So before I begin to tell
about our Christmas adventure to Virginia. I just wanted to take a
sec and write a little update on each of us, cause it's been a
while. We'll go backwards this time.
Sarah: 11 months old!!
I know, crazy. When we left for our trip in mid-December she
wasn't crawling at all. By time we came home, she was not only
crawling but standing on her own and cruising along furniture.
She talks too! She can now say Mom, Dad, Go, and Bump (when she
falls down or toots :) And she is such a good imitator of
sounds. She mimicks the older girls' cries and some of their
talking. She sings herself to sleep sometimes and hums "mmmm"
when she's eating something she really likes. She sings along
with the O part of EIEIO. She tries to do the actions for
"Popcorn Popping" and looooves when we do Itsy Bitsy Spider
with her (unless Rachel is doing it and pokes her in the eye.)
She gets soooo excited and bounces up and down in our arms when she
hears music come on, when she's happy to see us, or when she sees or
hears Shizzie. She loves to explore and her favorite place to
go is the bathroom when we forget to put the gate up, little
stinker. She loves to play with her sisters and chase after
them, cuddle with Mama, and climb on Dad. We love our little
Sarah!
Rachel: 3 years but I'm
pretty sure she's actually 7. This girl loves to learn and be
crazy. She loves the kids in her class at Church, especially a
boy named Bradley. When Anne goes to school and while Sarah is
napping we do preschool where she can now write almost all her
letters and is on book 7 of the BOB books (meaning she can read
sentences like "Dot had a cat. The cat sat on Dot"
things like that.) She also loves to count and we're starting
adding and subtracting. She loves to color pictures and paint.
Almost every day she builds a tower of some kind either with the big
blocks or her new legos from Uncle Loren. She is doing much
better with eating and I think has recently hit a growth spurt.
She and Anne play doctors and dress up for hours and are best buds
90% of the time. It is amazing to listen to their imaginative
play. They mostly act out either the shows they watch or Zac
and I. With being stuck indoors a lot she gets out her wiggles
by dancing, doing kickboxing with me, or just running back and forth
across the front room. Oh, and we've also started violin and
piano lessons each week with me which she loves. Yay Rachel!
Anne: 5 years Our
little sweetheart. Ok, well I guess not little. She is
currently wearing size 6/7 clothes and I'm pretty sure she's going to
pass me up before she leaves elementary school. Speaking of
school she absolutely loves her Preschool. She comes home every
day and tells me all the cool stuff she did and the weird sounds she
heard. She's even now telling me about new friends on the bus
besides the bus drivers. After a lot of talking with other
parents, prayer, and thought we've decided to keep her at Provo Peaks
next year for Kindegarten. They have wonderful teachers and
facilities and Anne will still get to ride the bus which she loves.
She is making amazing progress and we are so proud of our big brave
girl. At home Anne loves to play with Rachel and Sarah.
Her imagination is incredible. She lives in her dress up
clothes and is constantly changing outfits throughout the day.
One minute she's Ariel, the next a dancer, the next a football
player, and the next a doctor. She feeds and takes care of her
baby dolls and loves to help do anything I ask with Sarah. She
is the best big sister and example of kindness to Rachel and Sarah.
She too is learning to play the violin and piano but her love is
still dancing. Anne you melt our heart!
Ilene: 29!! My last year as
a twenty something year old. Sad. I do have some lofty
goals for this year though. Call it a mid-life crisis. I
am currently training for my first marathon which I will hopefully be
running (all body parts staying intact) some time in June probably.
So far everything has felt great. I also recently chopped my
hair and lightened it. It's the style I've always wanted since
I was a kid so I went and got it done. And to go along with
getting old I noticed my eyes were bugging when I was reading for a
long time so I went and got my eyes checked for the first time ever
and it turns out I need reading glasses, which I am currently wearing
to do this blog. I've also always wanted glass, I know I'm
weird, so it wasn't a huge disappointment for me. Other than
that I'm just keeping busy with the kids and working hard and trying
to be a good Mom and wife.
Zac: 37 Zac got a new
calling at Church and is now the 2nd Counselor in the Stake Young
Men's Presidency which he loves. He is glad to be back working
with the young men and is excited for some awesome Scouting
activities and campouts this summer. He is still loving his job
at UVU. He even got offered another job at a different company
but after a lot of talking about it and praying about it, it didn't
feel like the right thing to do so we turned it down. He works
with some great people at his job and he genuinely loves what he does
which is hard to walk away from. He will be taking a Red Hat
certification class in March in Denver which will be a great
oppurtunity for him as well. He says that I am trying to talk
him into doing a 5k and he's thinking about it.
Shizzie: Almost 3 and has
not eaten any rocks since last winter!!! Wahoo! She has calmed down
quite a bit but still loooooves to play. She plays catch for a
solid 15 minutes, even now during the winter, before she just comes
over and wants to be rubbed down and snuggle. We let her in
every now and then and the girls love watching her race around the
front room. I like to just sit with her at my feet and just pet
her. There's something soothing in that. In the last few
weeks we noticed she was in heat which means in a couple months we
are going to breed her and have some puppies! The girls are
very excited for that. We had an incident with one of our
neighbors about her barking so we're trying to work with her on that
as well. Other than that she is our sweet crazy dog.
And now for our family
vacation to Virginia for Christmas 2013! It was wonderful to
spend time with Grandma and Grandpa Russell, Aunt Jennifer, Uncle
Gordon, and Uncle Loren. We all had a blast and were very
spoiled by everyone. Since it is most likely the last time
we'll be going back there, I took some time and visited old schools
and meaningful places from my childhood and felt like I was able to
get some closure. Virginia is where I grew up from when I was 5
till I went off to college. What a beautiful place that I'll
miss.
Anyhow, the girls and I left
on December 16th and had a great two plane rides. I was bracing
for craziness from flying by myself with three little ones but they
were once again angels. They loved flying and traveling.
The only dark spot was when I left my brand new phone on the first
plane and they never could find it. That stunk. But other
than that we made it there in one piece. Zac flew in on
Christmas Eve and we spent another two weeks...and an extra two days
because our original flight was canceled due to weather. We
loved every minute of the trip and hopefully all these kazillion
pictures will help to keep these memories with us. Sorry that
they're all out of order but that's how it goes with multiple phones
and cameras. These were pulled from me, Zac, Jennifer, and my
Mom's cameras.
Enjoy!
Before we left for the trip we had a Fall Festival at our Church where Zac and I were volunteered for the pie eating contest. We both lost :(
Back at Mt. Vernon
Henderson Elementary School. Looooots of great memories from this place. When I look back at all my schooling, elementary school was by far my favorite.
Dancing with Grandpa
2 comments:
That is great! Looks like you had a wonderful time. You kids are so cute. My favorite picture was the one of Sarah sleeping. So sweet and peaceful!
That is great! Looks like you had a wonderful time. You kids are so cute. My favorite picture was the one of Sarah sleeping. So sweet and peaceful!
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