2007, A Year in Review

Today I bought my new family wall calendar that keeps track of all our activities. Now you may say, Cherylann doesn't seem that detail oriented and organized. You would be correct, thus why I need one. Even with a calendar I screw up. Actually, this is the first year that I had a calendar that actually worked for me. Even though it is a little cutesy for me, I LOVE it because it keeps me from forgetting most things (except when I don't look at it in the morning or don't write it down). With this in mind, I thought I would run down our last year really fast. You know, since I didn't bother to send out a Christmas card and all...

• Katie was hitting up our neighbors to buy Girl Scout Cookies last January...now I am the troop's "Cookie Mom".


• Beginning of the year, I volunteered at Katie's school once a week...now I volunteer in Katie and Christian's class once a week. It is a lot of fun to see them in their environment and get to know their wonderful teachers.


• Mike worked a lot...he still works a lot.


• Christian was in Pre-School...now he is in Kindergarten. (Both kids in real school, wow!)


• Since we have moved to Phoenix we have been to NHL Hockey and MLB Baseball games an an NBA game. It is so fun to be enjoying professional sports while we live in a metropolitan area.


• The Phoenix Zoo has been a favorite of the kids. Between school field trips and some earned tickets from the library, we have been enjoying it.


• We got to go to Disneyland for our second time...the kids are still asking when we will go back next. We did it in one day and closed the park down at Midnight. Where upon, as Katie was getting ready to get off the Peter Pan ride she leaned forward as the bar came up, smacked her head and started to bleed. We now know where the First Aid Building is at Disneyland. This did not deter her from wanting to go back...go figure. By the way, where are our free tickets for that terrible accident?


• Mike and I went to Atlanta, Georgia at the end of May, sans kids. It was fun to be away even if I mostly caught up on my sleep and saw a few sights. The kids had fun with their cousins in California. Katie was talking today about feeding a donkey during her cousins piano lessons while she was there (it came up since we got carrots at the co-op today).


• Katie and Christian improved their swimming skills in our pool and at the community pool with their swimming lessons. They had a lot of fun. They transform into little fish in the summer.


• "Heart and Hand Girls" made June fun for Katie, learning things from cooking and sewing to making jewelery, with the girls from Church.


• The kids have loved the rock wall at the gym. Katie can get to the top on the easy and middle difficulty walls. Christian is overcoming his fear of heights.
  
• We go to the Library nearly every week. We love it there, even if we don't stay very long all the time. (Okay, along with loving reading, they have computers and free DVD's to checkout and they only checkout for 7 days...)


• Mike has resumed working on his 1968 Mustang and has had it painted.


• The whole family got to go to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico for a week in July. Even though I was a bit skeptical about getting even further into scouting territory, it was a blast for the kids and I. (For the scouters, I still refuse to go to woodbadge and work my tickets...and yes I had to ask Mike how to phrase that exactly.)


• The piano got tuned for the first time in six years. Thanks to Katie for starting piano lessons this year. She loves to play and is doing really well.
  
• Mike turned 40!!!


• Katie has lost a lot of teeth this year! Okay, I only added this because there were a lot of really funny pictures.


• We went home to California for Thanksgiving. It was so fun to see Mike's dad, my parents and 5 of my 6 siblings and their families.

So there is our year in review for our family. Even though it is a long list, I did restrain myself from sharing every appointment (Luckily for you, I am not that detailed oriented).

Happy New Year!!!

Christmas Time with the Marchese's

The night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring except me and my camera...

The Christmas Season has been busy and a little overwhelming at times, but we have had a blast too!

Our month started off with an infatuation with all things "Spy Kids", thanks to the library DVD's that we get. Playing house was a Spy Kids fantasy that still is a favorite to play. Notice Katie's rad outfit. Thomas the Train sunglasses offset her rainbow belt that holds some sort of spy gadget. Her shirt that has red and pink going blazingly well with her hot pink pajama shorts. She is the Spy queen. She is so cute. I was quite the dresser like her at her age. Genetics really do have a strong hold on kids. Don't worry. She wasn't allowed to go out in public with the outfit.

We decorated our annual gingerbread house. Boy we love Costco's kit. We had fun, but we decided that we need to get two next year, one for the kids and one for my perfectionists self. It was fun and we had a built in treat after, with the gingerbread men that they include in the kit. Don't look around our house for our beautiful gingerbread house for more than a day after we decorate. We don't believe in dusting gingerbread houses and having unusable candy.

The kids had a Christmas concert and we did Katie's hair all curly. She had many compliments on it and it is now a common request... I am thrilled that she is letting me take a more active part in her hair... :) Silly me, I know.

Two nights before Christmas we went up to the Mesa Arizona Temple to see the Christmas lights and see a movie about Christ's birth. The grounds were beautiful and the kids loved going. Christian makes sure that every time we go we see the beautiful statue of Jesus that is there. As soon as he saw it he went in and plopped down to listen to the recording of Christ's words that they have. Kids always amaze me with what they tune into.

Christmas morning was a lot of fun. The wonder of Christmas for kids is amazing. Christmas is not the same without kids.

The kids received new blankets for Christmas as Christian's is literally falling apart from all the love he has given his. Now, he walks around the house with both of them.
Christian wouldn't even look at me for the picture he was hugging the blanket so tight. He actually picked it out and I bought it in front of him. Then I told him it was too expensive and we would have to take it back. He was shocked when they opened them.

They, of course, love the toys they got. Katie loves the new game, Druthers, we got from Clark and LaDawn. She quickly claimed the small calendar that came with the larger calendar. As Katie grows up, the items she wants grow up also. She wanted and got a reading lounge pillow with a book and a watch (along with a few Barbie's, she hasn't completely grown up yet). Is it possible that she is almost eight. I keep telling them to stop growing up, to which I get a response of many giggles telling me how silly this request is. Oh, the wonder of kids that make all the stress worth it.

We hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas season. One of these years we will get our act together and get cards out. We have loved yours!

The Dancing Marchese's

You probably have seen this already. I finally couldn't resist. Just Click to watch our Fabulous Dancing!

Stick Figure Drawings, Hurray!

Some people are fast bloomers, some people are regular bloomers, and some are slow bloomers. In my young life I was a bit of a regular/late bloomer. There was the lower reading group of the "more advanced" class in my grade that I was a part of. (There were 1 and 1/2 classes per grade. One class always had 1/2 of one grade and 1/2 of the another) I always loved reading and would take the city bus by myself at age 8 to go to the city library to get books. However, I was painfully aware, because of my love for reading, that my reading speed and comprehension was not up to the upper echelon of the classroom. Over time, I got over the fact that I wasn't the smartest person on the planet. At the same time I am grateful that I wasn't the most challenged person either.

However, my heart aches for my kids when they seem to have a hard time with developmental issues. You don't want them to hurt or struggle, but that is part of life. Earlier this fall I became aware that Christian was having a hard time with his fine motor skill. Hindsight is 20/20, so I realized all those things he didn't enjoy doing that I found puzzling at times (not wanting to color, to do puzzles, refusing to do his seat belt, etc,.) were because he found it frustrating. Apparently there is a diagnostic tool to see how children are comprehending their surroundings or something by seeing how detailed a stick figure they can draw. Well, Christian never really did anything but scribble. A few weeks ago, he started to do stick figure Aliens that consisted of a smiley face head, a stick body, and a huge foot with toes sticking out all sides of it. Very cute. Finally, today, the first stick figure I have seen from Christian. Not just one, but two. Christian was making a card for a girls birthday party. Katie wrote it and drew a cake and then everything in marker is Christians. He even made hands with fingers (reminiscent to the alien "foot" since he and the girl were holding hands (as friends, he holds his sister's hand all the time). So Hurray for stick figure drawings!

Gilbert Day Parade

In the midst of packing for our trip to California (okay, I am totally putting it off), we decided to attend the Gilbert Day Parade that ended about a half mile from where we live. We packed up our new folding chairs and got the camera, and away we went. I am not sure why we have a parade this time of year except that it is cool enough. It is just to celebrate our wonderful town of Gilbert. So while we were waiting the kids took pictures of each other and had me take pictures of them and that occupied them until it started about a half an hour later.

What a great smile!

Our little ham bone....
The police color guard started the parade with the fire trucks sounding their sirens as they came down the road.
We had a great time, and then we went home. To start packing. Yeah...I am taking a "well-deserved" break right now. (I'll leave that up to your interpretation).

Another Day, Another Trimming

When one moves to different areas of the country, you learn all sorts of different things about the amazingly different flora and fauna the Lord has put on the earth. Here in Arizona, plants are predominantly spiky to different degrees. Not all, but most of the things in our yard. Also, the plants LOVE the heat. No joke, they do not grow much or at all during the "cooler" season. No, they love to grow like crazy when it is a blazing 110 degrees outside. Growing up in the Northeast, California, even the living in the Pacific Northwest you only trimmed trees if a branch was annoying, or was growing into important phone lines.

When we moved here we experienced something entirely new. We have a Mesquite tree in our front yard. We moved in at the end of March with the tree looking nice. I kept wondering as time went by if the tree was really that full when we moved in. By the end of May, I was getting a little flustered about what might be wrong with our tree. Then the branches were touching my car. Finally, a big branch was resting on my car (it is a soft wood) from the weight of all the new growth on it. As I backed out (amazingly without any scratches) it continued its decent to the ground. Of course, now professionals had to come out and take care of it. Still, it took us a few more months to realize, we would need to thin out the tree at least 4 times a year between April and November. Luckily, we already had a sawzall and just needed to get a long tree pruner.

Once, I trimmed it by myself. That is not a smart idea, being on a ladder by yourself with a sawzall. Mesquite trees are a very soft wood. So when I would cut off a large chunk, what I thought was a good clearance of tree to ladder would swiftly disappear as the tree limb would rise. It happened often enough (yeah, I am a little slow, it should have only taken once) for me to realize, Mike should be around for the next time. The tree was trimmed without incident, but I am not sure it wasn't without attentive angels (shaking their heads at me), as maybe my time wasn't up yet.

This last Saturday was another yard cleanup day. The last one we did all the bushes that had grown past the point of acceptable and it was finally cooler which was more acceptable to me. It is once again bulk trash pick-up this week, so we needed to trim all the palms and our two trees. The kids were really cute and helped us haul the non-spiky tree limbs to the front curb. As long as it is not horrendously hot, I actually don't mind it. We are getting faster as it only took us 2 hours for all of it this time. Katie is a real sweet heart and helped sweep the driveway and brought us tall glasses of water without being asked. I was really touched. Katie and Christian have both learned to stay clear of the trimmings as the type of Mesquite we have has small to two inch spikes on its limbs. (Another wonderful aspect of that particular tree.) Here is a picture of the kids in front of the trimmings (that pile is over their head). It brings us great joy that trimming is done, and we are hoping it doesn't grow a whole lot over the Arizona winter.

Later the kids were ready to go outside and have a water fight. Here is a cute picture of the kids together, soaked. Mike had just cleaned the glass doors that morning, of course.














They later went to the park with Mike, by scooter and by bike. So a little work and a little play, made it one great happy day!