Another year has passed in the great state of Minnesota. The snow has come and gone and come again. The mosquitoes came, bit and (thank goodness!) died off again. And our family grew by one more little boy!
Trevor David, alias Mr. T, was born October 18. He weighed
in at 9 lb 11 oz, and continues to grow at an incredible rate. He is named
after two of his uncles—my and Stephen’s oldest brothers. Everyone loves the
baby, especially Lincoln.
Lincoln, alias Twinkie, just turned 2, and is always trying
to help. He is actually quite helpful, although I always get a little concerned
when, from the other room, I hear him sing the clean up song or say “Uh-oh!” He
continues to charm us with his adorable cuteness.
Sammy, alias Sambo, is 5 ½, and on any given day he might be
a cheetah, scorpion, mongoose, poisonous rat, dog, starfish or mouse. He loves
nothing better than to have someone read to him.
Mason, alias Edison, is 7 ½, and a more electrically minded
boy I have never seen! Stephen and I have learned to take his word when he
explains how something works, because 9 times out of 10 he is right on.
Elise, alias Belle, is 9. She has excelled in her ballet
program and also loves her piano lessons. She has been an incredible help since
TD has been born. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without her!
It seems like every stage of life that my kids have been in
has been my favorite! Being a mom is a job that I absolutely love! I stay busy
teaching them, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Stephen and I have had a
great year reading and discussing education philosophies.
Stephen, alias Dr. Jones, stays very busy with his Business
Strategy PhD program at the UMN. We’re a year and a half into his 5-year
program. He stays busy writing papers, attending classes (only one more
semester of that!), grading, and doing other research projects (I think he is
currently working on 5). I swear his vocabulary grows by at least a word a
day—things like ‘explicate’, ‘exogenous’, ‘heteroscedasticity’,
‘heterogeneous’, ‘paucity’ and ‘endogeneity’. I just nod and smile.
Living in Minnesota has been a great, but different,
experience. For one thing there are NO mountains. The kids and I still get
excited when we see a hill. The winters here really are cold! But in this state
of 10,000 lakes there are many, many ice skating rinks. The lakes all freeze
over, but the rinks that we frequent are simply parks with a flooded field.
They have official hockey rinks, too. The older 3 kids are pretty good on
skates now, and even Lincoln has got up on his double-bladed skates!
Living here puts us within a 7-hour drive of Nauvoo, IL, and
we visited there this past summer. We spent 2 full days exploring and
participating in the many activities they have there. We visited the temple,
and it was wonderful to be where some of my ancestors sacrificed so much. We
are definitely going back!
We really love our house and especially yard! We joke about
the kids playing in the “back 40”; we really have so much space to just play! I
have a huge garden—too huge, in fact! I’m considering planting wild flowers in
half of it this year. The kids love playing “Forest Children”, “Indian”,
“Emergency” and a host of other pretend games in the back yard.
If you’d like to keep track of our homeschool adventures, you might
like to check out our blog:
1 comment:
I loved reading your letter. What a blessed year you have had. I am still impressed with your bed :)
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