December 2009

We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas Season this past month. We started out the month with Katie’s concert at school and her piano recital. The concert was really great, fun songs! (she filled our home with these songs for weeks and weeks before AND after the concert…she does love to sing!!!) For her recital she did a beautiful job. Wish the room wasn’t so crowded so we could have gotten a decent photo of her…Katie loved having our friend Raelyn come over for a birthday dinner. This is Ms. Raelyn that took Katie and Jason to Disneyland! And of course a photo with Santa…and the last photo’s were after Christmas was over. Katie was feeling pretty tough taking the tree out to the street!

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Becca and Katie both started basketball. Katie kinda fell through the cracks..I am wondering about this league here…she never got a phone call from her coach so I finally called and they gave me the info. We got to practice (she’d missed 3 already) and they had put her on a team with kids way older than her, add that to missing 3 practices and the coach was awful (her 2nd practice, coach’s 5th…he got there sent them running to warm up then threw a temper tantrum and yelled at the girls that he wasn’t coaching them today!!! I am not kidding…and then he left. All these kids left with no adult supervision. Well there were still a few parents there but there were 4 or 5 girls that were wandering the halls wondering what to do. OOOOHHH I was so ticked. I called the head of the League and let him have it! They actually let the guy coach a couple more practices until they could get themselves together enough to make a decision about the guy. Crazy, so I pulled her from the program. Not a great experience for her!  Becca was placed on a team that was older than her on purpose, when I signed her up the coach for the U14 really wanted her! She is doing really great with these older girls. I just wish she enjoyed it more! I am having a blast being the assistant coach. I guess it is good one of us is having fun right??? Sigh!!!  I was released as Primary President and the next week we were talking about Primary and Becca said “well I guess you are a Primary Veteran!!!” I thought that was so cute! Becca and Susie had a concert as well for their school chorus. Susie loves Chorus, Becca has been counting down the days for the semester to end so she doesn’t have to go to chorus anymore…does she sound like a moody pre-teen or what? Becca has done a little bit of art this month.  Becca says she started out drawing a portrait of Xander but it looked too feminine so she turned it into a girl.  I think she drew Olivia and just didn’t know she was…She looks very similar to Susie and a little bit like Lana, but not quite, has her own look. I’ve always imagined Olivia looking a bit like my sister Lana and she obviously would have looked like our other kids cuz as you can see we have what my mother in law calls “cookie cutter kids”!!!Becca also drew a boy and when she was done she came to me and told me she wanted to give it to Sister Hill for Christmas. She said sister Hill is always telling her how talented she is and what a great artist she is, she said she thought sister Hill would like to have a drawing from her. Very sweet, Sister Hill felt honored!

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Susie has been really into music this month. The school concert I already mentioned. She has also continued her voice lessons and has been preparing to sing in sacrament meeting ALONE!!! She sang “Mary did you know?” the Sunday before Christmas. She did an amazing job. She didn’t seem nervous at all. I knew she was but she was very composed and sounded beautiful. She sure had her Daddy in tears! She has done some babysitting for friends in the ward throughout the month. I think she has been dubbed the best babysitter in the ward. She really enjoys those kids. She brings activities and does a great job taking care of everything. The kids all love Susie! She has also been involved in 4H focusing on horses. She has had several meetings and activities.

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Xander has been super busy with preschool, he loves it. He has also learned how to snap his fingers and he is so proud of this!!! He will say “when I snap my fingers once that means yes, when I snap them twice that means no” when I ask him a question. And he just wanders around snapping away. “Hi Mom…snap snap…what’s for dinner…snap snap…” So cute! He also discovered that he loves tangerines because he can peel it all by himself (yep saves the seeds). One day he asked me to peel it for him, I said “no buddy, you can do it” he flipped his fingers up towards me and said very dramatically “I can’t peel them…you cut my nails off!!!” He was right, I’d cut his nails the night before! This other picture was such a crack up. We got home from somewhere and Xander was wearing his Santa hat. Well he kinda disappeared for awhile and when he showed up again he was wearing his red turtleneck and he had gone into the bathroom, filled the sink with soap and made himself a Santa Beard! It was so adorable. So he posed for me with his ‘Santa bag’ and even gave us some ‘ho ho ho’s.  Too cute!!! We also dogsat another dog, this one was Molly. Xander loved Molly, loved to help me take care of her and play with her. He started begging for a dog of his very own. I’d tell him we already have Roxy, so he started begging for any kind of pet of his very own. He got stuck on the idea of his own fishtank with his very own fish. So he asked Santa for that for Christmas along with a ‘bunch of oranges’. That was his list! Well Santa came through… And as you can see from the last photo Xander is into that age of picking out his own clothes! Good one Buddy!!!

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Jason has been super busy with work and school and trying to keep his motorcycle running and of course the on going maintenance of his saltwater fish tank. It is really looking good. He is so proud of it and will show it off to anyone! I have finished up my photography course. Learned a lot but still have ton’s of additional material they gave us to go through online. I took a bunch of picture of several families for Christmas cards, this one is of our good friends the Martins. Molly is there dog. She came and plunked down when I was taking photos so I had to start snapping away at her too! Her poor sad face in time out! :-). I also included several from photo’s I took of our kido’s in the same area.

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