A New Year of Possibilities

The New Year brought a new change for Lydia. She started attending Treasure Tree Acadamy preschool with Miss Anela, Miss Erica, and Miss Stephanie. She goes two afternoons a week while Ethan is in kindergarten. It works out well so I can do a little work from home. I've been helping out some friends at Alegra Learning by writing a few lesson plans for them. It's nice that the work is so flexible.

Lydia's first day at Treasure Tree Academy

 We had a really good snow storm at the beginning of the year and Jason helped Ethan and Lydia build this giant snowman. Unfortunately he only lasted a few hours before we dramatically saw him pushed over by an older kid right as we were pulling into the driveway. We were all stunned and Lydia cried and cried. It's sad when people purpose destroy something that is not theirs.

 Lydia also attended her first day in Primary at church as a new member of the Sunbeam class. She has a big class with about 8-10 children her age.

Ethan and Lydia playing with the phone and their toothbrushes. I just think this picture captures them and their life at this stage.

 Ethan had a day off school so we met up with my friend Marilee who treated us to a trip to the Butterfly Pavillion at Thanksgiving Point. The kids had fun playing inside and seeing the butterflies and I had fun talking to Marilee again.

One day we went home to visit my Mom in West Jordan who was very sick the first part of January. She was having major health problems and when the doctors took a look they found a big mass of cancer. Miraculously, after a lot of prayer and fasting, when the doctors went to remove the mass they didn't find any cancer and my mom was able to recover relatively quickly with the mass gone. Such a huge blessing for our family!

I tried on the dress I made for Senior Prom and it still fit great 20 years later!

 With cold weather outside, these are some of the typical activities we would do in the mornings. Ethan loves to build and create things. He also worked hard on practicing the piano and reading so that he could earn money for some Fuse Beads. Crafts beads that you arrange and then iron together. He even went outside and sold rocks by the side of the road a couple times to earn some extra money.

 Ethan celebrated his 100th day at school. He's doing well and has grown a lot in reading and writing. He can skip count to 100 by 2's, 5,'s and 10's. He's writing more sentences and he's reading on Level G which typical of the middle of 1st grade.

 Jason and I celebrated by birthday by eating at Los Hermanos and seeing the new Star Wars Movie in the theatre. It was such a fun date together and it was really nice to spend some time alone together.

Sara helped me celebrate my birthday by taking me out to lunch at Zupas, one of my favorite restaurants. And that night we sang, ate cupcakes, and opened presents. 

Lydia ended up getting a really bad cold or virus. It made it hard for her to breath and she was coughing almost constantly. We took her to the doctor's and they gave her a breathing treatment and sent us home with an inhaler and other medicine to help her get better and sleep through the night.

 Ethan stacked every picture book in the house into a big pile and I think we counted somewhere around 150.

 Ethan has loved playing with his Hot Wheels track from Christmas and has gotten very creative about how and where he sets up his tracks!