He's got games

Aspen, can be SO manipulative! He is incredibly witty and smart, maybe too smart. Here's an example...

Lately, Aspen's new thing has been to try to make us feel guilty when we get frustrated with him. Mark came home after a long day of work, we were all sitting down to eat (translate - it was a bit chaotic around here), and I asked Aspen to bring some forks to the table. He came and sat down without the forks. Slightly irritated, Mark asked Aspen to go get the forks.

Aspen responded with, "Dad! Why are you so mean to me? You've been gone ALL day, and then you come home and are SO mean to me!"

Argh! See? So manipulative! That boy keeps us on our toes, I tell ya.

Mark doesn't remember much from his childhood, but he does remember being manipulative. Aspen isn't able to get anything past his Dad. He wrote the book on manipulation, after all! I'm so thankful, because I'll admit, I have a harder time recognizing when he is being manipulative and when he is being genuine.

Halfway through 1st grade

Aspen is half way through 1st grade and doing great. I feel a little bad that I don't have too many current pictures of him right now, but when he gets home from school, things get busy!

I generally give him 30-45 minutes to wind down from school, get a snack and watch a show or play the Wii. After that, we do 30-45 minutes of homework. Each week he has a homework packet to work on, plus 20-30 minutes of reading to do each night.

It was torture for me at first, trying to find that amount of time to read with him, but now that he is reading on his own it's getting easier. He's really progressed a lot in the last month, and I'm really proud of him! The downside is that Mark and I can no longer spell things out to each other when we don't want the kids to know what we are talking about. We always get caught :)

Sneaky Girl

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

This girl is driving me crazy right now! If it's not the toilet or toilet brush, it's markers.

I can't leave her alone for a minute.

Choosing to Grow

Growth.

Sometimes in life, the most growth comes out of pain. I'll be honest. I hate this fact. But as much as I try to fight it, I know it's true. I guess it give pain a purpose. A way to bring good out of something bad, but it makes me feel like the bad was somehow justified. And so I fight it.

The last six months have been challenging. I've been dealing with some issues that I thought were dead and dealt with, and I've been surprised at how much pain emotion, and insecurity it brought up for me.

Recently in worship at church, some lyrics to a song really stood out to me. It was about loving others the way God loves me and living out that love.

I really felt like God was whispering to me that I can choose to react out of my insecurity and continue the emotional spiral I've been in, or I can choose to respond in love. Insecurity is my comfort zone. Respond in insecurity and the walls go up. I may not be hurt, but I sure do come off as a, you know, .....itch.

Live out love? Love takes growth. Intentionality. Vulnerability. Dealing with my insecurity head on and choosing trust instead of fear and doubt. Bottom line, it's hard.

This year, I'm going to choose growth, and with God's help deal with my insecurity as best I can.

Christmas Eve

Since we celebrated Christmas with the Wilde's on the 23rd (we are normally with them on the 24th), we were able to celebrate it together as a family. As in, our own immediate family :)

We really tried to think through what we wanted to do to make it fun and memorable. We spent the entire day at home playing with the new toys and cleaning up from the night before, except to leave for coffee and drop off the chairs we had borrowed from my parents. That in of itself is unusual!

We went out to eat as a family to Hopworks. A local restaurant specializing in local and organic ingredients and beer. It is VERY rare for us to go out to dinner as a family, and now that Aspen has found a food he loves (pepperoni pizza), it is a fun treat instead of a chore.

It also helped that Hopworks had a play area for the kids!

After dinner we came home, opened stockings and ate the gingerbread house we had made with the kids a couple weeks earlier. We watched a Christmas movie and just enjoyed the evening without rushing. It really was a fun day, and it is great to see how we have grown into a family of our own, able to enjoy each other and establish our own traditions.

Christmas with the Wilde's

This year, we celebrated the Wilde Christmas on December 23rd at our house since Ryan had to work Christmas and Christmas Eve. It was a blast!

We had fondue for dinner, and this was the adults table.

One of the kids tables - we had all the boys around this one for dinner. The girls had their own table in the Living Room. With such a large group (11 kids and 11 adults) it was nice to have all the different rooms. It helped to cut down on some of the noise :) Having the basement and the Wii was also a huge plus. Much of the time half or more of the kids were down there.

The present pile....

Grandma Park was able to come and celebrate with us.

Getting ready for presents...

The anticipation is building!

Journey 3 1/2 years

Shyann 2 1/2 years

Adam 7 1/2, William 10 years

Willow 17 mo, Janie 3 1/2

Ava 3 1/2, Zoe 1 year

And the aftermath....enough said.

Christmas Party 2010

Justin sporting his gift.

Best gift of the night, a toasted English muffin!

The guys trying out one of the white elephant gifts - a blood glucose tester, haha!

This was at the end of the night and we were tired, but I had to include it since it was the only picture of us together of the whole night.

This year, we decided to change things up a bit, and go out for our annual Christmas party. It was SO much fun. We dressed up and went out to P. F. Changs downtown, then met back at our house for cheese cake, champagne, and a white elephant gift exchange.

Of course, I forgot my camera on our way out the door so I have no pictures of our dinner. Travis and Amber weren't able to make it for dessert, but did join us for dinner. It was so much fun catching up with them. I tried to make up for the lack of pictures when we got back to our house for dessert :)