Well after looking at blogs for some friends, I decided this is the closest to journaling I am ever going to get! This week we final got high-speed internet! Wow, no more waiting two minutes for a page to change or an hour to email photos. Kent loves having access to Playhouse Disney and since I work nights (at JCPenney in the children's department--hey someone has to do it!) I'm sure he will be on it more than I approve. Things have certainly changed. Aaron now does a lot of the grocery shopping--I have resigned myself to have top ramen in my cupboards! Aaron has become quite the parent now that he puts the kids to bed 5 nights a week. He actually puts pjs on them, brush teeth, says prayers, reads scriptures, and indulges Kent with a chapter of Harry Potter every night. Feeling left out, Evelyn has joined the reading club as well! She likes having Dad around because he slips her candy and bought 3 hamsters for her entertainment. Yes, I bought a hamster space station at a yard sale for $1 and Aaron got 3 hamsters for $40! Their names are Heather, Hannah, and Snowanna. Kent likes to feed them handfuls of food and watch their acrobatics. Evelyn is fearless and takes each one out to snuggle and kiss.
Today was our best sacrament meeting in a long time. I got an idea off the web about sticker books. So after the sacrament had been passed, the kids ate a snack of cheese sticks, wheat thins, and a piece of halloween candy (AHHH!). Then they each got their sticker books and a pack of small stickers (they don't tear as easy) and remarkably they sat their quietly! I actually heard the speakers and Aaron didn't have to take them out of the chapel! The hardest part was not letting Kent have the sticker book after church. I want this to be for sacrament only! HE got over it after a couple hours! We had a nice Sabbath day. Evelyn sang "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" and "The Wise man built his house upon a rock." She loves nursery and seeing all her friends. There's even another girl named Evelyn. Kent sang for us a new version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"---Twinkle, Twinkle little star where have all the stars gone. . . He likes taking fairy tales and changing the story. Last week Jack climbed up the beanstalk, got caught by the giant, the giant threw him down the beanstalk and he died. Can you tell he is a five-year-old boy?
We have spent this week putting up with candy consumption and saving money for the impending cavity fillings. It's hard to tell how well teeth get brush when you have a two-year-old that can do it herself! Kent's kindergarten teacher told us a neat story. A few days ago Mrs. Hull put sight-word flash cards down on the floor for the kids to look at after they finish their art activity. She cleaned the cards up and the started a writing activity. Kent told Mrs. Hull he wanted to write "I can see the gray dog run." These were all the sight word. And amazingly he wrote the words from memory. He couldn't remember how to spell gray, so he ask for a gray crayon and wrote the word from the crayon. Isn't that great!? This came from a kid who could only write his name. It is fun to see his mind constantly working. He is constantly seeing the shapes of letters in everything and creating shapes from string, playdough, etc. He is also constantly adding. "Mom, 4 and 6 is 10!" And he likes for Dad to tell him what everything is in Spanish.
Evelyn keeps me on my toes. She is a mama's girl and loves to have my undivided attention. If not, she experiments with things like highlighters on my off-white couch (I only own one because it was used and cheap), rubbing alcohol on the hardwood floors, markers on the newly painted walls, 500 q-tips in the bathtub, the list could go on but I can't remember what happened more than a week ago! Although the highlight of the year was when she drank half a bottle of triaminic and spent the day in the ER. She is so smart and curious, we just hope she lives to put all this to good use.
Aaron began his new job this month at Concepts NREC in Wilder, VT. It is an engineering firm and he is their contracts manager. He was pleasantly surprised to see that 5 LDS members work there and they have an internship program arranged with BYU. You never would have expected to find this in Vermont! Aaron, as usual, is going full force. He is running for the town selectboard, is on the Upper Valley United Way board of directors, and a few other things (church callings, etc.) . Aaron and I spent the last 4 months going through the licensing process for adoption through the legal-risk foster care program. We are currently just waiting for a phone call that their is a baby available. It will then take up to 1 year for the parents rights to be terminated and 1 year for the adoption to go through probate court. It will be interesting, but isn't a child worth it! Well this is a long enough first entry. Don't expect this much info from here on out! Just are daily rantings. I am going to try to figure out how to post photos now. Bye!