Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

2010 has been exciting for us and full of a lot of changes.  We have been blessed immensely.

Esther is 2 (almost 3) and in nursery at church.  She absolutely loves her nursery teachers!  She loves to look at books, sing, dance and she is quite a dare-devil.  She climbs on things at the playground that make Elizabeth's knees shake.  Esther has a best friend named Lydia that she adores and has become good friends with two girls next door.  Esther has mastered animal noises.

Joseph turned 6 this year and started Kindergarten at a Montessori charter school.  It has been good for him and he has made lots of friends there.  Joseph loves to read, build things out of anything (Legos, blocks, car parts, recycled stuff), draw plans of things to invent and sell to people, and run.  He recently got a suit to match Glen's and loves to wear it to church.  He wants to grow up to be just like his dad.  :)

Athena turned 18 this year and she is engaged at school with choir and other great things.  When she is not busy with school performances, she is busy getting good grades and having fun with friends.  She also plays the organ at church. 

Elizabeth has been busy with the house; especially with painting and organizing things.  We recently made our casita available for missionaries in our stake to use and the things from the casita that ended up in the house must go.  ;)  Elizabeth has fun exercising at the YMCA.  She also has very strong entrepreneur-tendencies and is working on projects from home to make extra money for the family.  **Here's where Elizabeth's life gets really interesting:  Because she has dysphagia (trouble swallowing her food), her doctor tested her for several things and one of the things she tested positive for is a gluten intolerance.   Now Elizabeth is learning how to cook gluten-free food.  And it's pretty fun, unless she really wants a nice slice of baguette with a bit of Brie.  Sometimes, there is just no substitute for the real thing, haha... Another side benefit of dysphagia is getting an endoscopy, which will take place at the beginning of 2011.  A specialist will stick a long tube with a camera down her throat and take a peek at her esophagus and stomach.  Eek.  

Glen, the very smart and hard-working head of our household, went back to school and is earning a Master of Ed degree at Arizona State University.  He has completed his first semester and is learning LOTS.  He likes to ride his bike to school when he can and is having a bit of extra fun with learning how to teach secondary school kids (middle school and high school).  He is a Priesthood teacher at church, as well as a ward missionary.

We send you and your families lots of love and prayers for the best blessings the Lord can give you.

With Love,
The Stowers Family

We Blew It Up and Then...We Ate It!

Okay, so I remember the last time I blogged on our family blog, that I promised to do a blog post devoted entirely to Glen.  I have to forego that for now, but will do it next time.  He's been up to some amazing things.  Stay tuned...

Now, onto our firstborn son, who just turned 6 and is loving it...

We had a blast celebrating his birthday as a family and then a few weeks later with his friends.  We had a science-themed birthday party and our birthday activities were centered around doing short, easy science experiments.

To kick things off, I cut out bow ties (with scrapbooking paper) in advance and had the kids decorate their own "mad scientist" bow ties.  After each child (and parent, haha) was done, I glued a clip onto each one with my trusty glue gun.  The drying time was quick and each of wore bow ties for the rest of the party.  Then, we had 5 science experiments, present opening, cake and ice cream and the finale science experiment.

We decorated our dining room and front room with green and orange colors and hung pictures of various famous scientists on our wall.

We also had an erupting volcano cake.  I got the instructions for that at http://beyondwonderful.com/recipes/desserts/cakes/volacano_erupting.html .  I modified it a bit to my liking.  ;)

I don't normally buy dry ice (which the recipe calls for) and found it at the grocery store for about $1 per pound.  The smallest size I bought was 5 pounds.  Never, ever touch it with your bare hands!  It's extremely cold stuff.  We kept it up and out of the way of curious and inquiring children.

Enjoy the pictures and video of Joseph and his party!

A view of the Rocket Balloons Experiment...

More Rocket-Ballooning!

The egg went from here...

To here.

  And now, the volcano cake eruption!









Happy Birthday Joseph! We love you! xoxo

Running, Moving, and Growing Up

Lots to do and just enough time to do it all.  Barely.  :)

My official half-marathon training began a few weeks ago and I decided on running 'Shun the Sun' here in Tempe, AZ.  The culmination of all of this great fun will happen in November.  First things first, I went to Runner's World (Online) to print up a training plan.  Goals written down on paper usually help to simplify tasks that are set forth.  Easy?  Maybe not on some days.  But the plan is simple to follow and I'm on track.  I start Week 4 tomorrow and am eager for my runs to get longer and to mix some speed into my workouts.

Writing down plans on paper has been quite effective and have decided that I will do this with a lot more of my goals.

Along with my runs, I have lots of weight-lifting here at the house.  Lift up one box.  Carry it to the other side of the room.  Set it down.  Onto the next box...;)  I've had lots of fun organizing our house, because we just added two more girls to the mix.  That's right!  They arrived three weeks ago.  What are their names?  They're both named 'Sister'.  :)

We are blessed to be able to host sister missionaries in the studio that's attached to our garage.  We had lots of help from our friends and ward members to help get the studio renovated and to get the sisters moved in.  Our studio is awesome and it now comes complete with a kitchenette area.  Missionaries normally cannot live in a household where there are children, but since they live in a separate studio, things worked out well.  It is a blessing for us to be able to consecrate part of our home for the Lord's work.

Joseph has been all smiles lately.  We worked very hard to get him into the school of his (and our) dreams and each day I pick him up, he's a flurry of excitement.  I love it!  He's in a charter school that is Montessori-based and it's such a good fit for all of us.  Esther misses Joseph though, and still asks why he doesn't ride back home with us in his car seat.  (But, I think she secretly likes being able to have me to herself...:)

Have a happy and blessed week!  :)

He's got one foot forward and ready to go onward to Kindergarten...

Oh yeah! Where's Glen in all of this? No worries, he'll be highly featured in our next blog post...