Moved and Back to School

Okay, so I'm a bad enough blogger that I haven't even mentioned that we sold our old house and moved around the corner into a larger, more comfortable home at the end of a cul de sac.  And we moved in June! It's a huge blessing and we are so thankful; we honestly didn't know if it would work out for a while.

We had a super fun but very short summer.  The kids played in their rooms or our backyard and basically didn't watch television at all.  They played soccer in late spring, and Emerson scored his first goal.  We had cousins come in town in July and August and did our own swim lessons by going to the pool for a couple of hours each day for a week.  Emerson is doing real strokes and Stella is almost there, too.  Atticus is still convinced he can swim when he really can't.  Stella mastered her bike without training wheels just as school started up.

Tad did his usual bike races -- Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood Canyons.  And he has his City Creek Canyon race coming up in October.  I did three half marathons and a couple of 5ks.  I did better than expected, especially considering that I was sick for two of the three half marathons.  It's so sad that the early morning light is waning so we can't go for early rides or runs as easily.

Of course Stella turned five and as school started up she started kindergarten while Emerson started second grade.  Both kids are loving it and doing a really fantastic job.  I can't believe how quickly they're learning!  Atticus, however, is just impatient for them to get home each day.  He asks, "Mom, where's Emerson?  Where's Stel?" about every ten minutes.

Spring Has Sprung -- I Think

     Spring in Utah is an elusive thing.  This year in particular illustrates how difficult it really is put your finger on a calendar date and say, "Yes, spring is here as of April 7th."  It seems like each day as I pile the kids in the car for our ride to school,  there's a weather dialogue and it usually goes like this:

"Mom, when is it finally going to be warm warm -- like summer?"
"Well, sweeties, it's spring right now and --"
"How can you tell it's spring, Mom, there's snow on the car!"
"Well, that's just the way spring goes.  It might be warm for a day and then rainy and cold for a day or even snowy."
 "That's what you say every day, Mom."
    
     Now of course we are having some splendid spring days, but these serve only to create a false sense of spring security and a couple of days later my tulips are flattened by soggy snow.
     The kids, however, seem to grow as if their bodies are in perpetual spring.  Stella has grown more than five inches since her last birthday, and her intellectual growth is even more stunning; if I need something in our house, she knows where almost everything is and she's really improving her reading.  Emerson is a full-fledged super reader who had to convince the school librarian to let him check books out of the second and third-grade sections.  He writes these amazing, fully illustrated stories about our pet lizard, Bluee.  Atticus is speaking in complete sentences -- all the time, even when I beg him to quiet down for a few seconds -- and is obsessed with strawberries ("strawbreeze").  I can't believe he's already two.  He got a couple of guitars for his birthday and he loves to dance as he plays them.  He's such an assertive little sucker who fully comprehends the noisy lengths a third-born must go to in order to get the attention he so richly deserves.
     For the last couple of months, we've been trying to sell our house in order to buy a larger house around the corner.  And although we've had a couple of close calls and 30 showings, we've had no offers yet.  This means that my full-time job is cleaning.  And I'm not talking putting toys away -- I mean floor-to-celing scrubbing and putting EVERYTHING away.  I've officially been driven to obsessive-compulsive cleaning habits; I stare at the smallest speck of dirt like it's my life-long sworn enemy and I extinguish it's existence with ruthless efficiency.  But with the deadline for the sale of our home approaching, I'm taking solace in the fact that no other houses are selling either and that at least our house looks the best it ever has.

Pacific Northwest Adventure

Okay, so we in the May clan are definitely optimists.  The proof -- we decided to fly, that's right, fly on a plane during the busiest travel season of the year, the week after Christmas.  Our destination was the May estate in Vancouver, Washington.  But it proved a little tough to get there.  After arriving at the airport in the morning, boarding and deplaning twice (with hour-long stretches sitting in the plane between), and waiting around for nearly seven hours, we received the news that our flight was cancelled.  Optimism tested.

Luckily Caroline, Afton and Cheryll were able to make it to Vancouver VERY late that night.  And luckily we were able to repeat our performance the next day, sans delays or cancellation and with a brief and not entirely unpleasant stop in Seattle.  We convinced the kids (all of whom behaved admirably) that Monday had just be a rehearsal for the actual trip and boy were they overjoyed to finally arrive at the cousins' house!

We had a great trip -- lots of cousin play time, eating, visiting, freezing excursions to gorgeous sites, and more eating.  I'll post more about that later, but I had to share this link to this New Year's song that Uncle Tim composed with a lot of help from all of the cousins and adults.  Get ready Bilboard Charts, here comes your latest hit:
http://schmaldviche.com/2011/

Christmas Greetings

     Okay, so maybe I've been really lax on the blog posts lately, but I promise it's only because I've been silly busy (who hasn't?).  And that's basically what this post is about -- being chronically busy.  Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusions that once all three of my kids are in full-day school things will be much better.  I have plenty of friends who've disabused me of that notion and I realize that things will only get crazier, although in different ways.

We found our Christmas tree!

     It's not even that my kids are over-scheduled or anything; I've made a conscientious effort to limit them to one extra-curricular activity per child.  Emerson is loving piano thanks to a brilliant teacher and Stella looks forward to her dance class each week with sparkling eyes, taking extra care to choose the perfect leotard-leggings combo.  Atticus has chosen the full-time pursuit of high-speed, adorable, chatty destruction (think of a talking tornado with curls and ridiculously long eyelashes).  Sure Emerson has homework, but his teacher truly understands what is an appropriate amount for first grade.  And Stella insists on her own "homework" projects while Emerson does his.
     Of course Tad and I have our little endeavors, too, like running/working out and yes that little thing called a bishopric calling.  But looking at that list and thinking of what my friends accomplish, I wonder why my "busy" takes up the whole day (and well into the night) without so much as a minute to catch my breath.  If I sit down at all by 9:30 at night lately, I feel extremely fortunate (and I should clarify that it's more of a collapse than a sit down).
     But do you know what the truly amazing part is?  I love the chaos.  No, I'm not wishing for more on my plate, but I really don't quite want to remove anything from that plate either.  I feel like just about everything we're involved in is important and satisfying in some way.  And so at Christmas time, as this chaos is more intense than any other time of year, I want to wish all of you a Merry Christmas -- from my whirlwind to yours!

Toothy McDuck

Emerson's First Day

Stella's First Day

After a wonderful summer of achieving new personal goals (learning to really swim, jumping off high objects, making sandwiches for themselves, an awesome ward campout in our new family tent), the kids are of course back in school.  Let's be honest, I never really worry much about Stella and school, so I wasn't too stressed for her in preschool.  You could plunk that girl down in a completely different culture and within minutes she'd have an entire entourage of friends.

The First Tooth

But I can confess to some nerves about Emerson starting first grade and being in school all day.  It's pretty amazing, though, because he's decided to absolutely love school this year.  When anyone asks him about school, he says, "I love Mrs. Barnson."  Last week they had a perfectly nice substitute, but before school on Monday, Emerson was literally jumping up and down and saying, "I can't wait for Mrs. Barnson!"  And he's learning and growing so fast.  Monkey bars -- check, reading with fluidity -- check, taking piano lessons -- check.  Here's the really big one -- last night he lost his first tooth (thus the post title).  The mixture of excitement and terror right before Tad yanked the wobbly sucker out was truly palpable.  And that super-generous Tooth Fairy brought him five dollars.

Stella at dance class

Stella's experience at preschool this year can be summed up in this short story: when I dropped her off the other day, she immediately grabbed Sophia's hand and they ran off comparing their similar shoes.  Sophia's dad then told me that she hated preschool until she made close friends with Stella and now she won't let him leave her at school until Stella shows up to hold her hand.  That's my girl, the spreader of joy and light.  She's learning to read and she can't get enough of coloring and painting.  We've already lost several new school clothing items to tragic preschool painting incidents.

Pony ride at the fair

Atticus is growing too fast.  He wanders all around naming everything he sees, combines words like a champ ("uh-oh chair"), and insists on running as much of his life as he can.  Just like big brother was, he's obsessed with trucks and tractors.  At the state fair last weekend, he literally quaked with excitement as we placed him on the seats of several real tractors.  And he finally made it through an entire two-hour session of nursery last Sunday with only one brief cry.  I've never had a child this good at getting into mischief and I constantly find things he's pulled out of closets, drawers, bags, etc.  If he wants it, Atticus will find a way to get it.

Tad's Big Cottonwood Race

Tad did another bike race, the annual Snowbird Hill Climb.  Despite a slightly longer and more challenging course, he got the same time as last year!  We really had fun cheering him at the finish of this one -- the canyons are so beautiful.  I ran our annual neighborhood Labor Day 5K and finished second overall!  The only person to beat me was an 18-year-old boy and I ran just over seven-minute miles, so I was really pleased.  My next race is a half-marathon this Saturday so fingers crossed!