Man, I love this kid...

First Day of School

I recommend having a babysitter who likes photography

My babysitter, Kayla, loves to photograph my kids and she's taken some of my favorite pictures of them. Thought I'd share them... (They look a bit grainy until you click on them and see them full-size)

Spring Pictures

1st Year Under my Belt

Well, I just finished my first year teaching in public school. I LOVE my job! It totally has its difficult days when I want to crawl back in bed, but ultimately it just challenges me in all the right ways. I'm excited to go back next year and have a solid curriculum and not feel like I'm kind of winging it.

I am so blessed to have a job that I love and that pays me well enough that I only have to work part-time.

The End of an Era?.....Hope Not

So a couple months ago we met with our friends, Steve & Jayme Smith. They are the couple behind Stories in Concert. Steve writes all the music and Jayme produces. They sprung it on us that they were moving in a week to Logan. For those of you that don't know, Logan is about two hours away. They've been living in this tiny rental for more than four years with their four kids and it was time to buy a house. More than time. So they found a place in Mendon (just outside Logan) that they couldn't live without.

Needless to say, we are not doing The Legend of Sleepy Hollow this year. Nor are we doing The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere at the Freedom Festival, nor are we working on Alice in Wonderland for next year. It took David and I several days to process and realize the full import of it. We are definitely bummed, saddened, etc. I told David tonight that while I mourn the loss of my involvement in it, I'm more saddened that it just isn't happening at all. It's just too good a thing not to happen!

Anyway, they say that we will pick it up again in the future, but we're not sure when. And how exactly is that going to work with them two hours away? We shall see...

Eight is Great

Wow, where has the time gone? We've had a rather eventful couple of months. Some good, some bad. I've got a bit to catch up on. I'll start with Hadley's birthday and baptism and then see where I get from there.

Hadley had some friends and cousins over for her birthday for a movie party.

First they ate pizza, then watched "Bolt."

Opened presents next.

Then we had cake and ice cream. It was pretty mellow and I think they had a good time.

Then the next week was Hadley's baptism.

Grandma & Grandpa Knight came, as did Rebecca & Emily, the Guinn family, the Matt Phair family, Jake and Elizabeth. Jake gave one of the talks. We also had friends from the ward and school. She was baptized with two other girls so there was quite a crowd. Hadley and her friend Liz, who was also getting baptized, sang a musical number with their brothers and sisters. They sang, "When I am baptized." Hadley was so nervous that she said before she went up, "I feel like if I go up there I'm going to explode." As you can see from the pictures she didn't explode, but she was a bit overcome with emotion and had a hard time posing for a picture right before going into the font.
She just gets nervous and can't function sometimes. Bless her heart.

She was happy inside...really. :-)

This is Hadley's best friend Parker. They met in the first grade and have been inseparable ever since. Sadly, he just moved to Highland, and while he's finishing school with her this year, he will be at a different school next year. Parker's mom and I are wondering how they are going to survive. The other night in her prayers, Hadley said, "Please help me to be strong next year without my friend, Parker--when he needs me and I need him." She just doesn't like playing with the girls much at school and not all the boys are as sweet as Parker. We'll see what happens. She has girls that are friends in her class, but would just rather play with boys most of the time.
Hadley & her cousin Aiden
With Grandma & Grandpa Knight. Grandpa Knight confirmed Hadley.
All the cousins that were there from the Phair side of the family. Check out Jordan and Hadley. (Jordan is the tallest cousin in the background) Are they twins or what? They also have those twin high-strung personalities.
Grandma & Grandpa Knight and the youngest of their brood. (Except for Jacob, Jakob, & Erik who are in New Hampshire)
Seth was cheesin' it up so Val decided to zoom in on him.

Things I Love...

Since I didn't get around to doing a Valentine's post this month, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about the things I love. This list is by no means comprehensive, just what's going through my head right now...

• I love the smell of my children after a bath
• I love warm chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven (semi-sweet chips, thank you)
• I love laying in bed with my husband and talking about whatever
• I love to hear my son ask if he can have "panpakes"
• I love that my girls think I'm funny
• I love the smell of garlic and onions stir-frying
• I love the smell of rain
• I love free food
• I love my jobs (all four of them)
• I love the little sounds babies make
  
• I love that I feel happier now than I have ever felt in my life
• I love that I can still feel peace in the midst of such uncertainty around me
• I love that I live in a time when a woman can get an epidural
• I love my country
• I love reading to my children
  
• I love that I live in a neighborhood where people don't worry about impressing everyone else
• I love an empty kitchen sink
• I love trying new recipes
• I love that one of my son's bedtime rituals is to spend a couple of minutes cuddling with me
  
• I love singing
• I love that when I sit down and play the piano it relaxes me. Or, in the words of Lucy Honeychurch, "I generally forget my worries at the piano"
  
• I love to teach
• I love that I am a woman, and that I am blessed to be a mother
• I love that there's no one else in the world I'd rather talk to or spend time with than my husband
• I love my church, my Savior, and my Heavenly Father
  

A Haunting Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFJ9xeYUTnQ

David sent this to me earlier today and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. What the crap are we doing, and how are we going to get out of this?

I was going to go off about how I feel about the current stimulus bill, but I'm so sick of thinking about it. I've been way less than impressed with Obama's scare tactics (ie. if we don't pass this tomorrow we're all going to be eating wallpaper paste). He's a hypocrite, because how are programs that we won't see the benefit from until 2-3 years from now supposed to help us now in 2009? I'm just disgusted with it all. I tried to have so much optimism three weeks ago, but it's gone now.

Christmas 2008

On Christmas Eve, after a living room picnic consisting of cheese, crackers, summer sausage, li'l smokies, and Martinelli's, the kids opened their new pajamas. I think Seth's worn his "Fiderman jammies" every night but four since Christmas. In fact, if you come over to our house on any random afternoon, you might see him ready for bed at 3:00.


Santa brought Seth a train set. When we asked him to sit with his train so we could take a picture, apparently he thought we said sit ON your train.

Grandma Emmett got the kids new binoculars. They are so nice, David and I are claiming them too.

Hadley was so excited that she got the entire set of A-Z Mysteries. She'd been asking for them for months.

I think this was the first Christmas where there were actually any pictures of me. I didn't even have to ask David, he just took the camera and took pictures! It was great!

This was by far the best Christmas morning for us. Not because of the presents. I just made the choice to be relaxed. I didn't worry about getting wrapping paper picked up and thrown away as we went or making sure things were staying organized. We just became surrounded by chaos as the morning went on, and it was really great. It only comes once a year, why stress?

Passing the Torch

I just wanted to share my thoughts today as I watched the transfer of power from President Bush to President Obama. Our principal at our school is so smart, and he asked all the teachers to tune in their televisions to the broadcast of the inauguration so the kids could witness the historical event. Then he also challenged the students to write about it in their journals. So, I'm going to take on his challenge.

Overall, I watched the broadcast with a fair amount of hope. I am, without a doubt, so happy that my children will grow up in a nation where it is possible for anyone to be president, regardless of race or gender. It's a very cool thing. I am happy for the young African Americans of our country that they have this role model to look up to. I hope many of them choose to follow his example rather than some of the sports figures who lead rather sorry lives.

I am hopeful that President Obama can unite our nation. I am SO SICK of the partisan bickering. He says this is his goal, and I think we should all hold him to it. While I may not agree with all of his policies, he is my president and I will support him as best I can. I really do love this country. Things feel like a bit of a mess right now, but I still believe there is no greater nation on this earth. But we have to believe that it belongs to us, the people. We are responsible for making the change happen. Get on the email lists of your senators and representatives in congress. Let them know what you want to see happen.

But don't forget the power we do and should have within our own state governments! We do seem to be forgetting that we are a United States of America. The federal government cannot and should not solve all of our problems.

Anyway, off my soapbox. Happy Inauguration Day!

Thanksgiving with the Firths

For Thanksgiving this year, we went up to Montana to visit our good friends, the Firth family. We had Thanksgiving several years ago together when we both lived in Los Angeles. I was pregnant with Hadley and they brought home their adopted daughter, Danika, a couple days later. Here's us in 2000:

Here we all are in 2008:

As you can see...no Seth! He was polite enough to take a nap for me and I got to enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner! He got to feast on a pb&j when he woke up.

Mary made the most amazing stuffing I've ever had. I've actually thought about it several times since we were there. How pathetic is that?

But enough about the meal. We had a great weekend at the children's museum, swimming, and just hanging out. Watched a movie or two. But we had a great time talking. We sure miss being able to talk with David and Mary on a regular basis. We LOVE just hanging out and talking with them. The kids played great together too. Danika and Hadley played as babies:

And now they got to play together as little girls:



We hope it's not too long before we get to visit them again!

Sledding with Cousin Emily

For Emily's birthday, she wanted to go sledding with Hadley and Lillian, so they drove down here and we had a blast.

Seth got impatient waiting for the tubes to come back up so he thought he'd try his bum. Needless to say, he didn't get very far.

And what would an afternoon of sledding be without a minor casualty?

I thought she looked pretty cool, but it's hard to convince a five year old of that.