Saturday, November 26, 2011

Aloha's First Tree Lighting

My Dad had heard that Aloha was going to have it's first ever tree lighting ceremony today so we decided to go check it out. We think it was well attended. Santa showed up on a fire truck, they had live music going on, and they did a raffle. An hour into it Santa came up and turned on the tree lights.
The best part was the raffle. My brother won a turkey. He's a vegetarian. Shane had just been telling me how he never wins anything in a raffle. As soon as they mentioned they were giving away turkeys he knew he would win. Sure enough, they called his number. The turkey is now in our freezer :)



Someone looks just a little hyper!

My brother, Shane. So sad, such a great picture of him and it came out a little blurry.

The grils all bundled up nice and warm!

Nathaniel and Jonathan and a friend from school.

Warming up at DQ afterwards with a cup of hot chocolate. Yum!!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Six months!


Meredith even got her shots yesterday a few hours BEFORE these photos were taken. She let out a couple really mad screams when she got poked, cried for about a minute than was all smiles at the nurse by the time the nurse was leaving the room :) This "little" girl now weighs 20 pounds and is 28 inches long! 20 pounds! I figured she'd only be around 18 or so. It's all those solids she's been eating. She loves her food :)
I still have yet to see Meredith roll over. She is working on sitting up all by herself. Her only problem is she gets excited and tries to kick her legs out which throws her backward. So, I just make sure I'm sitting behind her to catch her so she doesn't hit her head on the floor. She will spend more time on her tummy now. The great thing is she's moving and doesn't even realize it. The only thing is it's backward. She pushes herself up on her hands so much she ends up pushing her body back away from where I set her. Too funny.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A Late Happy Birthday to Elizabeth!

My "little" girl turned 9 last month. NINE! Wow, where has the time gone? She's growing up too fast. She got to celebrate by having one of her best friends come stay the night. The following day we picked up one of her other best friends and we all went to a Halloween Carnival at Jenkins Estate. The three girls had a really good time.
This past year has been a good one for her health-wise. So good we forgot at one point to make one of her CF appointments. Oops. Last year we were in there so much that they all blurred together. This year she's only had to go for her quarterly visits. Her sinuses are even doing well and for once we aren't looking at a surgery within a year of the last. Nov 30 will be one year since her last and at her last check-up (Oct I think) she was totally clear still! Yay!! Hopefully she will have another year of great health.
We are still doing school at home. Elizabeth is like a little sponge, she's doing great. Her writing has improved quite a bit. I had hired a yound lady over the summer to help with light housework and found out that she was also tutoring another child in writing so I asked if she'd tutor Elizabeth. That helped so much and Elizabeth remembers what she learned with Rachelle. So grateful for that cause I personally hated writing and trying to teach my kids to love it has been a huge struggle.
Elizabeth is very much enjoying being a big sister to Meredith. She's very cute with her and is always asking to hold her, which helps me out when I'm trying to get things done.
She is now taking piano lessons. My friend recommended Kristine Parker. She teaches in a very different way. Her students don't even learn the actual notes until year three yet Elizabeth is already playing very simple songs on the piano. She's loving it. Miss Kristine gave her students a challenge. They need to learn 15 songs by ear. It can be any 15 songs they want. The first person to 15 wins the big prize and then each student who finishes after gets a smaller prize. Pretty sure Elizabeth today will be the first. The assignment was given two weeks ago and the very next day she sat down and taught herself 5 songs. Within the week she had learned 10 all together. This past week she learned another 5. I'm glad to see she enjoys it so much and look forward to seeing/hearing her progress.

The following is her first recital piece. Had to laugh as it's so short but she'd only been taking lessons a few weeks at this point. She sat down and started so fast I didn't get the first few notes.