We stopped doing Christmas cards awhile back (after the twins?) but I know there are people out there who like updates and now is as good a time as ever to do one.
Dearest friends, family and loved ones,
2017 has been a wild one. Drew's work moved us to Utah after living in our home in Ohio for 3.5 years. The transition was a difficult one but we love our new home in Utah and the neighbors and friends we have met here. Our kids continue to be completely adorable and we can't believe how much they have been growing. Well, they are all still short like their mom but that's a given.
Little D turned 7 this year, with no big party since we had only moved in at the start of the summer. We
celebrated by sending Uncle DK on his mission that day, and then having mostly family over (and some friends that have been family for almost a decade). The Move was SO HARD on him more than anyone else because our Ohio neighborhood was crawling with 7 year olds. This neighborhood is very young and each time we would meet a new family with a 1, 2 or 3 year old he would facepalm and complain that we were wrong about him meeting anyone his age in our neighborhood. (at least he doesn't complain about getting to hold all the cute neighborhood babies, we've had nearly a dozen born since we moved in!). And thankfully that mindset has changed over the last few months and he has a few wonderful friends his age that live closeby. The Pokemon phase has been slowly dying out (how has that lasted not even a year?) since mostly the boys just play basketball or play videogames or build forts around here. He played and excelled at a few months of basketball, and is enjoying second grade with a first year teacher who we love. His teacher constantly tells us about how much he cares for his classmates, choosing to help them with their work "so they don't get it wrong" before finishing his own work at times! His spelling/writing is getting better, he is still crazy good like his dad at math and he read his way through all the Captain Underpants books and is working on the Diary of a Whimpy Kid books...He is constantly telling us how he "gets no respect in this family" :D Ruth is still trying to get him into Harry Potter. He finally has his own room, and graciously allows us to use it as guest room. Little D loves and he loves hard, spending the latter half of this year (post move) playing a lot more with his younger siblings as well as reading to them (which he loves to do!). He is a sweetheart and a love and a light to everyone around him and we love him to pieces (even when he is sweaty, which he is a lot from all the running around he does all day!). His favorite Christmas presents were Exploding Kittens (a game) and a paper airplane kit.
Little A is a total sweetheart. We cannot believe she is already 4 years old. She also had a rough go during The Move, telling Ruth multiple times a day for the first few weeks that she was going to leave this house and go back to live with K&S (her twin BFFs). We had a lot of raging tantrums from that little lady this summer, who had to adjust to life for the first time without her friends that she had known since she was a baby. Thankfully she met and quickly befriended our next door neighbor who also has only brothers and is quite girly and like painting nails and brushing dolls hair. It has been so fun to see their friendship blossom this summer and into the fall, as they now rarely go 24 hours without seeing each other. I have gotten used to leaving the front door unlocked and seeing them race back and forth from one house to the other as they play "dressups" (a new game for little a!) and frequently go barefoot in freezing cold weather because they cannot be bothered to put on shoes! Little A has loved her church class and her online prek where she is learning to sound out letter sounds and will hopefully be reading before she goes into Kindergarten next year! She has been a wonderful help at home with the twins, as she is quite good at gathering them together (only occasionally pitting them against each other) to play make believe games, most recently relating to their favorite show PJ masks. Little A loves sleeping in (our only child to ever do so!! Usually till 9am if we let her!), cheerios with milk (EVERY DAY) for "brekk-rest", Shimmer and Shine, playdoh, painting, and coloring (sometimes even within the lines!). She takes a yoga class twice a week at the local rec center and loves getting to "workout like mommy and daddy". She is the most beautiful little girl and we are grateful that she is loving living in Utah now. We cannot imagine life without her. She loves all her gifts but especially the dresses from the twins, a sparkly purse from little d, wonder woman from daddy, and shimmer and shine from mommy.
Lan is following right in his big sisters footsteps as the toddler that FEELS ALL THE FEELINGS ALL THE TIME. He fluctuates so quickly from sad to joyful and furious to laughing, it could give you whiplash and it's hard to keep track of sometimes. This is not to be attributed to the move, since the twins are so young and only just turned 2 before we moved out of Ohio, where their scope of friends was limited to whoever was playing with their big siblings. Toddlerhood is so wonderful with Lan and also terrifying as his tantrums lead to lots of screaming and sometimes hitting (but thankfully the banging his head on the ground has stopped...that was scary!). Lan is constantly singing, today it was "santa claus is coming to town" but usually it is the theme song to PJ Masks or Paw Patrol or one of the church songs he likes to sing. He also loves "Oh Mac Donnah" with all the animal sounds. Lan has loved the pass we got here in Utah to the farm because he loves all the animals, and although he is usually hesitant to ride the horses he is so happy when he does! It is no secret that he is the Mama's boy of the family and usually has to be within arm's length of Ruth at all times. He has always weighed more since birth than Lo, but this summer he has really thinned out, and unless they stand right next to each other (and you can see the height difference since Lo is taller by an inch or two), it is getting harder to tell the difference between them when they are wearing the same thing...which happens less lately. Ruth has been letting the boys pick their own clothes lately so Lan usually is wearing Maui, Cars, or Toy Story. He is interesting in eating anything and everything and "loves" to eat salad! He has learned to put on his own boots and is quick to strip down anytime someone mentions a bath. He is so smart and helpful and we love our Panda to pieces!
Our littlest Lo is our little baby genius! He loves ALL THE SUPERHEROS, DC comics as well as Marvel and likes to know the names of all the guys, as well as animals or anything else he doesn't know. He is quite a learning sponge! He loves to color and show off his work from Nursery each sunday (he and Lan have done a great job adjusting to Nursery out here, especially with it being so full and the fact that they struggled so much for the last year in multiple nurseries with ward changes and splits and the move!) Lo may not be a Mama's boy like his big brother but he always wants to help with anything that is being done, especially if it is in the kitchen. He is the first to help with dishes or cooking or mixing stuff. Lo has been the most interesting child because he is so different from our other three. He has not been as affectionate or dependent on his parents and siblings and has on more than one occasion stopped walking and refused to come with us somewhere when we are out in public. Threats to leave him there fall on deaf ears, he is "just fine" on his own. He is always blurry in pictures because he always moves at the last minute. He can outeat just about any kid in our family (eating avocados straight from the skin with a spoon is a favorite snack) and yet he is our skinniest little string bean (although not smallest since he is still taller than Lan!). He loves to read books and be read to, especially when the books involve him asking questions about who or what those objects are. Lo is a total package for us, just the right amount of calm and sweetness to balance out the times when Lan is wild (he does have his moments too though!). He is our family's baby, but as he likes to say, "I not a baby! I ah big boy!"
Drew has adjusted to his new role in the same company (6 years in January!) and received a promotion in the meantime since moving out to Utah. He convinced Ruth to quit her Crossfit membership so that the whole family could attend the local rec center, and has committed to going to 6am bootcamp style classes just about every morning before work! We got to go up to Montana for a few days to visit with family for the 4th of July and then down to Arizona in the fall for the first time with kids to visit his mission and see a friend get married. Drew loves the people he works with and the kids love how much more energy he has to chase after them when he gets home from work. Also the lack of work related traveling has been the biggest highlight of 2017! Drew's parents were able to help us move our stuff out to Utah and have become frequent guests at our home, which the kids love too! Drew had a kidney stone scare (it was a quickly resolved issue but still scary at the time!) but otherwise for the most part we have all been healthy this year, and we are always grateful for it!
In the midst of this year Drew and Ruth celebrated 11 years of marriage which was much different (and far more low key since it was in the midst of moving!) than last year's trip to Costa Rica, but far more rewarding. 2017 has brought more date nights and outings "just the two of us" than any other year since we started having kids, thanks in big part to parents and inlaws visits since moving (and siblings living nearby in Utah!). Ruth quit her regular gym in favor of trying Crossfit which she loved in Ohio then did the same in Utah at a friend's crossfit gym. Mid-summer, Drew started talking about getting a rec center pass to workout with some buddies from work, so Ruth jumped the ship with Crossfit and now we all go to the rec center, which has a fabulous childwatch and classes and we get to go swimming and play basketball as a family anytime we want! It was a small sacrifice for getting to work out with her favorite person and sharing that love of fitness for the first time. Ruth has recently taken up drawing and painting in the latter half of this year, as well as working on renewing her teaching license (which Drew has been wonderfully supportive of!). We also got Thanksgiving Point Passes so we have spent a lot of time at museums around Utah!
Much to everyone's surprise, Kevin is still alive and kicking (biting, scratching...). He will turn 10 years old this upcoming spring and is still as fiesty and yet good with the kids as ever! He has taken over the whole neighborhood (if he wasn't fixed we would definitely be concerned about him fathering all the ferrel kittens we see running around the fields near our house!) and the kids all around our street adore him. He followed us door to door for when we met new neighbors as well as when we did trick or treating and dropping off christmas gifts. He is so sweet and such a handsome cat, that it only took a few days to forgive him for throwing up all over the master bedroom carpet a month after we moved in! But he keeps all the mice out of the neighborhood (or at least he brings them all to our doorstep!) and keeps the neighboring dogs "in their place" much to the dismay of our kids, who adore all the dogs around our street (and can't figure out why they cower when they walk by our house when the garage door is open....oh wait, because Kevin is lurking under our cars!). Kevin is a piece of work and while we have had our good and bad times with him, since coming to Utah, he seems to have settled much quicker (he was born here after all!). We hope he stays healthy and active but Ruth also hopes he finds a better spot to sleep in than the bathroom sinks at night...
We had a wonderful christmas this year. After spending the last month hosting family from both sides in anticipation for Ruth's sister's wedding, Christmas eve and day were quiet (well, as quiet as it can get in our house!) and low key. We played all day, inside with the gifts and outside in the snow. Here's a little something Ruth made the kids for Christmas to house all the little action figures they frequently play with:
(no fireplace but we still made do!)
and we even got a little dusting of a few inches of snow on christmas eve...perfect for snowmen the next morning!
the princess and all her gifts
army crawling in the snow...we had good packing snow for snowballs and snowmen but about an hour into being outside the sun came out and it was so nice outside the kids took off their coats!
"Lan, what's wrong?" "Daddy hit me with snow"
Don't worry, he apologized (and who can stay mad at that handsome bearded man??)
middle littles helped me put the snow army together
and then obviously back to the playing inside
2017 gave us a lot of unexpected changes and happiness...
we are grateful for this time of year that we have to reflect on how much we have been blessed and recognizing that the core of our blessings have emanated from the gospel of Jesus Christ and everything He has done for us.
We can't wait to see what 2018 holds for our family!
Love, the Dowlings
