The past two Black Friday’s I have ventured out among the crazy shoppers instead of staying home and breaking out the Christmas tree and decorations, as I have done in the past. Hence, the Christmas tree has not been displayed as early as we all would like. As a side note however, this Black Friday shopping has saved us a lot of money. and this year, lets just say Christmas wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Black Friday shopping and online shopping late at night when the stores were closed!
It wasn’t just Black Friday that altered our usual plans. Something else threw us off this time around. Our Ward and Stake were realigned just prior to Halloween. I ended up receiving two callings, one which I had before the realignment. I belong to the Relief Society Activity Committee (previous calling) and to the Ward Activities Committee. I must be a good COMMITTEE member, a good behind the scenes person. LOL. The only bad thing about this……..both committee’s have Christmas activities, both just three and a half weeks after receiving these two callings. Things got BUSY at the Fairbanks house! Our Ward Activities committee has 7 members total!! We were doing a Polar Express themed morning party. I was in charge of decorations. Now this party is the largest the ward does each year. We were anticipating 230 this year. My fearsome trio of helpers were put to work immediately. Derron came the night before the party to help decorate. The kids were there too. The night before the party we were there from 4:30pm until after midnight decorating. And our kids were troopers.
This party halted setting up our Christmas tree until after the Ward Christmas party because our light strands were being used as decorations.
The Relief Society activity was the following Tuesday, and seemed like nothing compared to the Ward Christmas party. Maybe its because the Relief Society committee has 13 people on its committee. Maybe its because I didn’t have to do the shopping and budgeting for decorations for such a large group. Maybe its because for the Relief Society activity, I was in charge of printing fliers. Piece of cake. Well, actually Derron made them for me because they were copies of a poster which was created in some Adobe application I had no clue how to use.
After the exhaustion wore off, we managed to pull out the containers full of Christmas decorations along with the tree, and began assembling it on December 17th! That’s right folks, the 17th of December. Our kids were really getting worried we were going to skip Christmas this year. Maybe we shouldn’t have threatened that result so much when the kids misbehaved. we really had them stressed!! We still carried on our tradition of unwrapping and reading a Christmas book each night right before bedtime beginning on December 1st. This is a tradition the kids love.
We attempted to decorate the tree as much as we could in one night. Time escaped as usual, and we had to call it a night around 11pm. The next morning, I staggered out of the bedroom and noticed a few additional decorations on our tree. As I looked closer, I realized they were at least RED decorations. They were firefighter characters which look an awful lot like army guys, you know the green plastic ones. Let me just say that our kids LOVE ‘Toy Story’ and I think one of them was placing the firefighters in the tree like they were hiding out in the plant in ‘Toy Story’ to spy on the new toys opened at Andy’s birthday party. I couldn’t help but snap some pictures of the lovely decorations!!! And who put them there I wonder? I would guess its the little one with “guilty” written across their picture in the collage to follow.
As you can tell, we managed to get the tree fully decorated and in position for Santa’s big day.
I am embarrassed to say that it is now January 17th, and our Christmas tree is still standing, fully decorated. I am hoping to take the thing down over the next two days while the kids are out of school to enlist their help. Its only been up for a month now to the date!! Come on, give me a break! I promise it won’t be up until February!!
When we signed up for piano lessons, we knew it would entail daily piano practice, weekly lessons, and two performances a year. We had no idea our son, Reagan, would play the piano every free minute of every day. Not that I am complaining. Last Winter right after starting piano lessons, it was a chore to get the boy to practice a couple of times a week. He complained the entire time.
What a difference a summer makes. Maybe it was the lack of Mom hovering over him to make sure he’s doing it correctly. Or the fact that he was able to choose the songs he practiced (usually primary songs). OK, its wasn’t the summer, its called medication for ADD. What a difference it has made. He LOVES piano lessons now, loves practicing, and wants to perform for anyone who will listen. If he is bored, he will sit at the piano and play songs from ear, alter songs in his lesson books, or make up his own compositions. He will whiz through an entire lesson book in one day if we let him. He is so eager to learn as much as he can and also as quickly as possible. Piano practice is the very first thing he does after walking in the door from school.
He performed without hesitation this year, since he’s done it once before. The Fall performance/recital is much smaller and a more relaxed atmosphere compared to the Spring recital. And this year, he wasn’t the NEWEST student. As his parents, we look forward to the Spring recital to see how much he improves over the next five months.
We are so happy to have found something Reagan is excited about and looks forward to, unlike his soccer adventures. We love him and are extremely proud of our boy. He is blessed to have musical talent on both sides of his family……lucky duck! We love you.
Halloween costumes this year at our house consisted of Reagan as a Star Wars Clone Trooper and Lauren as a “nice” witch.
Reagan’s mask squished his nose so he wasn’t too happy to wear it. And after convincing him that taking his Nerf gun as a weapon when trick or treating, would be just one more thing to carry, he reluctantly carried it and his mask in his trick or treat bag. Reagan was shocked that only five of our neighbors guessed correctly as to exactly what his costume was. Most thought he was a transformer. Believe me, he kept track after each and every house.
Lauren was a “nice” witch. She informed us when we chose her costume that witches can be mean, but she wasn’t going to be a mean witch, she was going to be a nice witch. The skirt to the costume actually had fiber optic lights in it, and if she pressed a button, it would light up, something she showed as many people as would take the time to listen to her.
They were both very happy with the haul of candy they ended up with. Mom was glad to be home and off her feet. I was recovering from pnuemonia associated with getting the Swine Flu (H1N1), and being out in the cold didn’t help the awful cough much.
The fun part of Halloween, is anticipating what the kiddo’s will choose to be next year. Until then, enjoy the pictures from this year…
When we found out we were expecting our first child, Derron created a cute little dancing baby movie announcing to everyone by an emailed URL that we were having a baby. With Lauren, we made a fun Christmas card with a note that we were expecting another child. Its not that we aren’t excited, but the third time around, maybe we are just too busy these days, but nonetheless, we are just as excited to announce to everyone,
“WE ARE EXPECTING!”
After many bumps in the road, we are finally able to announce our third child is due at the end of April 2010.
YES, another dang April birthday. WAY TOO MANY IN THAT MONTH. Fairbanks side thinks its bad with 5……the Jensen’s have WELL over a dozen birthdays all within 6 weeks in April and May!!! I hated sharing my birthday with my brother (sorry Willy) with our birthdays being June 6th and 7th! I promised myself I WOULDN’T do that to my own children. Low and behold, Reagan has the first birthday on April 8th, then Lauren on April 13th. Who wants to guess the day this baby will enter the world? Leave a comment with your guess, and we’ll keep track and let you know who the winner is in 6 months!! Guess the gender too, because we aren’t planning on finding out at the ultrasound at 20 weeks!! Doing it the old fashioned way.
My Dr has been tracking this pregnancy very carefully. After two miscarriages, I guess they figure there might actually be something causing them and not just spontaneous miscarriages taking place. So this time around, I have been taking progesterone pills and baby aspirin to help things along…or to aid in allowing the pregnancy to stay viable. Evidently my body hasn’t been producing enough progesterone on its own from conception, until the baby takes over at 13 weeks producing its own, to keep the pregnancy viable after 6 weeks! Good to know. Not that we plan on having any more kids after this one, but we were able to figure out the problem right away without it taking 14 months to get pg after a miscarriage like it did with Reagan. My awesome OB/GYN has performed two ultrasounds thus far, just to make sure things are advancing properly. At 6 weeks, we had the first ultrasound to view the heart beating and proper placement within the uterus (looked a bit alien like with the tail still). Then at 12 weeks, he took another look inside to see that the baby was developing properly. It actually looked human like this time around. “LOOKS PERFECT” were the words he used to describe this pregnancy.
Morning sickness is much worse when taking extra progesterone, the culprit for all the miserable stuff experienced in the first trimester! It’s been a long 13 weeks!!! But I am officially out of the first trimester this week!!! YIPPEE!!!! I’m still a bit nauseated, but have meds (finally) to help with that. The newest symptom has been the light headedness which strikes when I turn my head too fast, or stand up too quickly. Typical, right? Now that I am actually only needing to eat three regular meals to keep my food down, rather than 5-6 small snacks throughout the day, hopefully I won’t be as prone to gain too much weight. With Reagan I gained a whopping 17 lbs. Lauren was a different story, I gained 34lbs with her. I’m hoping to keep it between 25-30 lbs, or at least that’s what the Dr wants. All I know is I am definitely living in maternity and stretchy waist clothing now. Amazing how you can go to church one week not looking pg at all, and two weeks later, show up with everyone looking down at the belly. I love how people look at the belly and want to ask so badly if I’m expecting or just getting a bit plump. This time we haven’t jumped out and announced it to everyone at 7 weeks. So not too many people know other than siblings, parents and close friends.
We are very excited to welcome this little miracle to our family in April, just 6 months away now. It’s going to be a long but busy winter for us. I’m just glad this pregnancy is during the same seasons I have maternity clothes for, so I don’t have to go buy all new clothes just to get rid of them a few months later. Although some are a bit out of date (purchased 8 yrs ago), I can at least use the pants, jeans, and a few of the shirts still.
BTW the kids and Derron are pretty excited too. They love watching my belly expand. And when I was losing my meals with regularity and gagging at every smell, Reagan was right there with a barf bucket, or a hug, or the famous question, “Mom, are you ok?” Lauren on the other hand is a bit skeptical of giving up the “baby” title. And she keeps reminding me, “Mom, your belly is getting fat.” You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, darlin’.
Every pregnancy is different, but with all three, I’ve managed to have the following symptoms each time (I’m writing these just so when I can’t remember what it was like being pregnant, it is documented somewhere):
Ahhhh, now its on to many fun symptoms over the next trimester……..why do we do this again??? J/K. And no I didn’t forget how miserable pregnancy is in between Lauren’s and this time around. Remember quite well, thanks. I keep reminding myself of the end result. To those who never get sick with their pregnancies, I just want to smack you and force you to go through morning sickness for a day, you’d understand!!!
What a miracle the whole baby thing is. Obviously, there is a higher power involved. Don’t know how someone could go through the creation/birth of their own child and not believe in GOD afterwards. Truly amazing how this miracle has gone from a few cells to a full on 2″ human in 12 just weeks!!! We’re grateful for this little miracle coming to our family, and can’t wait to meet him/her in only 6 months. We’ve been waiting over 2 years for this to happen. Can’t wait to feel the little one move and kick. Something to look forward to in the coming weeks.
Our tiny little Lauren Grace has always been a petite little peanut. She has hopped, twirled, jumped, and hung on everything possible since she began walking at 15 months old! Seems like most little girls begin dance class as a toddler, so we told her she could start taking tumbling/gymnastics classes once she became potty trained. Didn’t work much as incentive to get her potty trained sooner, but we kept our promise (who knew such a girly girl would be motivated by Pokemon stickers on a potty chart rather than a tumbling class). So we signed her up for a class at a local gym and classes began this Fall. She is the oldest child in the class and loves being the example of how to do each element. She is keeping track of the days of the week and now knows and looks forward to each Monday, the day after church day. I kind of wish it was a bit more technical, but it’s a great place to start. I can see her loving an advanced tumbling class in the future with an actual balance beam and uneven bars. But for now, its a great way to get some of her energy out, while learning the basics!
Sorry in advance for the blurry pictures. They were taken on my iPhone; It’s hard to get a good shot of something or someone in motion!!
Like most second graders, Reagan’s thoughts at this time of year are caught up in Halloween. The season of spooks informs his conversation, his play and his drawing. But I don’t think either of us was prepared for the idea that it might become, well, his muse.
Last night after I had finished reading to the kids, Reagan casually disclosed three things that genuinely surprised me. First, he told me that he had completed all of his schoolwork in class. As anyone who knows Reagan well could vouch for, that was a surprise. I took at as a sign that his mild dose of ADHD meds was working. Next, I was informed that he had finished his work so quickly that he had free time in class. Really? That, frankly, is uncanny. And finally he made it known that he had used the free time, which according to class rules is to be spent either reading or writing, to write a poem. Which he turned in. Which his teacher read. Whereupon, he alleged, she asked for permission to keep the poem long enough for her to make a copy of it.
“Really.” I said. ”You finished your work in class, had free time left over and used it to write a poem?”
“Yep!” He beamed. ”A good one!”
“Wow.” I allowed. ”Can you recite it for me?”
“No, I don’t really remember it all. But Mrs. Jones said she’d give it back to me tomorrow after she makes a copy of it. Can I bring it home and read it to you?” He asked.
I insisted on it.
And sure enough, when school let out he emerged wearing a big smile and produced the poem, plus a note from his teacher he found on his desk when he reported for class this morning. It read as follows:
Reagan, Would you like to read your poem to Mrs. Sponbeck’s class at 9:15? It’s fabulous! - Mrs. Jones
Reagan,
Would you like to read your poem to Mrs. Sponbeck’s class at 9:15? It’s fabulous!
- Mrs. Jones
Well. How do you like that?
Reagan, being an alumnus of Mrs. Sponbeck’s first grade class, agreed to give a reading of his work for his underclassmen, and again for his own class. That too is a big surprise, given his retiring nature in front of groups. Heaven knows I’d think twice about reading an original composition to an audience of my peers. Needless to say, his Mom and Dad were a bit puffed up with parental pride.
And now, I’m pleased to share what is to my knowledge the first original poem extemporaneously composed by Reagan S. Fairbanks:
October Bats and witches in black hats, Ghosts and goblins chasing black cats, Wolves howling through the night, Halloween is giving everyone a fright, All through the Halloween night.
Bats and witches in black hats, Ghosts and goblins chasing black cats, Wolves howling through the night, Halloween is giving everyone a fright, All through the Halloween night.
I should note that the original, written in his youthful hand with age-appropriate spelling errors is a real treat.
