What we'll remember about 2010

Now that it's nearly May, I feel ready to reflect on some of last year's happenings. No, actually I wrote this in December and just remembered to edit and post it:

• Jamie Beth's permanent teeth grew in funny--completely behind, not even touching her baby teeth.
• Dallin's reading skills improved at an exponential rate as he often spent two hours a day reading. We have to actually limit his reading time so he'll do other things!
• Matthew moved from football to basketball without missing a beat. He tries not to complain about sore muscles or injuries, because he doesn't want me--the nervous mom--to nix the whole athletics thing.
• Nathaniel took apart everything: hinges off doors, screws out of switchplates, sockets, and toys, baseboard off walls. Nothing is ever safe at our house from this climbing, curious boy. Oh, and he figured out the alphabet.
• Disneyland & California Adventure for the first time. Five days was the perfect amount of time to explore and have fun. Matthew rode the California Screamin' Roller Coaster 16 times over two days; Jamie Beth couldn't get enough of the river rafting ride and coaxed me to go with her. We truly enjoyed a fantastic vacation together.
• Hired someone else to paint for us. And someone else to close in the carport so we have a real garage. Three cheers for getting projects completely finished!
• Matt began loving his job for the first time since he started there eight years ago. He's enjoying developing apps for the iPad and iPhone for Ancestry.com. He also began traveling to San Francisco on a regular basis.
• In November, Matt found a new favorite exercise program: CrossFit. He joined with his brother and brother-in-law and now works out like a crazy man. It's definitely become his hobby.
• I was pregnant from January to October, which seems like a really long time when I say it like that.
• Celia joined our family, with all her sweet calmness, her kissable chubbiness, her dark hair and blue eyes.

Very wise, I think...

Well, everyone needs a Dallin-ism once in a while:

On a recent evening, Dallin was describing his interest in taking up bobsledding (?!?), which led us to a short discussion about that old movie, “Cool Runnings”, which led us to a talk of Winter Olympics. Dallin became excited about maybe winning a bobsledding event someday and started planning his strategies. As our conversation turned to recalling a sledder who died at an Olympic practice, Dallin's eyes widened and his self-preservation instinct kicked in. In a suddenly serious tone, he said, “Actually, I think I would tell my team to go really slowly. I wouldn't mind losing so we don't die.”

(I just made a label for the kid whose talent is unintentionally making people laugh. Dallin.)

Sharing

(The past several months I've re-committed to writing in my journal. Between that and the instant sharing of Facebook, I haven't felt very motivated to keep up this family journal. However, I'm starting to think about maybe printing out the blog as a family journal for the kiddos to read. So here's to a tentative re-start.)

As we prepared bags of food to set out for the scouts to collect for the food bank drive, I said that my food storage was looking a bit low, so we would just do three bags. Jamie Beth then remarked, “But Mom, we have money to buy more food storage, and poor people don't!”

Well, how do you argue with such sweet generosity? We made up another bag.