February 2026

February started with a trip to St. George for Jaron's soccer tournament.  This team decided to do a different tournament this year earlier in the month and I was nervous it was going to be snowing but we had the most beautiful warm weather.  I think we were in the low to mid 70s all weekend.  So nice.  The tournament didn't go so well and we tied one game and lost the other 2.  But, we still always have such a fun weekend down there and it's always nice to get some warm weather in February.

Another picture of the JLO's.  Jaron has been shorter than his cousins almost his whole life and look at that, he has caught up.  Jaron has grown 4 inches this year and he's happy to be taller than some of his friends.

Siena's has some good friends on her basketball team this year and it's been fun to go watch them play.  

Kind of another quiet month...or I'm just not taking as many pictures these days.  Might be a combination of both!

January 2026

Siena got cupcake decorating tips for Christmas and has been loving trying different designs.

Pink Box Donuts opened this month.  They announced this location over a year ago and we love Pink box whenever we go to St George. So we joined the hundreds and hundreds of people for the grand opening only we didn't stay to get donuts because the opening ceremony took 45 minutes and they weren't serving anyone and we were so far back in line.  We had 2 people that wanted to stay and one that really wanted to leave.  I'll let you decided who is who.  So we left and I read online later that people waited for over 6 hours (not worth it)  We went back on Monday since it was a holiday and waited about 35 minutes.  Much more manageable.

Then I went back at the end of the month and got some for Michelle for her 1/2 century birthday!

And that's about it for January.  Siena's Jr Jazz basketball team started up and other than that we've been just moving along with life.  The strangest part of January is that we've had no snow this month.  It's been unusually warm and it doesn't really even feel like winter here.

Temple Trips of 2025

We made a goal as a family to go to a different temple each month this year.  It was fun going to so many different temples but also hard to get appointments at times we could go to each temple as well as the time it took to travel to some of them (not to complain as we know a lot of people travel days or are unable to) but we did it! We are so grateful there are so many temples near us and allow us to go often.

January - Draper Temple - Jaron's first time

February - St. George Temple in St George for Jaron's soccer tournament

March - Orem Temple and Mount Timpanogos Temple (Jaron was sick the day we went to Orem)

April - Jordan River Temple (ran into Cousins Lilly and Collin by total chance)

May - Taylorsville Temple

June - Payson Temple

July - Deseret Peak Temple

August - Bountiful Temple

September - Saratoga Springs Temple

October - Red Hills Temple (St. George) On our way to California for Fall Break

November - Oquirrh Mountain Temple with cousins during Thanksgiving break

December - Provo City Center - 2 days before Christmas, Siena got sick and wasn't able to make it :( 

We now plan to continue to go once a month but will stick mostly to the Draper temple as that one is the closest and easiest one to go for us.

December 2025

We started off December with some orchestra and band concerts.  I always like these concerts at Christmas time so we can hear all the Christmas music they've been learning.  They also both played in the grand concert this year with all the top band, choir and orchestra classes.  Grandma came to listen as well and they did such a great job.

We got tickets to the Alpine Live Nativity.  I hear about this every year and never get tickets so I was glad we did it this year.  Aria loved all the animals.  Jaron's friend JJ came with us and it was a fun night and not too cold.  My favorite part was when we saw Mary, Joseph and cutest tiniest baby playing Jesus. A great way to start the December Christmas season.  

Our annual gingerbread house decorating.  They are getting so good at doing this all by themselves and it looking really good.

Jaron had a great indoor season this year.  The team won all their games except for a tie and one loss.  Jaron's deacons quorum came to one of his indoor soccer games.  Brady another deacon is also on the team.  They said if either of them make a goal the leaders would buy everyone pizza.  We were down to the last few minutes of the game and neither of them had made a goal.  Then Jaron made a goal and you would've thought they had just won the world cup, all the deacons went crazy.  It was so funny and nice of them to come.  The leaders took them to Pizza Pie Cafe for dinner after the game.

The funniest thing happened in our adjoining neighborhoods in December.  One night we noticed the largest blow up Santa outside a house.  It was taller than any house and you could see it from a ways away.  Then we noticed it popping up at other houses.  It was so fun to see it and I heard someone was doing it as a joke on their friends.  We got a kick out of seeing it.

We went downtown this year to see the lights at temple square.  It wasn't that cold and it was fun to just walk around for a bit, eat dinner and enjoy the sights.

We tried to take a Christmas Sunday picture with the timer, cuz we don't get family pictures that often.  Here is how it turned out.  Aria was asked to play a little part during the primary kids Christmas song they sang.  Aria did such a good job and and had practiced a lot to make it sound just right.  The song was 'Little Baby in a Manger'

Christmas break started out great.  We did our annual get Grandpa South's trains out.  Always a fun day or 2 with them out.

We also made clay oil lamps.  Hopefully they last until next year and we can put little tea lights in the them.  We had our first annual Bethlehem dinner.  I made a new chicken kabob recipe that everyone loved and we sat on the ground and ate finger foods and cranraspberry juice.  It was a fun evening and hope we keep the new tradition going.

We took our monthly trip to the temple except Siena got sick and wasn't able to go with us.  It was super crowded at the Provo City Center temple but we were glad to do some baptisms right before Christmas.

I am seriously really bad at taking pictures on Christmas, this was the only one I got all day and it was them on their scavenger hunt to find a present giving them a cruise in Florida during Spring Break this year.  We had a pretty good day, everyone was happy but Jaron got sick the day before and on Christmas night his fever spiked to 103.7.  He was so miserable and I felt so bad because we had taken him to grandma and grandpas and then he asked to be taken home so I dropped him off to sleep and when we got home his fever was so high.  We took him in to the dr. the next day and they gave him tamiflu and that seemed to help.  Aria got sick a few days later but it wasn't nearly as bad but lasted about 6 days.  So our Christmas break fun turned into relaxing and chilling at home.

The Brians came to town so we got everyone together and we rented our clubhouse.  We ate pizza, played games, and watched movies in the theatre room.  The candy game with all the grandkids was a bit hit.

This is the puzzle the kids found at the end of their scavenger hunt so the knew we were going on a cruise.  We spent a few days putting it together.

The rest of December was just hanging out trying to get everyone to feel better.  I think the kids were ready to go back to school but it was nice having some downtime and just relaxing.  We saw Wicked and Zootopia2 as well as went to a Jazz G-League basketball game and played some arcade games.  So we did go do a few things too.