January Recap

This has been an awesome month. Heidi and I have reworked our budget and
we are trying to run a cash budget this whole year. We had a good month last month
and we are so grateful that tax season has arrived. We are hoping to put most of our
return towards Heidi’s student loans and a few other amenities for our home.
The first week of the month Andrew helped run the sound system in the
Drama theatre for a touring group doing a show called “Forever Plaid” He got to
hear a lot of great barbershop music with piano and bass. He also learned bunches
about programming sound on a digital soundboard. He will also be helping out
backstage with two children’s shows later this semester.

Heidi has been attending her cake decorating class and although she was
anxious about it at first. She has already had 2 projects where she learned shells,
shell borders, writing tips, stars, twisting stars, trees, and use of piping gel. Both of
her cakes looked and tasted great! She has another project due this next week and is
excited to learn some more. Roses are her latest challenge.

We had a really great family dinner here at our house a few weeks ago. Ben
and Bob both came over with their families and after dinner we took a little tour
around campus in the newly dedicated buildings. We just loved watching Hyrum
and Caleb play together they were both quite content to sit on the floor and play
together for almost an hour with very little supervision. On that note Hyrum is
crawling around really well now. He crawls in short sections and stops to play or
observe, he isn’t quite up to full-fledged fleeing.

This last weekend while Jenn was at her gaming conference Andrew went
and played in a Magic: The Gathering Prerelease tournament he placed 4th out of
about 36 and was rewarded 6 pack additional to the ones he opened for the
tournament.

Heidi is really busy with work this month. We have had two difficult girls in
particular that have needed some personal attention. We have also met with the
Bishop and the dean of students to decide what needs to be done. Although both
situations seem to be improving – if they don’t improve faster we may be sending
one of the girls home. Overall that has been a challenging yet growing experience for
Heidi.

We started inviting over couples in our ward for FHE to get to know them better and to help us hold FHE. We have done really well this month and it has made a difference to how we interact in the ward. One of our ward friends invited Heidi to come walking during the week in the new BYUI Center and so three times a week she is walking with her friend Tara who has a little boy 2 days younger than Hyrum. She is very excited to have some time out of the house and is preparing to run in a 5K on the Fourth of July: One year from giving birth to Hyrum. Andrew will be running with her although he won’t be training much until school gets out in April.

Hyrum is getting so big! He is eating solid foods really well, crawling, starting to pull himself up to standing, and saying "baba" and "mama" and we're working on getting him to say dada. Below is a video of one of the first times he crawled...so that was his beginning stages--he's much quicker now!