Annalise

Merry Christmas and welcome to our Taller Family update, 2011 Edition. 

Things could get crazy, so get comfy!

 Starting out this year is our sweet girl, Annalise.  She turned 5 this fall. She is more like 5 going on 15 sometimes. 

Annalise blossomed into quite the swimmer this year.  She is like a fish.  For the first time since we have lived here, I can take my kids to the pool and not be in with them.  She even goes off the diving board in the deep end all by herself.  She is looking forward to being part of the swim team next summer.

 Annalise is still in preschool this year.  Her last year.  She goes 4 mornings a week and even eats lunch with her teachers and classmates. 

 Annalise and I are still BFFs.  I can't do much without my little shadow.  It is nice...most of the time.  I do look forward to the day when I get to take a shower uninterrupted.

 Annalise is the comic relief and the life of the party around here.  She always is telling us goofy jokes or making silly faces.  She loves to have staring matches.  She also is into fairies, crafts, and anything that her sister is doing.

 Annalise is having some fun at preschool this year, and is learning too.  She has started to read a few words and can write almost anything as long as we assist with the spelling.

 If I had to say one big change this year, it would be her interest in the kitchen.  She loves to measure out ingredients and stir.  We've made lots of cookies, pies and desserts this fall.  She also always asks to help with dinner.  Maybe she will take over a night of cooking every now and then.

Annalise was involved with gymnastics this fall .  She has improved greatly and really is getting stronger.  We'll see if she has a future in gymnastics.  She is taking a break after this session and is trying to convince us to start her in piano lessons next.

Evie

Evie turned 7 this past Feburary. She has grown so much this year, both physically and intelletually. 

Evie continues to be our inventor of all things.  She likes to do experiments and build things.  Her interests really lie with science and engineering.  This year, she tested into the Challenge classroom at school. It is a class in which she is with other gifted kids and they explore subjects in great depths which Evie loves.  She has a great teacher too!

 It was a great summer filled with lots of trips where we learned all kinds of new things.

 Evie was on the swim team again this year.  She swims like a fish and helped her team win lots of meets by earning blue ribbons.

 While in Florida, Evie was the only one to master the skim board.  She also was very brave and got to see some manitees up close!

 And after years of waiting, Evie lost 4 teeth this summer!

 Evie is a big cousin again this year to Cecelia Seibert.  She is a very good cuddler to Cece and helps her to take naps.

Evie rounded out the year with a session of gymnanstics.  She is getting really good at cartwheels and round offs!  Evie is looking forward to selling girl scout cookies in 2012 so watch out!

Thought you would enjoy this stick bomb that Evie and Jim spent an afternoon building in our basement.

The grown ups

We grown ups have spent the year doing things that grown ups do.  We drive kids around, coach teams, volunteer at school and church, pay bills, clean house, make food and try to get in some quality time with one another every now and then.

 At the urging of Jim, and completely against my better judgement, I ran the Mini Marathon this year.  I didn't run with Jim because I was "too slow".  We did spend 3 months training together.  Many thanks to our wonderful neighbors who would keep the kids during our long weekend runs.  We promise we only ran.  No coffee shops or naps for us. 

Jim finished around 1:43 and I came in at a surprising 2:03  (well, 2:02.59 if you want to get specific).  A great accomplishment for us.  We are considering another half marathon in 2012.  It's like having a baby.  The memory of the pain has faded enough that it might sound like a good idea again.  In the mean time, we are keeping up with running around the neighborhood. 

We also found lots of time this year to hang out with family and friends.  After all, we needed some tasters for Jim's homemade beer.  He has brewed 5 batches now and most of them have turned out pretty good.  He is looking forward to trying to keg his beer in 2012.  Beer on tap?  Something tells me we will be seeing lots more of the neighbors this coming year.

Jim continues to work with Beckman Coulter as a quality engineer.  His job still takes him on the road about 40% of the time.  While he's not working or being a landing post for butterflies, he also coached Evie's soccer team.  He is still the chief light bulb changer around the house.  We celebrated 13 years of marriage this year.  Can't believe it's been that long.

 I continue to stay home with the kids for at least one more year.  I devoted lots of time at the schools and at church with Annalise's religion class.    I am also serving on the neighborhood board and savoring every minute of free time while the girls are at school.  I did spend about 2 weeks working on this Lego model of the space shuttle.  It was an awesome birthday present that no one is allowed to touch but me.

At the encouragement of my friends, I hosted a craft sale this fall. It showcased my knitting and crochet work as well as the creative work of 10 of my friends and family.  It was a lot of work to organize, but a lot of fun.

Stuff we built

This year, we didn't take on many projects around the house. Thankfully, most things remain in good shape and we are able to sit back and enjoy.

We were faced with a muddy and shifting stone pathway around the north side of our house.  I was worried that someone would fall and hurt themselves.  So we ordered up some nice weather, a couple tons of stone and a holiday weekend.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we carved out the path and spread 5 tons of stone and sand.  We also rented a fun compactor.

Like any good home improvement project, we got into a heated discussion over something pretty minor.  Good thing our friends showed up to give us a hand.

It was like fitting a giant puzzle to make all the stone fit. 

Our pretty, finished path.  It has served us well and kept our shoes from getting muddy on the way to the composter.

And to celebrate, a B52 bomber flew over...well, it might have had something to do with a certain race on the same day.

Places we visited this year

We were fortunate this year to take the family on lots of trips across America.

Over Spring Break, we visited our Nation's Capitol.  We dragged the kids to all the sites like the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, Senate Building, White House, Washington Monument, and the National Zoo.  And their favorite part was getting ice cream and riding the Metro.  Oh Well.

Pricking my finger on my favorite site in Washington DC

The Taller Family hangs out with the Obamas.  Kind of.

In June, we journeyed west to St. Louis to visit friends and see more National Monuments.

We crammed inside the little pod to take a ride to the top of the Arch.  It was tight and when we got to the top, Annalise was too scared to look out the windows.

We had a great day with college friends from SMC at Grant's farm.  Home of the world famous clydesdale horses.

And with friends from grad school in MN, we went to the very awesome City Museum.

As if that wasn't enough, we loaded the car and headed south to Daytona Beach, Florida for a week long break before school started back up in August.  We traveled just one more hour south to Cape Canaveral to see the NASA visitor center and see where they launch and land the space shuttle.  It was awesome.

Our condo was right on the beach so we were just steps away from family fun on the water.

And we climbed to the top of the tallest light house in Florida--the Ponce Inlet lighthouse.

Here we are at the bottom

Then we rounded out our summer at the Fulton County fair at the top of Ohio with all the Seibert Cousins.  It was a fun time with lots of tractors and animals to look at.  Just like a fair should be.

We also made trips to visit Ney and Cleveland Ohio.  In fact, the girls spent a week traveling with their grandparents this summer while I accompanied JIm on a business trip to Minnesota.  While he got the work done, I caught up with our friends up there (and had a very peaceful day at the Aveda spa--ahh).