I can't believe this year is almost halfway over. Where is the time going?! I am going to sum up what's been going on with the Anderson family thus far in 2012. First of all, in January, Travis's sweet Grandpa Simon took a fall, broke his hip, and had some complications that were going to make surgery questionable and then his body started to shut down anyway. He made the decision that we was ready to go. It was so hard to watch Travis say good bye to him for now. What a blessing our knowledge of Heavenly Father's plan is! We know that Grandpa Simon is now with Grandma Simon who he had been without for almost 12 years. While it is sad for those of us left behind to say good bye, we know it is only temporary. Someday we will all be together again :) Our first thought was just to send Travis home for the funeral but I couldn't bear the thought of not being with him to support him and show my love for the family. I knew there would be a lot of family there that we don't get to see and I also wanted our girls to experience the funeral because we had just been up to visit this past July and they had very vivid memories of Grandpa. We tried to prepare them as best we could. Death is a pretty difficult concept to grasp. I am not sure if we prepared them as well as we could have (for example: during the funeral Riley had been sitting with Barb and Barb told her that we would be going to the cemetery after the service to bury the casket. She came back and told me this as she wasn't sure I knew that's how these things go... Then in the car on the way to the cemetery Riley told Isabelle where we were going and why and Izzy gave me this look like, "Really, Mom? They are going to put him in the ground?!" Seriously she looked mortified. I hadn't even thought to tell them what we do with bodies. We had mostly focused on the fact that although Grandpa's body was no longer living, his spirit was and that he was now in heaven with his wife and Heavenly Father and Jesus, etc). Anyway, 4 months later and we have paid off all our plan tickets and the car rental and all I can say is that it was worth it. It was worth it to be together as a family and to be able to see so many relatives that we rarely see. There are still members of Travis's family that I have never met after over 7 years of marriage! Grandpa Simon was such a sweet man. I am so grateful that I got to know him and that when we were there in July we sat and listened to his stories. The funeral service was so beautiful. The stories that were told about his life made us laugh more than cry. He would have turned 90 (I believe) in February. He lived a long, wonderful life and raised 8 children. Those 8 children have 33 kids between them. Many of those kids are now married and have families of their own. What posterity!
We returned home and I realized that Lucy had a tooth that had broken through! She had been sick but I totally hadn't even thought to look for teeth because our other girls didn't get their first teeth until they were almost 1. But sure enough, shortly behind that first tooth, the second broke through.
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| Can you see those two little bottom teeth? |
February 18th marked our 7th wedding anniversary. Prior to that I had only left the girls (Riley and Izzy) once for one night ever. But we decided it was time for another night alone and my sister Maria and her husband kept all 3 girls for us for one night so we could go up to Salt Lake and spend a night at Anniversary Inn. We stayed in the room themed "Romeo's Retreat" and I did all sorts of things that week leading up to our night away to build the excitement. It's heaven to have time to focus on us. And it's definitely much needed. We do what we can here at home but it was so wonderful to have a time we knew there was no chance anyone would interrupt!! Maybe someday we will get away for more than 24 hours. I can only hope!!
Around that same time I gave up nursing Lucy. She was the only baby who I would say I was able to nurse successfully. With the first two things just didn't go well and I stopped completely at 4 months. And even in the four months it last I did a lot of supplementing with formula and pumping. Needless to say while I didn't necessarily LOVE to nurse, I was a little sad to give it up. With each milestone with her I feel so sad that this might be it...since I have often felt I don't want another child. Thought I am too young to say I will do anything permanent, I do feel like I am at MY capacity. I will always yearn for another baby. There is nothing sweeter. But we each have our limits. While some women can have 6, 8, or 12 kids...my sanity will not survive that! I want there to be enough of me to give my husband and each of our kids my love and attention and I am already spread pretty thin. Luckily, I think they are all pretty forgiving of my shortfalls.
In March our house showings picked up quite a bit but we still haven't had any bites at the house. It is a little bit discouraging but I know the big thing is that there is a lot of homes in our area in this same price range. We have lowered the price twice and are about to do it a third time this week. Crossing our fingers that the right family will walk through the door. Travis is ready to buy a TV for the buyers. THAT IS HOW MUCH HE WANTS IT SOLD!
At the end of March we went back to Coeur d'Alene (but we drove this time) and spent a week there for Randee's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and we are so thrilled that she and Spencer have recently moved down here to Utah so we can hang out with them!
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| Cousins |
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| All the girl cousins in the Anderson family! |
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| Anderson Grand-girls with one Pingel granddaughter :) Cute girls! |
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| Good looking Anderson's!! Especially that one second from the left ;) |
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| The whole gang. |
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| It was such a wet, chilly day! But it doesn't look like the happy couple minded one bit! |
Also, my mother-in-law knows how to put on a reception!! She is pretty much amazing.
| April brought Easter (my favorite!) and Lucy started walking. What a naughty baby! How dare she continue to grow up and reach these milestones. Seriously everything about her is ahead of my other two. It goes faster anyway, with each kid, but she is so ahead of things...there aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with her new words/developments/abilities! She is getting so darn smart. She has a pretty good vocabulary for her age, although not everything she says can be understood by just anyone. There are words she tries to say that only we understand. I will post more on her soon. After all, she turns ONE this weekend :( |
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| We went to an Easter egg Hunt at BYU which was pretty successful!! And totally crazy. |
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| The cutest little Easter bunny ever. Can you tell we woke her up to have Easter morning? |
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| It worked out so nicely that their little flower girl dresses from the wedding could be used as their Easter dresses! |
Also, Riley's school held their annual awards assembly. Each class was able to give out two awards, one for superior academic achievement and one was for good citizenship or something like- for a child who is exhibiting good qualities and character. The Academic hero award is as it sounds, for a student who works hard and completes their work, etc. Riley received that award and we are so proud of her. She is a pretty well rounded kid for now. She is smart and can focus on schoolwork but she is also very social. She wants to be every ones friend and I have had several moms tell me how she has been so good at befriending their children.
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May has been the most insane month yet for me. Izzy had been asking when she gets to return to preschool. I kept her home with me to keep the craziness to a minimum. I figured there is always next year for her second year of preschool since she won't go to kindergarten until fall of 2013. The issue was that because Riley was in kindergarten this year here is what my Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday would have been like for the year. Tuesdays and Thursdays I would have had to take Izzy at 9:45, take Riley at 11:30, go get Izzy at 12:15 and then go get Riley 2:30. Then because Wednesdays are "early out" days at Riley's school she goes for 2 hours earlier than normal so it would have been Izzy to preschool at 9:45, Riley to Kindergarten at 10:50, pick up Izzy at 12:15 and then get Riley at 1:00. I did NOT want to be making so many trips. I already have to wake Lucy up from her naps to take Riley to school. But Izzy had been missing preschool more and more so I sent her back for the month of May. She is starting to read words with the short "a" vowel sound as long as the words are really simple and short! She can blend the sounds together much better than Riley did when she started reading. Although Riley was younger.
On May 10th both my younger sisters went through Mt. Timpanogos temple to receive their endowments. What a neat thing to be at the temple with both of them and my mom. The next day, Alyce married Nathan Johnson in the Manti temple. That is a really neat temple and Oh. My. Gosh. Their sealer was incredible. We were told before we went in that no note taking was allowed and my goodness I can understand why. I wish I had been able to record every word he said. He was really amazing!
Cutting the cake.
As you may or may not be able to read these answers that Riley gave to these questions I will tell you some that I think are funny. She put that I am 6 feet 11 inches. Ha. Not the best guess! She also put that I weigh 11 pounds. Those two are the funniest. She put that she thought my favorite food was "a rost" (roast). It is one of my favorites I guess, but definitely not my most favorite! She guessed my favorite TV show was "a danseing show". Not really, but I do enjoy dancing shows. She nailed the question on what my favorite thing to do was with this answer "Spend time with dad". I will treasure this forever :)
At preschool they put each of the kids hand prints on paper and put a photo of the child on it with their name and year. Travis bought me a new Food Network Griddle! It is much larger than my older and semi-broken griddle we had been using.
Riley's school held their Dance Festival last week and each grade did a different dance to songs that were mostly from musicals. Kindergarten danced to "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. I am the worst when it comes to holding steady to video, but if your stomach can handle it, here is the video of Riley dancing :) (Try the link below? Let me know if it works...Having technical difficulties...)
YouTube-RileyDance
This girl loves to move her body. When we play music I can only describe what she does as "interpretive dance". I want to get her into some type of movement class. I don't necessarily was to deal with a dance class that will have all types of shows, etc. But I do want her to be able to explore and have fun!
My last duty as a room parent this year was to help put on Kindergarten graduation. It came together so nicely!
Again, sorry for the shaky video, but here is the song the Kindergarten sang at graduation. "First Grade, First Grade" to the tune of "New York, New York"
