Anna turned 4!  Can you believe it?  I sure can’t.  Where has time gone?  I think I say this every year, but this is such a fun age.  She’s very independent and loves to play on her own but she’s so smart too.  She picks things up like crazy.  She can consistently count to 40 and has counted as high as 70 with no help.  She can write a bunch of her letters, and has been able to write her own name for a long time now.  She knows the sounds that most of the letters make and constantly asks us what words start with certain letters.  I’ve recently started to try to teach her how to sound out simple words and she’s starting to catch on a little!  There’s no doubt in my mind that she’ll be reading before she starts Kindergarten…especially since she won’t start until the Fall of 2011 when she’ll be turning 6.

Anna also started preschool right after we moved back here in October.  She goes twice a week for two hours each day and LOVES it.  She loves her teacher Ms. Cathy, and has a lot of fun with all of the other kids.  The preschool she goes to is a co-op preschool, which means that each day, three parents stay to help out.  So I’m there about twice a month working in the classroom which Anna just loves.  Every school day she asks if I’m going to be a “teacher” in her class that day.  We’ve gotten to go on two field trips with her school, one to the pumpkin patch in October and then to a Christmas tree farm a couple of weeks ago.  We were supposed to go to a fish hatchery in November but it rained the day we were supposed to go.  (Rain in Seattle?  Shocking, I know.)

We’re in our new house!  Hooray!  We moved in the second week of November and are so happy to finally be settled.  We’re still working on getting furniture…but we’re getting there.  While it was nice knowing that we have GREAT friends here who shared their homes with us when Dan moved back in June, and then all three of us (plus the dogs!) once Anna and I moved out at the beginning of October, it’s great to finally be in our own place.  We have a ton of space to fill and Anna loves all the room to run around…especially our 3rd floor bonus room that she has decided to call her “gymnastics room.”  It’s a great house, and seems like a great neighborhood.  Hopefully when the weather warms up a bit we’ll meet some of our neighbors.

School.  I’m still going for that teaching degree that I’ll hopefully get someday.  This last semester was pretty rough with all the moving around, but I finished up at the end of November and started a new semester December 1st.  I get a lot of teaching courses this semester (Classroom Management, Testing, Diversity & Inclusion..) so those should at least be a bit more interesting than the boring old Econ and World Civilizations I had last term.  If I continue as planned, I should do my student teaching in January 2011 and graduate in June 2011.  I just need to keep on keeping on..

We had a small little Thanksgiving feast with just the three of us, which was nice.  We cooked a full Thanksgiving meal complete with turkey, ham, stuffing and all of the other fixin’s.  Anna actually ate pretty much all the food you see on her plate.  She loved it!  We had a second Thanksgiving with some of our friends on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so needless to say, it was not a very healthy long weekend….but everything sure was yummy!

Anna’s gymnastics is going very well.  We tried three different gymnastics schools before we found one we really like.  She’s in a preschool 3-4 year old class right now and since she started there has only been one other little girl in her class so she’s gotten some great individual attention.  Her instructor told me that they’ll be moving her up to the 5-6 year old class before too long (even though she just turned 4).  She still loves doing her cartwheels and handstands and has gotten really good at them.

Probably the biggest piece of news is that my best friend, Mary, and I decided to start our own photography business.  We’re calling it Giggle & Click Photography and we’ll cater to children and families.  We’ve been working hard getting the business license and all the stuff on the business side of things (Mary’s taking care of all that) and also getting the website going.  We plan to “launch” on January 1st and will start advertising soon.  If you want photos taken of your family or children, let us know!!  We’re very excited about it and I’m super excited to turn my hobby into a business.  I think it’s been a long time coming but it feels great knowing that we’re getting everything going and will be in a business we’ll both enjoy.  Oh, and become a fan on my Facebook Giggle & Click page!  You know you wanna.

So that’s about it with us.  Christmas is coming up fast and though we’re spending it without family and there may not be as many gifts under the tree as in years past, I know we’ll still have a joyful time.  This is my absolute most favorite time of year and I love seeing it all through Anna’s eyes.  She’s so excited for Christmas and keeps eyeing the gifts under the tree.

I’m going to try to be better with the blog (I know I’ve said that before..) but if I don’t post before the holidays, I hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

(Ok, does this win the award for my longest blog post ever?)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YLFzeBAUIE

Anyway, Anna got a letter in the mail inviting her to be in their Christmas Pageant (traditional play about the birth of Jesus).  The play itself is tomorrow after the church service and they had one practice this morning and will have another one tomorrow before church starts.  The letter we received said that typically all little girls under 6 are angels, which is perfect for Anna since angels have wings, just like her current obsession, Tinkerbell (not to compare Tinkerbell to angels or anything… ;)  ).

So we went this morning to the practice and they got all the kids organized in the back of the Nave (sanctuary) while the parents sat up front.  There were about 10 little girls, mostly ages 3 and 4, who were angels.  They started going through the run through and when they had all the little angels run up the aisle to the front of the church, Anna was nowhere to be seen.  I went to the back and apparently she and another little girl had decided they didn’t want to participate, according to the parent watching them…  Great….

So I took her back up to sit with me so she could watch what was going on.  Luckily the little angels are pretty much the last ones up so they don’t have to stand up there as long as the rest of the kids, so it was over pretty quickly.  They decided to do another run through, so I told Anna that if she wanted to wear the angel costume with WINGS and a halo that she had to run up to the front with the other little girls.  Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to participate tomorrow.  She started sulking a bit, as 3 years olds do, so I left her with the teacher and went back up front to wait.

Well, lo and behold, I guess she wanted to wear the angel wings.  She came running up the aisle with a huge smile on her face and her hands up above her head ballerina style (as instructed by the teacher).  She got up to the front and I thought all was well.  After about 3 minutes she looked around and I knew she was looking for me.  It took her a minute to find me but when she did she weaved her way through all the kids and walked down the aisle to sit with me.  Sigh…

I was, however, able to get her to go back up to stand with the other little angels.  At one point she decided to yell out “MOMMY!  WHAT’S THE LITTLE BABY’S NAME?” when she saw the baby who would be playing baby Jesus.  It was pretty funny and cute but I told her that she probably shouldn’t do that tomorrow.

So we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.  The play is supposed to be cute and not-so-serious and I’m told that the angels and any other little kids under 5 usually get pretty good laughs.  She’ll probably end up coming to me in the middle of it, but as long as she runs down the aisle with the rest of the little girls, that’ll make it worth it to me.  She was so cute!

…and thanks Nani for the dress! Anna looks so cute in it. :-)