January 30th, 2010
If you check in here at fivejordans.com every once in a while you may have noticed a definite lack of updates. I had all these great plans for 2010. Christmas was great. We had two wonderful early St Louis Christmas celebrations. One with the St Louis Jordans and another with the Ziegler clan. Clair's dad joined us and we hopped on a plane and took a family vacation to Las Vegas where we celebrated Christmas with my sister Danielle, her husband and three kids.
This of course meant that all the Christmas stuff needed to get done early because of our trip. Well.....not everything got done. I addressed Christmas cards to everyone, but didn't get them in the mail. I had planned to send out a "Recap of 2009" letter. Well, that didn't happen either. We returned home from Las Vegas, Chris returned to work, my father returned to England and the kids returned to school. Suddenly after a month of being surrounded by family and friends, everyone was gone! To top it off, our entire family started sharing one bug or another and it seemed like someone was always sick.
Just when I thought maybe things were looking up and I was coming out of my funk - I got the sad news, that on Jan 16th, my last living grandparent, my grandmother had passed away. On top of the normal grief of losing a loved one, my sister and I had the stress of trying to figure out if we could make it to England or not for the funeral. To make a long story short, we tried to go, but an expired passport for me, and a misspelled name on a document for my sister, meant we couldn't go. I will try to write a little about her when the mention of her name doesn't reduce to me to tears.
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November 15th, 2009
Nothing like a nap with your friend on a lazy Sunday afternoon!
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| Ella and Sarafina |
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November 9th, 2009 ~ A Beautiful Fall Day in St Louis
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I love a beautiful fall day. Chris enlisted the girls help to rake the enormous amounts of leaves in our front yard. Of course every leaf pile needs to be jumped in first though and Ciara and Ella were happy to oblige!
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| A lovely message from my daughter |
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November 5th, 2009
Ciara loves to make homemade cards. She can whip one up for just about any occasion. Here are two of my favorites from 20 cards that she made me for my birthday this year:
The 1st one: (hard to see cause she drew it in highlighter)
"Even if you die, I will always love you more than anything.
Love your favorite daudgter,
Ciara Mari"
The 2nd one: (No sugar coating here!)
"34?
Wow"
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June 27th, 2009
Riley's old Jeep has been sitting in the garage for a few years now. Every once in a while when Chris is mowing the grass or something, Ella would go sit in it and pretend to drive. I tried charging the battery but it appeared to be completely dead. I had previously looked for batteries online and they were all in the $50 range so I never ordered one. Today while Chris was mowing, Ella was playing in the Jeep in the yard and of course couldn't drive it anywhere. I called a local battery store and they had one in stock and we decided it would be worth the money so that Ella could enjoy the Jeep too.
We loaded the battery in and took Ella out to show her. She got in and immediately put her foot on the pedal and was surprised when the Jeep lurched forward. Chris tried to teach her how to hold her foot down on the "gas" pedal and steer but she couldn't seem to master the two and kept running in to things. Finally big sis Ciara got in with her and took her for a ride up and down the sidewalk.
Ella would yell for us to "Get out of the way!" Even when we were quite far away. She seemed quite content to be a passenger and talk on the Jeep's walkie talkie.
Ciara felt quite grown up driving her little sister around. She did quite well backing up and turning the Jeep around. She pretty much declared herself ready to drive.
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February 15th, 2009 ~ Yet another lost tooth!
Ciara lost yet another tooth this month, bringing the total to three for the month of February. (And there is still another 13 days left in the month!) The tooth was loose on one side and hanging on slightly on the other side. Ciara would spin the tooth around with her tongue and it was causing some discomfort especially when she ate. Chris tried to pull the tooth out yesterday but she said it hurt and we thought that maybe it needed a few more days.
Today Ciara turned to our good friend and resident "Expert tooth puller" Elaine while we were at church. Elaine pulled out her tooth AND gave her a dollar. Check out Ciara's cute smile.
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| Ciara loses yet another tooth |
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| Riley bowling at Wii Tournament |
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Saturday, Jan 24th, 2009
Today Riley participated in a Wii Bowling Tournament at Probe (The gifted program that he and Ciara attend) It was really a cute idea. They had board games set up for the kids to play while they weren't bowling and you could buy snacks and drinks. They also had a t-shirt contest. The kids were invited to design their own bowling t-shirt.
For the tournament they had several Wii's attached to the Smart Boards and the kids were placed in brackets to compete against each other. In the very first heat, Riley had to go against one of his best friends: Bryce. Riley and Bryce play Wii Bowling together at home all the time, and Riley was convinced Bryce was going to beat him. Not only did Riley win the first heat, he made it all the way to the Semi-Finals where he lost by only 1 pin!! He was pretty dissapointed to say the least.
Ciara decided not to bowl in the tournament, but had a great time hanging out with her friend Jordyn. And even though I was ironing on t-shirt transfers at 10 p.m. the night before, she refused to show off the t-shirt she had designed.
Thanks to all the great staff at Probe for organizing this fun activity!
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