Disneyland with the Youngs

This last week we got to spend three fun filled days with a bunch of our Young family at Disneyland. It was great fun! Two of Shaun's sisters, and their families escaped the snow and cold of Utah to enjoy the warm sunny weather of southern California.




We enjoyed lots of fun rides!





Connor enjoying a healthy lunch of Oreos and fruit snacks!



The little Princess. Nothing was ever more appropriate.

Report card

Amanda got her report card for second semester today, and there is good news and bad news. Good news is that she did great! Bad news is that they send home two copies of your report card now because so many kids come from divorced homes. That just makes me sad.

FHE-Making Doughnuts

Like so many mothers I want my home to be a place of fun, learning, and love. So I plan "fun" activities to hopefully accomplish this. In my head they usually involve my kids sitting and listening to me patiently while I explain all the directions, then them following them exactly and while doing this, laughing and getting along perfectly. Mission accomplished. How often does this happen? Pretty much never. This is how it usually goes:
Me: "Hey guys I have a fun thing for us to do!"
One of the kids (usually Amanda): "Can we watch TV while we do it?"
Me: "No, c'mon this is going to be fun!"
The kids: "Connor is sitting in my seat!, make him move!"
"Sam stuck her tongue out at me!"
"Mads is sitting on the table and playing with the scissors."
Me: "Connor that was not appropriate, go to your room!"
Amanda: "Sam kicked me!"
Me: "Sam I SAW you do it, go outside for your time out! Fine, Amanda go watch TV and take Mads with you while I clean this up!"

Last night was the exception. I decided to make homemade doughnuts for Family Home Evening, and it was a blast! The kids took over doing different jobs, Amanda glazed, Samantha rolled the dough, Connor cut them, and Mads covered EVERYTHING within her reach in glaze. I fried, and Shaun was the videographer, photographer, and took care of clean-up duty! It was amazing. For over one hour they worked together, didn't fight, and not one person got sent on a timeout! Today I am still reveling in it! It's times like that, that make up for all the failed attempts! I guess I'll still keep trying.


Mom in training...doing your job with one arm while holding a baby in the other!


Amazingly these two worked side by side for about and hour and did not kill each other!


These are obviously low fat.


The finished product.

Martin or Marvin

OR




Last week I had one of my proud mom moments. At the Sunday dinner table we were talking about what the kids had learned at church that afternoon. Amanda told us that they were having a lesson on church history and her teacher asked if anyone knew who Martin Harris was. ( For the non-LDSers out there he's a prominent figure in our church's history.) Amanda raised her hand and said, "Do you mean Marvin Harrison? I've heard of him." The boy next to her said, "Amanda, Marvin Harrison is a wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts". OK, so maybe not one of my proud mom moments, but I do believe Shaun was grinning from ear to ear, and I'm sure Grandpa Dell will be too when he reads this! Maybe we need to rethink how we spend our Sunday afternoons.

Wedding Crashers

This weekend I got to do something I've never done before, crash a wedding! My brother Logan's best friend was getting married in Newport this weekend and invited my parents down. They decided to fly into San Diego a couple of days before the wedding to spend some time with us. When Saturday came we hated that we had to waste a day of their visit with them up in Newport, so the girls in the family decided to tag along. It ended up being a great day. We got to spend the morning on beautiful temple grounds, eat at Baja Fresh, tour a mission, and crash a very fancy wedding reception. The end of the day capped off with a visit, back down in Poway, from Logan and Kristen where a little DDR and Guitar hero competion broke out. All in all a great day! I can't take credit for this picture, we ran across it on someones facebook page but it shows how serious Mads was about crashing that wedding. She was going to get into that temple, recommend or not!




My handsome brother Logan in his groomsman attire, and his cute girlfriend Kristen.



We had a couple of hours to kill between the wedding and the reception so we headed down south to Capistrano where the reception was being held. Sam's in 4th grade and is studying California history which means a lot of time talking about the missions around the state. We decided to make the trip educational and visit the San Juan Capistrano Mission. It just so happens that is where the wedding party was taking pictures. I felt like we were stalking them. We had a nice time, Sam got to see a lot of stuff they had talked about in school and, of course, my dad really enjoyed the audio tour he took!



Amanda and Kristen taking a break.



We wore Mads out with all our stalking!



Yes, we also crashed the reception, and at first I refused to eat anything or let my kids eat anything, I wouldn't even sit down, I mean we weren't invited. All it took was a crepe bar and, not just a dessert table, but pretty much an entire bakery to break me down. Madison didn't hesitate when it came to the eclairs!




Oh yeah, one last thing...Kristen, my mom owes you a flute!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from the Young family! We had a great Christmas break and a very happy New Year. We got to spend it in Utah with our family. We spent a lot of time with the Holman family becase my brother and his family are getting ready to move to England for a few years. We figured this might be the last time we get to see them for awhile so we definitly made the most of our time with them.


We are sure going to miss our Holman cousins!


As you can see it was especially hard for Matt to say good-bye to his one and only sister.

Here are a few highlights from our trip.


Playing the Ungame with Grandpa. Finally, after all these years, Grandpa found family members to play WILLINGLY!





A trip to BYU and Grandpa's office.


Playing in the snow at Grandma's house.



Playing around at Kangaroo Zoo.

Matt and Jenny planned a New Year's Eve party for the Holman gang and it was a blast! It included PF Changs take out, a Wii bowling tournament, and Bingo complete with New Years poppers for prizes. It also included Matt in a kilt and Sorels and Logan in a tiara, neither of which I will include pictures of, you're welcome! Everyone over the age of 5, even Grandpa and Grandma, stayed up until midnight to ring in the New Year. We had a New Year's Day dinner with the entire Young Family (except Shaun, of course!)at a favorite Mexican restraunt. All the cousins sat at one big table in the middle of the dining room. I'm not sure how much the waitress enjoyed it, but I kow us parents did! One of the funniest things happened on our long drive home. I ran out of windshield wiper fluid. That in itself, not so funny. Me making my 11 year old daughter stick half her body out the window with a water bottle (while I'm traveling at 75 miles an hour) to try and splash it on the windshield to clean it off, and then 3/4 of the bottle coming right back into the car and soaking her, now that's funny!

I just had to include one more highligh, sledding on pure ice! We wanted to go sledding the whole time we were in Utah and kept waiting for a fresh snowfall, but that didn't happen and we had to make do with sledding on old snow and ice. We all had fun except Amanda, who on her first run down the hill, hit an icy bump pretty hard and landed on her back. She recovered but didn't want to go down anymore hills! This video is Mads and Sam taking a run! What a great trip we had!