January 2010 Update

So here is what we have been up to this month:

MARY

I've been working on my new year's goal to work out 5 days a week. I was doing really well until we all got sick with the swine flu last week, but plan to get back on track now that I can breathe through my nose again. In addition to exercise, Jared and I have a lot of goals for home improvement projects this year. Here are some pictures of some curtains I made for the kids' rooms.

I plan to re-paint the girls' room and do some art and crafts to put on their walls--then at least the kids rooms will be done. Most days I just cover the basics and on a really good day I can get a small project done. I guess there is a time and season for everything, and right now this is my more-than-full-time mommy season.

JARED

Jared bought some woodworking tools and is excited to use them. He is currently building some end tables for our living room (I'll post pictures when he finishes them--right now they look like glorified tomato cages). When he finishes those, his next project is to redo our master closet. In addition to work and woodworking, he stays busy with his callings and giving the kids lots of daddy attention--which it seems they can never get enough of.

ABBY

It seems that we have finally found the thing to motivate Abby to get potty trained--ballet lessons. She has been doing much better with this new incentive.

Here is Abby in her leotard, "practicing" for her ballet lesson next week.

Abby loves her new doll house, but was disappointed that she doesn't have a mommy and daddy bed yet. One day I went to crawl into bed only to find that she had tucked her doll family into our bed for the night.

Since starting Sunbeams this month, one thing that has really impressed Abby is "the stand" in the Primary room. She came home after her second week of Sunbeams and drew a picture of it for me and burst into tears as she told me how sad she was because the teacher never called on her to come up to it. Abby is one of those kids that always wants to be in the lime light. So one day I came into the bonus room to see that she had built a pulpit for her toy tiger.

MADDY

Maddy is still our sweet, smiling happy bear. She is learning so much everyday and is starting to use longer sentences and can now count to 10. She loves books, music, building things, and copying just about everything that her older sister does.

Poor Maddy was the most affected by the swine flu. She got it first and was the last one to recover. She had high fevers, vomiting, and an awful cough that kept her up every night for a week. She is finally getting better, but it was hard to see our little bear so sick.

NATHAN
Nathan continues to be our sweet, happy baby. He started solids this month and is continuing to grow at an amazing rate. He and Maddy now wear the same size diapers and he has outgrown his baby bathtub.

Bath time is probably Nathan's favorite time of day. He loves to kick and splash around.

One of his second favorite things is rolling around on his blanket and playing with all his toys. We love our cute little man cub.