My Dearest Jonas,

Oh Jonas. Where do I even start with you? How about in the middle? I really do worry about the middle-child syndrome and hope we are doing okay with you. I think a huge side-effect of you being the middle child is that you whine a whole lot. A whole lot. Especially this past week and so that is really on my mind right now. But Miles and Emmy both demand so much attention (in different ways), that perhaps the way you grab our attention is through whining. A whole lot. Did I already say that? So I'll try and be more attentive and see if that helps you whine less?

But even with your whines, I am totally in love with you. You're funny. You make me laugh out loud and that is one of the best things a person can do. Keep it up buddy.

Sometimes you mean to be funny and silly and goofy, and other times it just happens on its own. You're a delight. You make up all sorts of words. One that I can think of is "niggle." It's some sort of creature. At first it was faster than a T-Rex (and whoa did that make Miles mad). The latest is that it has a body like a tiger and horns like a rhino. Or something like that. You are very creative in your use of words and stories. One night, while camping this past year, we all took turns - once the lights were out - to tell stories. Mine was pathetic. Miles' was pretty predictable. Ben's was half-decent. But yours? Yours took the cake. I can't remember the details, but I do remember that it went on and on and on. You'd be a great author. Fiction, of course.

You continue to this day to mix up your words. They are always oh-so-close to the right words, but just not quite. It's hilarious. Just today you were calling a girl "Fall," when her name is really "Autumn." Oh Jo.

This past summer you actually learned to ride a bike without training wheels. Miles was a little too hesitant to be able to do it, but in your carefree way you just took off. Literally. You'd go zooming down the sidewalk, then turn onto the grass for a safe crash-landing. You did so well and really loved it. But we put the training wheels back on because you're a little too fast for us - especially when you haven't learned the concept of stopping. But this coming summer I have no doubt you'll be biking it all over town.

Several times this year you cut your hair. You. It was just little snips here and there - nothing too bad. (You even snipped a little of Emmy's hair.) But it just never seemed quite right since you scalped a tiny section of your hair. So we ended up buzzing it all off. You cried and cried afterwards, but I think it was just because you were tired of sitting and getting your hair cut. Once we left you alone for "rest-time" (a Sunday), you literally came out of your room a new man. I mean, a new boy. Seriously. You were giddy, jumpy, and couldn't stop rubbing your hands all over your head. You made it look so delicious that Miles decided to have his curly-locks cut, too. Now your big eyes are bigger than ever and you are still just as handsome.

You started a couple of "schools" this fall. We are now doing "mommy 'n me" school and that has been a lot of fun. I remember the first day you were just so excited, so excited to begin - and so excited! that i had gotten you your very own notebook. You just sat and wrote the letters of the alphabet. You are an eager student. You also do a "preschool" once a week with 4 other boys in our ward. It's fun and I think you have a great time!

One of the most vivid visual memories I have of you this past year happened at swimming lessons. You and Miles were together in a class. I had some trepidations the first time I went with the teacher. Mothers do, indeed, have intuition. Well to make a long story short - the teacher put you on a bar to hold on to (it was in the 4-feet deep end), and went to help another kid. Well you had never gotten a hold of it. So you were head under flailing in the water - I started loudly talking, "Get Jonas!" While I ran over to you. You got out and then barfed. It was pink. We had had a strawberry smoothie before class. I want to barf just thinking about it. You/me/Miles were done with lessons after that. For now. We'll do it again with more/better supervision.

Your smartness continues to shine brighter and brighter each day. A lot of it comes from your brother Miles, it's true. You learn a lot from him. And from The Letter Factory. And a tiny bit from me. You know all your letters - well all their sounds at least, and most of the names of the letters. You have even sounded out simple words on your own. As well as spelling out a word or two correctly. Your memory is very good and impressive, too.

You're a crazy swinger on our downstairs circular swing. You're quite talented on it, if I say so myself. You've come up with all sorts of wild and silly tricks. You like tricks and always want to show me some jumpy-twisty move that you just created. It's great.

But most of all you are great and we have great adventures with you.

I love you oh-so-much, Jonas.

love,

mom.

Quote of the Week - a Jonas Classic

So we were just walking back home after dropping Miles off at school today. And Jonas says to me,

"I love fall."

Well that seemed normal seeing as it was in the teen-degrees and cloud-cover - so pretty nippy. But I decided to ask him anyways, "Why do you love fall?"

"Because she's the new girl in Miles' class."

Chortle, chortle, laugh, snort, hehe.

me: "Jonas, her name is Autumn."

The Other Morning

This is what I found the other morning when I went in to the boys' room. I had gotten Emmy out of her bed and I saw the boys' light on. So I went in and saw this:

So cute.

Of course Emmy had to follow her brothers. :)

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday Happenings

Life is going too fast.

On Saturday evening we went to the Parade of Lights. I love this parade - it's big and bright, of course. :) There are tons and tons of trucks, cars, floats, trailers, horses, bands, etc. - all lit up with christmas lights. It's fun - and also cold. After an hour we had to head home because 1. we were cold and 2. I had to work that nite. But fun times.

Sunday. Fast and testimony meeting. Miles decided he wanted to go up and share his testimony. Ben asked him what he wanted to say (since a couple months ago he wanted to get up and tell people that smokers are bad, etc. Needless to say, we had a FHE lesson on what a testimony is and isn't - and that smoking is bad, but not smokers. . .) and it sounded okay. So Miles went up - alone. Ben felt that if Miles was going to do it, he was doing it by himself. I wanted to puke I was so nervous. But he got up there and said something like this, "I know this church is true. Sometimes we go to other churches and I know they are true, too." And by other churches he meant Grandmas' and Grandpas' churches. :) So cute and precious.

Also, Jonas gave his first talk in Primary. He had spoken before in Primary when he had the "Spotlight Bag." But he talked so goofy and so silly and so Jonas that is was pretty unintelligible and the kids laughed at his silliness. So he did not want to talk again because "I don't want them laughing at me." Oh sweet boy. So I told him that if he spoke normally nobody would laugh. And you know what? He did a great job. He's a sweetie.

Monday. The only time we could go and get our Christmas tree. (Check here and here for our past adventures.) I think this is our 6th year of chopping down our own tree. It was quite a snowy day and the roads were snow-covered, so we decided to try a different area that was closer to home. After one road was too scary for the wimpy-mom-with-kids-in-the-car, we turned around and went to a different spot. It was Perfect. The perfect place for our kids to run and play in the snow. They loved it. The had a "snow home" there and slid on the sled and, of course, ate the yummy snow. The only bummer thing? The dumb batteries we brought for our camera didn't work - they were brand new but, after further investigation, are only for "low-drainage devices." Apparently a camera does not fit that category. I was bummed. But we really had a great, great time.

Here are some pictures we did get today:

Getting ready - like father like daughter? Too cute. And, yes, Ben ok'd me in posting this picture. (P.S. Check out our AMAZING stockings handmade by my AMAZING sis.)

There she is - our Christmas tree! Compared to our others, she is huge! The tree is also a different variety of pine, a lower-altitude one (pinyon, perhaps?) and so it's just different. I really love it; it's fun.

Trying to get a decent non-flash picture with the lights on the tree. (you can click on this one for the bigger version)

My sister found these great 3-D image glasses that when you look at Christmas lights, a picture appears - like snowmen, santa, and snowflakes. I love them! And so do my boys. I think they spent about 30 minutes playing with them. They had to have all the lights off in the house except for the christmas tree lights. Super fun.

And in the middle of this crazy fun I got to work a 12 1/2 hour night-shift where I did not get to sit down for more than 1 minute for the first 6 or 7 hours. Blech. Ben taught in Elders Quorum. Ben wrote Jonas' primary talk. Meals prepared. Belated laundry started. And all the happenings that come with this thing called Life.

Dear Santa x 3

When I asked Emmy what toy she wanted for Christmas she indeed said a "baby doll."

:)

I loved all of Miles' expressions: seriousness, happy, and so excited! Here is what he wrote: "I wont a brd rel! Red prind bug. Statu biy Miles." What he meant: "I want a bird, real! Red pretend bug. Santa bye, Miles."

Cousins

Kissing cousins.

Emmy feeding Rhett.

Eating breakfast at Grandma's little kids table.

I so love this boy! And his mom, too, of course. But man that Rhett is hilarious. Such a cutie. This is his polite "no" face. When you ask him to do or say something and he doesn't want to, this is what he does. Every time. It's the best.

Cute, cute, cute, cute.

Saturday

Saturday we were lucky enough to go to the Bountiful temple and see our friends from Colorado sealed to their 2 newest children. It was a sweet experience.

After that we had planned to take our children to the Kangaroo Zoo - appropriately named as all our children did for the next 2 hours was jump and jump! The place just has tons of bouncy things for the kids to jump and slide on. It was a lot of fun.

Then we headed home just in time to watch the BYU v. U of U game. We breaked in the middle of it and went to an early dinner - so we could watch the last half of the game. It was pretty fun. BYU didn't really impress me, however. We were gone when they played decent, apparently. Oh well, they won. Whatever.

Another fun day. My pics at the Kangaroo Zoo stink, but I still want to "document" it.

This is to show how steep the slide was! Ben was literally scared of it. I'm serious. He made me do it once to see how scary it was. I wasn't scared. Neither was Miles - which is surprising as he is always our more-cautious child. He probably went down the slide about 3 dozen times? Emmy even demanded that she go down by herself.

Jonas was a little timid, but still went down a few times.

I like this picture.

And there goes Miles!

Friday

Friday morning we lucked out with having the warmest morning of my entire stay. We did family pictures for my parents since their 3 kids were all there, as well as their 4 grandchildren. It was a real sunny day - which was good for warmth, but bad for looking in to the sun. The kids were funny. Emmy topped it all by falling face-forward in a mud puddle and getting her entire front-side soaked and muddy. Ben cleaned her up good enough to get some more shots, including the ones below.

Here we are. I, of course, don't like how I look, but overall everyone else looks really great. And check out Miles. Too funny.

Another pretty good one. Although Miles is chewing on his sweater - we couldn't stop him. It turned out to be an okay experience and nice for the kids to wander about outside.

Later in the afternoon we all went swimming. The kids LOVED it. Emmy all of a sudden turned against me and would only go to Ben or Aunt-E. Silly kid.

Derek flew out that evening and Erin and fam. had a red-eye flight. It was great to be all together again!

Thanksgiving

Erin, Chuck and I started our morning with a fun 5K+ run (I say + because it was a little more than a true 5K) in Park City. It was super fun! The entrance fee was canned goods - loved that (thanks for the cans, mom!). We all had a good, brisk, morning run.

Then we came home and just hung out (well my mom was busy the entire time getting everything ready) and helped a little. Then we had family over - about 26 in all, I think. It was great. A lot of people, for sure, but it was good to see some of my family that I really hardly ever see anymore. The kids did pretty well and played a fun game of playing turkeys "Gobble, gobble" and then getting chased back into the room by the T-Rex (aka, Jonas). Awesome. That night we all just hung out and watched The Office. It was a grand and lazy evening after a grand and busy day.

Before the race. Erin made us these great shirts - we got quite a few positive comments. They even say our names on back. Which was funny because as Erin and I were running we heard some other racers say, "Go Erin and Emily!" We thought we had run in to some friends, but nope, just literate runners. :)

And after. So fun! I especially loved the hot chocolate at the end. Perfect.

Here is the kid-table. The true kid table. I sat in the "middle table." No longer a kid, but not the oldies either. A good place to be. Aren't they all so cute? (Rhett was somewhere else? Either the high-chair or running around.)

Wednesday

Both my brother and sister were at my parents' too, so it was some good times to be with everyone. Wednesday we went to Wheeler Farm and visited the animals. One of erin's best-friends met us there with her 2 little girls, so we had a lot of fun. After that, we went over to my Grandma Phyllis' house to eat our snack lunches. Then it was back home. Here are some Wednesday pics:

When we got to the farm we were practically charged by these birds. Holy scary - for the adults at least. Miles loved it, as well as the other kids. My dad hated it! He stayed pretty far away. I warmed up a little bit. :)

Cute boy on a tractor with Scary-looking Hand. :)

My kids atop and inside a tree-house.

Checking out the mama pig and her piglets. Oh Rhett was SO devastated when we left the pigs.

The group - well those of us 62 or younger. :)