Tough Days

Well, on top of being homesick already during the holidays of 2010, on Wednesday, December 29th, my Grandpa Donbrosky passed away. He was 3 weeks shy of his 91st birthday. It is hard to imagine him not with us any more, as he has been there my entire life. I know miss him extraordinarily. As my sister Martha said on her blog, I know he has gone on to a better place, of that I am sure, and he has been reunited with his wife, Martha [yes, my sister's namesake].
I too remember him with a cigar always protruding from his lips. I also always remember him with a baseball cap on [just as he is pictured in his obiturary picture].
He was a giant of a man in my life, as is his son, my father. I have nothing but great memories of my times with him, of our trips to Michigan and the many Christmases spent there. I don't know if it is accurate, but I seem to remember that whenever we went up there, it was snowing. Always a white Christmas. I think that made it stand out even more in my mind, because it was so magical. We don't often get white Christmases in Virginia where I grew up.
I know this is extremely hard on my father. I cannot even begin to describe the depth of emotion within me right now as I ache for my dad.

Uh oh . . .

Well, as you can tell, it has been nearly 3 months since my last post. Time is just a flyin' my friends. Well the kids did go back to school last week. We are terrible parents who did not take any pictures of Devin on his first day!

We did however take a few of Lauryn. She had absolutely no fear going in there. She wanted Heather to just leave her alone so she could get on with the learning. Heather said it was funny to see, and there were some kids who were definitely not ready to make the leap.

I do have a picture of Devin with Larry Gelwix. Who you ask? The movie, "Forever Strong" is based around him. He is the volunteer coach of the Highland High rugby team. He has been there for 34 years and only last 9 games, while amassing something like 19 national championships. I guess they didn't really play for the national championship in some of those years.

Boy oh boy, I really feel like a failure though. I wanted to do at least 1 update on here every month, and I thought this would be my September entry. Then I realized that I already missed July and August!

Yikes!

Man time flies way too fast. Everytime I turn around, another month passes, and I realize how terrible I am at updating my blog. Just not a whole lot of time I guess.

So, last night, Heather was watching some recorded American Idols and they had Kiss on to sing one of the songs. Heather asked a general question, which was not really directed at anyone in

particular. "How old are those guys?" she queried. Devin, immediately offered up his opinion, "I don't know, probably 30."

Now that will make you feel really old in a hurry. We proceeded to have a history lesson, and explained the fact that they had to at least be in their 50s or 60s. Then we licked our wounds and went to bed at 9:30PM. Just kidding, we stayed up til at least 10.

Okay, there's an update for you . . . and here are a couple of pictures to tide you over.

An Untimely Update

Okay, so I was sitting here a minute ago, and Martha said "I thought you were going to keep your blog more updated."
My response: "Well, the last blog I started had only one entry, so anything more than that is 'more updated', right?"

With that said, here is a little update from the Utah Donbrosky neck of the woods.  The kids continue to do well.  Brenan is just growing up and learning to not put up with his brother and sister if they give him a hard time.  He's "support" walking a little bit now, so I'm sure he'll be progressing toward the full on stroll pretty soon.
Devin is closing in on the completion of his 4th grade year.  He is doing really well in school, and once he starts reading it's hard to get him to stop.   But, sometimes we do struggle to get him "started".  The other night he saw a member of our ward, and their little girl who had pierced ears.  She is probably about a year old.  Devin walked up to the father and asked, "are those fake".  He found out they were real and replied, "she's a bit young for that don't you think?"  The father thought that was really funny, as did all of us.

Lauryn, she's just all girl and full of sass and spunk.  And boy does she have an imagination; one can get lost in there.  She's always playing with her stuffed animals and giving them names and doing all sorts of things that girls do.

Okay, there's an update for now.  I'll post some pictures next time.

Easter Greetings

Okay, so Easter has come and gone.  The kids all received new easter clothes.  This picture was taken right after church, and Brenan fell asleep on the way home.

When I finally made it home from church, we hid the baskets and some eggs, and Devin and Lauryn were on the hunt.  Brenan is still too little to search for the basket, but had a lot of fun looking at the colored eggs, and shaking the plastic ones that had jelly beans and such in them.

A Walk on the Moon . . .

And Mars for that matter.  As a family, we recently went to visit the Clark Planetarium at the Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City.  We saw the movie, "Under the Sea 3D" which was pretty entertaining, as narrated by Jim Carey.

I have to admit, my eyes are not made for 3D.  I always have a difficult time watching, and found myself closing one eye, or taking the 3D glasses off quite often.  It was pretty funny to watch the kids in the audience, including Lauryn, continually reaching out in front of them to see if they could "catch any fish".

After that, we did some exploring, and the kids, Devin and Lauryn got a chance to walk on the moon.  As you can see, they are "moving in slow motion".
They then decided to see what life was like on Mars.  They didn't seem quite as enthused to be further away from planet Earth.  Maybe it was because the temperature was warmer . . . we may never know.Meanwhile, Brenan was more than happy to keep his stroller wheels firmly planted on Terra firma.  I don't think he thought it was a big deal.  Ain't he so cute?

Full Crawl

Brenan is officially crawling.  He started about a week ago actually [I've been a slacker].  Now we are constantly on defense, watching to make sure he's not headed for the stairs or some other peril.  Gone are the days of sitting him in one spot and finding him there 10 minutes later.  But, he is a much happier child now that he has gained some "independence".Of course, all of that crawling tends to wear him out.  As is typical of a little child, they don't understand the great blessing that sleep is. 

I'm not really sure what Devin was looking at in this photo, but he was really interested in it.  He was also so handsome that I thought I'd share the pic.

Then there is Lauryn.  Man is she sassy!  She packs quite a bit of "attitude" into her daily activities.  It is amazing to see the difference in personalities between boys and girls.  We wouldn't trade her for anything.