The Thatchers: Baptism, School, and 40!

Updates:

James-Jet is growing and getting more mobile every day. He still does a low crawl but we got him to go up onto his hands and knees in the grass. He can pull himself up to stand on anything and cruises along furniture. He also started walking when we hold his hands. He plays around with his voice but hasn't said anything very definitive except "da-da". He still loves to eat and enjoys all his new baby foods. He has two teeth and is about to cut a couple more which has made for some awake nights. But he has slept through the night multiple times which is a step in the right direction. He loves motorcycle sounds and music and jumps in our arms when he's happy or wants to dance. He gives the biggest hugs and flirty smiles and charms everyone he meets, even if he is upset. We just love our James (and yes we can't pick a name, we use both).

Sarah- Our crazy three year old is full of spunk and sweetness. She absolutely loves doing preschool with me at home and is learning a lot! She runs to Daddy when he gets home and clings onto his leg when he walks. She still has a hard time eating her food quickly but is doing much better. Recently she came into Sunday School when I was teaching and sang "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" for the entire class. For Anne's baptism she and Anne sang while Rachel, Jen, and I played instruments. That girl loves music and candy and is so darn cute!

Rachel- Rachel is loving school and her new first grade class. She started the year off in Kindergarten but at the first parent teacher conference the teacher told us things that we worried would happen. She was bored. The teacher tested her and her scores were double what the end goal is in kindergarten. She always completed her work super fast and then would "help" all the other kids with theirs. Even though she was doing first grade math with the first graders she was still completing her entire packet in one day. After a lot of thought, prayer, talking with Zac and the school, we decided to see if it was even an option to switch her to first. The school tested and observed her and everyone said she was more than ready and first grade is where she should be. Luckily, her new teacher Mrs. Reeves, didn't have too many kids so she was not burdening anyone. Socially it is also a better fit because she has always enjoyed playing with older kids. She is also not that much younger than her peers since she has a fall birthday. She is exactly how I was when I was going to school. She is excelling in her class and recently came home and said she won a math facts doubles game and beat everyone in her class. She also came home yesterday and said they play a game at recess where all the girls tackle the boys and she won at that too, oh boy :)

Anne- Our sweet Anne turned 8 and got baptized! Her baptism interview was priceless and Zac, I and the Bishop were humbled by her simple, direct, genuine answers about her faith. At one point she said sadly, "I miss Jesus." She had no fear about her baptism because thankfully she all of a sudden learned how to swim last summer so she was excited to go under the water. After her baptism she said she felt "Clean and pure". She is excited to be an official member of the Church and felt everyone's love for her on her special day. She is doing better in school now that I have implemented a behavior chart for her reg. ed classroom. It just says "All work, partial work, or no work" to help encourage her to stop putting her head down or complaining that it was too hard. She had come home with two straight weeks of all but two days of all work, and two partial, and no no work. Every day we work on math packets from last year and I am determined to catch her up. She is working hard and we are very proud of our happy girl.

The girls had fun with soccer this year, though the coach was a complete flop and only showed up to two practices and missed several games. But I stepped in which was fun and made me realize I could volunteer next year. As with school we moved Rachel up from the 4-5 year old team to Anne's 1st grade team. Her first game on the younger team she was dominating and couldn't kick the ball very hard or it would go out of bounds. So the girls had fun being on the same team. Anne did better this year and enjoyed running around :) Rachel said the older team was more of a challenge but she learned a lot.

Poor Sarah is more than ready to play next year.

Jet just liked eating the grass during the games.

Silly kids.

You know you're a fourth kid when.....your three year old sister is in charge of feeding you. Though I must say she did a great job.

The girls convinced me into buying lunch boxes and thermoses for school. I just laugh and love their choices, very them.

Escapee.

We had a fun trip to Colorado to be with Zac's brother's family and participate in the sealing ordinance of their daughter Brielle whom they recently adopted from China, to their family. It was beautiful and wonderful and we had a blast being with family. We stayed with Mimi and David and had an amazing time with them. It is a trip I'm sure we will all not soon forget.

Bubbles with cousins. Such a beautiful area.

Art time with cousins.

Movie time.

We all got to go see one of Aunt Rhonda's friends whose dog just had puppies. Soooo cute.

Yum, ice cream.

Mimi also arranged for us to ride a neighbors horse around their property. We were all in heaven.

I finally got to ride a horse without someone leading me which was on my bucket list. Thank you Rhonda!

Painting with a pro!

More fun play time with cousins.

Just fun times around the house.

A familiar view with different sets of legs.

We had a huge grade harvest this year which made for a about 20+ quarts of homemade juice. Mmm.

Fun sunflowers were huge!

The girls filled up their "Bean Jar" with good works so we all went to see "Finding Dory". Such a cute movie.

Bean jar. I can't remember how many they had but it was a couple hundred.

Rachel and I went on a Mommy/daughter date to my friend's daughters' wedding. These kids are all so different one on one. We are trying to do things like this more often. They just light up.

Can you spot a baby? One of his favorite places till I cleaned it all out.

Last pool day.

Last swim day.

Anne's beautiful new smile! Thanks to Aunt Dawn for fitting her with a retainer and fixing her crossbite. It was a struggle but she finally wore it long enough to fix the problem and now she doesn't have to wear it anymore!

From one of my bike rides, a pond near our house. Reminds me of home :)

Anne's first day of 2nd grade! She loved it!

Second day, just a cute outfit, had to take a picture :)

Homegrown tomatoes to make some mostly homegrown salsa.

The girls all got invited to our friend Bailey's tea party birthday party at Thanksgiving Point :)

Zac and I did a mini triathlon this summer which was so much fun to do and train for. Thanks hubby.

After.

I got third place in my old lady division.....out of three. ;)

Rachel's first day of school! She rocked it of course.

She was sooooo excited to go to an actual school.

Sarah on her first day of preschool! My roaring three year old was also very excited to do preschool with Mom.

I love that the girls are at school together. They sometimes eat lunch and play at recess together.

Ha.

Garden grown, frozen mixed stirfry veggies.

We had quite a bit of surplus produce that I didn't have time to freeze or can so the girls went out and sold it in front of our house. Some good lessons were learned. Hard work, patience, math, customer service....

For Labor day, we rented a cabin up at East Canyon Reservoir to go fishing. It was beautiful, fun, void of fish..but lots of good memories were made.

The girls loved playing with the worms again.

One way to burn some calories.

We did some fall cleaning (since I was a bit occupied during the Spring). These are all clothes from Zac and I to take to be donated. Feels good :)

Rachel wearing my old night shirt. Brings back memories.

Joy

A project for school that touched my heart. We read this story by Mem Fox called "Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partidge" which was about a boy that tried to help an older lady remember her "memories". Then Anne collected her own. She came up with each thing entirely by herself. From left to right: something warm-her blanket, something from long ago-Great Grandma and Grandpa Hebbert, something that makes her laugh-Shizzie, and something as precious as gold-Jesus. She was also supposed to add something that made her cry but just thinking about crying made her cry so we left that out. I love my sensitive, thoughtful kid.

Sarah can now put puzzles together all by herself, smart girl.

We're in trouble. Our little ham.

First time wearing shoes. So cute.

My "helpers". Can you find 2?

Another cute outfit.

I used to pull James in bed with me for his last feeding in the morning and this is the cute face I got to wake up to. One of my favorite times of the day to just talk with him and snuggle.

Anne had a princess birthday part again this year to help her meet more friends in her class (yes, at the last minute she decided to be Tinkerbell instead:)

I did a puppet show for them in the puppet theater. It got a few laughs.

A princess pizza party.

On Sunday we had a family party.

Trying on Anne's present from Uncle Loren.

We had some little critters show up in the greenhouse. Needless to say, they have been eliminated.

Fun hike up Battlecreek falls near our house with awesome buddies.

Man Carlie, we have a lot of kids now! Thank goodness for Carrie, made Sarah's hike :)

Man I love living here. It really is a beautiful part of the world.

Zac and I celebrated our 11 year anniversary with a delicious and fun night at Red Lobster and go-cart racing.

How much for this cute baby?.....priceless.

We had a fun visit with Grandpa Thatcher but forgot to take a lot of pictures. The kids love their Grandpa!

Anne showing off her new pretty cowgirl boots from Grandma and Grandpa Russell.

Anne and I had a fun date to go see Women's Conference and then ice cream afterwords.

Sunday dinner with lots of family.

Sunday game night.

Wish I had a couple of these at home ;)

We had to be inventive when Rachel fell and bonked her head on our way out to dinner.

First day of 1st grade/ Almost 6 year old pictures with some very Rachel expressions.

My favorite.

She wanted a picture with her dog.

James' first time in a park swing. He was a fan.

I got to go on a field trip with Rachel's class to the zoo! Such sweet kids. It was hilarious to hear Rachel and the girl that rode with us's conversation in the back of the van. At one point they were quizzing each other for about 15 minutes on math facts.

I feel ya.

Rachel wanted to take this one.

Rachel with her new teacher Mrs. Reeves.

This girl can fall asleep almost anywhere. Just like her daddy.

Jet got his first tooth! He really wasn't very fussy for this one. Later ones brought some clinginess and sickies.

Rachel and I got some early birthday presents at Costco....no the bear was not one of them, ha. That would take up her and Anne's entire room. But she did get a new winter coat cause she needed one. There were girly ones like Anne's and some boy ones in different colors. Once again, I love her fashion choice.

My fun present, a multitool that I've wanted to have around the house for a while now. It's just a plus that it happens to be red and black, my favorite colors.

Out to do some yard work while I clean the house.

We struggled the first day of General Conference trying to get the kids to be quiet and listen. I decided to try this the next day and was blown away by how effective it was. Conference BINGO with hershey kisses and m&m's.

I love his big boy outfits.

Sarah was in dire need of new shoes and was getting blisters from her old ones so we went to Walmart and she picked out these. Minnie mouse light-up, very exciting.

I decided to make the girls' baptism dress and it actually turned out! (I can not say this about many of my sewing projects.) The main fabric for the dress actually came from a really nice sheet that my brother Loren gave me that was partly frayed in a corner. And my Mom made a beautiful slip to wear underneath which I forgot to take a picture of.

You can't tell from this picture but Jet has some awesome curly locks in the back.

First time using a sippy cup. He did great and drank about three ounces of formula. We love our new Tupperwear from Aunt Michelle!

Sarah wanted a picture of her with her pet grasshopper.

Anne's baptism/8 year old pictures. Her headress is mine that I got in Hawaii years ago.

We told Anne she could go out to lunch wherever she wanted after her baptism and she picked Zupas. We love our salads and soups!

A couple more pics I snagged walking home from Church the next day.

This one's my favorite off all her 8 year old pics.

It frosted a couple weeks ago which killed all our pumpkin vines so it was time to harvest! Here is wagon-load #1. We filled it up two more times. The girls sat out once again and sold pumpkins to our neighbors and did pretty darn good. They are well on their way to earning their trips to Disneyland someday, which is what they say they are earning money for.

Running errands with these two seems like a piece of cake. A fun piece of cake.

We decided to sign up Anne for ballet class hoping to find something she would enjoy and participate in. We told the girls they could pick two activities so Anne picked track and ballet. Rachel picked soccer and wants to take gymnastics after Christmas (the doctor said that's when it would be ok for her to do that because of her arm).

Anne has taken this dance class at the rec center for a couple months now and loves it. It is very low key which is perfect and the teacher is very nice.

While Anne is at class we run around the track, take walks around the block, and just play near the benches outside her classroom.

Big standing boy.

A house project I've been working on for a while. I couldn't take the shoe mess anymore. Yay for IKEA, boo for having to clean up chalkboard paint dust that settled on every particle of my kitchen.

Cubscout activity teaching the boys how to retire a flag.

Good timing that we needed to do another big burn.

These pictures are terrible, I was a little busy, but this is Zac's birthday party. I threw him an almost-surprise party till he decided to try to "surprise" me and come home from work early while I was setting up. But it was still a great time with great friends! We had a bbq and then watched the BYU homecoming game on a big screen I rented. 40 never looked so good hun ;)

The next day the girls ran in the BYU Homecoming kid's races. Rachel was sad she didn't win again this year, but she aged up and had to run a 400 instead of 200, and still placed 5th. She said she learned some things and was excited to do it again next year. Anne ran the 800 again and did great and passed a couple girls at the end. Sarah ran the 200 much faster this year and was in the middle of the pack.

One of my favorite pictures of these two.

Then we headed over to the Homecoming parade which is always a hit.

After we headed up to BYU to walk around campus and the bookstore, then eat some yummy lunch. Yes, we are BYU fans :)

Cool critter we found.

Beautiful dresses from Grandmas. Anne is wearing one that Grandma Russell made for me when I was a kid, Rachel is wearing one that Grandma Russell made for Jennifer when she was little and Sarah is wearing one that Grandma Thatcher gave her. Beautiful dresses for beautiful girls.