Disneyland!

During our fall break this year, we went to Disneyland with many members of the Roper family.  It was a great time had by all!

It's about time I join back in with the blog world!  So many events have taken place.  I'm not going to try and catch everything  up for the last couple of years, but I would like to mention that some major changes have taken place in our family.  Last December, we lost our most wonderful Grandpa Ed Holmes.  We are feeling a huge void in our lives not having him here with us.  We also now have Nicholas living with us full time and we plan to have this be a permanent situation.  We are so blessed to all be back together as a family!  We were also introduced into the cruel world of brain cancer, as our sister-in-law and Aunt Jen started fighting her battle this last August.  I'm sure I will be recounting many other things as they come to mind.  But, these are the major events that I can think of right now.
I would like to share some photos from Jace's Kindergarten Program in the spring of 2012.

The next photos are first day of school photos from a couple of months ago.  Nick is a senior (but hadn't moved down at the time of this photo), Spencer is a sophomore, Jocelyn is a freshman (all 3 attending Cedar High), Alyssa is in fourth grade and Jace is a first grader (both at South Elem.).

Jace's Brush with "The Law"

This will go down in the books as one of my worst mother moments.  On July 22, Alyssa decided she wanted to ride her bike up to Granny & Papa's.  After all of the safety rules, Alyssa was on her way.  In the meantime, I called up my mom to make sure she got there o.k.  We chatted for 10 minutes or so, and it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't seen or heard Jace for awhile.  Jocey and I frantically ran around the house.  It was obvious that Jace had left the house and was most likely headed up to Granny's following Alyssa's lead.  I jumped in the car and raced up the street and saw a police car sitting in the middle of the road.  I slammed on my brakes and jumped out and said, "Have you seen my little boy?".  The two officers got out of the car and said,"Yes".  "We found him walking down the middle of the road on 600 S."  (The busy street in front of Cedar High.)  And to make things worse, he didn't have shoes on!!  I ran over to the backseat of the car and Jace leaped into my arms.  He said, "I'm so sorry Mom!"  He wasn't crying and seemed alright.  I told the officers how grateful I was that they found him and brought him home.  They said they asked him where his house was and he kept telling them, "No, I go to Granny's".  He lead them up to Days Inn, which is pretty close to Mom's house.  They finally got him to tell him his name and they looked up our address.  I think they must have been waiting on our street to see how long it would take the ditsy mom to figure out her 4 year old was missing!  We're going to blame this on Chris though, since he was brought home twice by officers when he was little!!

Spence's 14th Birthday!

Spence had a couple of great celebrations for his birthday this year.  First, he went bowling with a couple of his good friends, Yahel  and Brock.  They seemed to have fun bowling and playing in the arcade.  When they finished, we had a surprise party waiting for him at Granny & Papa's.  Elaine along with Sherry's family joined us for the celebration.  It was a wonderful day!

Grandpa Roper's 100th Birthday

Grandpa Roper would have turned 100 years old on May 22, 2010.  Even though Grandpa has been gone about 10 years, the family celebrated nevertheless.  Chris and I drove the kids up to Fillmore and met everyone at Uncle Alan's farm.  "The Barn" has become a regular meeting place for the Roper family to gather.  My kids have a ball at the farm.  They haven't been exposed to farm life, and they think it is a real treat to visit.  I love that they get to have this experience, because growing up, I looked forward to going to Oak City to visit Grandma & Grandpa on their farm.
You wouldn't have believed the cake.  It was huge.  All of Dad's sisters cut out little icons that signified something important to Grandpa.  The uncles and aunts paid tribute to Grandpa and recalled many fond memories.  It is an event that none of us will forget!!