Missin' You

Brothers

Henry's brother from another mother just left Virginia to live in Australia for an extended period of time.  We haven't seen River since we left Pittsburgh last May, so since we moved across the country it has been hard to get together, but Australia is even more impossible to visit! Our only hope is that he will come back to Utah and live right next door when he comes back to the states.  Henry will miss his little brother.  We love you River!

Silly little boys

Chinese immersion, here we come!

As you can see I don't have any good recent photos of Henry!

 I just entered Henry's name into the Chinese immersion school lottery in our school district and he got picked! I couldn't believe it.  At first I was totally torn because I've heard amazing things about this program but I was totally planning on home schooling next year.  It's only in it's third year here, but other places like CA have been doing it for a while now and say the kids are fluent by 6th grade and can test out of University level classes by the time they hit Jr. High.  Some of them get a minor in their language before they get to college.  You can only start in 1st grade and since this program is only in it's third year, the fourth graders will be the most senior group when Henry starts. There are two teachers at Henry's school and as far as I know, one of them is native Chinese.  Not sure about the other one. Every school around here has something special going on in it.  The school Henry is in right now has a special needs program, but the school that just so happens to be just about equidistant from the house we're hopefully going to buy here in Sandy, has this Chinese program that he got into.  The new house is still in our current school district, but we're only three streets away from the other district, so hopefully I'll be able to work something out to get him there on the bus. If I had to drive him there, it would be a 6 minute drive, so not bad at all.  The other really amazing thing about Utah schools is that you can put your kid in school half day if you want and then home school them for the other half of the day, which means I can just send him for Chinese school every day for either morning or afternoon (whatever time they decide to do the Chinese portion) and then I can teach him at home(or go skiing! haha).  I can decide to home school him one year or put him in another year full day whenever I feel like it, but he will have to go to Chinese school every day for the three hours until sixth grade.  During that time, they learn math, science and social studies as well as obvious language learning stuff.  There are a bunch of videos on You Tube that highlight these programs.  The best one I found is a school in California, but there are some specific ones about our school district right here in Sandy.

Utah    http://youtu.be/hTG0YFU8vWA
California  http://youtu.be/3zsOLNHwcso

There aren't any programs past elementary school as of now, but I bet they'll have something in place for the students as they progress in the program.  I have a bunch of friends who have friends who have put their kids in the program and they LOVE it.  Most of my friends wish our school had something like that or that they had put their kids in the lottery.  Since Henry got in to the program, all my kids have priority to be in it as well, so they'll all be taking Chinese together.  The fun thing is that they're all so close in age that they'll be able to talk to each other at home if they want to.  There are also classes for the parents of the children who are in the immersion programs so they can learn as well.  I fully intend to do whatever I can to learn as much as I can, even if I end up just being semi-conversational, but can't read much or write. I'm really excited for him to start! I wouldn't have believed it, but dreams do come true in Utah:)

Dead Pet

Good-bye old friend

Since September we've kept a small black widow spider in our windowsill.  We found her in our garage and I put it in a jar so I could take photos of it to send to my dad and then never took her out.  I wanted to see how long she would stay alive.  I thought maybe a few weeks, but months passed and she was going strong, eating whatever I put in there and spinning a giant web inside my large mouth quart sized jar.  Everyone thought I was crazy, including myself, for keeping a pet that could kill my children in the house, but they were totally disinterested in it and it was out of their reach so I just left her there.  The kids excitedly showed their friends around Halloween time that they had a pet black widow, but then they forgot about her.  I enjoyed watching her spin her web and gracefully move around the jar as I did dishes and I was always on the hunt for bugs to feed her.  She was the perfect pet for me!  Just a few weeks ago I put some bugs in her jar and she didn't touch them and ever since then she just started to shrivel up.  Today I noticed she was sitting in the position that dead spiders sit in instead of her usual sprawled out, beautiful, elongated position.  She wasn't dead, but her abdomen was shriveled up and her usually red hourglass marking had dulled to white.  I knew she was on her way out and I didn't want to watch her die over days and days so I tossed her outside in the freezing cold.  She would die quicker that way(do I really feel like I'm going to cry? haha). I know people expect to get their pets back when they go to heaven.  I wonder....

Alive

Henry put this rubber T-Rex skeleton puzzle together almost all by himself.  It was hard for me!

So if any of you are wondering...we are still alive.  On Halloween I took the most adorable photos of the kids in their costumes with my old slr camera and they came out all unfocused and horrible and that was the last straw. I wasn't going to take another photo with that camera.  Uploading photos has also been a huge problem for many reasons including 1. Our desktop took at least 15-20 minutes to recognize it was attached to my camera and bring up the photos, 2. The Mac that my sister left me wouldn't even recognize my camera as attached to it so I couldn't upload my photos on that, and 3. Justin's computer was totally full of photos and I didn't want my pictures on that anyway.  If I don't have photos I'm just not inspired to blog because most of the time I forget what we did a week ago and without those photo reminders I can't even remember what to write!(such is the brain of a tired mother).  Now with a new camera for Christmas and a new laptop for my Birthday that has a chip reader built into it I am in heaven.  My photos load in about one minute, my camera works and I have an empty hard drive to store all my photos in! It's literally a dream come true! 

Henry at the new Museum of Natural History wearing a bug mask

I guess I should recap a few major events since the last time I wrote just for posterity's sake.  So...
1. In October the kids took a trip to Southern Utah with Justin to camp and play in the desert.  Henry climbed to the top of an arch and scared some old ladies to death.
2. We have been taking Henry up to Snowbird on a regular basis to ski and he has gone down the blue square(intermediate for you non skiers) all the way from the top of the tram, which takes about 45 minutes to reach the bottom.  He's doing aweesome!
3. I missed the parent teacher conference that was scheduled and Henry chastised me for being irresponsible. I ended up just having a phone conversation during which the teacher said he was already at the academic level they want all the kindergartners to be at by the end of the year.  He could have just gone into the first grade. 
4. Henry and Daddy had fun ding-doing-ditching people for Christmas
5. Aunt Courtney got married in the SLC temple the weekend before Christmas so Henry got to spend a whole week with his cousins, the Chous, and his best friend Wee-o.  They had so much fun running around together, having sleepovers and throwing tantrums.  We hiked up to the Bradshaw family cabin and did some sweet sledding together. 

Henry lounging on the elephant trunk at the zoo

6. Christmas came and Santa brought another PS3 controller, Little Big Planet 2, which Henry has already beaten, and the best present, a slider bike called the rip rider 360 that has coaster wheels in the back that allow you to spin out in 360s.  Click on the link to watch the commercial for it.  It literally is as fun as it looks.  Justin and I want an adult sized one. 

I like how he spells Jackson

Can you tell he's watched the Christmas Carol over and over?

7.  Since we're in Utah, we've had many visitors.  We had Nanni and Papi(my dad and step mom Teri), Mary and Aaron(step sister who married my cousin), other cousin Margie, my brother, Uncle Will, and then we hung out a lot with Meghan and family, Tracie and family(both Justin's sisters), and had tons of fun the week before with everyone who came out for the wedding. 
8.  Henry has been gorging himself on Candy since Halloween and I've pretty much let him eat whatever he wants, but on January 1st I got rid of every piece of candy in the house(like I've done in years past) as far as he knows.  It's actually in the Ziplock box up at the top of the pantry.  When you read this 20 years from now, Henry, you'll know my little secret.  haha. 
9. Finally, Justin took a job here in SLC at a place called TOSH (The Orthopedic Surgery Hospital) and will start in August.  We have been looking around at real estate and have found our dream farm which is a short sale so we don't know if things will work out, but we're praying to get it.  It's actually a 2.25 acre horse property, but I'm going to slowly integrate some goats, pigs, more chickens, and a giant garden.  The house comes with one horse, chickens and some wild cats that catch all the rats and mice.  It's my dream come true, rats and all!