We Were Blown Away!

Brooks had a leading part last month in our Stake's musical production of "The Garden" by Michael McLean. Tony and I hadn't heard any of the rehearsals so we had quite the surprise! He's only 15 years old and many people thought he was several years older.  

AND, if you can believe this, it looks like he will be singing "The Prayer" with the young girl who played the "seedling" at the Jon Schmidt concert in our area on Saturday, June 27.  Jon Schmidt has been a huge hero of Brooks' since he was about eleven years old.  Talk about a dream come true!

Mother's Day Roses

Aren't these roses just beautful!? Tony worked so hard to make my Mother's Day very special. He bought presents (I especially liked the "Topsy Turvy") and prepared a wonderful dinner. Oh, and he made me a great healthy smoothie for breakfast. But after all the shopping and work, he pretty much crashed by Sunday night. :) Thank you Tony for all the kindness and love!
(Side note-We may just have to give up on our Mac web-site as my hard drive crashed (with the help of Andrew) and in order to update the site we have to re-create everything from scratch! Could be a while before we can get around to doing that...)

Here's the Link...

Our other family web-site can be found at:
http://web.mac.com/tkbutler10/Site/Home/Home.html
We are STILL unable to upload any new pictures on this account!:(

So Sorry

We are still under construction on our page...the pictures wont load so I quickly added all the kids names and then Im going to try and add the pictures again!
Im so sorry!
-Heart

"The Captain" and "Queen Bee"

You may have noticed from the photos that we didn't add a baby this year--hopefully that will all change by next Christmas.;) It's still been a busy year, however, with three very active toddlers (two of them are "red-heads" and the other "acts like one", according to Heart) and with more traveling for The Captain than ever before.:(
The Captain was promoted to a Director level at the bank last year and leads a 4 person team of analysts, writes research on the CMBS market and has been all over the US (and the world--Europe and Asia this past year) where he meets with clients and presents his research and market views. He may be heading to the Middle East (Dubai) this year. How has this affected Queen Bee, you might be asking? It's given her greater motivation to start saving pennies so we can do something else in the future! The Captain is still serving as 1st counselor to the bishop and even sings in the ward choir (along with Heart and River). He sang in a beautiful quartet in church on Christmas Eve.
Queen Bee finds more meaning daily to the principle of "whosoever will save his (or her) life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his (or her) life for my sake shall find it." (Matt. 16:25) What an amazing, true principle taught us by Lord. It takes great courage at times to live by, but I have found I am more "fulfilled" when I exercise my faith enough to lose "me". Life is one great balancing act, though, and without a little time daily for personal scripture study, prayer and pondering/journaling things never go as well. You'll get a pretty good clue as to what Queen Bee's up to as you read about the children! Her biggest source of support over the past couple of years has been through the Above Rubies (magazine). Please check out the website at www.aboverubies.org

The Family

All of us :-)

Heart

Heart, age 15!
She wakes up daily at 5 a.m. to attend a Seminary Class where high school youth from our church study the scriptures together for about an hour. She has a very full academic schedule this year, taking classes in Latin, English, Spanish, and Design two days a week (but w/ homework given for the entire week--just like a university.) At home she works daily on Geometry, History and Biology. Add to all of that piano and voice lessons, and you have a girl with very little extra time! But when she IS available she is still a VERY popular baby-sitter. Some parents have told us they will just wait for her to be available rather than get someone else.
She is the best sister EVER..., She had a very busy summer and LOVED it! It started in May when she went to a home-school conference at the Buena Vista College with River, Smiley, and Mom. In June it was off to Utah for our church girls camp with her cousins Amanda and Karli E. While still in Utah she and River began a "Wild Western Adventure Super Trip" with their distance learning school (Liahona), which included a full week of things like white water river rafting, Yellow Stone Park, and rodeos. They even squeezed in a cousins wedding--all in less than a month! Shortly after returning to the east she went to the beach (Charleston, SC) for a week with the entire Butler side of the family (39 people). The week after that she went camping for Youth Conference in the pouring rain! Then the week after that went to Especially For Youth with her cousin Karli at the Buena Vista college and had the best time ever! (She had her birthday there on the 28th of July) The last week of August she took a drivers ed. class which she loved and made new friends that she still keeps in touch with! Then she went to the mountains for a weekend with her best friend Mariah's family and Gillian. Then FINALLY after once failing the test....she got her driver's permit! (3 months late due to full classes for home-schooling youth here...Dad wasn't happy about that....and you think she would be the one unhappy:-) Well Heart is usually happy all of the time! Some of her friends thinks she's "too happy"...and they make jokes about how she is "blonde" (yes the whole extended Butler family knows about that......how in the world did she get the "Blonde Of The Week" award!?!?!? haha) She likes to make new friends all of the time...You could say she is outgoing! She loves going to church dance dances (about once a month)!