2010 In Review for Real This Time

Okay, the previous title was a teaser for this posting (and not a silly mistake of hitting the "enter" key). That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)




This year has been wonderful. We have had so many fun things happen and we would like to share the highlights with you.

January

Runner up:

Naomi starts gymnastics (after telling everyone that she meets that she was going to do gymnastics! She can be very persuasive and persistent)

First Place:

Jeremy won the Pinewood Derby for Pack 122

February

Runners up:

Jeremy turns 11 and Nicholas turns 8

Historic snow storm happens - 49 of the states got snow on the same day.

First Place:

Steve took on the project of making his own guitar. That is so awesome.

March

Runner up:

Building our miniature treehouses

Tie for First Place:

Nicholas is baptized

Jeremy earns his Arrow of Light and crosses over to Boy Scouts

April

Runners Up:

Neighborhood Easter egg hunt

Jeremy earns his first merit badge (Bird Study - SURPRISE!!)

First Place:

Naomi breaks her wrist (while Daddy is out of town, of course!)

May

Runners Up:

Year End Tests - both boys pass with flying colors

Naomi gets her cast off just in time for the pool to open

Nicholas gets into poisen ivy (not pretty)

Jeremy takes archery lessons

First Place:

Family camp at Black Mountain with Troop 122

June

Runners Up:

Painting Frenzy

Nicholas cut his head open and had to have 3 staples to close it up.




First Place:

Steve's yearly conference is a huge success (thanks to all his hard work since December)


July


First Place:


No Contest!!! The Cannon Family Beach Trip



August

Runners Up:

Dragonfly Delight and Hummingbird Festival at the Reedy Creek Park

I am made the Pack Committee Chair (WAHOO!!)

17 wonderful years of marriage



First Place:



Getting together with our homeschool friends again

September

Runners Up:

Nicholas starts scouts and earns his Bobcat.

Sean and Brynn married

A new niece is born. Welcome, Olivia

Homeschool roller skating is back!!!!

Nicholas graduated from speech therapy.

Steve is made the Scoutmaster (WAHOO!!)

First Place:

Steve's Promotion. Way to go, Honey!

October


Runners Up:

General Conference

Steve and I got Droid phones (welcome to the current century!)



First Place:

Trunk or treating with our friends.

Jeremy is Toad, Nicholas is Knight Mario and Naomi is Princess Peach

November

Runners Up:

Naomi turns 5 and loses her first tooth

Jeremy earns his Tenderfoot

First Place:

The leaves were the most brilliant we have seen in the nine years we have been here. We went on a lot of walks just to admire them. Here we are with our friends Paige and Hailee.

December

Runners Up:

Saw Tangled for my 41st birthday - best movie EVER!

Naomi got her ears pierced

First Place:

The first white Christmas in 63 years. We played the whole day.

Happy 2011!
May your new year be filled with happiness and success

2010 in Review

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas!

The title to this blog might seem kind of silly since I am writing from the South and we rarely see snow - especially on Christmas. In fact, the odds are completely against us since Charlotte has not seen a white Christmas in 63 years! Well, my theory on this one is that Naomi really wished hard for snow on Christmas and she has the magic touch. It started snowing on Christmas day about 6:00 p.m. and it still has not stopped (it is now noon on the 26th). My Christmas decorations finally don't look out of place.

The kids spent a blissful 3 hours rollicking in the 6 inches of snow. We started in our yard then we all migrated to the golf course to sled Southern style(we don't have a sled so we multitasked our boogie boards). Enjoy the pictures!

Going Snow Surfing! Cow-a-bunga, Dude!

So, what do you do for Family Home Evening?

During an uplifting and spiritual message about serving others and planning out some service we were going to do in the coming months I made the mistake of saying, "When serving others sometimes things don't go as planned. You need to be flexible." This is what happened immediately after that statement. It's a good thing I am flexible with our family home evening lessons!

Nicholas wins the flexibility contest. If he ever needed to do so, he could remove his contacts with his toes.

No one can ever say that the Cannon family is not flexible.

Big Day for Naomi

Saturday, December 18th, was a big day for Naomi. In the morning she FINALLY decided to have her ears pierced. We took her to the mall and after a few pre-piercing hysterics she has really pretty ear rings that make her look older (or so she says). You can't see them in the picture, but she picked out the cutest rhinestone, flower-shaped ear rings.

Then she had her first gymnastics exhibition. The gym where she takes gymnastics is trying to encourage us to let her be on the pre-team. This would mean 4 hours of gymnastics a week and competitions starting in the fall of 2011. Are we just being overprotective parents or does that seem a bit extreme for a 5 year old? She is good and she loves it, though, so this is a hard decision. We will keep you posted. The smile on her face when they awarded her the ribbons almost made me sign the paperwork right then and there!

This Blew Me Away

The other day we were working on our Faith In God requirements and I asked the boys to write a letter to someone that they really admire. Jeremy went to his room to complete the assignment, but Nicholas hung around with a frustrated and upset look on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he didn't know who to write his letter to. We talked about it for a while trying to come up with a person he admired. Then it hit me that quite a few of the people that I really admire are no longer alive. When I shared this thought with Nicholas he brightened up and said that he knew who he admired. He left the room and came back in about twenty minutes with this gem.

Dear Jesus,

I wonder how you made the world in seven days. When I'm up there, I want to be your assistant and help you shape the world and make people better than usual. And one day, I just want to be like you.

Love,
Nicholas

Out of the mouth of babes

I just finished helping Naomi type her talk for primary tomorrow. This was such a precious experience that I needed to get it posted right away. I told her the theme was about missionary work and sharing the gospel of others so they could get to know Jesus. We have been talking about the Book of Mormon at home a lot and she has wanted to learn to read it. I started with Nephi and she wanted to "go back further" so we started with the introduction. She was so pleased when she learned to read the first sentence. Obviously, this needed to be in her talk. She then turned to Mosiah (that's my girl!!) and insisted on the verses that are in her talk as well. I corrected some of the grammar and filled in a few words here and there, but for the most part it is all Naomi. Happy reading! If this doesn't bring a smile to your face, nothing will.

Naomi's Talk

In the beginning of the Book of Mormon it says, "The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scriptures comparable to the Bible." The world knows about the stories in the Bible, but they don't know about the stories in the Book of Mormon. These stories tell us more about Jesus and why he loves us so much.

I love the scripture in Mosiah 15 verses 8 and 9. It says, "And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men. Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them and satisfied the demands of justice." Jesus is my older brother. I love him and I know he loves me.

Also, in the book of Mosiah, chapter 15, verse 27 it starts out by saying, "Therefore, ought ye not to..." Yes, we ought to go out and invite everyone to learn more about Jesus. I think people need to know that Jesus loves them and we should share his story with everyone!

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

We interrupt this blog to bring you an important update!

Just a shout out to let you all know that on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010, Steve Cannon was promoted from manager to director! He is so excited! We are so excited! It is very rewarding for him to finally see that all his hard work is being appreciated and recognized. Congratulations, honey!!! We took him to Rita's Ice to celebrate! (A special thanks to Bob, Steve's boss, for not giving up and pushing until the promotion came through!)

If that was not enough excitement for one night, Nicholas started cub scouts and earned his bobcat badge the first night. The Cannon's are on a roll!! All in all you could say it was a GREAT day!

What A Summer! - Beachy Keen!

Okay, I am going to do my best to sum up the most wonderful week in pictures for you. I must tell you now that the pictures are not in chronological order. I have just put the pictures out here for you to enjoy and hopefully when you are done reading you will have a good idea of just how much fun the week was and why we all want to go back and do it over again!

One handsome family - more family pictures to come later.

There is nothing like the waves and sea birds to get you to relax and have a good time. I could definitely live at the beach and visit the ocean every day for the rest of my life and be completely happy!

Sean helped the nieces and nephews build a habitat for all the jelly fish that they were catching. Yes, there were a lot of jelly fish, but they did not keep us out of the water. You just had to know to dodge the ones with brown stripes (the ones with stingers).

As always, Sarah and I had fun being "twins" (if only in name) for the week. She is so much fun to just hang out with. I miss you, Sarah!!

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this picture of Nicholas and Naomi walking down the boardwalk after a fun day at the beach. The bikes and beach wagons and beach grass and beach houses.... It is all so beautiful and sums up the whole experience.

This is a picture of "Camp Cannon" from on top of the stairs coming down to the beach.

You have already seen the family picture we got while at the beach (Thank you Dianna and Marva!) Here are some of my other favorites.

What a gorgeous crew! No wonder all of our kids are all so cute!

I love this picture that Melonie captured during a quiet moment in the middle of the family photo shoot. Thanks, Melonie!

It was quite a process getting all of us to the beach at the same time, in white shirts, but we did it. Afterwards we let the kids play in the waves for a bit.

Life guard Sean!


These next two pictures sum up the water action while at the beach. Boogie boards were a hot item. You had to get them away from Randy, Bradden and Steve! It was fun to watch the three of them ride the waves in, stand up and yell "Yah! Let's do that again!" and run back out to catch another wave.

Burying cousins was a favorite past time!

A rare photo of Steve and I. One of us is usually behind the camera.

Me and the kids enjoying some time building in the sand. I love the way that the personalities of the kids comes out in this picture. Naomi is right in the middle of things, Jeremy is working on a project and Nicholas is having too much fun to sit still for a picture.

Steve's pyramid was a hit! Jeremy built a sphinx for it as well but I didn't get a good picture of that. People would walk down the beach just to see it. Word got around fast.

Naomi had a blast playing with everyone. She was right there to lend a hand with digging or fetching water for your creation.

Although all the adults were watching the children we still managed to lose Sage and Nicholas within a half an hour of each other. Thank goodness for excellent lifeguards! Both kids were found quickly. The rest of the week we doubled our efforts and made sure that the kids were all accounted for at all times.

We celebrated Steve's birthday with the whole family as well. This was the highlight of the week for him. Naomi and Steve getting into the wacky, festive mood of the party.

Groovin' with Hyrum.

A Cannon family party would not be complete without all the nieces and nephews piling on top of Uncle Derran!

A trip to the beach would not be complete without tie dying. Here is Naomi in her pink creation.

The brothers had a beard-growing contest. This is the before picture. It was so hot they all wanted to shave by the second day!

Nice melons, Randy!

It took them several tries to get it done, but here it is in all it's glory.

Nicholas's version of the wave hairdo. Although it is quite handsome and fashionable it will be extremely difficult to duplicate in that the wave that did the styling will never come along again. Believe me, they all tried over and over again to get this look. The waves were awesome!

Top Gun volleyball scene re-enactment! ZOO-WE-MAMA!! I like this version even better!

Back at our house for one last cousin sleep-over before everyone flies back home.

It was an awesome week that we will never forget. We miss everyone already. Our door is always open for visitors if you want to come and get some Carolina sun on your face and some beach sand between your toes! Thanks to everyone for being part of what is undeniably the best week of the summer!