Gracie Bug

Life has been just trucking along. I mentioned before, and I still really mean it, that it is nice to be in a routine. Not much has changed this school year for Grace. We had a four-day weekend come and go. We tried planning a few different things, none of which panned out. The kids and I ended up taking it easy, having friends over to play, playing at the neighbor's house, and doing art projects printed off DisneyJr.com. Grace, who watches close to zero TV these days, spent an afternoon watching nature videos. Reportedly, it was a fantastic little break - nobody seamed to miss our big plans. Note to self!

She is still really enjoying gymnastics. The gym she goes to was the training ground for a girl in our Ward who now competes on BYU's gymnastics team. Gracie peeks at this poster on her way to line up with her class every week. One of the girls on the team shares our last name as well. Grace considers it a sign of sorts. We don't shy away from reminding her how much work lies between where she's at and collegiate competition. But her enthusiasm remains unfazed, something I love about her. Her biggest struggle is with her head, she isn't much of a daredevil. Gymnastics has been good for her in this regard. However far she chooses to go with this sport, we are just so happy that she can be doing something physical that she feels so good about.

Grace has also started a little soccer season at her school. It is just 5 weeks of practices, right after school. I don't have to drive her anywhere extra, or pull Grant and Eden along, so we agreed to sign her up. The best side affect of this new interest (for me) is that she spends her recesses playing soccer with her soccer friends instead of being buried alive in the sand box everyday. Seriously, the cups full of sand I had been cleaning out of the shoe box, the car, the dryer lint trap, her hair...

Grace is reading more than ever these days. She is reading 1-2 chapter books a week. I was surprised to see how many she was reading at home, and then found out she has also been charging through another series of chapter books at school during her class reading time. The books she chooses deal almost exclusively with animals - pet puppies, wolf packs, wild animal rescue. She picked up the title pictured above after having read Risby (a pet dog) and then Henry and Risby. Grace finished it, but didn't like it nearly as much as the others.

an act of war

One might think I would have more interesting things to document than the goings on of our yard. But our last couple of weekends have been busy with outside work and I took some pictures. The fallout from that week of freezing temperatures peaked. We spent hours trimming dead stuff all the plants. The good news is that there are signs of life on nearly everything. The bad news is that the yards will look a little barren for the next month or so while everything tries to grow back into what it was. The trees all have little buds growing in around their dead leaves- a good start!

Cori and Gracie got our little garden plot planted. This is the time to get things going. We planted a couple of months late last year. We are hoping that with an earlier start we can get more of a harvest before the worst of the summer hits.

The pool filter baskets have been overflowing...

 But the little signs of life are encouraging.

I took the picture above with the picture below in mind. The picture below was taken in April of last year. Fingers crossed everything will make it back. It still makes me so sad. :(

happy valentine's day

It is proving to be an easy, low key holiday. Just how I like it! I had been gathering creative, crafty ideas for Grace and Grant to make for their class Valentines. It took one trip down the commercial isle at the supermarket for them choose otherwise. Again, fine by me. Gracie's teacher requested that the students address their cards to 'my friend', thus saving a lot of time in the delivery portion of their class celebration. Grant carefully wrote the names of all his classmates.

We are saving our pennies for the big family babymoon we are taking during Spring break next month. So, I told Cori the only thing I wanted for Vday was a night off in the dinner department. He is grilling steaks tonight and there is ice cream in the freezer. Sounds about as perfect as it gets. Hope yours is great too!

Eden, yesterday

Doc says we should name him Ty, or Evan...

... because baby number four will find our little family all tied up -  boys and girls evenly numbered. Once again, Cori correctly predicted the outcome of the ultra sound with some certainty, and once again, I had no idea.

Baby boy was quite the little exhibitionist at the ultra sound, so there is very little chance of a gender misdiagnosis. He is also the most mobile baby I have had the privilege to carry. It took a while to get pictures of everything on the squirmy little guy. But we counted fingers, toes, and heart chambers and everything looks great. We are so grateful.

We are at 21 weeks - over half way there! The morning sickness finally kicked a couple of weeks ago. It took for-ev-er this time around. I am so excited to have some energy and drive back. And I am even more grateful NOT to be using that energy on moving our family somewhere, as has been our pattern at this stage of a pregnancy.

Incredibly, we have most-of-the-way decided on what his name will be. Eden has completely evacuated the crib and we can start arranging the bedroom shuffle. It is nice to be getting ready for him.

sports report

Grant finished up his third season of soccer just before Christmas. Most of the boys on the team were friends from previous seasons. CCV, the church that runs the league, changed their policy so that only members can be head coaches. Our neighbor, Augie, who had coached Grant for the two seasons previous is a good Catholic and so Grant got to work with a new coach. (Augie was the assistant coach for his team and Grant was so happy to be with him and Matti) Coach Brian was wonderful - very patient and energetic.

Grant's soccer and team work skills are improving. I remember how glad we were after his first season that he had figured out how to run. Now he is actually able to do more with the ball and got to score a few goals - a development that has made soccer even that much more fun for him. By the end of their season, the coaches had them passing the ball at least twice before shooting for the goal. It was so cute watching them figure it all out.

The next soccer season has begun. But Grant really wanted to try T-ball. So we have him registered for little league starting sometime this month. But we will be back for more soccer in the Fall.

family, hurray!

The last couple weeks of January brought a few surprises and a lot of fun. Brett and Tiffany spent a weekend with us. They watched the kids while Cori and I went on a date. They also played a few games of Settlers with Grace which made her the happiest girl. They watched us tuck our plants into their blankets every night at the beginning of the recently mentioned cold snap. We were all of us excited about the weather at that point. It was fun to want to cozy up. And we found some Fall colors on the grape vines. 

The next weekend, Aunt Brittany and Uncle Cory came to visit with their boys. Grant had a smile on his face every single day in the company of his cousins. The night they arrived, we went up to Anthem to ride the train and play at the park. Tiff and Brett came back up to spend the weekend with everyone. Our house was so happy being full of all these people we love!

Sunday morning... having church in the afternoon isn't so bad sometimes.

Most of the crew either had Mr. Luther King day off work or took it. We went out to White Tank Mountain regional park to do a bit of hiking and enjoy a picnic. The hike we chose was up to a seasonal waterfall and boasted petroglyphs galore. The petroglyphs did not disappoint. The 'waterfall' ended up being little more than a 6 ft wide pool in a little rain shoot of a canyon. The kids had fun anyway climbing around the rocks (with the assistance of the bigger billy goats in our group).

During the middle part of the week, Brittany, Cory and crew stayed down in Chandler. Cory had some big meetings for work down there. Britt and I met up at the zoo - Gracie had to go to school and miss out. That night we took all the kids out for pizza and games.

That weekend we were all together again at our house. The rains started and didn't let up for several days. Wonderful, but WEIRD. Really, it had been such an abnormal stretch of weather. Nevertheless, we were content limiting our activities to inside games and pjs in the puddles.

It was such a great visit. We were sad to see them go - especially because Cory's new position at work wont bring him out to Phoenix any more. But these kids all get along so well, it is always fun and easy hanging out. Look at those happy faces!