We had a family night lesson last week on building relationships with our extended family and as a result, I thought about how little contact I have had with many of you lately.  We all get busy, but we need to remember what is most important and each of you is among the top of my most important list!   I tried to post a couple weeks ago and the pictures kept messing up and so I am going to post sans pictures and try to get them up later.

Courtney is finishing up the 6th grade and preparing for Jr. High- I am not ready for that, but she is a great girl.   She continues to excel at school with a perfect 4.0 and at her three instruments- saxophone, viola and piano.   She also sings in the school chorus and is currently preparing for a performance as a River City Girl in The Music Man.  She also had a lead role in her school production of The Pied Piper.   Our ward has discovered her babysitting skills lately and she is called most every weekend night now for a job- she is such a sweet girls, she has also babysat for free many times for couples attending to callings, meetings or temple prep classes.  Her most exciting thing right now is that she goes next week to Camp KEEP, a week long camp at the beach- I don't know what we will do without her here, but she is very excited.  

Aubrey is loving third grade- she is in a combination class for the third year in a row, but she makes the best of it.   She also was in the school play and loves playing trenchball in the school intermurals.   Aubrey is a natural at the piano and works hard to do well.  She too has a perfect report card and was disappointed that her spelling grade was a 99% instead of 100 like everything else.  She is a sweet girl who's always ready to help out, especially with Caleb and is adored by everyone around her.

Elijah is at the end of first grade and trying to convince us that he is ready for 3rd grade, so should skip 2nd- he's doing great, but that is not in the cards for him!   He loves to read and he loves to play video games.  He plays basketball EVERY recess and played on a team this winter with Mark as his coach.  He started piano this year and works very hard to get every piece perfect.  He was also in The Pied Piper as a Rat!

Christian is still our little firecracker, the life of the party!  He will start Kindergarten in the fall and our district has just decided to go to all day this next year, so he will be in the first group of that.  He is very excited and Caleb is very sad that he will be gone all day.  He wants to play baseball ( not Tball), so I am looking for a team for him.  He works hard to make right choices and loves to be surrounded by friends.  He along with Aubrey and Elijah ran at a community track meet a couple weeks ago and they all did great.  We were especially proud of Christian who was adamant that he wanted to run the 400 so he could go all the way around the track.  That is a long way for such a little guy, but he fought through and ran the whole way!

Caleb is the darling of our family.  He is the sweetest little boy that gives hugs, kisses, and I love you's freely to the family.   He just moved into a big boy bed and is almost completely potty trained.  He loves nursery and we can hardly believe that he is already almost a Sunbeam!

Mark has had a great school year with building a collaboration between his seniors and the local university.   With his work through that, he has traveled to present at various conferences and has built friendships with key players at the University.  He recieved a statewide excellence in teaching award, for which we are very proud of him.

I am still serving as the Relief Society President and Girl Scout leader as well as committee chair for a few things at the school.  Mostly though, I just try to keep up with everyone else's activities!   I am trying to run a few races again and picking fun ones to do like the mud run I did in the fall.

We are VERY excited to see everyone is a short 6 weeks and look forward to building memories and even stronger relationships through that time together.  Love you all!

I never feel like I have any real news but I will write a few lines anyway. Dad is finally pretty well healed and doing very well. He starts working full days tomorrow which he isn't too excited about but it does mean he is back to normal.

We are enjoying a real Alaskan winter this year. We have lots of snow and cold. We have also had the opportunity to see lots of moose as they come down from the higher elevations when the snow is heavy. The northern lights have also been active this year so that has been neat to see.

Since we changed time it is still light and it is a little after 8 pm. The long spring and summer days are definately my favorite thing about Alaska.

We are looking forward to going down to meet Kellen (and see his family) in a couple weeks.

I sure wish that you could all move to the same state so we could see everyone at one time.

We are definitely excited for the Family Reunion. We are flying in to Sacramento on June 7.

Hope you are all able to work out plans to be there.

Love You All!

Our New Home

Hello, I sent you all an email as well, but thought I would post here as well. Our new home closed yesterday, so we are now officially homeowners! A little scary that we went from absolutely no debt to a 30 year commitment to debt (though hopefully we can pay it off sooner than that), but also very exciting. It is a large house with extra space, so plenty of room for visitors, so help us put it to good use and come visit! (Though if you want anything more than an air mattress to sleep on, please donate to our furnish our new home fund) Anyway, our new address is:

4924 Portview Dr
Fort Worth, TX 76135

Introducing Kellen Riley Stewart

Here he is, our new baby boy! Kellen Riley Stewart, born January 11, 2012 at 3:29 am. He weighed in at 7 lbs. 1 oz. and was 21 inches long. (I was going to post more, but now he is awake and crying for his Mama to feed him! Hopefully I will get back to this later!)

Just made an offer on our first home! Wow, sometimes I thought this day would never come...now we wait to hear if it is accepted. Here is a link to the listing if you want to see: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4924-Portview-Dr_Fort-Worth_TX_76135_M75460-40894?source=web

It has a small yard, but everything else about the house is more than I ever imagined having in a first home. We are so excited!

So, there are so many things going on in our life right now, I figure I better post regularly or else I will never keep up!

Trever graduated last Friday, the 17th. He graduated with a 4.0 GPA which earned him a summa cum laude ranking within his graduating class. Considering he was not even sure college was for him when he started it, we are all very proud of his accomplishment. He truly is amazing and excels at everything he puts his hand to.

His new employer took a little too long getting their paperwork together for us to be able to get full service movers, but we were able to get the u pack set-up where all we had to do was load the trailer and someone else drives it for us. Thanks to lots of help from family and friends we got that all done by Saturday afternoon and were able to spend a relaxing Sunday visiting friends and spending time with Trever's Grandma and Mom before they headed back to their respective homes.

Monday morning we piled in the car and took off on our adventure. Despite on small hiccup where the road we planned to take was closed due to snow, we made it to Trever's Dad's house on Wednesday evening as planned. The kids loved the hotels, especially the pools.

So now we are here in Cedar Hill, Texas trying to figure out what in the starry heavens to do next! Trever has gone in and signed all his official paperwork. We have decided that we want to seriously look into buying a house here, but of course with the holiday everything is running a little slower than usual. Hopefully early next week we will be able to get in with some lenders to see what are financing options are. Homes seem quite affordable in this area of the country, so hopefully we can find something we will will be happy with and can comfortably afford. For the time being we are staying at Trever's Dad's house, which is very small and not really designed for guests, we actually sleep in the camper trailer in the driveway because that is where there are beds available. Weir (Trever's employer) will actually pay for up to 60 days of temporary lodging, but we want to find out about house stuff first. We don't want to move into an apartment just to move right back out, plus most of them have a lease we would have to sign. We may look into an extended stay hotel, we are just not sure. At the moment we are mostly just trying to get through Christmas and then we will figure out the next steps. We did all the kids Christmas shopping yesterday, and I will never do all my shopping in one day so close to Christmas again, Toys R Us was a mad house!

Anyway, Trever should start his job on January 3, so we have all of next week when he is still around all the time to try to get some more things figured out, so wish us luck!

Hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas, we love you all!

Also, in case you missed it, our temporary Texas address is:

525 Flower Dr

Cedar Hill, TX 75104

OK - HOW DO I MAKE COMMENTS? I have tried with no luck. Anyway- Amber we are sooooooooooooooo Happy for you guys.