Hinton Highlights

Okay, I’ll try my hand (since it has been a while) at writing this month’s newsletter. Where has September gone! Nathan continues to enjoy Kindergarten and has learned to count to 100 in several ways (by 1s, 10s, etc) and is starting to recognize some simple words in books. It’s exciting to see his mind growing in some many ways. His favorite thing lately is to “outthink you”. Something he learned from one of the stories he likes.

Becca is our artist. She creates a tremendous amount of masterpieces – at that’s just during Sacrament Meeting! She loves to draw, color, paint with pens, pencils, chalk, paints, and crayons. She is definitely following in her Grandma Ellis’ footsteps.

Jared is finally to the point where we can say he is potty-trained (Woohoo!). He loves to have fun and play jokes on people and is constantly telling us that he “tricked” us. His favorite thing is to sneek into the fridge and pull out some food (like grapes for example) and hide them in his hand behind his back. He then asks which hand and, after you guess, pulls out both hands to show that he has one in each, all the while yelling “tricked you.” Ben meanwhile has just barely started sleeping all the way through the night. Brett and Amber (and especially Amber) are very excited. We hope by mentioning this that we aren’t jinxing ourselves! Ben has also cut his first teeth, which he (and Mom and Dad) didn’t think was very fun.

Brett has been busy with one workshop, webinar, or event after another. It has been a busy start to the school year (though not for the normal reasons) and the rest of the fall is shaping up to be a busy time. He went to Washington D.C. for a week for training and enjoyed it, as well as the visit with Dustin Hinton and Brad and Autumn Hinton. His hotel was only a block away from Brad and Autumn’s house so it was fun to connect with them while he was there. He was caught on the east coast when Hurricane Ike hit and was initially told by Continental Airlines that his Friday flight (which was cancelled due the hurricane) was going to be rescheduled on Monday. Amber (and Brett) and kids didn’t like having Dad gone even longer, so Brett made a deal with the airlines and they were able to get him home Friday evening (4 hours earlier than he had originally been scheduled to land!).

Amber has been keeping busy with a full schedule of kids, preschool, teething baby, helping a sick husband for a couple of weeks, and holding the fort together, all while teaching the occasional piano lesson. She was excited to get a Jr Primary Pianist and both Brett and Amber are enjoying the opportunity to be in Sunday School together. That has happened much since we were married. We are also excited to listen to the prophet and the General Authorities this weekend.

We heard back on home we put an offer in about 5 months ago. We were told that it was ours if we wanted it. We are having a home inspector take a close look at it and are struggling to decide if we we really want to move (even just 2 doors down) or not. We really do love our little home here on the corner! We’ll see what happens on that front in the upcoming month. Finally, we’re looking forward to Nathan’s sixth birthday in a couple of days and are planning on having a swashbucklingly good time. Arrrggghhh Matey!