Anna is 13

Anna turned 13 on Dec 7, and Lucy turned 1 on Dec 13. It's been a poignant reminder of how my oldest and youngest daughters are twelve years apart, and how I have a teenager and a baby at the same time! December is busy with our two birthdays, but I'll always be grateful that Anna was born three weeks early, and Lucy two so that their birthdays aren't right on top of Christmas. We're glad Anna got better to celebrate her birthday. She got a horrible case of strep. I don't know if she had the flu too, but she could barely lift her head from her pillow for eight days, and she missed six days of school and several violin rehearsals, lessons, and performances that all fell during that week. She had missed so much school that we didn't get to skip it on her birthday to go shopping with her mom and Grandma Thompson. We'll go another time. I'm glad she was there because her friends decorated her locker and sang to her during lunch, and she came home very pleased. Grandma and Grandpa Dastrup drove up to Ogden to have a fun birthday dinner with us. Anna decided to cut out sweets for a year, so she didn't want a birthday cake. We think it was brave to make this decision the day before General Conference (and homemade cinnamon rolls). Many people, if they made this commitment at all, would have waited until they had gorged themselves on cinnamon rolls to begin their goal. She hasn't gone off sugar completely. She has jam on her PB&J sandwiches, fruit, and syrup, so she requested french toast made with homemade challah and buttermilk syrup, bottled peaches, and hash browns. Sarah took a permanent marker and wrote "to and frum" on all of her presents. The last picture is of her teaching Grandma and Grandpa Dastrup how to do Together Forever, which is how Thompsons end their family home evenings.

Halloween 2012

So Halloween isn't my favorite holiday, but once the school parties, costume parades, and potlucks are over, and everyone has eaten dinner and is dressed in their costumes, I do enjoy the evening of Halloween. The kids love being dressed up, and there is a pleasant, community feel as we Trick or Treat and say high to neighbors. Other adults seem to have so much fun dressing up that Travis and I say, "We really ought to try that some time." But it never lasts past that night, and in the end, we just aren't much fun. 

This Halloween the weather was warm and lovely. Anna didn't want to dress up--or at least she wanted to want to dress up and always wished she had after the fact--but she had fun carrying Lucy most of the night. Lucy clutched her plastic pumpkin the entire night and had as much fun as everyone else--until the end of the night. Sarah was sprinting the first half, and ended up in the stroller the second. Michael has been dressing up in his costume for months. Our neighbor is a pilot in the Air Force, and he lent Michael his real captain's hat and aviator sunglasses. 

A Crawler and a Climber

This was actually Lucy's first climb up the stairs. She made it up both of the wooden steps that go from our living room to our kitchen, and then crawled through the music room and kept going up the carpeted staircase. I wish I could peak into that little mind when she realized she could do it! This is our first house with stairs, unless we count the basement stairs in Minnesota, but we could block those by closing the door. Lucy's siblings have been extra vigilant for a few days, but I can tell their concern is wearing off. Instead of running to rescue her themselves, they yell, "Mom, Lucy's upstairs again."  

Cougar Pumpkin

For the past two Halloweens we have carved pumpkins with Mike and Heather Thatcher. Heather is Travis's cousin, and she and her husband Mike are our dear friends. They are serious pumpkin carvers with all of the right tools and books full of templates. They also have incredible patience to let each of our kids design their own pumpkin and go at their own pace. We were so sad to learn that Mike's mom died suddenly the week before Halloween. We can't imagine such an unexpected loss like that.  There just aren't words for it. We're thinking of them and looking forward to resuming our tradition next year. We had pumpkins for Anna, Michael, and Sarah to carve in addition to all of our fun Cinderella pumpkins and jack-be-little pumpkins that we grew in our garden. Sarah and the other young neighborhood kids keep a baby paired with each big pumpkin. I love it. I didn't have the courage to tackle three pumpkins without Travis's help, and he didn't return home from work until 7:30. We decided to just carve one altogether using Travis's design. We Cougar fans have to make a statement in our Ute stronghold. Travis tries to not be a contentious fan, as a member of the bishopric and a doctor with a variety of patients to relate to, so this is a strong  public statement for him. Inside our home there is no tempering his loyalty to the Cougars  

Sailor Girls

I never could have dreamed that some day I would have two little girls who could wear Anna's size 12 month and 4T sailor dresses at the same time. We had to take pictures. The last picture is Sarah sulking about something. I don't remember what, but I think she was a great sport. She loves this little sailor dress and would wear it several times a week if I let her. Sorry, linen isn't for Tuesdays. 

Anna and the Neon Atom

Anna came home on Thursday and said that she needed a 3-D model of an atom by Monday for 7th grade science. The fence project is still all-consuming, so it was a pretty amazing Dad who helped engineer this model of a neon atom. I think it took about eight hours, plus a trip to the store for spray paint. We have lots of ping pong balls thanks to Anna's science project last year about the volume of ping pong balls and how many degrees of pi you need for an accurate measurement (I'm already lost trying to explain the project--can you feel Travis's influence in the design and execution of both of these projects?). Anna learned a lot about atoms because Travis insisted they don't simplify the shape of the orbitals by making them all round (to represent spheres) when some of them are really dumbbell shaped. It was a late night, but I think Anna learned a lot. We weren't thrilled when she came home, pleased that her teacher wanted to keep her project--what were we going to do with it?--and somehow it slipped that she could have drawn a model of an atom. 10 minutes?

Both Anna and Michael have been excited about Rick Riordan's latest novel, which is the third in a series they have each been reading. You should have heard the squabbling over who got to read it first. Michael hit me up to acquire it a long time ago, and somehow negotiated a promise that I would purchase it the first day it came out. Anna claimed she was just being good-natured and trying not to harass me, but she 1) wanted to read it more, being a bigger and earlier Rick Riordan fan, and 2) was more worthy of reading it first for a long list I won't include. We finally settled everyone down and I took a picture because I thought it was so fun that my 12 year-old and 9 year-old were clamoring to read the same book. I thought we had settled on Michael reading it first, but you can see that there's still some tension.

Michael won, but then he suddenly gave in and Anna disappeared up to her room with the precious book. In an uncanny imitation of his big sister, he described her likely behavior if he was taking too long to get through it, or putting a slight crease on one of the pages. I don't know if that should have been allowed, but harmony returned and Anna did read it awfully fast. Michael was free to read at his own pace. Now whose bookshelf does it live on? I should have thought about this a long time ago when Anna was reading series and Michael was just looking at Transportation Bibles (what I call his oversized picture books of vehicles of all kinds). I bought a lot of books for her that he is now interested in. I insist on sharing, but it's hard when despite his best efforts the books don't remain in pristine condition. I understand both of my kids. I love my books to remain beautiful, but despite my best efforts, they always show use after I have read them. I'm so grateful that my dad and Angie still allow me to borrow their books. Somehow they each read without creasing the spine or even slightly bending a page. I try so hard, but how can you read a book without actually opening it? 

Picnic with Grandma Thompson

We have been slaves to the enormous project of building a vinyl fence with our two neighbors. We're doing all of the work--including a new mow strip--except for placing the posts. If you roll your eyes and think, Well, that's all the work, you haven't pulled out our old fence posts or tried to dig trenches for forms with a neighbors as fastidious as ours. (He's a great guy and we're going to have the best-looking mow strip ever.)We've had some great family help, which we deeply appreciate, and Travis has spent every spare daylight minute working on it. He doesn't have a lot of spare daylight minutes, so that means there haven't been bike rides with the kids or playing catch with Michael or autumn hikes  . . .. BYU ballgames are being watched on the DVR late at night, his desk has becoming an embarassment at work, and so on. I realized that our only outdoor autumnal family activities are going to be working on the fence, so I've got to get my myself and my kids on some walks, hikes, picnics by myself, while my poor husband works (indoors, in the dark.) My mom came up for a day last week and we took Sarah and Lucy for a picnic at Glassman Pond, which is a tiny pond about a half-mile from The Condo. We took Michael fishing there once, and just ask him, we haven't been back to fish. Not because it wasn't fun, we just haven't gotten to it. Like everyone else, I love the changing leaves. Fall is my very favorite season, and we had a lovely picnic.