I think it has been about 10 months since I last blogged! I have had my share of really valid excuses for why I haven't...but the other day I revisited this blog and read lots of the old posts...stories of my kids from their much smaller days...precious memories that are forever saved thanks to typepad and I decided that this was just too valuable to give up on. I love having this family photo album/journal to look back on and the kids love looking back and reading stories about themselves. So, I have resolved to do better!!
On that note...I shall attempt to catch up on the time I have been "away". Jon went to do a school in New York with Seth Godin. This was an amazing experience and a huge blessing in so many ways! We are so thankful for this opportunity. It was not always easy being a single, home schooling mom of 4 kids, but we made it. (Jon's business is
doing really well now and we feel that the sacrifice was so worth it for so many reasons). I got a chance to go and visit Jon in New York and we had a good time. We saw the sites and even went to see the Blue Man Group. Even better than that trip was a few months later when I got to take Anna for about a week to see Dad in New York. It was soooo much fun! We did just about everything and had such a brilliant time!!
I decided that it would probably be a whole lot easier for me during Jon's school if I went and stayed in Texas with my parents. So, the kids and I (and the most wonderful mother-in-law in the universe) loaded up and drove to Texas. It was quite a journey, but we made it and we spent several months there. It was a really sweet time. I loved that my kids got to spend so much precious time with their Nana and Papa and Grandma and Grandpa. They played with the goats and chickens and puppies (oh my!) and did a LOT of swimming (which is something they don't do a whole lot of here in Colorado). Anna is a great swimmer and after our time
there Eli and Shae are both holding their own pretty well. Aspen LOVES the water...she had a great time! Maybe next summer she'll learn to swim.
Jon came home from his time in New York in July. Just after he returned I left for a week for an artist's retreat called The Glen. I did a week long fiction writing workshop and it was brilliant. I learned so much and had a great time being with my lovely friends, Tara and Abigail! It was a really good break for me to have a week with no kids!
Other highlights...Greenday concert in August...AMAZING!! Moved to a new place in September. Huge blessing! We love it here! It feels like the country, but it's right in town. It's on 6 acres and when there is not snow on the ground Anna and Eli are out riding dirt bikes all day long!
We had an early blizzard in October! It was beautiful and a great start to the season! The kids had a great Halloween. Eli went as a skateboarder, Shae was Jessie (from To
y Story), Aspen was Tinkerbell, and Anna was a mad scientist.
Thanksgiving we spent here with some of our very best friends! We had an amazing time and I am so thankful for our family (whether related by blood or not)!
Christmas was an adventure! We started with a mini-vacation which was SOOOOO much fun! We went to Branson, MO and had a couple of days at Silver Dollar City. We also went to Dixie Stampede. And we got to reconnect with one of our best friends that we hadn't seen in years...it was fabulous!!! The kids were so good and had such a great time!! We traveled from there to Oklahoma and celebrated Christmas with some of my extended family and also got stuck in a snow storm in Lawton, OK without our stuff, but we found a hotel and made the most of it! Then we traveled to Texas and had
Christmas with the Dale family. Sadly, just as we were sitting down for Christmas lunch I looked over at Aspen and realized that she was about to puke...sure enough I ran her to the bathroom just in the nick of time. Apparently we brought the plague with us and wanted to make sure we shared it with everyone and almost everyone in the Dale extended family got to share in the experience with us...joy. Then we went to my family and had Christmas there and thought we were no longer contagious...sadly, we were wrong. So, if you didn't receive a Christmas gift from us this year...perhaps you should be thankful :)!
Needless to say we were pretty exhausted after all of this excitement! We decided Christmas is not the best time to travel and thought maybe it would be good to travel other times and stay home at Christmas.
Jon had a birthday shortly after we returned home and I surprised him with a little get together to
celebrate him. It was really fun and pretty amazing considering my lack of ability to keep anything from him!
We have starting having a home fellowship here on Sunday mornings. It has been soooo beautiful. We are so excited to worship and talk about Jesus together! Our times have been so rich! We are excited to see what God does in this new year!
OK...now here's a brief kid update. Anna is now 10 and in 4th grade. Her health is now excellent! She is doing fabulous in school. She makes amazing claymation films (you can see them on her youtube channel) and she is an all around great kid with a great sense of humor and immense creativity! Currently, she wants to be an inventor or filmmaker when she grows up. She is doing an 8 week course at Breckenridge to improve her snowboarding skills, so every Friday she gets to go snowboarding with her dad...tough life!
Elijah is just about to turn 7. He loves skateboarding and tech-decking. He has built a huge tech-deck skate park with cardboard in his room. He is also super creative and is a fantastic artist. He loves to draw. He is a really loving kid. He is doing great in school and learning a ton. He is starting to really read now! He is also doing the snowboarding program with Anna and I think all of his hours of skateboarding have helped him a lot! He currently wants to be a professional skateboarder when he grows up.
Shae is 5 and she is beautiful! She is very compassionate and affectionate! She is also VERY inquisitive. Which means a LOT of questions all the time!! She loves animals and babies and is really good with both of them! She makes up songs a lot and they are really cute! She is doing well in school and is beginning to read a bit! She currently wants to be a vet and a mommy when she grows up!
Aspen is 3! A lot has happened in the last 10 months for her. She was potty trained and is even out of the pull-ups at night now! Woo-hoo!! She is going to be moving to the big girl bed very soon! So exciting! She also said bye-bye to the bottle which she was seriously addicted to! She is an absolute Joy and we all love her so very much. She is talking a lot now although she is pretty difficult to understand. One thing she is very adamant about is that she is a big girl...if you call her baby even as an affectionate term she will correct you. The funny thing is that the way she says "big girl" sounds very, very similar to "bird dog". So, that is what she gets called quite a bit
around here :). I try to include her when I school Shae and Eli, so she is learning some basics and is doing well at sitting still and coloring. She is currently undecided in what she wants to be, but I suspect that it would probably be to take over Tinkerbell's job.
We also have a new dog. Maggie was NOT the right fit for us and my parents very graciously told us that we could bring her to them and we could take one of their dogs (they raise standard poodles...check out their site www.greatpoodles.com ). So we picked the one we liked the most and brought him home. His name was Pierre when we got him, but Jon wanted a more manly name...so he is now...Bear! He is the PERFECT dog for us. We adore him! He's only about 1 1/2 and he is super calm and loving! So, thanks again, Mom and Dad! He is such a blessing to our family!
OK...that should do it! Whew!