Happy half birthday

Soren Soren is a wonderfully happy baby. He has a smile for everyone (very unlike his big sister). He loves to smile at any child who pays him any attention. He is finally starting to take longer naps, I think it is adding to his better mood of late. He has really taken to baby food (I've been making my own) and loves to eat those little puffs. He already tries to grab the spoon so he can feed himself. It gets to be a bit of a mess but he actually gets a lot in his mouth. He can never get enough of his brothers and sisters, but especially his brothers. Ethan can always get him to stop crying by clapping and he loves to fall asleep on Jacob. If he falls asleep lying beside Jacob he scooches over to be as close to him as possible. It's really sweet to see my boys being best friends.

He has totally mastered the art of the Army crawl. He can get anywhere in the house except up the stairs. He sometimes changes it up and does the inch worm. He sticks his butt in the air and pushes forward. He gets on his knees and elbows but not hands yet. I think the crawling is maybe a week or 2 away. I'm sure if I'm happy about that. He loves being barefoot. Any time he has socks on he pulls them off before I can even get him to his carseat. If he's fussing a lot and he is in pj's if I let his feet loose he gets happy in seconds. I don't have the usual statisics since his dr. appointment isn't until next week. I have high hopes for it even though he has been sick with the same cold for about 2 months. I'm starting to get a little concerned now.
I love having this little boy in our family and I know we would feel lost without him.

November update

I've never had so many comments before. I wrote the title meaning to come back to it but being a single mom right now seems to be sucking all my time. So here is the long over due update for November....

Jacob...
He is still loving ballroom more than scouts or anything else. I'm so glad that he seems to have found the thing that makes him happy and he enjoys. I hope he'll enjoy it for many more years to come. He also got his first report card from the 4th grade. Four A's and a B plus. He also paid his tithing for the first time. He was very proud and loved giving his envelope to the bishop. He also has now saved enough money to buy a Nintendo 3DS. I am very proud of him.

Amara...
Amara was invited to participate in a before school club called SharkNets. There they teach kids how to have good sportsmanship, how to use their time wisely, how to do their homework, and to do speed cup stacking. She has loved every minute of it, she didn't even mind getting up at 8 am every morning and staying at school until 3:30. In November she continued on her perfect spelling record. She loves school and plays school with her friends. She is really looking forward to her 8th birthday (even if she won't be getting baptized until April). She bought this outfit with her allowance so she would look super cute for her Christmas concert at school and her birthday.

Ethan...
Is loving all the tutoring he is getting outside of school. He has learned so much from his private tutoring with Corianne. His sounds, letters, and speech has improved better and faster than I ever could have hoped for. He also loves the reading tutoring at the library. I think it's all starting to make sense to him and that he is learning it for a reason. He actually asks everyday after school if it is a tutoring day. I think Tuesday is now his least favorite day of the week. No one had as much fun on vacation as Ethan. He played his little heart out with his older cousins and had a really great time talking with Great-Great Grandma Lillian.

Keira...
Has the best preschool teacher ever with the cutest ideas. She made this turkey hat and wore it for 2 days until we left for vacation (then it fell apart). She now knows all her sounds through i. She is so cute when she does the actions. Keira is also turning into quite the student. Everyday after school while I'm working with the older kids on their homework she gets out her Hello Kitty (because eveything is Hello Kitty) coloring book and says she is doing her homework. She goes page by page and makes sure she colors everything on the page.

Soren...
Soren gets bigger eveyday and does something new everyday too. I'm not going to get into too much detail since I plan on doing a 6 month update on him too. We bought him this walker since our last one was destroyed by the older kids. He totally loves the colors, sounds and toys it has. He has yet to get it to "walk" but then I'm not really ready to have him all over the place yet. Not that that keeps him still. He has discovered and mastered the fine art of the "army crawl". He could give some serious lessons to Marines. I love that he is such a happy baby.

Jake and Jill...
Jake didn't have to travel for work the entire month of November. We were very happy to have him around so much but he did leave on Dec 2 and we haven't seen him since and don't plan to for a while. His work has been going really well and he seems really happy with what he has been working on. He just got his pilot's physical, so I guess he's working on planes. Jill has been busy doing nothing but laundry and cleaning house. It's not easy getting ready for a 9 day trip and then having to wash the laundry of a 9 day trip. I'm having real issues getting it all folded and up the stairs. My holiday diet seems to be working. So far I have lost 8 pounds so that I could feel like I could eat whatever I wanted for the holidays (if I want pie, I want to eat pie and not feel guilty or gross) and then really start losing wieght for the new year. I only gained back 3 pounds (good pie) at Thanksgiving and I have already lost 2 of those pounds. I'm very pleased.

Portland day trip

While in Washington for Thanksgiving we decided to take a trip over to Portland to visit with Great-Great Grandma Lillian. We had a great time! When we showed up she had a full ham dinner with potatoes, 2 kinds of veggies, fruit salad, a veggie tray, and rolls waiting for us. Her daughter Linda was also there. We had reminisced quite a while about Grandpa and Lillian kept trying to get up to take home pictures and knick knacks.

After dinner we went to stay at our hotel. The kids were dying to get there so we could go swimming. We got all dressed in our bathing suits and went to the pool. We had fun splashing (we had the whole pool to ourselves). Soren took a little while to warm to the pool, this was his first time swimming. Afterwards we got hot chocolate from the lobby. We went swimming again in the morning. During breakfast we noticed a family wearing a BYU shirt so Jake went over to talk to them. It turned out to be Natalie Ashton's older sister. We were even in the room rght next to them. It's always so amazing how small our world really is.

After leaving the hotel we went back to Lillian's where she had ham sandwhiches waiting for us for lunch. The kids had a great time playing with legos and fiddle sticks and loved showing Grandma all the things they made. We stayed until about 8 pm and then we went back to Washington for Thansgiving at my brother's house.

All in all a great trip. Lillian is doing really well but is looking to sell her house soon so she can move closer to her daughter. She misses Grandpa a lot. We got some great pictures of Grandpa when he was young man and some great pictures with Lillian. We sure love Lillian and wish we lived closer.

Thanksgiving

We went to Washington and Portland for Thanksgiving. We left as soon as school got out on Friday and drove all night getting there at 4 am. After a day of sleeping we had a great visit. We went shopping and were able to go on a double date and see Breaking Dawn.

We took a day to go to Portland (to be posted later).

Helping Aunt Brenda making pies. The girls make chocolate, cheesecake, 2 pumpkin, lemon, cherry, and dutch apple (made by my brother).

too much Home Alone

playing with Aunt Brenda's hair

Fun with cousins

We left on Saturday for another long drive home but this time we decided to go during the day. We had to stop every half hour for bathroom breaks. I think we'll go back to traveling at night.