dear future me

Dear Future Me, (in 10 years)
Right now Alex is 9, Nathan just turned 8 and will be baptized Jan. 7, Katherine is 3 and Abbie is 19 months (and yelling at me right now. ok, I got her down and hugged her and she's off playing and eating a cookie). We have Rocket back (we got him about a month ago) and we have Manzo (almost a year old) and a bearded dragon, 6 chickens, gerbils, fish and a hermit crab. My mom and dad and Avery are here to visit and dad looks great! I'm still not used to his slim figure! (Now Abbie is in my lap.) The boys are playing a pretend game that they're "on a boat riding around down super fast rivers and down waterfalls" (Alex's words)- it's wild. We're homeschooling and I love being with my kids. I'm coveting homes with land right now. We want to get 5.25 acres in Payson, but we got a no answer when we prayed about it, and we're not sure if we can afford it, or afford to move because there's a lot we need to do to fix up our house. Alex is getting really good at his piano. He just played in sacrament meeting for the first time last week. He played Silent Night. Nathan is coming along with his violin, and he played The Nativity in sacrament meeting, singing one verse and playing the violin and the other. He doesn't like the violin as much as Alex likes the piano, but he's doing well. They both have different strengths and it's wonderful to see them develop. Nathan is a great runner, and makes goals for himself with running- how far he's going to run- and does it! Last July he ran a 10K and ran the whole way! School, especially math, and writing and spelling come easily to Nathan. Alex is great at building. He can build some great things with legos, models, electronics set, anything. He has a real talent for building. Recently the boys were in the play A Christmas Carol with some other homeschooled kids and they really loved it, but especially Alex. I'll have to get him into more plays- I had NO idea he would like that! They also like to ice skate, ski, draw and paint (they're good at art too), do pottery, ride horses, garden and take care of animals. Katherine  is a little ballerina. She loves dancing, and has loved it since she was 2 years and 3 months old. She also really loves horses and animals. She loves to check for eggs in the chicken coop multiple times a day. She's a real animal lover. She also likes music, and likes to "play" the piano. She's also a very good helper, emptying the dishwasher when it's clean without being asked and always putting her dish in the sink. Her favorite color is pink. She is an extremely adorable little princess/angel/fairy. (As I typed that, she just farted really loud:)).  Abbie likes to do anything and everything Katherine does. She likes to dance right now too. I wonder if she'll really like dancing as she gets older. She's talking a lot and really well. she likes horses, and when we started doing horse lessons she was too scared to touch them, but every time she'd get more and more brave. This last time she rode on the horse by herself! Jaci was leading the horse though, of course. Katherine and Abbie just started to play together. They will play chase and giggle too.
Todd just got promoted to boss at Prosper. He likes it and does really well at it. He still loves to cook and is getting better every year. He took an oil painting class last month and liked doing that again. I had to make him do it because he didn't want to spend time away from us:). He's a very good husband and so patient with all my many shortcomings and "ideas and projects". He's very supportive of me. He stays busy with work, extra work, cooking and helping me.
I've been doing author's guild for the boys in their boys club again this year. It's been fun and they like writing a lot more. I stay busy with homeschool, doing fun things with the kids, and keeping everyone alive. I'm really into gardening and animals and planning for a farm:). We started doing horse riding lessons as a family I'm really very very happy. (except for the cleaning part.)