Dear Friends and Family,

One of my favorite days of the year was yesterday. I get excited for this day months ahead of time in a quite ridiculous way. Several of my long time friends and I get together for a day of Christmas shopping and eating every year. We visit those non-kid friendly crafty stores, get fudge at Gardner Village and hit a few practical toy shops at the end of the day. I get a lot of cute things for Christmas and have a ton of fun catching up with my friends. Long suffering Jeremy rides herd on the kids with a patient smile and by the time I arrived home at 11 everyone is out and the house is cleaned up. What a great day!

Snow hit us yesterday adding to the holiday feeling. We walked to tithing settlement at 9:30 this morning and the kids all ran back inside to grab coats. Earlier this week we were wearing t-shirts but I think that was the last gasp of autumn. I made fruitcake Tuesday. Tried out two different recipes. I will post my favorite next week when we have a taste test. Spencer and I have to be the only people I know under 50 who like fruitcake but it always seems part of the holiday season to me.

Monday Spencer and I (with the always present Robyn in tow) went up to see a pediatric gastroentologist. She think Spencer's reflux is gone and he can go of his prevacid. Yeah, one less pill! We are going to wait till spring when we are past croup season to try taking him off it. Spencer was excited by the visit because he learned he had grown another inch so now he is 5 foot 1 inch (107 pounds). I felt a little bad for always riding him about his weight when his height and weight matched up perfectly at just above the 100 percentile. According to the growth charts he should be my height at age 12 - that made his day!

Jeremy had a tougher day than usual Monday as he had a filling at the dentist in the morning and than a photo shoot with VERY unhappy little boys that afternoon. But he redid them Tuesday along with another family and got some great shots then so all was well. Speaking of pictures I printed out some of our family ones this week and put them around our house. I have the ones of our girls sitting on my dresser. Makes me smile every time I see it. Jeremy was a bit stiff int he legs this week after playing volleyball but Friday night he and Spencer headed to the church gym for some more. Spencer is learning how to play volleyball in P.E. right now and Jeremy said there were some very, very patient adults on Spencer's team. But he came home happy, tired and proud of himself.

Robyn and I got to drive Spencer and part of his class on a field trip this week to the space center. Part of a school that has been turned into a space mission stimulator. Spencer thought it was so awesome. He was in charge of sending out space probs and analyzing the video feeds.

Allison lost a tooth this week. And for the first time the tooth fairy remembered the first night before she woke up! There has been some creative "helping" to find the tooth fairy money in the morning in the past. As well as some great apology letters. Allison finished up the Little house in the big woods series this week. Her friend Alena has taken her on some big play dates Friday and Saturday as Alena's family plays while the dad is off hunting. So Allison went to the Mayan, the aquarium, Wendy's, the nickelcade. So she had a good weekend! She and Robyn are truly "frenenemies" lately. Wednesday night they will not stop poking, bugging each other at dinner. Then while I am gone for 20 minutes to pick up Spencer from karate, Allison gets them both showered, in their PJs, combs their hair and washes all the dishes from dinner. She must have been cruising. Made me realize how old our kids are getting.


Thursday night Jeremy and I went to a fireside at the church. Our babysitter came down with a cold so for the first time every our kids were left to babysit themselves. I was really nervous. They were thrilled to watch a movie on a school night. I was more worried that they would get caught up in the movie and Robyn would be free to go create some mischief undisturbed. They were fine though and it made me think how Spencer is almost 11 and how I used to hire 9 and 10 year olds to babysit for me all the time while I would visit teach etc.

Taylor was doing great for the first part of this week. At school they learned he would laugh if given pineapple or lemon pudding to eat. And he has been doing well drinking from a camel-back on his own which is huge. You have to put it in his mouth but then he would be able to do it. He came home Thursday morning from school because his seizures were just knocking him out. Friday we went up to Primary's to have his VNS adjusted. Am hoping it will help and he will be back to enjoying life again. One of his aides made his a muff for his hands. The middle part is lined with sheepskin and they stick a tactile type toy in the middle for his fingers to play with. So his hands stay out of his mouth, they stay warm and he is busy entertaining himself with things to touch and manipulate. I thought it was a stroke of brilliance.
Spencer and Allison are currently playing airplane with Robyn. Looks very precarious but they are all giggling. Love to everyone, Heather