I have made my lists, checked them twice (times about 200), and am busy marking them off as fast as I can go. With the lights already up, most of the presents already wrapped and family Christmas movies in the Netflix queue, I am determined to have a more leisurely and memorable holiday than in recent years past!
This year has been a time of adjustment for our family. The winds of change are in the air and I can’t quite decide if they are a refreshing breeze or an ominous cyclone. Tyler is 12 and has started middle school, making the great leap from “elementary” to “secondary”. He has a locker, a rotating class schedule, and a cell phone. He can eat from the ala carte menu at lunch (meaning junk food instead of trays) and no longer has to go to car line to be picked up after school (hence the cell phone). Tyler is still involved in football and basketball, but he has also started playing trumpet in the band, joined Student Leadership Club and participates in Motion (a singing/dancing/Stomp-style choreography group with the goal of reaching other kids for Jesus). Tyler’s favorite pastimes are making stop-action videos with his Star Wars Legos and playing any game with a shoot-em-up military theme. (For Halloween, he was a zombie army man with a bloody face holding a homemade cardboard-tube-and-duct tape rifle he learned to make by watching a You-Tube how-to video…enough said!)
Emily is 9 and in the fourth grade and Lauren is 7 and in the second grade, but I swear they are both going on about 15! I had “the talk” with Emily this summer and Lauren’s may possibly be this coming soon due to her sole desire of “finding a husband, getting married and having babies just like me!” (As long as it is in that order, though, I guess I can’t really complain…) They are starting to wear bras and deodorant, and managed to talk Grandma into shaving their legs once when I wasn’t around. (Wes closes his eyes and ears and concentrates really hard on not noticing.) But they are both good girls with their unique and quirky personalities. Emily is our little artist, book reader, and the one who stops by the piano even when it isn’t “practice time” and plays just for fun. She loves to look nice but in a very safe and conservative (meaning matching) way. Lauren is the tomboy cut-up who is always making us laugh by shaking her rear or making faces when she isn’t scowling about something that has made her mad. She loves dressing up in her own stylish and flamboyant (meaning sassy) way. They both still take gymnastics and sing in the church choir and are pretty good friends with each other when they aren’t arguing over whose turn it is for something.
Hannah is 4 and just started 2-day, 3-year-old pre-kindergarten. (Try saying that five times fast). I thought she would love the social interaction, but turns out she hated it. Or just hated Spanish class—we never quite figured that one out. Hannah has since adjusted fairly well (meaning she doesn’t break down into sobbing hysterics anymore) but she still doesn’t look forward to “school days”. She is still our most difficult personality, the hardest one to break, and the one requiring the most frequent discipline. But her “poosie” curls, her blue eyes and her “I love you’s” go a long way toward easing the frequent “no’s” (usually earning her a spanking) and “that didn’t hurt” (that sometimes follows the spanking). I’m not sure who Hannah will take after the most as far as fashion, but she looked at herself the other day, declared she “looked dumb” in her outfit and wanted something else to wear…so it is without question that she has a definite mind of her own! Hannah is also taking gymnastics, is a very good singer, and shows interest in the piano. She loves to paint, play on the computer and watch countless hours of Netflix-streamed Blues Clues, Backyardigans and Pink Panther when she isn’t trailing me around asking me to play a riveting game of Sorry or Candy Land.
Penny is our newest addition to the family. She is a Boston terrier who was born December 15, 2010. We got her the night before the huge snowstorm came through last year in February as a surprise Valentine present for the kids. Penny is a great dog…she housetrained exceptionally well and has a great personality. She loves to go in the van to get the kids from school and gets extremely excited when anyone comes to the door. Her only real vice is trailing around my feet in the kitchen and waking Wes up at 4 AM each morning to go out and play. I get around the first by throwing treats into the living room to distract her from the food smells; Wes got around the second by allowing her to sleep with Tyler instead!
Wes is doing well. He has had only minor sports injuries this year (Lauren took the fall instead with a broken arm in May) and continues to play basketball at lunch. Wes coached his last season of football for Tyler this fall (next year is junior high team) and is starting his last coaching season of basketball. It would be a very sad day indeed contemplating “coaching retirement”, except that Lauren is playing a bit of basketball herself so Wes has volunteered to help coach her team as well. I would be worried about the gender shift, but he has plenty of experience with whining and crying girls here at home so he should be just fine.
I am staying very busy with my volunteer missions work. Our church has a goal of sending 1000 people on a cross-cultural missions experience this year to over 15 different locations, and I am heading up the training and sending of those who choose to go to Malawi, Africa. I have even managed to coax Wes into the madness; he has agreed to go with me on one of the March journeys to see just exactly what grabbed my heart almost two years ago. Although this year will be a lot of work, I am looking forward to it and am so excited God chose me to be a part of this ministry.
I hope your families are also doing well this holiday season and that most importantly, you are able to take the time to make the memories count. Have a very Merry Christmas, a happy New Year and peace and love all year!
Wesley, Beth, Tyler, Emily, Lauren and Hannah Tollett
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