A Decade

In January, Abbie turned 10. Double digits!

What can I say about this girl?  She is smart.  4th grade has proven to be the most difficult grade for her so far.  Straight A's aren't coming as easily as they used to, but she's been up for the challenge.  She is dedicated and loves to learn. 

She is a great friend to everyone and tries to help others feel included. She always has something nice to say to everyone and she is well liked by other kids and adults alike.

She is adventurous!  Abbie loves to hike.  She and Garrett went on a hike a few Saturdays ago.  There was a small mountain that Garrett's been wanting to check out, so he took Abbie with him and they had a great time.  He said it was really difficult but she did great and never complained.

I know I've probably talked about this before, but Abbie LOVES little kids, and they adore her right back!!  She is always making up games for them, helping them, playing with them, entertaining them.  I have never seen a little kid who didn't love Abbie once they got to know her.  She's been dying to babysit.  She still has another year or so until that happens, but she's a great mother's helper and is a huge help for me, especially with Henry.  She loves to make him smile.

She is entrepreneurial.  She is always trying to think of ways to make money.  When we got snow about a month ago, she wanted to make flyers advertising her shoveling services.  I wasn't super comfortable with her trying to charge money for something I had never seen her do and wasn't sure how well she would do it, so I told her instead to just maybe do it as a service at first.  She loved the idea and proceeded to shovel the sidewalks of every house in our row of condos.  She came back 25 minutes later with $10 from one neighbor, and a big bag of candy from another, haha.  She was thrilled.

She is patient and helpful.  She can often tell when I'm getting frustrated with Ellie or Olivia, and she swoops in to help out, either by taking over what I'm doing or just inviting them to come do something with her to give me a break.  I'm so grateful for this!  

Abbie is very flexible - literally and figuratively.  Literally, because she can do the splits, is always doing gymnastics, and trying to perfect her front walkover (or handspring I think?).  She's also flexible in the sense that she can "go with the flow" very well and doesn't get ruffled easily.  If I have to change plans on her or something doesn't work out, she takes it in stride and moves on quickly.  

She is responsible.  I can't remember the last time I gave Olivia a bath or helped Ellie in the shower... Abbie has totally taken over this job.  She also wakes herself up in the morning (with her alarm), gets all ready for school herself, and wakes Ellie and helps her pick out her clothes for the day.  She will even get breakfast (cereal) started and served up if I'm not downstairs yet.

She loves to cook and bake.  Sadly, my desire to have total control in the kitchen doesn't mesh with that too well and I don't give her many opportunities to cook/bake, but I'm trying to be better about that.

She is supportive and sweet!  I got a rower for Christmas and she wrote this cute note to me in chalk and left it under my rower one morning.  Got me through a 6k row!

Here's a picture of Abbie and Olivia from a few weeks ago.  Abbie placed first in her classroom spelling bee last Fall, so she got to participate in the school spelling bee in January.  She didn't win, but she did great and was such a good sport. I think it helped that I had told her the story of when I was in my school spelling bee in 4th grade... I missed the word "terrible" because I was so nervous! (I forgot the "e" at the end) 

She chose to have a cheesecake for her birthday... girl after my own heart!  

For her birthday, we gave her an ice cream/sweets truck for her American Girl doll(s).  It came with about a million pieces but she's pretty responsible so I don't have to worry about them getting lost all over the house, thankfully.  It's actually pretty cool and the girls have been having some fun with it.  It's the "Our Generation" brand (from Target) and seems to be really good quality.

Happy Birthday, Abbie!  We love you!

Snow Day

In early January, it snowed here in eastern Tennessee.

Why did I even bother taking this picture, you ask?  Well, I got a text from the school district saying that school was letting out early that day.  You know, because of the snow.

I totally understand when cities - especially here in the South - need to shut down, even for a small amount of snow that may seem inconsequential for this New England girl.  I get it.  Cities aren't equipped for that, plus it just makes people nervous and they don't drive well in it. Fine.  But this??  This is crazy.

Thankfully, we did get more snow, late that night (it was a Friday night).  We woke up on Saturday to a good 4 inches.  Most of the city was shut down and we enjoyed just hanging out at home and being cozy in the house with nowhere to go.  The kids played outside a couple times, too.

It didn't snow again that weekend, but regardless I still woke up on Monday morning to a text on my phone saying that school was cancelled that day.  The roads around us were certainly clear, but I think that there were still a few roads in the outer parts of the city that may have still had some snow on them, and busses may have had a hard time getting to them. I don't know, that's just my guess.  So we had another fun day at home together.  Garrett had the day off which was nice (post call - he had just finished up working a week of nights).  Thankfully the school district has built-in make up days, so instead of having a random day off on Feb 3, they had school.  Nice to make it up now instead of at the end of the year, I guess.

Christmas Break 2016

It was a "Woodbury" year for Christmas in 2016, which was nice since we didn't have to travel anywhere!  Everyone came here, so it was really convenient.  Garrett's 3 sisters and their families came (with their combined total of 4 big dogs), so his parents' house was quite full.  Thankfully, we got to come home and sleep in our own beds every night, which was really nice. 

Garrett's family has a tradition of getting pizza on Christmas Eve.  This year instead of getting takeout, we went out to a place called Main Street Pizza.  It was really good and they had all kinds of different pizza options for all the varying tastes (and gluten restrictions for some) for our group of 19.

After dinner, we came home and opened sibling gifts (we have a gift rotation - our family had his older sister's family this year, so we gave them a watercolor portrait of their family that I commissioned from Etsy, it turned out really well and was just $30).  His younger sister had us and they gave us a really neat wall ruler for measuring the kids' heights.  I will have to do a blog post about it because it was really neat and a unique design, not like most of the ones you see.

After that, we tucked the kids into bed and got to work.  The girls slept upstairs in the smaller media room:

I love this picture from Christmas morning... all of us adults/parents getting ready to film the kids coming down the stairs (after Mannheim Steamroller got started, of course).  And it's only one of about 3 or 4 pictures I took all morning! Whoops.  

 

We really didn't give our kids many gifts... I'm not really into getting tons of things.  We did want/wear/need/read again (plus something from Santa), like we've been doing for the last several years.  Honestly though, it was still too much.  I think next year we will just give them wear/need/read, and let Santa take care of the "want".  Even that will be plenty.  Soon I hope to move away from gifts altogether and just plan some fun trips or outings for the upcoming year or during the break.  I almost did that this year, but I didn't and wish I had.

Abbie asked Santa for the American Girl gymnastics set, which she was thrilled to get.  It comes with a balance beam, uneven bars, and a mat for her doll.  She's had lots of fun with that.  I'm glad Santa got them all American Girl dolls for Christmas the year before -- it has been easy to give them gifts over the last year because they always like getting things for their dolls.

Ellie asked Santa for a robe for Christmas.  Yep, just a robe!  Haha. So, that's what Santa brought.  He also brought a matching one for her American Girl doll.

Olivia asked for a My Little Pony necklace.  I wasn't sure if those existed or not, but thankfully they do!  She actually got a set of 4 necklaces (4 random Friendship Pony necklaces... I think we got Pinkie Pie, Apple Jack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash).

For their "wants" from us... Abbie got a bracelet making kit, Ellie got a big stuffed unicorn (she's totally into those TY stuffed animals with the big sparkly eyes... this wasn't a TY doll but it looked just like them and was about half the price.. I think it was from Justice?  She loves it).  Olivia really wanted a "My Little Pony" robe, and what do you know... we found one on Amazon.  Haha.

For their "needs" - Abbie got an alarm clock, and Ellie and Olivia got bikes.  Both of them had outgrown their old hand-me-down bikes, and I knew that by summertime they would need new ones.  I really wanted to count it for Christmas so we got them early, which has already been nice since the weather has been pretty mild this winter and they've already put them to use quite a bit.

For their "wear" - all three girls got some black boots.

For their "read" - Abbie got an American Girl book about math ("smart girls' guide to math" or something), Ellie got the American Girl "Kit" books series (I totally stocked up on AG books when we lived in Madison, our library in Middleton always had tons for sale for like 25 cents each).  Olivia isn't reading yet, so I decided to buy her the My Little Pony matching game (I've realized that if I get the kids games I enjoy playing, I'm much more likely to play with them.  I like matching games... and her knowledge of My Little Pony trivia and characters always cracks me up.  We've had fun.).

And of course the kids got some fun things from their grandparents, like the My Little Pony sweatshirt that Olivia got (pictured above).

After Church, we attempted to take some family pictures on the back porch.  How many people does it take to try to get kids to smile and look the right way?  Haha.

Around the end of October, Garrett ordered himself a drone for his Christmas present.  It came just a few days before Christmas, and he spent a good amount of time figuring out his new toy.  It's been really fun so far.  Here's a picture a took from a couple hundred feet above his parents' house:

A few days after Christmas, the dads took the kids on a little hike nearby.  This is one of the reasons I love living where we do... we weren't cooped up all day because of freezing weather.  It was also nice that Garrett had the week off, for the most part.  He only had to work on the 26th, and other than that he was off from the 24th through Jan 2 (he started nights on Jan 2).  It was awesome!  Plus, I think that it counted for him "working Christmas" because the 26th was technically the holiday for working people (and he's at the bottom of the totem pole at work since he's new, so he knew he would be working over Christmas which was why it was especially nice that everyone came here! We just lucked out that he got assigned the 26th... I think next year he will be at the top of the list for getting Christmas "off" since he worked it this year.  So that's really nice.)

Anyway, so yes. The dads took the kids hiking.  My two sisters-in-law and I (one had already gone home) did a little shopping.  Mostly we just went to Cosmo prof, because my sister-in-law is an amazing hair stylist and she always tells us what products to buy and how everything works (I always need tutorials on how to do my hair, haha).  She also gave haircuts to everyone (and a balayage for me) which was awesome.  I sooo wish that she lived close to me, but of course she's the one sister who lives far away in Springville!  She works at a new salon in Lehi and loves it.

Another afternoon, we took the kids ice skating at a rink nearby (I say "we".. but I stayed home with Henry rather than going and sitting in the cold and watching.  I can't skate anyway).  The kids had a good time.... Olivia lasted for about 30 seconds and then had a good time sitting with Nana.

My parents sent us a Kubb set for Christmas, so we put that to good use.  Thank goodness for the internet because I could NOT remember the rules.. it's kind of confusing at first!  But we all got the hang of it and it was really fun.

Again...thank goodness for a mild winter!

Lots of time was also spent playing Super Smash Brothers....

Olivia sleeping in her Pony robe.... she slept until 11 a.m. the day after Christmas!

Snapped a pic of us when we were playing Kubb... or maybe this was the afternoon we walked to the neighborhood park.  I can't remember.

Playing "Sleeping Queens"... another favorite game in our family.  It's really easy, even Olivia knows how to play and she taught many of her aunts, uncles, and cousins.  It's something our whole family enjoys playing, so another win for that!

The Tuesday after Christmas, we had dinner at "White Duck Taco", which is one of my favorite places here so far.  It's a really fun atmosphere... pretty hipster, but family friendly.  On "taco Tuesday" all their arcade games are free, so we definitely took advantage of that!  And it was really quiet so we were pretty much the only people there, which was a huge plus:

Sitting on couches and comfy chairs around a coffee table... it was a little crazy but cozy!  Haha.  I seriously love this place - I usually get a pork belly taco with watermelon rind slaw, and a fish taco.

So, another successful Christmas break on the record.  I wish I had some pictures of the kids with all their cousins, or at least a picture of all 4 of my kids with their Christmas jammies on, but... I don't.  Not on my phone, anyway.  I think Garrett got some on his nice camera so I will have to find them.  So glad we got to spend the holidays with some of our favorite people, relaxing and making memories!