Only a year late...

I've had a few people kindly remind me that it has been over a year since I last updated the blog, so I guess I better do it. The longer I wait, the harder it gets to do because there is simply too much to write!

 

I guess we'll start at the top. Josh started driving truck over the road again about a year ago. He started driving for Pride Transport. It was a pretty good company to work for, but it was very hard on our family to have him gone so much. He was generally gone for about a week and a half at a time, then home for a day or two, and then gone again. So in June of this year he left Pride and started driving for FritoLay. He is only gone a day or so at a time, and it has been much better for our family. Plus we get a discount on chips at the company store! :)

Tania is still working at Primary Childrens and loving it. She switched from full time (3 shifts/week) to part time (2 shifts/week) when Josh started driving again. Sometimes that feels like too much still because the weeks keep going too fast!

Mitch is almost 9 and in 4th grade. We decided to put Mitch in Online school this year, and we keep wondering why it took us so long to do that. The curriculum is much more challenging and he has learned so much more this year than he has learned all the previous years combined. He didn't learn much of anything in 3rd grade, and had a teacher that wouldn't communicate with us at all. It was very frustrating for everyone, and so we thought we'd try this method. It is essentially a charter school because it is a free public school. They sent us all the books and everything we need for science experiments (which accompany just about every lesson) and art. Some of the lessons are online and some are in the books they sent us. We are his "Learning Coaches" and there are teachers online available to help with anything. Some of the classes are taught in online "classrooms" where they have a powerpoint/white board and microphones. He loves it and we are so happy he is actually being challenged and learning to buckle down and do his work.

Lizzy is 4. She is a very strong little girl, and she loves to do pull-ups on Josh's pull-up bar. She has a best friend that lives across the street from us. She and Sami both love to play with Eden. It is so cute to watch them play together. They have so much fun. Lizzy is still a very girly girl. She wears a skirt every day. She has to be forced into wearing pants. She loves to get her hair done and her nails painted.

Sami is 2. She and Lizzy have lots of fun together.


They share just about everything, even a bunk bed. And since everything Lizzy grows out of becomes Sami's, they share clothes and toys for the most part too. She has little to no interest in potty training, much to our dismay. She is a very cute, spunky little redhead.

Alex is the newest addition to our family.

She was born the first part of May. She came out with lots of dark, curly hair and darker skin. If I hadn't seen her be born, I would've thought maybe they switched babies on us. She loves to be held. Even if she is hungry, as long as she's being held, she is happy as a clam. Her skin has lightened up since she was born, and she is starting to look more and more like Mitch all the time.

Life keeps going faster and faster the older I get. Hopefully one of these days I'll get caught up...

October 2011

Every October we go down to Thanksgiving Point. They have a corn maze and lots of fall festivities. We didn't do the corn maze this year, but the kids had a blast with all the other stuff they had. Mitch loved the pedal carts, and even the girls liked the rides Tania gave them.

The kids (including Josh) also loved the duck races.

The girls' favorite part is the Princess area, where they have lots of dressups to try on and a princess pumpkin carriage to sit in. This year they even had a stage where they could dance, but the girls were to nervous to do much dancing.

For our neighborhood Halloween party, we all dressed up. Here are our costumes:

Happy Halloween!!

Mitchell

Mitchell is getting older every day. He started 3rd grade this year. It is nice living close enough to the school that he can ride his bike. I wake him up in the morning and he gets up and ready all by himself. He even makes sure he leaves on time. Here is a picture Tania took before his first day this year.

Mitchell still does really well in school. He never practices his spelling tests at home and rarely gets lower than fourteen out of twelve. He still reads tons and goes through books like they are cake. He has read all of the magic tree house series books that he could find and always looks for more.

This year we signed him up for soccer. He really seemed to enjoy it. When he first got his jersey, shorts, cleats and socks we kept having to tell him he couldn't wear them every day and every where. He would probably still be wearing them if we would have let him. During games he mostly played defense. Sometimes he would play offense and for being his first year playing he did pretty good. One game they stuck him in as goalie. The coach soon found out that the only kid on the team with glasses shouldn't be the goalie. In the picture Mitchell is the blue jersey between the green team.

Here a while back Mitchell lost one of his baby front teeth and when the new one started to grow in we thought it looked weird. We took him to the dentist where we found out he had an extra baby tooth that was blocking his permanent tooth and causing it to grow in sideways. The dentist removed the extra tooth and we hoped that the tooth would straighten out more as it came in. Well, it is still mostly sideways. After talking to a few orthodontists we decided to put a small set of braces on to help his tooth straighten out. He was excited to get them on. Today I got him out of school early and we headed to the office. He was still excited when we got there. He even had them put Halloween color bands on his braces. Later he started saying that they were hurting a little but he has been pretty good about it. He wanted to go back to school and show his friends but I told him he would have to wait till tomorrow. In the picture you can see how crooked his tooth is. It is almost 90 degrees out from straight. They say he will probably have these for eight to ten months. Mitchell can't wait to have a straight tooth.

Trip to visit family

A few months ago we were able to drive up to Caldwell Idaho and visit with my family. We had a lot of fun while we were there. We were able to go fishing, jet skiing, riding horses and tons of other things. We didn't have the camera out on the pond while we were skiing. It could have been because we forgot it or it could have been to spare you from looking at pictures of us in our swimming suites. Here are some pictures of fishing at my dads ponds.

Mitchell was able to catch tons of Blue Gills. He really liked it. He was even able to take them off the hook after he caught them. Here is a picture of one.

While we were fishing the girls went for a walk around the pond. Sami seamed to really enjoy it.

It was nice to get Buddy all saddled up and ride. The kids always love horse rides. I took them all by themselves and then I took the girls together and I just led him around. They loved it. Mitchell is almost getting big enough for me to let him ride alone. Mitchell would have no problem getting him to go his problem would be not being able to pull hard enough to get him to stop. Buddy likes to go. He was really tired though by the time we were done.

Visiting family is always fun. Especially if it is a horse.

Summer fun

This summer went pretty fast for us. We were plenty busy and the weather usually cooperated well for us.

Earlier this year we decided to buy a year pass to the Hogle Zoo here in Salt Lake City. I has been good. So far I think we have been able to visit at least four or five times. The pass is for a calender year so it won't run out for a while still. All the kids seem to enjoy it. Here is a picture of Lizzy with a few animals.

Here is a picture of a giraffe that apparently could taste something on the pole that was really delicious. It kept wrapping it's tongue all the way around the pole. Who knew they could do that with their tongues.

I think the girls really liked the giraffes because it seems I have a bunch of pictures of them. While we were inside the giraffe building we were able to see their trainer working with them. They don't do anything amazing but it is still neat to see them handle them.

More house work

Well, if you haven't read enough about the house here is some more for you. We have been working hard and got all the major repairs done. We still are working on the lawn but the house looks dramatically different. Don't you think?

Amazing what a new coat of paint will do. The wall inside has also been finished. It is nice to have the projects done.

Behind the picture frame with two pictures there is a door that can be taken out to grease or adjust the track for the pocket gate. These projects have taken quite a bit of my time but I think they were well worth it.


Tania helped quite a bit on most of the projects. Mostly she was just moral support but she still helped a bunch. Most of the time I would have to work on the projects after I put the kids to bed. If I tried to work on them when they were awake they would either try and use all my tools or beat each other up to where I spent all my time tearing them off each other, and yes I mean they are very aggressive children. Even little Sami can hold her own.

Some times I think it would be nice if they were a little more settled, but then I think of how I want them to always stand up for themselves and for what they believe, and I realize that they are exactly how I want them to be. Don't get me wrong they drive me crazy most of the time, but because of how they act some day they will be great at what they do.

Mitchell will be a great lawyer some day. He still works hard at honing his arguing skills daily. I'm sure he drives his teachers crazy because he is so far ahead of the group. The other day he took some reading test at school and found out on average he reads 150 words per minute. We went to the library on Monday and he got four books that are over a hundred pages each and I believe he finished them all already. He still enjoys math and science as well. He will be finished with second grade here in the next few weeks. I can hardly believe he is getting so big.

Elizabeth has turned in to quite the little dancer. She enjoys playing songs or music and dancing. She insists that she can only dance if she is wearing a dress or skirt. If she is wearing shorts or pants she will change so she can dance. So needless to say we need to buy more skirts. She can sit and watch princess movies all day long.


Sami is our little climber. She is 14 months old now but still is too chicken to walk. She can stand and could probably walk if she would just try. Even though she won't walk she climbs on to everything. She will climb onto a speaker next to the couch then lift her leg up like she is getting on a horse and climb over the arm of the couch. She uses this same method to climb on everything. She loves most of all to climb and get the remotes, and then she will bring them to me as if to say "try again, I could still get it."

I have finished another semester of school and am currently looking for employment. Mostly right now I spend a lot of time working on the house and the rest watching the kids. I still get to spend some time with Tania so that is nice.

Tania is still a wonderful wife and mother, not to mention a wonderful nurse who still works hard so we can have such a nice house and I can afford to go to school. All in all our family is doing pretty good. We are just hoping the snow will stop before it's time for winter again.

Sami

Sami is 6 months old already. I can't even believe how fast time flies. She is such a good, happy baby, and we love her so much. Here are a couple of somewhat recent pictures of her.

This first one is Sami in a horse costume that we used for pajamas. We bought it after halloween last year because it was a horse. And her dad is Josh. Enough said. :)


This next one is just a cute smile. She is sitting with help in this picture, but she is sitting without help now. She can roll both ways and sit up on her own. She is starting to get angry when we eat without her. Getting so grown up.

Sami likes her Johnny Jump Up. She loves to jump. Here is a video of her jumping while Lizzy is taking pictures of her with her Ariel camera. At the end, Lizzy says, "Oh, that's a good picture of Sam!"