Richardson Report

The fondest wishes of their hearts were answered when it actually snowed on Christmas Day... But first let's back up to some other December things.  First....Faith's preschool program Family Home Evening one night was hot cocoa and Christmas light viewing But mostly these kids were excited to get to Idaho and see their favorite biggest sisters! It didn't hurt that the snow showed up right on time! My mama heart was thrilled to have all my people together under one roof.  And it was just us on Christmas Eve, which made it even more magical.  Everyone got Christmas jams...of course! There were two really special Christmas gifts that deserve to be shared. Kenna made Natalie the sweetest poster of 7 things she loves about Natalie (one for each letter in Natalie's name).  Natalie's smile when she opened it and started reading it was something else.  She was grinning from ear to ear. ...

I can't keep up with birthdays anymore.  We had two between Thanksgiving and Christmas... 🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂 To start...someone was ECSTATIC to be turning 5 years old. She planned her "cake" herself.  I told her it had to be a trifle because I wasn't sure how to to it otherwise (cake with strawberries and chocolate mixed in) She didn't seem to mind as long as there were 5 candles! She got ballet clothes and roller skates, and purchased her own remote control cars with the birthday money she received.  So, basically everything her heart desired... The day of her birthday she made a few videos... you'll need your sound up to hear what she says - it's pretty funny.  Here's one:  https://youtu.be/Z3EwbabSDbQ and the video above (if it doesn't play) can be found here:  https://youtu.be/pRYu3G5FlwY ➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵➵ And then on to Kenna's 11th Birthday.  For her we kept it simple - we invite...

Today on my walk I listened to Jody Moore's "Brave New Mom" podcast and she said something really stunning.  She said, "you are the mom your children were meant to have.  You are one of their trials." Which sounds somewhat horrible but at the same time so, so reassuring.  Right?  So maybe your kids will need therapy (maybe you need therapy from your childhood experiences) but Heavenly Father must have thought it would all work out.  It's something to mull over a little bit more, but I had to share that while it was fresh in my brain. Find this podcast episode here:  https://boldnewmom.com/12-am-i-a-good-mom/ In other news, we have a birthday coming up in our family.  Faith has been counting down the days to her birthday since...well, probably since her last birthday.  But definitely she has been getting antsy since about August.  Which is a long time to wait.  And with that much lead-in time I'm wondering how I'm going to make it th...

I thought it would be interesting to make a little record of some homeschool days.  It's just the stuff that makes up a day.  In between are questions, talking, nagging, lots and lots of driving, reading in small chunks, etc. MONDAY I woke up unusually early thanks to the time change and decided to go with it. Read Scriptures @ 5:30 and a family prayer with Logan before he leaves went for a walk @ 6 made breakfast family breakfast/scriptures/prayer about 7:00 Faith asked me to read so I read The Princess in Black and since I was in the mood, we also read two chapters from our current book, Farmer Boy I took a quick shower about 9am and got a load of laundry started. 9:30am - Got the girls working on music/math - have to pull them away from their books to do it. They each did a chore. Faith helped me clean the playroom and get it ready for uncle Nate. Rotate laundry 10:15am - did a quick history lesson on St. Patrick.  There's a recipe for Irish Soda Bread as...

What makes a mama's heart happy? Seeing their kids love the Gospel. Seeing their kids do hard things. Seeing their kids enjoy amazing friendships. These trek photographs made my heart happy for all those reasons.

I haven't posted since graduation - summer has been busy! Our Edward Jones summer regional was in Sunriver this year - we played it cool and spent a lot of time at the pool every day. However, we dressed up for the two dinners.... Perhaps you recognize us better  by our aliases...but here is the latest family photo...minus a couple of big kids. Josh somehow thought 80s Prom theme = 80s kegger...but whatevs.  We drove home late Saturday night after summer regional in order to be at church the day Josh released me as Relief Society president...  that was a super emotional day.  I thought after six weeks of working through those emotions I would have them all under control. And I was okay until about 5 minutes before RS when someone came up to talk to me and I just burst into tears.  And cried all through the opening exercises, which I had to conduct because BOTH my counselors had family emergencies that day and had to be gone.  So I wa...