New Years Day...

New Years morning we were up bright and early... we had two baptisms and a baby blessing to attend... those of my nephews, Luke and Jake, and their baby sister Juliet.  Since Tricia was in town for Christmas and The New Year, and because a lot of family either live in Utah or were also visiting, they decided to baptize and bless the kids here.

I can hardly believe the twins are 8 years old already!  I remember when they were born--- I received the news in a package with a letter and pictures while I was on my mission in Portugal.

In case you can't tell by the picture, Luke and Jake are identical twins...  the only thing difference between the two (aside from personalities and interests) is a freckle that Luke sports on his forehead.  It used to be a cinch for me to tell the two apart, but more recently, these last couple of years, I confuse the two ALL the time! Funny story about that--- I believe it was Luke who was baptized first (I can't actually remember now)---  Victor baptized the boys while Tricia watched with the rest of our families... she later admitted to me that she thought it was actually Jake being baptized first, until she realized after the fact as she watched Luke leaving the baptismal font and Jake entering the font, that it was actually Luke!  It was pretty funny because she admitted even sometimes she can't tell the two apart from a distance.

Following the boys baptism, Victor blessed Juliet...
Have a mentioned before how tiny and precious she is... she is just gorgeous!

She sort of, kind of, makes me hope that one day Spencer and I will be fortunate enough to have a daughter... don't mistaken me, I'm THRILLED that very soon we'll be welcoming our 5TH baby boy into our family but eventually it might be nice to even out all of the testosterone in our family with some girl genes.

Following the baptism and baby blessing, we gathered to take a couple of pictures...
below is a picture of Tricia and Victor's 9 children.

It hardly looks like a group shot of 9 kids huh?  I admit, I had to count them all in this picture at least two or three times just because I wasn't convinced they were all there.

The following picture is of all of the grandchildren with Grandma and Grandpa Truesdell...

Ian actually wasn't in the picture... he was in the middle of throwing a tantrum so Spencer took him outside.  These aren't all of my parents grandchildren--- we're still missing Janna's 3 children, Idrese, Paresa and Kyse from the picture and Jeff's daughter Tatiana--- Jeff & Janna and their families were in San Diego.  As of date, my parents have 21 grandchildren...  towards the end of March they'll have 22 when Jeff and his wife welcome another daughter into their family and by the end of April/beginning of May they'll have 23 when our baby boy is born.  It's cRaZy how quickly our family has grown.  I still remember vividly, the day when their oldest grandchild, my niece Rayanne was born... that was just over 16 years ago.

In case you didn't spot it with your own eyes, check out what Noah's doing in the picture above... Love it!  Who taught him to start making silly faces for the camera?!

Following pictures, our families went to the roller skating rink in Orem where the kids ate pizza, the adults mingled and everyone skated (or scooted) their little hearts out (everyone but myself and Spencer----Spencer doesn't do skates and I wasn't feeling it).

 

 This scene below shocked us!

Normally, out of all of our boys, Ian has the most fears and reservations when it comes to facing new challenges or meeting new people...  he usually needs A LOT of coaxing to encourage him to do something new so imagine how surprised (but quite pleased) we were when we arrived at the skating rink and almost immediately after, with out any coaxing, he picked up his scooter and went out onto the floor to scoot around all by himself!  He was out there almost the whole time while we were there!!!

As nap time was approaching, we wrapped things up and said our "goodbyes"... this was going to be the last time we would see Tricia and her family because they left for Texas the following morning and my parents left the following afternoon to return to San Diego... it was bittersweet saying our "goodbyes"--- bitter because I hate that I don't get to see my family very often since they all live else where but it was also sweet because I was READY for the holidays and festivities to be over with... I'd been sick for weeks (pregnant sick and sick sick)  and I was exhausted from all of the activities that occurred during the month of December--- I was more than ready for some quiet downtime--- now that it's the middle of February, I'm still wondering though, when am I ever going to get that quiet downtime I was expecting?!