A Talbert Happy New Year!

Seeing as I'm not the greatest at keeping up with my blog, I'll try to do a nice recap of the year.

January: Both the girls started the new year with hair cuts.  Isabella's the only one who took a picture of her hair cut.

February: The girls had their first piano recital. They were both a little nervous but did well.

March: The boys had fun playing in the mud and decided to show me how much fun by making a mess of the bathroom.  Those are MUDDY hand prints.  Not anything else.

April: Isabella turned 11!  Can't believe how big she's getting.

May: We were so excited for the end of school.  Here's the kids on their last day of school!  Isabella's last day of elementary school too!!  They were so excited.

June: We took our first family vacation since Korbin had been born.  We went to Six Flags Magic Mountain and had a blast.  We all had a great time riding the rides.  We were there for three days and each day we had a different theme for the shirts we wore.  The first day was tie-dye shirt day, the next Angry Bird shirt day and the last was super hero shirt day.  It was a blast and we made some amazing family memories.

July: Was my 30th birthday!  No pictures of that but here's a picture of Korbin enjoying a 4th of July treat.

August: We started August celebrating Evan's 6th birthday!  Can't believe he's six!!

Then we moved on to the first day of school!

Isabella starting her first day of middle school!  6th grade!

Autumn starting 5th grade.

Evan's first day of 1st grade!

September: Remembering those who lost their lives on September 11th at the Healing Field at Tempe Town Lake.  It was such a somber event but something I wanted my kids to know about.

October: We started out the month celebrating Autumn's 10th birthday!  Can't believe she's 10.

 Happy Halloween!  Evan as Big Ben, Korbin as Green Lantern, Isabella as Bat Girl and Autumn as a Vampire.

November: We celebrated Jayson's 30th Birthday!  Yummy pizza casserole!

December: We started out the month celebrating Korbin's 4th Birthday!

On the 21st I hosted a baking day at my house and invited friends over to make and share treats.  It was a blast and here's a picture of all the baked goodies!!

In October we took our second family vacation to Utah to visit Jayson's family.  While there, Jayson's sister Meghan took our family pictures.  I think they turned out great!!

Jayson is extremely busy with work.  He got a promotion the end of October at the same facility he's worked at since January 2008.  He is the head chef of the heath care center.  They are going to do some renovations and want him to help those changes along.  In his free time he likes to watch movies, when he has free time!  It seems he works a lot these days!

I stay busy with the kids.  Having four kids is really a full time job!  I also stay busy with my church calling as Primary Music Leader.  I teach songs to the kids age 3-12.  We learn songs throughout the year and sing them in a program usually at the end of October.  I've had this calling for two years now and I love it.  We'll start learning new songs this Sunday and I can't wait.  It's a bit of a challenge with all the kids in there now but I like it and seem to do well with it.  I'm hoping to go back to school sometime in the near future.  I've been feeling like that time is coming soon.

Isabella turned 11 this year and she is growing into quite a wonderful young lady.  She excels in school and loves to read.  She spent the summer taking 6th grade math to get ahead for the year and ended up getting moved to 8th grade math at the beginning of the year.  She's also in all honors classes and is doing amazingly well.  She's in her second year of playing the cello and her third of playing the piano.  She's a great big sister and watches the boys for us often so we can go out on dates.  It's fun and scary watching her grow into a young woman but I'm excited to see who she becomes.

Autumn turned 10 this year and she's still just as spunky as she was when she was little.  She loves the social aspect of school and has no problem making friends.  She loves to write and draw and creates such fun stories.  I hope she continues to develop that talent and it makes her very happy as she grows up.  She's in choir at school and loves to sing when she thinks no one is listening.  She's also in her third year of piano.  I keep thinking she'll be the one to give me the issues when she's a teenager but it's still fun to watch her grow and learn.

Evan turned six this year and is quite a character.  Out of all my kids, he is so different.  What started as a love for space and the solar system turned into a love of the Earth and world landmarks.  He has such a love of learning and a vast knowledge of things most six year olds don't even know exist.  He had an interesting start to school and that continues today.  There are times when he gets so frustrated and doesn't know how to channel that into something positive and he freaks out.  He has an intervention team at school and we work hard to help him be successful.  I see so much potential in him it's unreal.

Korbin turned four this year and has grown so much.  He's so interested in the world around him and loves to tell me about it.  We have such interesting conversations about everything he sees.  He cracks me up with his vocabulary.  Sometimes it seems like his favorite word is "actually", he says it all the time!  He is always on the go and is very aware of his surroundings.  He loves attention and knows just what to do to get it, whether it's positive or negative.  He loves to drive his sisters crazy sometimes just for fun.  It's fun watching him grow and learn.  

This has been an amazing year for our family and we look forward to another new year! 

Why Are You Mine?

I've been thinking a lot lately about my kids.  I love each of them dearly and they are so different.  I wonder sometimes why it is that I was chosen to be their mother.  I do feel very inadequate being a mother sometimes.  As the girls get older I'm excited and scared.  Things didn't go so great with my mom and me when I was a teenager, though things were a bit strange for us.  I just hope that I can do right by my girls, that I'm a better mother to them than mine was to me.  

I think I wonder the most with Evan, why I was chosen to be his mother.  He has a special spirit.  As I write this, we're looking up pictures of the John Hancock Center for his picture he's drawing for a thank you note.  He's six and has more more awareness of the world than my girls do!  I feel very protective of him and you can't just be anyone to know him, you have to have a special quality about you too.  It might sound strange but it's how I  feel.  The interim principal told him she'd have lunch with him a couple months ago because he had a rough time at lunch or somewhere and then he made a good choice and that was his reward.  I felt that she hadn't been at the school long enough to earn a private lunch with him.  Yeah, it's silly.

I guess the point of this is I've been more aware that I gave birth to the babies I did for a reason.  Maybe someday I'll understand why each one was given to me but I don't now.  I hope that I do everything I'm supposed to as I raise them.  Hopefully I'll be the mother to them that I was meant to be.  

Happy 6th Birthday Evan!

I can't believe Evan is six already!  Seems like he was just born, though I just about feel that way with all of my kids.  He was so excited for his birthday and couldn't wait to open his presents.

 Angry Bird toys!

Solar System cupcakes.

I thought of the idea for his cupcakes early in the summer and while they aren't the most beautiful cupcakes in the world, they did the job.  They were a huge hit with Evan and the other kids.

My Life is a Zoo

As if my life wasn't crazy enough for four kids, two cats and two dogs, we figured we add a tortoise to the mix.  Like the cats, the tortoise was kind of a surprise addition to our family but she fits right in.  We found her a few blocks from our house, wandering down the street.  Jayson thought she might be someone's pet so we brought her home in fear that she would get hit by a car.  We did what we could to find her owner but no one came forward.  She's pretty low maintenance which is awesome.  We should have gotten a tortoise instead of cats and dogs!  Jayson made her an enclosure so the dogs will leave her be and we like to think she's pretty happy.  It's funny watching her eat, not sure why but it is.  As you can see from the picture, her favorite food is watermelon.

The Best Vacation Ever!

In June we took a family vacation to Six Flags Magic Mountain.  Jayson and I had gone last summer and had a mostly good time, despite the circumstances that had happened.  We wanted to take the girls because they are both tall enough to ride on all the rides but weren't sure it would be as fun for the boys.  I thought about it for a while and figured we might as well take the boys too, we'd figure it out and manage to have a great time.  I'm so glad we did.  Jayson didn't take much convincing and we had everything planned.

I thought it would add some fun to our vacation to have theme days.  It was easy to come up with tie-dye shirt day.  MM has a super hero theme for some of the rides and I really wanted to have a super hero shirt day but the shirts were expensive, I was able to make our shirts for much less which was a win win.  We had a difficult time coming up with a third theme day but my parents suggested it and it was an awesome idea: Angry Bird shirt day!  Yep, fits us well.  So with our themed shirts, we were ready to go.

 Tie-dye Shirt Day

 Super Hero Shirt Day

Angry Bird Shirt Day

I won't go into detail of all the rides we rode, we rode them all, but we had a great time.  All the kids had fun riding the rides, even the boys.  We went at the perfect time, as most kids in Cali are still in school.  We're hoping to make this trip annual.  We still wear our theme shirts which is kind of fun.  And the tie-dye shirts were the best because it made it easy to locate everyone.

Random Rant

I kind of suck at blogging.  I'm not sure why, guess I just find other things to do with my time.  Though I think it would be a good release for me.  This has been a challenging year, to say the least.  

You don't have to search very far back on my blog to see that Evan started kindergarten this year.  I've even posted in a few posts that I knew there would be some aspects of school that would be difficult for him.  I wasn't surprised at all, though I wasn't prepared how to handle it either.  

Evan's teacher's mother passed away the second week of school, so she was out that whole second week. It was a rough week for Evan.  He didn't know how to handle having a sub so he was horrible.  The school counselor didn't know how to handle Evan at all.  She was trying to get him to do things the way other kids do and he did not respond well to her at all.  In fact, he'd much rather not respond to her and avoided her for a long time or shut down anytime he had to be around her.  Once his teacher came back, things started to look up, he was doing better at school, wasn't having so many behavioral issues.  Come fall conferences, he had great feedback and was doing well.  Then things started to go downhill the end of October.  

On a Friday, Evan got really upset and I can't even remember the reason why and he started pulling posters off the walls.  He and I cleaned it up and I was hoping it was a one-time thing.  It wasn't.  He did it a few more times, one time it happened early in the day and I had to come pick him up from school and he ended up getting suspended.  Yeah, that was super fun.  I was at a loss of what to do.  I couldn't get from him what was going on that made him feel the need to trash his classroom.  Come December, I was ready to pull him out of school and try again the following August.  After talking to his teacher on the phone, she convinced me that was a bad idea and to keep going and we'd figure out how to help him.  And we did.  He's had just a few instances where he's gotten upset to the poing of wanting to flip the tables over but not as frequent as it used to be.  I think his teacher knows his cues now and can get him redirected before things get out of hand.  It's really hard to say what will set him off and once he is set off, it's hard to get him back to himself.  He will completely shut down to the point of silence, he won't talk to anyone.  Super frustrating for his teacher.  

I'm grateful for his teacher, I'm sure she's wanted to give up but she doesn't.  And I know it's only because of her that Evan has made it through this school year, myself too.  It is so exhausting being a parent, I can see why some parents don't care and don't do anything but that doesn't help your kids out at all.  I can see so much potential in Evan, he's going to be an amazing person!  If we can make it through the next few years and teach him appropriate behaviors and how to handle behaviors, the sky's the limit with him, maybe not even the sky, maybe space is the limit for him!  I'm not sure why I was entrusted with such a special boy with an equally special spirit, but I promise, I'm doing the best I can to help him reach his potential.

Holy Sticker Charts, Batman

We like sticker charts in our house.  For the last few months it's how I've motivated the kids, especially Evan!  I should take pictures of all of Evan's sticker charts, I think he's going on his seventh now!  Sheesh!  It's working though.

Trying to get Korbin potty trained, here's his sticker chart to get a prize of his choice. 

Evan's sticker chart, along with his happy notes.  He has nine stickers already to get his mustache/father pig. 

 Autumn's AR point reading chart.  She's not the biggest fan of reading, if you can't tell.

Isabella, on the other hand, loves to read.  Of course, all three Hunger Games books were worth 15 points each so she got a lot of points real quick.  And if you can't tell, I owe her two prizes.  Yikes!