The Barben Adventures

Dear my busy mother,

2010-12-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

you have lacked blogging for a while.
{You need to update a lot more often.}
So I am going to help you catch up, since the last:

well... your wonderful planned road trip finally had to come to an end.

and you and dad flew back to WA and packed up everything we had.

and we moved backed to our home town St. George.

[August-September]
All the kiddos started public school again and have met so many new friends.

Sweet Jaxon started Kindergarten as a big 5 year old. He is loving school and is learning a lot.
As for Brigham, he gets to stay home with you and who knows what you do together. You will probably both be playing Just Dance all day together now.

August 31st Lindsey turned 9 and her and Bailey had a BFF party.

Bronson started football as a 1st grader and loved every minute of it. "Mom this is my first game of my whole career".

Nerdy me started Success/Stress Academy and am loving it, even though it stresses me out a lot.

yes, most of us kids go to different schools. Snow Canyon. Desert Hills. Dixie. College.

Our whole family went to see our cousin Payton as young Tarzan in Tuachan's amazing show Tarzan.

[October-November]

Jaxon learned to ride a bike.

I took some of Whit's senior pics. in Cedar.

The family went to Bryce Canyon, since we had never been there before.

It was beautiful.

Halloween. Brigham was a dragon.

Jaxon started flag football with his best cousin Steele. They had a blast and were great!

You practically had a new baby in the house for 3 days while I had to take care of it for my class. Thanks for helping with Boston. haha

Whitney was in the Junior Miss pageant. She did great and looked beautiful.

We watched Jacobs championship football game against his old Snow Canyon team. Dixiwon!

In November we had so many leaves in our front yard. So, just like any other children we made a huge leaf pile and swung, jumped, and rolled into it. It was great fun, you even joined in!

For Thanksgiving we went to Nevada. We stayed at the Grand Sierra Resort and had lots of fun playing with out cousins, lazer tag, bowling, eating, and mini golfing. Later, we went to Grandma and Grandpa Lindsey's house and played some more, ate Thanksgiving dinner, went to Hyrum's baptism, and took Lindsey family pictures since mostly everyone was there.

[December]

I had a dance performance.

took a Christmas family picture.

St. George flooded.

Santa Clara Christmas Eve Program.

Brigham sat on Santa's lap.

Christmas Eve jammies from Grandma.

Christmas Eve. You and daddy. After santa tipped his sleigh ;)

We played Just Dance on the wii non-stop with all the fam.

Brigham turned 4 on December 26th. he is getting so big!

Barben family pictures. Every one was here.

We all had a wonderful adventurous year and can't wait for 2011.

Have a Happy New Year!

Love ya momma.

From your blog updater daughter, Brooklyn. :)

Cross Country Road Trip 2010

2010-07-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

We have had a blast so far on our cross country road trip.
We have gone throuhg 26 states! wahoo.

Sorry I haven't kept up on my blog, but my girls have.
Here are some pictures I added on facebook today to keep you all updated.

There are still more adventures in store.
We are on our way to California!

Happy Birthday Whitney!

2010-05-30T19:50:00.001-07:00

Whitney we miss you!

And we can't wait to spend time with you this summer.
Remember we love you!!!

Happy Birthday Bronson!

2010-05-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

This baby's growing up!!!

Bronson loves sports-baseball, basketball, football and soccer. He is on the swim team and just got swimmer of the month out of about 100 kids, with him being one of the youngest. I love how hard Bronson works in whatever he does. He will practice for hours until he masters a skill. This great work ethic will help in all facets of life- not just sports. I am so proud of you Bronson!

To celebrate Bronson's 7th Birthday he went with his dad, brothers, cousin Cooper,and his Uncle David and Uncle Ben to a Mariners game. They had a great time-just the boys!

Happy Birthday Bronson! We love you!!!

Our St. George Missionaries

2010-04-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

What a small world-Both of the missionaries in our ward are from St. George!!! We felt an immediate bond as we talked about "home". Elder Tippetts graduated from Snow Canyon and Elder Petersen's mom owns Benja's Thai and Sushi and his brother used to dance with Whitney and Brooklyn. They bring such a great spirit into our home as they teach our family important gospel principles. They always have a cool object lesson to share which the kids love. We are excited to share the gospel with our new friends and neighbors.

Vancouver B.C. Temple Open House

2010-04-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

Saturday we had the opportunity to go to the Vancouver B.C. LDS Temple Open House. It was so absolutely beautiful!!! What an opportunity for the kids to go inside and see the beauty and feel of the Spirit there. We are so grateful for this experience!

The Barben Kids-missing our lovely Whitney!
Families are Forever

Couldn't pass up the chance t go to the Tulip Festival one more time!!!

Tulip Festival on Easter

2010-04-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

We had the chance to go to the Tulip Festival this Easter. It was so beautiful! There were so many different tulips and beautifu colors. We enjoyed taking Easter pictures here.

Brigham

Jaxon

Bronson

Lindsey

Jacob

Bret
Brooklyn
Brooklyn and Lindsey-sisters
We thought the yellow flowers were bright and colorful, we took a lot of pictures by them. We are missing th sunshine!
After we stopped by Jeanne and David's and had Easter dinner at there home. We also went on a nice walk after dinner, we had a great time. The kids love playing with their cousins!

Easter fun!

2010-04-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

We did a lot of fun family activities to celebrate Easter this year. We decorated sugar cookies that Jacob made (he has become quite a cook), dyed Easter eggs, enjoyed the beautiful spring weather at the park, and went to an Easter egg hunt. It is always fun to celebrate holiday's with your family.

Yummy cookies.

The kids with their Easter cookies they decorated.
Colored eggs
Brigham enjoying the swings at the park.
Bret helping Jaxon and Brigham find Easter eggs.
And they even met the Easter Bunny!

The Suite Life

2010-03-14T20:56:00.000-07:00

Last week we went to Seattle with Bret on business. We stayed at the downtown Worldmark, a renovated historical hotel. We felt like we were livin' the "Suite Life." We had the chance to visit several museums and attractions in Seattle. Including the Seattle Aquarium, Science Center, Space needle, EMP/a rock n' roll interactive museum, Art museum, and Pike's Market. One of the many benefits of homeschooling. We did school in the morning and in the afternoon we explored.

Pike's Market Place

Children's Museum-They almost didn't let us in because the adult to children ratio was to high. haha

My dream of having a farm....

Seattle Aquarium-Jaxon and the Octopus

Great Acting by Bret and Bronson

Our favorite art sculpture.

The Space NeedleThe EMP guitar sculpture

We even made our own rock video! We rocked!

Our rock photo shoot! :)

Winter Olympic fun!

2010-02-23T20:53:00.000-08:00

We had the opportunity to go to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. Since we live so close. On our way to the Olympics, we stopped by Mt. Baker and went snowboarding and tubing with the Lindsey's. We had a blast. It was fun to be there, to get the Olympic feel. Go USA!

Beautiful Lindsey and Mt. Baker

Playing in the "snow cave"

Bret's a pro snowboarder

Cute cousins

Barben Crew Bob-sledding

The Olympic Torches

Olympic fun

Go Canada when the U.S. is not playing them in Hockey. So in this case, Go USA!

Homeschooling Adventures

2010-02-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

This past couple weeks I have decided to homeschool all my kids. With all of their extra curricular activities we felt we were not home together as a family as much as we wanted too. They have a great homeschooling program for support here. We thought we would give it a try!

Basketball is one of the extra curricular activities we are currently involved in. (Lindsey, Bronson, Bret, and Jake are all playing this year.) Lindsey is also taking a tumbling class and Brooklyn is taking ballet classes. Brigham and Jaxon also enjoy taking a kids tumbling class.

Having fun at the Science Discovery Center

Brooklyn in the butterfly exhibit at the museum

Exploring the Fort Casey lighthouse

The fun mirrors that we spent a lot of our time playing on.

One of our home school projects is starting a garden. This is the kids with the starters for our garden. This is our first garden experience, we are excited!

Lovin' the Lindseys

2010-02-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

We have enjoyed having David and Jeanne's family close by. We have gotten to know them a lot better and our kids have enjoyed playing with their cousins. They are all so sweet and lovable. Jeanne is such a great cook, she is such a good mom, and I hope some of her patience will rub off on me. David is such a hard worker, great business man, and such a fun brother/uncle.

Cute Eliza

Alice enjoying her ice cream

Brooklyn and Sophia the birthday girls

1 month down......

2010-01-28T12:42:00.000-08:00

Where do I start??? One month a go we packed up and started our new adventure. We all hope to learn and grow from this experience, even though we miss our friends and family

Our first month adventure at a glance.

Right before we left, we got our new "friend" and puppy, Champ.

Whitney and Brooklyn on Christmas

Dec. 26 Brigham's birthday on the ferry. Going to the zoo!

Having fun at the zoo

Champ our new dog :)

Jaxon and Brooklyn at the park on the oceanBrigham supporting Bret and Jake at their basketball games.

Go Wildcats!

Barben family at the ocean right by our house

Whit and Brook. Whitney went back to St. George to go to college and is living with her grandparents.

At deception pass, it is so pretty their.

Notice the boys wearing there sweat suits, their team colors are Red and Black. They made up their own sport team "The Daggers". This is what they asked for, for Christmas.