Abe and Meredith Fish

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T15:46:00.006-05:00

I can't say I have been that excited about Valentine's Day for the last several years. But the kids are at such a fun age with holidays that I'm enjoying today so much.

This morning I made the kids some pink, heart shapped pancakes with a little note. The kids were so fun. Ethan says "Mom, that is so sweet" just like I would say to him. All the effort to make them seems worthwhile when they are appreciative.

The other day I told Ethan that I loved him and, as usual, he didn't say anything. I asked him why he never told me that he loved me and he says "It's just not my personality." He is so matter of fact. But I do know that he loves me :)

When I picked Ethan up from school yesterday his teacher says to me "Ethan is so kind. Tell your mom what you did today?" So Ethan says "oh I was supposed to be doing something about things I love but instead I wrote a note to Kyleen (see early posts about the girl Ethan is crazy about) that says I Like You with some hearts on it." The teacher found it very amusing. At dinner last night I mentioned it and Ethan said "Yeah I was going to put I Love You but I know Miss Stephani doesn't like it when I say that so I just wrote I Like You." He has really put some thought into this. I asked him today what Kyleen had said about the note (since he had put it in her box and she hadn't seen it yet). He was quite happy to report that she said she loved it. Ethan tried to convince me to buy her a large teddy bear in the Valentine's day section of the store to give to her. I really didn't think we would start these conversations so young.

Ethan brought home a little poem from school talking about little fingerprints and how quickly he was going to grow up and it did make me a little emotional to think about. When I got done reading it to him he sort of wiped his eyes and said "that's gonna make me cry". I can't decide if he was mocking me or trying to be sympathetic.

The kids came home with an amazing amount of stuff/junk from school today and they enjoyed going through their loot. At the end Ethan got his fake sad face on and said "But I didn't get a valentine's from Taylor." (which I interpret as I want more candy). Taylor walked over to him and put her arm around him and said "But Ethan I still love you". Ethan actually willingly hugged her back. It seems that the Valentine's day spirit is doing wonders at our home today.

So I have to tell you about Abe's other love. He has worked very hard for the last month in an effort to grow grass in our yard. He started by tilling the whole yard and planting seeds. We have been very lucky to have lots of light rain and the grass is now growing beautifully. For a long time we were avoiding walking on it while the grass was still small. Abe and the kids have been known to sit outside and watch the grass grow. I'm hoping it survives the summer heat.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day with the people they love.

Big Bend - Part 2

2012-01-16T14:21:00.010-05:00

So here are the rest of my favorite pictures from our vacation. Day 1 we headed to the Chisos Mountains and hiked 2 miles through the mountains. It was so beautiful. It got a little chilly as we made it to the top. Taylor's favorite part was Abe giving her his hoodie to wear. The arms hung down so far that she looked like an ape. Everyone that passed her laughed as they realized she was hiding in the hoodie. She liked all the attention. Surprisingly there had been snow the week before in the mountains so a little was still left on the ground. So we had our first Texas snowball fight. The kids thought it was so fun. But we were happy that it was gone by the time we got there and we had beautiful weather every day.

I'm okay if this is only snow we see this winter (or for the next several winters).

We had picnics each day for lunch while we were out and about. I never expected the park to be so big that we would need to pack our lunch before we left each morning.

Abe did a great job fixing some tinfoil dinners one night. This is one step above just doing hot dogs like we normally do. The smores were eaten too quickly to get any pictures of them. Ethan was completely obsessed with meeting people and inviting them over for smores. I have no idea why but he was on a mission. He had grand plans of putting together invitations and mailing them out to people at the different campsites. We did get lucky that in the next campsite over there was a little girl a few years older than Ethan. He invited her over to play and quickly invited her over for smores that evening. She was actually really excited because her family had not brought any smore fixings because they thought there were no fires allowed because of the dry weather. The kids were really bummed that the family was leaving the next day and they didn't find any other kids to hang out with.

We were a little disappointed that we didn't see any of the parks' mountain lion or bear population (okay maybe we weren't that disappointed) but it was fun to see a lot of different animals running around. We saw some javalina at several different places (thankfully we were in the car since they aren't known for being all that friendly). We also had a coyote come through the campsite one afternoon. We also managed to see some roadrunners, deer, a rabbit, and a golden eagle. One afternoon we were sitting by the trailer while the kids played in the dirt and a small bird came very close to them and was watching them looking for food. The kids didn't know what to think of this bird that was approaching them so they all just stood and starred at each other for a long time without moving. We were a good distance away watching and the kids kept glancing back with a confused looked, not sure what to do. Finally Taylor turns around and yells, "We aren't going to touch that bird cause it has a big pecker!" Of course it did have a large beak but her word choice cracked us up.

It was so wonderful to finish up a vacation not exhausted and ready to be home but rather feeling so blessed at the little family we have and special time that we spend together. I'm already thinking about the next adventure. Anyone that wants to join us for some camping near the beach in the spring let me know!

Family Vacation - Big Bend National Park (Part 1)

2012-01-09T11:16:00.016-05:00

For the last several months we have been excited about Abe having a week off from work and we wanted to do something really fun. Since everyone says that you can't camp in Texas during the summer we decided to give it a try during the winter. Luckily the base has good rates on renting a camper for the week so we set out finding somewhere to camp. Being new to the area I just looked on the map of Texas and looked for a large expanse of green and ended up finding Big Bend National Park which is right on the border with Mexico along the Rio Grande River. As we put our plans into action we got a lot of feedback from people that thought we had made a good choice and had great things to say about it. Though people did mention it was really far away and in the middle of nowhere (and they were not exaggerating). We had our doubts that we would ever get there with all the stops for gas we had to make (gas mileage pulling a trailer is awful!) But in the end it was definitely worth it. Big Bend is popular for its varied landscape. Most of the park is desert but then in the middle there is the Chisos Mountains, where it was very green and beautiful. Then there are the areas around the Rio Grande River that are completely different too. For the three days we decided to visit each of the different areas. The park is huge so there was some serious driving between points in the park. I took so many pictures that I'm not going to be able to put them into one post so I thought I would break it up into two. But since I loaded these into blogger thinking I would do them all we are starting with the end of the trip and moving forward.

On Day 2 we headed to hike a canyon where the Rio Grande goes through the mountains. We were all surprised that the Rio Grande isn't quite as "grand" as we were expecting. It can be more than a foot or 2 deep in the middle.

These two kiddos can be so sweet when they are having fun together.

Ethan was obsessed with carrying a reed the whole hike and acting like it was a spear. He threatened several other families walking along the way (most of them played along with him).

Taylor was SO proud of herself when she got to the top of this rock. She is quite a climber, just like her brother. Climbing rocks was usually the highlight of our hikes.

Even I can get into a little rock climbing.

After we finished up hiking through the canyon we took a walk in search of natural hot springs along the river. I never thought that it would be as warm enough to even think about bringing bathing suits but the kids were pretty upset that they couldn't get into the warm water. I couldn't get over the fact that some 60 year old man was in the water in a speedo (or maybe his underwear). It was very disturbing.

On Day 3 we headed to some rocks through the desert. We enjoyed a lot more rock climbing.

Here we are, almost to the top of the rocks. Behind us is the path we had taken on our hike.

Ethan at the top of the hike, holding the balanced rock.

Taylor was giving me a heart attack as she tried to follow her brother up the rocks. The drop off on the other side was my concern.

Our second hike of the day was again along the Rio Grande River. I will admit that after reading the warnings on the brochures at the park about how there were routes of drug smuggling and human trafficking through the park I was a little hesistant every time we saw Mexicans on the US side of the border. But we didn't have any interesting stories to tell.

At the end of the hike along the river was a huge sand pile. We did venture up the largest pile but the pile we let the kids play in was at least 3 stories high. It was the kids dream come true, lots of sand and no one telling them to stay clean.

We were finding sand in every crack and crevis in these children for several days. In this picture you can see Ethan at the top of the picture as he made it up the pile. We wore them out GOOD this day.

This picture was from a overlook near our campsite. On the right is our campsite through the trees and on the left is the Rio Grande. In the very back were the Chisos mountains.

The Christmas Season

2011-12-23T20:31:00.017-05:00

December was another busy, fun month. But before I get into that I have to put a few pictures of Taylor's new haircut. I have debated cutting her hair for a while since she fits me on a daily basis about brushing it and it was getting so long that the curls were weighed down. But I will have to admit I almost cried when I saw how short it was. The babysitter took her to the mall the other day and had it straightened at one of the booths that the mall. But Taylor loved the way it moved when it was short and smooth. She was asking for a haircut like Ethan's but this is as short as I will go.

We started off December with a short visit from Abe's parents and then a trip to Dallas for Abe's brother's graduation. Ethan was not excited about heading back to a graduation (he was still scarred from the hours we spent at Abe's graduation) but it was very short and to the point and it was wonderful to visit with family. While Cali and Stephen were in town we were able to take a talk around the Alamo and the Riverwalk. On a side note Ethan recently was telling me about a scary dream that he had that woke him up that night. I asked him what it was about and here is what he said "It was really scary mom. You took us to H.E.B (the local grocery store) and you left us in the car alone (I will have to admit I have done this a time or two when going in for one item and I really didn't think it constituted a nightmare but he continued). You see mom, two bad guys came and stole us from H.E.B. and then....they took us to an awful place (still with a look of fear on his face and in all seriousness he says...) They took us to a graduation. It was SOOO boring." I laughed so hard that he got mad at me. He has truly been scarred.

Abe had a great schedule this month so we felt so blessed to be able to do a lot of fun things with him around. We decided to use some free tickets that we get for being in the military to visit Sea World for our first time. There is nothing like the great weather in Texas in December to do things like this. The kids had an absolute blast with the rides and the shows. It was a day well spent together.

Here they are feeding the dolphins.

We all had fun watching the Polar Express in 3D.

Ethan wasn't a huge fan of the Shamu show but it was a little slow in between the action. But it was pretty amazing to watch what all the animals can do.

The rides weren't all that exciting for the adults but the kids loved it.

Ethan's preschool took a trip to a nursing home to sing to the residents and it was so cute to watch. I was interested to see how he handled the nursing home environment but he did great. One gentleman wanted to give the kids high fives as they walked by and it was interesting to see the kids reactions. Ethan didn't shy away from him. He did tell me on the way out that he thought the placed smelled funny.

The kids both had a Christmas program at the preschool that Abe and I got to watch. We had been hearing alot about it from Ethan for the last month so it was fun to see it all come together. Ethan's class put on a short play about the littlest Christmas tree. Ethan had been annoyed because the teacher had moved him from the group made up of cute girls and put him in a different group. According to him he was going to be the dad and he was supposed to cut down the Christmas tree and carry it off stage. The "tree" was to be played by another child who was just as big as Ethan and he was a little worried about this part of the play. He was sure that the teacher expected him to lift the boy over his head and carry him away. This was the part I was waiting for the whole play. When that part came you could see Ethan trying to decide how he was going to lift the boy. Everyone laughed. He did finally admit that maybe he had misunderstood the teacher and he wasn't supposed to carry the boy off the stage. I think he just liked his version better. Taylor in her adorable rudolph costume.

After the rounds of Christmas events at the school we moved on to celebrating Ethan's birthday. A lot of Ethan's classmates had parties that we attended this year so it was the first year where the topic of what kind of party Ethan would have started coming up. Luckily he is a pretty easy going kid and was thrilled with inviting a few of his friends to Chuck E. Cheese on a slow afternoon to play a few games and eat some cupcakes. It was so easy and he had a blast. I'm sure I will have to eventually give in and plan him a true party one of these days but it is hard having a Christmas birthday.

Christmas was low key and wonderful. Abe was lucky enough to have Christmas day off so we got to enjoy the day together. The kids were wonderfully thankful for the things they got. Abe decided to surprise us all by getting them a Power Wheels and the kids went crazy about that. They sat it in for most of Christmas day just hoping for it to charge faster so they could play with it. We told Ethan that the time it would be ready was around the time we were having friends over for Christmas dinner so he would have to wait until they left to drive it. Knowing Ethan so well, we also warned him that if he tried to run our friends off then he wouldn't get to drive it today. But he couldn't help himself. The minute we were done eating he was trying to push everyone to eat dessert and the minute dessert was over he started making comments like "well desserts over, probably time to get going" along with making yawning noises. He can be such a stinker. Abe and I were both pretty annoyed for him to lose that chance to play because we both wanted to see them enjoy it. But we had to wait until the next day. It was hilarious to watch them drive it. Taylor decided she needed to get her helmet because Ethan's terrible driving kept making her hit her head. Ethan was even willing to admit that Taylor was a better driver than him.

Taylor showing off all her girlie dressup stuff.

The look on the kids face when they found the Power Wheels.

Out for our first drive.

A Busy Fall!

2011-11-30T16:13:00.022-05:00

Halloween was fun since the kids are both big enough to really get into it. Ethan kept trying to convince Taylor of what she wanted to be and it never worked. She wanted to be something very girlie and Ethan kept trying to talk her into being a vampire or something scary. We finally settled on a princess after a lot of debate.

Ethan really got into acting the part and Taylor was not a fan.

We had a nice fall with lots of fun things at the kids school. We have been spoiled in the past having some really nice pumpkin patches to visit where they actually grow the pumpkins there. I was surprised when the trip to the pumpkin patch was a church parking lot with already cut pumpkins. It just doesn't feel as authentic but the kids enjoyed it.

Taylor and her favorite person to talk about in her class. I love hearing the kids stories from preschool. Usually Taylor talks about how the other kids behaved during the day. It's no wonder Taylor's teacher referred to her as the sheriff of the class.

Taylor going through the hay maze.

Taylor's class trying to pose for a picture. Taylor and the other girl seem so old compared to the little boys in the class. Ethan and Taylor went to the pumpkin patch on two different days and unfortunately the camera battery died on the day Ethan went.

Ethan and Taylor's preschool had a little Thanksgiving party and they made Indian costumes for the kids. They looked so cute.

Also while enjoying some time off we decided to take a day trip to Enchanted Rock National Park. Several people had mentioned that it was a nice hike so we made a day of it and checked out that side of San Antonio.

Here we are as we started our hike. Taylor got the easy ride.

Here is a picture of the rock from the bottom. It is just a huge, granite mound but since they really don't have mountains here it is the best they can do.

Enjoying the windy view from the top. We couldn't have picked a more beautiful day to go hiking. There was a cool breeze that felt great after walking all that way. I can't believe we get to enjoy this kind of weather in November.

Here is Abe and the kids as they descended down the hill.

Ethan loved leading us down the hill through the rocks. Since there is no real "path" that you have to stay on he kept wondering if we would get lost. But we assured him that we would be okay and we were.

We had such a nice Thanksgiving this year. It was so fun to be close enough to stay with family and enjoy some time together. We were pleasantly surprised when we found out Abe had 4 days off in a row and we enjoyed every minute of it. Of course Abe and I both were having too much fun to pull out the camera and actually take pictures so you will have to check with Carol for those. Thanks ladies for the wonderful food and the great company. We can't wait to do it again next year!

Thank You Craigs List

2011-11-14T14:41:00.004-05:00

I really wanted to get the kids a playset for Christmas but I started thinking that we really needed one now while the weather is so great. So Santa just came early! We started searching on craigs list and found this great set. I really love finding great deals. Abe was thrilled to spend his day off disassembling and reassembling this bad boy. We carried in it big chunks so it also involved taking down some of the fence to get it into the backyard. We were thankful for good friends to lend a hand and we had it up in time to play with it on Saturday. The kids have enjoyed it so much. If only Taylor could learn to swing by herself it would be perfect. It has been great to be able to send them outside to play with the great weather we are having.

The other day we were putting up dishes and Ethan thought some music would make it more fun. When I asked him what he wanted to listen to he suggested we find some "Red Hot Chile Peppers". I guess he was riding in the car with Abe the other day and he decided he liked Red Hot Chile Peppers. He is all about rock music. He used some strange phrase the other night at dinner and when I questioned him about what he meant he said "Well its rock 'n roll talk for 'that was good'". He just says it so matter of factly. So Taylor and Ethan started dancing to the music. I couldn't help but laugh at both their moves. Just watching these videos really make my day. I hope they make you smile too.

Life

2011-10-27T21:56:00.002-04:00

I'm not usually the one to blog, even though I did start the blog, I think that Meredith uses it as a good way to keep things written down like a journal or diary. She is pretty amazing. She works part time from home while the kids are in school. She maintains the house, is able to keep groceries in the fridge, make meals, take care of the kids and her calling at church. All of this is done with little or no help from me. It isn't so much that I don't want to help it is more of a I'm at work all the time. All that being said she is a pretty amazing woman. I'm lucky to have her for wife and a friend.
I just wanted to also say a little about residency. What a growing experience. Our program has a tradition that as the first year it is your opportunity to take care of the really sick people that come to the Emergency Department. Now I'm not talking about the bad trauma people I'm talking about the ninety year that has pneumonia and is septic, or the four year that is struggling to breath because of asthma. It is a humbling experience to have someones life in your hands. I have had two experiences in the last couple of month's that really stand out that I wanted to share.
First I had a man that came to the department. They got him in a bed about 30 minutes before shift change, which is always a tough time because the workup takes about 2 hours for the average person, so I was debating about leaving it for the oncoming resident. I picked it up anyway. Turns out that the guy had a story that sounded very much like acute coronary syndrome, which is his heart arteries are blocked to the point that he gets pain in his chest if his heart has to work to hard, so I got him admitted to our chest pain unit. The next day I find out he had an aortic dissection that went from his heart all the way down into his abdomen. This is very very bad. The aorta has three layers to it and one of the layers had sheared off and became a flap inside the vessel. People die quickly from this. I wasn't the one that diagnosed this but I could have sent him home for an outpatient heart workup and he probably would have died.
Second the other day a older lady came in with difficulty breathing. In most older patients like this it comes down to if the have congestive heart failure or pneumonia. During the process of her stay we ended up intubating her, or putting a breathing tube in her and admitting her to the ICU. What a very scary decision that was.
It is experiences like these that make my job so fulfilling and so very humbling. Someone is willing to put their life in my hands and trusts me to make the right decision for them. I love being in the emergency department. Ok I think I have ranted long enough. Life is good.

Crushes

2011-09-30T12:00:00.005-04:00

Ethan is really into girls lately. I'm hoping that he moves through this stage before he becomes that creepy kid on the playground that is always trying to kiss the girls. Recently I was getting ready for Young Women's and I was explaining to the kids a game we were going to play and I mentioned that I was going to put Ethan and Taylor on a team with the girls (mainly so I didn't have to entertain them for the whole time). Ethan gets a look in his eye and says "Can I be on the team with that girl that babysat me?" I reminded him of her name and asked him why he wanted to be on her team. There was a long pause and a little grin. I gave him an out and said "oh because you know her and you aren't shy when you know someone?" He agreed and then added "and because I think she is cute." He does have good taste because she is a very sweet girl.

So the day after that he was pretty chipper when I picked him up from preschool. He was telling me about his day, which usually involves what game they played at recess. He told me how he had played with the girls again and talking about playing super heroes with one girl in particular. He smiled and said "I told her that I was going to date her when I get older." And what was her response, I asked. "She just laughed." I questioned him about what he would do on a date and he said matter of factly "You go out to eat." I guess I will be happy that he plans on waiting until he is older to take this girl out to eat. Unfortunately things have not continued to go well with this little girl in his class. He was pretty bummed the other day when he came home. I asked him about the playground and he said "K said that she only likes cute boys and that I'm not cute." How do 5 year old girls already know how to be mean to boys? Taylor was oh so helpful and kept saying "All my friends say I'm cute!". I tried to explain to her that we were talking about Ethan's feelings right now and she responded "Well it hurts my feelings when we don't talk about my feelings." I have tried to convince Ethan that he should move on and try to play with some other girls but he is still convinced that K is a very nice girl and he still likes her. That boy is going to have his heart broke a lot if he keeps this up.

The other day you could tell he had something on his mind as we walked into the preschool. I asked him what he was thinking and he said "Boys are very serious..... and its because girls are so difficult. They really distract us." All this wisdom from such a young boy. Then he tells Taylor, "You don't understand big school. When you get to be 4 you are going to hurt boys feelings too." The same day he tells me that although he fell in love with K his love for her is getting smaller every day. Thank goodness. But then she goes and plays with him once and he lights up and says "maybe my love is getting bigger now."

Oh how I love our deep conversations. I'm sure one day they will end and I will no longer get insight into what he thinks about girls around him. So I will just continue to enjoy it for now.

Belton Lake

2011-09-27T22:10:00.008-04:00

Abe had a weekend off before he starts a month out of town north of Austin at Fort Hood so we decided to meet some of the Fish gang there. Since it is about half way between San Antonio and Dallas it was a pretty easy trek for both of us. We had such a great time hanging out. We rented a cabin at a lake on the military base and it turned out to be a pretty nice cabin for the price. With 2 bedrooms, kitchen and living room we could cook and have enough space to not be on top of each other all the time. The kids enjoyed the nice playground that was near the cabin and it was perfect weather to hang out at the lake and swim. Friday night Abe and the kids and I stayed at Abe's hotel so we didn't crowd everybody but the campground failed to mention that the road into the park would be closed on Saturday morning because of a triatholon at the lake. It took us forever but we finally made it after taking a dirt road and getting a person security escort.

Taylor and Emmett look so sweet. You wouldn't know that Taylor had just been fighting with him about not wanting to share "her" swing.

The swing beside our cabin.

Maren is such a sweetie. She always wanted to carry Taylor around and "help" her. She did drop Taylor on her head once and Taylor kept saying "Mom, please tell Maren not to drop me on my head again."

Okay, I may have not gotten the sand castle in this picture but they all looked so cute!

Waiting for church to start.

They had such a great time playing together. We can't wait for the next Fish gathering. Carol, your turn to plan the next visit!

Let the Preschool Adventure Begin

2011-09-17T15:28:00.010-04:00

Ethan and Taylor have been so excited to start preschool. I feel like we had a countdown going all summer for when school began. Ethan wanted to know exactly what he would be learning and admitted that he was a little nervous that he wouldn't remember all the rules. They were troopers from day one and neither one of them gave me a second thought when I dropped them off. Taylor only goes two days a week and Ethan goes 5 days a week. Taylor was pretty upset about the days she didn't get to go to school but she soon figured out that life was kind of nice with just us girls. She now likes to torment Ethan by suggesting, in front of him, that we go to the park every day Ethan is gone since that is his favorite activity. I will have to say that it is kind of nice to just have my quiet child at home for a couple of mornings. They have such different personalities and Ethan can really get her riled up.

Ethan was a little frustrated the first week with just having to learn his letters again. After the second day when I asked him what he had learned he said "Nothing, she hasn't even taught me to read yet!" Needless to say he was a little disappointed with just learning a few letters but week two picked up and he is thrilled to be getting pretty good at reading his words each week. Taylor has gotten on board with the disappointment in our educational system and when asked what she learned I get a similar "Nothing, and I don't know how to read."

Ethan's teacher has a system where you get blue slips of paper for doing good deeds and once you get 5 you get to pick something out of her treasure box. Ethan always gives me an update on how many he has and how many he needs until his next prize. He is getting good at any math involving the answer of 5. The other day he was reminding the teacher that she had not given him all the papers he earned. She better not try and pull a fast one on Ethan, he has the memory of an elephant. He also enjoys reporting on who is on yellow (green means you had a good day, yellow means you had a hard time following some directions, and red is pretty bad). Ethan prides himself on allows being green but keeps tabs on the yellow kids and what got them there. I love to hear his stories when he comes home. Taylor tries to compete with Ethan's stories and always tells us how Presley didn't know how to sit on her tape (which happened on the first day of school but we have relived it for 2 weeks now.)

This being Baptist preschool has also brought with it a little confusion that I hadn't thought of. After the first day of school Ethan asked if it was possible for there to be two different ways to say prayers. I guess they had a prayer at snack time that was not what he was expecting. Being a child who attended many different Christian churches and preschools I'm quite familiar with "God is good, God is great, let us thank him for our food. Amen." But Ethan thought it was interesting. He has yet to try and bless the food at our house that way. They have also been learning some new songs that they want me to help them learn but are new to me. Ethan was trying to sing me one at dinner and according to him it went something like "and when I'm at the gates with cheese at my side...." I asked him if he thought that it could be "Jesus at my side" and he pondered it for a while and said "yeah, you're probably right. I didn't think cheese made any sense anyway." I love that kid.

Yesterday Abe didn't have to work until the afternoon so we decided to enjoy our first weekend with him in a while and do something fun. Ethan has been begging to go to the children's museum that someone had told us about. We are pretty excited to go from no children's museums to having 2 within 30 minutes. The kids had a great time playing. I love to hear their vivid imaginations as they play and try, unsuccessfully, to boss each other around. Taylor takes make believe very seriously.

The kids loved playing in the ambulance, especially with Abe driving.

Taylor's favorite activity was taking care of the babies in the "hospital". She can't get enough of babies.

Taylor bossing her daddy around with her hands on her hips. We get this look a lot.

Taylor calling Ethan in his ambulance to tell him to come to the emergency room.

And Grandma Came to Town

2011-08-12T21:53:00.006-04:00

The kids and I finally discovered another part of the zoo in town. Who needs animals when you have water to play in and sand to dig in. I know I told Ethan to stay dry but that didn't last long. But it is a great way to end a hot morning at the zoo. The annual pass to the zoo has been a great investment.

My mom came into town to watch the kids while I went to Detroit for work. We were spoiled to have some company while Abe has been working so much. I think we probably failed in the department of showing her the highlights of San Antonio but we showed her all the important stuff. And the kids LOVED having her visit for so long and are already planning her trip back.

We went to the caverns that are close by and enjoyed the cool walk.

Ethan was a trooper for the long walk. The other day we were trying to figure out something to do to pass the time on Sunday. With 8:30 church we have a lot of time together in the afternoons when Abe has to work. Ethan decided he wanted to walk to Sonic. I explained that I was okay with the idea but we couldn't buy anything since it was Sunday. Sonic is a 2 mile round trip walk so I had my doubts but he did awesome. It is fun to see how excited he was to accomplish his goal.

Some pictures of the caves.

The things we love, and those we don't

2011-07-28T21:52:00.006-04:00

Now that we are past the moving in phase here in San Antonio I've really been thinking about all the things I love about our current city. I absolutely love the side of town where we ended up. Everything is so close. We have a huge shopping center right behind the house with most of the shopping I could ever need. The other day we had to get the cars inspected and while waiting I walked to the post office and then to the insurance agents office. I was having flashbacks to my time in Honduras as I walked down the dirt road where the post office is (they are repaving it) in the 100 degree heat. I might have even been honked at by a group of latinos in a car, or maybe that was just in my head. This week we played the fun waiting game at the DMV for a Texas license and just as we made it to the front of the line, almost 2 hours from the start of our adventure, Abe had to go take the kids to swim lessons. So I just waited and walked home. We have never lived so close to things before. In the heat I was regretting my decision until I took a little detour by the Sonic for a drink. I can't wait for it to cool down some so we can take more advantage of our close proximity. We get a lot of strange looks when we walk to church.

The other thing I really love is being in such a friendly town. Its probably the same all over Texas but you just see a lot of nice helpful people. We were driving somewhere the other day and watched several cars pull over on the interstate to push a car that had died in the middle of the street. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was always that helpful to a neighbor.

There are a few things that I'm not so found of... mainly the military way of doing things. I needed a new military ID now that Abe is on active duty again. I made 3 trips to the ID card office. One day I got there and they had just closed because they close at 4. But there is no hours listed on the door so you never really know. The second time I came at 3 but I guess they close even earlier on Friday because once again the doors were locked. Finally I got there early enough only to find out that unlike the last time I got a new card your "sponsor", Abe, has to be with me. The other options, according to the helpful woman at the check-in counter, was to wait the 2 hours that they were estimating it would take me to get to the front of the line and get a piece of paper that I then had to take back to Abe for him to sign and then I could come back again and sit ANOTHER 2 hours with my children to actually get the ID. Oh no she couldn't just grab me one of those forms, I had to wait for it. Like that made any sense. Needless to say I did not wait and actually was able to find a day where Abe could get off early enough to actually get it done. I feel like I'm finally getting to the end of my crazy long list of things to get done when you move. Yeah! Now maybe we can start doing fun things instead of spending all our time in line at the DMV, ID card office, Tax assessors office, immunization clinic....

The kids are enjoying our move and all the fun things San Antonio has to offer. We have been doing swim lessons the last two week. The kids have loved it even though they have learned absolutely nothing except Taylor makes a great teacher's pet and can sweetly convince the swim teacher to just pull her along in the water rather than making her swim. On the first day the teacher told each of the kids to put their face in the water. All the kids did it until she got to Taylor. She is my child, and I hate going under the water, so I knew she wasn't going to do it. She did put her face close to the water and then smiled nicely at the teacher and said "No, thank you." And that was that. Now I have to find swim lesson that will actually teach them how to swim. Ethan keeps us on our toes as usual. On the way home from swim lessons he re-started an earlier "discussion" about how I don't let them watch tv when the babysitter is here in the mornings to watch them for a few hours. I explained to him that I pay the babysitter to watch them not to watch them watch tv for 2 hours. There was a pause in the back and he starts again.
Ethan: "You pay Darlene (the babysitter) to entertain us."
Me: "Yes"
Ethan: "I think watching tv is fun."
Me: "I know you do"
Ethan: "So if watching tv is fun then it entertains me so you should let us watch tv with Darlene."
I love how he logics through the things that he wants. Not that it changes my mind but I love watching them grow up. Sunday at church they decided that they wanted to go to Nursery and Primary by themselves. They were adorable. Taylor idolizes her big brother and loved him taking her to class. I just can't believe how big they are getting.

We went down to the coast last weekend with some friends from the ward. It was the perfect weather to head to the beach. It was hot but not overwhelmingly so. The kids had a great time and so did the adults.
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This weekend Abe had to work Saturday and Sunday so the kids and I decided to come up with lots of fun things to do. We started off at the zoo early in the morning. Of course it would be the one day that it actually rained in San Antonio. But it didn't last long so we just kept on going. It was better than sweating.

Aren't they so cute!

The goats don't like the rain so they didn't want to come out and play.

After the zoo we headed to a great park on base. This park had everything. It was so nice to have some nice weather so we could actually survive time outside. You can tell from their faces that we take the park very seriously.

After the park we headed to the pool for a nice swim, with the life jackets on since no one learned a thing in swim lessons (but I'm not bitter :). Such a great day. But we definitely missed Abe. It is going to be a hard adjustment getting used to him working weekends and not being around for all the fun. We are hoping to check out some more San Antonio fun this week when my mom comes to visit so hopefully he can get a day off in there.

We Have Arrived

2011-07-04T22:15:00.006-04:00

Wow, I think we can finally say we are settled in San Antonio. I can't believe graduation was a month ago. The time has really flown by. After graduation it was a whirlwind of packing and loading the moving truck, a few final visits with friends and then we were off to San Antonio. What a long drive! I'm so thankful to my mother for watching the kids so I could do it by myself. I spent the first week cleaning, painting and just sitting around waiting for our furniture. There is nothing like sitting around in camp chairs and staring at one another in the evenings. It was fun to have Michelle, Abe's sister, stay with us and keep me company during the day. We were hoping that our stuff would come before the kids arrived but we weren't so lucky. We still had 4 days of "camping" once the kids arrived so those were some long days. Our first military move has definitely been a learning experience. The movers finally came at 5:30PM on last day of their 2-week window and unloaded until midnight. The driver laughed when I asked him when he was going to come back and unpack the stuff, which is included in the military move. It was pretty frustrating but most of our stuff made it here safe and sound.

The next couple of days were a whirlwind of trying to unpack before the Fish family came for a visit. It is so fun having family within driving distance. We were so excited that everyone could come down from Dallas and stay with us. They are such easy company. We took a trip to one of the nearby rivers and had a day of tubing. I really wish I had gotten some pictures but Carol was the only one with a camera. The kids had a blast playing with their cousins and everyone played so great together. I had a last minute trip to Dallas for work so we followed everyone back to Dallas to continue to the fun at Zeb and Leah's house for a few more days. They were so sweet to watch the kids so I could do some training. The house isn't nearly as excited without Michelle and all our family around. We are still adjusting.

We are finally starting to feel like we might like our ward. It is always so hard to leave a place you love and have to start all over again. Our new ward has an interesting mix of military and non-military families. We are pretty close to an Airforce base and I guess they have some training programs there that only last about 4 months. So there are a lot of families that just come in for a very short time and everyone seems very hesistant to befriend them because they will just leave. So when anyone hears we are military they assume we are short-term. Finally people have started asking how long we will be here and they are somewhat satisfied with the answer of 3 years. Today they had a 4th of July pancake breakfast and the family at our table said to her husband "Honey, they are going to be here for 3 years. That is pretty good. I think we can be friends." We all laughed but I think she was serious. So Independence Day was jam packed with fun activities starting with the pancake breakfast and then a great lunch with some of Abe's co-workers. Abe got a new grill for a graduation present and he cooked up some delicious chicken for us. Then we went to a member of the ward's house for a pool party and bbq. I would have to say that the lack of fireworks on 4th of July has been a let down. There are in a really bad drought in San Antonio so they thought fireworks were too much a fire risk. We are all missing them. Maybe next year.

I added a few of the pictures we have taken since we have been here. Hopefully I will get better. On Saturday Abe took Ethan for a little father/son time and they went rock climbing at the YMCA. Ethan was a little hesistant to begin with but with enough coaxing he made it all the way to the top twice. We always knew he would be a great climber. We also braved the heat for some bike riding at the airforce base. It was perfectly flat sidewalks that were great for riding. We are starting to feel at home here and enjoying all the things there are to do (and all the shopping that is so close.) We are missing our Virginia friends very much but our guest room is fully operational so we would love some friends to come visit.

Graduation Here We Come

2011-06-06T13:44:00.013-04:00

We can't believe that the event we have looked forward to for the last 4 years is finally here. I knew May would fly by and it did. All the things we wanted to do one more time and all the people we wanted to visit one last time, some of them happened and some of them didn't. We will miss this beautiful place very much. Every time I drive through the mountains to get to work I'm reminded that we are very lucky to live in such a wonderful place and have such wonderful friends.

One last canoe trip down the New River. The water was pretty chilly but Ethan still wanted to float down.

One last playdate at Elicia's house. I felt like I was flashing forward 14 years when Vann threw the car into reverse and sped out of the garage with my baby girl. I don't know if I can ever handle the idea of her dating.

Do you like Taylor's "swimsuit"? Playing in the water hadn't been in the plan but the kids wanted to really bad so that was the best we could come up with. I told her to just play in her clothes but she didn't like that idea.

We went with some friends to a Salem Red Sox game on Memorial Day. We thought it would be so much fun but the heat was overwhelming. The kids were melting before the game ever started. Taylor and I spent most of our time on this bench in the shade where she made friends and flirted with older men.

One last playdate with Summer. Last year Summer watched the kids while I worked so the kids got to be really tight. I will have to admit that I also missed my improptu chats when I would pick the kids up. And look, her kids will pose for pictures.

Abe's school put on a picnic for the families the day before graduation. The kids had a blast on the inflatible slides and running around. Taylor loves to have her face painted!

They had an awards ceremony and graduation dinner at the school. I always love a reason for Abe to have to wear a suit.

We took one more walk around Pandapas Pond. Someone, who will remain nameless, has scared Ethan about the idea of ticks getting on him and sucking his blood. So Ethan wouldn't take one step off the path our whole trip. It didn't help that Abe's dad led him to believe that there might be rattlesnakes in our yard in Texas. On top of his concern about fire ants thanks to our last trip to Texas. He may never camp again.

Before graduation there was a promotion ceremony for all those graduates who will be entering the armed forces. It was a wonderful ceremony and they had an amazing General who spoke with so much enthusiam that I think we all wanted to join the military by the end of it. We are very proud of our soldier and what he is willing to do for us and for our country! He thinks we should address him as Captain Fish now.

And graduation was way too long but it was wonderful to see Abe walk across and be hooded. We are SO proud of him. We were so thankful that both Abe's parents and my parents could come and support him. Ethan and Taylor couldn't get enough of having their grandparents there and were sufficiently spoiled for those couple of days.

Ethan really wanted to take some pictures of the graduation. He was so cute and serious about it. He started to panic when he realized it was Abe's turn. I didn't get a chance to download any of the pictures he took to post though.

A little snack break outside during the ceremony. After 2.5 hours we were all ready for a snack break.

The Summer of Cousins

2011-06-03T21:20:00.009-04:00

We were lucky enough to be able to fit in another quick trip to Richmond to see my older sister, Emily, and her two kids while they were visiting my mother. The kids were so excited to be able to see their cousins and they played so well together. We hadn't seem them in a very long time but they just hit it off. Emily and I forced them to take lots of pictures and they endured it pretty well. For my kids they did amazing!

During our two days there we also made it to the zoo. The kids loved it. I was pretty impressed with Taylor and Ethan's willingness to let the animals eat from their hands.

Taylor was not thrilled with the smell at the zoo.

Taylor and Emily's daughter were best buds. Taylor loved to follow her around and do everything with her. It was so great to have constant entertainment for the kids.

We also managed to work in a trip to the park after the pictures. It was such a great trip. Hopefully we can convince them to come visit us in Texas. Now we just have to wait a few more weeks before we get to see our Texas cousins and we can't wait.

Vacation Season

2011-05-19T21:43:00.011-04:00

We were very lucky that my mom wanted to spend a little more time with the grandkids before we head off to Texas so she invited us on another cruise. To refresh your memory, we went on a cruise last year around this time and it was awful. Taylor didn't sleep at night and we spent hours pushing her around the boat all night long and we were all exhausted and crabby. I'm sure we all vowed never to travel with her again but a year has passed and we decided to give it a try again. Since 5 days were so bad last year we decided to try 7 days this time! Yes, these pictures may all look very familiar since we went on the same boat and to some of the same islands but the kids had so much fun that it was totally worth it. They were both great sleepers and so much fun to be with. And thanks to the kids playroom, mom and I even got to enjoy some peace and quiet, although Ethan seem to think that we must be doing really fun things while he was gone so we always had to bargain when it came time to ship him off to play. Of course when I came to pick him up he always asked for a few more minutes so I think he was having a good time too.

Ethan came up with the idea several weeks before we left that he wanted to try all sorts of food while we were on vacation. He even made a list. He did great and I think we made it through most of the list. You can see the thumbs up for the crab cakes. He must have gotten his love of seafood from his dad. This look was actually directed at the fact that green beans were on the plate with his shrimp, scallops, and calamari. Scallops and calamari wasn't on the original list and they won't be on any future list from Ethan's lack of enthusiam. Just FYI even though Ethan is wearing the same shirt it wasn't the same meal. His brillant mother forgot to bring one stack of his clothes so there was a lot of repeats during the week.
The lobster was his favorite. So at the end of the week we crossed off shrimp, lobster, crab, steak, and fish. He cracked me up when he looked at the steak and said "Next time I want the red steak, like daddy, not this black kind." I guess he doesn't like my well done steak any more than Abe does.

Someone doesn't want their picture taken with their mother. Oh it starts early.I was trying to convince Taylor that she didn't need to smile big (ie stick out her lower jaw and bear her teeth). So I asked for a thinking face and I got it.

These adorable children truly struggle with smiling (I'm sure they get it from me). You can see Taylor watching my mom behind me and copying what she is doing. This lovely beach was right off the boat, as you can see behind the kids. It was just perfect.

The kids had a wonderful time at the pirate themed party. Taylor couldn't wait to have her face painted though Ethan was very much against it for some reason. You have to love a party where they paint your children at 9 at night and you get to fight with a tired child to try and remove it before bed. What are these people thinking? Good thing mom was prepared with vaseline or we might still be wiping it off.

Ethan asked me to take his picture and this was his best pose. He NEVER wants his picture taken but this one cracked me up.

Half Moon Cay is an amazing island in the Bahamas. I think mom and I were just as excited as the kids to go back. We were ready for a long day this year and the kids swam and played until they were both completely exhausted.

Ethan is a great swimmer with his lifejacket on. He is so independent and would never get out of the water if it was up to him. Taylor didn't have as good of luck with her lifejacket and was very high maintenance in the water.

Our favorite part of the island was the pirate ship play area. I really think Abe needs to build of one of these in our backyard in his spare time next year :) Taylor and Ethan both are huge fans of pirates so there was a lot of "arrrr matie" going on as they ran from one area to the next or were "trapped" by the bad pirates. Their enthusiam was contagious.

Taylor was always so excited to find a towel animal in our bed. Every night she would say "it's my ____ (insert the animal of the night) and I love him." Then Ethan would promptly destroy it and she would cry "but I loved him" and find the animal on grandma's bed. And we repeated that pattern for 7 nights.

Ethan's putt putt skills have improved from last year. Both kids would have played all day long if I had let them.

Our 30 minute stop in Nassau. If there wasn't a great beach the kids weren't even interested in getting off the boat.

We are very proud of our cheap, plastic trophy for our win as "Best Twisting Family" on the boat. Since this will be the one and only dance contest we ever win, we will treasure it. The kids were so excited. Ethan thought he was a shoe-in for the "Best Boy Dancer" since he was the only boy for the first 2 minutes of the song but then came some little boy with some serious moves. He won it fair and square but Ethan didn't see it that way and he was crushed. Thankfully there was one chance to redeem ourselves with the family twisting contest. We danced as hard as we could and they had pity on us!

The kids loved the water slide but it was a lot more crowded than last year so they couldn't play in the water at the bottom and it was also a battle. I was happy to see that my kids weren't the only ones that couldn't get the concept though.

Househunting in San Antonio

2011-05-15T21:13:00.008-04:00

I can’t believe how far I have fallen behind on blogging. Last month Abe and I decided to take a trip to San Antonio to look for a place to live. I was going to go by myself since Abe doesn’t have any time off these days but the doctor he was looking for was nice enough to let him have some time off and my mom was nice enough to watch the kids so we could go. Although it was complicated to get the kids to Richmond and meet up in San Antonio, since I had already bought my ticket when Abe decided to come, it was worth it. We have such a time nice exploring the city, looking at houses and just having a kid free long weekend. When I booked the trip I had no idea that it was “Fiesta Week” in San Antonio. It’s some big cultural event in the city but it really just meant that all the nice hotels were booked, traffic and parking were horrible, and everyone was taking random days for holidays. We did find a cute bed and breakfast to stay at. It was on a very quiet end of the riverwalk until the day when they had a big Fiesta party right outside our window. It was the one day that I really wanted to take a nap and relax after looking at houses all morning. It wasn’t going to happen with the loud latin music blaring all afternoon.
I wanted to surprise Abe with a nice dinner for his birthday while we were out there but I never have good luck when I try to surprise him. He always either figures out the surprise or does something to ruin it. I should be prepared for it by now but I still try. I was going to try to surprise Abe by staying at a hotel (we were going to spend the whole trip at the house of a friend of a friend) but since Abe was arriving first and I didn’t get there until 5 hours later I couldn’t figure out a good way to work out my surprise. So the dinner was my last hope for a surprise. I thought I could get him to walk with me along the riverwalk until we came to the restaurant, an expensive steak restaurant. But of course we were running late so I had to rush him along for our reservation time and he totally caught onto my plan. I picked the restaurant based on the lovely view of the river and the romantic atomosphere. Here is what is looked like on their website.

Little did we know that because of Fiesta week they were going to put up an ugly wooden fence and have loud, bad music playing and lots of people drinking and partying right beside our table and we could barely talk over the noise. Here is the picture below from our table. It was almost funny how bad my surprises turn out. But we did enjoy our time hanging out on the riverwalk.

So while we were there we spent most of the days looking at rental properties. We thought we had a lot of options from the online searches we did before we left but we quickly learned that pictures can be very deceiving. Most of the houses had not been well taken care of, were dirty, or weren't even honest about the number of bedrooms they had. Our favorite house was the one where the formal living room consisted of piles of clothes and 3 guns laying on the floor. The living room was two camp chairs, a big screen tv, and can of dip. Abe said he counted around 15 guns just laying around the house in every room. Having noticed a car in the driveway when we came in I couldn't help but think that they could be in the house and these were not people that I wanted to surprise. I think I held my breath the whole time we were in the house. Finally on the last day Abe was there one house lowered their price and came into our price range so we went to take a look. We are excited because this house is just a few blocks from the church and walking distance to the elementary school. It is right off the interstate for Abe's job and right behind a huge shopping center with Target and Kohl's. So here are a few pictures of the house. We will have a guest room and lots of space so I hope we get lots of visits from friends and family.

The formal sitting room has a pool table that the owner has left in the house. Maybe we will have to take up pool.

We are so excited about the move, although we will really miss our great friends here. Ethan is counting down the number of Sundays left until we move. It is nice that he is so excited.

And since no post would be complete with out some pictures of the kids here are a few from Easter.

What have we been up to?

2011-04-06T21:15:00.006-04:00

This post was started forever ago so I'm just going to finish it and then move onto the more recent past. I must be the worst blogger ever lately.

It has been forever since I have even looked at anyone's blog, much less had anything to write about. So I was trying to think of what we have done over the last month and all I can come up with is cleaning. It seems like a futile attempt to keep this house clean but I feel like cleaning is all I do from morning until night. And we aren't having any showings so it seems completely pointless. Maybe one day it will all be worth it if we can just get it sold. But we have already come to terms with possibility of renting it out if need be. (Update: House is under contract and we should close June 9th if all goes well. We only had about 6 showings so we feel very blessed that it sold relatively quickly)

I guess we have done a few other things in the last month but in my attempts to keep the house clean I seem to never have a camera when I need it. Work has finally slowed down significantly so we have had lots of togetherness. I'm still trying to decide if that is a good thing or not. Taylor and Ethan are still terribly amuzing and frustrating all at the same time.

So here is my Ethan update.... He continues to be much older than 4. He is obsessed with talking to people anywhere we go and it is pretty funny to see how people react to him. We were in a bike shop today and the salesperson comes over and asks me if I needed any help. I said we were just browsing and didn't need anything. Ethan follows him saying "excuse me, excuse me. Can you tell me how much this costs?" The guy looked completely confused and paused for a good 5 seconds before he answers Ethan that the bike costs $150. I love his willingness to ask questions without concern but it can be a little frustrating too. The other day I was at a fast food restaurant and he asked to order his lunch. He knew he was suppose to order a 4 piece chicken nugget and he looks at me with his mischievious look and then tells the lady he wants a 10 piece chicken nugget and we have a fun little battle as the clerk seems to be confused by which one of us she should listen too. Why she wouldn't just ring up the 4 pieces so we could move on I don't know.

I have recently been reminded that I need to watch what I say in front of him because it will be repeated... word for word. I was somewhat frustrated with someone (who will remain nameless) because of something said person had fed Ethan that had sugar in it. I was ranting to my mom and I said something like "why in the world would you feed him popcorn with sugar on it?" I was over it by the next time we saw this person but Ethan marches right up to the person (I was around the corner and could only hear the conversation) and says "why in the world would you feed me popcorn with sugar on it?" She politely responded "Well it said it had sucralose. I thought you could have that." To which Ethan replies, "No I can't have sucralose" with complete conviction. (No he doesn't know that he can't have sucralose but he's pretty good at just going with the conversation). So she replies "well I'm sorry. I will check with you next time." I guess that satisfied Ethan cause he finally let it drop. Later on when he was repeating some other comment I had made he looked over at me and says "You really need to watch what you say in front of me." Oh I love hearing myself coming out of that little mouth.

We attempted to watch conference last weekend even though it appeared that no one was getting anything out of it because of all the chaos. At one point in time Ethan was playing on the floor, paying no attention to what was going on, and Taylor was throwing a fit about wanting something. So I was a little short with her and Ethan looks up from his playing and says "Did you just hear the prophet say that you need to be kind to little children?" Ouch, how can you argue with that. Funny how that is the only thing he got out of conference and will often use it against me now.

We have decided that Ethan will most likely grow up to be a used car salesman. The other day we were playing pet shop and I was suppose to buy some of their stuff animals. I selected the ladybug and told him that I wanted to buy it. He says "well somebody else was just about to buy it but I'll sell it to you for $2." The beginning of his used car career.

I guess I should say that it he makes it to adulthood he will probably be a used car salesman. We have our doubts these days with the lack of fear that child has. We went to a pond in town the other weekend and we were walking over the stepping stones that go across the lake. The water is only about 2 or 3 inches deep where the stepping stones are on the spillway but on either side of the stones it gets much deeper. Ethan thought he was all big and bad and was jumping across the stones by himself and it was driving me crazy. I tried to convince him that it was a bad idea but I hate always being the voice of reason so I let him continue. He decided to walk along the cement divides of the spillway and somehow got the bright idea to jump from the divides to the stones which was a further distance. So when he jumped he lost his balance and tumbled right into the deep part of the pond head first. Oh it was so awful to watch it all in slow motion but be too far away to do anything. Abe grabbed him out of the water before he even took a breath of air but he was so upset. We took off his shirt and gave him my sweatshirt to keep him warm as we walked back to the car. (I thought I had made my point that maybe he should listen to mom next time she warns him about something. That lasted for a couple of hours but by dinner time he said "Boy that was pretty cool".) So we get back to the car and strip him down the rest of the way and just have him in my sweatshirt that went down to his knees. He was VERY concerned that someone in another car might see him and know that he didn't have any underwear on. He talked about it the whole way home and once we pulled in front of the house he realized that people on the street might see him and his lack of underwear. So I told him that I would just carry him in and he said "but then Will (the neighbor) will see my bottom". I was out of patience so I just told him to cover it with his hands. Then he said "but then Will will see my penis." So I again told him to just cover it with his hands. In total frustration he says "but my hands aren't big enough to cover it." I'm sure his concern was that I expected him to cover everything at once with his little hands but it sure made us laugh.

Taylor is getting bigger and more amusing each day also. She is such a girlie girl. She loves to wear a tutu and do "ballerina dances" for us. She has been known to put on 3 pairs of pants while she is suppose to be taking a nap and is constantly making request to wear dresses all the time. She isn't all sweetness. She can have it out with Ethan and she can be pretty violent when she wants to be. But even Ethan can't stay mad at her for long when her eyes fill up with alligator tears when she gets in timeout for putting him in a choke hold. I'm always impressed with Ethan for his ability to not strike back at her (even though he will get right in her face and growl at her when he gets really mad which only makes Taylor more likely to punch him). Taylor is all about compromises lately although she really doesn't understand the term. At dinner Ethan was trying to negotiate dessert or no bath or something he wanted and Abe joking said "Here's compromise, do what your told or get a spanking". Taylor quickly chimes in, with her hand in a fist, "how 'bout I spank you daddy? that be a compromise" with such a sassy tone.

Poor Taylor has so many cute things she says and does but they are usually quick, one liners or things that just don't come across being written. Hopefully she won't feel bad down the road when we don't have great records of all the adorable things she did when she was 2. She is so different than Ethan in some ways and I'm not sure if its boy vs. girl differences or just personality. She gets so frustrated with Ethan's constant chatter and noise, we both would like it a little quieter from time to time. Ethan's pictures have always been full of scribble and cover the whole page. Taylor does neat little pages full of small, delicate circles, usually the same size all over the page. She may be my little perfectionist.

I better finish this post before I head off for vacations. I promise more updates to come when I get back. After a trip to San Antonio and Easter I finally have things to blog about.

Potty Humor

2011-03-03T14:19:00.003-05:00

I will preface this post by saying all may not find the humor in this post so you have been warned!

The other week both kids were sick and it was AWFUL for everyone. It was so strange because they were both sick in completely different ways but they were both miserable. I guess it is better to have them both sick at once since Abe and I had to take turns missing work to take care of them.

So day 1 of being sick Ethan had terrible diarrhea and was miserable. The attempts to make it to the bathroom didn't always work so it was frustrating and upsetting to everyone involved. I think Ethan got over the initial horror of it pretty quickly though. By mid-morning he says "Uh, mom, I thought it was just a toot.... but it wasn't". By dinner that evening he was even more non-chalant about the whole thing. He is sitting eating his dinner and he says "I'm totally going to run out of underwear." He doesn't move from the table, he doesn't even pause from eating. So I'm thinking he is just speaking in general so I gave him a rundown on how I would do laundry tonight and then it hit me "Did you just poop in your pants?" He answers "Yep."

Good times at the Fish house.

Where did January go?

2011-02-07T16:46:00.009-05:00

It seems like it has been a long time since we posted something but the pictures in our last post are from Christmas and that was just a few days ago, right? Maybe its just me but January was a complete blur. Abe had his second round of radiation and was able to get lots of things done around the house during is forced exile. Work has been incredibly busy and I'm counting down the weeks until I can be done. I actually did the math the other day and realized that technically I could take the next 5 months off and still get paid based on all the overtime I have been working lately. Unfortunately there is too much to do and HR doesn't seem to like my plan too much.

Other than work, getting the house ready to put on the market has been the most time consuming task lately. Abe did an amazing job of redoing the front and back porches. They were in pretty bad shape and now look great. We enjoyed hours of patching, painting, cleaning, organizing, and staging. But now the house is officially on the market. So bring on the offers. I thought this would be a good time to do a little comparison of what the house look liked when we moved in.

The living room before. Note the lovely blinds.The living room after.

The kitchen before. I do not miss that tile.
The new and improved kitchen.

The dining room. Sorry the light fixture went to goodwill.
Abe did such a great job on this floor!

Our bedroom.

The master bath. Ethan and Taylor's room.
The kids continue to do wonderful and are very excited about our move. Ethan has gotten into the packing process. We were loading some stuff to put in storage and he wanted to know what we were doing. We explained how we wanted the house to look cleaner by getting the clutter out. He said "so stuff is going to the attic like in Toy Story". We said yes that was pretty much it. Then he grabs a box and starts loading his toys in. He told Taylor "come on, we are going to sell this stuff at a yard sale and get some money." He is always thinking. The other day he was watching me as I was getting ready for work. I put on a pair of hose only to realize that they had a run in them so I took them off. Ethan wanted to know what I was doing and I explained about the hole and how I couldn't wear them. So he say "So I guess you're going commando today?" Thanks Abe for teaching that concept to Ethan. Tonight as we were trying to leave the house I was trying my best to convince a stubborn Taylor to go to the bathroom and she wasn't having it. I finally told her that Ethan and Dad were going to leave without us if she didn't go. Ethan's eye got wide and his face got very serious. He said "Hold on here. I am not going ANYWHERE without my sister." I love the moments when they love each other so much.

So last Saturday was Taylor's 2nd birthday. I can't believe another year has passed by. Taylor is so much fun and such a handful at the same time. While playing teaparty today Ethan was making a lot of noise while "drinking" his tea. Taylor said "Ethan that isn't very good manners." Just what I was thinking, she is like a mini me some days. Since I am completely overworked and lazy we decided to go to Chuck E. Cheese for her birthday. Ethan and Taylor had a great time. I'm worried that this picture is a flash forward 14 years.No worries, it's just Abe, not some creepy mountain man trying to abduct Taylor. Abe thinks he is trying to get in as much time with a beard as possible before the army regulations kick in June 7th.

All day long on Taylor's birthday Ethan was letting Taylor pick everything. She got to decide what they watched on tv. He let her go first at everything. And this was all his own idea. So Sunday, the day after her birthday, she said something that she wanted to play with. Ethan took the toy from her and said very matter of factly "Taylor, its not your birthday any more."

Christmas in Utah

2010-12-28T22:51:00.010-05:00

So we once again made the trek to Utah for Christmas. I have vowed never to travel again for Christmas after the hassle of trying to figure out how to celebrate Christmas early to avoid bringing more things on the plane than necessary but we have had a great time. The kids were great on the trip out so we can't complain about the traveling and no delays was nice.

The kids have been having a blast visiting their grandparents. Grandpa has all sorts of toys that Ethan loves. And by toys I mean the bow that Ethan got to shoot and the 4-wheeler. Ethan has had such a great time. Even Taylor has gotten into riding the 4-wheeler. She doesn't like to be left out.

We celebrated Ethan's birthday again with the family and Ethan loved the attention, and the cake.

Taylor is a huge fan of Cricket, Peyton's dog. I think Cricket was pretty ready to go home after all the attention she got from Taylor.

Peyton was such a great cousin. Ethan couldn't wait for him to come over and play. He was so patient with Ethan and Taylor.
Christmas was the day of the Pillow Pets. The kids have been begging for them for months so we gave in and got them each one for Christmas. The kids haven't let them out of their sight for more than a few minutes. I guess that means it was a good present. I love this video of them and their pillows.

Ethan pretending to be asleep on Taylor's Pillow Pet.

So we decided to try and take a family photo before church on Sunday. No wonder we don't have any family photos. What is Taylor doing with her face? That is her new look when she is making a "mean" face. Why would she choose it for the family picture?

"The look" up close.

Oh that is nicer.

This week we also checked out the museum at Thanksgiving Point. The kids had fun running around and looking at everything.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2010-12-15T10:14:00.002-05:00

First of all the Good, last night we found out that we are moving to San Antonio, Texas to do an Emergency Medicine residency. San Antonio was our first pick and we are really excited. I really enjoyed my rotation there, I got along great with the residents and staff, I like the set up and the construction that is going on to improve the hospital. I really hope the parking garage is done before we get there though. Also there are some great affordable housing options, the city is awesome with all kinds of things to do for the kids, and right now here in Christiansburg it is like 15 degrees so Texas heat sounds great.

Now for the Bad, I got the results of my scan done last Friday. There was some uptake in the front part of the neck which is expected, also some in the liver, again expected because that is where it is metabolized. The bad is there was some uptake in my left chest. The radiologist wasn't able to determine if this was from a highriding stomach which would normally have some uptake or if it has metastasized to my lungs. Either way the treatment for this is to have an ablation dose of radiation.

Now for the Ugly, the dose of radiation that I had last Wednesday was supposed to be an ablation dose. However the doctors office put the orders in wrong and I only had a scanning dose. So all the arrangements to have Meredith's parents watch the kids, and me taking my vacation month this month instead of in May (if it was May we could have found and bought a home in San Antonio where we are going for EM Residency, did I mention that, because that is where we are going and we are super excited) were for nothing. So right now I will have to do the ablation dose of radiation in January. This means we have to rearrange my schedule, and arrange to have Meredith's parents watch the kids again.

Lastly this post was meant more to inform everyone that we are really excited about going to San Antonio, the rest of it is just FYI. I also would like to say that I'm feeling perfect, I have some bad days but there aren't many. So be excited for us going to San Antonio and don't worry about the other.

Update

2010-11-21T20:04:00.002-05:00

Dear Zeb,

Here is the adventure race course that I had in mind. I think that you can spread out the obstacles to suit your need. You can tell them that a Special Forces soldier and his son designed it. No need to thank me.

Abe

Recently Ethan has really gotten into doing family home evening. I thank Meredith for this because she has come up with some pretty amazing ideas of how to keep the kids interest. One of her ideas was about following commandments and so we made an obstacle course where the kids had to follow the instructions to make it through the course. Well Ethan loved this idea and decided that he wanted to make a course of his own. Most of the stuff he came up with on his own, pretty impressive.

On another note here is an update on what is going on. Right now I have good and bad days. I feel as if I have been very blessed that when I needed mostly good days I was able to have them. Especially since those good days that I needed where when I was doing interview rotations for residency programs that I wanted to get into. This also determines where we will be for the next three years. The next step in treatment is radiation therapy. It is a little different for thyroid than other cancers. First I have to have a couple of injection of thyroid stimulating hormone. This will cause any thyroid cells that are left to want to take in as much iodine as they can to try and make thyroid hormone. Then I take a radioactive iodine pill. This will be taken up by the thyroid cells essentially killing them off. There is a chance of recurrence with papillary carcinoma so in order to minimize it you have to get rid of all the thyroid cells. The radiation therapy is a onetime dose and then I have to follow up for a couple of years to make sure that I'm still clear. The worst part about it is that I can't have any contact with the kids for five days, so they are going to stay in Richmond with Meredith's parents. I will have the radiation on Dec 10th and then we will go from there. I'm looking forward to having this done and being able to move on. I also want to thank everyone for there support and prayers. It truly has meant a lot to me when people have told me that they and there families are praying for us. Thank you!

You know your kids is watching too much tv when...

2010-10-29T21:25:00.008-04:00

So I thought it was time for me to write down a couple of my favorite recent Ethan sayings. I can definitely tell that the babysitter is letting Ethan watch too much tv when he is constantly quoting commercials.

- When Ethan saw a picture of some automatic broom he says "if you get this mom, you will have more time to spend with us." Later I saw the commercial with some mom sitting at the table with her kids while the broom worked saying it gives her more time with her kids.

- While looking through a Toys R Us ad at the house he pointed to some video game and said "mom that will really help me learn."

- While unloading the dishwasher (and complaining the whole way) he comes up with the plan that instead of unloading it we can just use the silverware straight out of it until we get to the bottom (I didn't mention that this is usually my plan with the clean laundry in the basket so I don't have to put it away. Maybe this is genetic.) When that plan was not accepted he decide that he would promise not to eat for a week if he didn't have to do them.

- The other day while I was distracted on the phone I see Ethan collecting some supplies for a "project". He had a rope and a hanger. After I got off the phone I listened to the conversation between Taylor and Ethan. Ethan was trying to convince Taylor to jump off the second story porch while using the hanger like a zipline on the rope. He promised her that he would catch her at the bottom. Thankfully Taylor wasn't into the idea. I have to keep a closer eye on that kid.

We have been enjoying the Fall out here. I will definitely miss Fall in the mountains. Even the kids are always pointing out the trees, the leaves and the mountains and how beautiful they all are. We spent the first Saturday Abe was home at the pumpkin patch. We had such a wonderful time with beautiful weather. Ethan had been waiting not so patiently for Abe to come back from being gone so we could get a pumpkin. It was well worth the wait.

Our search through the corn maze.

Taylor wanted to pick up ever kernel of corn she found in the corn maze. I thought we would never get through it.

Hard to imagine but Ethan really was having fun.

Ethan and Taylor with the animals. No fear from these kids.

Getting them both to smile at the camera at the same time with the bright sun was impossible.

Not to be out done by her brother's talkativeness Taylor is so good at keeping up with him. I love to hear all the things that she has to say. Although it often involves A LOT of attitude. I put in this video of her helping me "read" one of her favorite books. I love to hear her say the words.

Sometimes Ethan and Taylor can be so sweet to each other. I just love it! Sometimes they are all about giving each other hugs and being so adorable. The other night at dinner Ethan pulled Taylor's chair close to him and hugged her and said "mom, I just really love being beside my sister." Taylor leans over and says "I love you too Ethan." Too cute. Of course Taylor wanted some long hugs and Ethan was done with his sweet moment very quickly but it was still cute while it lasted.

Our Texas "Vacation"

2010-09-21T15:03:00.013-04:00

The kids and their cousins

I call this a "vacation" because this week doesn't feel like much of a vacation. We planned to spend 2 weeks in Texas visiting Abe as he does two audition rotations for residency (in other words, a month long interview). We have been waiting for this trip for a long time and we were so happy that things worked out and everything turned out the way we planned. Some of Abe's family is in Dallas so we were super excited for an excuse to visit them. It had been way too long. So each weekend we spent in Dallas and the week days we spent following Abe around.

Julia taking the easy ride.

Ethan was a little overwhelmed by his cousins at first but he got over it relatively quickly. When we met Zeb and Leah at the airport Ethan was very quick to tell them "I don't like to be touched." He has just started using this phrase and I guess it's my fault. Recently he has been a little rude when people talk to him or want to give him a high five. When I asked him why he said that its because he is shy. We all know that this isn't really true but that is beside the point. So I told him that instead of just turning away that he could say "I'm shy". Instead he decided to go with the phrase "I don't like to be touched." He has definitely gotten into being too cool for kisses and wipes them away when he gets them. He can even be totally distracted by t.v. but he will still unconsciously wipe them away. So it became a game to try and give him kisses that didn't get wiped off. He still doesn't understand girls and their sillyness. Being one of 2 boys amongst 8 girls he was way out numbered. Sometimes he would just watch them from a distance trying to figure out the game and what in the world he was suppose to do. He has some concerns about people laughing at him so he doesn't like playing "silly" games when other people are around. At home one day he was pretending he was Diego, from his favorite tv show, and we were all different characters so he would call us by the characters name. In the car he said, "Mom, we have to stop playing this when we get to the store or people will know that we are playing a silly game." So when the girls were playing mermaids in the pool he couldn't quite decide if he wanted to play the game. At first he was taking the logical approach and when the girls would start screaming about something he would say "Girls, girls, girls, there are NO sharks in this pool" finally he decided to join them. But first he said "Mom, will you please not laugh at me if I play mermaids with the girls?" Of course I agreed but then he had to ask every other adult around to make sure they wouldn't laugh either. He is such a character. We had such a great time hanging out with family, eating great food, and watching the kids have a great time. We sure hope that we end up around here for residency so we can visit more often.

Ethan and Maren had the best time playing together. Maren was the only one willing to rough house with Ethan and allowed him to tie her up with his rope. I guess in return he was willing to play hair dresser.

Thankfully this brush doesn't get tangled in hair easily.

After a weekend in Dallas without Abe we went down to San Antonio to meet him and see where he had been for the last month. San Antonio was a fun place with lots of fun things for us to do. The roads are really confusing and I felt like I may never find my way around but it was definitely nice to be able to have lots of options of things to do. And to make things even better Abe ended up not having to work that week so it was like a real vacation. The heat was pretty overwhelming but we survived and were able to get out and do a lot despite the heat. We also didn't have the best sleeping arrangements since we just stayed in the extended stay where Abe had been staying. It was one room with a fridge and microwave. Unfortunately, that meant that once the kids went to bed we really couldn't do anything to make noise and we pretty much just hung out in the bathroom area so the kids wouldn't see us and want to stay awake. So we were definitely ready to upgrade to a bigger hotel once we got to Killeen.

Day 1 we checked out the riverwalk in downtown San Antonio

The kids loved the boat ride down the river.

The next day we headed to the zoo nice and early to beat the heat. It wasn't a big zoo but it was really pretty and well landscaped and the animals seemed so close. We didn't make it through all the exhibits but it was fun.

Ethan having so much fun. Actually he was but he refuses to smile for pictures. Which is fine with me as long as he isn't running away.

They had a little petting area where the kids got to pet the goats. The kids loved it!
Any time we asked Taylor if she was ready to leave she would say "No, I brushin'" She really loves doing some chores.
This goat starting pooping right as Taylor went to pet it and she was fascinated by the whole process. I wasn't going to put this picture in the post but Taylor saw the other goat pictures and kept asking to see the poop.

Possibly the only picture of Ethan smiling. I had to catch him coming out of his hiding spot to capture it.
Right down the street from our hotel, on base, was another house, like a Ronald McDonald house, that I stumbled on while running. They had an amazing play area with bikes and all sorts of stuff. The kids had such a great time. It was sad we didn't find it until the last day.

Downtown also has a nice Children's Museum. The kids had such a good time and didn't want to leave.

We also walked around the San Antonio Temple, which was just beautiful and went to several parks and found some good restaurants and shopping centers. We definitely felt like we could see ourselves living there. Not to mention the fact that Abe loved his month in the hospital there. So we will keep praying that we end up where we are suppose to be, and hopefully that is San Antonio.

After another weekend in Dallas we came back to Killeen,TX and it was hard adjusting to a totally different type of base. The base in San Antonio was small but the city was large. In Killeen the base is very big but the town is really small. There were no worries about getting lost but we were struggling to find things to do while Abe goes to work. It didn't help that Abe had to work and we only had one car so we always had to be around to get him. I can sum up everything we did with these 2 pictures.

We found a pretty unexciting park outside of town.

And there was an arcade at the mall that was thrilling, can't you tell?

Needless to say the kids and I aren't all that excited about the possibility of moving here next year.

Before we left we got to spend one more night with family. Josh and Carol were sweet enough to watch the kids so Abe and I could sneak out for dinner. It has been way too long since we got to do that. Ethan was so sad when it was time to go. He had such a great time with all his cousins. See Carol's post for pictures of the kids at their house. I'm pretty bad about pulling out my camera too :)

We survived the flights back and honestly I'm very thankful for how good the kids were on the flights. It's not easy to keep them entertained and by the end of the trip I felt like I should have gotten a standing ovation for my hard work. There was a cute old man that had been making faces at Taylor and as we got off the first plane he patted my shoulder and said "you are doing a good job with those kids." It was pretty cute. We are happy to be home and back in one place for a while but we do miss the fun of vacation. And we can't wait for Abe to come and join us at home in 2 weeks.

Life's a Rollercoaster

2010-09-02T20:51:00.016-04:00

St. Thomas, Virgin Island as the hurricane was coming in.

Lately we have definitely been riding the rollercoaster of life, with all its ups and quite a few downs. I guess you have to take the good with the bad and we have had a lot of goods in our life so maybe it was just our turn for the bads. We have had some school set backs along the way but I think we did a good job of seeing the positive in them and bouncing back. I think we did a pretty good job of taking Abe's cancer diagnosis in stride and getting through what had to get done. But we were hoping that he had moved past the bad and were back onto the good. But we just got back from a vacation that just reminded me that there will always be some ups and downs.

Our hotel, we were in the top building.

Back a few months ago my parents had invited the kids and I to head to St. Thomas with them for a week. I'm not one to turn down a vacation and things worked out pretty good with work so we went. Once again I totally forgot that I have bad luck with traveling during hurricane season but dad assured me that he had checked the weather and there was nothing heading our way. The kids were really good on the trip down, both driving to D.C. to catch the flight and while flying down to the Caribbean. We arrived on Friday and by Saturday there was talk of Earl and how we were right in its path. We had a great time the first couple of days. The condo was lovely, with 2 bedrooms and a kitchen and living area. And the beach and pool were so much fun. Ethan and Taylor couldn't get enough of the water slide (which meant that one of us was stuck going down it a million times with them). But on Sunday everything started shutting down in preparation for the hurricane. The hotel was sending around notes saying that if you had a way to get off the island you might want to think about it. Having lived in South Carolina for a long time we weren't terrible concerned about a hurricane, especially when they said that path had changed so that we would only being getting the edge of the storm. And actually the storm itself wasn't that bad. It was very windy and the rain, at times, was so hard that you couldn't see anything out the windows. The kids thought it was pretty fun to be blown around in the wind and be allowed to walk out in the rain. It was all fun and games until the power went out, for 3 days!

The view from our condo

For the first day it wasn't that big of a deal. The hurricane was still blowing through so the room would get a good breeze if someone held open the front and back door. Although it was really strong so McKaylan got sucks out of the door once when a big gust came and she wasn't ready for it. We still had some charge in the computer and DVD players so it wasn't too bad. Dad went on a mission to find ice from a hotel down the road that had a generator so we had a chance at keeping the food cold that we had bought when we arrived. Food was crazy expensive on the island, like $9 for a gallon of milk, so letting the food go to waste made us just sick. So we made 2-3 trips a day to get ice. The hotel was set up on the side of the mountain so there were a lot of flights of stairs. So with no power that meant lots of sets of stairs. There were about 10 flights of stairs to go down to the pool, and another 10 to get back up. We got some great exercise and I was amazed at Ethan's ability to walk up and down them all, with some prompting. We sure were missing Abe and my dad when we had to carry all of our pool stuff and Taylor up the stairs. By 6:30pm on the first night it was dark enough that you weren't going to find anything without a flashlight and since there was one flashlight in the room for all of us there wasn't much to do. We felt like we were from the olden days when you went to bed when the sun went down and got up when it rose. By day 2 the thrill of the adventure was wearing off as was the breeze from the storm and it was hot and muggy in our room. We pretty much lived in our bathing suits and went to the pool for most of the day. I had decided to pack light and only bring 3-4 outfits for everyone and I was going to wash clothes in the condo. Of course the storm hit right as we ran out of clothes so our choices were limited to which sweaty outfit we wanted to wear. At least I had brought 2 bathsuits for each of us so at least they could sort of dry in between wearings. Poor Taylor usually didn't have on any clothes and her little curls never dried from all her sweating. We were even desperate enough for some cool air that the guy driving the shuttle around the resort offered us a ride in the van and we rode around for a couple of loops just to get the kids cool. We definitely met some nice people as we all sat around the pool chatting about how crazy it all was or gabbing while charging our electronic devices in the lobby, which had a generator for the lights but still no a/c. It definitely brings people together.

Dad felt pretty bad leaving us on Tuesday while we were still without power but his ticket had been bought for that day so there was no reason to stay around. We looked into getting out early ourselves but flights were full until Thursday and that was only the day before we were suppose to leave. I felt kind of sorry for the people that showed up to the hotel not realizing that a hurricane had just hit and most of the island was without power. I guess they have learned to do their homework before they show up next time. One couple said their first clue was the fact that on the plane the lady sitting beside them that had on a red cross shirt and said she was traveling to provide hurricane relief.

By day 3 we were threatening to make camp at the pool and sleep outside in hopes of getting enough breeze to sleep through the night. Taylor had been up from 2-4 since she was too hot to sleep. Crazy hot and no sleep made for a very crabby mama. Luckily right at dark on Wednesday night the power came on and there were cheers from all over the hotel. You forget how great a/c is until you don't have it for a little while. The island still was recovering when we left so we didn't see much, even on our last day there but at least our attitude had improved by then. And it definitely made me thankful that amongst all of us there wasn't a complainer in the bunch. We all just sucked it up and made the best of a tough situation and had a good time.

Hanging out in the park entertaining the locals and chasing the chickens!

This was easily the kids favorite activity.

The igunas take over the hotel. Taylor LOVED to chase them.

Taylor calling "come here, iguana" to the big one hiding under the chairs.

I just love this picture of Taylor.

Luckily we got in our beach time before the storm hit because the sand was pretty much gone after the hurricane.

Can you tell he was getting into something?

The calm blue sea was gone for several days after the storm.

Taylor loved the wind in her hair during the hurricane

Our post-hurricane attire

Oh how Taylor loved to watch the planes go by. She would say "Oh, plane, hold you."

Taylor found her favorite play spot in the closet.

Ethan happened to pack a small flashlight, when my sister McKaylan saw it she thought it was the flashlight provided by the hotel and was pretty concerned that it was all the light we were going to have. Thankfully not!

Nothing to do in a hurricane but to run the corridors half naked. Our redneck roots were really showing during this trip.

Ethan kept saying that he never wanted to go home, even when the rest of us were dying. He had such a great time!

Airplanes!

2010-07-28T15:32:00.004-04:00

Our ward has been doing some summer "field trips" that the various mom's plan and they have come up with some fun ideas. Usually I work on Mondays, which is when they usually do them, but this week I didn't have to work Monday so we could go. Taylor has recently become very interested in planes. We saw quiet a few planes flying near the lake when we went camping and every time she saw one she would yell "airplane" and then say "bye bye airplane". You have to hear her say it to get the full effect of how adorable her little voice is. But one of the mom's set up a tour of the local airport here in town and got in contact with this wonderful man that let the kids sit in and play with his little plane. He even took some of the adults up for a ride. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever. Ethan was ready for a ride though I had explained on the way over that only the adults got a ride. He told me that if he couldn't ride then I couldn't ride. Taylor was just as bad about wanting a ride. She sat in the back sit and kept saying "buckle, buckle" until one of the other kids buckled her in and she didn't want to leave. I had to drag her out when our time was over and she kept trying to run back. I never knew that she would find it so amazing. Probably it is just another reason for her to try and demonstrate her temper in front of everyone. Her new phrase is "I da boss" if that gives you any indication of her temprament. She can be a handful, that's for sure.

Ethan always amuzes me with the things he comes up with. Here is our conversation from the car the other day.

E: So mom, you remember that I want a little brother and another n little sister right?

M: Yep, I remember.

E: So what kind of girl am I going to marry?

M: Hmmm... well she will probably be nice and smart and a good mom.

E: (with a very puzzle sound to his voice) I want a smart girl??

M: Yes, you definitely want a smart girl.

E: Oh yeah, We don't want one of those wrong girls. I'm going to have lots more kids then you have. And I'm going to have a mom to babysit my kids. And then I won't have to do any chores.

Where have I gone wrong? He cracks me up with the things that go through his head. Ethan has told me on several times that when he gets to be a dad he won't have to do any chores. Abe really doesn't like the fact that Ethan thinks he doesn't do anthing.

Our Garden

2010-07-17T11:55:00.004-04:00

So this year we planted our tiny garden again and I have to say that I just love having a garden. Thankfully here it isn't all that hot so I don't have to water it all the time and the weeds aren't out of control so there really isn't a lot of work. But it is so fun to go outside and see what has grown since the last time we checked. These veggies were from this week. Last year we made the mistake of planting just a few green bean plants and only about 4 green beans would be ready at the same time so usually I was too lazy to cook 4 green beans. I love to see Ethan so excited about the zucchini and checking for more veggies.

We decided to make some cheese crackers yesterday and Ethan was so excited about helping. He asked if we could take a picture of his crackers. I went a little overboard on the red pepper and after Taylor ate one she kept saying "hot, hot, hot".

So we have decided that Taylor is definitely OCD. This is a video of her with her baby. I started recording her because she is so adorable with her baby dolls. She totally has the "mom" rock going on as she tells her baby "sh, sh, sh". But they the time I got the camera the baby had gotten unwrapped and you can watch her try to cover the baby again and again to get it just the right way. She is such a sweetie.

4th of July

2010-07-04T21:57:00.008-04:00

We really enjoy 4th of July around our house. Maybe it is because our anniversary is around the 4th so we always love an excuse to celebrate but we decided to pick up the family tradition again of going camping on the 4th. Boy is it a lot different with 2 kids compared to the trips that Abe and I took before Ethan came along. We decided to go some place close to home and only do 1 night since we were pretty sure it was going to be bad. And we were right but we'll talk about that later. Ethan was terribly excited because he had been camping with his dad in May and couldn't wait to go again. He told everyone we saw that he was going camping, and invited most of them to come along. I love his enthusiasm.

We stayed at a state park which was on a lake and the weather was perfect for camping. We did a lot of swimming and digging in the sand. And the kids probably would have stayed there all day if we hadn't made them leave. We also played at the park. walked around in the woods and watched the fireflies. And you will probably notice that Taylor and I refuse to do our hair while camping so we are looking a little rough.

The kids were excited to get to roast (and eat) marshmallows on graham crackers. I was glad I had gone through all the effort to make them when I saw how excited Ethan was to cook them over the fire.

Everything was going nicely until we got to bedtime. This is where any vacation is challenging but camping just takes it to a whole new level. While we were out doing on thing the campground filled up and though we started the day with lots of extra space around us by 9 we had tents on every side and VERY close. As our luck would have it the tent closest was a group of teenagers with one adult with them in another tent. As we tried to get the kids ready for bed they were talking REALLY loud and all the girls were laughing at everything the one guy said. Since we could hear every word they were saying it just got to be pretty aggravating. Of course, Ethan was hyped up on sweets and hearing other people talk convinced him that it was not time for bed. And as the language next door got worse and worse I could feel my blood pressure rising. We got Taylor to bed and then Ethan claimed he needed to go to the bathroom. That woke her up and she started to cry, REALLY LOUD. We got her calmed down and the kids next door were quiet so we thought we were in good shape. Then the neighbor started up again and woke Taylor up. Then they had the nerve to talk about how annoying her crying was and what they would do if it was their kid. Once again, I'm thinking they were just stupid enough not to know that we could hear everything, or maybe just annoying enough not to care. So then Ethan fell asleep and we finally let Taylor out of her crib and she just ran around like a crazy her for a while. It was after midnight by now and we were so tired. Our only salvation was the thought of how fun it would be when our kids got up early and we could annoy the neighbors by waking them up early. So you can imagine how aggravating it was when those same kids woke up before 6 am and were once again talking so loud that they woke up Ethan and Taylor. Not to say that we were getting any good sleep but I still wanted to kill them. We soon got up and started making breakfast and the neighbors continued to talk and the language got worse and worse. Finally I asked them to watch the language and they quieted down for a minute but then were back to talking foul. After another 5 minutes I asked told them that there were children around and they didn't need to hear that. Finally they stopped for good. Abe did tell me later than when I walked away they were talking about their rights to freedom of speech and the amendments. I'm so glad that I wasn't there to hear that or I might have lost it. Idiots really bother me. We did have another nice day at the lake and playing with the kids. The kids were so tired that they fell asleep after 1 minute in the car and slept the whole 2 hours home. It was a very peaceful drive.

Of course Saturday night we had already planned to eat at a friend's house and then watch the fireworks. The kids got a second wind and were pretty good even with the lack of sleep. I absolutely love fireworks so it was fun to enjoy them with the kids. Ethan has never been afraid of the noise and Taylor wasn't bothered either. She lost interest after a few minutes and was ready to go home but we stuck it out. The two late nights definitely made for a rough day at church but we survived our fun filled weekend. Now it is back to studying and work and all the un-fun things that our lives are filled with. We can't wait for this part of medical school to be over with.

Just because I want to put these other pictures in. This is "Kitty" a cat that has adopted our front porch as his home (well and inside our house when Ethan strategically leaves the door open just wide enough for Kitty to get in). The neighbors are cat people and have been feeding Kitty so he isn't going anywhere right now. Abe is NOT a cat person and neither am I but it is pretty cute to see the way Ethan and Taylor love that cat. To begin with Ethan would get sad every time we had to leave the house because he wanted Kitty to come with him. We are warned him that Kitty might leave one day and not come back. So every time he can't find Kitty he sits on the porch and makes everyone say "I wish Kitty were here" which is like a magic phrase that makes him appear. Ethan and Kitty have had a few altercations, in which Ethan is always the loser, but I'm 99% sure Ethan did something to Kitty to make him mad, like drag him by the tail. It makes Abe want to get Ethan a dog so bad cause he wants Kitty to follow him around but Kitty has a mind of his own. Ethan is ready for a pet but he is requesting one that doesn't poop and doesn't have claws. Since we have yet to find that kind of pet we are still petless.

This picture of Taylor is my favorite because she looks so big. She loves to chat on the phone with her dad. She usually hangs up on him at some point but she keeps chatting away. I was going to paint my toenails the other day so I let Taylor have hers painted too. She had never had that done before and she sat so still. She was so excited to show her toes off to everyone. Ethan wanted his done too and we explained that boys don't really paint their toes. After awhile he came back and asked if he got a boy color, like green, could he have his toes painted. He got over it eventually though, thankfully.

2010-06-15T20:58:00.011-04:00

Once again time is getting away from me and I can't believe another month has passed. That is probably good since it means we are one month closer to being done with Abe's third year of medical school and closer to being done with boards so that we can see Abe again. May was busy with Abe having an odd schedule at work on top of full weekends with all sorts of fun activities. Why we feel the need to fill all available time I don't understand. I'm hoping for one nice quiet weekend at home so I have a chance of getting some cleaning done. Here is a little video of Ethan when the cleaning bug struck him. One morning he jumped out of his chair after breakfast and told Taylor that they needed to get cleaning. This NEVER happens so I had to catch it for posterity.

One weekend the ward had a father-son campout and Ethan had a wonderful time. For weeks he talked about the "no girls allowed" camping trip. It was a little rough on Abe but Ethan had a great time and can't wait to go camping again. I felt kind of bad that Ethan couldn't roast marshmallows and eat them since he can't have the sugar in marshmallows so I set out to figure out how to make homemade marshmallows with sweetner that the kids can have. They were a big hit. The kids love to lick the bowl.

Ethan was playing on a soccer team and had games on Friday nights. That poor kid wanted nothing to do with the games. It was a little frustrating because Ethan spent the whole time trying to get off the field and Taylor spent the whole time trying to get on the field. She loves to dribble the ball around and is pretty good at it. She would get so mad when I would drag her off the field while trying to chase Ethan down to get him back on the field. Ethan got a trophy at the end of the season, as all the kids did, with a boy on it playing soccer. One day he was looking at it and asked me if I thought it was suppose to be him. I said I didn't know and asked him if he thought it looked like him. He matter of factly said "No, he isn't running back to his mommy."
Another weekend we took the kids to a children's museum. It is a fun place and the kids had such a good time. They both loved milking the "cow".

I also spent a weekend in NC at my friend's wedding. Abe was so sweet to stay home and watch the kids. It was wonderful to have the time to visit with friends without having to chase the kids around. Adult conversation is so great and so are wonderful friends. I actually had the time to visit multiple friends and even wander around the mall without anyone whining.

Last week the kids and I went to Richmond so I could work for a couple of days. The kids loved their time with my parents. Ethan asked if we were going to stay there for forever. I'm sure grandma would eventually stop feeding him everything he asked for and eventually he would want to head home. On Friday we went down to North Carolina with my family to bury my grandmother. She passed away in mid-May but it took a little while to finalize the arrangements for the military burial. It was a nice chance to visit with family, some of whom we have not seen in many years.

The kids were good on the trip since we divided them up between the different cars. After the burial we went out to lunch with the family to grandma's favorite restaurant by the beach. And then we took the kids to the beach that my grandparents used to take us to when we were little. It was a nice trip down memory lane. The kids loved the beach. I wish I had pulled out the camera but I was just too busy having a good time in the ocean.

The next day we went to an aquarium. Ethan and Taylor's enthusiam was just adorable. Taylor loves the word "fish" and she just couldn't say it enough. She didn't like to get very close to them and didn't want to take her eyes off them when I tried to convince her to sit down to take her picture. I love how she gets perfect ringlets in the hot, humid North Carolina summer. The rest of us just looked like we were melting and she looks adorable. Taylor is the biggest fan of holding Ethan's hand. He puts up with it pretty well but isn't nearly as excited about it as Taylor. He is a pretty good sport though.

Like I have probably said before Taylor is my little mama. She loves real babies and baby dolls more than anything (well other than Ethan). She walks around church saying "baby, baby" and chasing anyone carrying a baby carrier. When she sees a baby in a book she holds out her hands and says "hold me baby". The whole trip to North Carolina and back she had her baby doll with her. She would hand me the baby while I drove and hand me this sweatshirt and say "baby night night" so I would have to wrap the baby up and she would bounce the baby and say "sh, sh, sh". Oh I just love that little angel.

I will finish up with Abe and my favorite Ethan quotes of the day. The kids went to a new babysitter today. Well actually not new because she watched Ethan when he was younger but they haven't been there in a long time. The in-home daycare has 3 girls near Ethan's age and they are all just adorable. I could tell when I dropped Ethan off that one of the girls was into Ethan because she kept trying to sit near him and he would move away and she was VERY giggly. This is little scary since this girl is probably just 2. The babysitter sent me an email today and she said that all the girls had taken a fancy to Ethan. She told me that they were often fighting over who could sit next to him. So Ethan says "Girls, there is only one Ethan and I can only sit in one chair." I love his reasoning. The babysitter also mentioned that she was having a discussion with one of the girls about how we don't always get what we want. Ethan chimed in and said "Yeah, cause my dad really wants a truck and he can't have one." Such a perceptive child. I just love this pictures of Ethan. He is such a cutie!

See Previous Post

2010-05-17T19:52:00.004-04:00

I grabbed the camera today when Ethan and Taylor were working on the dishes. I just love these little helpers. (And yes, Taylor does have her pajama bottoms on her head while she works. It was my attempt to distract her during a fight she was having with Ethan because she wanted to wear his pajama bottoms around her neck like a scarf. She loves her accessories. And no, no one was harmed by the butter knife.)

"Tank ou, Ehan"

2010-05-16T21:17:00.003-04:00

Taylor has gotten to be so chatty lately. I just love to hear her little voice and all the things she says. The other day Ethan handed her something and she said "Tank ou, E-han" (thank you Ethan). It just melts my heart. Ethan was always so verbal and had a great vocabulary at a young age. I assume I'm not alone but I definitely always wondered if it would be hard if Taylor wasn't the same way. But she has been just as verbal as Ethan so it's nice to know what her little mind is thinking. Of course she is very opinionated and strong-willed so we have some battles. She was saying "bite" very loudly today in church when the sacrament went by and let everyone know that she wanted some.

Ethan has some chores that he has to do and he isn't a big fan. He always asks if Taylor is big enough to do chores and we tell him that no he is on his own. Well today he was unloading the silverware in the dishwasher and Taylor LOVES to get into the dishes while Ethan is taking his time unloading them. So we decided to get Taylor to hand Ethan the silverware and he put it away. It was the cutest thing ever to see them working together. Of course Taylor was able to go from the drawer to the dishwasher and back before Ethan could put away one utensil. She was kind of showing him up but he loved having the help. I think Taylor is going to be my little helper. She is such a little mother some days. I just love the moments when they are getting along and helping each other. It is the sweetest thing and makes my day.

Thankfully April is Over

2010-05-03T20:48:00.004-04:00

I already mentioned that April was a busy month and we were all over the place so when my grandmother got really sick and we decided that we needed to go to Richmond as soon as possible Abe joked that it was because I just had to get one more trip in before April ended. If only that were true. By no stretch of the imagination could this be called a vacation. My grandmother went into the emergency room on the day that we finished our cruise with shortness of breath and has since had 3 heart attacks that leave her a little weaker and a little more confused each time. At 92 there isn't much they can do for a bad heart so we knew it was time to spend some time with her while we still could. Ethan was so sweet when I told him that great grandma was really sick. When I told him we should do something special for her he suggested we paint her a picture. I asked him what kind of picture would make her happy and he said he would paint her a rainbow. To begin with it actually looked like a rainbow until he decided that he liked the green paint A LOT and so he over did it with the green. The picture was just perfect and grandma loved it.

We went to Richmond on Friday afternoon and I got to spend a couple hours with grandma every day. Those are some long, quiet and emotionally draining days. Abe was so wonderful to watch the kids while I was gone. He got to understand how much fun it is to chase them both around a completely unchildproof house. He will never ask me again why I don't consider a trip to my parents' house a vacation. We also had a chance to visit with some of my siblings that I don't get to see very often. It wasn't a great reason to get together but it was nice for the kids to get to visit with their aunt and uncle and Abe and I really appreciated all the help with the kids.

By Sunday grandma had gotten her strength back from her last heart attack so she was back to her normal self. It is such an odd experience because grandma can't remember why she is in the hospital or that she is even sick. All she kept saying was that the doctor said she was going home on Monday (but no one else would ever confirm that). Even though we had some rough times it was wonderful to sit with her and chat about things and let her know how much we love her. On Sunday before we left town we brought Ethan and Taylor by the hospital to see grandma. We had a little chat about how he needed to be really happy and nice in the hospital and he did wonderful. It is such a nice hospital but I worried that he might be spooked out by the whole thing. When we got in the car on the way over I told him where we were going and he said with such joy, "Yeah. Taylor did you hear that? We are going to see great grandma." After we said our goodbyes and left the room we got half way down the hallway and Ethan said "Are we going to see grandma here again?" I said "no she won't be here at the hospital when we come back". And then he said "maybe I should go say bye to her again" and we did. He is such a sweetheart. Grandma looks kind of angelic in this picture but that is because I didn't realize that I had something on the lens of the camera. She did actually come home from the hospital today like she wanted. Maybe it is better that she doesn't know how short her time might be. The whole weekend has made me very thankful for my faith in knowing where we go after we die and that our family will be together again. Please keep her in your prayers.

A Whirlwind Month

2010-04-24T11:24:00.015-04:00

Where did April go? We have been so busy that I don't know if I'm coming or going. I haven't been good about keeping up with our blog so this will be a marathon post. I hope you are ready.

Though it feels like ages ago we had a nice, low-key Easter. Taylor and Ethan both really got into hunting for Easter eggs. Though Ethan seems pretty disappointed when he realized that not all the eggs had a treat inside.

That Sunday afternoon the kids and I drove to Richmond because I had a 3-day training for work there and my mom watched the kids while I went to work. Thankfully the kids are great for grandma and they had a nice time. We stayed through Friday in Richmond and went to the zoo there.

Late Thursday night Abe came into town and on Friday morning we drove up to Washington, DC for a stake temple trip. The temple trip was on Saturday but we went up a day early to see the sights since Abe didn't have to work on Friday. It had been amazingly hot all week but of course on Friday it got cold so we, and every other tourist in DC, decided to hit some museums. Ethan loved the Natural History Museum but the crowds were overwhelming! We didn't know it was the Cherry Blossum festival, spring break for a lot of kids, and just crowded. We had a nice time walking around but the kids were done pretty quickly.

On Saturday we went to the temple. The stake Primary had planned a huge Primary activity for the kids so they could learn about the temple and so parents could go and do sessions. Abe and I took turns watching Taylor and had a wonderful day. The Primary kids were in small groups and Ethan struggled a little being left in a group with no one he knew. But his wonderful group leader spent a lot of time with him and Ethan finally got into it. Of course at the end of the day I asked him what he had done, hoping or expecting some wonderful, insightful response, and all he had for me was a list of what I had packed him for his lunch. But over the last several weeks little thoughts and comments have come out that make me think maybe he did get something else out of it. The Primary Presidency told me that one Sunday he raised his hand and told them that he had heard the voice of God in the temple. I think he was referring to the overhead speaker in the visitor center but it was cute.

Saturday we drove back to Richmond, since we had left a car there, and then Sunday we drove back home in time to make it to afternoon church. The kids did not have any patience for church after sitting in the car for 4 hours in the morning so it made for a long afternoon also. I had to work a couple of days that next week and at the end of the week I left for a cruise with my mom and the kids. We drove down to Jacksonville, Florida for a 5 day cruise and it was quite an experience. Overall the kids were good in the car but it was just a long ride for everyone.

The trip was a lot of fun and we were very appreciative of my mom taking us but boy 2 kids are a lot of work in a small space with little sleep. Taylor didn't do well at night. She woke up constantly from all the loud sounds and the squeaky bed and who knows what else. She got so used to being up that she started acting like it was time to get up. I would feed her and she would jump out of my arms and start running around the room saying "night night" in this sassy way that let you know she was not going night night any time soon. We got to the point that we would just push her around the boat for hours to keep her from keeping everyone else awake. She loved it but it make mom and I exhausted. So if we all hadn't been sleep deprived it probably would have been even more fun.

Taylor's favorite spot on the boat was the planters filled with round stones. She would take them out, line them up and then put them back. She is pretty easy to entertain.

Taylor's favorite activity is following her brother and climbing stairs. And on the boat she had a lot of stairs. Unfortunately she doesn't understand why she can't take the stairs standing up like everyone else so you have to watch her closely. Taylor was such a hit on the boat. Anywhere we went she had people talking to her. She is such a social little girl and loves to watch people and wave to them all. At dinner one night the hostess came over and started playing with her and said "Oh I just love this little girl. Look at how many people are watching her. She is our favorite." It was not uncommon for 4 or 5 waiters to come to the table during the meal to play with her and Ethan. On the last day a man came up to me and was telling me about how at the beginning of the cruise Taylor had been waving to him in the dining room. He was so excited. It was funny. But she is a cutie!

Ethan had a great time at the waterpark. I was a big fan too since I could just sit in a chair and watch him play :)

Ethan had a blast though. Sometimes I think once you become a parent you stop thinking about what is fun for you and fun becomes finding things that your children love. If that is true then I had a lot of fun because Ethan was in heaven. I don't know what was his favorite because he will never pick just one thing but he always asked to play minature golf but it was hardest to pull him away from the pirate ship playground equipment they had at one of the island we stopped at. Carnival owns a private island in the Bahamas and they have built all sorts of things on this beautiful island. We played at the beach for a while until we discovered this park area and Ethan never wanted to go back to the beach. Taylor on the other hand is my beach girl. This was her first time ever going to the beach and she couldn't get enough. She had no fear of the water and got her first taste of sand. She may stick up her nose at the NC beaches we are used to after experiencing the Bahamas.

Poor Ethan got so tired from walking all the time that he asked to ride in the stroller and hold Taylor. Sometimes they are so sweet together.

I love this video of Ethan trying to play putt-putt. The course is on the top of the ship and it was so windy.

Spring Break

2010-04-01T20:49:00.013-04:00

We spent some time in the Smokey Mountain National Park and it was just beautiful. It would have been nice to be there when all the leaves were out or in the fall but it was still pretty. I love this picture of Taylor and Abe. She loves her daddy.

Below are some wild turkeys that were hanging out throughout the park. Ethan had big plans for getting a bow and arrow and catching one. Where does he get that from? Definitely not my side of the family.

Ethan's favorite activity of the trip was the go-karts. He thought he was the coolest thing ever. I loved the look on his face when he would come around the corner. I never could quite catch the look as they sped by. He still talks about how fast he went.

That grin says it all!

While we waited for Ethan to finish with the go-karts Taylor found her favorite spot. How could you not buy ice cream from this cutie? Taylor loves to wave and say "hi" or "bye bye". It is just adorable and strangers love it. Sometimes as we are leaving stores she will do her little beauty pagent wave and say bye to everyone we pass. She is so friendly.

Kennedy, in the sunglasses, is Taylor's favorite toy. Taylor loves babies but she especially loves Kennedy. She always wants to check on her, hug her and see her. Poor Kennedy takes the "love" pretty well.

I think Ethan fights us on about 75% of all pictures we try to take. Sometimes we just give up.

We took a nice hike up to some waterfalls in the Smokey Mountain National Forest. It was a lovely walk but it would probably have been prettier when the trees have leaves. Ethan wasn't too happy with how cold it was near the waterfall. I think he was hoping for some swimming but it was really chilly. Abe got a real workout pushing both kids up the mountain.

On the last day of our trip we went to Dollywood amusement park. It was a cute park and they had tons of rides for the kids. We swaped kids with our friends so that we could all ride some of the rollercoasters. I was impressed with Ethan and Taylor for their bravery on the rides. Taylor had no problem on the teacups and even rode some rides with Ethan by themselves. They are just an adorable little couple sometimes. Abe took the camera with him while I had the kids on the ride so all the pictures I took were on my friend's camera so I haven't gotten them yet. If they turn out cute I'll post them later.

This is the last picture of the day. I think we all felt the same way. What a long day! It was fun though. I love seeing Ethan having such a good time. His enthusiasm is contagious. As always, the vacation was too short and we are once again back into the grind of having Abe out of town and life being busy. But Abe is enjoying this rotation and the doctor he is working with. I'm so proud of him! During a very busy day during this first week the doctor told Abe that he was really happy to have him helping him. I would guess that most medical students just add to the work that the doctors have so I thought it was a great compliment.

Parakeet Eyes

2010-03-28T20:31:00.003-04:00

The other day I was impressed with Ethan for finding something that we had lost in the house. We had been discussing the letter E and eagles so I mentioned that eagles have good vision and so when a person is really good at seeing small things we say they have eagle eyes. Ethan thought it was kind of funnybut didn't say much about it.

Later this week he was sitting in his carseat and out of the blue he says to me, "Parakeets have creepy eyes. So if someone has creepy eyes then you call them parakeet eyes." That boy cracks me up. So if Ethan ever calls you "parakeet eyes" you will know it isn't a compliment.

Just so everyone can see how bad it was

2010-03-24T19:50:00.002-04:00

Just in case anyone doubted that Ethan's hair twirling was a problem I took a picture of Ethan's bald spot. He has the big one and then he had started a smaller one above it. It is at least the size of a quarter.
Since the picture I posted of Ethan's haircut made it looked that Ethan was pretty pained about the whole thing I thought I would post another picture. Ethan does not like to cooperate for pictures. He likes to intentionally close his eyes and turn his head when I try to take them. I got smart and took the picture on 2 rather than on 3 so he didn't have a chance to ruin my picture. The haircut is growing on me. He looks like such a little man though.

I think Taylor is hoping to get her head shaved too. Every meal she ends up looking like this because after every bite she has to run her hands through her hair. That hair around her eye is actually plastered there with green beans. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she would actually leave a hairclip in her hair but that would be asking too much.

This is Ethan's first picture of anyone. And of course he took the easy route and drew Abe. I would say it is pretty accurate. I'm not sure if Abe is suppose to have a mustache or what but I love it.

Oh my....

2010-03-20T15:08:00.003-04:00

So this morning when I left Ethan with his dad while I ran a few errands this is what Ethan looked like (well minus the chocolate, that was from the pie we made for Abe yesterday)

Then when I came home I found Abe and Ethan in the bathroom and this is what Ethan looked like. Needless to say I was a little shocked.

In Abe's defense I had been threatening to shave his head for the last week. Ethan has picked up an awful habit from Taylor of twirling the hair on the crown of his head. Taylor does it while she is nursing and he started doing it when he is tired but now does it all the time. But when Ethan does it he twists REALLY hard and it makes the hair on the crown of his head stand straight up. Well this week I realized that he has been doing it so hard that he now has a bald spot in the back of his head and it is getting bigger. None of my techniques for getting him to stop have worked so I told him we would shave his head when daddy got back. He protested all week that there was no way he would have his head shaved. When I saw him willingly shaven I asked Abe how he convinced him. All it took was a promise of one piece of pie. I now know that this kid would do anything for pie.

We had been having some gorgeous weather these last several days so it has been wonderful to get outside for the first time in ages. Thankfully the warm weather stuck around until Saturday so we could enjoy it with Abe. We had a picnic and did some fishing. Oh life is so much better when I can get outside when the kids. I love it!

Can you get more balance after you lose it?

2010-03-05T10:32:00.007-05:00

Usually when we are riding anywhere I get bombarded with questions from Ethan. Often they are related to analyzing books or shows and he asks a million questions about why things happen. We have these books that are shortened versions of all sorts of Disney movies. Ethan has picked up on the fact that some pieces are missing and he wants me to fill in the pieces. The other day we were analyzing the book about Snow White. We went through all sorts of questions and then we got to the point where the Queen dies by losing her balance and falling off the cliff. So this is how the rest of the conversation went:

Ethan: So how did she lose her balance?
Me: She tripped.

Ethan: Did her balance fall out when she tripped?

(This is when I figured out that Ethan was a little confused.)

Me: No, balance can't fall out. It's just an expression. You know how Taylor doesn't walk very good. She doesn't have good balance.
Ethan: So is her balance smaller than mine?

Me: (having given up) Sure.

Ethan: So can I give her my big balance?

Me: Would you do that for her?

Ethan: Sure, but I can get another one right? Is you balance in your head or your body?

We will try to bring that topic up again some day. I love his inquisitive mind, even when it drives me absolutely crazy. He is always thinking about something. The video is of Taylor and her lack of balance.

The other day I was working very hard to clean the kids' room. They were playing and I had it looking great. I left the room for a few minutes to work on the office and this is the scene I returned to. Taylor had decided to unload everything in her dresser. Ethan had decided to join in the fun by adding every blanket and pillow he could find. They were both so proud of themselves.

So I have always been a fan of the photo editing where they take a B&W picture and add a little bit of color. I never knew how to do it though and we all know I'm cheap so I have never gone to a fancy photographer. So recently a friend mentioned using picnik.com to edit photos for free online. Probably everyone else has heard of this but I hadn't. So I have had fun editing some pics. If you haven't checked it out, you should.

Tattle Tail

2010-02-28T17:40:00.002-05:00

Ethan definitely likes to try to get his sister in trouble. In general, it's usually Ethan that has done something to her when she does get mad at him so he is usually the one getting in trouble. Today I was cleaning up after dinner and this is the conversation:

Ethan: Taylor's hurting me.
Me: What is she doing?
Ethan: Stuff, mean stuff.
Me: Like what?
Ethan: Just mean stuff.
So I walk into the room to see Taylor at the book shelf getting a book and pulling it across the room. I give Ethan one of those "sure she was" looks and go back to the dishes. A few minutes later,
Ethan: She's still being mean.
Me: She is just looking at a book.
Ethan: But she got out the dinosaur book to scare me away. Look it has big teeth on it.

I think he is giving his sister a little too much credit. Of course a few minutes later he was told to pick up his blocks and I heard him trying to talk Taylor into picking them up for him. She is actually a much better cleaner-upper so it actually worked. Soon she will learn that he was just trying to "throw her under the bus" with mom.

Wish us luck as we start another two months with Abe being away during the week. He hasn't been gone 2 hours and we already miss him. Week 1 is always the worst. We have been spoiled having him around for the last 2 months and it has been wonderful! Work has been terribly busy and having Abe around has been such a blessing. The last week has been 12 hour days and I can't wait for Wednesday when I get to start a break from work. A nice trip to visit the grandparents is just around the corner, as long as we can survive until Wednesday.

Happy Birthday Taylor!

2010-02-14T19:18:00.009-05:00

I can't believe my baby is one already. She is getting so big. Her birthday was the 5th but work has been crazy and life has been so busy that I didn't get a chance to post anything. We had a party planned for the day after her birthday but thanks to the never ending snow we are getting this year we had to reschedule for yesterday. Both Taylor and Ethan have celebrated their birthday with snow this year and we are so tired of the snow. We still have at least a foot of snow in the front yard. And spring is nowhere in sight. Taylor is growing and learning new tricks every day. She is getting better and better at walking all the time. She walked almost half way across the gym today at church. She is saying new words, like baby and ball. I have no doubt that she will be competing with Ethan to tell her stories soon enough. Today Ethan said to me when we were in the nursery "I was playing and then I recognized that my secret bag (a present from his teacher) was missing." He is the only kid that I know to throw recognized into a story. He also came in and said "Mom, I'm famished." I asked what he said just to confirm and he replies "famished, mom. It means you're hungry." I love when he defines words for me.

On Taylor's actual birthday she opened her presents. She loves her little stroller for her baby dolls but she really loves trying to sit in it herself. She has quite a love for her baby dolls. She usually has one tucked under her arm all day long and always wants to bring them in the car. She loves real babies just as much and loves to try and hug and kiss them.

We had a great time visiting with friends as we celebrated Taylor's birthday. Last month my friend and I took a cake decorating class so it was fun to decorate a cake for the party. Unfortunately it was made of sugar so Taylor couldn't eat a bite of it but it looked pretty. When Ethan and I went to buy the cake mix he convinced me to get one strawberry and one chocolate. I didn't realize that I hate strawberry cake. Even the smell of it is awful to me. So I can't say it was the best tasting cake either but once again, it looked pretty.

Taylor walking around, baby in hand.

Taylor talking to her friend at the party. She was probably telling her "don't you dare touch the baby."

Taylor really got into eating her cupcake and now when she sees them on the counter she whines for more. She definitely has a little sweet tooth.

This is Ethan's contribution to the post. I have been trying to convince him to try and draw things for me but he has zero interest. He made a valentine's day card for me and it had a little picture on it and I asked him what it was. He said something like it a splat, pow. So we have been working on writing letters and he was finally willing to give up his constant power struggle to try and write his name for me. You have to use your imagination a little but I was so impressed. He probably has the creativity of his mother and will never draw me a picture.

Taylor's Turn

2010-01-11T15:58:00.004-05:00

I have been totally amazed by how much Taylor has changed over the last several weeks. It is so much fun to watch her grow up but of course it is a little sad too. She has started taking steps in between Abe and I. She will take about 4 steps unless she gets too excited (usually because she sees Ethan). Such bravery has resulted in our first black eye though. She has started talking more too. I love to hear "mama" coming from the other room when I'm gone. But I think my favorite word these days is "thank you." She says it so sweet and quietly. I just love it. She has figured out that the cow says moo and will say moo when she sees a cow (or any animal that she thinks looks like a cow). I love "uh-oh" as she starts to drop food off her high chair. She is such a social little girl, just like Ethan at that age. She was constantly saying "hi" to the little girl behind us at church on Sunday and loves to hug people she meets and her baby dolls. She is just such a sweetheart.

Taylor hates having her hair done but that doesn't stop me completely. The fact that she usually has the clips out before I can get into the car does deter me though. She is so proud of herself when I go to get her out of the car and she has her hair clips out and her sock in her hand. She just waves it around enthusiastically.

This is a picture of the day after her last hairdo. Another deterrent to hairdos !

Happy Birthday Ethan!

2009-12-27T14:32:00.007-05:00

So we celebrated Ethan's 3rd birthday the other week. I can't believe how much time has passed. We had a big snowstorm here the weekend that we were planning to celebrate his birthday since Abe was gone on his actual birthday. Abe was a trooper and thought he could make it home in the snow but he had continual bad luck. The highway became a parking lot for about 5 hours and the rest of the way he had to drive under 35 mph. Needless to say a 4-hour trip turned into a 14-hour trip. He probably would not have made it home for the weekend except for the fact that all the exits had huge piles of snow from the snowplows and he couldn't get off the highway. Once he finally got home around 5am he still had a walk a mile to our house since the roads had not been plowed in our hilly neighborhood. So he gets lots of brownie points for the effort. It was nice to have him home while we were stuck in the house.

But we did have everything we needed to celebrate Ethan's birthday so we had fun. Ethan was so excited with his chocolate cake and ice cream. When everything has to be made completely from scratch it isn't often that we make that kind of effort. When we got done with the cake and presents Ethan said "Thanks guys for celebrating my birthday, thanks guys." It was so sweet.
Grandma Singletary got Ethan this great wooden castle for his birthday. We joke that it was a present for Ethan and Abe. Honestly, we have all had a great time using the castle as a backdrop for stories, puppet shows, and battles.

So in honor of Ethan's birthday this post is all about him. He continues to amuse us with the things he says and does. I had a video I wanted to upload but it wouldn't load. It may be too big. I'm stubborn enough that I will probably try to load it another time. The video was of him telling me a story. I love his stories. They usually start off "Once upon a time when I was bigger...." Then he continues with pieces from other stories that he has heard. They always make my day. But instead of the video I will just list off some of my favorite Ethan lines from the last several months. I'm afraid I will forget them so I'm saving them here for posterity. Here are my favorites. I may have posted some of them in the past so forgive me if you have heard them before.

- While talking to Abe on the phone "Dad, is it okay if I catch up with you later?"

- When he was told that he had to talk nicely to his dad if he wanted something he replied "Abraham may I have some milk?" (I don't know why he had to call dad Abraham)

- While saying the prayer at dinner he opens one eye and says "God made the animals so I can bless them too, right?"

- While visiting his grandma he sat down outside the bathroom. She asked him what he was doing and he replied "Just making sure you don't get into anything."

- When Grandma said, in a serious tone, that it was time to stop playing and lay down (while he was suppose to be in his bed asleep) Ethan said "WHO taught you to talk like that?" Grandma doesn't get serious very often.

- While Ethan was suppose to be taking a nap I found him in my room with a jar of vaseline and vaseline all over him. He quickly said "I'll get it off in just a minute. I just wanted to look like Santa Clause."

- Ethan is great at learning new words from books and movies and using them. The other day while watching a movie he said "Jesus' shadow is looming over the man." "Looming" came from a Winnie the Pooh book. He also came out of his room one night saying he couldn't go to sleep because "there are mysterious shadows on the walls."

-He has become a master at trying to get out of going to bed. The other night he had several trips down the stairs to avoid bed. Once he said "oh I thought it was morning time." I explained that I would call him when it was breakfast time. So 5 minutes later he came down and said "Umm, mom I just have to ask you something. Did I just hear you say 'Ethan, its breakfast time'?" When i said no he said "oh, okay" and went back to bed for good.

- I love the way he talks to Taylor. She was crying in the store because she wanted to get down from the cart. He looks at her and in a very sweet voice says "Taylor, we can't yell in the store. Okay?" And if I ever tell Taylor no or she gets into something he is very quick to defend her. He tells me "She's just a baby mom. She doesn't know any better."

- The other day Ethan says "Let's play David and Goliath. You be Goliath." I said okay and as soon as I turn around Ethan chucked a plastic screw at my head. I got really annoyed and lectured him about how we don't throw things at people. He looked confused and said "but you said we could play David and Goliath?" I learned my lesson.

- We are fully into the "why and how" questions stage. The other day he wanted to know why boys marry girls and why girls are different than boys. After our discussion I asked him if he was going to get married some day. He said "no, I can't." When I prompted him for why not he replied like it was obvious "because I can't dance." He continued with "I just know silly dances. I can't do real dances, you know, like Prince Phillip."

- In the car the other day he wanted to know what Heavenly Father had made us out of.

- After leaving the bathroom one day he said "Do giants have big penises?"

- While sitting on the toilet he says to Abe and I "can you hear that?" then says "try and smell it"

Thanks for humoring me. I just want a record of these things so I will remember all the fun times with this little boy as he gets big.

Slacker

2009-12-19T08:16:00.007-05:00

I can't believe so much time has passed since our last post but I guess with the busyness of work, Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, and not having Abe around it has kept me busy with other things. We had a long week at Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving. It was nice since Abe was working in Richmond for the month. We got to see him in the evenings and he even had a couple of days off for the holiday so it was nice to spend time with him. We are counting down the days until his 3 months of out of town rotations will end. Christmas Eve he will be done and we will have him around for 2 months before he is off traveling again.

Ethan and Taylor did not want to cooperate for pictures. In every picture one of them looked cute and the other one had their eyes closed or something else weird was going on. Finally we just gave up and took their pictures alone.

Abe's sister was wonderful and made the trip from New Jersey to come see us. We had a great time visiting with her. We went to Williamsburg the day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate all that well. Thanksgiving Day had been gorgeous so it was sad that it turned cold and rainy while we were out. Abe took this picture right before Taylor peed all the way down the both of us. Of course I had extra clothes for her but not for me.

There is a park near my parents house and Ethan loves to go anytime we are there. Taylor was getting into it too. Even some of the adults had a good time on the slide. I will spare them the embarrassment of posting those pictures.

Poor Taylor, her hat makes her already large head look gigantic. But unless it secures under her chin she has it off in a heartbeat.

Ethan has no fear at the park.

Ethan was a great "help" while we raked the leaves at my parents house. He got a ride both ways and Abe got a great workout.

Last week Abe had to work all weekend in N.C. so we went to visit him. We stayed with two different friends while we were down there and we had a good time. One family had a dog that Ethan couldn't get enough of and the other friends had several boys for Ethan to play with. I'm sure they were tired of playing with him by the end of the weekend but he loved it. He wasn't ready to go home at the end of the weekend. Taylor's favorite part was grabbing the boys hair and giving them wet kisses. This girl is a total flirt with the boys. She is so much fun as her little personality continues to come out more and more.

As some of you probably know, Ethan had a very attached tongue and it made it impossible for him to say some letters and to do things like lick his lips. We finally decided that we needed to have it fixed so we had the surgery done this month. It was very minor but because of his age they had to put him under. It is always a stressful process. Thankfully we have wonderful friends that watched Taylor since Abe was gone, of course. Ethan was a trooper about it, as he usually is. They have him some medicine to calm him before they took him back for surgery. He was pretty amusing. They had poked his finger to draw blood so he had a bandaid on his finger. He just kept starring at his finger and saying "bandaid, bandaid, bandaid" in this really spacey voice. Then he would would ask me if the bed was moving and the go back to "bandaid...." So here are a before and after picture. He didn't want to move it for a few days but now it is all healed and he is pretty excited with wiggling it around. Of course he will never keep up with Taylor and her crazy long tongue but at least now he can lick the batter off the beaters.

Happy Halloween

2009-11-01T19:54:00.004-05:00

We had such a great weekend. For the first time in at least 5 months Abe hasn't had to study over the weekend so we got to spend a half day on Friday and all day Saturday together. We have some WONDERFUL friends that volunteered to watch Ethan and Taylor on Friday night so Abe and I could go out and celebrate. Saturday we had fun getting ready for Halloween. We decided to go with a Peter Pan theme for our Halloween costumes. Ethan has wanted to be a pirate for months and Ethan refers to Taylor as Tinkerbell so that was settled. Thanks to a costume from high school I was Princess Tiger Lily. Ethan had the most fun. He was told he could only swordfight with people at the ward party that also had a sword so he spent most of the time just wandering around looking for people with swords. He hardly got any candy, which only makes Abe and I sad since he can't eat it and we were hoping for more, because he spent the whole time provoking people so they would fight with him.

Abe doing his best "angry pirate" face.

Taylor was a trooper about her tu-tu. Friday night I decided I didn't like the onsie that I was going to put under her tu-tu so we whipped out a green dress in a couple of hours and I think it turned out so cute, well as long as no one looks too closely.

I put some gel in her hair to give her some little curls and she worked on ruining her hair do from the minute I put it in.

She loved to eat her wings all night long.

So Proud!

2009-10-28T20:40:00.004-04:00

So today has been such an exciting day. Abe found out that four months of studying paid off and he passed the boards! I am so proud of him. He was a little worried after he took the test so we have been not so patiently waiting to hear the results. What a relief! He has had a great month starting his rotations and getting into being at the hospital. I know he will hate this but I'm going to brag on him a little bit. Last week, I think, he was helping the doctor in the operating room. The doctor was letting him do some parts of the procedure. Once they were finished and the doctor had left the room the nurse told Abe that the doctor had never let a medical student do that before. I have always know that Abe would shine once he got to the hands on part of medical school so I am so excited for him.

You guys will have to bare with me with all these random video posts. Taylor is growing and changing so much and I feel bad that Abe misses out on all the fun things. So these are for him. I was in the kitchen today, while periodically checking on Taylor to see what she was up to. I saw her trying to pull herself up for the first time by herself. So I grabbed the camera and was able to capture the moment when she finally got herself up. Being the good mother that I am I stopped filming before she crashed to the ground (actually she sat back down pretty gracefully). I love seeing all the new things she can do. She is so close to "really" crawling but gets around quite well with her little army crawl. Today she was rocking and picking up one arm and then the other. But she just can't figure out how to get it all together.

Today Ethan used his new favorite phrase "Mom, can you do me a favor?" I think he got this from my mom or maybe the babysitter says it. But it often is followed by something kind of annoying like "Can you do me a favor and not make a mess when we get home?" That would imply that he actually cleans up messes that I make. Even when I agree to do whatever favor it is he asks of me it is sometimes followed by a doubting tone and "do you promise mom?" Oh if only he actually did all the things I asked instead of just memorizing them and using them against me. Thanksfully even with the long weeks I can still find the humor in that little boy.

Just for you Abe

2009-10-20T19:57:00.002-04:00

So Abe has been gone for the last week and was on call over the weekend so we didn't see him. I know he misses us so we made a little video of Taylor. It's not all that exciting but she gets so excited in her swing. I thought he would like it. I know it makes me laugh. Who knew a baby swing could go this fast.

We can't wait to see Abe on Friday. Love you Abe!

Our New Adventure Begins

2009-10-04T21:29:00.006-04:00

So this week Abe left for his first rotation and another chapter begins. Needless to say it will be a challenge since it starts the first of 3 months that he will be gone at least Monday through Friday and some weekends. I'm not looking forward to single parenthood either. But we are so excited for him to be able to start 3rd year and be one step closer to being done. And so far we are surviving just fine. And Abe is doing great in his rotations. He is doing OB-GYN so he has been delivery babies all week. We are so proud of him! Keep him in your prayers as he takes the boards next week and we will be so excited when that is done. Then maybe we will get to see him on weekends.

Ethan and Taylor are both doing great. Ethan spent a couple of days with my parents a few weeks ago so I could get some projects done around the house. Ethan had a blast with all the attention. My mom called me with lots of great stories about things Ethan had said. We definitely missed the funny things he says. He sat down outside the door to the bathroom and when my mom asked him what he was doing he said "Just making sure you don't get into anything." I love when you hear your words coming out of his mouth.

Though we missed him it was nice to have more free time and the ability to get things done. Mainly we got a lot of painting done and we moved Taylor and Ethan into the same room. I like all the change and Ethan and Taylor have been doing great together. Ethan does end up in Taylor's crib many nights. Just now I was interrupted by Taylor crying and found Ethan and his blanket in bed with Taylor. He was totally asleep. We are going to have to break him of this habit somehow. But overall they have been so good in the same room.

We went to the pumpkin patch this week and Ethan had a great time with the pumpkins, petting zoo, and hay ride. He has no fear of the animals and was all about sticking his hands in to touch them all. Even Taylor didn't seem to mind the animals getting close. I would sometimes forget that she was in the backpack when I turned around and she was up close with the animals.

Ethan is obsessed with being a pirate for Halloween and he has a pirate sword from his costume that practically doesn't leave his hand. Well unless Taylor finds it first because she loves it as much as he does. And she loves to stick her tongue out also. I find it adorable because I'm used to Ethan's tongue that doesn't stick out. We took some family photos at my mom's house and Taylor's tongue was out most of the time for the pictures.

Taylor loves finger foods. This was a picture from her first attempt at eating cereal. She would get so excited when she got them between her fingers and figured out how to get them into her mouth. It's nice to have a way to distract her when I need to get stuff done.

So Ethan's new favorite toy is a rope swing that Abe put up under the back porch. He watched a movie where the pirates were swinging from a rope swing so that is all he wants to do. This little video is Ethan once he discovered on his own how to climb up the playhouse and swing off. We are waiting for the day that this little trick lands us in the emergency room.

Our Utah Vacation

2009-09-05T20:13:00.007-04:00

It is kind of sad to be home from our vacation to Utah. I'm sure the best part was that Abe didn't study like he should have and we got to spend lots of time with him. But it was a really fun trip. I think Ethan probably had the most fun of anyone. Abe's parents house is like his dream come true. There are horses, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, a pool, heavy machinery, plastic swords, swings and pumpkin pie.

We went up the canyon one evening for a picnic. Ethan had a blast with his cousin Peyton. Ethan was a little sad when Peyton told him that he "wanted to be alone." Ethan doesn't understand the concept of wanting to be alone but I'm sure he will learn it once Taylor gets big enough to want to tag along all the time.

This sword did not leave Ethan's hand for the better part of the week. He would have it sitting on the table while he ate his breakfast and didn't put it down for the rest of the day. Usually his eyes would barely open and he would mutter "wanna sword fight?" Thankfully there were two swords so everyone else had a chance at defending themselves. They were short enough and hard enough that he could get some good whacks across your knuckle. He was quick to remind Grandpa that "we only hit swords" when Grandpa got a little out of control. Ethan's sword fights involve a lot of sound effects, rolling on the floor, and an adorable little kick. It is really quite a sight. We learned from Ethan that "girls can't sword fight" when he took the sword away from Aunt Leah to give it to someone else to fight with him. We did finally convince him that he was wrong and he let Leah play.

I decided to get a new haircut while I was out in Utah. I'm still getting used to it.
I know I have mentioned before that Ethan LOVES hats. He was once again loving Grandpa's house with its never ending supply of hats. He had about 3 that he rotated between. Usually first thing in the morning it was the "pirate" hat that he would wear while he ate breakfast, with the sword close at hand. Then when it was time to feed the animals he would put on the cowboy hat, because Grandpa told him he couldn't ride a horse if he was a pirate so he had to be a cowboy. Then to the park he would wear one of Grandpa's ball caps mainly because he couldn't sit in his carseat with the cowboy hat.

We all had a good time playing in the pool. Though Ethan seems to have a death wish when it came to the pool. He tried to drown himself twice, unsuccessfully. We had a cookout on Saturday when a couple of Abe's siblings and their families came over. Taylor loved all the attention the whole week. She loves it when anyone holds her or looks at her. She loves to stare at people until they smile at her and then she gives them a big grin. She was loving all the people on the plane that she could look at through the seats or across the aisle. On the flights out to Utah things were pretty slow and most of the flight attendants had held her at some point in time. She is our attention junkie.

This is Abe's dad fixing something on the flag pole. I thought he was absolutely crazy for doing this. Though I'm guessing such feats are somewhat common since no one else seemed to bat an eye at this. Note Abe and Ethan are driving. Stephen wasn't thrilled with me for taking the picture so I'm sure he will LOVE me posting it.

We had a great time visiting our friends Becca, Brett, Aidan and Ethan. Ethan kept wanting to hold Taylor, well he called her "it". Of course Taylor loved it because Ethan has great hair for pulling, which is her favorite hobby. Our Ethan kept asking to go back to their house for the rest of the week.

Taylor is getting enough hair back for some hairdos and I'm loving it! Of course this one only lasted for a little while since Taylor loves to stroke her hair and pull out the clips.

We were lucky enough to be visiting Utah at the same time that our sister-in-law Leah and her daughter, Julia, were in town. Taylor and Julia are about 2 months apart and they were so cute together. Taylor enjoyed rolling on top of Julia and trying to suck on her feet. Can't you just imagine Julia thinking "put down the camera and save me!" I'm sure if Julia and Taylor had spent another day or two together Julia would have learned to roll just to protect herself.

Home is just utterly boring compared to all the fun we had in Utah. Ethan continues to ask to go to the pool or if we have any pumpkin pie (which his Grandma had made for him). Thankfully the day after we got back I had to go to work and he went to play at his friends house and that took his mind off our boring house. I thought to myself after the plane ride out there that we may never fly with two kids again but the kids redeemed themselves on the way home. They were really good even though we had to get off one plane and run to the next and immediately sit down again. So we can't wait to go and visit everyone again. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

An Update

2009-08-05T22:01:00.003-04:00

Thanks for all your concern about our babysitter quitting. Luckily we have found another babysitter and she is great! As of right now she might just be around until September when I have to rethink my plan for when I work because she has night classes that start at 4 (which she didn't mention until after she was hired, I didn't say she was perfect but she is great). Ethan seems to really like her and Taylor is actually taking a bottle from her and drinking a whopping 10 oz. of milk while I'm gone all day. This is a record since she was drinking 3 oz at most from the old babysitter. So that is one stressor down for the moment. I do have to complain about one thing with the new babysitter. You know how I had ranted in my last post about the horrible "goodwill" pants that the old babysitter had put on Taylor. Well I come home after the first day of leaving the kids with the new babysitter only to find that Taylor was once again wearing the "goodwill" pants. Either babysitters, by profession, have no fashion sense or Abe is trying to tease me by changing the children before I get home. I will also mention that Ethan had on a "belly shirt" (a shirt that was obviously too small and showed his little belly). My kids might be scarred for life from these outfits.

I just love these two pictures of Ethan. He was watching the Sword and the Stone the other day and he decided he wanted to joust. So in a moment of creativity, a fleeting moment, I made him a little costume. He was just so cute as he rode around on his "horse" with his stick. In the top picture Abe had Ethan make a mean face. He is just so cute.

Ethan-isms

2009-07-27T18:45:00.006-04:00

Ethan has been driving me crazy lately with the things he says and does. He tries to act so grown up. Abe finds them quite amusing so I thought I would share some of them with you. I took the picture above this morning. He sat at Abe's computer and told me that he had some work to do. I was talking to him about what he was doing and he picks up the voice recorder, puts it to his ear and says "Mom can you be quiet, this is an important call." I know where he has heard that before.

The other day he came out of his room before quiet time (in lieu of nap time) was over and I asked him who told him he could come out of his room. With all seriousness he said "Monkey (his stuffed animal) opened his eyes and said it was time to wake up." Today during another non-nap time he came downstairs with a blanket on his head and I said "Ethan why did you come out of your room?" He replied "It's not Ethan, its just a ghost."

The other day I asked him if he had seen the sling I have for Taylor. He wasn't sure what I was talking about so I clarified "the brown polka dot sling." He was quick to point out that it had "white spots". And the sad part is he is usually right but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

I had cleaned up the other day and I threw away some things that Ethan had brought home from nursery since he hadn't looked at it since Sunday. I made the mistake of throwing them in the bathroom trashcan so later when Ethan went into the bathroom he said "WHAT HAPPENED!" I think I just played innocent and acted like I had no idea what he was talking about. Then in a totally patronizing voice he said "Mom, Jesus doesn't go in the trashcan."

I don't think I have mentioned that Ethan told us recently that he has a brother that hangs out at Food Lion (which is kind of across the street from our house). His name is Nathan. When I asked him if his brother lived at Food Lion and he looked at me like I was completely crazy. He said "No one LIVES at Food Lion." So I'm the crazy one cause its completely rational just to hang out there but not to live there.

So I have finally found my one crafty passion. This has taken many years and much money wasted on things that I did once and put down. As Taylor has lost a lot of her hair it is hard to put ponies and barettes in her hair. Not to mention the fact that she likes to stroke her hair while she eats and will pull out anything that is in her hair (and any hair that might be attached to it). Because of her rather large head I couldn't find many headbands that will fit her head so I decided to make my own. So I spent a while (I won't confess how long it actually took) figuring out how to make them adjustable and how to make it so I can just switch out the ribbon so it takes me about two minutes and maybe 50 cents to make a new one. It is pretty sad that I'm so excited about my accomplishment but like I said, I don't do crafty very often. So here is Taylor modeling my first creation. She is pretty good about wearing them though the other day in the car I heard Ethan say from the back seat, "Mom, Taylor is being a pirate" as the headband had covered her eyes. I felt kind of bad so I was talking to her about how I was sorry and I would fix it when we stopped. Ethan looked at her and said "Don't worry, now the sun can't get in your eyes." Such an optimist.

And the rest are just some random photos that I forgot to post. We once again abandoned Abe and went to my parents house on one of the weekends that he had classes on Saturday and Sunday. It is so nice to have them close enough that we can pop in for the weekend.

We had a fun 4th of July and Ethan loved his "flag shirt". Any time I put it on him now he points out that it isn't the 4th of July any more.

Ethan's enthusiam went down from here once he realized that we weren't going to let him shoot the fireworks off.

So this picture is from one day when the babysitter did Taylor's hair. I don't know why she always makes it stick straight up but it looks so funny. I can't remember if I ranted about this or not but forgive me if I have. So I have this pile of clothes that people have given me that I decided I didn't like enough to keep and I have been meaning to take it to goodwill or something. For several days straight I would come home to find that the babysitter had dressed her completely in goodwill clothes (by the way this is not one of her goodwill outfits). I personally think Taylor has lots of adorable outfits so I can't figure out why in the world she would pick these to dress her in. It annoyed me to no end. Not to mention that I'm so annoyed with this same babysitter because she wrote me an email last night saying that she is quitting with hardly any notice because she found a better paying job. So annoying!

Putting Off Work

2009-06-29T21:08:00.007-04:00

So since we are always willing to take blog requests from someone as cute as Ethan's cousin Audrey (and do to the fact that I don't feel like doing work) here is a video of Ethan. I asked him what he wanted to do for his video and he said he would sing "I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home." Maybe it was the fact that we were sitting on the porch waiting for Abe to come home. I had a cuter version where he sang all the words but I always forget the fact that you can't turn the camera on its side when you take a video. You would think I would learn.

The weekend before last Ethan, Taylor and I went to Greensboro, NC to visit some of my friends and we took Ethan to the Children's Museum. He had a great time at the museum and I had fun visiting my wonderful friends. I'm so bad about forgetting to take pictures, especially while trying to keep Taylor happy. But here are a few.

We started a garden this summer and Ethan has been a big help. He would water it all day long for you if you let him. And he is quite willing to pick anything, even if it doesn't need picking. This is a picture with our weird looking zucchini. He was so excited that he got to pick it.

Abe finally finished his second year of medical school and we are so excited for him. So that means the classroom portion of medical school is over and he is spending the summer studying for boards. Unfortunately he only had one day off between the end of class and the beginning of board reviews so we enjoyed our day to the fullest. We spent the evening celebrating with some of Abe's classmates and their families at a bbq. Of course I didn't take hardly any pictures and after the fact I realized that I hadn't taken a single picture of our family other than one of Taylor. Taylor was too tired to enjoy the party so she whined most of the time.

Here are a few more pictures of Taylor. I just love naked baby pictures. Taylor has figured out that sucking on her toes is a lot more fun than her fingers.

Just Some Pics

2009-06-15T15:07:00.006-04:00

Since we don't have anything exciting to blog about here are just some pictures of my babies. I think Taylor looks so cute in brown. She is growing out of her clothes way too fast. Her 6-9 month clothes are no longer big on her.

This is what Taylor would look like if she was bald. A friend of mine gave me this headband but Taylor doesn't like wearing it too much. I think without her hair she looks a lot like her cousin Julia.

Her hair is getting so much thinner than it was back then. I can't wait for it to start growing back in again.
And some pictures of Ethan. This is from the park on Saturday. It was nice to get to spend a little time with daddy at the park.

The other day Ethan grabbed his backpack and started for the door. He asked for the keys and said that he was going to school (obviously he forgot that you don't get to drive to school until high school). As he walked down the front walk he said, "Don't worry mom. I don't have a test today, just some meetings." It's funny what he picks up and how much he wants to be like Abe. When he "came home" from school I asked how his day was and he said, "We had a test on skeletons."

Ethan loves hats. He wants to wear them all the time. This picture below is him with my winter hat on. I don't have one of him in Taylor's pink hat but he has been known to wear that one too.

It was probably 80 degrees outside and Ethan said he had to wear his winter hat to play outside.

I love this picture of Ethan and his "thinking" face. He got this from Peter Pan. He is so expressive with his face some days. It is hard not to smile when he says he is thinking about something and he makes this face.

Fun in the Sun

2009-05-22T20:44:00.009-04:00

So Ethan, Taylor and I took a trip with my mom to Myrtle Beach last weekend and we had such a fun time. Ethan has been wanting to see the beach for months and he loved it! He would have played in the sand all day but he wanted nothing to do with the water. It was too cool to get in so it was nice not having to worry about him wanting to get in. The weather could have been better so we didn't spend too much time at the beach but we had a good time. We sure missed dad though, especially in the middle of the night when Taylor didn't want to go back to sleep :)

We spent some time in Brookgreen Gardens in Myrtle Beach and it was a fun time. It's an old rice plantation which was owned by some very rich people that turned it into beautiful gardens with statues. When I was young we lived in Myrtle Beach and I have tons of memories of time spent there so it was fun to show Ethan around. He loved it too.

Ethan got into the statues so I told him to stand on a rock and be a statue. This is what he came up with. Now everywhere we go he wants to find a place to be a statue. The other day he thought standing on boxes of diapers at Walmart was a good place to strike a pose.

Ethan also thought that each of the stands describing the statues were music stands so he would stop and conduct at each of them. Of course we were all instructed to sing while he waved his arms.

I was amazed to see this alligator and turtle hanging out together. You might not be able to tell but these little guys were not in a cage, they were just wild. So needless to say we took the picture and kept walking before mama alligator came looking for her baby.

And the rest of these are just some pictures of my angels. Would all the moms agree that this is too high to push a kid in a swing? But Ethan absolutely loves it!

The other day I walked into the living room and saw that Ethan had given Taylor a pretend piece of chicken and a breadstick because she was "hungry". She was so excited.

And here is a little video of Taylor. She doesn't do anything all that exciting but she is quite a talker these days. It won't be too long before she will be giving Ethan a run for his money.

Gone Fishin'

2009-05-02T19:56:00.004-04:00

For the last couple of weeks Ethan has talked about wanting to go fishing. As with all the other ideas that Ethan gets in his head I don't know where the idea came from but finally today Abe got to take him fishing while Taylor and I went to a baby shower. He had such a great time playing and casting his fishing pole. He is such a cutie.

Abe said he kept chasing this poor goose and telling it to get in the water. Just like all the other people that Ethan bosses around, the goose didn't obey either.

The weather has been so nice lately that we have had lots of time outside. Ethan has recently decided that its fun to pee outside. It all started when we were on a walk and he had to go to the bathroom. It was several miles back to the start of the trail so Abe told him he could pee on a tree. Ethan thought that was the most fun ever. He wanted to "water" all the trees along the trail after that. Since then we have found him several times pulling down his pants and peeing against the same tree in the yard. This next picture was the other day on the front porch. Abe and I looked out and saw that he had taken off his clothes and crawled into the pot of water he had been playing in. Oh what he neighbors must think!

Taylor is getting so big. She will be 3 months next week and she is so much fun. She still has her little scowl sometimes but its easy to get a smile out of her too. She has been such a good, easy baby. We have been very lucky.

Today we were driving home and Abe mentioned that when we got home Ethan was going to have to get a bath. Ethan LOVES bath time so it was kind of strange that he started whining really loud and saying "Nooooo". After a minute he stopped suddenly and completely calmly said "Wait, Dad did you say bath? Oh I thought you said nap. Sorry dad." The whole way home he kept saying "Sorry dad." I love it when he apologizes for things. Unfortunately it is usually for things that he hasn't done wrong. For example if one of us kicks the leg of a chair then he will say "sorry mom, sorry mom". He can be a real sweetie. We just love that little boy.

We need gas

2009-04-15T10:14:00.003-04:00

Sorry no pictures for this story but I have told it to several people and all of them thought that it was funny so I thought that it should be shared with everyone. First let me say that Ethan is fascinated by Meredith pumping her breast milk. So Meredith and the kids were out and Meredith says:we need to get gas,
Of course Ethan is thinking of the fact that when he has the toots we call it gas,
Ethan says "what mommy"
Meredith: we need to pump some gas. Ethan gets his thinking face on which is really cute
Ethan: "pump the gas out of my hiney".
Meredith busts up laughing as I am sure that most of you are
Meredith: what did you say
Ethan: nothing I said nothing.
I hope this story has brightened you day a little.