Christmas 2021

"I’m with you. There’s no need to fear for I’m your God. I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you. 

I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you." Isaiah 41:10 MSG

New Job
Our big news for 2021 is that we moved to Arkansas in October! Blake accepted an administrator position as the Assistant Provost of Student Success and Retention at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith. We are still adjusting to 75° December days and traffic and a new house and new schools and new friends. We miss Laramie a bunch. Tiffanie continues to work part-time, remotely for Northern Virginia Community College.

New Kitten
In July we added a new family member, a kitten named Ginny. She already had this name when we met her, but we decided that it’s short for Virginia, which is a perfect choice! When we met her at the animal shelter in Laramie, she was nervous and when there was a loud noise, she huddled in Emery’s lap. This is the moment we fell in love with this sweet kitty! She was born in March and has grown a bunch since we brought her home. She’s sweet with the kids, loves to cuddle, gets a little feisty on occasion (read: she climbs the Christmas tree!), and we love her so much!



Highlights
We began 2021 celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary with dinner and a movie. We celebrated Emery’s 9th birthday with a painting party with 2 of her friends. Emery is bold and confident, she loves stories, fun facts, kitties, and reading. We made it through a mega snowstorm in March with snowdrifts taller than our kids!



This spring, we decided to put our Virginia condo on the market. In July, Delaney and Tiffanie traveled to Virginia to visit Grandma and Grandpa Klud and check on the condo. During that trip, Blake, Emery, and Everett traveled to Steamboat Springs, Colorado.



Delaney turned 2 at the end of July. Her birthday happens to also be Avocado day, which is her favorite food! Delaney loves babies, kitties, all things Frozen (the movie), and singing loudly for all to hear. She likes to play dress up and put on fancy clothes, but she also likes being outdoors and playing in the dirt. She surprised us in November by reading the word Frozen at an ice cream shop. She can also read Zoo, No, and Yes.



This fall, Emery started 4th grade and Everett started his second year of preschool in Laramie. We miss these schools and friends!



Blake was offered the position at the University of Arkansas at the end of August. September and October were busy months for us. We put our beloved Laramie house on the market and traveled to Fort Smith to buy a house. We chose a beautifully renovated two-story home in a quiet neighborhood within walking distance of an elementary school and middle school. Then we packed everything up and left town mid-October. The weekend prior to our move, Blake drove one of our cars to the Fort Smith airport and flew back to Laramie. The night before Tiffanie, the kids, and the cat planned to fly to Fort Smith (while Blake drove), Laramie gave us a delightfully cold send-off: about 4 inches of snow that closed the highways and eventually canceled our flights. So, in our cram-packed car, taking the only open road out of Laramie, we rode with Blake all the way to Arkansas. Instead of a 9-hour travel day for us, it ended up being 30 hours of travel with 3 kids and a cat in a car not big enough for all of us. It was an adventure!



Everett turned 4 a few days before we moved. This boy loves sports and games, he is tender-hearted, and he loves our kitty. He likes playing baseball and football (Delaney sometimes tackles him!) and jumping through makeshift obstacle courses. Everett can read very well and is starting to learn to spell.



In Arkansas, Emery joined a 4th grade class at the school near our house. She walks to and from school. She joined their Gifted program which meets once a week and will be in their school play in the spring. Everett started 3-day-a-week preschool and he enjoys his class.

We experienced our first warm Halloween. And we were able to visit Blake’s cousins in northern Arkansas for Thanksgiving.



We are grateful for safety and good health this year. We are grateful for new opportunities and adventures. We are grateful for friends and family.

 
Love,
Blake, Tiffanie, Emery (9.5), Everett (4), and Delaney (2)

Everett Matthew is Four Years Old - 10.10.2021

Everett Matthew is 4 years old!

Everett loves all sports and games. Basketball, football, baseball, golf, diving, and gymnastics to name a few. He loves board games too. Everett loves playing our old Nintendo. He loves the sports games and Super Mario Bros. 

Everett goes to preschool for the 2nd of 3 years before Kindergarten. He loves Play-Doh. Everett can read very well and remembers a sorts of new words we help him with. He loves Paw Patrol and we had some Paw Patrol cupcakes at the park last weekend!

Everett loves our new kitty, Ginny. 

We are moving to Arkansas this week so our family has a lot of new adventures ahead!

Delaney Alina is Two Years Old - 07.31.2021

Delaney Alina is two years old!

Delaney loves to sing and twirl. She loves Let it Go, Twinkle Twinkle, the alphabet, the Final Jeopardy song (humming), and lots of made up songs. She loves to dress up and wear a blanket or towel as a cape. She likes to play pretend and is often rocking and caring for a baby doll. 

Delaney loves to pretend to be a kitty. And especially now that we have a sweet little kitten named Ginny. Delaney is brave when the kitty is a little feisty and also very sweet with the kitty. 

Delaney says silly things. We were driving and Everett said so many roads were closed to which Delaney added, "until my birthday!" She also told me she was brushing her teeth with a French fry! She likes to copy her siblings and points to lots of buildings saying they are "Nay-nee's school" (she doesn't go to school but she wants to copy them). 

Delaney's favorite food is avocado and her Grandpa told us today, July 31, is avocado day!

We are trying to teach Delaney to read the word Zoo and she read it on a book we'd never seen... but then when I asked her a different word she also said zoo, so maybe she doesn't quite know it yet. 

Delaney does well with the difference between "you" and "me" which is easy to get mixed up. She also doesn't want us to say "excuse you" because she wants to say "excuse me!"

Delaney knows all her letters and numbers 1-10 and can count 1 to 10 and some combinations of the numbers in the teens. She knows colors, shapes, and animal sounds. Delaney likes to color and "write" but even more she likes to type.

Delaney is a sweet girl. She is independent and often stays away from the busy-ness and does her own thing. We are looking forward to this new year with our sweet girl!

Delaney Alina is Twenty-Three Months Old - 06.30.2021

Delaney Alina is twenty-three months old!

Delaney loves to sing and twirl. Her favorite songs are Let It Go, Jingle Bells, If You're Happy and You Know It, and the Final Jeopardy song (humming the tune). 

Just like Emery did at this age, Delaney likes to identify everyone's eye color and talk about it. Sometimes she says the wrong color on purpose and corrects herself. 

Delaney loves kitties and also pretends to be one. 

Delaney speaks well and relatively clearly. She replaces the C/K sound with T and the G sound with D. 

Just this week (while traveling!) she has decided to use the potty several times a day. Perhaps she doesn't like disposable diapers since she's used to cloth diapers or she's ready to potty train? Who knows!

Delaney will be two at the end of July!

Delaney Alina is Twenty-Two Months Old - 05.31.2021

Delaney Alina is twenty-two months old! She will be two years old in two months!

Delaney is talking a lot and we understand her more and more. She likes to repeat herself and add a lot of words we don't understand in between the ones we do - maybe she knows what she's saying or maybe she's just trying to get the words out? 

She calls herself, Nay-nee, and if you call her anything (baby, sweetie, etc.) she will correct you: "No, I Nay-nee!" But if we see a baby and I tell her the baby's name, she says: "No, 'baby!'"

Delaney notices a lot and frequently asks, "S'at noise?" (What's that noise?) She thinks the coffee maker sounds like it's burping. When she answers, "Yeah," she actually says, "Yam." 

Delaney has started singing while dancing and twirling. Her favorite song is Let It Go. "Deh dih do, deh dih do..." and she gets a few bits of other lines: "I doh tare whatcha doh-in to day..." (I don't care what you're going to say...) then the singing somehow shifts into "Wee Elsa, wee Elsa, wee Elsa..." Maybe because she's twirling (weeee!)? Who knows. It's all super cute and sometimes very loud! She can also sing a reasonably good version of the alphabet and "Dubba-do, X, Y, and Z, now I know muh ABCs, Dubba-do, X, Y, and Z..." will loop several times at the end. She identifies colors well and combines them with objects: Blue [s]wing, red see-sul (circle), pee-pul tup (purple cup). 

Delaney continues to love Peek-a-Boo and hiding and shouting Boo! 

At dinner, Delaney says: "Nay-nee pray! Tee-too, Amen!" then she instructs each family member individually: "Ev-ett pray!" (He prays) "Em-ma-may pray!" (She prays) And so on. Often going around the table several times. 

Delaney and Everett are finally starting to play together as she becomes like more of a peer to him. He's pretty gentle with her and they usually have fun together. They like Ring-a-ring-a-Rosie, including falling down and jumping together on their mini trampoline.  

We love this stage - she's learning new things every day! 

Delaney Alina is Twenty-One Months Old - 04.30.2021

Delaney Alina is twenty-one months old! Only three more months until she's 2 years old!

Delaney has picked up phrases like "aw man!" and "I wub you" and "c'mon!" She's started to repeat us a little bit more clearly most of the time. Me: You're gonna play with your friends? D: Pay fends.

For words that start with the C/K sound, she uses the T sound. Cold is told, cup is tup, etc.

Delaney knows more shapes: circle, triangle, square, and generalizes pentagon/hexagon/octagon as oh-ta-don [octagon]. She knows nearly all the basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, white, black, brown. Now she can count from 2-9 (still leaves out 1). She can quantify two things: "I hah two bears!"

While we were doing our pictures, she stepped up on the porch step without using her hands - I haven't seen her do that. She's become more reliable around stairs and we've moved the baby gate to the top of the stairs going downstairs, leaving the set of four stairs going up to her room open. 

Delaney is picking up so many new things! We love this phase. It's hard to believe Everett was this age when she was born!