2021 :: week 2

January 3

With the start of the new year our assigned church time has moved from 9am to noon. With that comes the change of meeting times for Anthony. Last year the bishopric would meet at 6am, then he would alternate between meeting with the Ward Council at 7am on the 1st and 3rd Sundays and the RS Pres and EQ Pres on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. Now all the times are pushed back three hours. It is nice for him to get a bit more sleep, but mornings feel a little more lonely again. I appreciate it when some of his meetings take place while I am still sleeping. 

January 4

Monday was the beginning of the end of vacation mode. Anthony had to work and Elliott had preschool. Will and Lauren had one last day off before school resumed and they did a lot of playing. In the afternoon they used an empty 5 gallon bucket to make the building blocks of a fort. Unfortunately enough of the snow had melted they had trouble making solid walls. Regardless they were determined to work on it as long as they could. When it got dark they brought out glow sticks I had recently purchased at Costco to aid help them see. If you look closely in the background of the picture you can see a green light inside the house. That is Miles playing with his glowstick inside. 

January 5

Elliott go this cool flying helicopter from Nana and Papa for Christmas. You charge it for about and hour and then it can fly for 5-10 mintues. It has a bunch of sensors on it and you can guide it up, down, left, right, etc. by moving your hands close to it. It is especially fun for the kids to play with it in our front room and entry when it is dark out. 

January 6

Miles still loves to read. I caught him reading on the couch after picking the big kids up from school Wednesday afternoon. Even though he officially "talking" yet, he is making more consonant sounds and his voice goes up and down mimicking speech. He has also started pointing at the words on the page and moving his hand across like he has seen Elliott and me do when we read together.

January 7

Our appetites for Kansas City history were whetted on the gangster tour last week and this week some of the requested library books arrived. On Thursday evening we watched a documentary about Nell Donnelly called A Stitch in Time. We first learned about Nell Donnelly on the gangster tour because she was kidnapped for a large ransom during the 1930s. Her neighbor, baby daddy and eventual husband, former-Senator James A. Reed, leveraged his knowledge about the KC mafia to enlist their help to get her back unharmed. Nell made her mark on history because she was an incredibly successful dress designer, manufacturer and entrepreneur. Nelly Don, the company she created was the largest dress manufacturer in the United States for fifty years. She was a true visionary (employing assembly line procedures in production), treated her employees with generosity and produced quality and reasonably priced dresses. I cannot believe the first time I heard about this remarkable woman was as an aside on the gangster tour!

January 8

As much as I wish he didn't, Miles enjoys taking can out of our pantry and stacking them. I am usually pretty good about keeping the cupboard doors locked, but he is lightening fast at capitalizing on the times that I forget. 

January 9

One of our 2021 goals is to plan deliberate dates with our kids each month. Tony naturally spends a lot of time with Will and Elliott because they enjoy a lot of the same pastimes--shooting hoops, playing Rocket League, watching basketball. Lauren spends a lot of time with me because we enjoy reading and crafting together. Saturday evening Anthony took Lauren to Freezing Moo to get ice cream and then they came back to our house to play a game together.