We fell behind this year, so I guess this is our excuse that we are "keeping up with the times" and taking our Christmas card electronic.
Merry Christmas! We hope you are enjoying the season as much as we are. It took a while to get the Christmas lights on the house working (busted outlet outside), but once we did, the kids faces just lit up! We were under a lot of pressure, as all of the neighbors’ lights were up and running, but now we are keeping up with the Joneses.
The kids have loved the snow so far this year. Even though it’s all crusty and frozen right now, they head out every day. Last night when they came in, Samantha’s mittens were totally soaked through - you know that means they had a good time. Or we need to buy better mittens. Speaking of which, the kids’ snow outfits are hilarious. They finally outgrew their last set, though we managed to squeeze 3 good winters out of them. Trying to build on our past success, their new snow clothes are about 3 sizes too big. Snow stuff is already pretty bulky, so it’s pretty shocking that they can move.
Samantha started Kindergarten this fall, and loves it. She also loves her teacher Mrs. Lemon, and thinks that it’s hilarious that she has the same name as a piece of fruit. Her teachers say that she is a perfect angel in class. We’d be a bit suspicious about that, but Kristi was her primary teacher for a while, and she was always quiet, attentive, and did a great job at participating. It’s a lot of fun to help her with her homework. It’s marvelous to see the joy in her face as she figures out how to sound out a new word. She does get easily frustrated, especially when she’s tired, so at those times it’s best to just move on to something else, but she loves finding her sight words everywhere we go, and is obsessed with counting things. It’s amazing what kind of knowledge she can bring home from school. The other night while daddy was watching Food Network (SHOCKING), someone was making a Yule Log. “What’s that?” Samantha asked? “It’s a Yule Log,” daddy replied. Samantha then launched into a lecture about the history of the Yule Log and its German origin! She threw it out very casually. Not surprisingly, we’re probably in a lot of trouble in the future – Kristi has seen the boys on the playground absolutely mooning after Samantha as she arrives at school. “Hiiii, Samantha.”
Alex started pre-school at the same place that Samantha went last year. He already loved Teacher Nicole from having met her many times he had met her before, so he had no trouble fitting right in. He is less than an inch shorter than Samantha, and depending on the day, might outweigh her by a pound or two. With a September birthday, he’s just about the oldest kid in class, and he towers over some of the kids by a full head. (We STILL get asked if they are twins – we thought it was just the double stroller they used to ride in.) Alex will undoubtedly be a better student than Samantha. I’m sure a lot of it is the benefit that he gains from the fact that she is constantly practicing, so he can pick up that residual knowledge, but he just absorbs things faster. While Samantha was practicing her reading (most of the sentences were repetitive), she struggled to read one of the new words in each sentence. On the second try, as she was working to get it out, Alex prompted her with the right word, kindly not vocalizing the “duh” that was plain in his tone. Alex struggles to speak a bit, in terms of clarity and enunciation, so he goes to speech therapy twice a week. Once is at the public school (free – yay!), and the other time is with a local speech pathologist (pricey – boo!). After his first trip to the speech pathologist (Paige), he was talking about what he thought of paper. “Paper?” daddy asked. “Yes, Paper.” Read through that a couple of times (out loud might help), and you’ll crack up when it clicks.
Kristi is happy (Alert – Extreme Understatement detected!) to have both kids in school, even if the stars only align for a couple of hours at a time a couple of times a week. She’s taken advantage of Andy’s amazing corporate discount at Gold’s Gym, you can now find her in the Cardio Cinema on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. She is currently practicing to be a taxi driver as she shuttles the kids to pre-school/school/’peech (one of Alex’s struggles is words that start with “S”)/whatever. We managed to sell our home in Pleasant Grove in October, and Andy’s parents have been kind enough to loan us their home in Orem until we can find a new home. Not knowing where we’ll end up, we’ve chosen to keep Samantha and Alex in their same schools, so Kristi’s schlepping kids around the valley a little further than you might normally expect. Too bad Orem is awful at clearing snow from the roads. To make sure that she doesn’t have too much free time, Kristi has decided to start a cookie catering business. She’s perfected her own cookie recipe, and there’s just enough action to keep her busy, between her local customers and some fans as far away as New York (it’s amazing how well those vacuum sealer things work).
Andy finished his MBA in August, and is just glad to not have to worry about it anymore. Work hasn’t changed much – he’s writing this on a flight to New York. Thank goodness for his tiny netbook and complimentary upgrades on Delta. It appears that he is in danger of beginning to refer to himself in the 3rd person – perhaps he’ll have to try to make the jump to professional sports. Andy is very grateful to have such a wonderful family, and generous parents who are letting us crash in their home until we can get a bank to finally move on a short sale. He won’t tell you too much about what he think about banks, as this isn’t really the place, and he happens to work for one, but suffice it to say we won’t be sending them any of Kristi’s cookies at Christmas. The good news is that we have a bank considering our offer on a home in American fork, and we are supposed to find out if they have accepted it in5 weeks or so. The bad news is that by writing that sentence, he has now totally jinxed the deal.
Have a Merry Christmas!
Andy, Kristi, Samantha & Alex
