TressaBlog

As usual I didn’t get any Christmas cards sent out. I keep thinking I will do it every year, and it keeps never happening.

Kade started kindergarten this year and he absolutely loves it. He has one of the very best teachers on earth. She teaches because she loves it, and I think she spends a good portion of her paycheck on the kids. He is always coming home with books to keep, games she has put together and laminated, etc. We sure love her. Kade continues to love to be Mommy’s buddy and likes to go shopping or do projects around the house with me.

Tayla is now in 2nd grade and is doing great. She loves to read, and help Kade with his reading. She has lost several teeth this year, and loves getting money from the tooth fairy. Although she is tall, Kade is trying to catch up to her pretty quickly. She is quite the little social butterfly and is often found with the other little girls in the neighborhood. Tayla joined a local youth choir this year, and reminds me every Monday that it is choir practice. She is in the prep choir, and thoroughly enjoys it.

Brinn is in 4th grade and is growing up so fast! She has started to learn to do her own hair, for which Mom is very excited. She is turning into an avid reader (Fablehaven books have inspired her the most). She continues to be a big help around the house and is very responsible. She also joined a local youth choir for which she auditioned and made it into the concert choir. Her choir is very talented, they sing in a 3 part harmony. She is an alto, so she is learning to harmonize. It is a bright spot in her week. Her piano teacher moved, and we haven’t found a new one yet although we need to since we now have a real piano!

Gavin is in 8th grade and is as tall as Mom and Dad! He has been the deacons quorum president for most of the year, and does a great job in his leadership role. He continues to read constantly and work on writing his stories (he has many chapters written). He is a treasure in our family, and I am afraid we take him for granted too often (babysitting, mowing the lawn, etc). He seems to be growing about an inch every month or two. Keeping him in clothing and shoes is a real struggle! Skinny and tall are not a good combination for buying pants apparently!

I have three callings at church at the moment - choir president, ward chorister, and member of the enrichment board. I find myself with free time every afternoon while the kids are all at school. But, I tend to take naps all too often during that time since we are expecting our 5th child (a girl) the middle of March. Yes, I know, that will make 4 of our kids with birthdays in March. What can I say? It is a good month for us. I love being able to volunteer in the kids classes at least for another few months. I’ve been sewing, sewing, and sewing some more. I started making photography accessories (straps and camera bags) and that keeps me just busy enough to enjoy it without getting too bogged down. I also started quilting this year and have thoroughly enjoyed that.

Eric continues to love his job. We are hoping that they will move his office to a building the church just bought a few miles from our house. But, it will probably be a year or two before that happens. He is serving as the ward Executive Secretary and spends a lot of time in that calling. I think that he is actually busier than the counsellors - seriously! He still has a fairly regular “Geek Night” here at the house when all his geeky friends can get together and do geeky things like hacking XBox’s, fixing assorted computer stuff, and playing games. He continues in his quest to convert all of the kids into geeks as well. To that end he and Brinn and Gavin have been playing D&D together. He also has them creating their own websites.

Overall it has been a great year, and we are excited for the new year and the new addition to our family. It is driving the kids crazy that we won’t tell them the name of their baby sister. But, that is a secret until she is born (hopefully around March 19th).

We love you all and we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love, The Wadsworth’s

I just read Holly’s blog about her fun weekend, and all of the fun things she got accomplished. Whew! So, I decided to blog my weekend.

Friday I met up with some friends at 5:10 to carpool to go see Twilight with 500 other moms (we rented out an entire theater). I have the same feelings that Holly did about it. We were talking the whole way home (we went to a theater in downton SLC).

The Cullen’s house was COMPLETELY wrong. I totally saw it as being an old fashioned white Victorian house with a whole wall of windows in the back. What was up with the modern crap? Especially since they were supposedly returning to this house after a long time, the modern thing wouldn’t have even been built the last time they were in Forks. KWIM? Ugh!
I was so sad to not see Alice and Bella’s friendship more. I wanted to see Alice getting Bella all ready for the prom. Oh, and what was up with the tennis shoe that Bella was wearing? She was supposed to be in a heel for heaven’s sake!
Jasper was just way too weird. I mean he is supposed to be a little on the edge, but his power wasn’t even talked about or shown. Too freaky.
And, what was up with Edward climbing up a tree like Spiderman? He is strong and everything, but his fingertips do not have little hairs that can climb vertical stuff. It would have been more realistic for him to jump from branch to branch upwards, although it would probably have been harder to do.
But, I still enjoyed the movie, and I am glad that I went.

Friday Gavin had a scout campout, so he was off doing his scouty things. Saturday morning Eric, Brinn, and Tayla went to the church to help clean up the grounds with people from all 3 wards at the building. Meanwhile I got Kade ready for a birthday party, got the present wrapped, and dropped him off. Then I went to the grocery store one more time.

Saturday afternoon we decided to put up some Christmas lights since everything isn’t covered with ice and snow yet. Our house is not easy to put lights on, can I just say? I think this is the first year in this house that we have actually put any up. Yeah, I know that is pretty pathetic. But, our super duper tall ladder doesn’t even reach the top of the house even opened out straight. And, Eric isn’t thrilled with the idea of laying on his stomach head down hanging off the edge of the roof to put lights up. And, I don’t blame him. So, we did some lights at the entry, above the garage, and we put a ton of lights on the pine tree next to the garage (looks like a big Christmas tree). Later I will put some huge outdoor ornaments on it. We stopped as it got too dark and too cold to continue as Brinn’s friends all showed up for a “late night”.

We do late nights instead of sleepovers at our house. So, they all showed up at 6 pm and left at 10:30. They ate pizza, played DDR on the big screen, giggled and squealed their little hearts out, and watched Kung Fu Panda. I was starting to droop by 10:00, so I was happy when 10:30 rolled around and they all left. I was in bed within 10 minutes! LOL Since I wake up every morning at 3 am (yeah, that is when the baby is awake too, aren’t I lucky??) it makes for a long day. I usually can go back to sleep, but I’m already getting conditioned to not get a full nights sleep every night.

I’m not doing any more Christmas decorating, cause I have to have all my fun Thanksgiving stuff out since we are hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year. Tomorrow I will be sewing Christmas presents in the morning, then I am volunteering in Kade’s class in the afternoon. After school the girls have choir practice. Brinn has an extra long practice (2 hours instead of 1) because they will be recording their CD of Christmas music. Tuesday I am trying out a new cleaning lady (my ongoing saga of finding a good one is ridiculously long!). And, then Mom and Dad and possibly Becca arrive Tuesday evening sometime. Then on Wednesday Holly and Brett and Mindy and BJ arrive. Yay! It will be a house full, but what could be better?

I am so glad we got our old fridge working again. It is jam packed to the gills with 4 turkeys, 8 dozen eggs, 6 gallons of milk, 2 lbs of cheese, bags and bags of veggies, 10 pounds of butter, 3 pounds of cream cheese, lots of Pillsbury crescent rolls, biscuits, fruits, etc. I need to clean out my inside fridge to make room for stuff inside. But, it is a good thing! I am so excited that I can hardly stand it. Yay!

The kids were all out of school for Halloween, so we carved pumpkins in the afternoon. I took the tops off and then let the kids do their thing. I was very hands off this year. Although, I did help Tayla and Kade carve the actual faces out of their pumpkins. But, they did their own designs, and cleaned out their own pumpkins.

Then, since Daylight Savings didn’t change until after Halloween it wasn’t pitch black outside at 5:30. Yay! Still, as it was we took pictures a little too late, so they are pretty grainy. Oh well, you get the idea. Here is Brinn as Professor Sprout with the gray hair and all.

Here is Tayla as Dolores Umbridge aka The Freaky Pink Lady. Do you just love Tayla’s expression? She was going for evil. LOL And, of course we had to include Smoky in the pictures since Dolores Umbridge absolutely loves cats.

I think the favorite costume of everyones was Kade’s though. I did an exact replica of Eric’s costume from last year. I even used the same patterns (thank goodness for costume patterns that they make in both adult and child sizes!). The material is a tiny bit different, but that is all. They even have the same wig in adult and child sizes. Too fun! By the time Eric got home from work it was pretty darn dark, so I had to use the flash. Aren’t they the cutest Professor Snapes that you have ever seen? Oh, and take note of Kade’s candy bucket. It is a cauldron, because Snape is the potions master.

Today was my doctor’s appointment. My doctor offers a “sneak peak” to determine the gender a month before they do the official ultrasound. Well, that was today. Here is a cute picture of our little munchkin.

Of course right after my appointment I had to go to the fabric store to get some material to make a little blanket. So, what colors did I use??

Hmmmmmm

Was it blue?

Was it pink??

So, when I heard that Letia was having a girl, I knew I wanted to make a blanket or a quilt. I ended up making a quilt. I finished it today, and I am in love. It is so cute! I want a girl so I can make one for me. Of course if I have a boy, I can still make a cute one, but isn’t the girly version to die for?

There are strips of material running across the quilt with their raw edges showing. So, when I washed it they got all frayed and shabby. So fun! And the big and not so big rick-rack - yummy! The back is the fun green with white polka dots. And I love the pink candy cane stripe for the binding. I used two textured materials for two of the stripes. One is the nubby fleece like Granty’s favorite blanket but in white and the other is second from the bottom in pink. It is a stripey feeling chenille kind of material. Ah, heaven in a blanket!

Not that you can see it in the picture (it is actually MUCH cuter in person, yah I know you don’t believe me) but I did a free quilting motion and put a running chain of 5 petal flowers down the two biggest stripes of background fabric. So cute! And, I did a pretty good job of it (for being the first time I have done it!) if I do say so myself.

Ok, so how badly do you want the quilt Letia? Bad enough to come for Thanksgiving??? LOL!!

Monday evening Gavin called up to me to say that the freezer didn’t seem to be working. I hurried down and found my food almost all defrosted. Ugh! I threw away what I couldn’t salvage and put the rest into the chest freezer in the basement. We packed ice (from the grocery store) into the fridge to try to keep the food at a somewhat decent temp. To add insult to injury our vacuum cleaner died the exact same time! I swear we had just used it a few days before and it was just fine. This time, the motor was throwing sparks. Eric took it apart to see if he could fix it. Nope! It was just dead. So, Tuesday morning he worked from home for a few hours until the stores opened. Then we went and bought a new fridge and a new vacuum cleaner. Ugh! We decided to save $65 in delivery fees (which may or may not have gotten our fridge to us that day) and get the fridge ourselves with our suburban. It just barely fit with all of the seats taken out and laid down. Then when we got home we had to get it out and into the house by ourselves without any dolly or anything. We had to take the doors off of the fridge to fit through the front door, but it finally got in. Then we had to let it sit upright for a few hours before we could plug it in. So, I took Eric to the train and then I went to Ikea to get a dresser for Kade.

Why a new dresser? Well, he was using a plastic piece of crap. And, since we are moving kids around, we figured it was time. After brainstorming lots of options we finally decided on one. We moved Gavin upstairs into Kade’s room. Moved Brinn over to Tayla’s room. Brinn’s old room will be the nursery and Gavin’s old room in the basement is now the playroom with all of the toys in addition to the guest room.

I just hope things are done breaking for the time being. Ugh! On the bright side I like the new fridge a lot better. It actually matches the rest of the kitchen (white) instead of the black beast that had been dominating the kitchen. The kitchen actually seems a lot bigger with the white one in there. Tonight we are going to move the old fridge out into the garage. A friend told us that we might be able to fix it, so we figure we will try (it might be a cheap fix). If it fixes then we will just have an extra fridge in the garage which will be really nice. Especially with the large crowd coming for Thanksgiving.

On October 12th we woke up to snow. The kids had to go and dig out all of the snow clothes and go and play. There wasn’t a ton, and it didn’t last too long, but the kids had fun while it lasted.

My snow angel.

The snowball maker.

The beginnings of a snowman.

So, I was at the quilt store getting material to make a quilt when Mindy called to say that they had decided to stay in Oakley. Yay!!! That means they will most likely be here at our house for Thanksgiving. And, they are close enough we can get together for a weekend every once in awhile.

Grandpa and Grandma Loveland will be here for Thanksgiving dinner. We’ve invited DeeAnn and crew as well. Becca will be here, and possibly Brandon. Mindy and BJ and kids will be here. Soooo, now we need Letia and Dan.

Favorite color: orange

Favorite food: chicken

Favorite dessert: doughnuts

Favorite thing to do at school: centers

Favorite movie: Curious George (prompted by Brinn)

What animal would you be if you had to pick: lion

Favorite book: any book about dinosaurs

Best friend: Dallin

Favorite holiday: Halloween

What do you think will be the most fun about being a big brother? “Big? No! Little!”

But, what if you were a big brother? “To do service”

Again, I am using a picture from the workshop a few months ago.

Favorite food: macaroni and cheese (good thing Gavin makes it for her a lot!)

Favorite dessert: doughnuts (hmm, do you suppose that is because there were some doughnuts sitting on the counter for dessert for FHE?)

Favorite color: light blue

Favorite holiday: Halloween

If you had to choose an animal to be what would it be: shark

Favorite subject in school: math

What do you like about being a big sister: “I like to help Kade when he is hurt. I like to make him laugh.”

Favorite friend: Brynnlee

Favorite movie: The Last Mimzy

Favorite book: Jack and Annie series of books