Seeking Answers

What an emotional ride I have taken the past few days. I got a call last week from a principal at an elementary school here in Price. They needed some first grade teachers and wondered if I would be interested. I had my application submitted for another part time job that I didn't get and they saw I was a certified teacher. I had the idea for my neighbor and visiting teaching charge and I to split the job (she is a teacher too) and then I would only work part time and get to teach. It sounded like a great idea but I just felt uneasy about it. I wasn't sure if it was the thought of change and leaving my kids every day or if it really was not the right thing to do. I made my decision to take the job and then took it to the Lord. I wasn't sure what His answer to me was, so I just kept on taking the steps. I was getting excited for it yesterday and then today I woke up with a terrible feeling about it. I went in with my potential teaching partner for the interview. Since they called me I thought we pretty much had it in the bag and that was making me even more anxious, but I kept thinking it was just thinking about all the changes that would be necessary to accommodate my job. I came home from the interview feeling worse than ever. I knew I didn't want to do it but how did I tell Debbie (by neighbor) after dragging her into this? How can I turn down a chance to make some needed money to build a house next spring? I know now that my uneasy feeling was the answer to my many prayers but I was so afraid to act. Luckily, Heavenly Father loves me and He acted for me! We didn't get the job! I have never been so relieved to be turned down for a job in my life! We are still alternates if one of the other people they hired backs out but I am SO RELIEVED and THANKFUL!!

Haylie can read!

As a kindergarten teacher I have seen lots of kids figure out how to put sounds together but it is pretty exciting when it is your own child who is doing it. She can only read CVC words (for those not in education--Consonant Vowel Consonant) but that is where it starts! She knew the letters and their sounds before she started preschool this year so I figured it wouldn't take too long before she would be able to read some words. The Letter Factory video by Leap Frog is awesome for helping learn letters and sounds! That is how Haylie learned them all. I came up with a game she likes to play that I call "read it to eat it." She loves saltine crackers with Easy Cheese on them and I have always written letters or numbers on the crackers with the cheese when I gave them to her but now I give her 3 crackers and make 3 letter word with them (cat, rug, dog, mat, bat, bus). Then I have her read me the word before she can eat it. The past couple of days she has gotten much better at it. Then tonight she was reading some of the words in my Bob books. I know this is probably way too much information and a boring post but it's the kind of stuff I love to talk about as a teacher, and I want to remember the idea for Zander in a couple of years. Haylie is growing up so fast!! She only has two more days of preschool this year. She will be going back again next year and then on to kindergarten!

Zander's 2nd Birthday

Since the weather didn't let us spend Christmas with Dave's family we decided to go for a visit over Zander's 2nd birthday. It had been a little over a year since they had seen the kids so it was good to visit them. Zander is a big basketball fan so the main gift he got was a little basketball hoop to play with outside. He loves it and I love not having to act as the hoop when he wants to play. We had a little party with Grandma and Grandpa Holzer, and Aunt Dawn and Uncle CJ and I made him a basketball cake.
Zander is such a cute little guy. He has become very particular about certain things and if something is not just like he wants it then his favorite phrase is "I don't like it" or "I don't want it". If you offer a snack he won't eat it until it is in a bowl. If you try to cut something up for him that he wanted whole he won't even think about eating it. It is kind of funny, but can get kind of tedious to keep him happy. He has a great sense of humor; today at lunch I was trying to get him to eat his sandwich by making the two pieces of bread open up and talk to him. Instead of eating the sandwich he picked up his sippy cup and started giving his sandwich some juice. He thought it was hilarious and so did Haylie and I.
Generally he is a very happy boy and I am so grateful he is a part of our family. I remember thinking he was such a little stranger to me when he was first born. Day by day I have learned who he is and he is such a joy in my life! I love you Zander! Happy Birthday!

Easter

We had a fun Easter this year with the kids. They are at good ages to do lots of fun things. We got to color Easter eggs.
We went to several Easter egg hunts. The Easter Bunny even showed up at one of them. Zander wouldn't go near her but Haylie decided to give her a hug. (I say "her" because the person in the costume was the daughter of some people on our ward.) On Easter morning Zander seemed to wake up on the wrong side of the bed and didn't feel like hunting eggs or finding his basket. He would just point to the eggs as he saw them but wouldn't pick them up. Haylie showed her kind and generous side by getting the eggs and making sure that Zander got as many as she did. Zander did feel a little better after his morning bottle ritual.






Since there was General Conference on Easter Sunday, Haylie wore her Easter dress to church the week before Easter. Zander was sick that week and didn't go to church so the picture of him was from a different week.

Zander's Surgery

In my last post I wrote that nothing worth posting had been happening but I forgot that I hadn't posted that Zander had surgery on February 1st. Since he was a newborn he has had a hydrocele, which is fluid on the testicle. His doctor told us that it would go away by the time he was about a year old. It wasn't going away and was causing him pain sometimes.

We took him to Primary Children's in Salt Lake where Dr. Cartwright explained that he had a communicating hydrocele which means the fluid was moving back and forth between his abdomen and his testicles because the tube that the testicles come down when he was a fetus never closed off. So we scheduled surgery and the doctor told us that while they were doing the surgery they would check the other side to see if it need repaired as well. It did, so they repaired it and now he has two nice looking scars to show for it.

We couldn't have asked for a better boy for the whole process. Haylie stayed at Grandma and Grandpa Oberholtzer's house the night before the surgery and Dave and Zander and I stayed with my brother Darin in West Jordan. I was worried because Zander couldn't have anything to eat or drink the morning of the surgery and he is kind of a stickler for his morning milk. He didn't seem to care too much and luckily there were plenty of toys and other things to see at the hospital once we got there so he wasn't thinking about being hungry. The surgery took about 45 minutes and then they let one of us go back to see him. I went back and he was just waking up when I got back there and he was pretty upset. He was disoriented and nothing would help until Dave came back with his blankie and Rufus (his stuffed dog). I should have thought to bring those with me to begin with!

We left the hospital less than an hour later and he wanted to get down and walk in the parking lot. He only took his pain medication 3 or 4 times. He was a little sore but otherwise you would have never known he had just had surgery. What a resilient little guy! He sure looked cute in his little hospital jammies!

Bowling and Mohawks

It's been awhile since I have posted anything. We haven't really been doing anything that I felt was worthy of a post on the blog. Life is kind of dull here at times, but we try to have some fun. This past Saturday we decided to take the kids bowling. We took them a few weeks ago but I didn't bring a camera last time. Everyone had a good time. We weren't on a lane with bumpers so I am glad that neither of the kids care if they knock pins down or not. Zander was shaking with excitement because at this bowling alley the balls are returned above ground so you can see them roll all the way back. After we got home Dave decided to give Zander a haircut. We had been noticing that his hair naturally stands up in the middle and lays down more on the sides so he had a bed head/mohawk look no matter how you combed it. Dave decided to give him a real mohawk since that is how his hair wants to lay anyway. It looks pretty cute for a mohawk. We will see how long it stays.

Christmas

Our plan for Christmas this year was to go visit Dave's family in Wyoming. As the day we were supposed to travel got closer the weather forecast got worse and worse. We finally decided the day before we were supposed to leave that we weren't going to risk going on snowy roads. Most of what we would have to travel to get there is highway and several mountain passes that are treacherous in good weather. So we quickly changed plans, went grocery shopping for some holiday meals and made the best of our first Christmas in Price. We were able to connect to Grandma and Grandpa Holzer via Skype so they got to see the kids opening presents. It was a nice Christmas but a little lonely not being around any family. I also didn't get many pictures taken of Christmas morning in all the excitement. Haylie got a Littlest Pet Shop Clubhouse and a Tag Reader from Santa and Zander got a race track for cars and a bus and dump truck that are bigger for pushing around.
Before Haylie even looked at the gifts she had to check to see that Santa ate his cookies and drank the Hot Cocoa.
Haylie and Dad checking out the Tag reader.
A Christmas Explosion!!
We got to have Christmas Morning all over again on the Wednesday after Christmas. This time Santa was wearing Brown and came in a big truck instead of a sleigh. Our gifts from Wyoming arrived!! 5 huge boxes! They sure spoiled us. The main gift for our whole family was a Wii! We have had lots of fun with it already. Thanks again Holzers!


We had the traditional Oberholtzer fondue for Christmas Eve and then decided to enjoy some delicious Chocolate Fondue! Yummy! Notice how clean Zander's face is compared to Haylie's. Just another way they are complete opposites.