Family Pics

Before Christmas our cute neighbor took some family photos for us. It's been a while and we wanted something to put on our Christmas card. Our kids were being typical young children which means it was hard to get a decent picture of all of us at once. And then there is the issue of me still wanting to lose a few (or actually a lot) of pounds before doing much documentation of this time of life (the extra poundage from the third child is a bit more stubborn and I am a bit more tired and lazy about doing something about it). Despite these challenges there are a few we liked. She 'shopped a few of them in vintage style which I thought turned out pretty cute. I am so glad we don't have to do this too often.

 

This is the second best family picture that didn't quite make the Christmas card cut.

 

Adie may have gotten those awkward posing genes from me...we just can't seem to be able to look relaxed and normal in most photos, but we still think she is a cutie.

 

Here is our pensive-looking Chase who is actually just holding on for dear life because it freaked him out to be climbing on a train car. He really loves trains but apparently doesn't love climbing on them.

 

I think Brett looks great here. Yay for being married for 7.5 years!

 

And here is the winner. We put a black and white version on the Christmas card (and on my FB profile).

We didn't get a picture of Parker that day because it was rainy and there wasn't really a soft location to put him as we were in an orchard and then near train tracks. Now, Brett just needs to bust out our camera again and get some updated pictures of this kid because he is growing up so fast.

Oh Yeah, We Have a Blog

Now that we've gone almost 3 months without posting anything here, I guess it's high time we do. I was already unmotivated to take the time to blog before, but after rejoining Facebook and getting a smart phone, it's been really hard. It takes me less than a minute to throw up a picture with a small caption on Facebook. Let's just say it takes me forever here. Anyway, I am doing a quick wrap up of the year and thanks to Picasa's collage feature, this shouldn't take too long for you to scroll through.

 
In the middle of November my dad came for a visit. The kids adore their grandparents, so his visit was a very welcome event. He was here for a week but for some reason I only took out my camera one day. Luckily, it was the day we went on a random scenic drive to a very beautiful lake a couple hours from our home. I didn't know places like this existed in Southern Arizona. We all had a wonderful time spending time with Grandpa Savage and he was he even willing to brave driving back up to Utah with us when his trip was over, which brings us to our next set of pictures...


 
We spent Thanksgiving break in Utah and Idaho. My dad drove with the kids and me up to Utah the weekend before Thanksgiving and Brett flew in on Thanksgiving day where we met him in Idaho. We packed in as much family time as we could during that week and a half. The kids got to see all of their grandparents, great-grandparents and almost all of their cousins and aunts and uncles during that time. We played lots of games, stayed up too late, ate lots of good food, rode the Trax train, saw the Temple square lights and made many wonderful memories.



 

Since we were with so much family, we took advantage and blessed Parker while up in Idaho. Some of Brett's cousins and an aunt and uncle were even able to come, which was so nice of them. I wish we had gotten a better picture of Parker in his dapper little outfit, but he seems to be sleeping or kicking or being held in all sorts of awkward positions in most of these photos. You can barely tell from the photos, but Parker is wearing the cutest of shoes made by his own talented Aunt Camille. They were his early Christmas gift and a perfect addition for the blessing outfit. My favorite photos in this collage though are the ones of us trying to get some sort of normal family picture. As you can see, it didn't happen, but at least Brett and I are smiling so we must have been having a good time.



After Thanksgiving was busy, busy, like it is for practically everyone. We had some sad moments saying goodbye to a little friend who left us way too soon. We had lots of happy moments decorating our yard, Christmas trees and cookies. We made neighbor gifts and Adie learned to weave potholders. The kids jumped in bounce houses, acted out the nativity at preschool and at home just for the fun of it. Adie and her friend were Suzie Snowflakes, dancing ballet and tap for their winter performance. Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year, even if it stresses me out a little.

 

This year we were so fortunate to have visitors at our house for Christmas. One of my cousins married a lovely lady in the Mesa temple a couple days after Christmas (congrats, Daniel and Lisa!) so his family was down here for the holidays, as were my mom, stepdad and grandparents, and though their stay was short, we packed in the fun. We ate lots of food (as always), played cards, saw the lights in our neighborhood (we have a lot of fun impressive displays here) and just spent time together. I am told it is nice to have little Christmas celebrations with just your immediate family. I am sure that is true, but in our 7.5 years of marriage we have yet to celebrate Christmas with just our immediate family and, truth be told, I am okay with that. I love having as much family around as possible. After a wonderful Christmas sacrament meeting in the morning, lots of gift-opening and a yummy brunch everyone packed up. My extended family headed to Mesa to get prepped for the upcoming wedding and Brett, the kids and I started our trek to Texas. More on that in another post...

The best of times...

To begin with, as a general disclaimer to what follows, everybody is alive with no long term side effects from anything that will hereafter be discussed. I also warn you that there are plenty of pictures in this post.

Sabrina asked me to blog today about our last month or so. She suggested I do it in a highlight/lowlight fashion.

Highlight: Grandma came to visit for a few days.

Happy Family! 

 (guess who took this picture)

Picking beans at a local farm 

 Sucking on honey sticks

Corn, who knew it came in brown too? 

Adie picked her own pumpkin this year 

 Chase loved seeing the tractors

We promise we have more in our family tree than just Adie. 

Lowlight: We've all been sick off and on over the last month. Lots of fevers, runny noses, and a trip to the ER. Adie had a febrile seizure, scared us all badly, and ended up spending a couple of hours in the ER until they determined she didn't have anything more serious.

Highlight: it's football season.

This is a common sight during games. I stay connected. 

 Sabrina made delicious cookies for some woman get together. They were good and she was quite pleased with how pretty they looked.

Lowlight: Sabrina forgot to put the car in park when dropping Adie off for preschool. 

Highlight: Sabrina's mom was in the passenger's seat and stopped the car before it got more than 6 inches into the garage door.

Highlight: Halloween.

 Apparently we do gingerbread houses for Halloween now

 Adie was Cinderella and Chase was Tigger.

 Sabrina cooked us dinner in a pumpkin the Sunday before Halloween. Not the same one we carved for jack-o-lanterns.

 Jack-o-lanterns.

 Our kids seem to go through this phase where they think smiling requires them to scrunch their face up and close their eyes.

Adie likes to pose these days.

Lowlight: Parker goes to bed late. Chase wakes up early and during the middle of the night. This doesn't add up to much sleep for the rest of us. Fortunately Adie somehow sleeps through Chase waking up, turning the lights on, and playing with the toys in their room. I wish I did too.

Highlight: Grandma was here (ok, I think we already said that, but we still have more pictures). Adie's also quite the little artist. 

For quiet time, Adie does crafts. It's really pretty amazing what she comes up with. She's showing off a rose that she made. She did all by herself except for rolling up the flower she cut out. She also likes to give people her art. Keep it folks. She'll be famous one day.

 For Grandma's birthday, we made a pumpkin pinata. And when I say we, I mean Sabrina and the kids.

Our kids loved having Grandma come visit.

The BYU crew

Just a fun picture of the BYU fans in the fam on opening week.

The kids

That's why people have blogs right? To post pictures of their kids? I understand that grandparents like seeing their children, so I guess it's good to indulge them every once and a while. Here are some we took this evening after general conference was over.

He smiles now!

Oh Fine!

I joined Facebook a few years ago, I don't remember exactly when, 2007 or so. Some time in early 2009 I decided to retire my account for multiple reasons, so I went to the trouble of actually deleting my account. I had a few reservations about doing so, but by the time I did it, I was hardly using Facebook anyway and when I did it was usually to waste time when I had other things to do. Now, 2.5 years later, I feel like Michael Jordan coming back out of retirement because I can't make up mind. I decided to reinstate my Facebook account. I've been contemplating doing it for a while now and what pushed me over the edge was the multiple times recently I've wanted to post things on our ward Relief Society's Facebook page and have had to have friends do it for me, or just not do it at all. I decided the convenience of it was worth it after all.

Guess what I had to do to reinstate my Facebook account? Just log in with the same log in info I had before. When I did so, everything was as it was 2.5 years ago. All of my friends were instantly back, my wall showed updates up to the time I last used it. Yes, folks, it doesn't matter if you "delete" your Facebook account, the info is still all there in their databases, floating around cyberspace. This is one of the reasons I decided to leave the Facebook world. However, I haven't put much info out there and don't intend to so I've decided it's safe enough. Besides, here I am blogging about our lives anyway, so it's not like I have the lowest profile on the Internet anyway. However, let this be a caution to you, if you haphazardly throw something out into the great wide world of the Internet just be aware that you may never be able to fully erase it.

Anyway, hello again, to all my Facebook friends. Let's see if I remain out of retirement this time.

Education on the Brain

I have a few questions for our dear readership:

As I am sure is common with many parents, since Adie's birth, I have contemplated the education options our children have and have wondered what will be the best for them. For over 4 years I have read and contemplated about different education options: public school, charter school, home school, private school or some sort of hybrid of these choices. I feel do blessed we have so many options, but each one's pros and cons make me nervous about making the right choice for each child. Next fall, Adie will enter Kindergarten, which means we need to start really nailing down what we want so that, if we need to, we can get on waiting lists, attend open houses, etc, in the ensuing months. I have heard mostly good things about the public school, at least for the younger kids, that we live near. We also have a couple of charter school options nearby and I have always considered home school a very viable option. Adie requests that she get to go to the "bus school", AKA the local public school, mostly because she wants to ride a bus to school. For now, I am feeling relatively comfortable with this, although I do have my concerns. Now, when our kids reach much past the 3rd grade, I am a little more wary of the options we have available to us in our little town here. What, dear reader, are your thoughts on public schools, charter schools, home schooling, etc? I would love to get a discussion going on the merits / disadvantages of each.

Now, if we had schools more like the ones found in Finland, featured in the following video, I think I might feel a little better about sending my children off to the local public school. Have any of you ever seen, read or heard about the Finnish education system? If you have or watch the video below, what are your initial impressions? I don't think we'll be moving to Finland any time soon so I obviously don't consider this an option, but I do think it's interesting to look at how different locations handle the upbringing and education of their children. I would be really interested in sending my children to a school that was set up more like those featured in this video.