Daily Adventures

* Ascha is officially 9 months old. Can't hardly believe how fast it's gone...and is still going!

* The boys had two neighborhood buddies over today for a few hours. They disappeared outside during a break in the rain. I "kept a visual" on them for most of their adventure, but after they disappeared into the trees for a few minutes, I decided I'd go check on them. I found them under the trees just beyond our property, digging into some logs for grubs and roly-polies. Their instrument of choice? A very old, very rusty steak knife they'd discovered stuck in a nearby tree. THANKFULLY Aric hadn't had a turn with the knife yet. :-) He was so disappointed I decommissioned the tool without his having used it, but I figured even the six-year-olds were too young, so my four-year-old definitely didn't "get his turn." I asked the disappointed troop what they thought they should do next time they find something sharp or unsafe...you could see the wheels turning in their dejected heads (as one of the other moms said, we're sure they were thinking "Hide it from Mom at all costs!"). In a great Eeyore impersonation, one six-year-old sighed, "Don't touch it." 

I guess boys will be boys...sometimes it's a lot of work sneaking and spying to make sure they don't poke that proverbial eye out. :-)

A Quick Trip to Seattle

We zipped up to Seattle yesterday to see my little brother, Shane, for a few hours. He is volunteering for a disaster-relief organization and is temporarily stationed in Seattle helping to fix up a donated ship. We got to see the ship (here are the kids at the helm) and then we took Shane for a nice tour of Seattle. (Read in between the lines - we changed our plans because of the weather and drove ALL OVER trying to find a kid-friendly place to eat. Thanks to cell phones and family members with the internet, we finally managed to net a restaurant, and lucky Uncle Shane got to spend a bunch of time in the back of a mini-van with kids. :-) The boys were so happy to see him and talked his ear off the whole time, and Ascha was happy to see a new face from the vantage point of her carseat, so I guess it could have been worse. :-) After lunch we went to a park on Lake Washington for a few minutes (it wasn't exactly a balmy day - it had snowed quite a bit that morning on the drive up), then dropped Shane off at his ship, and zipped back home. It was a long day but it was SO good to see Shane and hang out for a bit.

In other news, Ascha has her third tooth and is crawling VERY quickly these days. She still prefers to say "ba" (or "bra," which we're SURE means "brother" :-)  over any other consonant combination, but every once in a while she'll let a "da" or a "ha" or even a "ma" slip out. With teething has come another round of interrupted sleep at night - she's been up at least four times a night lately. We're really hoping that after her second top tooth comes in, we'll get another reprieve. Thankfully, she doesn't have any sicknesses on top of teething this time, so hopefully a full night of sleep is only a few more days away.

Aric is picking up steam in the reading department. He's getting very good at sounding things out (IF he doesn't guess - he's a VERY talented guesser, which leads to some amusing "interpretations"). His latest funny phrase came the other day when the sun was shining and the boys were enjoying popsicles on the back deck... "Ummm....Did you know??....My teeth are allergic to popsicles."

Taylor is going along with kindergarten and growing up. He's such a dichotomy right now - he seems to be both little boy and big boy at the same time, all rolled into one package. He is changing before our very eyes and although the vestiges of babyhood have been gone for a long time, we're losing some other part of "little-boyhood" right now and I mourn as I see it less and less. However, at the same time, we are so proud of the kind-hearted and helpful big boy he is becoming.

February Update

For the month of celebrating sweethearts we, of course, have to feature our little love bug! Ascha's seventh month was incredibly eventful. She went from rolling to crawling to pulling up (and practicing taking steps with Daddy, much to Mommy's chagrine) in a matter of weeks. She acquired her first two teeth. She also got her first ear infection. She started trying to do sign language a little bit ("all done" is the sign for just about everything, but she is starting to put her fingers together for "more"). She has learned to clap her hands and has also gotten into enthusiastically waving "hello" and "goodbye." Her favorite waving moment is the first time, on any given morning, that I carry her past a mirror. She loves to start her day by waving "hi" to the mommy and baby in the mirror. Here she is in all her grinning glory:






Hanging with her favorite playmate:











...And my, how the time has flown! Where has our little baby gone? This is one of her newest favorite pasttimes - watching brothers from the top of the stairs.




Showing off her two new pearly whites:





In other "tooth-related news," Taylor has had four loose teeth for a while. We went to the dentist ("Gentle Rental," according to Aric) in February and Taylor was quite pleased and proud to learn that he was looking at losing four teeth rather than just the two he knew were loose. As of this blog posting, Taylor is down one tooth. Today he and Aric were looking out the window when Aric flung his arms in exclamation (from what I can piece together from the varied stories :-). His hand bonked Taylor's tooth, which went flying onto the floor. Taylor immediately started crying when he saw blood and Aric started happily shouting that Taylor had lost a tooth. It was chaos, but in a few minutes, after Taylor realized it didn't hurt, he was pretty pleased with himself. He's so excited about the coming of the tooth fairy that he decided she ought to have a note. He wrote it all by himself and taped his tooth to it before sticking it under his pillow. The note says: "Have a grate day and night thanks for the thing you gav me" - not bad for a kindergartner, I think. :-) (I always get a little giddy when he thinks to use the silent E as he spells things - we haven't worked on spelling at all, and the fact that he already grasps the concept makes this language-loving mama happy.)





Taylor also had an eventful "Open House" at school last week. He and his classmates had created many special projects to show off, and he got to take home his work in a custom-patterned, custom-laced portfolio he made himself. (sorry about yet another disoriented picture!)





Since February is Valentine's Day, each child had decorated a big heart for the wall, but you can guess how they looked. Much more interesting to me were the drawings of Washington and Lincoln that they had created in conjunction with Presidents' Day.

(can you believe those ears?? Tee-hee! I love it!)

Taylor's wrestling program wound down with a big Jamboree last Saturday. Unfortunately, Taylor had a virus and a fever and had to miss out. However, here's one last picture paying homage to this fun chapter in our winter:

We're planning on growing a big garden this year and I've been working on tilling up a plot. The boys and I are taking these down days to plan and plant so we have seedlings to transplant. Taylor and Aric are excited to grow another garden - they were outside digging in the mud a few weeks ago for HOURS. I came out to call them for dinner and they excitedly showed me their handiwork - they'd raked and smoothed the mud and made nice straight lines in it. Then they'd taken a little stick and poked holes to drop the seeds in. Of course, in mid-February, in the mud of one of our half-finished landscaping projects, one cannot find ideal growing conditions, so I congratulated their efforts and promised we'd plant things inside very soon. Now, it's officially March, and we've officially planted 72 pots worth of seedlings (with 72 more planned for tomorrow). Happy almost spring. :-)

January Update

I guess I'm a "once-every-few-months update" blogger at the moment. We've been pretty busy enjoying life and kids and projects.

I'll start the month with a few sideways pics. I need to work with them and get them oriented, but I've been holding off posting for too long because of my perfectionistic tendencies, and it's time to just go for it (so...my apologies for crooked pics. :-)

I have a favorite group of pictures of Jeremy with each of our kids from about this age. I might (in about 20 years, when I have time :-) post all of them together to compare our children as 6-9-month-olds. Of course, Ascha's not out of the stage yet, so I might take some I like even better, but so far, these are a few of my favorites. :-)

I haven't updated about the house in a long time. It's extremely liveable and Jeremy keeps plugging away at the trimwork whenever he has a spare moment. The only major interior project left is the tiling of the master bath and shower. Here is a pic of our completed dining room:

Now, on to the "kid updates." :-) Taylor is a very creative 6-year-old and when he puts his mind to something, he does an excellent job. In a recent example, he has been getting Highlights magazine for a few months (thanks, Great Grama and Great Papa! :-). After seeing the reader-submitted page, he decided he'd submit a drawing. He sat down, got right to work, and quickly presented "Rainbow in a Race." We took a picture of it, then sent it off to Highlights. Who knows whether or not they'll eventually publish it, but he got a very official letter thanking him for the submission and telling him that his art made the editors happy. That made his day.

Taylor has also been participating in a recreational wrestling program during January and February. Unfortunately, his one big meet was last Saturday but he had to miss it due to a fever. He still LOVES to wrestle Dad and Aric for fun but is a bit burned out regarding the official sport at the moment. It has been a good foundational year, though, and he understands a bit more what the sport is really about.

Taylor is doing great at school. He's come out of his shell a lot and we've been really pleased with his teacher. He gets to have individualized reading training for half an hour four days a week to keep him challenged and motivated. We are very proud of him and his love of books is such a blessing - he is never bored in the car, at the doctor's office, or anywhere else. :-)

Both boys are so sweet and loving with their baby sister. Her seventh month has been quite eventful (more on that later) and she is now extremely mobile, which provides the boys with daily challenges as she eats and tears their paper airplanes and as mommy requires all tiny toys to stay downstairs at all times. Taylor loves to hold Ascha and "help" her as much as I let him (and then some :-).

Aric loves to help out with his sister, too. Both boys need a daily dose of "holding Ascha" time and have a quota of smiles from her that must be met (Aric needs "my morning smile" and "my goodnight smile" or life just isn't right).

Speaking of Aric, he's always such a character, but I'm behind on posting some of the funny things he's said, so I need to play catch-up.

~He got an "Armor of God" knight suit from my parents for his birthday, and he insists on calling it his "Nightmare Suit."

~He was talking to Jeremy on the phone one evening and telling him about the stars he'd seen. On my end of the conversation, I heard an indignant, "I am NOT a little sus-tronomer!!"

~I've put all the board books on the bottom shelf so Ascha can look at them/eat them. :-) He found one of his "special" books in the pile and complained bitterly. When I explained that I'd put it there because it's a board book, he was very offended: "But it's not bored to ME!!!" :-)

He keeps us all in stitches with his impish ways.

Ascha has been growing and changing by leaps and bounds. She learned to crawl at the end of January and is increasingly mobile every day. For the most part she is a very smiley baby and we love seeing her personality developing more every day.

In January, both Aric and Ascha were dedicated at Daybreak Community Church. Both sets of grandparents were able to come out for this special event, which was such a blessing. The visits were a last-minute whirlwind, but we all enjoyed our time together so much.

Here we are at our favorite park on the day Lyn and Janet came into town.

The boys still LOVE Grandpa's dog "Whifford."

Here we are at the dedication. It was a very special day (and it was kinda neat for Aric to be old enough to appreciate the ceremony. He was very proud of his "special day.")

Grammy and Grumpy with kiddos:

Grandma and Grandpa with Ascha

Of course, we had a lot of fun just hanging out together for the little bit of time we had together. Grumpy always has babies stand on his hands, and they usually love it. Ascha is no exception.

Aric got to show off his skills as an archer to all the family:

Once everyone left and the hubbub subsided, Jeremy decided it was time to embark on our ambitious landscaping makeover. It will probably be a few years before we get things how we want them, but we have at least seven trees to take out, so he decided he may as well get started. He did a great job felling this tree exactly where he wanted it to go. Once it was on the ground, the boys and I went out and helped haul limbs to a chipping pile. In the matter of a few hours, the tree was felled, limbed, and sawn into firewood rounds. The next day, the boys helped him transport (by the trusty old Red Flyer wagon, of course :-) the firewood to our lean-to where it can sit and season for a few years without being in the way. It's a shame we don't have a fireplace! A few days later, Jeremy had all the limbs chipped and was talking about taking out the next tree. He's an amazing guy!

Christmas 2009 - Ascha's First Christmas

We had a great Christmas as a family of 5.

Here's a picture of the boys with their "Cuddle Buddies" - blankets that have hoods, paws, and tails. All the Christmas morning pictures look about the same, just swap out which present they're smiling about. :-)

 

Christmas Preparations and "Real" Snow

We've had almost two weeks of snow. It started out with about an inch and a half...and we were so excited we managed to build a snowman even though there wasn't much snow. Then it REALLY snowed - we had about 18 inches or so when all was said and done. I didn't get any pictures of the maximum amount, but did get some a few days in...our trees were so beautiful coated in white! We got an ice layer which made the branches quite heavy, but we only lost one scrubby tree we didn't like very well anyway. Our massive Douglas Fir lost three large branches...thankfully, that was the only real damage our out-of-its-element foliage sustained. 

We've all been struggling with never-ending colds (I'm not being overly-dramatic, unfortunately. Taylor's had it for over seven weeks and still isn't completely over it! The rest of us are about four weeks behind). Because we'd break into coughing fits whenever our lungs hit cold air, we didn't enjoy the snow nearly as much as we would've liked. We went out for five or ten-minute spurts here and there. Mostly, though, we enjoyed the snow through the windows and did lots of inside Christmas activities.

Here are the boys with the gingerbread men and angels they made:

...and here are the boys helping Dad crack open pecans. I needed them for baklava and was reminded by Grandma Janet that they'd enjoyed cracking nuts with her this summer. What I view as a mundane chore ended up being a really fun time for the boys (and Dad was game enough, although he's definitely not ready to declare it a favorite pastime).

...And here's the obligatory baby pic - who could resist posting those giant dimples whenever possible?

The prelude to lots of snow: Aric's turn with the shovel. After we had a lot of snow, the kids didn't want to shovel anymore for some reason. I wonder why????

Here's our little snow guy. The boys were ready to be done rolling him when he was about a foot high, but I insisted that we "finish the job!" I came outside to help during Ascha's naptime and I figured I'd better make sure he was complete before I went back in the house, or he'd never get done. (Can you tell I'm projecting my procrastinator's nature onto my kids? Poor guys...they probably would have had more fun making him slowly over a longer period of time, but at least the boys were still smiling after he was finished!)

Here he is a few days into the snow.  He looks rather shocked, eh? :-) 

Beautiful trees:

Tree Hunting in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest

These days, at least in Washington, tree hunting really does have quite a bit in common with hunting: you pay for a permit, then you must "IMMEDIATELY" tag your tree with the day, month, and year upon cutting it, and that tag must remain conspicuous the entire time the tree is in transit to your home. Mildly amusing to us Montanans (although the same system may be in place back there now... it's just a lot different than when we were growing up). 

Jeremy's figured out a new way to get out of the despised chore of having his picture taken: he takes the picture! :-)

Ascha isn't nearly so cold as she looks. It was a mild day, but I guess she wasn't too sure about this hunting business. Doesn't she have an expressive (and prominently muscled) forehead? :-)

Jeremy let each of the boys have a few whacks with the hatchet as he cleared the lower branches off the tree. It was a scary time for this mama, but no one was injured. :-) (In all fairness, they did just fine and learned during the process, so I can't really complain.)

After the tree was felled, it was time for a science project... Our tree was about 15 years old.

The victors...

...the spoils. (hot cocoa and candy canes)

Homeward Bound...

I don't know why, but this is the only picture I took of the boys decorating the tree.

This year we started a new "count." In the past, both boys have been able to jointly put on the star, but they are getting a bit too heavy (note Daddy's strained face with just one boy above his head). Taylor took a turn this year, so next year, it'll be Aric's job.