Thursday, September 30, 2010

Thinking about sweet baby Abigayl. It's been two years today.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

We're a Jeep Family

Because it is worthy of its very own blog post, I waited until now to document Jake's Jeep. Grandma Diana gave it to him for his birthday. It fits right in with the two other jeeps we've got parked in our driveway.

It's a pretty neat machine. It offroads in our backyard very well. The little neighbor girl down the street has a pink one and they like to go cruising together.


Let's ride!


Room for everyone!


Sometimes other people get to drive it.



So fun!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

All About Bubba

Some things about Jaycob now that he's seven years old.

He's now in first grade and doing so well on all his school work. Not doing so well on the not talking during a test, not talking in the halls, not talking in the bathroom type things.

Jaycob is still obsessed with all things Star Wars and every so often he will ask me if I know everything about Star Wars and when I say no, I don't, he tells me everything about Star Wars. I'm pretty sure I actually now know everything about Star Wars.

He cannot go thirty seconds without pretending to shoot someone or something with his imaginary weaponry. Sometimes it's a gun, other times it's a laser. Maybe a ninja star. I'm not always certain what I've been shot between the eyes with.

He loves to ride his bike around our street and his most recent trick is to stand up and pedal or pop wheelies. He's really, really fast and so we just bought him a super duper helmet for his birthday to replace his old helmet that was falling apart. How can a helmet just start falling apart?

Jaycob loves video games and in an attempt to prevent him from becoming the 40 year old overweight mooch living in our basement in the future, we only let him play video games if he doesn't get in trouble for talking at school. So he gets in less trouble for talking at school, but not enough less to actually earn video game time. Win/win. Sort of.

Every morning Jake wakes up to his alarm clock, gets himself dressed for school and comes upstairs for breakfast. He's so terrified of his alarm clock that he wakes up a half hour before it goes off and sits in his bed and cries in anticipatory terror. We finally had mercy on the poor guy and switched the alarm to music so know he wakes up to KLOVE and comes upstairs singing to Jesus.

Jaycob accepted Jesus as his Savior this past spring and has been wanting to be baptized ever since. His utter and complete revulsion of having water on his face has caused us to put it off for months all the while practicing (with much screaming and gnashing of teeth) in the bathtub. He finally felt comfortable enough last week to go for the dunk and was baptized in front of the church last Sunday night. His favorite part was the robe because it reminded him of Star Wars.

Jaycob's favorite things are Star Wars in general, Boba Fett in particular, video games on the Wii or the PSP (Star Wars of course), building things out of Legos (Star Wars ships mostly), playing wrestling with dad (and only dad) on our bed, going to playgrounds, eating ham and cheese sandwhiches without mayo (that's my boy!), playing football at recess, talking about Star Wars and eating Top Ramen.

He is SO smart. SO diligent. SO stubborn. He is so like his father that his father is terrified. I love everything about them both. Well, I could do without the Star Wars and random sniper attacks.

Photos, Fours and Fails.

I'm in the process of switching my life over to a new computer. So, on Doobie's birthday, I created a quick happy birthday post for him and saved it to my drafts until I could add a picture from my other computer. I just realized today that I never posted it. As if I weren't already in the running for mom of the year, I feel the urge to confess that the reason there are no candle blowing out pictures on his party blog post is because, like a complete moron, I stuck a big giant "3" candle on his cupcake. I didn't realize what I had done until later that evening when Grandma Diana came over and saw it sitting on the counter and made a comment about 3+1. I didn't really catch on to what she meant until I sorted through the pictures later and suddenly remembered that the poor kid is FOUR. He's FOUR! I can't keep track of all these different birthdays happening in one weekend I guess. Or I subconsciously want to keep him three forever, which doesn't make sense because he pooped his pants a whole lot while he was three.

So, without further ado, here is the proof of my epic fail.


And here is my missing happy birthday post.

Today my baby turned four years old. When I told him I couldn't believe my sweet baby was four, he told me he wasn't a baby.

Sigh.

Then he cried about something and it made me giggle because he's still a baby.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Jake's 7th Birthday


Since Jake isn't anywhere near over his Star Wars obsession (we're going on three years now!) this birthday was wrought with Star Wars paraphanalia as well.

Star Wars action figures...


Star Wars space ships (this one is a Snow Speeder. You will sleep better at night knowing this).


More action figures.


I think Jordy's birthday boogie is the best part of this picture.


I think Jake's struggle with the candles is the best part of THIS picture.

Happy 7th birthday to my sweet Bubba Boy. Man, I love this kid!

Doobie's Very Own Birthday Party


On Friday morning I threw together a little birthday party for Joshy. All the big kids were in school so we had a few friends over to play and eat lunch. He was very excited to have his very own birthday party for the very first time instead of sharing with his big brother.

Parties at the house with small kids is SO much easier to plan than an extravaganza designed to entertain rambunctious older children (that's coming up soon for Jake's birthday). I thoroughly enjoyed putting this little shindig together.


Rather than doing a theme (which I really kinda hate) I did a color scheme. This made everything so simple and fun. Royal blue, canary yellow and lime green were the colors of the day. I even dressed Joshy and myself accordingly.

All the food was color coordinated, including the mini candy bar with assorted colorful candy's, green frosted cupcakes and cookies, easy to serve uncrustables and juice packs and of course, fruit snacks.


Green gift bags with custom tags for each guest.


Tissue paper puff balls made in minutes by yours truely. Yes, I am awesome, thanks for noticing.


Doobie received fun gifts from his friends including Star Wars toys, cars and trucks and transformers. It was a super day!



Friday, September 24, 2010

Birthdays and Such


Seven years ago today, my little Jayhawk came into this world crying and covered in goo. Today he's still typically covered in some form of goo or another but the crying is fairly minimal.

Josh and I visited him at lunch time and brought cupcakes for his class and then we went home and had a birthday party (for Josh, whose birthday is coming this Sunday) without Jake's knowlege. When he arrived home from school later that day he assumed all the party decor was for him. Nice.

So Jaycob is seven. What the heck.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Jaycob vs Airplane

Darrin and Jake went on a flying adventure with our friend Dave. Though there was room for me to tag along, I opted to say behind with my other children to prevent them from becoming orphans. The flying adventure was a surprise for Jake for no reason and every reason, just that surprises are fun. He of course ruined the surprise by saying, "What? I've flowin in airplanes before!"


What saved the coolness of the surprise? THE ENGINE FACES BACKWARD!



A water landing just for funsies.


Oh look, he's having fun.


Oh look, he's flying the plane. What?

Yes, for about twenty minutes, Jake had control of the airplane and flew it home.

Getting BATHtized.

After months of practicing, Bubba finally decided he was ready to be baptized. I mean bathtized. So last night at church, he got dunked.







Afterward he ran around the church telling everybody and got lots of hugs, which he hates but which he was willing to tolerate because he wanted to let everyone know that he loves Jesus.

Later, back at home, he brought me his bible so that I would write his baptism information in it and then he wanted us to lift it up together to thank the Lord for salvation. He's so adorable I just want to bite his ears off.

Friday, September 17, 2010

It's Official.

After five nights in a row of potty perfection, we are officially a diaperless household.


So...neener neener.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

We Exude Fantasticisms



As if multiple photoshoots in a week weren't enough, we decided to take advantage of some rare and decent weather in order to get some new and updated photos of ourselves for marketing. Uh, I have a whole new respect for our clients, especially those seniors who are forced to pose awkwardly and yet, remain looking fierce. I prefer to be behind the camera, thank you very much.

Not that it wasn't fun because it was. And funny. We tried poses and ideas that we've been wanting to try but didn't want to experiment with using actual clients. A good thing too because many didn't quite work out or were generally physically impossible.

Doobie tagged along and ended up doing some modeling as well. Because he's cute. And he loves to say cheese with his eyes closed.


I probably should have dressed him better but what's more Doobie than a track jacket and Lightening McQueen shoes? Nothing.


This is me and big Max. He looks good.


You know what's funny? Taking pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. Yup.


Doobie showing me how to look fierce.


At the end of the day we did a few mommy and doobie pics because he really wanted to climb on this log with me.

Jordan's First Field Trip

This week Jordan went on her very first field trip. Well, she went on several last year with Jake's class, but this was her first official trip as a school kid. I went along to help, as did Joshy and he even got to ride the bus! I drove separately because a bus load of 60 excited 5 year olds didn't really appeal.

The field trip was an adventure to a farm where they keep draft horses and do wagon rides. We visited the horses, had a picnic, threw rocks into a river, took a wagon ride, ate s'mores and sang songs around a fire pit. We did this event last year with Jake's class and it was raining. This year was warm and sunny.









Saturday, September 04, 2010

2010 Alaska State Fair

These pictures all loaded in reverse order and I don't feel like fixing them because it's 2am.

So here is our day at the fair...in reverse.


A family photo before we walked out of the gate for home. This photo is awesome for two reasons, Jake's eyes are closed and Jordan is distracted.


Jordan wanted to carry our giant bag of kettle corn to the car. She didn't make it much farther than this. I didn't realize there were people canoodling in the background until after I loaded this photo. Sweet.


The bumper cars moments before Jordan bashed her face and bloodied her mouth all up.


Jake and his grandma on the hang glider thingy. One of them was scared. I won't say which one.


The "Where's Waldo?" shot. Jake and I are on top of the ferris wheel looking down on Jordan, Josh and Diana. Can you spot them? Hint, Jordan has a red shirt, Josh has orange and Diana has green. GO!


A view of the parking lot from the top of the ferris wheel.


A view of Jake on top of the ferris wheel.


Standing in line before getting on the ferris wheel.


The first ride of the day. The "cars" at the kiddy ride area. Everone's favorite and it's SO LAME.