March 5 [the falls]

Shortly after the kids left for school on Wednesday morning I got a text from a mother in the neighborhood who said that Jason and another 2nd grade girl lifted up her daughters shirt at the bus stop causing her daughter to run home humiliated and refuse to go to school.  I was shocked.  Jason is uber aware of modesty at home for himself and is very respectful of his three sisters.  I couldn’t believe he would actually think something like that could be funny.  It didn’t sound anything like him.  The mother filed a report with the school and when I couldn’t reach either of Carly’s friends that have cell phones I decided to wait for news.

I received a phone call a few hours later from the principal.  She had questioned several kids at the bus stop and all gave her the same story.  The ‘victim’ was sitting on her backpack waiting for the bus, the other 2nd grade girl was trying to pull her up and when unsuccessful asked Jason to help her.  He did.  As they pulled on her arms her shirt lifted slightly showing a little of her tummy.  She obviously thought kids were laughing AT her and ran home embarrassed.  Thankfully it wasn’t as terrible as it first sounded, but still a lesson for kids to keep their hands to themselves.  The principal handled it beautifully.  She called the irate mother and explained the reality of the situation and that the kids weren’t acting malicious.  Jason and his accomplice spend their lunch writing apology letters to the victim and both were “punished” by not being allowed to ride the bus yesterday.  The principal said it almost broke her heart talking to Jason because she could tell how horrible he felt and how innocent his motive had been.  Regardless of his intent I think it will be something he remembers and hopefully he’ll chose not be a follower next time.  Just the day before this he was playing outside at the park with these two girls and they all went behind a fence to explore.  Not a big deal, but it’s something he knows I don’t approve of so when I saw him behind the fence he had to come inside and was done playing for the day.  Because his friends were doing it he decided he would too.  Raising these kiddos to strong enough to stand up for what they know to be right is not an easy job.

Anyhow, after I dropped him off at school yesterday we stopped at the Snoqualmie Falls on our way home.  Isn’t my backyard beautiful?  I so love where we live!

Drew was too busy running around to stop for any pictures.

The water is actually quite low right now.  This picture was taken in January when we were experiencing some flooding in the valley and the falls were overflowing.

Just a tad bit different.

March 4 [Carly's 11th birthday]

We have a long history of unexciting birthdays around here.  Carly might just say her 11th tops the list.  It’s her off year for a party though that didn’t keep her from trying (unsuccessfully) to sneak in some sort of friendly celebration.  Neither Justin nor I were home when she woke up in the morning (I did heat her up a cinnamon roll when I got home from running).  She had to spend the entire day at school (and deal with a little bus stop drama, a story of it’s own).  Then every member of our family over the age of 7 had something going on that evening making a family celebration impossible.

Leave it to good food though to make a day special.  Instead of a birthday cake Carly wanted Oreo truffles.  She was surprised with how well they turned out (dipping food has not been my strong point) – and Boy! were they delicious!

That’s an 11 she’s holding up.

When she got home from school I had to leave to pick up Abigail from soccer – Carly willingly helped prepare her birthday dinner while I was gone.   Not too surprising that it was chicken biscuits – a long time family favorite.

While kids ate dinner I fried up some Utah scones (completely different than Washington scones) that were meant to be an after school snack but took longer than expected to rise so they were an after dinner snack instead.

There was no time to clean up the disastrous kitchen before Carly and I headed out the door to her clogging class.  She started taking clogging once a week from a family in our stake back in October.  Until recently her cousin Hannah was going as well and Grandma and Grandpa Fletcher were taking the girls.  We’re on our own now and debated whether we could still make it work, but we decided we’d give it a try and if she couldn’t make it to a class or two it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Yesterday was the first class I’d been able to go to and I was impressed.  It looked like so much fun and Carly has all the coordination I never had.  It was so fun to watch and I really hope we can continue to let her explore this new talent of hers (and that the idea of "performing" won't make her quit).

After clogging we stopped by Cold Stone to redeem Carly’s BOGO ice-cream treat.

Turns out Carly was so full of birthday goodness that she couldn’t even finish her ice-cream and ended up bringing it home to enjoy this morning for breakfast.   Hope you had a Happy Birthday Carly!!  We think you’re pretty fabulous even if your birthday wasn’t! ;-)

Drew @ 20 months

I thought it best to combine the latest pictures of Drew into one post.  We absolutely adore this kid.  He is quick to cause mischief and keeps us on our toes, but Oh my! he makes up for all his trouble 100 times over with is adorable expressions, contagious smiles, and hugs and kisses. 

Drew continues to love balls – he has an amazing arm and can throw a ball hard and fast – keep your eyes on that kid!  He also loves shooting baskets in our small hoop in the playroom.  Besides balls he doesn’t stick with any toy for very long - though he has recently become more interested in books.  

Drew squeals with excitement anytime he hears the TV turn on.  The kid likes shows – particularly Mickey Mouse and our Baby Einstein DVD.

Balloons are a close enough cousin to balls and Drew loves to play with them.

Drew loves baths and showers.  He has no problem getting water in his eyes and is all smiles until we pull him out and try to dry him off.

He’s been doing this funny thing at the end of a bath where he’ll lay his face down on the bottom of the tub and try to suck up any last drop of water.  Yum, yum.

Drew started speech therapy at the end of last year.  We only do it twice a month and I'm not sure yet how beneficial it is for him, but we’re giving it a try.  When Jason was in speech at this age the therapist worked one-on-one while I observed – things are different with Drew in that I work (i.e. play) with him and the therapist watches and offers advice or tips.  It’s definitely a different approach. 

As far as words are concerned Drew now has “ma” for me and a few signs (more, drink, please), one of the newest “signs” is that he will shake his head for “no” which is actually a welcome addition.  He will say “ba” for ball if prompted and he pats his backside when he has a messy diaper.  Besides that it’s mostly just basic sounds and pointing.  He does have a few animal sounds. Drew gets very excited when he sees any animal.  We kept our Christmas cards up until Valentines Day and Drew loved to point to the dogs in the photos and growl.

I watched a friend’s baby girl a few weeks ago and Drew was fascinated with any movement or sound she made.

My older kids have more experience with little kids and babies than most kids would ever have at their age.  Funny to think that Drew will have the complete opposite experience growing up.  Having any younger kids around will be bizarre and unfamiliar to him.

Another sure sign that my baby is growing up is that instead of sitting in the stroller while we walk Katie to/from preschool he prefers to walk.  I’ve gotta adjust my timing and realize that it will take at least twice as long to get around the block with Drew toddling behind.  He stops to watch any bird or plane.

He wants to stop and touch everything

The kid LOVES to be outside.  

There’s a timeline of Jason’s hanging in the boys room.  It’s a few years old, but everyone (minus Drew) is pictured on it somewhere.  Drew likes to point at the pictures of his family and hear us say each of their names.  You can see he’s also tried to pull it off the wall a few too many times.

Such a silly kid!

Early this week I was taking a picture of the orange glow cast onto my front door from our newly painted office wall.  Drew saw what I was doing and sat himself right in front of me and smiled.  It’s these moments I realize how much I’m going to miss having little ones.

These kids are growing up too fast!!!

March 3 [bedtime]

The last several nights Drew has deviated a bit from our normal bedtime routine by crawling up into Jason’s bed and pulling up the covers.  He shakes his head at me if I immediately move to take him out to put him in his crib.  He doesn’t intend on actually sleeping there; he just wants a few minutes with his big brother.

March 2 [eating out]

A few days ago Abigail proclaimed that we never eat out as a family anymore.  When the girls where little and we had less mouths to feed and smaller tummies to fill we probably ate out 3-4 times a month.  Now it’s primarily Justin and I eating out on date nights and an occasionally quick bite for the kids at Costco.  Because we don’t live by any fast food restaurants fast food is rarely even an option - which I think is great.  Abigail’s statement wasn’t entirely fair though and we quickly pointed out the Papa Murphy’s pizza we’d had last Tuesday, eating at Costa Vida over mid-winter break, and the Herfy's french fries Grandpa Fletcher brought over for the kids 2-3 weeks ago.  She clarified that if there wasn’t a server involved and it didn’t take an hour and a half it didn’t count as “eating out”.  Justin and I laughed cause never does it take the Fletchers an hour and half to down ANY meal – even at a proper sit-down restaurant.

Carly’s birthday is tomorrow, but from 4:30am-9:30pm we don’t have a single minute together to celebrate so we decided to take the family to Red Robin last night for dinner.  It was an enjoyable meal.  Drew was very well behaved, ate half a pizza, french fries, and was quite fond of the freckled fruit.

Carly decided it was worth being sung in order to score herself a free sundae.  Since when do they serve sundaes out of coffee mugs?

Our server was so incredibly slow that we were actually there for an hour and a half so it met all of Abigail’s criteria ;)  Jason ate a regular sized burger and fries he still left wanting to eat more, but we couldn’t bear to wait another 20 minutes for another basket of fries.  That boy has a voracious appetite these days!  Even with splitting the check to take advantage of two $3 off coupons, getting a free birthday burger, and having Katie and Drew split a kids meal it still cost us over $50 to feed our family.  Good times!

March 1 [chefs & indexers]

We recently started watching the second season of Masterchef Junior as a family.  The third season is actually already airing so we’re quite behind.  Contestants are between the ages of 8-13 and it’s AMAZING what they can do with food.  Justin and I look around at our three kiddos that fall within that age range and realize that our kids could help in the kitchen much more than they do.  The girls actually really enjoy baking.  They help me prepare dinner on occasion and even have a few easy meals they can make, but they really should be comfortable doing more.  Last week Justin tried to teach Abigail how to make paella and was so frustrated with her unwillingness to properly trim a raw chicken breast that she was sent away without dinner.  Jason and Katie love to help in the kitchen – typically their tasks include chopping veggies and using the hand mixer.  Yesterday Jason was Justin’s kitchen helper.  Pretty sure this was his first time using the can opener – we have a long way to go.

What I also love about this picture is that Katie is right there along side Jason in our typical Sunday attire (PJs).  The two are buddies and she wanted to be helping with dinner just as much as her big brother.  Having Justin’s work laptop out is the norm these days – he’s an indexing madman.  He and Carly indexed for hours yesterday.  Me?  I took the indexing introductory course yesterday, but haven’t index a thing.  I figure I'm working on our current family history, right?