Welcome friends! We decided to jump into the world of blogging for our annual Christmas update in an effort to save some time, paper and postage! We hope you enjoy this way of "catching up." Life continues to be good for us. We are all healthy and happy and enjoying life. We love our little town, our home and our ward. Life around here is reminiscent of where both Loren and I grew up and we are very comfortable with it.
Loren continues to work for the NYS DOT. His main project, "The Connector Project" is a 5 mile road with 4 bridges costing 106 MILLION dollars. Some day it will connect Fort Drum to Interstate 81 but there is still lots of red-tape and reports to get through before it goes into the construction phase in the spring of 2010. Mind you, he has been working on this same project since his arrival here FOUR YEARS AGO! Loren has recently been attempting to make Vermont National Guard history by being the OLDEST officer candidate to graduate the OCS program. He has been in the program for about 9 months and has completed phases zero and one - where one is also known as "boot camp on steroids." That took up 2 1/2 weeks of his summer and made "YES SIR!!" a regular part of his vocabulary. Among his 1 remaining classmate (they started with 13 and the other 11 wimped out) he is lovingly known as "Grandpa" and in August 09 will graduate and be commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army National Guard Engineer branch. "HOOOOO AHHHHH!" On a lighter note, he still is serving as Assistant Ward membership clerk and 2nd Counselor in the High Priest group. He has been spending a lot of time with his new best friend, a Stihl chainsaw, as we had an outdoor wood furnace installed to combat what we thought would be outrageous fuel oil costs. Hey, we are warm. He has had no success, to date, at shooting any wild game in either NY or VT, but he would claim it's due to the fact that he hasn't had much time to try. He is still the girls favorite playmate and seems never to tire of swinging them up to touch the ceiling or playing "hide and seek." They are both "Daddy's little girl" and "Daddy's helper" and you can always hear a big cheer of "DADA" when he comes through the door. Like I said earlier, life is good.
I, Kym, am also doing well. I continue to enjoy creating and believe President Uchtdorf's talk at the General Relief Society meeting in September is grounds to continue enlarging my flower garden and purchasing card-making supplies. I was just recently released as Visiting Teaching Coordinator and am now enjoying teaching the CTR 6 class. Come January Emma will be in my class and we are both very excited about it. Primary has always felt like “home” to me. Hanging out in RS is difficult – lessons that don’t include a coloring sheet or a game just don’t feel right somehow. The majority of my time is spent on my life’s greatest work –Emma & Lucy. Last Spring Emma went through a series of tests that resulted in the conclusion that she has a “high likelihood” for Asperger’s Disorder – a high-functioning form of Autism. I had always thought there was something a bit special about her and now we have a name for it. Through the local school district and county she receives special services and has made great strides. She is slated to be evaluated at the Children’s Clinic in Syracuse at the end of January - we have been on their waiting list for 8 months and are anxious to learn what the specialists think. Needless to say it’s all very time consuming, as any parent with a special-needs child knows all too well. Emma turned 5 this year and started Kindergarten. She LOVES it and is doing very well. She was reading before she started but still loves “The Letter People” and doesn’t seem bored learning things she has already mastered. She seems to have a lot of friends and enjoys gym class the most. She recently lost a tooth which pleased her greatly. She is excellent at keeping secrets and continues to tease me with the secret of what she got me for Christmas. She has always been practical – last year it was a broom and for my birthday a bra. (Mind you, Loren takes her to buy these things! Why he doesn’t try to talk her into something else is beyond me!!) I can’t wait to see what it is this year!
Emma is an excellent singer and is always well heard in Primary. She has not quite figured out that there is a difference between singing loud and shouting. Everyone has learned to accept it as just Emma. She is very active in gymnastics and is in Level 2, which is a bit higher than most 5-year-olds and started dance this year as well. One excellent Emma quote and then I’ll move on –
One evening Lucy had a major melt-down about something so trivial I can’t even remember and it was all I could do to get her to bed. She ended up going without brushing her teeth and in just the shirt she’d worn for the day and a diaper. She cried herself to sleep and when it was finally over I went in to check on Emma and found she was still awake. I crawled in bed next to her and let out a big sigh. “I don’t know what we are going to do with Lucy,” I said. Emma replied, “Maybe we could sell her.” I controlled my urge to laugh and corrected, “No. You don’t sell members of your family.” “Oh,” Emma said and then thoughtfully added, “then maybe we could just give her away.” Lucy turned 3 which quickly brought back the fact that the terrible 2’s is nothing compared to the treacherous 3’s! Lucy is VERY animated and loves to pretend. She wakes in the morning and before getting out of be lets me know what she is and what I am – for example, “Mommy, I am a blue hippopotamus and you are a green hippopotamus.” From that point until she changes, she prefers to be referred to by that name and often will not do what you ask until you address her as such. I am often heard to say, “Lucy, blue hippopotamus, yellow baby whale or whoever you are right now, get in here and brush your teeth!”
She had no problem with Emma starting school. She shed no tears and has never asked for Emma or cared to know when she is coming home. Most days she doesn’t even want to go out to the end of the driveway with me to get Emma off the bus unless there is some other draw for her like getting to ride her bike an opportunity to make tracks in the snow. She really rather enjoys her time alone.
Lucy also takes gymnastics and dance and enjoys both very much. We think she may someday get into acting as she is incredibly gifted at memorizing word-for-word things she hears. One of the best examples is Veggie Tales. She can recite the words to most of the Silly Songs (except “Dance of the Cucumber” – they sing it in Spanish) and we think it’s pretty cool to show off her skills. She is very affectionate and compassionate. She loves babies and has one little boy, Levi, that is a particular favorite. One day she was holding him and asked, “Mommy, will you take a picture of me and Lovey, I mean Levi.” She talks A LOT and gestures and tilts her head like someone on the stage. Fortunately, she will talk to herself even after you have left the room. She is always having friends over – usually it’s the Backyardigans – and they all play well together. She can throw the BIGGEST fits and when she does it is LOUD!!! She gets very unreasonable at those times and IF she is able to be talked down you can usually only do it by pretending she is one of her favorite personas, “Baby Buddha, Baby Shluddha.”
All in all, things are going well. I’m going to try to keep up with this blog – let me know if you have one as I’d love to “follow it.” We love you all and miss you. We wish you all the merriest of Christmases and much health and happiness in the coming year!