New Pictures

Jason hasn’t had his pictures taken since he was 7 months old so last month I scheduled a session. It happened to be a no school day for the kids so she took pictures of Abigail and Carly too. I just got the CD in the mail today and had to share my favorites. Jason was totally uncooperative… to busy to sit still and smile so I’m amazed we actually got some decent shots.

She was only able to take a couple pictures of the kids together before Jason was done for good - I love this one!

Ready to take off...


The photographer really liked this one and posted it on her blog. His expression is adorable, but his head looks ginormous.



This one just makes me happy!


Near the end we headed outside for some outdoor shots. This is the only picture she took. Jason is pulling Abigail’s hair cause he wanted to get down and play.

Enough Already

I’m tired of this…

Snow again, what’s with this winter? I don’t mind snow, but Seattle is not equipped to handle all the white stuff we’ve gotten this year.

And I’m tired of this…

Until this year it seemed our family rarely got sick. Sure we get a cold now and then, but this year it seems like not a week goes by when one of the kids isn’t sick. Thankfully, it’s never lasted long and it’s not as bad as all the icky flu stuff going around. Abigail didn’t feel well over the weekend (symptoms included tiredness and being either too hot or too cold). Then Carly threw up this morning. (I know too much information). The one day I actually needed the snow to cause a 2 hour late start of school I didn’t get it. To be safe I kept Abigail home from school (always such a hard call to make) and by 10am the girls were playing perfectly fine, Abigail was begging me to take her to school and Carly was begging to play in the snow. Both requests I denied. But now Abigail’s snoozing on my office floor with a blanket wrapped tightly around her… what’s the deal?

Carly Turns Five!

My little girl celebrated her fifth birthday yesterday. In a way it seems hard to believe that five years have already passed by since Carly joined our family. She was by far my smallest baby, weighing only 7 lbs, 2.5 oz at birth and getting as small as 6 lbs, 5 oz. (Abigail and Jason were both 9 lb-ers… BIG difference!) To me she was so tiny and fragile. Her little arms and legs looked like there was just skin needing to be filled.

Still so tiny at 3 weeks old

Carly was the most jaundice of my babies and needed phototherapy treatment for nearly 48 hours. It was heartbreaking to only get to hold my new baby when she needed to be fed. Thankfully she didn’t seem to mind her nice warm bed one bit.

Carly started sleeping through the night before she was three months old. She’d occasionally wake up around 5 or 6 to eat, but always went right back to sleep. I’ve been SO blessed with such great sleepers!

People often say that Carly most resembles me, although I don’t really see it (she is getting freckles like her mom though). I think she’s adorable! Just look at those big beautiful eyes!

3 months old

First ponytails - 14 months old

Halloween - 20 months old

The older Carly gets the more I see (and hear) myself through her. Her Carlyisms remind me of my Dad and how he often referred to my comments as Hollyisms. Carly started talking well at a very young age. She is full of inquisitive questions, many of which we can’t even answer. She definitely keeps us entertained with her spunky personality.

"Flying" on the Beach - 2 years old


I’ve also recently noticed that Carly will talk to me while she watches herself in the mirror… did I do that too? I think I remember denying it, but my parent’s dresser mirror was positioned just so…

As lastly, we’ve noticed she has become my strongest supporter. She tries to keep her Dad in line and make sure he’s doing what he’s been asked to do. There are times she’ll say something with just the exact tone and mannerisms as me… isn’t that scary. Two nagging wives!

Our birthday gift to Carly was going to the Great Wolf Lodge earlier in the week (see post below). To celebrate her actual birthday we had Justin’s family over for cake and ice-cream. I thought it was cute that before they got here she commented that she doesn’t need anything new and that she is “spoiled” by her grandparents.

Carly got to pick out how she wanted her cake decorated. She didn't want it to say Happy Birthday, but she did want her name and a heart on top.


Carly said our family prayer last night and thanked Heavenly Father for her great birthday. She was so excited to take cupcakes to her pre-school today and wear a new outfit from her Grandma Fletcher. (and Mom, she dove into the ice-breakers immediately)

Happy Birthday Carly! We are so grateful to have you in our family!!

Great Wolf Lodge

I have cabin fever. Which is weird because I love to be at home. But this winter, more than any other I’m ready to go somewhere. So a few weeks ago I suggested to Justin that we go on a little mini-vacation to the Great Wolf Lodge (an indoor waterpark and hotel). Since this is Carly’s year to have a family birthday, we decided to suggest it to her as an option. She of course was thrilled to accept. So on Monday we pulled Abigail out of school early and an hour later we were ready to dive in and have a great time. We were there just over 24 hours and the girls spent 12 hours of that time playing in the pools and going down the waterslides. Lots of fun, but too short… where to go next?

Abigail was awesome crossing the lily pads

Carly was fearless (as usual) she wanted to try everything and was disappointed she wasn't tall enough to ride the Tornado

Jason loves the water and had no problem laying down in the wave pool and getting water splashed in his face

All dried off and ready to head home

Updating the Blog

My Mom has this idea that the bloggers in my family haven’t been blogging as much lately because of facebook. Which I think might be true for some people, although not us. We've just been busy. My Mom’s been on a cruise this past week (I’m so jealous) and I know she’ll be checking our blog when she gets home to see if we’ve been updating. So here’s what we’ve been up to.

Sunshine

The weather was great last week. Although it was still cold, the sun came out so we were able to play outside a lot. Since there wasn’t any school the girls spent nearly every afternoon outside playing with the neighborhood kids. Their cousins played with us at the park one afternoon. Justin’s sister, Tami took some great pictures of the kids.

All the Fletcher grandkids

This guy loves his Mom!

Zoo

On Saturday we went to the zoo with our newly acquired Topeka Kansas Zoo membership - thanks to Tami’s research (see here for more info.) This was Jason’s first trip to the zoo. We thought he’d be super excited to see the tigers, walruses, and elephants - he loves animals, but instead he was quite reserved and saved his excitement for the boring, stinky fish in the disgusting aquarium. He also thought going down the slide was really cool.

Trying to keep up with his sisters

Abigail recently finished a whole penguin unit at school so she was really excited to see the penguins and tell us about that particular species.

Fire Station

On Tuesday Carly had a pre-school field trip to the fire station. Little trivia: Does anyone know the difference between a fire truck and a fire engine? We do. The firefighter that gave us a tour was awesome. The kids got to sit in the fire engine and even try on his gear. Carly was too timid to do either, but I did get a picture of Jason standing on the back of the fire engine.

Carly's pre-school class (minus the little guy in the middle) - there's only one other girl in her class.

Tis’ the Season

The sunshine disappeared this week and today we woke up to snow. The ¼” we had was enough to delay the start of school 2 hours. That combined with Jason waking up sick resulted in canceling all our plans today. I spent the morning sitting on the couch cuddling my little guy… definitely a perk for having sick kids (staying home & getting some cuddle time). Thankfully he’s still sleeping awesome; hopefully he’ll wake up from his 5+ hour nap happy and healthy.

Mid-Winter Break

This week is mid-winter break, not to be confused with spring break that will be in only six weeks. While I typically look forward to no-school days I would much rather trade mid-winter break to get out of school before the end of June. It seems only logical, right?

We don’t have any fun outings planned this week. We’ve worked on a few organizational activities (cleaning out the craft cupboard and shredding massive amounts of old documents from the file cabinet), but other than that it’s just nice to have the kids home and not have to wake up before 8am.

Last night I was sitting on the kitchen floor feeding Jason some leftover mashed potatoes. I have always loved potatoes; in fact my Grandpa called me the potato girl. To my shock, my firstborn detests potatoes (unless they’re fried or in the funeral potato form). None of my kids are picky-eaters so for potatoes to make the short list of disliked foods is disappointing. Anyhow, so I was very pleased that Jason kept wanting more and more mashed potatoes. He was acting goofy so I got out the video camera. Of course he insists on watching himself on the screen (way up close), leaving me to hope I’m pointing the camera in the right direction.

We’re very excited that Jason has started to make out some words. He’ll copy us now when we ask him to say Mama and Au-O. We’re still a ways from the 20+ words he “should” have, but we’re making progress.

This second clip was actually filmed first, but Jason got so excited watching himself that he stepped in his dinner.

Facebook

When we were in NYC in December, we had dinner with my favorite roommate from BYU. We’d hadn’t spoken in years so we had a lot to catch up on. She told me I needed to get a Facebook account so I could keep up with her busy life. I’ll admit to being somewhat reluctant. The idea of having 100’s of “friends” isn’t quite comfortable. And I worried about being mean by declining a request for my “friendship”. Do people really want to be your friend, or are they just trying to up their friend number? And what if you change your mind, can you really de-friend someone? I’m all for reconnecting with people I grew up with or knew in college – I love that. But if I’ve never had a friendly conversation with you than I probably don’t want you reading about my life. That’s why we ask people not to create links to our blog. You can’t find us unless we tell you where we are. Our blog is “private” without the hassle of being private. So if anyone reading this is a lurker (i.e. you’ve never left a comment or told us you read our blog… now is the time to fess up).

So I created a Facebook account and in my first day I was reacquainted with some of my closest childhood friends. Amazing. I haven’t used it much (I only have 10 friends, mainly family), but Facebook is definitely a great way to find people. I do have a question though: when writing to your “friend” do you use the wall-to-wall which everyone can see or send a message through their inbox?? I’m thinking I’m more of an off-the-wall kind of person, any thoughts on proper protocol?

Anyhow, my purpose for this post… Today I was looking through pictures so I could update my Facebook profile with a picture I’m actually in (I previously had this one). I quickly realized that Justin needs to take more pictures (I’m always behind the camera – which I typically prefer) and that we need a new family picture.

This was taken in November of 2007 (Jason was only four months old). I can’t get over how tiny Jason looks. Justin’s hand could totally palm the kids head. Abigail’s lost so many teeth this past year that she looks completely different now and Carly had her hair chopped off. My little family is growing up too fast.

18 Months Old!

Jason is officially a year and a half old and today was his appointment with his pediatrician. Here are his stats:

Height: 34.5 inches (95 percentile)
Weight: 27 lbs. 12 oz. (75 percentile)
Head: remains consistently off the charts (smart little dude!)

"Hello"

Overall Jason is doing well. Because he has a small cold, over the past few days his asthma has been acting up. Trying to use a get medication into our strong little guy with an inhaler has been difficult. Even Abigail has a difficult time breathing correctly with the inhaler, so at the doctor’s recommendation we came home with a nebulizer for them to try instead. Neither Abigail or Jason has serious asthma, but when they get even the slightest cold they get wheezy. I think the Dr. is right - with two asthmatic kids having a nebulizer at home is a really is a smart idea. Better safe than sorry.

Of course we also talked about the fact that Jason still isn’t speaking. Although he totally understands and follows directions. The doctor re-recommended getting his speech evaluated (not sure how they do that seeing as how the boy has no speech to evaluate).

Jason’s most recent accomplishment is climbing onto the kitchen chairs. Yes, he is a little slow, but it’s been nice up to this point knowing he can’t reach anything on the table. Notice his pants are wet, he got a hold of a cup of water.

Thanks to the girls for teaching Jason how to “cheese” – This is what I get when I take out the camera now… still cute though.

Nursery here he comes!

There’s a small group of mothers I can usually count on visiting with at church each Sunday. During sacrament meeting, the first hour where the entire congregation meets together (including children), it’s the parents with kids that aren’t quite old enough to make it through the entire hour reverently. So they end up listening to the meeting in the foyer. Because of Justin’s calling serving on the high council, I’m typically on my own with the kids; Jason will usually make it through all or most of sacrament, but rarely through Sunday school. That’s when I get to see the pre-nursery group (parents with children under 18 months). Each week the pre-nursery group will discuss how long we each have until our little ones enter nursery and we can attend Sunday school in peace. We have an awesome Sunday school teacher so this is something I’ve really been looking forward to. This coming Tuesday is Jason’s official 18 month birthday.

By the time the third hour rolls around Justin usually shows up and takes over Jason (however, by this time Jason is so worn out that he’ll just sit quietly on Justin’s lap during priesthood). I’ve been serving as the young woman’s secretary which I absolutely LOVE. The girls are amazing and our lessons (by our super talented teacher) uplift me every single week. I’m quite certain I get much more from working with the young women than I could ever give to them.

Things were looking real good for me… too good perhaps because just as I was prepared to send my baby into nursery and be kid-free for two whole hours, I was asked to serve in the Primary presidency. Now instead of one pre-nursery toddler who I love with all my heart, I get to spend two hours with 60+ children. And what’s most shocking is that’s it’s not as secretary. I’ve never been anything but a secretary in Primary. I’ve never even had a primary class. I’ve never planned a sharing time presentation. I’m not much of a kid person so this will be a huge change for me. As for Jason, he did great in nursery today and even took a little nap… that never happens when I have him.

I tried to get a picture of Jason today after his first time in nursery, but the girls kept getting him to make crazy faces. This is his “cheese” face.

Looking for a new job?

T-Mobile was spotlighted this morning on the news as one of the few companies in the Northwest actually looking to hire in this economy. If you know someone looking for a job have them check it out: (article) (video)

If you apply, just make sure you list Justin as the way you found out about the job. With the salary-freeze they issued this year a little referral bonus would be great... maybe we'd even take you out to dinner.

Repairs

The van got fixed over the weekend. Well, mostly fixed. There’s still a large dent and scratch on the side, but we aren’t getting it fixed. Besides the hefty price we paid for towing and repair, I’m also bummed about what the damage portrays. I feel like I’m one of those cars that people look at, seeing the dents (or the mirror dangling off with duct tape holding it together) and think, stay away from that woman… she must be a crazy driver. Is it wrong to want to hang a sign from it proclaiming my innocence?

The van was fixed just in time for our newest issue. This afternoon I was sitting in the office and noticed a four-foot long pucker in the ceiling. Shortly after we noticed it, it started to drip. Yes, the ceiling was dripping. We knew immediately what the cause was. Our bathtub is directly above the office.

We’ve had on-and-off issues with our tub faucet since we moved in and have even had a plumber try to fix it. Every so often the water won’t turn off completely, resulting in a slow drip. So slow that it doesn’t drip into the tub, it travels down the underside of the faucet, down the side of the tub and onto the cursed bathroom carpet (in my opinion, carpet in a bathroom is never a good idea). Anyhow, the drip reappeared while Justin and I were in NYC and although we thought we had it under control, we obviously didn’t.

I called the handyman who converted part of our garage into our office and he said he’ll try to come check it out tomorrow night. Because the faucet parts are under the bathtub, he thinks it will be easiest to replace the faucet by coming from underneath it (instead of trying to completely take out the bathtub and attached shower)… meaning he would like to remove the office ceiling (which also doubles as my bathroom floor). Seriously, remove my ceiling. Anyhow, lots still to find out. Will the sub floor need to be completely replaced? Is there water damage under the cabinets? On the bright side, we got the ceiling to stop dripping.

Back in Business

After 138 days of sporadic, unpredictable satellite service we are FINALLY back in business. Come to find out we’ve suffered unnecessarily (when we moved everything out for the new floors a small connection cord went missing)…arrgh!

With Justin’s new TV, upgrading to HD, and getting 3 months of FREE movie channels, we’re ready to bunker down and watch some movies.

Now we just need Dish Network to work out a deal with ABC so we can get LOST… it starts in only four days!

The Sun is Shining

Carly is wearing shorts

So what if it’s only 40 degrees outside

Happy Birthday Abigail!!

Today is Abigail’s 7th Birthday! This is where most Moms would say “I can’t believe my baby is seven.” Well, I’m not like most Moms. Seven fits Abigail, in fact, eight wouldn’t seem strange either. She’s always amazed me and I feel so lucky to be her Mom.

Being an odd year means that instead of a birthday party we do something fun as a family. I gave Abigail several options. She jumped on the opportunity to have a movie night at home Saturday night. The kids don’t watch many movies or TV so this was a real treat.

I’m a junkie. So sending me to the store to buy goodies under the pretense that they were for the birthday girl was… well, anyhow, I went a bit overboard.

The goodie table – all peanut-free and egg-free.

Abigail and I went to Blockbuster (a first for her), where she picked out Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for her movie night. (Cute show, but Justin and I both like the original version better).

The girls ate so much candy that they both felt ill afterward. Carly (the junior junkie in our home) felt so sick that she actually threw-up. She felt much better afterward and commented about the colorfulness of it… skittles, licorice, and gummy bears… yummy!

Today me and the kids picked up Abigail from school and took her to McDonalds for lunch. I was surprised to find her wearing a birthday crown from class. For dinner we went to Red Robin to redeem her free birthday burger coupon. Normally, Abigail shies from any attention, but she said she felt like wearing her crown to Red Robin too and didn’t completely hide under the table when they sang to her.

Dinner was followed up with opening presents and having the Fletcher family over for dessert.

Abigail really enjoyed her birthday… maybe she’ll want to skip the birthday party next year too!

Christmas Production

Because of the snow closures before Christmas, Abigail’s school play was rescheduled for this past Friday night. It felt a little strange to be going to a Christmas play mid-January, but it was fun to watch all the cute first-graders (and a handful of second-graders from Abigail’s split class). Abigail was one of four “narrator deer”. The kids have been practicing their parts for months and did a great job.

I took a picture of Abigail in front of her locker before the play. This is the only thing in the entire classroom that refers to Abigail as “Abigail.” I’m not sure exactly how, but at the beginning of the school year Abigail took on a second identity. Everything at school refers to her as “Abby.” Is there anyone that sees her as an “Abby?”

And a video clip for Grandma.

Utensils... or not

Jason has entered the “I want to feed myself phase”

He was doing so well eating his yogurt with a spoon this afternoon

So I went into the office

I got distracted

He lost focus

“Look, no hands”

“Look, no spoon”

“But really Mom, I can do it by myself, see”

Getting Back Routine

Between our vacation, snow days, and Christmas break, it’s been nearly 4 weeks since I’ve sent my kids off to school. We had a great time at home. We didn’t get anywhere close to accomplishing all that I wanted to (we haven’t even put away the Christmas stuff yet), but I suppose that’s how it goes. To our surprise Abigail said she wasn’t ready to go back to school, but she is excited to get more homework.

Last night the snow started falling once again delaying the start of school one hour. Boy did I need that extra hour of sleep. Getting used to the early mornings will certainly take some readjusting. Getting used to not having Abigail around to help out will be an even bigger adjustment. Only six weeks til mid-winter break.

Just a fun picture:

Playing the DS is a family affair.
(Mom, have you noticed that in every picture of Carly since Christmas she’s wearing the flower you sent)

2009

We brought in 2009 with a few of our favorite people. Guitar Hero was meant to entertain the older boys, but the adults first had a go at it. The boy band did much better than our girl band. I wasn’t TOO bad playing to Bon Jovi, but got boo-d off the stage with a less familiar song. Sorry ladies.

Even though Tammy won, I’m not sure the Summers will ever play Settlers with the Hatchs and us again. Fun game, but we all ganged up on her, making the game last most of the night.

The kids completely entertained themselves all night. With only a few minutes left before the countdown we gathered them for the build-your-own sundae bar.

Everyone got a little glass of bubbly to cheer in 2009. Good friends, great food, lots of fun! Happy New Year!