Dear Family,

Am stuck with the sniffles right now - must be that time of the year. At least its so cold outside right now that hot tea and a warm blanket sounds really good. We are going to try switching to a blog following the trend of David and Daniel's families.

Yesterday I went on my annual girl's day out with my friends. We have a great time going to lunch, visiting craft stores and buying all our Christmas presents. I look forward to it for months. A cheesecake factory just opened up in SLC which we tried to hit for dinner but it was a 4 hour wait. Since we didn't get there till 8 p.m. we decided that was more than we cared to do. But I was able to get a piece of cheesecake to go. Very good. Guess I'll need to run a lot more this week!

I made fruitcake this week. The responses were pretty funny - Spencer "yum, when can I have some" Allison: "are you going to make something yummy for me to eat instead of that stuff" Jeremy: "now, why are you making this?" Robyn "please, me, me" - give her a bit and then its "yuck, spit, spit". So I am starting to feel the holidays are coming.

The weather started turning the weekend from the brisk fall days that I love to the cold, sleet in the air, winter is around the corner weather. I planted rye grass seed in the vegetable gardens to see if helps the soil. Read that it was a good idea, I will see how it works in the spring. I am having a hard time convincing Spencer and Allison that short and sandal weather is over.

We had the framers finish this week on the basement. Our electrician and Jeremy are going to start pulling wiring tomorrow. Its neat to see it start taking shape. The framers worked at night and the sound carried through the vents through the whole house.

Spencer met his new psychiatrist this week. Had to get his blood drawn which for him was a big deal. He is as high as he can go on lithium and they are going to go as high as they can on seroquil. They understand why we don't want him in the hospital again but said that he is very unstable in their opinion still. We want to max out his current meds though first before we switch to anything else. The deep depression is gone but he still has very strong paranoias and fears. They didn't want to add anxiety medication when he still has so many up and downs as they are afraid they will send him into constant rages. Some days are better than others and sometimes you can tell he knows he is acting strange. He does try half the time to really control his behavior to get our approval which is sad in a way to watch as its often a real struggle for him. School though is going well as he is able to not freak out with other kids or with his teacher. This week we going to try adding fish oil supplements which sometimes help.

On Tuesday Spencer had his big end of the year football dinner. Jeremy spent many nights and almost all day Monday working on a movie for the dinner. He had interviewed the coaches and interspersed their talking about the experience and about each kid with music and clips from the games. He went through to find a clip of each kid playing the play the coaches were talking about. It was a lot of work but it turned out really well and the kids were all excited to see themselves playing. Jeremy set up his screen and borrowed a projector to make it all work. Spencer had to really screw up the courage to go up and get his trophy but he did - had to go hide in the truck afterwards for a while but he is very proud of his trophy.

Allison is getting ready for her Christmas dance recital. They are dancing to rocking around the christmas tree. She is busy every day finding friends to make crafts with and run around. Emotions seem to run high a lot of the times - either trying to annoy Spencer and crying when he is mean to her or upset over not getting something she wanted. Thought a lot about how I need to make some changes in how I parent this week. Am trying to do better in how I ask for kids to do things and to keep a looser schedule. Seems that everything runs smoother when I do - or at least it seems that way to me because I don't stress out so much about it. Allison went and got her library card this week. She was very excited to check out her own books. Allison's school requires each parent to volunteer 40 hours a year. So we are busy trying to come up with volunteer hours. I have a bunch of Indian vests I am cutting out of grocery bags and I got to go into Allison's class twice this week. She really loves her school and has a great time with all her little friends there. She can sound out most short words now and loves to point out things she can read. It was the Primary program today and Allison did a great job with her part. She was proud that she didn't have to read it, as it was memorized.

Robyn has become a cute pill of a kid. She thinks every food should be candy and she should eat all the time. So we're working on that. She tries to throw these mini-tantrums which we try hard not to laugh at. Hopefully she will figure out soon that they don't do any good. She wants so badly to be like Allison and follows her and her friends around whenever possible. Allison likes it most of the times. At night we hear this little voice saying "allison..." They just think its funny when we tell them to be quiet.

Taylor has the same cold I do. Hmm...wonder where I got sick? So besides a constant snot face, he is doing good. I am looking to move him next year to Lincoln as well. Its either that or Linden's junior high. I need to go in to look at both programs.

It seems that day to day life is pretty busy lately. I taught today which accounted for most of my free time this week. I do enjoy teaching although I still get pretty nervous every time. But people are really good at sharing comments and many have actually read the lesson which surprises me at time. Hope you are enjoying the Thanksgiving season!

Love to all, Heather