January 2017

2017 started off great with Devin's mission farewell on New Year's Day.  He did a great job speaking about the power of the Atonement to help us get through hard things, and we had a great time having so many of our family and friends come to support him.  We continued our chalupa tradition on a much bigger scale than normal. :)  It was an awesome day!










Devin with some of his friends who came


With his Finch family cousins

On January 3, we were privileged to witness Alysha and Mac's wedding in the Salt Lake temple.  They are such a cute couple and we couldn't be happier for them.





Megan, Devin and Autumn have been wanting to try skiing for a while now, so we took a day to go skiing as a family, plus my nephew Ben and his wife Jessica, and minus Seth who has no interest.  It was just about as perfect a day as you could get for skiing and the kids all picked up on it quickly.  Autumn has since been skiing a couple of times with her friends and is skiing like a pro.  Bryce and I also took a day to go skiing just the two of us and that was fun too.  We have tons of snow in the mountains this year and get new powder every few days, so it's been a great year for skiing.





Ben and Jess also invited Bryce and I to come along with them to box seats for a monster truck rally - it was seriously so much fun!!






Baby Rowan sleeping through all the noise - babies amaze me. :)

Devin had a few good-bye events in the days leading up to him entering the MTC.  His friends at BYU threw him a goodbye and good luck party...





...and we had his favorite dinner, thai beef and coconut rice the night before he entered the MTC.



And then on January 11, he said goodbye to the pets, we drove to Provo, said our goodbyes on the Provo temple grounds...















And then we drove across the street to the MTC, had one final group goodbye and he was off...





We were pretty excited to get a brief paragraph email from him later that day, in which he said, "Guys! Putting my name tag on was everything I dreamed it would be!  I am so happy and so ready!!"  His enthusiasm and positive attitude haven't changed in the 3 weeks he has been in the MTC.  He is happy to be a missionary and we are happy for him!!

The rest of the month has been pretty normal for January - school, dance for Autumn, running track for Seth, and lots and lots of snow.  Bryce and I did build this snowman one snowy Saturday when we couldn't get Seth and Autumn to come play in the snow with us.





At least Sasha still loves playing in the snow...



Happy February everyone!!