Merry Christmas 2011

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas! We love taking the time to catch up with all of you. Here’s what we have been up to this year:

Jared continues to enjoy working at Kadlec Neuroscience. In his free time he likes reading, rollerblading, biking, and studying French. Most of his free time, however, has been taken up by serving in the Elder’s Quorum and on home improvement projects. He spent spring and summer landscaping our backyard, and has spent this summer and fall tiling our master bath, dining room, kitchen, hall, and guest bathroom. He is looking forward to a new year with hopefully not quite so many projects.

Mary stays home with our three darling children. She enjoys doing homeschool pre-school with Nathan, reading lessons with Maddy, and homeschool with Abby in the afternoons. In her free time she enjoys rollerblading, biking, and reading.

Abby (5) is growing up and learning to be more responsible. She is very enthusiastic and gets super excited about birthdays, holidays, and vacations. She enjoys school (she started Kindergarten this year), playing with her siblings, swimming, riding her bike, and reading. She is learning to play the piano and is doing well. Her favorite things are Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Ponies, and princesses (she was Ariel for Halloween). She is a good big sister and a wonderful helper to her mom. We love having her in our family.

Maddy (4) is as sweet as ever. She loves to play with her siblings, go to the park and library, and do arts and crafts. She loves books and is learning to be a good reader. Her favorite things include everything her sister likes, as well as cats (she insisted on a cat-themed birthday party) and babies (she dressed as a baby for Halloween). Her sweet smiles and snuggles continue to warm our home.

Nathan (2) learned how to walk at the beginning of this year, and he has been busy getting into everything ever since. His favorite things include cars, tools, Clifford, Bob the Builder, firemen, and dogs. He likes to be mommy’s helper with his little vacuum and by “helping” her cook and do laundry. Most of all he likes to help dad by digging in the yard, or by using his toy tools to help with projects around the house. We love our little man cub.

As far as trips go, we went to Boise in March for Jared’s brother’s wedding, and then down to Utah to see Mary’s family and the Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU. In May went to Boise to celebrate Jared’s birthday and to see the musical Wicked. In June we took a family vacation to the Oregon coast with a stop at the Portland zoo on our way home. In August we met up with Mary’s parents in Spokane and spent several days in beautiful Coeur d’Alene. We went to Boise in September for a fun Collett family reunion and again in November for Thanksgiving.

That’s what we’ve been up to this year. We hope you and your families are well, and that you enjoy the beautiful Christmas season filled with the peace and joy Christ brings.

Love, The Colletts

Thanksgiving 2011

Our little pilgrims and Indian.

Making toilet paper roll turkeys at Grandma Collett's house. The kids put down the things they were grateful for on their feathers.

Nathan was the first one seated. He was ready to eat.

The table was beautiful as usual.

The feast.

Grandma Collett once again outdid herself with all the delicious pies. (We even had two more not pictured.)

We enjoyed a delicious dinner with family and spent the rest of the time relaxing, eating pie, playing games, eating pie, watching movies, eating pie, shopping and eating pie. Did I mention eating pie? Amidst all of our gluttony we did take some time to remember the blessings the Lord has given us. As we looked back on the year we realize how richly blessed we are. Abby and Maddy have grown tired of all our FHE lessons on gratitude, and now if we ask what they are thankful for they say, "everything," so that they don't have to come up with a list of specific things. Some things Nathan told us he is grateful for are food, cookies, ice cream, dogs, trucks, his basketball, and cars. Above all Jared and I are most grateful for our Saviour and our sweet family.

Maddy's 4th Birthday!

Maddy was very excited to have Grandma and Grandpa Collett come up for her birthday. Maddy wanted a cat party--thus the ears and tails.

Their first game was find the mouse, which they took turns hiding.

Maddy after she found the "mouse."

Next they had goldfish eating contest with their cat and dog (for Nathan) bowls. The rules were that they couldn't use their paws.

I'm afraid that this striped little cat cheated.

We then played tape the bow on Hello Kitty.

Grandpa Collett won with his tricky behind the back technique.

The cats were feeling hungry again so they decided to go fishing for some goldfish to eat.

Nathan was especially excited when he finally caught one!

The kitty cats still complained of hunger so we sang Happy Birthday and Maddy blew out the candles on her cat cake.

Big smiles!

The kids loved eating the cake and ice cream out of their cat and dog bowls. This time the animals were challenged by having to use not only their paws but utensils as well.

Now Maddy's favorite part--presents!

Maddy got the purple baby doll that she fell in love with at Costco. Abby wrapped up some of her old dolls, out grown clothes, and princess dresses to give to Maddy. Maddy was of course thrilled to get some of Abby's things. She also loved the presents that her Collett cousins sent up for her from Boise.

Maddy loved the Strawberry Shortcake dolls from Grandma Donaldson as well as this cute outfit and her very own learn to cook set.

On Sunday Maddy looked absolutely darling in this cute little Scotti-dog jumper from Grandma and Grandpa Collett. They also gave her some money to pick out a gift. Having just received so much she couldn't think of anything else she wanted so she says she is going to save it for later.

Maddy is excited to finally have a her very own church jumper just like her big sister Abby.

MORE ABOUT OUR MADDY:

Her Favorite Things: Playing Strawberry Shortcake with her sister Abby, cats and kittens (stuffed animals & pictures--we won't allow the real thing), coloring and doing crafts, reading books and snuggling, trips to the park, playing with baby dolls, anything purple, and anything sweet to eat or drink (she will do and eat almost anything for a cookie or piece of candy).

Physically: weight 30 lbs (13%), height 38 1/2 inches (24%)--She is really small for her age and with Nathan being so big people sometimes mistake them for twins. Like Nathan she has a big head and we often have hard time getting her shirts on and off. She is mostly potty trained during the day but still needs pull ups at night. She is full of energy and loves to run. She has the most beautiful thick, curly hair that looks great when mommy does it and looks like an absolute frizzy mess when I don't. She has big blue eyes and a smile to make your heart melt.

Spiritually: She is learning about prayer and Heavenly Father. When the weather turned cold and it was raining I said I hoped that Grandma and Grandpa would be safe driving over the mountains. She told me that we needed to pray right away for them to be safe. She loves scripture stories and Family home evening. She is doing well with memorizing the Articles of Faith and other Book of Mormon scriptures we have worked on as a family.

Mentally: She is extremely smart and is already on lesson 50 of the book Teach Your Child to Read is 100 Easy lessons. It is nice that she is motivated by the example of her big sister. She is excited to learn is often looking over my shoulder as I do Abby's home school lessons with her.

Personality: She is very shy in public but is learning to be less afraid with friends that we see often and in her primary class. She still loves snuggles and loves from her mom and dad. She is very imaginative and I will often overhear her talking and pretending with her stuffed animals and dolls. She is a good big sister and she gets very upset if Nathan is unhappy and throwing a tantrum. Maddy enjoys the big sister role and likes helping Nathan learn his letters during his pre-school time and holding his hand when we go to Storytime at the library. She is a good little sister too, and she and Abby are best friends. She often says, "I want my sissy." or "I want my sister to play/sit/eat with me." Maddy hates to be left out of anything that Abby has or does. She is extremely sweet and we love having her in our family. Happy Birthday to our little Maddy Moo.

Sad News

I just wanted to let everyone know that I went to the OB today and was sad to find out that our baby has died. The doctor thinks that there is probably some chromosomal abnormality for me to lose the baby when I'm so far along. We will find out more on Thursday when I get my D and C. We appreciate all of your prayers and support.

October 2011 Update

Jared finished our dining room floor. It is SO nice not to eating over carpet anymore!

This month Jared has been working on our kitchen. It took a lot of scraping and hard work to get the linoleum up, and now he is busy tiling. As you can see we've had an interesting time with moving our fridge, washer/dryer, stove and dishwasher around.

We took a family trip to Country Mercantile which had lots of fun harvest day activities. The girls enjoyed climbing the haystack pyramid and crawling through all the tunnels.

They also loved the kid-size haystack maze.

We managed to get lost in the corn maze. Here are the girls cheering that we finally made it out. Yeah!

The girls taking their first roller coaster ride. You can see them in the last car hanging on for dear life.

The bouncy house--Nathan loved the frog on it.

Some nice person gave us their extra tickets as they were leaving, so the girls were able to take an airplane ride too.

After all the rides we took a hayride out to the pumpkin patch where the kids picked out their favorite pumpkins. Abby liked the one with warts.

Maddy picked out this cute little white one. She called it her baby pumpkin (she has a baby obsession right now).

We asked Nathan to pick his favorite pumpkin so he went and sat on the biggest one he could find. We picked one slightly smaller since we had to pay per pound for the pumpkins. Jared picked up a pumpkin and guessed that it was 25 pounds only to find out when we brought it in that it was actually 41 pounds.

Our little pumpkins riding back to the van.

On the 21st we were excited to have Craig and Jessica come up for a weekend trip to go to the temple since the Boise temple is now closed. We enjoyed spending time together and playing games. The kids had fun decorating pumpkin sugar cookies with their cousin Courtney, and they were fascinated with their cute cousin Kayla.

Nathan's first time decorating cookies with us. He wasn't worried about making cute faces; he felt it was more important to have candy cover every last bit of frosting available.

Abby had a Harvest day party at school and came off the bus wearing this spider hat. She ran to us and tried scaring us all.

Our ward had a chili cook off, costume parade, and a trunk or treat. It was fun to see so many people in the ward dressed up, and the kids loved all the candy.

Jared spend the night before Halloween doing some pumpkin carving while the kids drew pumpkin faces and played with Halloween stickers.

This year Jared tried a new pumpkin carving technique where you don't scoop out the middle, you just carve the face into the skin of the pumpkin with clay pottery tools. Jared turned a giant zucchini from our garden into Frankenstein and made Maddy's white pumpkin into a happy face.

Abby wanted a traditional jack 0'lantern with a cat, so Jared carved her this.

Here are the kids all ready to trick-or-treat.

Abby was Ariel and couldn't stop dancing around singing "Aaaaahha aaahhaaa . . . "

Maddy insisted on being a baby this year so we put her in footed PJs and gave her a binky and a bottle. The funny thing is that she was my only child who as a baby would never take a binky or a bottle. She enjoyed crawling around and saying "wah wah." She insisted she couldn't walk for trick-or-treating since she was a baby, so she ended up riding around with Nathan in the wagon.

Nathan growling like a bear.

September 2011 Update

ABBY

Abby is loving Kindergarten. I think it's been good for her to make new friends and learn how to follow directions, keep a strict sleep schedule, etc. The kindergarten curriculum doesn't really challenge her so we do homeschooling with her in the afternoon. Here she is jogging in the school jog-a-thon. She surprised us by running more laps than any other girl in her class.

Her school also had a Cowboy Round-up event. Here is Abby learning how to rope a cow.

They also had carnival games. Here is Abby trying to pin the badge on the scarecrow sheriff. She managed to get the chair instead, but at least we know she wasn't peeking!

Abby was very excited when she was chosen as Magnificent Me for the week which meant that she got to be teacher's helper for the week, and mom got to bring in $40 worth of allergen-free snacks.

MADDY

Maddy was feeling left out that she didn't have a Magnificent Me poster like Abby, so Abby drew and taped together this picture so Maddy could have one of her own.

As part of Abby's homeschool I was teaching her what an archaeologist is so we had a dig in our backyard. I buried a bunch of household objects and Maddy and Abby had fun digging them up.

Maddy likes to learn and do whatever Abby is doing so she joined in making a doll for school and putting together a timeline of her life.

Here she is dressing up like a ballerina. She is very excited to take ballet this winter.

NATHAN

Nathan loves having pre-school with Mom and Maddy in the mornings. We learned about the letter F so he was excited to color a picture of a fireman and wear his favorite hat. We are happy that he seems to enjoy books more and is starting to learn more words and letters.

Other than pre-school, Nathan's other favorite time is bath time, and as you can tell here, he has a thing for hats.

Nathan with his favorite ball. If you play catch with him he will be your new best friend.

JARED

When Jared isn't at work or at home tiling the floor, he loves to be out in the garden. Here he is bringing in some of the harvest.

Jared is especially proud of his Harry Potter Mandrake-looking carrot.

MARY

Hanging in there.