Arabelle's 5th Birthday

Arabelle was so involved with planning everything to do with her birthday this year that it was exhausting.  We had a little family party and ate spaghetti and she wanted blueberry muffins for the dessert. 

Grandma and Grandpa came and brought her horses in a barn for a gift, and she got this nail polish, which was her only gift from John and me since we were paying for a big friends party.

Memaw got Arabelle this vet costume/kit and it has already seen a lot of use.

  Arabelle started planning her birthday in full force 6 months ago.  Since then she has made countless lists and rounds of homemade invitations.  She went through tons of ideas:  costume party, games party, angry birds party.  She finally settled on "exercise party", which I convince her could be done at the place where Jeffrey has gymnastics.

Here are just a few of the lists that she made.  Keep  in mind that I had to dictate every letter to her.

She made her own invitations, which I never would have allowed with her meticulously planned and themed ballet party of last year, but as I said, this year Arabelle needed to be head party planner.

Those are 2 that Arabelle made on the top row, and the 2 on the bottom row are ones that Charlotte made in imitation.   The squiggles are her "ABCD's".  We glued a printed insert inside with all the necessary details, and then Arabelle decorated the fronts.

That's Arabelle on the far left.  She was really excited to wear her fancy rainbow glitter gymnastics leotard.  Of course, one of her first guests asked her "why she was wearing her pajamas", but she didn't seem to mind.

 It was a super fun party.  There were 2 instructors there that did the parachute with the kids and also a fun obstacle course, and then they had time for free play.  My only complaint is that we had to be super strict with time.  We got exactly one hour in the gym area, and a half hour in the room with tables for cake and ice cream/presents.  It all felt a bit rushed, and a few kids were quite late, so they got almost no time in the gym, which made me feel bad.  I will go ahead and mention that it was $100 to rent out the facility, but I have spent close to that on home birthday parties buying lots of games/crafts/party favors to entertain the kids for an hour.  Of course, not having to get my house perfectly clean (while under stress of also planning a party) was priceless.  And as I mentioned, she only got one very small gift from us, and I really don't think she would have minded had she gotten nothing, she just wanted that party!

Arabelle had lots of guests, but mostly she played with Emery.

Emery, Arabelle, and one of Arabelle's admirers, Braxton.

Scotlyn and Valin, to whom Arabelle is apparently engaged to be married.

More guests:  Sara and Xander from church, and Jeffrey of course.

Charlotte was very pleased with the cake and ice cream.   I wasn't sure how many guests would show up, so I had 2 cakes.  The first one was planned by Arabelle:  chocolate with chocolate icing, blue sprinkles, and green frosting letters.  She wanted the letters to say, "I love to exercise!", but I did encourage her to change it to "Happy 5th Birthday!"  We also had a round vanilla cake with strawberry frosting and 2 kinds of ice cream.  We did eat over half of each cake, so I was glad I had planned extra.

The gymnastics staff had Arabelle sit on this block and she got to call up friends one at a time to sit by her while she opened their present.   Halfway through I realized it was horrible because she was calling up her "favorite" friends first and then leaving the other kids until last.  So then I just had the last 3 kids all come up at the same time, and it was wild so I wasn't able to write down what give gave what for thank you notes, which quite bothers me, but oh well.  So if we were to do a party here again, definitely would do presents differently.

I was a little worried that no party could live up to Arabelle's extensive planning and expectations, but she seemed fully satisfied with the experience. Almost all of her guests game, and she actually got some really great gifts including a card making set, a set of 8 "Frozen" puzzles, and lots of Princess Sophia items including jewelry, 2 ceramic princesses to paint, and a doll.  She has been playing with all of them.

2014 Year Recap

I decided to borrow Emily's idea and do a year end recap, since likewise this is my only form of journal/family record keeping.

This was our first year making hats for New Years Eve in the Nickerson tradition.  The kids loved it so much that it made me feel guilty for not having done it sooner.  It's just always felt like one extra thing that I couldn't handle and that the kids would never know they were missing.  For some reason it is really hard for me to be the instigator of these sorts of activities, but it is also very rewarding, so I should really try to make it happen more often.

Charlotte wouldn't really let me take a picture.

Jeffrey was very proud of his hat, which could be rearranged into several different variants.

Arabelle was also very proud of her hat, and she kept posing like this for pictures, I could tell she was trying to look really cute.

2014. 

Jeffrey began the year as a Kindergartener at Loveland Classical School and ended the year as a first grader at Berthoud El. Repeating Kindergarten was the right decision for him, and I loved LCS, but ultimately decided to switch him back to Berthoud El because the commute was really hard on me and I also wanted to be able to facilitate friendships more by having his classmates living closer by.

Jeffrey received a Wii for Christmas 2013 and has been enjoying Skylanders and Mario Kart.   He received the newer Skylanders "Trap Force" for his 7th birthday.  Halfway through the year Phillip gave me his old I phone and put some games on it, and Jeffrey really loved playing on it and kept calling it "his phone" and I kept having to remind him that it was in fact my phone, I just hadn't gotten around to hooking it up and using it yet.  Jeffrey has definitely turned into a "gamer" kid who prefers sedentary entertainment indoors.  If he's not playing video games his favorite thing is to watch you tube video commentary which annoys me and John particularly hates. I have to force him to take "breaks" from these activities and do something else, and usually he wanders around and whines that he doesn't know what to do.  I remind him of all the toys that he has: cars, action figures, legos, puzzles, art supplies.  He never wants to play with them anymore, which makes me sad.  Surely 7 is not too old for those kinds of toys!  Other times when I make him go outside, he starts to actually enjoy himself and afterwards he'll tell me how much he enjoyed himself...riding his bike, going to a park, playing in the snow.  He really just has to be forced to do anything active.  Jeffrey also started gymnastics last July and this is probably the first sport that he doesn't seem to mind, so I think we will stick with it.  At first he had a tough time because he was going right after school and he was very tired, so we switched to Saturday mornings, and now he never complains.  Again, many, many children participate in after school sports without being "too tired", but evidently Jeffrey is just an extra tired kid. 

Jeffrey likes to eat bread, chicken nuggets, pizza, soup, pasta, mashed potatoes, apples, berries, popsicles, cookies, chocolate.  Still quite picky but he eats in the school cafeteria sometimes this year which is quite convenient for me.

Arabelle turned 4 in 2014.   She began the year doing "Joy School" and ended the year at Little Learner's Preschool.  By Jan. of 2014 her Joy School had fizzled into a once a week playdate with our neighbor's daughter Emery, but that was fine with me.  Emery has turned into a real friend for Arabelle, and that makes me happy.  They really do play well together and will actually disappear, playing, for hours at a time. This is quite amazing because whenever Jeffrey has a friend over I have to constantly supervise, help them come up with things to do and intervene all the time when things go south.  Typically Jeffrey winds up in tears a couple times and I can tell he's ready for the friend to leave.  Back to Arabelle.  She started Sunbeams at church, and since her birthday is the beginning of January, she seems way older than all of the other kids in her class, but I'm sure that difference will become less noticeable over time.  Of course, she seems much older than the other kids in her preschool class as well.  I guess he's just precocious like that.  She is loving going to Little Learners Preschool and she is doing very well.  At her first "parent teacher conference" she had mastered pretty much all of the skills that they were intending to teach her for the entire year.   Her memory is quite amazing when something interests her.  She can hear a song one time and remember it.  She can write all her letters and knows her letter sounds.  I've offered to start teaching her to read, but she doesn't want to, and if she doesn't want to there is really no point even trying.  Incredibly when Arabelle started Little Learners, she stopped being so picky about her clothes and has been willing to wear almost anything I want her to. Of course she has some weird ideas about accessories and things, and I just go along with what she wants since it is such a vast improvement over the past couple of years.  Also, though strange, it is cute that she has real opinions about "fashion". 

Arabelle loves playing with her toys, but typically only if she has a friend over. Mostly she likes creating homes for her stuffed dolls and playing some sort of game with them.  She and Emery also like to play "mermaids" which from what I can tell is playing house except they are mermaids.  Mostly Arabelle likes to watch TV or do crafts/draw pictures.  Her drawing skills really emerged last year and it has been a lot of fun to see what she has come up  with.   She bugs me constantly to help her to do crafts and also to dictate spelling to her so that she can write cards to her friends and make lists.

Arabelle loves pasta, pizza, cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, oatmeal, apples, berries, and the usual sugary foods.

Charlotte turned 2 in 2014.  She is still quite the baby.  Still waking up several times a night.  Still throwing tantrums, still a very picky eater.  She has turned into a very picky dresser as well.  For months she would only wear pajamas and I just didn't push it all that much, even letting her wear pajamas to church a couple of times. Once John shoved her into a dress, and she screamed and cried and pulled the neck down over her shoulders cutting off her circulation.  Charlotte is still in nursery, she's generally pretty good about going.  The major occurrence of this year is that she is talking!  It is always a relief to me when this happens as Jeffrey had such a difficult time getting started.  She was fairly mute until July, so I was beginning to get worried, and then suddenly within the month she started talking in full sentences. She is quite the chatterbox these days, but isn't saying a few sounds, including "R"s, so her voice is very cute.  She learned how to ride a tricycle, how to use scissors, and how to draw.  Out of stubbornness neither Jeffrey nor Arabelle were willing to draw at the age of 2, so it has been really fun to see what she comes up with at this age.  She draws really cute people that she calls "guys".  They have a head with eyes, nose, and mouth and then arms and legs coming out of the head.

Charlotte is actually the pickiest eater I have had, which is saying a lot.  She likes yogurt with m&ms (which I started giving her so that I could sneak her acid reflux medicine into it), cheese toast, cereal with chocolate pieces, pizza, sometimes pasta, sometimes chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, apple juice.  Lots of apple juice.  That is basically all she eats.  I can sometimes get her to eat part of a banana, but it really worries me that she's basically eating no fruit or vegetables.


John and Bethany:
Well I am pregnant with our 4th and what we have agreed will be our last child.  I was surprised to find that it is a boy.  So far we have not been able to agree on a name, but I like Leo, Theo, and Gideon.  So we'll just have to see what takes I guess.  I can't think of anything I did last year, beyond everything revolving around everything that the kids were doing.  I continued as Activities Board Chair for the Relief Society, which is a really good calling as it doesn't require any work on Sundays or Wednesday nights.  After many years of debating, I traded in the Durango for a Mini Van and have been loving it.

John is still working at Vestas, he had some major deadlines which were requiring 80 hour weeks.  He was project manager of a major project and at this point it is a tentative success, although it's still not entirely completed, to the chagrin of everyone involved.