It's that time of year!

Life is great! I haven't blogged enough and I need to do it more often. I don't want to forget about the cute things that my kids have been doing. I'll give a short update on each kid.

Max is 6 1/2 and so dang cute. He has Mrs. Wininger this year (1st grade). He is so very thoughtful and tells his teacher every day that he loves her and he doesn't want to leave school. He also tells us that every morning before he gets on the bus. He LOVES school, but he gets really sentimental all the time. I love that about him. He is my sweet sensitive boy.

Max's teacher always tells me how smart he is, but the thing I love to hear most is that he is thoughtful and sweet. He loves his best friend Mikey more than anyone in the world and they had their first friend sleep over last night. They are so sweet and if we listen to them when they think we aren't, we can hear them telling each other how much they love each other and what best friends they are. They are so dang cute and we feel so lucky to have such good friends next door.

Max loves playing games on our phones or on the Wii. He loves cereal and granola bars and hot chocolate milk. He loves playing with his friends and is so excited for Christmas! He wants an iPad, but I don't think Santa can afford that.  He loves doing experiments and is always making us chuckle!

Max just lost his first tooth. His other tooth was growing in behind it so it had to be pulled, after it came out he said, "Well hello tooth, We meet again!" Then, while we were at the store later that night, he couldn't stop telling everone he saw that he lost his tooth. He is NOT shy and will talk to anyone. He also just won an award for dance choreography and the whole school got to see his dance at the Reflections assembly. He thought he was pretty awesome!

Gracie is so sweet. She has had some really sassy moments in her short life but she is starting to grow out of it. She is very particular about what she wears and how her hair looks. She recently decided that yellow is her favorite color now, not pink. Too bad we only have pink clothes.

Gracie loves mermaids and horses and obsesses about having long golden Rapunzel hair. In fact, she wants to be Rapunzel mermaid. She loves healthy food like grapes and strawberries, but she also LOVES treats. She can be bribed to do almost anything for a treat. Good thing she thinks that oatmeal and yogurt are treats!

Gracie just started dance this summer and at first she loved it, but then she didn't really love the outfits I was picking out for her. At her Christmas recital she did the first count of 8 and then watched everyone else dance. She says she loves it, but I'm starting to think she loves the sucker that she gets at the end more than anything.

Gracie just had her 2nd eye surgery in October. Everything seems to have gone well, but we will have to keep watching her eyes for a long time.

Sophie is so sweet. She started walking about 2 weeks before her 1st birthday. She got her first two teeth at the same time on July 4th and her 3rd tooth just popped through last week (almost 5 months later)! She has been fussy lately, because of her teeth, but she has always been an awesome sleeper and goes down around 6:30 or 7 for bed and wakes up at 8. She has been my best sleeper by far!

Sophie is wise beyond her years. She is thoughtful and caring and always notices if someone is sad. She also gets nervous when people wrestle. She likes to harrass her brother and sister and, if they are laying on the ground, she will tackle them and giggle. She also loves music and dancing. Anytime the radio is on she starts bopping up and down. She loves her hot dogs, oatmeal, yogurt, grapes and animal crackers. She also loves macaroni and cheese. She loves to color, which is so strange to me. I don't remember any of my other kids having the attention span to color at this age. She always finds crayons and lays on her tummy in the middle of the floor and colors on whatever scrap she can find. She loves banging on the piano and sometimes I think it's Gracie because it sounds planned out.

Mike is busy with work and trying to get his mortgage license. He is a great dad and the kids love him. I love him too and appreciate all the work he does for our family. He just spoiled us with a vaction to Disneyland at the beginning of October and we had the best time! We had three days in Disneyland and California adventure and the kids were fabulous!

I am busy with Young Women, teaching cheer and musical theater on Mondays. I have also been teaching dance for the choir at the middle school. Gracie really loves coming with me to teach the kids to dance! I just finished with Reflections contest at Max's school and I'm looking forward to be being less busy!