Happy Valentine's Day!

OK, first of all I want all of you to tell me your favorite love songs. I'm trying to put together a cd and I want more ideas.
I REALLY want Through My Veins by Richard Marx:


and How Can I Tell You by Cat Power (from the diamond commercial):


but neither of those are available.
Here is what I have (but I'm still not sure I'm going to use every single one of these):

Forever Tonight --by Peter Cetera
Faithfully --by Peter Cetera
Faithfully --by Journey
Have You Ever Been in Love --by Peter Cetera
Dreaming of You --by Selena
Open Arms --by Journey
I Want to Know What Love Is --by Foreigner
Unforgettable --by Natalie Cole
With Your Love --by Journey
All I Want is You --by U2
With or Without You --by U2
Angelia --by Richard Marx
Died in your Arms Tonight --by Cutting Crew
Amanda --by Boston
Because You Loved Me --by Celine Dion
Feels Like Home --by Chantal Kreviazuk
To Where You Are --by Josh Groban
Far Away --by Nickelback
Samson --by Regina Spektor
Everything I Do... --by Bryan Adams


I am skipping some Chicago and Richard Marx songs that remind me too much of Jr High. :)

And here are two of my Valentines!

Here they are getting their Valentines ready.

And here they just woke up this morning. Every morning to wake them up I turn on Curious George in our room and they come climb into our bed to watch it before having breakfast. They are holding their Valentine goodies from us.

And here is Julia in her Valentine's Day attire. Ethan wouldn't let me take one of him but he is wearing a red shirt today.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day, and remember that you are loved!!

Check out the valentines that Julia made for Ethan after school today:

The small one says, "Der Ethan I lav you cus you or a gd frend and you or speshl to me and you or nis to me sumtims. Lav Julia." In case you're not sure what it says-- Dear Ethan I love you cause you are a good friend and you are special to me and you are nice to me sometimes. Love, Julia.

She's in Kindergarten this year and I love how she's trying to sound out words that she doesn't know. How cute!

Endless snow... we actually used our fireplace!

Yes, we had 3 more snow storms this week, and as always there are more coming. This seems to be the winter of endless snow. The kids decided to climb up on the snow pile in between our house and the neighbor's house:



And we finally made a snowman! It's gone already though. No it hasn't melted... Ethan decided to knock it over.

This is the snow tunnel the kids were making.

And we actually used our fireplace! We haven't used it ever since we've had kids, so it's been over 8 years. The kids loved it!

Here's Ethan roasting marshmallows.

And Julia eating a s'more.

They both declared that it was the "best night ever". This is something that Julia says almost every day (well she says "it's the best day ever"), she is so excited by life. Ethan doesn't say it nearly as much so it was fun that he was having such an enjoyable time!

A wonderful prayer from our prophet, President Hinckley

Most of you know that our beloved prophet Gordon B Hinckley passed away this week. He was such a wonderful inspiration to all of us, and he will truly be missed.

A friend of mine shared this with me and I thought it was beautiful, and truly showed who he was. This is a prayer that President Hinckley gave for the youth in November of 2000 that has been put to music. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
http://www.ashleyharris.com/prophetsprayer.htm

I'm adding a video tribute to President Hinckley:

2/10 Adding the tribute from his funeral:

Just a funny picture

This just cracked me up. What funny kids we have!

Happy Birthday Derek!!!

Happy birthday, we hope you had a great day!

This morning the kids helped me make baked french toast so we could take Derek breakfast in bed. Too bad it took so long to bake because he was up before we could take it to him in bed, but he did go back to bed to eat it. :)

Tonight we went out for dinner, Mom and Kristen watched the kids (thank you!). We started out at Magleby's because we had a coupon, but the wait there was an hour. So we decided to go back to PF Chang's since we had a gift card from Mark and Jill from Christmas (thank you!), but the wait there was even longer. We ended up eating at Chik-Fil-A. :) It was still good, even though we were planning on something a little nicer.

Derek, we hope you had a great birthday! We love you!

More snow, and more sledding

So we woke up this morning to about 7 inches of snow in our front yard. We knew some storms were coming, but this one wasn't supposed to give us too much snow. I hope the next two (coming in the next few days) don't give us too much more!


This is comparing the height of the snow to the sidewalk. The snow had been shoveled into the street, so there isn't extra snow piled on top here.

So we decided to go sledding again! In some places it was too deep for the sleds, but once we got a good track for them to slide down it was great (but still very cold).







And here is Julia's snow angel. It's kind of hard to tell, but the snow was higher than she was once she sank down into it.

A review of 2007-- Picture overload!

We started out the year at a BYU basketball game. :)

This is our St Patrick's Day hike.

Yes, there was still snow in the canyon.

Easter morning.

In April Devin and Emily and their kids got to visit. Here are Josh and Claire with Ethan and Julia. Andrew was around too, but we didn't get any pictures with him.

Later in April we went to Florida! We started out in Orlando and we went to Disneyworld-- Magic Kingdom.

Then we went to Jacksonville and stayed at Derek's parents' house. The beach was a little chilly at night, but was great the next day.


At the beach in Jacksonville.

In June we had more cousins visit-- Tamara and David came to town with their kids. This is Julia, Rebekah, and Amie at the Ogden Treehouse museum.

And here is Sanja, Julia, Ethan, Amie, and Rebekah at the Treehouse Museum.

Julia's preschool graduation.

Here are Ethan and Julia at the Orem Night parade with Hunter and Kaycee, we go every year with them.

In June we also went to Zion National Park. We went on some fun hikes and had a great time. Here's Derek and Julia in the river.

This was on our hike up to the Emerald Pools.

This is the Upper Emerald Pool at Zion, the hike to get here was a bit difficult, and it was SO hot (around 106), so when we finally made it here it was amazing. You can barely see Derek and the kids in the water right in front of the huge boulder.


And this is on our way back down.

Julia was a little tired by the end, but she was a trooper, she did made it all the way up and most of the way down by herself. Our hikes were over 4 miles and much of it on steep, rocky dirt trails that were difficult to climb.




In July we had the Hill reunion. This is Grandma Hill with Julia, Heather, and Mary.


This is also the Hill reunion on our way down the mountain after a little hike.

And one of the kid tables the next day at the reunion.

This is the Pioneer Day carnival in Cedar Hills that we attended with some friends at the end of July. This is Kendra, Julia, Talia, Amanda, Kyle, and Ethan. The kids were in line for a bounce house ride.

And doing sparklers at their house that night, before the real fireworks started.

And Melodie (Rosie's sister) came home from her mission at the end of July too. We were so excited!!

In August we went to Payson Lakes. Ethan tried to do a little fishing, but didn't have much luck.

Julia enjoyed her new canoe.

Here we are at an Orem Owlz game in August. This was the first real baseball game the kids had attended, and they had a great time.

Julia even got a hug from the mascott.

The kids were both in soccer this year, and it starts back up again in the Spring. It keeps us pretty busy since Derek coaches Ethan's team, but they both love it.

Robyn and Eric came to town in September, so Ethan and Julia got to play with more cousins! Here are Ethan and Mierae watching Julia's soccer game.

We went to visit Grandpa at the bakery too, this is Mierae, Grandma (my mom), Julia, Jolie, and Robyn at the bakery.

And a family picture after our barbeque in the canyon.


I started the blog in October, so most of the pictures from the rest of the year are already on here, but here are a few from December that I didn't post.

Our friends came over to the watch the BYU football game, and the kids had a great time. This was right before Christmas.

We made sugar cookies while they were here too.

We also went to Jungle Jim's, which is right by Derek's office in Murray. They have tons of fun stuff for the kids-- a small roller coaster, bumper cars, a carousel, rockets they can fly in, swings that spin them around, etc. We love to go there in the winter when it's too cold to do a lot of outdoor activities.

This is Derek and Ethan in the roller coaster.

And Ethan and Julia in the spinning cars.




Julia on the carousel.


Here's the kids right after church on the Sunday before Christmas.

Hope you all have a happy New Year!!!