Christmas Letter 2011

Getting our Christmas letters in the mail is not one of my strong points.  So, her it is for those that follow our family.

Dear Friends and Family,

   Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  We hope that this Holiday season brings joy, peace and good health to you all.  This time of year is a great time to reflect  back on the year and prepare for the new one.

   We still love our house and enjoy living next to Great Grandma Edington.  We didn’t get the landscaping done like we had hoped this year but I am sure one day it will get done.  We are just grateful we have a place to live that is our own.

    The girls are doing great! Courtney is three and loving life.  She is home alone with mom during the day and enjoys that time.  She does miss her sisters when they are at school though.  She is excited that someday she will get to go to school also.  More often than not she wants to bring a lunch and backpack in the van when we take the girls to school so she can pretend she is going to school now.  She thinks that just about any word starting with the letter C has to be her name.  She is a very talkative, happy girl and a joy to have in our home.

  Shaylee is seven and in second grade.  She enjoys school for the most part and is getting better on her reading all the time.  She has made a big improvement from the start of the school year.  At the end of last school year, in May, Shaylee became our first child to break a bone.  She got knocked of the bars at school and fell and broke her collar bone.  Sad to say, we didn’t realize it was broken for five days.  She would favor it and complain of it hurting but we thought she had just strained it.  It was when she screamed out in pain trying to pull up her pants that we decided it might be more serious and had her checked.  Luckily it healed pretty quickly.  She did have to miss out on playing baseball for the first time though, maybe next year.  Shaylee is a wonderful child and very tender hearted.

   Kelsi turned nine this year and is in fourth grade.  Fourth grade has been a new experience for her.  It has been a little harder than what she has been used to but hopefully it has been good too.  They do things quite a bit different in fourth then in the lower grades.  She has a homeroom teacher and a different teachers rotate in and out of the classroom teaching different subjects. Overall she enjoys school, especially the social aspect of it.  She loves to read, draw and color.  Kelsi is growing up fast and is a wonderful helper around the house.

   Another interesting tidbit, both Kelsi and Shaylee learned to ride their bikes without training wheels this summer.  They are both doing very well with it and love riding them now.  They even rode them in the people parade the Town of Thatcher put on for the 4th of July.  It was great fun!

  Jeremy is still working hard to provide for his family.  He is doing a great job.  We have been so blessed by his job and are grateful that he has it.  On those days that may be a little tough or long we just have to remind ourselves how blessed we are that he has such a great job.  We are also blessed that he does find time to spend with the family also.  He has started having daddy daughter dates with each of the girls and it is an exciting night they each look forward to.

   Cindy continues to be blessed to stay at home and take care of things there.  She has found a little time to help out at the schools also.  She gets to help with PE, PTO and Box Tops.  It has been fun for her to get out and be a little more involved at the schools.

  We are truly grateful for the year we have been blessed with.  Not everything that happened this year has been wonderful but much of it has.  We are thankful to our Heavenly Father for helping us along the way this year and we look forward to celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  What a gift and blessing He is and what a gift it is to have you all as friends and family.  We love you and wish you the best in 2012!

Love,

Jeremy, Cindy, Kelsi, Shaylee and Courtney Hunt

Odds and ends of November

   Here are a few odds and ends of the happenings of November.  We had several busy weekends in November.  The first weekend we headed to Pomerene  for my nephew Matthew’s baptism.  We are so proud of him and it was great to see everyone. 

   We got spoiled the next weekend also when we got the chance to go to Tucson with the whole Edington family, all 33 of us, to see the Wizards of the Rings (A fun take on the Lord of the Rings with jokes, singing and dancing.) at the Gaslight Theater.  If you have never been to the Gaslight Theater and you like that kind of theater I highly recommend it.

   All the cousins where so excited to see the Gaslight had extended a special welcome to the Edington family on they sign outside of the entrance.  Some of them even had to get a picture with it. 

  These are just a few fun shots of the girls outside the theater.  Nothing like posing in a wood cut out to look like someone else.  So fun!      Another fun thing the girls enjoyed was the night we let them eat dinner under the table.  I know probably not the cleanest thing to eat off the floor under the table, but they had a blast.  Luckily no one ended up sick or anything.  I guess you could say I am just trying to boost their immune systems.        In November, Shaylee became our first child to have braces.  She had to get them on five teeth on top.  She had a cross bite that needed to be fixed.  With the dentist and orthodontist suggestions, we decided to take care of it sooner rather then later.  Luckily she wont have to where them for very long.  She will probably get them removed at the first of the new year.  She has been a real trooper about it.  She gets very nervous about dentists, orthodontists and doctors but she was so brave during the whole thing.  She was excited to pick the color of the bands on them.  She started out with pink and then got red for Christmas. 

   Courtney has discovered a new joy, body art.  I guess it is a phase they all go through at one point or another.  She came into me one day and said “Look at me, I’m funky!”  Silly girl. Love her to death but we are going to have to nip this one in the bud before it gets out of control.  If you look closely at this second picture you can see she drew all over her face and even her eye lids.  She is my child who thinks that every time mom is putting on makeup she needs makeup also so she can be “beautiful.”  She is a particularly big fan of lipstick or gloss.  That has also been know to end up all over the face.

   In November we also had a big yard sale.  We had a bunch of toys that we where growing out of.  One job the girls had was going through the stuffed animals they have and picking out the ones they could live without.  I thought this picture was a fun picture.  This is probably only a third of the total stuffed animals they had before the yards sale.  We got rid of quite a few but I wouldn’t mind getting rid of a few more.  I just have to convince the girls of that. 

  This is just a silly random picture of a tomato that started sprouting.  I don’t remember ever seeing a tomato have it’s seeds sprout from the inside out.  It had been sitting in this bag in the kitchen and just started growing.  Thought it was kind of weird and interesting. 

  I know some of these things are kind of random but isn’t that the way life is.  You never know what you get from one day to the next.  Especially if you have kids.  They make life crazy, tiring, frustrating, funny, fun, but most of all a great joy.