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Monday, February 6, 2012

January 2012 Top Ten...in no particular order!

10. Celebrated both my grandma's birthday days!  Grandma Elyse is in town staying with Aunt Julie so we hosted a birthday dinner for her at Nana's and had a great time! Grandma Hansen is down south in St. George but I had a fun visit with her on the phone on her birthday! Both such inspiring women! I love my grandmas!!!!! So many fun memories past and present!

9.  Rob and I actually made it to a movie together, sans kiddos.  We don't make it out to the movie theater to often so when we do, it is reason to celebrate...although we had to go to the 5 o'clock show (Rob went straight from work and I met him there), make arrangements for Emily to get picked up from dance by a friend, and rush to get home so the teenagers could make it to a couple of Junior Jazz basketball games (as spectators not players)!  By the way, we saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and really enjoyed it (Rob likes Sherlock Holmes, Rachel really, really likes Sherlock Holmes) and Centerville has a new Megaplex theater complex which simplifies seeing movies for us!

8.  End of the 1st semester of school for the 2011-2012 school year!  Which means we are now more than half-way through the school year and report cards arrived!  Kudos to my kiddos, who all did fantastic for the most part!!!! And the grades that weren't "A"s were grades that had improved from the previous report card. Hard work pays-off, right guys?!? Speaking of school, we got to attend SEP conferences with Lizzie and Anna.  Glowing reports from both their teachers.  They both have fantastic teachers this year and they are both learning so much! Ms. Cox and Mrs. Howell rock! Anna was just telling us yesterday a story about the third president of the United States. She mentioned that he had red hair as part of the story and I told her she must be mistaken because Thomas Jefferson didn't have red hair!  She emphatically replied, "If he was the guy who lived at "Mont-i-Cello" he had red hair!" I came home and googled it and guess what, Thomas Jefferson did have red hair! And along the school days lines: Three out of the four weeks this month were 4 day-school weeks!  We love those! Wish I could say we did something significant but to be honest I can't remember. I do know on Martin Luther King Day some of us headed to dinner with the extended Howe clan to our favorite Cowboy Grub while the rest of us headed to an emergency dental appointment that ended up being pain from a six-year-old molar that was trying to come in in Davey's mouth! Life with kids...you never know!

7.   January means Book Group Book Choosing night for me and my book-group gals! It is always a fun night and we really have the system perfected. We started with about 36 titles and narrowed it down to 11!  If anyone needs some help figuring out a great and efficient way of whittling down their groups book picks, give me a ring and I will fill you in! We had a great list to choose from again this year and I had a hard time deciding where to throw my support but we ended up with a great list!  Surprisingly, two of the books I didn't vote for were two that I have read since we picked and loved them both! Crazy! Hope the ones I did vote for are as good!  Haha! I don't host until November.  Since we finished our house but still have not much landscaping, I always try and snag early spring or later fall to host so I don't have to worry about the bare yard!  Haha! Not that any of them would care...but you know how it goes! Anyways, here is this year picks in case you are looking for some good reads:
Persuasion by Jane Austen and/or The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (high school English anybody?)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Bonds That Make Us Free by Terry Warner
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
Destiny of a Republic by Candice Millard
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Common Sense by Thomas Paine

6. Abby participated in her first volleyball tournament.  It was actually just an inter-squad tourney but it still was a lot of fun.  Her last game of the day was against a U13 Power (competitive) team.  Abby plays for the U14 Club (since she is an August birthday she plays with the U14 by 4 days...when she decided to switch from dance to volleyball we went with the Club team...next year I think we will move to a Power team...). Abby's team was a year older but they are all beginners for the most part.  They went the first two games neck and neck, each winning one.  The third game is played to 15 but you have to win by two.  Abby's team ended up losing 20-18, which if you are familiar with volleyball means it was a very exciting final game!! The crazy thing was that Abby's coach actually is the coach for both teams!  Made it even more exciting!

5. The YM/YW in our ward headed to Z-Park (our stake's property) for their annual Mutual Theme kick-off with the Bishopric.  It was an overnighter and I think it was fun for everyone!  The theme this year is ARISE AND SHINE FORTH. It is a tradition that Rob and his counselors started and that the kids in our ward love! The girls are lucky because they get to sleep in the lodge with the heat (remember we are talking January in the Wasatch Mountains) but the boys have to sleep in the cabins with no heat! Rob actually sleep in the Suburban with a space heater that he ran with a long extension cord to the lodge! Said he was toasty warm! It was a bittersweet time because the bishopric kinda knew that it might be their last over-night outing with all the youth! While they were gone, Natalie and her kids came over for dinner and a movie night.  The kids ate pizza and Natalie and I got some yummy grown-up pizza and salad and then they watched movies in the basement while we watched Persuasion upstairs.  Half-way through some of Emily's friends showed up (even though she was out-of-town) and visited with us for a while!  That was fun.  She has really great friends!

4.  And they were right! January 29th rolled around and Rob was released as Bishop of our ward. He has served faithfully as a committed and humble man, continually striving to do what the Lord would have him do. I think that he might even deserve his very own post!  Watch for it, it will be coming soon!

3. Davey finally moved on from working on his "G"s at Talking Time to focusing on his "K" sound! He has worked hard and diligently since school started on his G's. Every Wednesday, we head down the street to a Headstart location for Davis School District where he spends and an hour at Talking Time.  There are about five other kids and their adult (parent or grandparent).  We rotate around to different learning centers where we play fun games that help him with his speech.  At two the stations he actually works with speech therapists who he really adores. If you haven't noticed, when you make a G sound you have to pull your tongue down and back. If you don't and it stays forward your G becomes a T.  I knew he was making progress one day a few months ago when he brought me a toy dinosaur with sharp teeth and a tongue right behind its teeth. "Mom", Davey said, "The dinosaur is making T sounds instead of G sounds! His tongue isn't back enough!" Smart boy!!! He still doesn't get the G all the time in his regular conversations but he is getting better and when he thinks about it he always gets it! And considering where he has come from as a two-year old that only made deep, throaty growling sounds I am pretty amazed!

2. Emily played her very first competitive singles match! For the high school in the fall she only played doubles but she is playing in a winter league on Saturday nights and has discovered that she loves singles. She was so nervous to start but once she got going she loved it!  They play for 55 minutes and whoever wins the most games (no add) in the time frame is the winner.  While she lost 9-7, she played better than I had ever seen her and really had a blast! (She and her doubles partner won that night as well). It was a fun evening and even more fun because she played at the tennis club near Nana and Papa's home so they came to watch too.  After words, she left with her friend Andrew to hang out with some friends and Rob and I discovered that Kneaders has all their treats 1/2 off on Saturday night!  We splurged and the kids had a yummy Sunday morning breakfast! The raspberry bread pudding is out of this world!!!

1. Lizzie and her dear friend, Meg, who moved last autumn got to have a couple of weekend late-overs this month!  We miss the Murri's so much and long to hop the fence to visit like the good old days (prior to their move)! Luckily, they didn't move to far so we still get to hang-out but it does take a little more planning that it used to take! While they beg for sleepovers, lateovers will have to suffice until they are older! We love having Meg around with her brown eyes, beautiful skin, and very kind heart!

2 comments:

  1. It was fun to read what has been going on in the Howe clan. ;)I am sure that you will enjoy seeing more of Rob now. I am sure it is a bitter/sweet thing to be released.

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  2. I have the Terry Warner book (if I can find it since the move) when you get to that book.....Cutting for Stone....my book club read that.........I will be interested in your take on it!!

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