Happy New Year!

2012, what a cool thought.  I have enjoyed writing it on paper a couple of times already, and haven't yet had to cross off writing "2011" by mistake...yet.

Well after a brief yet long Christmas break (brief because it was shorter than the winter breaks we were used to, and long because the kids still got bored), I just now saw my first child head back to school at 6:45 a.m., and everyone else at the moment is still sleeping, so I thought I'd take a few of these silent minutes to put some of my New Year's thoughts down.  There are two things I've been wanting to articulate:  1) my favorite highlights of 2011, and 2) my goals for the new year.  ...Yes, I do like to set New Year's resolutions, and yes, I do like to try to keep them.  At least for 6 months or so, which I feel makes my goals share-worthy.

2011 Highlights:

*In March we had the super-funnest Family Reunion ever, with all of my siblings, in Boise.  It was sad that Mom and Dad couldn't be there, but we were all so happy for where they were, in Virginia on their mission.

*I ran my first races ever.  None of them were races for which I officially registered, 'cause I'm kind of lame that way, but I ran them nonetheless and this year began to think of myself as a real runner.  Pretty cool, in my book.  I ran (jogged? who cares about that distinction, anyway?) 4.5 miles in the Butte to Butte, and I completed my own personal 10K, along with my sister, who ran it the same month on the other side of the country.

*We moved across the country, from Oregon to PA, in August, because my husband is awesome and got an awesome JOB even before he officially finished his doctorate.  He is awesome.  And we love our new home.

*Our younger daughter turned 8 and was baptized by her father.  That was a special day.

*My brother and his wife were able to adopt their second child, a beautiful little girl!  That made me happier than words can express.

*Our oldest child turned 12, and that's an important age in our church!  The kids graduate from being in the "Primary children's" group, and get to now be considered one of the "youth".  He received the priesthood last Sunday.  His grandparents were here to support him in this important milestone, and it was really funny when Grandma kissed him on the cheek after the ordination and left lipstick lips on his cheek, simply in order to embarrass him in front of his peers : ).  It was another special day for our family.

*Some fun musical changes:  I became the kids' piano teacher, and our oldest two kids started on new instruments: the trumpet and the saxophone.  Oh, and Tootie discovered he likes the drums (who's surprised?).  Good stuff!









Goals for 2012:

*Read 12 books.  That's up from the 6-8 that I believe I read in 2011.  I love to read, I really do.  I just have a hard time sitting down to do it (I guess unless it's on the computer).  Probably because I can't really multi-task when I'm reading, and because I fall asleep too easily when I read at the end of the day.  Anyway, the books I finish this year may include: The Book of Mormon (goal is to be done by the end of June), the New Testament or Doctrine & Covenants, the book I just started called "The Case Against Spanking", The Diary of Anne Frank, Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland, The Hiding Place, The Kingdom and the Crown, something by Jane Austen, Charlie's Monument (which I want to read to my kids), Matilda (which I'm currently reading to my girls), The Diary of Anne Frank, and I don't know what else.  Books are so much fun.

*Fitness goal: to maintain my weight.  I'm working on a goal with my family, and my personal plan within that goal is for me to exercise 5-6 days a week, doing 45 minutes per day of my aerobic and weight routines.  Running outside when I feel up to it, which is usually only when the weather is nice. 

*Music goal: like last year, I want to continue to practice the piano.  I would like to learn to play 4 more hymns in the hymn book.  Someday I would love to be good enough to have "piano player" as a calling in the church.  Maybe in the Primary for starters?

*Homemaking goal: start planning dinners in advance, in line with The Nanny Plan, on The Food Nanny show.

*Limit my computer time a bit.  I would like to try for doing just 1 hour per day on most days, and have one day per week when I do no more than check my email in the morning.  Thursdays--no computer after 9 a.m.  That should help me have more time to read, right?

Maybe I'll think of some more goals later.  These are goals that I'm feeling quite motivated about though for now, so there you go.  Do you have any new goals for this year that you can share with me?

(Oops...I think I already used up my hour for today's computer time.  Can I start over?)

The Christmas Story

This is such a wonderful and adorable depiction of the Nativity, I know you'll love it. Merry Christmas. (Can I please keep saying that for just a few extra days, even though it's passed?)

October and November

One of our many Philadelphia Zoo trips to come (since we bought a year pass...I hope we make good use of it!). 

How do you like my new stamp station all set up?  I have one more long table now along the left side that gives me a lot of work space.  I haven't been able to use this area much yet.......OH, BUT I PLAN TO.  Notice my little collection of rainbow pictures that my kids have made?  It is still growing, and I call it my "rainbow wall".  It's one of my favorite collections : )!

Isn't this a funny picture?  Goldie had a sticker book for making faces, and we got pretty silly with it one day.  Good times.

Hay ride for Tootie's preschool class.  A very cold day...I love these fun field trips.  It's one of the best parts of being a mom.

Tootie and I carved 2 of the pumpkins.  If you look carefully at the one on the left, you'll see a special secret (secret to this blog) in the design!

We had fun at the S'mores Night at Hershey's Chocolate World.   This singer guy was a good entertainer at the campfire party.

One of the highlights of our November was getting to meet Grandma and Grandpa at the D.C. temple and visitor's center on the day of their temple trip with their soldiers.  The kids thought the soldiers were pretty fascinating, and this man was kind enough to answer questions for them and pose in the picture with them.  I thought it was funny how they were afraid to stand close to him in the picture though, and this is as close as I could get them.

Happiness!

Can you believe these amazing sunsets!!?  This is a scene from our back door.

I had to come up with SOME way to celebrate 11-11-11, and this is what I came up with--a yummy cake : ).  And I was able to take a picture of my computer clock at 11:11 on 11-11-11, too.  It was very cool.  Oh yeah--I almost forgot~we also hid coins in the cake (washed, of course), in increments of 11 cents!

(11 candles, of course!)

Tootie's class did an elaborate Thanksgiving program for the parents, full of songs and stories of the first Thanksgiving celebration with the Pilgrims and Indians.  Lots of fun!

He made his own vest with real Indian writings on it.  Oh, that smile of his--it gets me deep down : )!

Our Thanksgiving Day feast.  YUM!

Our guests this year were the two full-time elders that are serving in our ward.  We missed being able to get together with family, but it was still a really nice day for us.  Shark and Jazz had a nice time in the morning too, playing in the Turkey Bowl with other friends from the church.  We played games (Scattergories and "Write to 100") after the meal and had a great time.

This is our handsome family scientist--testing whether play dough dries faster in the house or outside.   What do you guess that he found out?  He flattened both dough balls into pancakes, and he observed it for 3 days.We were surprised that our hypothesis was wrong--the play dough outside showed practically no signs of drying after 3 days, and the play dough inside was a crispy cracked white thing.  We took photos and he presented his findings on a big display board, and got an A on the project : ).  Way to go, Scientist Shark!

Silver Linings and My Pocket Full of Change

I just found this beautiful song on Nienie's blog and thought it would be a nice complement to the "Love/Hate" post that I had in the works.  So I'm putting them in one post together.  It's a great blessing to be able to see the silver lining to our dark clouds, isn't it?  And yet, sometimes it's still fun to list pros AND cons to things that we enjoy.  So, here's to seeing both sides of the coins in our pockets full of change : )! 




Re: Not having my own car
LOVE: being forced out of my element ("I can do hard things"), the extra exercise, fresh air, and being independent ("I don't NEED that, I am creative and can get things done anyway.")
HATE: feeling embarrassed about it sometimes.  having to ask for a ride occasionally.  sometimes not being able to do what I'd choose to do if I did have a car.

LOVE: Our new home in Pennsylvania!  And "living in the country" is so refreshing, quiet, and we love the farm lands.
HATE: Having to drive so far to get to church.  We used to live a 12-minute drive from our stake center/ward building, now we're an hour from our stake center, and 25 minutes from our ward building.  I wouldn't mind it as much if the kids didn't whine about it every week!  It doesn't help that 2 of our kids consistently get car sick (including vomiting on occasion).

LOVE: that I've still been able to keep up my exercise habit 5-6 days per week, despite not having a gym membership anymore.
HATE: that I haven't played racquetball once since we left Oregon.  Waaaah : '(.

LOVE: noticing the differences in the way people talk around here.  Such as the "upside down" intonations of their questions, the different vocabulary words ("yous" instead of "you guys"), and the funny pronunciations (Lancaster = LANG-kister,   Lebanon = LEB'nun), etc.
HATE: that I still don't understand the difference between a city, a township, and a borough.  Maybe I'll get the hang of that someday.

LOVE: Tootie's preschool class.  Tootie LOVES it too!
HATE:  that it's only 3 days a week, 2 hours per day.  We could use an extra few hours...2 hours a day 5 days a week would be nice, or 3 hours a day 4 days a week like we had last year would be awesome.  It's hard for us to fill up all the other hours of the week with good stuff to do while the other kids are in school.

LOVE:  reading good books.
HATE: not finding time enough to read.

LOVE: massages.
HATE: that no one is giving me one right now!  ha ha ha : )

LOVE:  my Stampin' Up! business.
HATE: that I am currently in the "find new customers or die" stage...again.  Hopefully for the last time though (at least for a long time).

HATE:  Snow.  That cold yucky (albeit pretty) stuff that is falling from our sky right now.
LOVE: Seeing my kids get so excited about snow, and knowing that they're going to make me hate it a little less as we find joy playing in it this weekend, and for the next few months, probably!

HATE: Messes in my house.
LOVE: Being a Stay-at-home-Mom!!!

DISLIKE: Halloween...Not my favorite holiday.
LOVE: Candy (Not burning it off later though).  And, seeing my kids have fun dressing up.  I don't love doing that now that I'm "old", but I know it's fun for kids.  I love that I have 4 amazing kids that keep me enjoying things that I've outgrown.  

As for counting my blessings, I think my life is almost pretty much perfect.  I am so happy with where we are right now.  Life changes a little bit every day, and I love the direction it is going.  I'm so happy to be me.

Fall Fun

Goldie and Tootie and a neighbor.  Sometimes the kids ask to have their picture taken when they're having fun, when I wouldn't have thought of pulling out the camera.  Those pictures can be some of the best.

We finally got around to taking down the birthday balloons we had hanging up in our dining room, and wanted to make a little more use of them, so Tootie and I invented "the birthday stick".  He carried this with him in the stroller on our outing downtown to the library and it was quite the good time, yes it was.

I just love this sign.  It's at the edge of the Lutheran Church parking lot where Tootie goes to school.  I wish we had one at our own church parking lot : )!

We had fun examining this "Ladybug tree".  There must have been hundreds of ladybugs on and around it.  And believe it or not, this is the first time in my life I have ever seen such PINK ladybugs!  I knew there were yellow and orange ones, but pink?  That's perfect!

Here we are on a very fun little hayride, a great way to celebrate the fall. 

The kids had a lot of fun worrying about the other hayride truck catching up to us.  We were in the lead, and we won the "race".  It was funny how they kept imagining our lead shrinking and expanding, since both tractors were just going about 5 miles an hour.

Shark couldn't have been more pleased with our Philadelphia Zoo experience, because we got in some high quality lion-watching time.  They didn't do anything amazing for us, but at least they weren't in hiding like they were when we went to the Oregon Zoo. 

flamingos! 

Philly Zoo...see you again soon.

The Best Movie I've Seen in a Long Time: "Two Brothers"

  As part of "The 5000 Days Project", the movie "Two Brothers" is a completely awesome documentary about 2 LDS brothers who are interviewed periodically over the course of 10 years.   It starts out when they are 8 and 10 years old, and ends with one coming home from his mission and one leaving on his mission.   The older boy serves his mission in Chile, and the younger brother gets to play college football before his mission.   It's so cool to see them grow up and see how they change in that amount of time.   Shark and Didi and I watched the whole 80 minute movie glued to our seats.   I wish it could have been even longer.

I heard about it because I'm on BYUtv's email list.   I don't know how long they'll keep the whole movie on their website, so I'd highly recommend watching this movie asap while it's on there.   It's also being sold on DVD for $20 (better to watch the free version!).   It's totally worth the money though; Shark wants me to get him a copy for Christmas.  

Watch it, and tell me what you think!   We LOVED it.   I hope you will too!
See the Trailer HERE
View the movie HERE: Two Brothers on BYUTV

It's Great to be Eight

We had Goldie's 8th birthday party the week before her baptism.  Last year she got to celebrate with a big "friends" party, so this year she got a small family party.  She had a fun day even with just us, though. 

I asked Goldie what kind of cake she wanted...the Piglet part was her choice, the rainbow part was my idea. Didi helped guide me this year with the design; she knows the rainbow order better than I do (though she informed me that I ended up making the rainbow upside down), and she was a great frosting color mixer.  She also helped me remember to put the (washed) money in the cake, continuing with my family tradition.

  

 I thought this "Tangled" poster was a fun gift to give her, and thought this photo turned out cute. It's as if the characters in the poster were standing right next to her/looking at her.

 

 

 

After she thought all the presents had been opened, Dad brought her to "the big one" : ).

                          By the way, today was Goldie's first Fast Sunday since she turned 8.  Now as a full member of the church, we were so proud of her for choosing to fast one meal this morning with the rest of us, and she also was brave enough to bear her testimony in sacrament meeting.  What a brave girl!  Isn't it great to be eight?