Happy birthday (a week late) to my sweet 7-year-old. Lance is the most tender-hearted of all my kids. He has always been very quiet and subdued, but it looks like he's going to outgrow that before too long. You just can't get noticed around here if you're not loud and obnoxious!

So we enjoyed two birthday dinner parties, one with the Hills and one with the Cardons. Lance got a new scooter, some Club Penguin toys, and his favorite: money!

This is Lance with his best friend, Brayden. These two are inseparable. I love it! Brayden lives right across the street. Having him in our lives definitely makes Lance my easiest child!

And here he is ripping up the basketball court. He is so good! I was so surprised, because he's got some kind of hip ailment and sometimes has trouble running, but I couldn't even notice it when he played. I think he's found his "thing!"

I love you, my sweet Lance!

Yesterday Kira, Lindsay and I had our own personal Fitness Day. We basically spent the day at the gym. We've been trying to plan this for months and it finally came together. It went perfectly. We were all able to hang in from 9:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, with a couple hours break in the middle of the day for lunch and visiting. It was a blast, and we all did so well and finished the day without quitting. What made it easier was that the day consisted mostly of classes at the gym. I can't say enough good about doing a class, as opposed to trying to go it on your own. It makes working out so much easier and more motivating.

Cycling

Body Step

Body Attack

Body Pump (this is my favorite gym instructor of all time, Natalie)

We also did Body Combat, boot camp, and a little bit of our own thing on the track. It was a great challenge for us and we felt so accomplished when we were done!

Jeremy was very considerate about staying home with the kids all day; didn't complain once. There were a couple of things I had been wanting to do for weeks now, and asked him if he could do them if he had time. One was to re-pot a plant that I got for my birthday. It was a Christmas clearance plant so it was in a Christmasy pot, and I have a nice pot I wanted to transfer it to. The other was to get the kids to write Christmas thank-you notes to their grandparents. Well, he accomplished both, in a man's way. The plant was, indeed, transferred. The original pot was round, and the new one is bigger and square. So there sat the plant in its perfectly circular shape of dirt, sitting in the big square pot. Not to be outdone was the effort put into the thank-you notes. He took three plain white pieces of computer paper and scrawled the names of the grandparents on the top, then had each child that can write scrawl an equally as attentive line, basically "Thank you for the present," written in pen or pencil. And sitting right there on the counter waiting for me to do the only hard part of that task; find envelopes, find stamps, address and mail them. But of course since I had been gone all day, and he HAD, technically, done what I asked, I couldn't very well get mad. I think I even mustered a half-hearted, "Thank you, Hun." It sure makes me wonder: Are men REALLY that simple-minded? Or do they just REALLY know how to play us women? It's like when you ask your 8-year-old child to clean the bathroom. It ends up more disgusting than when he started. Is the message I'm supposed to take from this, "That'll teach you to ask me to do such daunting tasks."?

Whenever I hear people say they're relieved Christmas is over, I always think to myself that they just have the wrong attitude, and aren't focused on the true meaning. Well, that judgmental attitude sure came back to bite me this year, because I was TREMENDOUSLY relieved when Christmas was over. Jeremy's employer was kind enough to lay him off at the beginning of the month, right before Christmas. Even though they give a generous severance package, it still made for a very stressful Christmas. I was disappointed in the gifts we had gotten our children. I like to really spoil them at Christmas time, and this is the first year I haven't really gotten to do that as much as I'd like. They were so cute, though, about making sure we knew how much they loved everything they got. They made me feel a lot better about the situation. Ironically, the favorite present by all of them costed $5. It was a gift card for a one month membership on Club Penguin. They've been on the computer nonstop since Christmas.

My attitude was also boosted when one night our doorbell rang at nearly 11:00 at night, and we found a huge pile of groceries and a Walmart gift card on our porch, and then when two days before Christmas a couple in our ward brought us our neighborhood gift, which was a bottle of Sprite, and they also had a big bag of different meats for us, and then the wife snuck a significant amount of cash into my hand. I will always remember these examples of Christ-like love, and how it helped remind me that Heavenly Father hasn't forgotten about us and uses his angels to help us remember how much he loves us.

We had a super fun Christmas Eve party at our house with the Steffensens, Giff and Shirelle, Denny, and Grandpa Greg and Stephanie. Oh, and of course Geddy:

The evening started with (of course) lots of good food, and Grandpa brought his gifts for the children to open that night. It was pretty funny, because he had put all of the gifts in this gigantic bag, as tall as he was, so it was almost as good as seeing Santa Claus when he came in with that big bag hung on his shoulder. Before he handed the kids their gifts, he talked to them about what Christmas means. It's kind of embarrassing that my kids don't know quite as much as they should, because that's nothing but a reflection on me and the efforts I make, which are obviously going to improve for 2010. This is how interested the kids were for the spiritual portion of the evening:

I'm glad he does it, though. I think Christmas feel so much more special when we focus more on the Savior than all the other "exciting" aspects. I hope I can do better on that next Christmas, as well as all year round.

After everyone left the kids opened their Christmas Eve jammies:

I'm so grateful for my children. I'm sure they would be shocked to hear that (especially after today when I spent all morning acting like the meanest drill sergeant you've ever seen trying to get them to clean the house), but I love them so much and am grateful every day that I have them.