Fall update

My girls remind me regularly that I need to update our blog. Yes, I do. It's been a crazy few months. I don't think I've even downloaded pictures off our camera since my last post. Can I even find the camera at this point? Here's the overview:

Oct. 18: Sierra's 9th birthday. Emma was so sweet and put together a surprise party for her.

Oct. 29: Emma's 11th birthday.

Oct. 31: Halloween

Also Oct 31: Moved out of rental house while Ryan was away in Chicago at a business meeting.

Nov. 1: Went to Pocatello to see my brother who was in town for 2 days before deploying to Iraq this month.

Nov. 2-20: Stayed in another rental. Ryan was over at our new place every night until 1 or 2 am trying to get it livable.

Nov. 19: Paisley sick with the stomach flu.

Nov. 20: Ready or not, here we come. We moved into our new house, on the condition that the plumbers turn on hot water for us that day, which they did. But the electricians shut off the circuit to the heat and we didn't have heat until Sunday. Thanks goodness for the wood-burning stove.

Nov. 20: Sierra, Anya, Christa and Mom up all night with the stomach flu.

Nov. 22: Lexi and Ryan up all night with the stomach flu.

Nov. 24: My sister Karianne came over to help me get a few things unpacked.

Nov. 26: Thanksgiving, with 3 more sisters here with their families and my parents, here at our new house. They all went home with the stomach flu as well.

Nov. 30: We actually closed the mortgage on our house.

We are grateful to be here, but still LOTS of work to be done (a front door before Christmas would be nice). Yes, my husband is a compulsive perfectionist, who believes that if it's going to be done correctly, he has to do it himself. Lots of boxes to unpack as I figure out how to arrange things.

December 4: Girls played piano in Christmas recital

December 5: Christa performed a Mozart and Mendelssohn concerto in a solo recital.

So, that's been our life for the last couple months. Kind of crazy, but good crazy. I am getting a bit tired of "Mom, do you know where . . . is?" Some days I feel like I spend 1/2 the day just finding things for people around here. It's nice to know I don't have to move again for a long while. Paisley is into the full blown 2 year old stage, complete with tantrums and screaming fits, alternating with complete cuteness, like when she points out the Christmas lights with a big "WOW!" Anya loves her preschool, and lots of playdates with friends. Sierra is so excited about making everyone's Christmas presents and started Irish dance this fall, along with Emma and Anya. She also had a great soccer season. Emma is really enjoying playing viola in the school orchestra, and is really picking it up quickly. Lexi has the lead role in the school play coming up in February, had an awesome cross country season, and is on student council. Christa is also in the school play, also on student council, played on the 9th grade varsity volleyball team, and is still keeping up with violin, piano, and her AP Physics class. Plus she's officially old enough for driver's ed, although that will have to wait a couple of months.

Now to think about Christmas, if I can find any decorations.

I'll try to find my camera to add some pictures of all this excitement! Happy December.

Pictures

Birthday Girl

Yellowstone

Yellowstone

4th of July with the Freis

Dr. Cole and Dr. Cole

Shoshone Falls

Paisley dressing herself

First Day of School

Christa and Friends at Music Camp

Is summer over already?

I can't believe how this summer has flown.  I've been really negligent on posting, partly because Christa wanted a Facebook account, so I started that, partly to get a glimpse of her life from that point of view, and I can only keep up with so many online posting things at a time.  Here's a brief update:  We moved Ryan into his new office.  He's been working out of our home for the past 5 years since starting his own practice.  Having him work at home has been a great thing for our family in many ways, but it was time to make the transition back to a regular office space.  One major reason being he needed to hire some additional support staff and I can't have a couple of administrative people working in my house.  We were able to hire my sister, who has worked for our billing office for quite awhile, and convince her to move to Boise, and we found another girl with some medical office experience who should be a good fit.  I have been working down at the office (about 12 minutes down the hill) trying to get the new people trained in and things running smoothly.  I have full time help at home with the girls for 10 more days, and then I get to really be a stay home mom again.  It will be strange to not be in the day to day of our practice, though.  Though I have plenty to do to keep me busy at home, I'll miss being more of a part of Ryan's world.

After putting out our For Sale By Owner on a whim, we had an offer on the house within 2 weeks, and closed a month later.  We were able to find a rental here in the neighborhood, since our new place won't be ready for move in until sometime mid October.  We put a lot in storage, and in many ways that has greatly simplified things.  It's a lot easier to pick up toys when the number that can get dumped out is limited.  

Meanwhile, Christa and Lexi went to Girl's Camp.  Then we took Christa over to Harrington State Park (Eastern Idaho, North of Rexburg) for an amazing two week music camp.  We took the whole family and spent an extra day in Yellowstone and checking out Bear World.  We were reminded that Paisley really does not like being in the car for longer than, say, 30 minutes at a stretch, and she doesn't sleep in the car for more than 30 minutes a day. 

July 22-25 Ryan had a conference in Cle Elum, Washington (an hour east of Seattle) so he and I took Lexi and Emma over to that, and enjoyed a couple of days relaxing and biking in the great outdoors.  We came back from that to a new hire at the office to train in, a record case load for the week, and a house to finish packing and moving.  We had some wonderful help with the move and getting the old house ready for the new owners, and it is great to have that behind us.  

I think I'm pretty much done with getting ready for school, except for finding shoes and a backpack for Lexi.  The girls are very excited about their new teachers and classes.  Christa just found out she made the varsity 9th grade volleyball team.  Lexi will be starting the junior high, and just got her very own cell phone.  Emma is going back to regular school after doing homeschool for last semester.  Sierra is always excited about everything and she'll be starting her new soccer season this week.  Anya is a bit sad that most of her good friends will be in kindergarten, and she gets another year of preschool.  It will be good to have the extra time with her, though.  Paisley is just a busy busy bee.  Her favorite words are Mommy, More and Shoes. And we added 4 more new kittens a month ago, but we lost 3 with the move.  They won't stay at the new place.  

One more week of summer freedom then back to the school routine!

Book Recital

On Saturday Christa and Lexi will have a their Suzuki "Book" Recital.  It's Suzuki tradition to have a recital performing all of the works in a particular volume when those pieces are mastered. Lexi completed Book 3 cello about 3 months ago, and Christa is finishing Book 8 Violin, so we are hosting a performance for them at Dunkley's at 5:30 pm on June 20th.  You are all invited to join us to celebrate their year of hard work and the joy of music in our lives!

One more thing I should have added on my list of things I've learned this month:  

-Small busted women are in the minority in this day and age, as evidenced by the difficulty in finding a bra that fits.

Catching up

Well, I guess I haven't posted in awhile, so I'll fill in here.  This past month has been a bit crazy around here.  After Christa's birthday, we had our anniversary (#17), Ryan's birthday (#41) and lots of end of the year concerts, socials, soccer parties, field trips, and so on.  Things have calmed down a bit since everyone finished school, with flying colors I should add, and we are settling into some sort of routine, if you can call it that. Ryan has a new lab building that is ready this week, so we will be moving offices over the next bit, and trying to train in some new secretarial staff.  We also put the house on the market.  We won't actually be ready to move out until October most likely, but we figured we should capitalize on the summer traffic.  Right now we just have a For Sale By Owner sign out front, but we have had one person come look already.  We'll see what happens.  We have lots of changes going on, and while they are all exciting ones, it's stressful in some ways, too.  A few things I've learned in the last month:

-14 year olds should not be hand-washing priceless family heirloom bowls

-High density spray foam insulation exacerbates asthma

-8 pizzas are too many for a soccer team pool party

-I must know where Paisley is at every moment-if I can't hear her, it means trouble

-How Spock and Captain Kirk became friends

-Sierra doesn't run into things as often without the filter on her glasses

-Emma would rather hang around the boys 

-Hot pink nail polish doesn't really come out of carpet, and the bottles break when dropped onto tile floors

-Love is a choice

-Cats can be pregnant again 8 weeks postpartum

-My husband can still make my heart flutter

-I don't remember very many people from high school

Until next time . . .  

Giving

I just listened to this great talk recently given at BYU.  It's about 30 minutes but well worth the listen.

http://www.byub.org/talks/Talk.aspx?id=2998

Naming Contest

So we need a name for our new little place in the "country."  We have been referring to it as "Cole Cottage" but it's not really sticking for me.  I am thinking more along the lines of something-Farms.  Just thought I would solicit nominations.  We'll come up with some great prize for the winning entry-you can come over and have a BarBQ or something.  Thanks for your input!