We did it!

Aaron and I finished the Old Testament before the end of the year. When we started reading, we were reading 10 pages a night because it would give us some leeway when the holidays came around, or when Isaiah or another "fun" book came up. We were scheduled to finish on December 15th, but somewhere around Thanksgiving we missed 10 days of reading (good thing we had planned for something like this). We decided that rather than try to catch up, we could just finish on Christmas. We had a couple more nights where we didn't quite read our 10 pages, so on Christmas Eve Aaron read all the way to Malachi while I wrapped presents (I think it was about 25 pages he had to read). We figured that it would be so easy to read the next four pages on Christmas...but Christmas came and went...and pretty soon it was New Year's Eve and we hadn't finished yet. Luckily it was only four pages, and we finished by 5pm December 31, 2009! We still made our deadline of reading the Old Testament in 4 months!! It was a fun goal, and now we just need to decide on the next set of scriptures to read!


Another topic...We just got back from a nice week vacation to Oregon! It was so nice to actually have a long break. Aaron and I haven't been able to take this much time off since we got married and it was fun for all of us. The kids still weren't ready to come home, but I am grateful that Aaron was able to get away from work for so long.

We got a sled for Christmas and we were able to bring it to Baker and go sledding! The kids had a lot of fun...well except for Ellen. She enjoyed the ride around the house until she got on unlevel ground and happened to fall off on her face. After that she didn't like it anytime the sled started to wobble, she'd cry and say "Whoa!" The next day, we drove in James' pickup to a good sledding hill and Ellen liked riding in the pickup. She even let me carry her to the top of the hill. When I went to sit down, she was hesitant, but since I was holding her tight, I think she felt safe. I was a little hesitant myself to go down, seeing how steep it was, but Aaron was on the bottom and encouraged me to go down anyway. We took off and at one point I thought we were going down too fast, so I stuck my feet out to slow us down. It worked, but it also covered Ellen in snow. I think Ellen held her breath until we reached the bottom, and then she started to cry, and she said, "No fun...no, no, no fun!" I figured she just didn't like the height, so we did some smaller, less exciting ones next, but she still kept with the same comment. She did enjoy making snowballs for Aaron to throw at Eli, and eating snow, and poking sticks in the fire, but sledding was "no fun" for Ellen. The rest of the kids loved sledding and didn't want to leave. I think we made some good memories there.

On the way home we were in and out of fog, but just outside of Farewell Bend, at the top of the Three Mile hill, we really ran into dense fog. I was nervous because we couldn't see the road very well, so I said a silent prayer. As soon as I was done, the fog lifted and I figured it was because we were starting down the hill. But then I could see stars up above. Just then Samuel and Jacque said, "We both just said prayers so the fog would go away...and look...its gone!"

I thought this was a great spiritual experience for all of us and it made me happy to see that they have a testimony of prayer! Samuel said that he wants to bear his testimony of this tomorrow in Church. I hope he still remembers tomorrow!!