Season's Greetings 2009

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you loved ones and family! We have had a great but challenging year! Larry still teaches 7th grade math and loves it, most days! He now serves as president of the Young Men. Mindy is still Primary president and is helping teach James' preschool group (kind of like Joy School). James is our precious little boy! We love him so!

Here is a quick review of the year in photos! Some are repeats of earlier posts, but we hope you enjoy it anyway!

Big Snowfall of March 2009! James and Larry before a sled run!

Mindy and James at the bottom of the hill!

Mindy and James in May 2009! We love tulips!

Larry and James with the tulips, too!

James and his cousin Jolie. James attended (with us, of course) his cousin Jolie's baptism on April 11, 2009. He really loves Jolie, and was very excited after the service. He wants to be baptized just like Jolie was!

June 2009- We visited the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and one of the highlights of that trip was visiting the Bodie Island Lighthouse. James is an avid lighthouse lover, and has memorized all of the lighhouses in North Carolina's coast. Someday, we'll get to visit the rest of them.

June 2009- Nags Head, NC - on the beach! We liked it! We loved it! We want some more of it!

July 4th- waiting for our town's parade to begin.

Aunt Julie visited in July! Here she is w/ James and his two new doggies- Ceasar and Rocky!

James at his "Construction" / "Cement Truck" themed birthday party in Sept. '09.

Oct. '09 at the NC Train museum. We took James on the Disney "Christmas Carol" Train Tour. James didn't care too much for the movie previews and such, but he loved the train!!!!!!

James and Larry on a hike at a local lake. One of their favorite places to go throw rocks into the water!

James at the lake. Oct. '09

Halloween 2009- two black-eyed P's and a vampire

At the ward Halloween party, James loved the donut eating game!!!!

Nov. '09- James in his pile of leaves! Mindy was constantly raking leaves off the new grass seed she'd planted in Oct. Those crazy leaves just kept on comin' and coverin' up her baby grass shoots!!! But what a way to get into the autumn spirit, right?!!!!!

Nov. '09- James on a tractor before going on a hayride!

While on the hayride, James noticed some of the older children and youth were chewing on the hay...so he tried it out...long enough for us to get the picture!

Here's James waiting for the hayride to begin. I might add that he looks patient and so angelic, but was running around the parking lot and away from me and Larry before this picture...

Our family + one on the way!

...the most wonderful time of the year...

It's here! The Christmas season is upon us, and it's been so exciting, already!

We had a great trip up to Northern VA for the Thanksgiving weekend where we visited both sides of the family. James was so good and enjoyed everything from his cousins, aunts, & uncles to his Grandparents Fox and Baumgarten. He even was a great traveler the cumulative 10 hours on the road, round trip!!!!

All before December 1st, we've set up our tree and hung garland and lights both inside and outside our house. James wrote his first letter to Santa (with help on the writing part-- he knew exactly what he wanted to say). He was so cute as he ran outside to put the letter in our mailbox and then raised the flag! We eagerly await a response from the North Pole... ;)

Larry and I are so excited to share with James all of the wonder and magic of Christmas...what a blessing to end a hectic and crazy year with celebrating with friends and family!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins

Here's our little "pumpkin" at the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago! He has really enjoyed this fall with the leaves and Halloween! He was a vampire for Hallween and was terribly cute! (Pictures are still in my 35 mm camera...drat having the old fashioned camera and trying to blog...oh well, use your imagination! :) And he's soooo excited about Thanksgiving and Christmas!!!!! (and so are mommy and daddy!)

(Thanks to my friend Jamie for e-mailing these pictures to me so I could have something recent to post !)

James is 3!

James just turned 3 years old, but we've been celebrating all September!

Newest thing about our little guy~ lately, he has become an endless chatterbox! And I love it! He often will tell me precious things such as: "Mommy, I love you!" or "Mommy, come play with me! You be Emily and I'll be Thomas (the tank engines)! or "You be Towmater and I'll be Lightning McQueen!" I am sooo grateful for him and how totally fun, bright, and special he truly is in our lives!

And, regarding the fire fighter suit, James went to the fire station on a field trip with his preschool group this past week, and one of the moms there was sweet enough to take his picture and e-mail it to me...since I forgot to bring our "dinosaur" of a camera.

September...at laaast!

What a relief that summer is over! I usually enjoy summer, but this past summer was a bit wild towards the end! After a busy and funfilled July with visits to and from both Larry's and my family, I started potty training James the last week of July. On the last day of July, I amputated the tip of my left thumb and made a visit to the costly ER! Sorry no pictures! :( Both Larry and I each had a bout with poison ivy for a couple of weeks in August. And the last week of August, Larry's lovely blue Ford Taurus (12 years old, now) has finally become too sick to repair...we're letting it go! :(

With poison ivy gone, my thumb almost healed, and the weather cooling off tremendously, September has brought lots of new events in just this first week! So far, Larry's 2nd year of teaching has gone great!

Last Tuesday, September 1st, James started pre-school-- homeschool style! 5 other mothers and I have collaborated together in planning out a schedule of rotation in teaching, assistant teaching, themes, concepts, and skills for each week for this coming fall, winter, and spring! It's somewhat modeled after the Joy School model, but we chose not to follow their curriculum. Needless to say, I hosted the preschool at our house and taught this past week! It was great fun, and James thoroughly enjoyed it! I'm going to make the most of these next 3 remaining years before James starts Kindergarten in 2012!

Circle Time. James is in the blue shirt, sitting to the far left.

he class! James is in the first row on the far right!

"Like a Lighthouse"

One of James' favorite songs is an old EFY song by Michael Webb called "Like a Lighthouse." He started liking lighthouses, last year, from a storybook. And after that, I started singing him a shortened version of Michael Webb's song. This year, we told James that when Daddy was done with school in June, we would go see a lighthouse on a beach. We kept our promise, and it was well worth the trip!!!! Here is James in front of the Bodie Island, NC lighthouse.

Since this particular lighthouse is closed for climbing, all James could do was look up into the top of the structure. We didn't have time to see all of the lighthouses on NC's outer banks, but we plan on doing so in the future!

Family picture with the lighthouse--much taller than we!

We spent the rest of our time on the beach. James loved the ocean waves . He spent all of his time chasing them and running up and down on the beach.

Our precious little boy watching the waves in wonder!

Family, Friends, and Surprises

Here are some quick glimpses of the people we've been able to see these past couple of months!


The fun all started when we got to go up to VA to our niece Jolie Fox's baptism on April 11th. Here is Larry and James with his two brothers Erik (left) and Brett (right) with two of Brett's kids-- Jolie and Genna.
James literally wanted to get baptized after he saw Jolie's baptism! He has to wait 6 more years!

Mindy's family came down to visit after Easter. Here is James with Aunt Amanda at the park.

Mindy's brother (Uncle Jacob) had a blast with James. Here are the two of them at the swings. We had a great time visiting with Jacob before he moved out to UT to become an engineer at Hill Airforce Base. We sure miss you, Jacob, but we are so happy for you!

In May, we were so excited that Mindy's brother (Uncle Matthew) and sister-in-law (Aunt Tamara) came through North Carolina on their cross country trip to visit both sides of the family. We had a great time getting caught up and hanging out together! We are so excited for Matt who just graduated with his Masters of Accounting, and Tamara who has one more year to go! How cool that they are both accountants and Larry and I are both teachers!

The big "surprise" happened one day the end of April! As I was making dinner, I heard the doorbell ring. I went to answer it and there stood Cam Black--a long-time friend from my mission in London, Ontario, Canada! He was baptized by the sister missionaries right before I was transferred to London. Cam is still faithful in the gospel, and he had so many great stories to share! I am sooooo glad that he came! I miss the people I knew in Canada, and to hear the "eh" was just like music to my ears!

Here is James's "surprise" face--as he pauses from tiptoeing through the tulips in our downtown!

What a perfect spring we've had!

We love strawberries!

This year, we had the opportunity to go strawberry picking! James loved it!

Here we are at the strawberry farm. It was very muddy- due to all the rain!

James helped me make strawberry freezer jam (the little jars stacked on the table). He was a great masher and stirrer! Then, I attempted to try a family recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie since that's Larry's favorite kind of pie! It turned out pretty well!

Easter 2009

We had a great Easter, this year! Larry and I had a great time sharing our Easter traditions with James! Here James and I are sitting in our front yard after we found the plastic eggs Larry hid for us! James caught on quickly and found almost all of them by himself!

It was great watching him color eggs! We couldn't help laughing to ourselves when he'd drop the eggs from his spoon. This poor yellow egg had multiple concusions!

The Easter Bunny hid James' basket in one of the lower kitchen cabinets! He loved eating his chocolate eggs and was excited for his new and 1st CD- "Veggie Tales' Greatest Hits!" Now he can hear the "His Cheesburger" song sung by "Mr. Lunt" as often as he wants when I set it to "repeat". Youtube, our DVD player, and mommy can finally get a break for a while!
Our roll of film ran out--so the rest of our Easter pictures are on the new roll of film--Oh the drag of not having a digital camera! We'll post them as soon as we can!

A "Little Leak" goes a long way!

On March 12th, while I was attending a Relief Society Birthday Celebration at our church, Larry called me to tell me that water was coming through the dining room ceiling! Needless to say, I imagined the worst--water gushing through a gigantic whole in the ceiling of our dining room, flooding out our main floor.

Much to my surprise and gratitude, it was a smaller leak, MUCH SMALLER! However, it was still a huge problem! We knew it had to do with the kid's/guest bathroom upstairs which has been intermittently used for mostly showers since we've moved into this house 2 1/2 years ago. We had just finally started using that bathtub for James' baths more regularly in March. Larry, who had just finished bathing James and put him to bed, came down the stairs and heard water running. He looked over and saw the stream of water coming down the chandelier into a tall flower arrangement on the dining room table! Thankfully he works quickly, saving the table cloth and the flower arrangement! We emptied 3 bowlfuls of dirty water before it stopped. The drywall on the ceiling was spotted, and even one nailpop was filling up like a little balloon!

After 3 weeks of plumbers, painters, a small hole in the ceiling, home owners' insurance calls, insurance deductible payments, and cleaning, we are grateful that it's fixed! The cause of the problem was a sloppy mistake on the part of the home builder. Rather than using plumber's putty to seal the pipes of the bathtub drain, they used silicon putty which dries up and shrinks over time, making it impossible to hold back the gallons of water coming out of the tub all at once! We've learned a lot from this little leak! And we are THANKFUL it was LITTLE!

Last Blast of Winter- March 3-4, 2009

We had the largest snowfall, yet! About 5 inches of snow fell, creating a winter wonderland, unlike James has ever seen before! School was canceled, and so Larry, James, and I went sledding and built a snowman! The best part of it all was watching James discover snow for the first time! Enjoy the pictures!