THE NEWS OF THE YEAR 2008

Dear friends and family, As Christmas cards start to arrive we are reminded that we need to send all our loved ones our news and best wishes for this special Christmas Season. We hope you enjoy hearing our news for the outstanding price of nothing!

Busiest Yet This year has been the busiest yet for Katie, a wonderful contrast to the previous year when she was pregnant and very poorly.  Katie started and completed an Open University course in Social Sciences, scoring an average of over 90% on her assignments.  She is excited to have finally begun her goal of acquiring a degree.  In April she started training to become a childminder and worked late into the night with Alan helping her to write the many policies and procedures she had to have in place.  It was all worth while, as in September she was inspected by OFSTED and received a “GOOD” rating after only childminding for a month – what a relief!  Katie now child-minds a one year old all day and has two boys to look after, after school.  Having a little friend for Jenna has been great and it’s been fun to add boys to the household and chat about Star Wars on the way home from school. So together with the usual tasks of caring for a family, she has been extremely busy but very satisfied this year.  Just recently, Alan and Katie have started attending dance classes (Ceroc) which they have always wanted to do.

Service In the Spring Katie was also asked to help the Stake Young Women in the capacity of secretary.  She has loved the opportunity to work with the young women again and go on another camp with them. Amber is looking forward to conducting the music for the children’s Christmas Nativity this year, with Leah staring as an angel and Jenna making her debut as a stable ensemble, (probably dressed as goat). 

New Kid on the Block Jenna is now one and a half, just starting to talk and loves to draw.  Unfortunately she doesn’t yet differentiate between drawing paper and wallpaper!  Jenna loves her family, hugs and kisses, and especially loves Elena who comes to play with her every day.  We now have to sit together at church or they disturb everyone by calling out for each other.  Jenna is practising sharing and taking turns and loves to sing and sign where she signs to communicate with us.  Jenna thinks she is ready to use the toilet so we’ve had a few attempts.  At the moment the score is toilet 1: floor 3.  We’ve obviously got some work to do on that one.  Jenna is a constant source of happiness and laughter in our family and we’re all pleased she’s joined our little family.  In the family there is much competition for favourite aunty.  For Jenna, all the aunties take second place to her Uncle Steve (Alan’s brother).

Over the rainbow This year’s highlights for Leah were the rainbow concert and the school disco (most recent and easiest to remember). She now swims in the big pool for her lessons and she is in the top group at school, which is red group.

Precious Gem Amber’s picture has been featured in the local press with the coverage of the Bournemouth Schools Christmas Carol Concert, where they performed an original song ‘Shepherds with shades’.  Amber was noticed not only for her voice, but the full performance, well done!

New Roles Alan, who earlier this year had been working as an application developer, had a slight change in job role and is now working as a Functional Architect for a new payments platform.  Outside office hours Alan has another new, exciting yet demanding role which has required special leadership training.  His effort is paying dividends as he leads his small but perfectly formed team around the dance floor.

Happy Holidays The Cottrell Clan have been on three holidays this year; Disneyland Paris during the Easter week; Haven, Devon cliffs during the summer half term, and camping in the summer holidays.  Unfortunately sickness from Jenna and then Leah slightly spoilt the first two, (and the weather!).  Camping was great and we enjoyed spending lots of time with extended Hough family.  When asked about her Eurodisney experience, Amber exclaimed “It was fun, exciting and very expensive!” Poor parents, luckily some relatives provided the children with some special spending money. Amber further explained “I met lots of friends, had hot chocolate for breakfast every morning at the hotel restaurant and a meal there everyday too!” There were also lots of rides, and we discovered that Amber is the thrill seeker, and Katie does not have the same passion for rollercoaster’s anymore – must be too many pregnancies!  The family stayed in contact at the theme parks using walky-talkies, this proved very handy when Alan, Amber & Leah got stuck inside Crush’s Coaster.

Peacemakers Amber has been selected as her class ‘peer-mediator’.  This involves sorting out friends and other school mates problems.   Leah is an excellent peacemaker at home, always willing to help others be happy.

Toothfairy At home, school and other places Amber has been pulling, yanking and twisting a massive, huge, gigantic tooth, which has given Amber so much pain and finally on the 4^th of December, she managed to yank it out, what a relief!  Leah cottoned onto the idea about the tooth fairy and now we’re sure they’re pulling them out on purpose. That’s all folks,

Happy Christmas Everyone xxx

Katie would like to apologise for this year’s format and especially the cheesy crossword…please send all complaints to the editor. 

Crossword

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Down: (1) Goes well with ice-cream, and Amber goes too, (2) summer holiday, (3) What Amber and Leah love to do when it is time for bed, (4) Amber & Leah have both joined the school ____, (8) The opposite of Jenna’s least favourite word, (10) What Leah looked like when she was born. Across: (2) Modern Jive, (5) follows living, bath & bed, (6) A family of dolphins, (7) ‘ello, ‘ello, where did we go in May then?, (9) you’ll feel sheepish if you don’t guess this one. Answers: will be published on request.

Feel free to contact the chief correspondent Katie or the editor Alan, or read the online and uptodate news at either http://adcottrellskis.blogspot.com/ or http://hough-family.blogspot.com/

News

I have been writing my bit in the annual family Christmas the NEWS letter, but as this is all about what happened in 2008, it is mostly OLDs, not NEWs, weird huh?

Last Wednesday the Young Men came to my home while Katie as out at a training course, and played one of my own crated games,

Monster mash, is not a new game, as Matthew & I came up with the Idea back in the early 90's. We even had some rules (Which we lost) and built a very large board. After Matthew moved into his own home earlier this year, the safe keeping of the very large board (and the boxes of little monsters) fell to me.

I decided to re-write the rules and have have had a few games with Amber & Leah during the year. Although Amber & Leah both enjoy the game, it was great to have some boys to play, as they did not get too upset when some other monster came and pounded on them. They all seemed to enjoy the game, and it would be great to have some more feedback from them

Carcassonne

For the last couple of weeks on a Sunday afternoon, Amber, Leah & I have played Carcassonne: The Castle and we have all won a game each.  When Leah won her game she scored a staggering 98 points!  The scoring track only goes up to 100!

Amber won with 63 points.

I've never been there, but this is a picture of the real place.

Bloggin'

Tonight Amber has been writing in 'Amber's Diary' and I've been helping her.  While blogging we have been listening to the radio on Katie's mobile phone, and just having fun.

Amber said "This was fun Amber Daddy time, wasn't it?", and I just smiled and we kept on doing the head jiggles and hand jiving to the music  :o)

Amber wants me to add that she got to stay up until 8:21 !

Good night Amber xxx

Family Search

I'm really looking forward to how 'New Family Search' is going to change the way we can collaborate on family history Reserch, and allow individuals in ther home be more involved in preparing work for ancestors to be performed in the Temple.

Horse Riding

Katie & Jenna have been going to a local sing and sign group for a while, where Jenna learns baby sign language so that she can communicate with us. She is fond of telling us when she is hungry and that she would like more. She knows the signs for No, and Hot and other important messages. As the name of the group suggest, it not all signing, but also singing. Some of our favorite songs include the signs for animals, including horse (which is one hand in front of you, fingers together and the hand vertical and your other hand making an inverted 'V' which rides the first hand).
Katie told me that today when Jenna was playing with the animal toys she was trying to ride the miniature horse, how cute.

Vegetable Sales

Last Saturday Katie & I decided to get the most out of our excess garden produce, so we picked loads of lettuce, plus some courgettes, squash and cucumbers from the garden, and then took it with the kids to sell to our neighbors. It was great, Leah liked holding up a bag of mixed lettuce and proclaiming that it was 50p (even if they had just said that they had just been shopping, and didn't need any). We didn't get rid of everything, but still sold over £5 worth of stuff.
Infact this morning we had a knock on the door from a neighbor asking if we had any more! (Which we did)

In addition to selling stuff we have been eating all that plus potatoes and runner beans. I can wait for the corn on the cob to be ready.
(I'll have to add some photos to this entry)

apples to proposals

I saw this story at lunchtime today where a guy proposed during a game of apples to apples.
This is a great game ( we have the junior version) but not sure that I would wan to propose infront of the whole family.

How to stay dryiest when it's raining?

I was talking to a college at work who explained that one often debated question that he had as a youth was whether it was better to run or walk when it was raining?
Do you walk, staying in the rain longer, or do you run and collect the same amount of water by running into it?
What do you think... well here is a short essay on the topic that I found, and it also agrees with my guess.

The Family @ Euro Disney

Just one of the family photos (ME, Katie, Amber & Leah) from our recent Disneyland Paris Adventure. It was incredible!

IF you want to see lots of pictures from the holiday take a look at my Disneyland Paris album on Picasa.

Swimming gala

Amber and me (Katie) went to the swimming gala together. We had a lovely time. Amber won her backstroke race but was too nervous to do front crawl. I won all of mine, back, breast, front crawl and fly and we also won the relay :) Bournemouth won overall and there was a really good turn out. Amber especially enjoyed getting a drink and a treat from the vending machine. Oh yeah, I lost my glasses and didn't know how I would drive home. Thankfully I found them under June Shearing!

Mucho Munching of Meringues

This evening Katie & Amber went to the Stake Swimming Gala and I stayed at home with Leah & Jenna (Who is not very well - she has both Laryngitis & Conjunctivitis).
After I had got Jenna off to sleep, Leah & I decided to do some 'cooking'.
I searched the Internet for a recipe and found a recipe I used to make when I was a child - Microwave Meringues.

Leah was a very good mixer - because the mixture gets very stiff.
We had to tinker with the timings because the first batch went flat (undercooked) and the second batch got a bit burnt. We perfected them and then added some pink food coloring to the final batch.

Labeling the Children

We have all probably been taught that we should not 'label' our children, or they may grow into that label. however these stereotypes have already set in with our kids.

Amber is the 'Cold Baby' - the only child to wear a sweatshirt & Jogging bottoms on a sunny day at school sports - but Leah is the 'Hot Baby' who would always be glistening in sweat even when wearing next to nothing.

At lunch the other day Katie and I were discussing that we need to address some other label that Amber & Leah have assumed, Amber Likes to Organise whereas Leah likes to 'mess'. Jenna however is very 'regular'1.
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NOTES
1 REGULAR: You can set your watch by regularity of the nappy changes.

D&D Requiem

Last year I got the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon boxed set, one of my favorites from the 80's. You know the kids never get back home, but that is because the final episode was canceled. Michael Reaves was the writer of some episodes, including 'Requiem' the episode that was never made. It was interesting reading his preface & background to the story... I also enjoyed reading the script