My Birthday Weekend!

Matt surprised me this weekend. He called a babysitter for the kids for Friday and Saturday, he took the day off work, and we took at trip to St. Louis for my birthday!The first thing we did was go to the St. Louis Art Museum. I found a picture of it on the internet. When we went it was full of snow! You can't tell that well from this picture, but there is a relatively good hill from the museum down to these fountains. The city had build two fires at the top and had a good stack of firewood and the children (since it was a snow day) were all out sledding down this hill! We thought that was an awesome idea and very nice of St. Louis to do.
On Saturday we went through a session at the St. Louis temple, where we were married.
On Friday night we ate at one of my favorite restaurants - The Cheesecake Factory. I even ordered the 30th Anniversary Cheesecake since I thought the title was fitting for the occasion. Yum..... :-)

I had a perfect birthday thanks to my wonderful husband!

On another note, Matt and I decided to let the deal fall through on that house we posted about. The seller wouldn't drop his price, wouldn't fix anything, and was pretty much hard to work with. After some pondering Matt and I felt strongly we should not buy it even though it seemed like an okay house. So we are house hunting again which is okay because we are not in a hurry to buy and looking at houses is fun, well, sometimes fun.

Jonah's Baptism

Jonah's baptism was this past Saturday, on January 8th, 2011. The missionaries started to fill up the font at 11:00 in the morning and his baptism wasn't until 4:00 that evening, but it took that long for the font to fill up. And of course, during that 5 hours the hot water heater couldn't heat it all up, so at 3:00 we went to the church to help the missionaries boil water and dump it in the font. It was a pretty fun experience. I even typed up and printed off the program myself. Being in a branch is a learning experience!
The jumper Jonah is wearing is an extra small. Our branch didn't have any extra extra small. I'm not sure if that size is even made. It was pretty long on Jonah, but he didn't mind.
Strangely enough, a brother in the ward informed us that was the first time he'd ever seen that Plexiglas partition in front of the font. The last baptism was in September, so it is brand new since then. I guess the branch president realized if we were to have Jonah baptized here he didn't want the rest of our children in the font as well. Haha, probably a very smart thing to do.
Unfortunately, Jared was asleep on the ground for the whole baptism, so we don't have him in any pictures. :(
Here is one with Matt's parents in it. Matt's mom gave the talk on Baptism and I gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. It went really, really good. I'm so grateful to be in such a small branch that is overall very caring and supportive. I think just about everyone that could be there showed up, which was just about the whole branch, and most of them volunteered to bring a snack for after it was over. These are actually all the pictures I took! I'm not the greatest at remembering to take pictures.

Jonah said the water was just right and warm, so all those pots sure paid off! We are very proud of Jonah! I miss teaching him in junior primary, but I know his teacher in senior primary will learn from him being she's a brand new member herself!

Happy 2011!

I will try to blog more regularly for 2011. We have many things I need to blog about. Here is the list that will come:

1. Jonah's baptism on January 8, 2011!

2. James and Jonah's birthdays!

3. Christmas pictures!

4. Kaylee's October birthday and Halloween!

5. Corn Maze!

Yes, I know I am behind. But when you are in charge of a Primary of little kids and you are the president, teacher, music leader and secretary and your counselor wasn't helping lighten the load you get burned out quickly and other things slide. Luckily for me I have a new counselor now and I have felt the load lighten considerably.

Today we are putting in an offer on a home. A modestly priced modestly sized home. A typical Robinson home. The kids are very happy they might move into anything other than our small rental, and Matt and I are happy with the price. It will allow us the freedom to get things done financially that we wanted to achieve before Matt's job loss and will be easier to make a reality now. And best of all, the house will suit our needs for the next 5 years (since that is the plan anyways).

If our offer is accepted I think I can show you a picture of the outside at least. We will see what happens!