Richardson Report

  Guess who got her license on her 16th birthday!!!  What??! December was a blast... Ward Christmas party - Faith and Jada were part of a group of angel dancers. The family came for Christmas and it was WONDERFUL being together. We played hard and I didn't take many photos.  But it was a very happy couple of weeks.  More on our play time in a January post.  First - I need to talk about the crowning event of DECEMBER!!!!!

  In November I was three weeks post-op and we had a trip scheduled!  I had been a little nervous about traveling but it turned out so great!  We drove to Reno and met up with our friends (who moved from GP to Texas a couple years ago) and we hung out for two days.  The highlight of the weekend was watching "The Lion King" musical.  What a fun show! Best part of the month - Faith turned 10! Because of her birthday's proximity to Thanksgiving, we combined her celebration with Thanksgiving and took Faith and her cousins bowling. Thanksgiving was so much fun.  The food was fantastic.  The family times together were even better.   On our way home we snagged breakfast with Aunt Lynette - it's always a treat to catch up with her! Anyone ready for Christmas and a wedding?????  Because it's coming!

 We took family photos this fall.  Someone asked me why I was taking photos without all of my kids. Well - two reasons.  The first is that these individual shots are the girls' "school" pictures for the year. The second is that this IS our family 99% of the time and these girls deserve to have their lives chronicled just as much as we did when all the kids were living at home.  While I love and cherish our all-together family photos, they don't happen as often as I would like and kids grow fast.  I like to look, year to year, at their growth and marvel at it. These were the photos we chose to keep.  We had such fun.  Outtakes below.... Watching Kenna and Natalie "help" Jessica get Faith to smile was highly entertaining!

No reason for this photo other than that it is a delight to hear Natalie play.  She's grown a lot as a musician the past year.  I'm grateful for her teacher who is so great! Kenna decided to homeschool through a local charter school this year.  Thus her back to school photo is just her, in her cozy clothes, ready for another day! Logan and Jordan were able to attend General Conference this year! Halloween this year - we had a bunch of kids come over and they went trick or treating in small groups. Kenna worked at the haunted corn maze for all of October and nearly froze to death one night - but she survived and made some $$$ too!          Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious Faith was vampire Cleopatra, a normal Cleopatra AND a normal vampire - three occasions - three costumes. Natalie was a runaway bride! HOCO happened.  Natalie went to the dance with a group of her friends and they had such a good time! Our friends Lance and Karen don't have ...

 We settled into summer this month and just enjoyed all the summer things. Josh and Logan got home from Ireland and Spain. We spent a delightful week in Sunriver Our family attended a Josh Turner concert and it was the bomb-diggity! Youth Camp for our ward included boating.  So much fun out on the water with these kids! Faith went to Garden Camp, hosted by the food bank farm.  She loves it out there! This how our family vibes... Three girls babysitting together. This was our family service day at the pear orchard in Medford.  Because August is pear picking season!  We each tried to give 12 hours this year.