Fall 2014 to Mid-June 2015

It's been quite a long time since I've posted an update, so I'll just hit the highlights.

Carolyn pretty well covered their visit to Austin and the family reunion. After we got back from that Noah started going to preschool for a few hours in the morning two days a week.

We went to Utah to spend Thanksgiving with half of Alex's family. Unfortunately there was a nasty stomach bug that did the rounds of a large portion of the family that was gathered. So a lot of us didn't even manage to eat our Thanksgiving dinner until a day or two later. Alex's poor brother got the worst though. He was already down with mono, then got a stomach bug to go with it.

For Christmas we stayed home quietly and didn't get sick.

Most of the happenings between January and April were Violet reaching developmental milestones like sitting up, babbling, and crawling.

In April we sold our beloved CR-V to Alex's brother and bought ourselves a minivan. We got a tow hitch installed so Alex can pretend it's a truck and use it to pull a small folding trailer. He's been putting it to good use hauling things for various house projects.

For May and beyond I'll break it up by person. We'll start with these two cuties.

Violet
Violet has finally gotten her first two teeth.Her first came in at about 10 months and the next one didn't make it in until she was 11 months. Of course, her lack of teeth has not stopped her from eating everything she can get her hands/mouth on. I think the grossest thing I've fished out of her mouth so far has been a potato bug. Just because it has potato in the name doesn't mean you should eat it. We've also been having fun "doing" her hair. It's not really enough hair to warrant being called a pigtail or ponytail. I'll just let the picture speak for itself. She's not quite walking yet, but she's getting close. She cruises around holding on to furniture and walks (surprisingly quickly) if you hold both her hands. She has lots of different laughs that we're hoping to capture on video. The most awkward one is when she just sucks in air until she makes a kind of croaking sounds. She's also been favoring us with all sorts of furrowed brows and angry glares recently. They mostly just make me laugh. I just can't take it seriously when someone that cute and tiny glares at me.

Hair styling by dad.

Blowing practice.

Teeth! Sorry for the weird angle, it's very hard to get a picture that shows off those crooked little pearly whites.

Noah
Noah turned five. With that came his annual check up. With that came a blood test to check for Celiac disease. With that came crying from all the Seveys in the room. (Alex wasn't there and Violet doesn't like being held by most people she doesn't know. Especially if she can see me.) His levels came back elevated, so we were referred to a pediatric gastroenterologist. We talked it over and decided to skip the endoscopy given the vast family history. (For those just tuning in, Alex's father, Alex, and four of his five siblings have Celiac disease.) So he's going gluten-free and will be rested in a couple of months. I've wised up though. Next time Alex will be coming to the appointment with us to hopefully help keep the trauma under control. He also “graduated” from preschool. My favorite part of the program was when the read the responses from the kids about what they wanted to be when they grew up and why. Some kids wanted to be firemen, cowboys, or soccer players. Noah, he wants to be “a big father, so I can be the line leader.”

Nicole
I visited the optometrist for the first time and now have my very own glasses for distance activities like driving at night and watching movies. I was also finally released from being a ward missionary and was asked to keep the ward bulletin board up-to-date which seems to fit pretty well with already being the ward website administrator. I've recently rekindled my love of ginger ale and often find it hard to believe that in just a couple more weeks I'll be the mother of a five-yea-old, a one-year-old and a T-minus-6-month-old.

Alex
Alex also visited the optometrist and got glasses (again, he had Lasik done several years ago) for distance activities. He's been keeping busy with house projects like building a loft in the garage and putting down paving bricks by the patio. He even made a couple of trips to Utah to help his dad with electrical work on the house his parents are having built.