The Latest

Here is what we are up to these days:

Owen is such a fun little boy. He jabbers all day long and is talking pretty well. He just learned how to say "poop" yesterday which makes us all laugh. He prefers to be the center of attention and somehow always manages to be. He and Ashleigh are still the best of friends always playing together when she gets home from school. Yesterday while Ashleigh was at school Owen played "baby" in her room. His "baby" was a Raggedy Ann doll that he fed in her high chair. Too cute!

Here's Owen enjoying his first ice cream cone.

Ashleigh has caught the school bug. She loves it so much. As soon as she comes home from school, she wants to play school and often sits at the table for hours at a time coloring and singing songs she learned at school. She reminds me of myself. She is such a social girl, but likes to be in charge which can be a problem. She loves to help me with chores while Owen naps. Recently she has become obsessed with horses. She loves them and just brought a book home from the library about horses. She is going to be a cow girl for Halloween. Do all girls go through this phase? I just hope she never asks for a pony!

Trenton has turned into a bookworm. He reads whenever he has free time, which again reminds me of myself as a child. He finished "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" in three or four days even though it has 550 pages! He couldn't put it down. He also spends a lot of free time drawing ships and airplanes. Webkinz are still very fascinating to him, but they come third to his other interests. He continues to love Cub Scouts and is excited about becoming a Bear in just a month or so. Flag football is not nearly as exciting to him as it was in the beginning, but he is sticking with it.

Nathan is busy as ever with work. He is just flourishing here and seems less stressed about work than he used to be. He handles the stress of a sales career beautifully which helps me to relax about it as well. He is quite the handy man as he just finished installing a brand new furnace and thermostat for us by himself! He has also replaced several faucets, light fixtures, locks, and the list goes on and on. It's great to have a handy man...now if I could only get him to learn how to build a rolling can holder for my food storage :)

Ashleigh enjoyed playing in the empty furnace box.

I am knee deep in PTA stuff at both schools. I am managing fine and I really love meeting lots of other moms and staff. The schools are so big here that it is hard to be known, but with my big tasks at both schools, we are starting to be recognized. Yeah! In my other free time I am working very hard to get our family totally prepared for emergencies. With our power outage a few weeks ago, I discovered how much I still need to do. My eyes were opened to how self-reliant I need to be because people are not friendly during emergencies. Everyone went into panic mode here which was really scary. I want us to be able to be completely prepared so that we wouldn't have to leave our house if necessary. Stay tuned for updates on my progress. There have been several community and church meetings about this since the big blackout which have been really informative.