Charles reading Brown Bear video

I finally figured out how to get the video of Charles "reading" posted. Here it is...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Emma's ballet recital

Emma's ballet class did the Nutcracker "party girl" dance for their winter recital. Emma's the cute one (the one in the reddish dress). She loves taking ballet.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Kid pictures

Tayla's mom (Jana) wanted to get Tayla and Charles together to take pictures. They have a ton of fun together! Charles was being so goofy.






Jana was kind enough to take pictures of my other kids too. Unfortunately we couldn't get one of all four kids together because Maya was crying and Charles was making silly faces.

Thanksgiving weekend

For Thanksgiving we went down to Spanish Fork to Chris and Jamie's house. This was our first Thanksgiving without Dad and Mom...weird! But we had lots of fun; also got to see Janice and Sean and Tori.
As is tradition, we put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We let the kids put on all the ornaments by themselves...

James took Emma on a daddy-daughter date to see The Nutcracker. They had a lot of fun!

Two big happenings...

Two big happenings since my last blog...

Back in September we got two new foster daughters, Maya (1) and Jaqueline(2). They are so adorable, and Emma and Charles LOVE having them here. They are little spitfires sometimes, but so fun! Emma is especially good at helping out with them.

James got a new job, and we will be moving to TEXAS! He is planning on going out there in January, and the kids and I will follow when the girls have permanency one way or the other.

Last week Charles decided he could "read" Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and spent about 3 days "reading" it to us every chance he got. He was VERY proud of himself. We got video footage, but it's too big to post! So this will have to do.

Emma got some quilt squares from our friend Juli a while ago, and yesterday decided to make a blanket out of them. She made it with absolutely no help! For an 8 year old, I think she did quite well (maybe better than I could have done...)

New at this blogging thing...

Everyone else in my family seems to be up with this technology, so I guess I had better jump on the bandwagon.

We've been spending quite a bit of time with my family lately. I'm so glad that my family is close, even though we don't live next to each other. I've come to realize more and more lately how important it is for my kids to really know their extended family and have strong relationships with them. What better way to have our values reinforced?

Just look at my beautiful family!

This was Charles back in April, just learning how to coordinate his feet enough to pedal a tiny bike with training wheels...he usually just sat on the bike and propelled it the same way the Flintstones propelled their car.

Now, by August he has moved up to Emma's old bike, and can ride easily without training wheels! He decided he wanted to ride without them, and it didn't take us more than about 5 minutes of working with him one night, and he was doing fine. He didn't perfect starting on his own until the next day, and using his brakes took a little longer, but all in all, very impressive!

The kids got lightsabers for Christmas, and they love to play with them.

A bunch of the neighborhood kids have lightsabers too, and we've had the occasional war between the Jedi and the Sith.