Ashley - Ashley is diligently working on her piano. She practices an hour every day and her progress is impressive. She has passed me. I can't even sight read her performance pieces. She gets to compete in two competitions this year and she is working hard to perfect her technique. I am proud of her and I love hearing her play. She is also working hard at gymnastics and is hoping to make the Eagles team in the spring. She goes 4 1/2 hours a week and has made a lot of progress. She has overcome a lot of her fear of beam and can do a great vertical handstand and dismount. She is closer to her kip and can do a round off back handspring. She continues to excel at school and came home this week with a perfect report card. Her teacher likes to tell me that if every student were like Ashley her job would be easy. She loves advanced math. She still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up, but I'm pushing for her to be a dentist. She loves stuffed animals and spends a lot of her time designing rooms, games, and other activities for her animals. She is a great big sister and all three look up to her. I love having her around.
Katelyn - Katelyn is excited to get her tonsils out in February right after her birthday. They have tortured her for years and she is finally ready to do it. She is preparing for her baptism in March and is extremely excited for her Amazin' hamster birthday party we are having in a few weeks. She is full of energy and joy. She does everything with a skip in her step and I find her upside down on her bed reading at night. She is excelling at gymnastics and has been promised a move-up to the level 5 competition team in the spring. She will practice 12-15 hours a week and seems happy about it. She can do the whole bar and beam routines and is working hard on vault and floor. She is fun to watch. She came home with a perfect report card, but is suffering from boredom at school. She never wants to go and complains often about how boring it is there. We are discussing, again, a jump to 3rd grade. It's not what I think is best socially, but her teacher is pushing for it. We will see what happens. She gets her social at the gym, so it may work out. I love this girl. She loves games of all types and has the gift of winning. She is a great sister and is the planner of the bunch.
Justin - Justin is a lot of fun right now. He loves playing basketball, kinect, games, and doing whatever his sisters are doing. He is up for whatever game they have planned, even if that means he is the prince. He is so great with Mia and is very sweet with her. He is so social and needs people around him at all times. He is into swimming right now and is getting braver in the water. He earned a date swimming with dad yesterday and was so nice to invite Mia along. He is working hard in school. His teacher called me in to tell me that he was the only kid in all of her kindergarten classes to score perfectly on the dibbles testing. While I have a lot of faith in Justin, I was extremely surprised. He struggles more in school then the others and we have been doing school for at least 30 minutes everyday. I was very proud of him and in the last couple of weeks he has made incredible improvement. He is reading fairly well and I now find him on his bed reading himself books....the first time I saw it I almost cried, since I was thinking he was going to struggle with school forever. Phew. I'm relieved.
Mia - Mia quit ballet so she could start gymnastics. She is already excelling and has her sights set on team like her sisters. She loves school and I am trying to figure out what to do with her next year. She misses the kindergarten deadline by 1 week and is so so ready to go. I may end up sending her to a longer pre-school to fill that school need. I wish she could just start kindergarten. She is a lot of fun. She is the girly girl of the family. She still only wears skirts and is into frilly things. She needs lip gloss on and sparkles sprayed in her hair. She loves her bitty baby and she and Justin spend hours making rides and games for this baby. I love having them both home with me in the morning. Mia loves me. She still cries when I leave her places and tells me that she just loves me so so much. Everyone needs a Mia around.
Hans is busy with work and scheming for the future, as usual. He started a basketball league at Lifetime and is loving it. He is still busy with Elders Quorum stuff and does a great job serving those in our ward and neighborhood. He still manages to find time to spend time with me, volunteer at the school, and take the kids on dates. I love him. He was nice enough to ride his bike next to me while I ran this week.
I am so so busy right now, but I like it this way. It seems like I am either restless or over scheduled. I am in the middle of marathon training, which is tiring. I ran 15 miles yesterday and felt every step of it. I am excited to run in Boston, but all this training is a bit much. I am still teaching my yoga classes at Lifetime and having a great time with it. January at the gym is always packed and I love teaching to an over crowded room. I also started working at the Endoscopy lab and have been training there 20 hours a week. It dropped to 10 hours last week, but goes back up the next few weeks while I finish the training. I love that I'm using my education and it's been a challenging experience to try and remember how to be an RN again. Luckily it's all coming back and the people I work with are extremely friendly and helpful. In the midst of all this I decided to change our house. We repainted the girls' room and re-decorated. They love it and so do I. Since I liked the change of the paint so much I decided to paint the rest of the house. It's been stressing me out. I think it's just poor timing on my part. Despite the schedule we still get time to spend as a family and it's this time that I love. I love being busy enough that I appreciate the time we do have.
The end.
