Goodbye 2015 and hello 2016! The year of 2016 has started off pretty busy for us. Josh is finishing up his last week at Transystems and will start a new job on Monday! With a lot less travel, woohoo! We are so excited to know that we will have him home this summer and I'm personally looking forward to some more family fun when it gets warmer. It will be so nice to not have to cram our entire to-do list into a weekend at a time. We are also really looking forward to having more time to work on our gardening skills....as long as the rain isn't so intense this year.
Last Sunday, on my 32nd birthday of life, I was baptized at the First United Methodist Church in Kearney MO. Josh and the kids came up front with me and watched as our Pastor poured water over my head. The kids reactions were priceless and I was so thankful to have my little family stand there with me! We then became members of the church and are starting to become more involved by volunteering to be greeters this year. Isla and Aiden will get to greet with us and I think they will really enjoy that!
Isla has started the second half of her kindergarten year and brought home her first progress report last week. She is doing excellent and had all I's (independent) on the skills they assessed for Q2! She still loves art and loves bringing home Jan Brett books from the library. She is doing so well reading and it's amazing to listen to her work through words and sentences on her own. She has started learning her routines for dance. After long consideration, we enrolled her in performance team. This team has a couple extra performances at a dance extravaganza and then an actual competition in addition to her regular recital. She enjoys dancing and works hard during class so I'm excited to see her perform :) She is also doing Girl Scouts this year and she is always excited to go and learn. She had to stand up and give a quick presentation this week on birds. She was so nervous but she made it through!
Aiden is loving preschool and I think he would be willing to go every day if he could! He loves his teachers and I was beyond thrilled the day they told me that he was such a joy to have in class and hoe much he loves to sing along to the music and that he was just a happy little guy! I think my heart exploded with joy that day! We were a little worried with how he would do and it did take him a couple weeks to adjust but we got there. His preschool focuses on learning through play and it fits him perfectly. He has even made a couple little friends that he will talk about at home. He gets really excited to show us his artwork and he was super pumped that he got to wear PJ's today and eat chocolate chip pancakes. It's almost time to enroll him in the Pre-K program for next year!
Evan is growing like a weed and wants to be bigger than he is! He has definitely developed his own personality and has started moving on from the baby things to big boy things. Over the holiday break, we separated the boys bunk beds and took down the crib. I cried like a baby because my baby isn't a baby anymore! He loves his new bed but we are still working through some challenges with having both boys in the same room and both able to get out of bed. The cool thing to do right now is stand up and take all of the clothes out of a dresser drawer. He has a check-up next week so we will have his official stats on hand. He can show you were his head, nose, eye, ear, mouth, belly and toes are. He can also "honk" your nose which kind of hurts sometimes. His answer to most questions is "Nooooooo" but he might actually mean yes and if that's the case, he'll follow it up with "Peeeeaaaasssee". He still loves some good snuggles and even more so if there's a blanket involved. He demands independence but will still ask for help when he knows he needs it. On Sunday, he pushed a chair to the counter, grabbed an apple and then sat on the living room floor and ate it. He learns a LOT by watching Isla and Aiden...not always a good thing!
And that should bring us up to speed! I'd like to say I'll go back and fill everyone in on the month of Christmas (because we really did celebrate for a month) but I make no promises. It comes and goes in the blink of an eye! And life doesn't slow down and let you catch up sometimes :)
