Happy Christmas 2010

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy Christmas! We cherish this time of year when we remember the birth of our Savior and reconnect with those we love. Here is what we have been up to this year.

Jared continues to be a wonderful husband and father. He loves his job working as a neurosurgery physician assistant. In his free time he enjoys reading, gardening, rollerblading, biking, and trying out his new BBQ grill. I have also kept him busy with home improvement projects--he painted all the bedrooms and built shelves for the children's closets. He has taken up woodworking and so far has built two beautiful end tables for the living room and shelves for the garage. He also serves as Elder's Quorum President for our ward and sings in the ward choir.

I love being a stay at home mom and cherish all the time I have to spend with my children. In addition to my many mommy duties, I am doing home school pre-school with the girls and have started watching an one year old girl during the week. Whenever I have free time (which is rare) I enjoy reading, rollerblading, biking, and decorating. At church I am serving as a Relief Society teacher and enjoy attending the R.S. sewing, book, and lunch groups.

Abigail (4 1/2 years old) is Miss Enthusiasm. She is always dressing up and playing pretend. She did ballet this year and loved the opportunity to dress up and perform. Her favorite activities are dancing, swimming, playing outside, singing, and riding her new bike. She is curious and loves learning. She amazed us this year by how quickly she learned to read. She is a kind and responsible older sister and a good helper to her mommy. We love having her in our family.

Madeline (3 years old) wants to be just like her older sister and copies her in everything she does. She loves coloring and is quite the artist. She constantly amazes us with her realistic pictures and the way she colors in the lines so carefully. Like Abby, she loves princesses and dressing up. She also loves swinging and going for walks by the Columbia River. She is a good friend to Abby, and is always looking out for her little brother Nathan. We feel very blessed to have her in our family.

Nathanael (16 months old) is a busy, happy boy. He crawls everywhere and is good at getting into mischief. He loves cars, dogs, hats, swinging, his star blanket, exploring outside, and most of all, food. He has fun with his older sisters and tries to be a part of whatever they are doing. We love his sweet, happy smiles and cheerful disposition.

For vacation this year we attended the Collett Family reunion at Time Lodge, and then we spent another week with my family in Utah. We took several trips to Boise to see Jared's family. We also got a new tent and attempted our first family camping trip (but that's another story).


We hope all is well with you. We love to hear from you, and if you every happen to be in Washington near the Tri-cities, we would love a visit from you too. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and wish you the best of everything in 2011.

Love,

The Colletts (Mary, Jared, Abby, Maddy, and Nathan)

Thanksgiving 2010

We were surprised when we had a big snow storm right before Thanksgiving. Here are the girls making a snowman with their dad.

Halloween is long over but the girls are still in the Halloween mode. Here they are pretending to be witches as they "fly" around my kitchen.

Jared finished Maddy's birthday jewelry box--purple at her request. As you can tell she loves it.
The night after this picture was taken Maddy fell asleep with the box cradled in her arms.

She knows daddy loves her.

Nathan's new favorite pastime. He climbs in the sled and whines until his sisters pull him around the living room in circles.

My mom making some delicious stuffing for our Thanksgiving dinner.

My dad helped by keeping the kids entertained. Here they are singing Little Bunny Foo Foo.

As you can tell the kids loved all the grandparent cuddles and attention. We wish we lived closer so they could get it more often.

Nathan loved getting rides on grandpa's shoulders.

All of us enjoying a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. Since we did all the shopping and cooking on Thanksgiving day, we decided to do salmon instead of a turkey. Jared went out in the snow and barbecued us some delicious pineapple salmon.

This turkey on our apple pie was the only one we ended up eating, but it was delicious and we didn't even have leftovers.

Nathan with his new favorite hat from grandma that he insisted on wearing everywhere. He loves that his hat is black just like his daddy's.

After much looking we found a sled big enough for Grandpa and a hill small enough for the girls. So much fun!

The kids playing in the backyard with grandpa.

I think my dad burned off all his Thanksgiving dinner by running around the yard as he pulled the kids in the sled.

Abby making snow angels.

We had a beautiful thanksgiving with my parents. Along with the gospel, family is at the top of our list of things we are grateful for. We are grateful for my parents coming up to spend Thanksgiving with us and for the rest of our family that we were able to talk with on the phone.

Maddy Cinderella's 3rd Birthday

It is hard to belive that our little girl is now three years old. For Maddy's birthday this year we decided to do a family Cinderella party.


We started out with Maddy's favorite activity: coloring. She is really good at staying in the lines, but often comes up with some interesting color combinations (note Prince Charming's orange face and hair).

After a "find the mouse under the tea cup" game, the girls were put to work cleaning the kitchen floor while they sang, "Sing sweet nightingale." Their cleaning was interrupted by a knock on the door where there was a messenger delivering invitations to the ball.

Maddy had to find a dress for the ball by opening all her birthday presents.

Jared made Maddy a purple jewelry box (we will post pictures when it is completely finished).
She also got a Cinderella Dress from Grandma D and several sets of princess shoes from Grandma C.

Thanks to Maddy's fairy Grandmothers she is now ready for the ball.

Her are the girls dancing with their handsome prince daddy at the ball. Unfortunately their dancing was interrupted by a clock chiming the stroke of midnight. The girls quickly ran upstairs, dropping their slippers. Luckily prince daddy found them. The girls tried on the slippers, and when they fit they were rewarded with cake and ice cream.

Here is Maddy blowing out the candle on her Cinderella cake. Unfortunately our camera ran out of batteries at this point, but afterward the girls had a princess tea party on their little table with Maddy's new tea set from Grandma. They then watched Disney's Cinderella movie and have been playing Cinderella ever since.

Halloween 2010

We kicked off the season by having our friends over for FHE to decorate some pumpkin cookies.

Nathan in his duck costume.

Our cute little Maddy bear.

Abby was Tinkerbell. Can you tell she is about ready to fly with excitement?

She got excited when we were at playgroup and the Nursery had a Tinkerbell doll that she pretended was her baby.

The girls with our good friends at the library Halloween party.

The girls with their Halloween crafts (sorry they just wanted to look at the crafts and not the camera).

We went to the city Fall festival where the kids enjoyed a scavenger hunt, a maze, a hayride and games, but their favorite activity by far was the clown that made them balloon animals. Here is Maddy with her purple bear.

Abby with her flower.

Probably the girls' favorite Halloween activity was the trunk or treat where they got loads of candy (which I quickly confiscated for potty-training bribes).

They also enjoyed all the carnival games and activities they had beforehand.

Probably the most fun was seeing our bishop (who is reasonably trim) in this fun costume.

October 2010 Update

Here is our October update, minus Halloween. Since I have so many Halloween pictures I decided to make that its own post.


PINK AND PURPLICIOUS

Here are Abby and Maddy holding their favorite library books. They have checked them out so much I think we are going to have to buy them their own copies. In order to make things easier and elimnate fighting when they were little we used to give pink things to Abby and purple things to Maddy. As a result Abby is exactly like Pinkalicious in that she is obsessed with pink, while Maddy has a purple fascination.

MADDY

Maddy never ceases to surprise us with her creativity. While I was cleaning up dinner Maddy decided to go play with the pots and pans that Nathan had gotten out. I looked down and saw her like this pretending to be a pot person.

Maddy busy with her favorite activity--coloring. When Maddy was 18 months old she wasn't worried about learning basic words like ball, book, etc. She was more concerned with learning colors. Once she had her colors down then she just pointed at what she wanted and said, "That yellow thing or that purple thing." It is now becoming evident that she is very artistic. When she colors she takes her time (sometimes a half hour) and is careful to color in all the lines. She has also started drawing people and includes almost all major body parts (minus the ears).

ABBY

One day I couldn't find my mirrior. To my surprise I found Abby brushing her hair while gazing in her own little vanity created by placing my mirror on some stacked books.

You have to admit she sure is cute. Here she is in her new outfit from Grandma that she wore for her performance in the primary program. Abby did a great job in her performance singing out loud and clear so everyone could hear.

NATHAN

Nathan loves being outdoors. He often crawls to the back door and bangs on the glass to let me know that he wants to go out. One day he was fascinated watching Jared mow the yard and would follow him as he went back and forth across the lawn. When Jared stopped to go in the house to get a drink of water Nathan took the opportunity to climb in the grass catcher. When Jared came back Nathan looked up expectantly as if to say, "I'm ready for my ride Daddy."

In addition to lawn mowers, Nathan loves getting pushed around on his little car by his sisters. One night when I went to get Nathan to put him in bed he hurried away and climbed on his car as if to say, "One more ride PLEASE before I have to go to bed."

One day we went for a walk with Nathan in the stroller while the girls walked. Maddy had on this teddy bear back pack. When we came home Nathan grabed the back pack and insisted that I put it on him. He wore it half the day as he craweled around everywhere. The girls took turns holding his "tail" as if he were their puppy. When I had to take it off for nap time he threw a royal tantrum.

Nathan helping Dad in the yard.

Nathan's latest trick: "But mommy, I just wanted a snack."

MARY

Right now I am staying busy taking care of and teaching my kids. I am still doing homeschool pre-school that seems to be working out well, especially now that our ward has started a once a week playgroup so I feel like the girls are getting a little more social interaction. My life is going to be getting even busier starting Monday since I am going to start watching another little girl during the week. I had been praying about what I could do to help us pay off student loans faster, but hadn't found anything that wouldn't take away from my most important role--being a good mom to my kids. Recently one of the new neurosurgeons that Jared works with asked if I would be willing to watch her 12 month old daughter for the next 8 months (until her daughter is old enough to go to a Montessori school here). The timing worked out perfectly for us and she is going to pay me well enough that it should help us out a lot finacially. I feel that our prayers were truely answered.

My mommy duties keep me pretty busy, but I have enjoyed a new Relief Society sewing group. Our teacher is a professional seamstress but most of us are beginners so the projects are pretty easy. Here is a picture of some crayon rolls I made for Abby and Maddy's stockings.

JARED

Jared harvesting our produce with the girls.

Now that Jared is Elder's quorum president and his job has required him to be on call a lot more we decided it was time to become a two car family (the cold weather didn't help either). Here is Jared in his little commuter car. He loves the yellow color which makes it easy to find in crowded parking lots. He also loves driving a stick shift again, even if it is only a 4 hampster wheel engine. The girls love the car and always want to go for rides in it (which we haven't done yet because it's too much work to move their car seats), and they have taken to drawing pictures of "Daddy's new yellow car!"