January post

So, it's been a while. I've been busy trying to get my last three years of blogging published (Blurb was finally working for blogger, which is great!). It's been fun to read through the last three years of our lives, but it was a lot of work. I am happy with the final result (3 books-one for each year), though, and hope we will enjoy them for many years to come.

We are surviving the winter here, but not particularly enjoying it. The recent warm spell was lost on me. We still had ugly, dirty snow everywhere, which meant we couldn't go outside and enjoy the "warm" weather, but Damon couldn't go out and play because the snow was just a big, icy mess. So we've been trapped inside wondering whether or not we should be grateful for warmer weather.

Damon has spent many hours making snowflakes and hanging them from his ceiling. He started karate last week (a class at Springville High School that lasts 6 weeks) and seemed to really enjoy it. It's sort of like dance, which he loves, but his dad approves, which he also loves. He also started a basketball clinic last night with the rest of the 1st grade boys. There were probably 40 boys there and only two or three that were wearing #11. Damon was one of them, purely by coincidence, and when I told him that was my number, he couldn't have been happier. It's too early to say whether or not he possesses any talent, but I'm so proud of him for actually trying. He's really grown up a lot.

Damon is also in charge of feeding the dog and rabbits (neither of which are ours, by the way) every morning. He earns 50 cents a day doing this (from grandpa) and has saved a lot of money (a lot of money for a 6 year old is more than $20. That's a lot of money for me, come to think of it.). He used his savings to buy a gun--a pistol that shoots out rubber ammo. Jeff couldn't be happier!

Damon working on his homework. You can see a paper for snowflakes on the dresser.


Allie loves Barbie movies. Every week when we go to the library she picks one out and watches it every day during Kyla's nap. Her favorites are Princess and the Pauper (which came with a bonus cd to listen to, which was plenty of fun for the rest of us in the house), The Diamond Castle and Mermaidia. If you haven't ever seen them, they are chick flicks for little girls. Barbie plays a variety of characters and always ends up with a cute boy (confessing love, but never kissing). It's good clean fun and I don't mind how much she enjoys them.

She still changes her clothes several times a day, but I try not to be too bugged. As long as she keeps shoving things back in her drawer instead of throwing it in the dirty laundry, I don't say anything. A funny story from last month--we were at Target and looking at leggings (one of Allie's favorite things). She started shimmying out of her pants to try them on, right there in the middle of the store. I quickly told her that she couldn't do that, that there were people all around that could see her. Before we knew it, we spotted Allie under a shelf of clothes, pants off, trying to slip the leggings on. At least it was semi-private. Tara and I laughed so hard, that is just so Allie.

Kyla suddenly is so big. She is a full grown person in a little body, and I am constantly reminded that she is no longer a baby. She climbs out of her bed several times at both nap time and bed time, but she doesn't cry. She'll knock on the door and sit and wait patiently until I come in to put her back to bed. She loves to copy Damon and Allie and started telling knock-knock jokes. Well, she tells one knock-knock joke and I made the mistake of laughing one time, so now she thinks it's so hilarious. It goes like this:

knock-knock
who's there?
banana
banana who?
apple

I laughed because I knew she had heard Damon tell the "orange you glad I didn't say banana" joke one too many times and thought she understood why it was funny. She grins so big when she says "apple," like she just came up with the best punchline ever.

She also started singing (chanting really) a song she learned in nursery. It goes like this, "a doo doo, a doo doo, blub blub blub. Oh NO!" We didn't know what she was singing until Allie informed us that she was doing "Slippery fish, slippery fish, swimming in the water. Glub, glub, glub. OH NO! He got eaten by a great white shark...etc." We thought that was pretty funny, which of course only encouraged her and now she does that all the time, too.

Kyla has also started this very endearing thing of pronouncing her words with emphasis on the second syllable, like she's mad or frustrated: "mom-MEE, dad-DEE, al-LIE, ma-MON," you get the point. It's funny for about two minutes and then it gets annoying.

A very common sight at breakfast time--Kyla won't sit unless strapped in, with two bowls of cereal. She is our finisher and likes to eat whatever Damon and Allie leave behind.


Jeff and I are doing well, too. We just finished season 4 of Alias and will start season 5 (the final season) when he gets back from his hiking trip. I asked him what we're going to do when we're done, and he said, "you can go back to going to bed at nine and sleeping your life away." Truthfully, I never go to bed at nine, but before we started our Alias frenzy I did go to be before him and usually get up after him. I try to tell him that most nights I am up at least once to coax a child (usually Allie) back into bed, but he didn't accept that as a valid excuse. So, if any of you have any good suggestions for tv series on dvd that we could start, it would be much appreciated. We've thought about 24, because my SIL said we HAVE to watch it. Any thoughts?

I have a lot more, but this is getting very long so I will stop for now. Here is one more pic of Jeff's mom's new dog, Tina (she was the dog of a patient of Nancy's that died and needed a home, so she came here). She spends a lot of time down here with the kids and she loves watching "doggie tv," which is actually Jeff's lizards in their cages. I doubt it's as good as Alias, but whatever.