Ooh, Little Miss Thing! She is having a language explosion right now! She is saying all sorts of new words and animal sounds It's wonderful! But she is sassy!
By far the sassiest baby girl we've had in our family!
This is the look she gave her speech therapist when she wasn't feeling terribly cooperative.
And the look she gave me when I told her she had to get off the table.
Oh, she is going to be a lot of fun!
I'll be the first to say that managing teens and toddlers simultaneously is a wild ride. When my older kids were little, a lot of people shared the sentiment that it would just get harder when they become teenagers.
In my experience thus far, I disagree. I find toddlers are still way harder than teens. These last two little ones are a handful and without the help of my teens I am certain I would be sinking faster than I already am most days!
In so many ways, they are being raised by about 7 parent figures.
And my money says they'll be better off for it.
I hope so, anyway.
We're having so much fun watching Elinor play water polo. She's had two games this week. This picture was taken yesterday when they won in double overtime. Water polo has been THE BEST thing for Elinor. She willingly and independently gets herself up at 4:30 am every single weekday. She takes care of her stuff and has been so responsible in staying on top of schedules and information. We are so proud of her. And let's be real... I'm pretty dang proud of Abe and I for getting up and taking her!
(She is second standing from the left)
I had to be a little braver than I would have liked to be, in that, I took these two little pumpkins to both games. Greta was excited and interested. Peter had woken up from a nap in the car and was struggling. Eventually he warmed up to the game and got into cheering.
Bethany went to prom for Corner Canyon High School last weekend!!
Her date was a very nice guy named Joe, whom she had never met before. So, sort of a blind date to prom!
He is the younger brother of a cute newlywed in our ward, whose family know my Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Tony's family in Draper. His sister used to be Bethany's Sunday School teacher.
She was happy to get to get dressed up and go have a fancy date!
Now let's talk about this dress!!
At the end of March, shortly after Joe asked her, we were in Boise with friends at a robotics competition. I mentioned to JL that Bethany would need to find a dress. She said her daughter (currently on a mission) had one and didn't want it anymore and Bethany was welcome to try it on.
... LIKE A GLOVE! Seriously! It was miraculous! She tried on several others at a dress shop her Aunt Katie works for and didn't find anything she liked as well as this perfect dress. We paid Katie a bit to hem it a little and VOILA! Instant prom dress! What a blessing! So many thanks to JL and Gemma.
And most importantly, Bethany LOVED it!
A few more pics.
He asked her by leaving a rolled up scroll of handwritten music on the front porch.
I mean, come on! That was impressive!
She learned to play in on the violin, videoed it and sent it back to him accepting the offer.
I won't go into details, but the whole prom season ended up having a few twists and turns and ups and downs. We just refer to it as "Prama" (prom and drama mixed) and we're glad it's over! All's well that end well.
Here is the group she went with-- none of whom she knew before the Friday night part of the date. They did the activity part of the date Friday evening because a few of them, including Bethany had the ACT Saturday morning. They went to Provo Beach and I was proud of her that she wasn't afraid to go have fun even though she didn't know them. She said they were all very nice.
Dinner and games with the Schramms. They are wicked fun to play games with. Emphasis on the "wicked". Just kidding. They are awesome. We're the wicked ones. Okay, I'm the wicked one. Actually, Bethany was quite wicked on this particular evening.
I love that Greta is doing the "X" sign for Prototype X. She knows who we were with! Keith is the robotics coach.
And Peter has decided that their youngest daughter, Kate, is his true love. He recently picked my daffodils to give to her, but they died before we made it over to her house.
Kate is an older woman. She's little but she is about two years older than him. If this picture is any indication, they may be perfectly matched in ferocity!
On Saturday I took Peter to Walmart and he saw the racks of flowers out front and he insisted we buy flowers for Kate. He picked out these little beauties. Luckily Kate lives pretty close to the Walmart, so we headed right over.
He had a plan...1. Give Kate flowers 2. Kiss her 3. Marry her
In theory it was a good plan, but not so easy to execute.
He approached her...
His resolve was wavering...
The flowers were proffered...
...and accepted.
At this point Peter said, "No kissing!"
...and he ran away yelling, "Now me go back to my home!"
So parts two and three of the plan were a bust. But it was a start.
After some coaxing from his future mother-in-law, he did return for a picture with his favorite girl.
And now it's all captured on video to be played at Peter's dream wedding.
There is one minor complication.
Kate has declared her love for George. It will be brother against brother. Peter told George it is a race to see who can kiss Kate first. This could get ugly.
Oh HECK! This is what we call Greta's "Crusty"! The funny thing is, she doesn't give crusty looks when she is in a bad mood, but she loves to give them when she's in a good mood. She'll usually give one on request. They crack us up and we admit to encouraging such "delightful" behavior!
She's got the pouty-girl lip action and everything.
Our final Fox family hoorah this week was a trip to Thanksgiving point with Jesse and Amy's family and Stuart and Tiffany's family. Besides the fact that it was Spring break here in Utah and insanely crowded (what did we think was going to happen?), we had a grand time.
Elinor and Annie are so awesome. There was a decided lack of bad attitude from these two newly fifteen year olds. They wandered the museums and made their own fun.
This was Greta's first real trip to the dinosaur museum and I think she quite liked it.
Oh, Greta Lou!
Cannon and James. Surprisingly, Cannon has been out drama-ed in a picture! Go James!
When Connor tried to feed Peter to the shark...
...And Greta was jealous and insisted that she be fed to the shark!
One of the best things we've been doing over the past few months is somewhat regular siblings dinners with Abe's sibling and spouses. They are so enjoyable. They don't totally count as a "date night" seeing as how nobody really talks to their own spouse throughout the course of the evening. The guys sit at one end of the table and the wives at the other. They are happy to talk loudly and uninterrupted and we women-folk are happy to talk amongst ourselves. For 20 (ish) years we sister-in-laws have been family.
And you know, it takes time (years) to get to know one another and figure out how everybody ticks, but what a joy it is to have this kind of support and friendship from people we didn't "choose" but now we wouldn't want to live without.
The Jordan River Temple (our temple) has been closed for renovations for the past two years. The open house before the re-dedication is happening right now and couple weeks ago the youth from our ward went through. I love this picture of Bethany, Elinor, Tristin, and Faith.
Then this past week Faith went again with a few of the youth to volunteer a few hours helping do shoe covers (plastics booties) for people going through. We called it "Booty Duty", but some people didn't think that sounded quite right. Whatever.
Cute, cute girls from the Beehive class.
Wednesday night we went with most of our family and most of Jesse and Amy's families. It was wonderful!
There were lines and crowds, but I thought the kids were all really well behaved and it was very pleasant. Oh, and I totally left Peter and Greta home with a babysitter. Yeah, I wasn't going to take that bullet.
