No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!

We've had an eventful number of weeks and this blog post is way overdue. However, I think I'll start with the most recent event, which occured at roughly 7 p.m. last Saturday night. Aric and Taylor were apparently skirmishing on the top bunk (a strongly prohibited activity) when Aric's face met the bedframe. Now he has five stitches over his left eye. We were able to take him to Urgent Care rather than the ER, but it still took over three hours to have him seen. He was a very brave little boy and only cried a little. He chose to hold very still on his own, so he did not have to be restrained while they stitched him up, which was a blessing to me. Last time he had stitches they strapped his entire body to a board (he was "papoosed") and it was awful.



Five days later, the wound was looking great and it was time for the stitches to come out. Our doctor's office told us we ought to go back to Urgent Care to have them removed since that is where he'd gotten them, but none of us were thrilled at the idea of waiting hours on end for a few simple snips with a pair of scissors. We dug out the surgical scissors we took home last time he had stitches removed and I sterilized them (they'd been living in Jeremy's hobby tool collection in the garage :-). Aric was a little trepidatious about having Daddy remove the stitches, but Taylor piped up, "I have a great idea! Let Aric watch TV." (Of course, that meant Taylor got to watch TV, too, but Aric calmed down and ignored what Jeremy was doing, so it was over in a flash without so much as a whimper).


Here he is "post-op" :


I guess we'll just keep going backwards through the month with our pictures since we started with the most recent event. A few days ago, we finally got around to getting Aric a new bike. Taylor's mastered riding sans training wheels, and Aric's really been itching to get riding again. We picked up a bike that we thought was the same size as Taylor's. When we brought it home, we put the training wheels on it and Aric excitedly hopped on for an inaugural ride. That's when we realized it was too big for him - it ended up being a larger bike than Taylor's, and Aric really couldn't reach the pedals well enough to get around. We groaned and figured we'd put it away for later, because we couldn't take Taylor's bike that he'd just gotten comfortable with away from him. However, Taylor decided he really wanted to trade, and Aric was amenable to that idea, so they both have "new" bikes now. :-)




Last time Jeremy was upriver, Janet and I decided we'd be ambitious and take the kids all the way up to Mt. St. Helens since it's practically in our backyard. It was an amazing sight and we really enjoyed the day, except for the ride home (Ascha screamed for well over an hour while we sat stuck in a major traffic jam caused by a brush fire on the freeway ahead of us). We started out at the Johnson Ridge Observatory, where we took this family picture. The displays were excellent and we'd highly recommend visiting this amazing place. The boys loved getting to create their own earthquakes by jumping up and down to make a seismograph needle move. There was an impressive movie about the 1980 eruption, which everyone but Aric enjoyed. He found it a bit scary.


Then we went to the Forest Learning Center, put on by Weyerhauser, where we learned a lot about trees, paper, forests, and animals. It was a great place to stop with kids. We picnicked in the shade and the boys enjoyed a playground complete with a hand-operated excavator and a giant rubberized climbing volcano. Inside the center, there was a helicopter flight simulator which they both thoroughly enjoyed.



After experiencing the volcano and the forest, we were ready for some fun. After sitting in the aforementioned traffic jam for way too long, we finally made it to Woodland where we enjoyed cooling off in Horseshoe Lake. The boys loved playing in the sand...


And Ascha loved being out of her carseat! It was a full day of adventure.



Speaking of Ascha, she's growing like a weed! She's now two months old and wearing six month clothing! She's been smiling and cooing for quite a while, but she tends to be camera shy. If we ever want her to stop smiling, all we have to do is pull out the camera! I have managed to capture a few smiles along the way, so here are a few:




The boys are still loving being big brothers to Ascha. They are rough and tumble a lot of the time, but they can both be so sweet and gentle around their baby sister. They can also be pretty sweet toward one another when they want to be. Aric sometimes gets scared at night and asks Taylor to stay in his bed with him. Usually this leads to playing and/or fighting, but on this particular night, I found them sleeping just inches apart. Awwww!

Their personalities become ever more apparent. Here's a fun recent example. The boys are starting to email their long-distance friends, and at the end of one of their emails, they both decided to make up poetry. This is what they said, verbatim:

A little poem from Taylor:
"I love you
How the trees and birds sing to you."

A little poem from Aric:
"See how the warm winds blow and how warm the trees are when you hug them. There might be ants on them, and they might be fire ants, and they bite you, so be careful!" :-) :-) :-)



In early August, the Clark County Fair occurs just 5 miles from our house, so of course, we had to go. We spent a day looking at animals and exhibits, watching a demolition derby and a monster truck demonstration, and wandering the carnival. We let the boys pick a ride, and after a lot of "back and forth," they chose the motorcycle jump.



At the very beginning of the month, my parents came out for a few days while my dad attended a work conference. Here they are with all three grandkids.


We took a trek up to the Ape Cave Lava Tubes while they were visiting, and it was a pretty cool place (41 degrees! :-). Aric was a little nervous (he gets claustrophobic and we were essentially in a dark hole in the ground), but Taylor LOVED every moment of exploring and talked Grumpy into going all the way to the very end of the cave, even though he had to crawl on his belly to fit!

The boys kept hoping to see a bat or a spider and kept noticing little pockets in the walls where they might find a "bat home." This was the largest one they found.


Grumpy and Taylor climbed up onto a ledge overhead - it was a little holey, as you can see.


Ascha slept through the whole adventure.


Aric was tired of walking, so he got to ride on Grumpy's shoulders. Here, he's touching the meatball," a piece of cooled lava that floated along the top of the lava flow until it caught at this point.


We also visited the "Trail of Two Forests," where you can view a current forest and see the remains of the forest that was swallowed up by flowing lava. The trees were burned up, but their trunks remained as the lava flowed around them. The charcoaled trunks eventually disintegrated, leaving perfect molds, some of which we were able to crawl through.

Ascha's First Trek to Montana, My Brother's Wedding, and My 10-Year Class Reunion

We had a lovely break from normal life (not that life has been normal lately, anyway, what with the new house, the new baby, and lots of company) while the boys played and played in Montana with Grammy and Grumpy. Jeremy and I enjoyed lots of sleeping in (without our early riser, Aric, waking us up at 6 or 6:30 at the latest) and getting to spend lots of quiet time with Ascha. However, we missed our big boys terribly and we were so thankful to get back to them.

On Wednesday, we decided to head toward MT around the middle of the day. We took Hwy. 14 from Vancouver all the way across southern Washington. Although it lengthens the trip by about an hour, it's a beautiful drive and we really enjoyed ourselves. We stopped for the evening in Couer d'Alene, ID and stayed with our great friends there. It was wonderful to spend a bit of time with them and their kids! In the morning, we pressed on to Missoula, where we met up with our boys, plus Grammy and Great-Aunt Lynn, for lunch. We were all excited to see each other again!

On Friday, Jeremy got to go up to the lake for his tri-annual ski. :-) Poor guy - once every three years is just not quite enough! He had a nasty wreck and is still feeling the after-effects of bruised ribs. That evening, we all went to the beautiful property where Amos and Meredith were going to get married. We had a rehearsal and then we all drove to a steakhouse in the beautiful Skalkaho area and enjoyed the rehearsal dinner.

Saturday was a whirlwind of a day. My mom and her friends were in charge of making 530 shish kebabs, which was quite a task! I attended the picnic portion of my 10-year high school reunion. It was good to see old friends and reconnect with people I only "visit" with online. Then it was back to my parents' house to get ready for the wedding. After the whirlwind of getting everyone ready, we headed over to the wedding where the boys got to be the "ring bears." They did a stellar job, and were incredibly handsome to boot. :-)






Sunday morning came all too soon and we had to head back to Washington. We got to stop in Idaho for a few minutes so the kids could see their friends while I nursed the baby. Then we trekked onward, stopping in Plymouth, WA (not much there) and again at Crow's Butte, WA (pretty pond and lots of water foul to see).

After 13 hours, we finally made it home to figure out what our new "normal" is going to be as a family of five in our new home. We're still working on figuring that out, but it's a relief to not have any huge events "pending" for a while. The boys are glad to be home and Ascha's still trying to recover from her days of sleeping and sleeping. Her daytime schedule has yet to recover (and she is changing all the time, anyway, as she becomes more alert for longer stretches), but her nighttime routine seems to be a fairly consistent 5 or 6 hour stretch, which we are SO thankful for!!!

Ascha is now one month old! I didn't ever get any good 3-week pictures, but I captured some acceptable one month pictures this morning. For some reason, I find it hard to capture my kids' personalities at this age and I'm usually unhappy with the pictures because I don't invest the time in making them look "just right." Oh, well - perfectionism has to give way to reality, so here's a picture of Ascha smiling at her Daddy this morning. She's started working really hard at smiling "for real" and it's so fun to watch. She opens her mouth really wide, then curls the corners of her mouth up into a smile, complete with dimples. Then she closes her mouth and the corners stay turned upward for a little while (this is the "phase" captured in the picture). She is already growing up too fast! The boys are both wrapped around her little finger (and, ok, I'll admit it, so are her parents! :-)

Catching Up

I meant to post these right after the 4th of July, but I somehow got behind. :-) This was the boys' first experience with sparklers, and I think it's safe to say they enjoyed it!

The boys are having such a great vacation in Montana with Grammy and Grumpy. They have gone fishing, had numerous playdates, ridden motorcycles, helped feed calves, played in sprinklers, stayed up late watching a fire and eating s'mores, and today, they are at the lake. I can't wait to hear whether or not they were brave enough to be pulled behind the boat in a tube!

We miss them a lot, but it's been a blessing to have this relatively quiet time to ourselves to get to know Ascha. It's also been a blessing to get to sleep in! Aric almost never sleeps past 6:30, but after Ascha's morning feeding, she's quite happy to go right back to sleep, so we've been enjoying a more leisurely morning pace the past few days. Ascha's doing really well. She does have the normal fussy evening period, but after she calms down for the night, she sleeps really well. She's been nursing at 11pm, 3am, and 7am, and last night she stretched it even longer between feedings! We really hope this nighttime trend continues! When Ascha went to the doctor for her two week appointment, she had gained 12 oz. over her birthweight. She is in the 90+ percentiles for both weight and height, and she seems to be growing like a weed! We're so thankful that she continues to be healthy. I realized today that I haven't taken any pictures of her since "the grandmas" left. She is three weeks old today, so I have a pretty good excuse to break out the camera again. I'll try to post those pics later.

Jeremy and I are trying to finish up some house projects before the boys' return. I'm trying to unload boxes and sort through as much as possible while I have the leisure of leaving things spread out all over without anyone traipsing through my piles! Jeremy's working on getting our last two sink faucets hooked up, doing some finish work on the doors, and completing miscellaneous other tasks. There will be quite a bit on our to-do list for a while longer, but it's so nice to be living in the house, and it really is very liveable. I guess I also need to take updated house pictures now that we are all moved in to display "the final product." I'll try not to keep you waiting much longer for those. :-)

So, perhaps you've noticed the wordless posts, often posted at strange times. I tend to only be on the computer while nursing, and while I can navigate the mouse just fine, typing with one hand is a bit of a challenge (especially in the middle of the night when I'm already sleep deprived! :-)

A bit of an update is definitely in order, though. Ascha is now two and a half weeks old and still healthy and beautiful and wonderful in every way! :-) We're all pretty enamored with her. Even Aric has decided that he not only loves her, but likes her, as well. Both boys love to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to her whenever she starts to fuss, and from day one, she has seemed to calm in response to their singing. We're debating what color her eyes will eventually be, and the other day, Jeremy said they looked "Pewter Gray." Taylor piped up, "I think they look COMPUTER gray!"

Speaking of the boys, they are in the midst of a great adventure right now. They traveled back to MT with my mom and will be there for eight days of "vacation" (from Mommy and Daddy :-) before we rejoin them. We will take a quick trip back next weekend to attend my middle brother's wedding (CONGRATULATIONS, AMOS & MEREDITH) and bring the boys back to WA with us then. My parents have wanted to have the boys for a "big boy vacation" for quite some time, so it's nice for them to have this time, and it's a blessing for Jeremy and I to get acquainted with Ascha and to have some intensive time working on getting things organized around the house.

Without the boys here, things are extremely quiet compared to what we're used to. My mom, obviously, is gone, too, and Jeremy's mom is headed out this morning to visit her folks in Canada, so we're transitioning from a very full house to a quiet, empty house.

Oh, yeah - an afterthought before I wrap this up. Today (July 10 - it's taken me two days to get these few paragraphs typed!) is our ninth wedding anniversary! (Kinda anti-climactic this year with all the other exciting things going on right now.) How did we get so old? :-) I am so thankful to be married to my best friend, and I'm looking forward to many more adventures together in the years to come. Thanks for all you are and all you do, Jeremy!

Announcing Ascha Lynn


Ascha was born at 3:41 P.M. on June 23rd, 2008. Both mom and baby are doing well. Ascha had to stay in the hospital an extra day to recieve some antibiotics, but was released this morning with a clean bill of health. She weighed in at 9 pounds and was 21 inches long. She has stolen all of our hearts. Taylor would like to be nose to nose with her most of the time, and even though Aric keeps a little more distance, he is pleased with her also.








We got to come home from the hospital to our new home! Hooray to Jeremy for getting everything moved, and special thanks to Grandma Janet and Grandpa Lyn. Although we need to put some things away, the kitchen was totally assembled and unpacked, and everything is lovely.

Progress Report

Sorry I haven't updated in a few days. The boys and I all struggled with being sick for a number of days, so we stayed at the apartment and out of everyone's way. We are all better now and we've been to the house recently, so here are some new pictures:



Our kitchen is coming together beautifully. I love the flooring and I love how it goes with our cabinetry. I also love the countertops Jeremy scored - we were planning on going with something lighter than this, but he got a great deal and they match everything else really well.



Here is a pic of our two carpet choices. The frieze in the front is what we did throughout the carpeted areas, and the "moon rock gray" in the two rooms behind is the lower-grade carpet we decided to put in the kids' rooms for right now. We're not completely trusting that the basement will never leak again (although it certainly shouldn't after the work that's gone into keeping it dry), so we didn't want to waste nice carpeting should it ever have a moisture problem. The boys really liked the gray carpet and it didn't cost much for now, so if we should ever have to replace it, it won't be such a big deal.


This is our laminate floor choice. It should compliment the kitchen cabinets beautifully. Jeremy, being ever ambitious, decided to lay it on the diagonal, so it's become quite a large project. However, after working on it all day yesterday (this picture was taken two days ago), he's gotten all of the living room and most of the dining room laid. He's hoping to take it down the hallway today, and then all of our flooring (except trim pieces) will be in. It looks great!




The boys are pretty excited to be moving in!!! Actually, in this picture, they're pretty excited that Grandpa has let them play in the back of his truck. He came back out on Sunday and he and Grandma are being so incredibly helpful! There's no way we could be ready to move in without all their help and we are thankful!




And finally, here's one last tribute to the T-Ball season. Here are the "spectators" at Taylor's last game. Aric saw a picture of me on the computer and said, "Look, Mom. There's a picture of you when you didn't have Ascha in your tummy... You were skinny!" Hopefully this is about the last picture I'll have taken with Ascha in my tummy...we're one week away from her due date today. We hope she stays put until the 25th so we can get things squared away with the house, but part of me is definitely ready to have her out.

Bathroom Progress

Here's a picture of our master bathroom. The floor is very dirty and should clean up to be brighter, but you get the idea. These vanities were scored for about 1/3 retail price on Craigslist - they came brand new in the boxes with matching mirrors! We're pretty pleased with how this room is going to look!

The carpet was installed today, along with all of our lights (except the chandelier, which we haven't decided on yet). Hopefully I'll get pics of the carpet posted in the next few days. We're really moving along well! Jeremy has all the cabinets put together and in the kitchen now and his mom is taking up the first load of boxes from the apartment tonight! It's growing very close to moving time and we are all pretty excited.

In other news, Taylor had his last T-ball game yesterday. He

managed to perk up enough to play, and then he hit his coach's pitch every time he was up to bat! We're really proud of him and the great season he had. He was very good at looking alert and staying ready when fielding, which is no small task for a 5-year-old! Great Job, Taylor!

Flooring and the Flu

Our carpet installer is able to install carpet without the door jambs in place, so we are on track for a FRIDAY (as in, tomorrow!) carpet installation! It's very exciting! Jeremy has done all the tiling downstairs in the boys' bathroom and in the laundry room, and he also got the stairs rounded and prepped for carpet and applied "floor leveler" to the spaces in the subfloor and "levelquick" to the areas of cement that needed tlc after removing the old tile grout. Today he's getting our "FiberFloor" (resilient floor - like vinyl - for bathrooms and kitchen). Hopefully he will be able to lay the master bath portion that will butt up to the carpet today, and then we'll truly be as ready as possible for our carpet install. Jeremy's mom has been helping out with cleaning things so that we'll be starting fresh with clean subfloor under the carpet (THANK YOU, THANK YOU!).

I, as usual, haven't been doing much on the house except working on the logistics and phone calls. It's been rainy and chilly so the boys and I have had a quiet week of hanging out inside. Today is supposed to be nicer, and it's Taylor's last T-ball game, so we had been looking forward to getting out today. However, Taylor got a 24-hour stomach flu yesterday. He was fevered and couldn't even keep water down most of the day, but thankfully, after a good night's sleep following a good day's sleep, he's doing much better. He's eating and his fever is gone, but he still feels "wibbly wobbly" this morning. I doubt he'll have the energy for playing t-ball tonight, but we might go watch the game, since it is his last one. We're hoping that the rest of us don't get this bug!

Ascha's due in less than two weeks, which is both exciting and overwhelming to think about. Hopefully after this carpet goes in, Jeremy's mom and I will be able to move quite a bit of the smaller stuff in the minivan so that "moving day," whenever it occurs, won't be a big deal, even if Ascha is around.

Here are a few more pics of the house progress. We have some of our lighting in now and all of our outlets are working, which is nice. Here is the kitchen:





Here is our family room / play room / guest room. I really love this gray-blue color:




And here is our bedroom, which may or may not stay this color, and may or may not eventually get some accents in the same blue as the family room. It is a silvery gray which we chose for both the guest bath and our bedroom. One of the reasons Jeremy liked this gray was because it looked very silvery without looking purple at all... of course, that was on the paint chip. In the guest bath, which has no natural light, it is a perfect color and just what we expected. In our room, bathed in natural light, it is quite purple. I am sneakily happy about this, because all our color choices tend toward the masculine. (Gray and blue in the bedroom, for example). I really like those tones, but once in a while I fantasize about having a feminine color somewhere, and now I have that, at least for a little while. :-)

PS - I finally redid the video posts from a while ago - you can see Taylor's "wind-up" for batting and Aric's silly question in that May post now. :-)

It's a House!

Since I last posted, the walls have been mudded, taped, textured, and painted. What a difference! It truly feels like a house now. Unfortunately, pictures can't do it justice, but here they are anyway:



Yesterday, Jeremy and his friend Adriel got most of these wall cabinets installed in the kitchen (pics coming later), so things are flying right along.



We thought we'd be on track to get carpet in this Friday, but now we're not so sure. The current roadblock is that all the interior doors have to be in before the carpets. We were thinking that would go quickly because we have all the doors we need leftover from demolition. However, every single door we have is in a 2x6-sized jamb, but because we took off all those layers of plaster, our walls now require 2x4-sized jambs. We can either acquire all new doors or Jeremy can disassemble every door jamb, cut each piece down, and reassemble them. With our time crunch / baby race, we're not sure which option we'll choose. Jeremy had been hoping to tile today, but this door dilemma might change his plans.

Jeremy has been going at super-hero speeds, non-stop, since he came home from his last upriver trip on Thursday. (When I say "last," I not only mean the nearest previous trip, but also the "last" in the sense that he probably won't be taking anymore for quite a while. Last year's grain is pretty much gone, so there won't be many trips, and with Ascha nearing her debut appearance, Jeremy will be sticking close to home anyway.) On Friday, he had quite a bit of trouble with different frustrating roadblocks, and wasn't able to truly start painting in earnest until the afternoon. By 10 or 10:30 p.m., he had managed to primer the entire ceiling and all the walls, paint the ceiling, and cut in the edges of the kitchen with our chosen color! AMAZING! Then, Saturday, Jeremy and his mom painted the entire rest of the house. In the morning, he sprayed the downstairs walls white (we figure we'll get fancy down there later - for right now the boys don't care that they live in a white space). Then they painted the rest of the house by hand and got it all done. I am in awe of how quickly they went. Today, Jeremy's mom will do some touch-up painting and give the family room a final coat, and then we'll be done with that massive project. Jeremy's next big projects are tiling, figuring out the door dilemma, and putting together and installing the rest of the kitchen cabinets. We also have our insulating contractors completing the attic insulation today, the electrical contractor completing the electrical tomorrow, and the HVAC contractor completing whatever he has left on Wednesday. Then we'll be completely done with the contracted-out parts of the house, except for the carpet install. It's coming down to the wire, but we are excited and hopeful that we just might make it in before Ascha comes. My job is to somehow keep myself from going into labor at all costs! :-)

Last Saturday, my great friends from Oregon gave me a wonderful baby shower. The kids got to play with a lot of their old friends and had a pizza party, while I got a pedicure and manicure and really enjoyed the company of my friends whom I don't get to see very often. Here is a picture of Aric / batman taking a break from playing outside to help open Ascha's presents. I felt overwhelmingly blessed...thanks to everyone who took part in that fun day!




And here's a picture of our hard-working Taylor helping with the yard work. I wish I would've had my camera out a few minutes later when Dad piled Tay into the wheelbarrow and gave him a wild, bouncy, and very fun ride across the yard.


And here, by request, are goofy pictures the boys wanted posted. Aric tried out Grandma's shoes and Taylor made an interesting face to share with the world.



And here (hopefully) is a video of Taylor batting. We were totally unprepared and unpracticed, but when the coach pitched at the last game, Taylor was able to hit off of him two out of his three at-bats. Pretty fun stuff. You'll notice that mom got a little excited and stopped paying attention to videoing the first time he hit. :-)