Zincke 2013 Year in Review

2013 has been a pretty quiet year….not that I’m complaining!  We are loving life in southern AZ, enjoying time together as a family, and making fun memories together.

One of the big advantages to living here is that we get to see our family a lot more often!  We enjoyed several visits to and from family this year.   We also got to participate in my youngest sister Rachel’s wedding in the San Diego Temple in the spring.  After the wedding Dave and I left our kids with my other sister Anna and had a great weeklong adventure driving up the coast, visiting Big Sur, San Francisco, and Yosemite.  It was some amazing America!   

Some other highlights for the family were several camping trips which the kids thoroughly enjoyed, and several trips to the beach in Mexico, which we ALL thoroughly enjoyed!  If you’ve never eaten a ripe mango with a squeeze of lime and a dash of salt while sitting in the sun on the beach then you've never really lived! 

Ellie (9)  is having a great year at school.  She is in the advanced 3^rd grade class and is finally getting pushed outside her comfort zone a little. She has a wonderful teacher who has been teaching for 17 years and does a great job helping kids reach their potential.  Earlier this year Ellie’s class along with several other classes did an Olympics after studying about the ancient Greek Olympics.  Ellie was the fastest girl and the second fastest kid among all the kids competing in the sprint.  She challenged Dave to a race the other day when we were taking a walk.  Dave beat her even with Leah riding on his shoulders, so I guess she still needs to grow a bit before we enter her in the real Olympics J .  Ellie is taking piano lessons and is doing quite well.   She had her first recital several weeks ago and impressed us all with her arrangement of Jingle Bells.   Several months  ago her teacher had her play primary prelude music for church and she did great.  She has started babysitting other kids here at our home so I can supervise and is enjoying work that she actually gets paid for.

Amari is getting big!  She turned five last month and is starting to read a little and loves to ride her bike and swim.   She is a daredevil on her bike with Ellie egging her on.  She especially likes to put both legs on one side of her bike and zoom down our driveway and around the corner “look Mom, no feet!”  She is a little quieter personality-wise, but loves to step out of her shell when Ellie is at school and take charge of the younger kids.  She has been doing dance class for a while but we switched her out of dance class and put her in gymnastics at her request.  She has a great time and is picking it up very quickly.  Her back bends and cartwheels are already impressive for just a month of class. 

    
  

 Joseph (4) is a busy boy!  He is slightly obsessed with horses and also loves to do puzzles and harass his sisters.   He is very particular about his routine and is the most homebody of all our kids.  He in many ways is a pretty typical little boy.  He has managed to hurt himself twice this last year, occasioning my first trip to Urgent Care and my first emergency dental visit.  Urgent care happened when he was running around our pool this summer and slipped and split his eyebrow open on the edge of the pool.  That needed three stitches which he picked out the first evening he had them.  We are now well stocked with butterfly bandages.   The emergency dental visit happened a month ago when he fell off Amari’s scooter and knocked his front teeth in and busted up his lips pretty badly.  They are still loose because he keeps hitting them on things like his sister’s leg (“let’s play Karate!”) and the stairs.  I suppose that is not unusual for a busy boy, but I really hope he can keep those teeth.

Leah (3) is our little diva.  She is stubborn and determined on all issues (“Mommy, I need to TELL you something!” ) and heaven forbid you try to tell her what to wear.  She once spent two weeks straight wearing the same pink dress-up dress everywhere, I’m sure people wondered if the child had any real clothing.  She is really perceptive and picks up new information very quickly.  She took swimming lessons this fall and after two weeks of being shy with her teacher, decided as soon as lessons were over that she could swim no problem.   She loves to read books, wear dresses, cut stuff up, write alphabet letters, and boss people around. Much like an unruly camel she is also known to occasionally spit.   She has such a cute personality that it is hard to be angry with her though.  She has mastered the art of flattery (“Mommy, you are SO beautiful”) and pretty much has Dave and I twisted around her little finger.

Dave had a great year at work- he works with the Israelis on a joint missile defense program and loves what he does.  He’s gotten a lot of positive feedback for his work which is always nice.   He is still working with the Young Men/ Boy Scouts at church and had the chance to go on High Adventure this year- hiking, kayaking, and camping around Catalina Island off the coast of California.

I turned the big three-zero this year!  So far, so good!  I am enjoying life and manage to stay pretty busy although I still squeeze in a nap here and there.  I have been teaching in two co-op preschools for the three younger kids- a lot of fun and a lot of work!  I have really enjoyed gardening this summer- Dave and I had a very successful garden and actually got some produce out of it- a first for us!   One tough thing for me this summer was having both my parents diagnosed with fairly serious health problems.  Thankfully they are holding up well and I am so grateful for the reminder to treasure the time we get to share with those 
we love.   

Here’s to a wonderful 2014!   Love, The Zinckes