Year in review - Abby

Abby has had quite a year. She finished her first dance class earlier this year and had her first dance recital, cutting a rug to the melodious tune "Baby-face". She's been the ideal student in Sunbeams and preschool, learning to swing by herself, her letters and how to write her name, and basically all the educational things that her parents couldn't seem to teach her. She's learned who President Hinckley is and that Christmas is about Jesus (and Santa). Jesus first, and Santa as a close second.

Her first bike got too small for her and she graduated to a big-girl bike (now tripped out with a basket and streamers). Berenstain Bear books and cartoons took over as her favorite reading and shows, so much so that they are now a part of her daily walk and talk. And, on top of all this, she turned 4 this year. Not 5 yet, but 4. AND she got a doll that "poops, cries, and pees".

If you haven't seen her dance recital, or her halloween costume, check out the following links:

Dance Recital
Halloween Costume

Year in Review - Collin

Collin turned 2 this year and is, well, awesome. He can keep up with his sister riding a bike around the neighborhood and regularly makes the 3 mile trek to and from one of our local parks. He jumps off of anything, whether we ask him to or not. He sleeps with footballs, golf balls, basketballs, and soccer balls. He likes Mickey Mouse and loves, loves, loves trains, trains, trains and more trains. Airplanes and trucks are cool too, but he loves trains.

On a more personal note for him, he's also getting pretty good at saying his prayers and is roughly 75% potty trained, if you can give potty training a raking. He's quick to say sorry and give hugs, and is a joy to have in our house. Basically, he rules.

If you haven't seen the video of him climbing our dresser, or the video of him jumping on the trampoline, check out the following links:

Climbing Collin
Jumping Collin

BYU Fan? Check this out...

Can Mercy Rob Justice? Nay!

Some pretty awesome photoshopping going on.... or is it?

Family Night

Last night we had a pretty good family home evening - we sang songs on our way to home depot, spent a good 30 minutes just pushing buttons on every Christmas toy/ornament at Lowes, and finished the night off with some Dairy Queen ice cream. Mmmm! But once the kids were in bed, it was time for work. I only spent 30 or so minutes on tiling, but this is what the floor ended up looking like in the bathroom at about 10:30 last night. Not too shabby.

Back to our house

So I've been painting a neighbor's house for the last two months as a small side job (to help cover some dental work I *get* to have done). It's been an...interesting experience. Some days it was so rewarding and enjoyable, and other days, I didn't know if there was anything I could hate more. Those days seemed to happen more as I started taking over seminary, mostly because I was getting up at like 4:30am, and going to paint around 9:30 after the kids were asleep. It got to a point where it seemed like it would never end... (do I hear violins playing for me?)

Well, then one day I turned off the paint sprayer and realized that every surface of that house had at least one coat of paint, and all of sudden it was fun again. Over 10,000 square feet of home had been painted with one or more of the 6 different paint colors or sheens, been taped with one or more of the 20 or so rolls of tape, or been sanded and repainted. So that's that. I'm out of there.

So now that all my tools are back home, and that major task is behind me? What do we do? Take a break? No way. It's time to start laying tile in our bathroom. We ripped up the lenolium this morning, so we're committed to this task, whether we're ready for it or not. We've been looking into it for a while, and unless we've dramatically underestimated the work required to knock this out, I think we're going to be able to complete this over the next week before heading to Kansas. I guess we'll know soon if this turns out to be another "house to paint." Anyhow, here's a few picture to enjoy.

Collin taking care of the concrete under the lenolium:

Abby and Collin on the tiles in our chosen pattern:

Oh, and after naps today, Abby and Amy made an apple pie. It was awesome.

Time stamp correction

I finally found the reason why my posts are always off by an hour or so. This was set to time stamp things with Pacific time - two hours earlier than here. It was like a huge light bulb turned on. So yes, I do get up early for Seminary, and go straight to work, however I do not get up at 3:16am. :)

For reading this email, enjoy a pic of the kiddos!


... and, for good measure, a picture of our neighbor's jackolantern...

Good morning!

Well I'm getting ready to head to seminary this morning, but thought I would post something quick so that you all can enjoy another video of the kids. They had a pretty awesome Halloween, and will be enjoying the candy from their walk around the neighborhood with Grandma and Gramps Phillippi for some time into the future. Anyhow, enjoy!

Long overdue update... sort of

So I'm just going to put out some quick updates for everyone. Hopefully this satisfies some of your curiosity as to what is happening in the Sheen household.

- Amy's currently 11 weeks along, so we are almost clear of the 1st trimester. Hoo wah!
- I'm no longer subbing for Amy's seminary class
- Amy's no longer teaching seminary
- I'm teaching seminary now. :)
- Painting a house should be easy.
- Abby's learning her letters really well - we love preschool teachers
- Collin loves jumping on our trampoline
- Abby can swing on her own now
- Collin loves Super-Why on PBS
- Collin still loves trains
- Abby's going to be a princess for Halloween

So there's a lot more that's gone on over the last several weeks, but I don't have any of the pictures here with me at work where I'm typing this out... Come to think of it, I'm really sure right now whether or not we've lost some pictures/video that we've taken - our camera won't power up right now so we're kind of out of luck right now as far as new pictures go. Hopefully between naps and other things this weekend I'll be able to update this page with some of the pics that we took before the camera went on the fritz.

Funny Faces

This evening we got home from a busy family home evening and sat down to eat some well deserved popsicles, and it was the perfect time to capture the video below. We hope you get a good laugh out of it - we sure did!

First Day of Pre-School (and etc.)

Wow. So this past month has been quite a roller coaster. Despite starting off the month with some bug that went around our family for about three weeks, we enjoyed a nice 5th anniversary at a sweet restaurant in Round Rock called the Main Street Grill (I would highly recommend it to all y'all.) We also caught the Bourne Ultimatum (another thing I would highly recommend if you haven't seen it yet.)

We also successfully completed a walking excursion in downtown Austin for the RedBull Flugtag. We walked right on down to the edge of the lake and found an open spot where there were some other kids for Abby and Collin to play with while we all watched these crazy contraptions dive into the water. One actually did fly for more than 2 seconds or so. :) On our way to find that perfect spot we passed a train that Collin got to watch for several minutes. It was only the second time he's been that close to a moving train, and was completely enthralled with it. We ended the night with some smoothies to cool off.

The rest of the month has really been spent getting Abby and Collin ready for preschool. Collin isn't attending any preschool yet, but he's been with Abby pretty much all day every day for the past two years, so it's a big change for him. We got Abby and Collin a bunch of new clothes, and Abby also got a outfit and backpack from Grandma and a matching lunch-sack. I think she is going to want her outfit to match her back pack now everyday! Her teacher is Ms. Sarah, and there are two Logans in her class. Uncle Tommy and Aunt Lydia also hooked Collin up with a sweet turtle backpack, so he's ready to go for next year.

Out new blog...

Welcome to the Sheens of Austin Photoblog. We saw Verity taking advantage of this, and thought we would follow suit. Now that Photosite has closed it's doors, we really don't have another choice but to clear out of there and start over. Of course, this methods means we'll need to take more time posting pictures, and be a bit more picky in general... But, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I don't know what all the pictures are that I'm going to post right now, so I'll just give you a quick update on how life is going out here. We've only got a few weeks left before school starts up and Amy's back in Seminary teaching - I'd forgotten how nice it is to sleep in, so this summer has been nice. This summer has also been WET and RAINY. Up until last Friday, we had not had a day hotter than 95 deg all summer - at one point I'm pretty sure we hit like 40 days straight days of rain. It's been a nice change from the scorching heat that we had the last two summers, but it's made it more difficult to hit the pool when it's closed all the time.

Anyhow, also a few weeks away is Abby's first day of preschool. We're very excited about it, though I'm not sure we're as excited as Abby - today she took me into her room and pointed with a squeal of glee at her new clothes for school. Awesome - our little girl is growing up and is very much a little girl. She also found out that she will be getting a cute cherry covered backpack in the mail from Grandma Syl and she now wants to check the mail three times a day to see if it is there yet. :)

Collin on the other hand has been making some serious jumps as well - and not just him climbing up and down our big dresser. No, this little guy is one serious potty trainer, and totally self motivated. One day he seemed interested, so we gave it a try and that was all the push he needed. I won't get into any details, but let's just say he is really good, and we're very excited to not need to change diapers and everything else that goes along with that.

Take it easy!