Dear Family and Friends,
Where did the year go?! I can’t believe that a new year is already upon us. With four kids there is never a dull moment! I will cut to the chase and give you the yearly update.
Jaxen (9) played soccer again this year. He keeps getting better. This year he also joined a LEGO Robotics club. He had group meetings two times a week for the fall semester and then participated in a local competition. He had lots of fun engineering and designing a robot to complete certain tasks. He has also been taking piano lessons and is doing really well. He is in the gifted program at school, works hard and gets very good grades. He is also in boy scouts (bear).
Ember (7) is also playing soccer this year. Being one of the oldest on the team, she is one of the stars! She was able to focus more this year and really work on her skills. Her team did really well. She is also taking piano lessons and doing well. She is doing great in school. She is a monkey bar queen and has some fancy handwork on display when she shows off. She likes anything and everything dog, and is convinced her life would be complete if she had one.
Owen (4) has been going to preschool two days a week for two hours. He has really made great strides this year. We have been working at home on our alphabet and letter sounds. Although slow going at first, he now knows lots of letters and sounds. He can write his name and likes to do “homework” (sometimes).
Kaysen (2) is shooting up like a weed. His hair is down to his bottom! He loves “roars” (dinosaurs), “heep” (sheep) and “hoos” (horses). He likes to play puppy with his brothers and sister. He loves to be outdoors and get dirty. He likes to work on letters with his brother and most letters are called “E”. He is also my first artistic child to write on walls. (I thought I had it made!) He also seems to be the only “righty” in the bunch of kids.
Shaunton passed his PE exam! We basked in the light of his achievement for quite a while. He still works at SRP-MIC and enjoys it. This year he trained hard and ran an ultra marathon (31 miles) in September. It took him 6 hours and 15 minutes, which is pretty awesome for a first time ultra marathon runner. He likes to work out daily and play football, soccer, and basketball in his spare time. He was the assistant coach for Jaxen’s soccer team, so that kept him pretty busy.
In my “spare” time this year I volunteered in Ember’s classroom, worked on quilts, and fell behind in my scrapbooking. I have a standing appointment with the boys to watch the recycle truck dump our trash on Mondays and the regular trash truck on Thursdays. I “enjoy” taxiing my children to piano lessons, school, soccer, and play dates. I also facilitated an internet course at ASU. This was a new and exciting experience. I work with the kids ages 3-11 at church, so lesson prep, stress, and organization have all been my friends (and enemies) this year. I was running for a good while there until the weather got cold, and look forward to running again when it isn’t freezing (and pitch scary black) at 5:30 in the morning!
Overall, we have kept busy this year. We went to California over the fall break and the kids enjoyed Disneyland, California Adventures, Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, the beach, and the Natural History Museum in San Diego. Lucky for us, October was apparently the month for kids getting free admission into most of these attractions. (Good accidental planning on our part.) This is a once in three year experience for the kids, so it was nice to get out of the heat and enjoy some cooler weather.
We hope that 2011 was a good year with much growth and learning opportunities. We look forward to a new year and wish you a safe and prosperous one.
Sincerely,
Monique, Shaunton, Jaxen, Ember, Owen and Kaysen
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