Morning Humor

As I was helping the kids get ready this morning, I heard Aaron laughing pretty heartily in the kitchen. I am always up for a good laugh so I asked him what he was laughing at. He replied, "They just said 'inducing vomit' on the news."

Some shots of the Fam

Well, I liked our photo shoot this year, but Nate says he looks like he's wearing a life jacket. Maybe the vests weren't the best idea.

Year in Review

Maybe a year in review isn't really what I should title this. The end of the year wrap up is more like it. I've tried to keep up on little things throughout the year, so hopefully I can make this a quick wrap up....although, knowing me, that will more than likely not be the case. I have a tendency to be long winded, especially when it comes to talking or bragging about my kids....I mean look at them....they're so sweet and cute, I could just talk about them forever. I used to think it would lessen as they grew older. That's simply not the case.

Joshua is in kindergarten this year. It's been quite a change at home. All morning to myself, I hardly know what to do. Oddly enough, the time is always gone quicker than I anticipate because no matter how much time I have, there's always laundry. Joshua is doing well in school. Of course every morning he brings me the thermometer in hopes that he may just be sick enough to stay home. As much as I think he enjoys school, I believe he likes the freedom to be able to play a little bit more. He also enjoys taunting the other kids with things that he's not required to do yet. For instance, he's not able to take piano lessons yet. So when all the other kids are being forced to practice, he simply reminds them that he doesn't have to play the piano. He used to do this with unloading the dishwasher as well. We took care of that by giving him his own kitchen duty and he learned pretty quick that teasing was not the way to go. We find that Josh is very easy going. He's just got this laid back attitude and takes things as they come. He gets along with everybody and his favorite thing to do is to play "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" with Aaron, and Aaron's always willing to participate. There are the occasional days when Josh will play the baby when Grace wants to play house, but that's becoming less of a favorite pastime since the time Grace was carrying him around and couldn't really hold him that well resulting in her running his head into the door jam. Of course this is after various warnings that she's not quite big enough to be carrying him around. She really believes she's bigger and stronger than she is. I guess there's nothing wrong with that, unless it's other kids who must suffer the consequences.

Grace....has got a lot of spunk. She is really having a great time in school. One thing about Grace is that you never have to remind her twice about getting her schoolwork done. She just sits down and gets it done and out of the way. She came to the realization early that if you just take the time and quickly get the work done, you can get on with play time. Others, who will remain nameless, haven't quite grasped this concept. We're trying to apply this same work ethic to her chores as well, but that is proving to be a little more difficult. Grace has joined the swim team this season and is really progressing nicely. She's got a mean backstroke and is becoming a girl to be reckoned with. She's improving nicely with her piano and was a little disappointed that she couldn't squeeze basketball into her busy schedule this year. She really loved playing last year, but with the conflict of swim meets on the occasional Saturday, our family couldn't keep up with the demand on their time. She's very motivated and has a pleasant disposition...most of the time.

Aaron came home early in the school year and said, "Mom, I'm a nerd," to which I replied, "Why would you say that, Aaron?" His response, "Because I like school." Yeah!!!! Finally, Aaron has been fighting school since....well, since he began school. I don't know why he has disliked it so much, but he's finally gotten to a point where it's not the most terrible thing in the world to him. He's anxious to get homework done and has really been doing well. We are just really proud of the progress he's been making. He also joined the swim team this year and never really complains to us about going, but I hear from others that he thinks it's a lot of hard work. I'm sure this is true, but hard work builds character, and in this case, muscles and skill. As much as he complains of hard work, he really is a good worker and follows through on things he has to do with not much complaining. He's continuing with piano and is really loving reading comics like Garfield and Calvin and Hobbs. This makes his dad happy since Calvin and Hobbes are one of his favorite comic strips. Nathan's got the whole collection of books as well as a compilation of all the newspaper comic strips. If Aaron's really good and the moon is just right, Nate will bring out these books and let Aaron thumb through them with adult supervision. It's quite the treat.

Claudia, sweet Claudia will be twelve next month. She will be in Young Womens. Wow, we can hardly believe it. I grow emotional every time I think about it. Since I work in primary, there's a chance I may have to announce her progression into the youth program during primary and I have seriously had to practice it so I don't break down in front of our 100 children, adults and leaders. We're trying to get all her Faith in God requirements done so she can graduate primary and it's proved to be good for me since I never did quite graduate from primary....(never got that 13th Article of Faith). Claudia's doing great though. She's having a good time in Middle School. There's a lot more independence for the kids in 6th grade than there was when I was a wee lass. One of the things that she's enthusiastic about is a "Pay it Forward" idea that they introduced to her at school. She's having a fun time thinking of nice things she can do for people. She is, however, having a difficult time applying it to her own siblings, but I'm sure that will come with time. Claudia is continuing on her swim team and doing well with her piano. She's turning into a lovely young lady.

Things are finally starting to progress with our plans on our house. As difficult as it's been to live in this old small house, I am appreciative for the time we've had to really think about what we want to do with the home ultimately. I'm still not excited about having to live like this a little longer, and really not excited about starting the construction which will surely turn our lives upside down, but I am excited about realizing the potential for what we have here. We'll have to build in stages, but I really think this home will be beautiful and unique when all is said and done.

Nate's staying busy at work. He even had a trip to California last week, which I was a little jealous of, but I'm sure we can even things out somehow.

We've had some fun opportunities to travel this year. Nate and I have traveled alone, with our family and with other families. We are continuing to really enjoy this area. There are times when we miss being out west, but really feel like we've found what we've been looking for here in Hershey.

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

More Thanksgiving fun

Just a few of the the kids favorite pastimes at the beach. Aaron and Grace loved playing in the water. Aaron has been very much into sports this year and really loves playing football. He really got into the World Series since the Phillies were playing. Oddly enough, he routed for the Yankees. Joshua loved playing in the sand. As you can see from his picture, he is in a squatting position. He would sit like this for hours and just sort through the sand. He would draw things or make little mountains or possibly pretend the shells he found were a car or an animal. Claudia loves to collect shells. She came home with bags of them along with Grace and Aaron. I suppose we'll have to figure out what we can do with all these shells.

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, we chose to spend our holiday with two other families. One of the families coordinated things so we were able to rent a big home in Corolla, NC. This is right on the ocean and not too far from Kitty Hawk. We had such a fun time visiting and playing games. Even the work of preparing meals was a joy as we were all able to be in the same room while each family took a turn with the menu. Thanksgiving day was a nice joint effort even though all didn't go as planned. Part of the electricity in the house went off. It just happened to be the half of the house with all the kitchen equipment. Fortunetly, not everybody was vacationing and the rental company was able to come and fix the problem. It still ended up being a great meal. When the week was over, I thought I would never feel hungry again. We ate well. As a matter of fact, each meal was so great, it almost made Thanksgiving day a little anticlimatic. The beach was our activity of choice most days. We were able to play, swim, exercise and even meet up with another family from Hershey who happened to be vacationing just a few homes down with their family. All the kids got along well, which helped the adults to be left alone most of the time. I know it's a vacation our kids will always remember. We hope your holiday went just as well.

Halloween

Apparently I am not very Blog Saavy because I couldn't figure out how to switch these around so that they were going the right direction. Besides, I'm trying to post these while Nathan is making cinnamon rolls that just smell delightful and it is a little distracting. Maybe I'll figure it out later.

This year I had a little trouble getting into the spirit of Halloween. I let the kids all pick out something and this is what they came up with. Claudia is Luna Lovegood during her fight at the ministry, Aaron is....I don't really know. He just wanted to be something scary so he could sneak up behind the trick or treaters and scare them when they came up. He was pretty disappointed when they didn't get scared and when I thought they would be too scared, I told him not to do anything. Grace wanted to be a vampire witch. I don't know what that entailed, so this is what we came up with...but I loved that I got the chance to buy her faux leather pants. She looks great in them. Joshua was his beloved Indiana Jones. Should I be worried that he loves the movies so much? Especially the second one that I think is a little too dark. Oh well, I'm sure he'll be on to something different in a month or so. Lots of fun had by all, and lots of candy consumed. Good thing we have the new year coming up to set our new year's resolutions:)

Summer pics...a little late

So, here are some of our summer pictures. We had Joshua's, Aaron's and Grace's birthday. We do birthdays a little like Christmas. We decorate rooms so when the kids wake up, they have balloons all over and then the table is decorated to their latest interest. We also let the kids get up and open their gifts. This explains their dishevled looks as the pictures are taken. Other highlights are our first trip to Ocean City, New Jersey and a little of our 4th of July fireworks. Yes, they're still all really cute, and again, I'm not at all biased.