Archibaldisms

We survived

2012-01-28T12:37:00.000-08:00

The coldest week of the winter to date has passed and we survived! Mostly because my mom came in towards the tail end of it and provided relief, entertainment and companionship.

We started off the festivities with cake and surprises to celebrate my mom's birthday that happened just before she arrived. Then we partied with movies and treats and games all week. She babysat the kids so Chris and I could go to the temple and out to dinner and a movie. Although, the movie theater was sold out for all of the shows we were interested in, even the one not starting for another 45 min. Crazy! So we went to Walmart and bought a movie (ended up getting 3) and a treat (or rather MANY treats).

Then we all went to church and Gwen had her 2nd Sunday in Nursery! She's doing great at being left there by herself and only cries for 30 seconds during the transition. The teachers are really helpful with her and she really seems to enjoy the snacks, songs, dolls etc... Hooray! On Monday my mom caught me up on all the laundry, helped me clean the bathrooms and made bread/scones with me for dinner.

Then the next day was chemo day and Mom babysat so I could go with Chris. This time around he started getting all quiet and withdrawn the night before (his Neupogen shots were giving him some pretty bad back pain this time around and he was on Tylenol for most of the weekend). He just laid in bed with his eyes closed and his beanie pulled down over his eyes for the entire treatment. No conversation at all. The lady in the bed next to him was on her first treatment and was very talkative, so I eventually moved to sit closer to her, in case our talking bothered Chris. Everyone thought Chris was just sleeping through it all and made comments like, " wow, good for him, lucky, etc.." I knew better. I could tell he wasn't actually asleep. His breathing wasn't deep and he shifted slightly every now and then. He really must feel pretty awful to pretend to sleep for 5 hours straight. Even though I felt didn't do much for him he told me he was glad I was there. Grabbing him extra blankets, rubbing his shoulder, making all the necessary pleasantries with nurses/etc for him was actually helpful I guess.

The next day was Mom's last day and we FINALLY made it to the West Edmonton Mall with my mom! Its the biggest mall in the world and it was really fun to show it to her. So big and amazing.

It was so nice to have my mom there and help with laundry, meals, cleaning up, watching the kids, spoiling me with groceries, a new spring form pan and a bunt pan! Also it was lots of fun to have a partner in crime for yummy treats and movies. I am paying for it now though. I really need to find some motivation for exercising more and treating less.

Charlie and Beyond Freezing

2012-01-18T08:38:00.001-08:00

Charlie is so silly. He eats so little and weighs in at 30 lbs, super light, I can still throw him around. Even though Alec is only 10/12 lbs heavier, it makes all the difference and he gets really sad now that I can't do some of the same tricks with him. Charlie just gets so distracted with his meals. Here he made an artwork out of his cheese and jam and toast:

He likes to cuddle, especially when he gets hurt and its one of my favorite things in the world to hold his little body and have his arms wrapped around my neck.

Well, I mentioned to Alec the other day, that he could use a haircut. Alec just rolled his eyes and denied the fact. Charlie, on the other hand, jumped up and down and requested a hair cut, "like Daddy... shave off all my hair!!"

I contemplated surprising Chris, who was at work, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. So I called him and warned him of Charlie's request. He wasn't against it, per se, but we wanted to make sure Charlie really wanted to do this, so when on the next day Charlie remembered and seemed quite sad we hadn't cut it the night before, we decided to shave it off that night.

In the first picture on the last row, Charlie looks A LOT like a Betteridge. He looks a lot like my dad when my dad was younger, and reminds me a lot of Betteridge cousins.

BY THE WAY...

It is soooooooo cold here. There are no words for it. I want to say, "Its freezing!" but in fact, it goes way beyond freezing. Last night it was 77 degrees BELOW freezing, in Fahrenheit. Thats -43 C or about -45 F. This morning as Chris was walking out to catch the bus, the thermometer on our front window read -32 C (-25 F).

It. Is. Cold.

Thank you, Canada

2012-01-12T08:48:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Canada...

for hands-down better Oreos
for free health care
for Shreddies (like wheat chex but... better)
for yummier Chocolate
for the best store bought Egg Nog in the World.
for heartier and tastier Graham Crackers
for generally extra kind and helpful people
for forcing me to watch hockey (its slowly growing on me)
for SUPER cold and normal tasting water straight off the tap

But most of all thank you for

easing us into winter this year!

We've been so lucky to have such a mild winter so far. Its been REALLY GREAT. As is evidenced by the following pictures. This is the ravine near our house. Chris was working from home last week during his few good days and I begged for a break so we could take advantage of the stunningly nice day.

We found a spot where I remembered kids wading across a section of this small river in the Fall, so we figured based on that and the fact that we saw tons of footprints in the snow, it was safe enough to walk across.

And now... the Canadian Winter we've heard so much about is coming. The average HIGH for the next week and a half is -14 C or 6 F. And that isn't a bad week, its what all of December was supposed to be like. There is a couple day streak of -20, so... I won't be running. And then this cold spell is supposed to end in a big snow dump, or so I hear. Lets hope we can face the next few months with all the exhuberance of an 18 month old!

Blah

2012-01-09T18:47:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about writing a post like this for a while. Then the day(s) pass(es) and I forget about it in the midst of other things to post about. But I finished the book I was reading and there aren't any interesting shows on TV so I'll let these thoughts just hang heavy and release them.

I'm tired. I'm done. I'm bipolar. Mostly, I think I'm tired. Its crazy to think that yesterday I was teaching the women in church about "Living what you believe" and I totally felt it! I felt inspired to try and work harder at truly living what I believed. I was determined to go above and beyond what I typically do and really strive for patience, assertive compassion, and awesome-mom-ness by enjoying my children more.

Then today, I'm just blah. And it wasn't even a hard day. In fact, all things considered, it had all the ingredients for greatness: I actually got out to run at 6:15AM even though I got to bed at 2:00, I got Chris to his chemo appointment only 15 min late, I successfully scrambled last-minute to get the bed/house ready for Chris to come home and feel happy to be there because for 2 hours I let the kids play/cry/laugh/entertain themselves while I read my book! I found energy to get 2/3 of the wash folded after I read for 2 more hours during nap time and finally finished my book, and I didn't over do myself when I made Mac N' Cheese for dinner and a very short, low-profile Family Home Evening before getting the kids in bed and asleep before 8:00.

Really, it was a great day. But I still feel tired with it. I catch myself wondering, so...this is my life, huh? I'm sure some of my feelings are due to my lack of sleep, or about how I don't live an exciting life of a woman who saves entire worlds with her magical powers and 5 guys who are all in love with her. (that one is slightly embarrassing to admit) If I break down my feelings a bit more, I'll start to feel a bit guilty for feeling so not-excited about life when we've been the recipients of so much love, support, and blessings (did you hear Chris' CT scan showed very positive results!?).

I like really loving life and being excited about it. I just wish those feelings could last forever.

Part of me realizes that its not possible to be in a constant state of cloud-9-ness. I know that we can't really know joy if we don't also know misery. I know that for a split second a few days ago I smelled spring and sunshine and felt the concept of "everything has a season" apply itself to all aspects of my life. I know Spring will come. I know that I'll wear shorts and sandals again and be warm somewhere. I know that we'll be able to do some active and fun activities with Chris again.

Until then I guess I'll just enjoy some good chocolate, waste some time watching nonsense on TV or on the Internet. Although, if I would follow my own advice from my lesson and try and recapture those inspirational feelings I would kick myself into action and do something really worthwhile with my time. How about a compromise? Baby steps. I'll veg out tonight and be better tomorrow. :)

Afternoon run

2012-01-04T12:52:00.001-08:00

Doesn't get much better than this.

Goodbye, Hello!

2012-01-03T09:48:00.000-08:00

Well, Goodbye to Thom and Brittany and Jackson and Graham! Thanks for coming, we know traveling with little ones is hard, especially flying internationally! Christmas, for us, is all about being with family. Thanks for making it feel like Christmas. We love you guys.

Goodbye also to 2011 and Hello 2012! We're ready for a new year with new hope. We kicked off the new year with an aebleskiver party (Chris' cousin, Steve and his wife Barb introduced these to us this past summer and Chris surprised me with an Aebleskiver pan for Christmas. You eat them like pancakes but they're also like light and gourmet doughnut holes.)

Anyway, Here are the things we're hoping for this year:

Cancer-free Chris. His scan is just in 2 days, lets hope the progress is astonishing and we can finish all cancer treatment by the end of February. If this is all we can accomplish this year, it will be enough. The rest of our goals are mainly to add some spice to every day living.

Renewed organization with daily habits like family prayer, family scripture study, Family Home Evening, chores for the kiddos, table manners and maybe even some piano practice. Chris and I finally put stuff on our billboard to help us keep track of all of theses. I know this is a lot but we'll just take work on them a little at a time.

Education! I want to try and be better about doing some sort of playschool with the kids at least twice a week. Also, I want to brush up on my own education. I realize I know nothing of physics and Chris is REALLY excited to go through some sort of textbook with me around once a week in the evenings....just for 15 min. Maybe if at least Chris is excited about it, we'll actually end up do it!

Charlie is already getting reading for school by maximizing his time on the potty. And Chris has already started a science experiment with the boys using our new Rock Tumbler we got for Christmas from my parents!

Personally, I need to lose a little weight, have more meaningful prayer, and focus on staying happy with my kids (read: not get so easily upset).

Well, I'm sure that's more than enough so I won't tell you any of my other crazy dreams like sew matching bed covers for the boys, hanging up pictures of the temple in the kids' rooms, painting a picture of the Bay Area, planing a family vacation somewhere, dream of upcoming family reunions, creating a picture somehow (pen and watercolor?digitally printing?quilted fabric?) to represent an "aha!" moment I had last week..... my ideas of things to do never end. Maybe this will be the year I won't let it drive me crazy.

Alec is 5!

2011-12-29T09:06:00.000-08:00

Even though we've been excited and anticipating Alec's birthday for a while, especially Alec, it still is SO HARD to believe that he is 5. That is so big! Am I really the mother of a 5 year old?

Alec, obediently, stayed in bed on his birthday and gave Chris and I some time to make a breakfast for him. He LOVED getting breakfast in bed, beaming his way through his pancakes and yet either he was too excited or it was too early to be eating since he said he was full before even finishing 2 pancakes! Usually, this kid can down at least 6 and sometimes 8.

Birthday Balloon Parade:
Grandma and Grandpa had to leave in the morning to drive back home to Provo, so we opened presents with them before they left. Alec's cousin, Jackson, is turning 2 this week and so we also celebrated Jackson's birthday!

Alec requested a superman cake and specifically mentioned "like Charlie had Buzz Lightyear on his cake." We don't have any duplo supermen, so Chris and I ran out to the store to see about finding a small superman action figure but were disappointed and came home empty handed. Then Chris had the brilliant idea to make a little superman outfit for a duplo person. So we tried to do that and Alec seemed to appreciate our efforts, even if it wasn't quite what he had in mind.

We decided we needed to get out of the house and so we all piled in our van and drove to this pretty park near the University where we hiked for a bit down to the frozen river. I was pretty sure there had been a bit of beach before the water started and so I walked down with the kids on it, but Chris was pretty convinced based on the landscape (there were these big sheets of ice that had been jammed up on top of each other, like they were deposited there by a current) that we were probably standing over the water.

Either way it was fun and we decided to stay super close to the parts of land we could tell were snow covered sand/rocks. We saw a bunch of people ice skating over this huge pond we visited with my parents. It is a man-made pond and there were LOTS of people skating on it so we figured it was shallow and fairly safe so we walked on the ice for a bit. By then, we were all cold and decided to head home. I'm glad we got out and I could tell Alec thought it was fun, he said, "I didn't think of doing this fun thing on my birthday!"

Well, Alec, you're 5. You know the alphabet, and can write all the letters, and even can sound out short words. You can count up to thirty and even to 100 with small amounts of help, but usually forget the number 13. You can add and even sometimes subtract and love to do "tricky" things. You make AMAZING mazes for us to do and love to figure out difficult mazes. You can throw, kick, jump, swing a club or bat with amazing accuracy, surpassing many 8 year old boys. You are very sweet with Gwen and Jackson and other little kids and babies. You love to play with Charlie and come up with fun games all the time. You love to read books and play computer games and wii. You have the first 3.5 Articles of Faith memorized and can sing many songs all by yourself, and mostly get the right notes! You have recently gotten into coloring and stay in the lines well, and use appropriate-to-real-life colors. You draw with detail and imagination and can focus on this for a long time.

We are so lucky to be your parents and appreciate your patience as we try our our parenting on you and your ability to cope well with the many "oldest-child" burdens we sometimes unintentionally place on your shoulders. I couldn't ask for a better first born, and we love you dearly. Happy Birthday, Alec!

One Sweet Christmas

2011-12-27T18:11:00.000-08:00

For an entire week we have been eating yummy food until our stomach's are stuffed and then going back for seconds. M&Ms, Steak, Clam Chowder, Challah bread, Cinnamon Rolls, Turkey Dinner with all the works: amazing stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy and homemade rolls, Raspberry Trifel with GG's raspberries, GG's peaches and cream, Delicious Eggnog, Oatmeal Cake, Sunshine Pancakes, Sugar Cookies, Overnight Challah Bread French Toast and homemade Baklava.

And I'm pretty sure I'm missing some things.

This Christmas was sweet in another big way: we're lucky enough to have Chris' parents here and Chris' brother and his family. Just today, while Chris was getting his Chemo treatment, we talked about how having them here has really helped us forget about Chris' illness and made life feel almost normal, like old times. What a blessing that little Christmas break from our current troubles and stress has been.

We opened matching pj's on Christmas Eve, and I tried to orchestrate family traditions like reading and acting out the Nativity and taking cousin photos by lining up tallest to shortest and doing a pyramid. Both were utter failures. I don't think I realized how crucial older kids are to keeping Christmas Traditions alive. These little tykes basically ran around like crazy people throughout the entire evening. They were so excited.

Christmas Morning, I get woken up by Alec at 2:30 am.

"Mom! Santa came! My stocking has stuff in it and there's a kitchen!"

Doesn't he know he's supposed to wait? I not only think that to my self, I also whisper it to him as I tuck him back in bed. I guess he didn't understand me because Chris and I were turning in bed waiting to hear noises from the kids that they are waking up when Alec and Charlie suddenly burst into the room, holding their stockings...

"Mom! Dad! Santa really did come! I see a kitchen and my stocking has toys in it, see?!"

Gwen really enjoyed her Christmas morning. Her eyes got so big when she saw the Kitchen set and ran right over and started playing with it. She also loved her doll stroller and pushed it around the house. In fact, she was quite content with some of the things she was given she even left a stack of presents unopened.

Chris and I gave the kids a big huge, bean bag we made for them. We cut up lots of free scrap foam we got from a local store across 5 nights. It was SO MUCH cutting. And I actually think we might need a bit more. :) It was more work than I anticipated, but the kids love it, I'm glad we finished it. We finished opening presents by 9:30 and then ate the yummy Challah Bread French Toast casserole and played until it was time to get ready for Church at 1:00. It was only an hour long Sacrament Meeting. Throughout the morning my kids (and myself a bit b/c of their behavior) were a bit ornery and Alec even refused to sing with the Primary children. Oh well.

Our last sweet Christmas experience was getting to talk to Chris' brother, Edward, on his mission in Mexico. He has such an accent and didn't seem to understand some of the English words we used! He's had native companions for his last couple of transfers and his Spanish sounds downright awesome. He's so positive and happy and mature-sounding. It was really great to hear from him. We're lucky to read his emails once a week.

And now back to the normal 'my-husband-has-cancer' grind. Well, not quite. Thom and Brittany are still here for the whole week! They've already been great and helped out a ton with meals, laundry, cleaning and babysitting. I hope they still feel like they're on vacation. Lets see how much fun we can have while they're here.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

We had a fun ward party last week and Chris was asked to put together the slide show for it. Our Bishop asked everyone to do some service as a family as the Christmas season approached and to record thoughts about how our testimonies grew. It was a fun challenge in many ways. One, it really did bring a sweet spirit into our home as we planned and carried out our service idea involving widows and other elderly. Two, I think a few of the families in our ward chose to serve our family! Maybe I'm too selfish or something, but I loved being thought of and I loved the help. One family brought us ice cream one Monday Night and told us they wanted to babysit our kids, once a week, for free, for Chris and I to go on Dates. And the awesome-est thing is that they actually kept calling to schedule it! The weeks Chris has chemo he hasn't really felt like going out, but the other weeks we've gone out to dinner, the temple and I even got to go out alone to do some Christmas shopping. Another girl in the ward has come over twice to help tend the kids and fold laundry while I did some deep cleaning. Another Mother and daughter team has brought over many frozen meals, sewed my kids Halloween costumes and make an effort to sit by me in Relief Society to help with Gwen and even took her out for the entire class one day when she was being particularly squirrel-y.

Maybe all these people are simply just nice amazing people and we weren't their Christmas Service project. Either way, service has been a fun thing this Christmas season and its made a difference in the way I feel closer to my Savior during this special time.

Thom and Brittany let us help out with a little card for Edward (Chris and Thom's brother on a mission in Mexico). Each family spelled out a different word. I think it was a great idea and it turned out great.

Classic holiday cheer

2011-12-15T08:43:00.001-08:00

Eggnog mustaches. The smell of Christmas. Holiday cookies. Advent chocolates.

First pigtails

2011-12-15T08:39:00.001-08:00

She's not totally happy about them but I love it!

my little sidekick

2011-12-09T20:33:00.001-08:00

Our little Gweny is SO super darn cute, seriously. And I'm not at all biased...well I AM biased but I'm not wrong. Every Sunday she charms practically everyone we sit around at church, almost to the point of distraction.

Even her "no" is cute. At least her quiet "no." She has a loud whiney yelly "no" too and that one is not so cute. But I like the one where she slightly tilts her head down, looks up at me and while doing short jerky shakes with her head, quietly chirps: "No... no..."

While I usually can smile at this next antic of hers, it also can bug me quite a bit if my mood is just right, or maybe I should say, wrong. She follows me everywhere.

If I am doing the dishes, she'll pull up her stool, sit down, and "help" by taking out dirty dishes or putting in clean ones. (Actually today, she really was a help putting away the clean silverware in the right spot saying, " 'poon" "fohk")

If I sit down to play the piano, she'll run over, demand to sit next to me on the bench, not on my lap, and proceeds to pound on the keys. I found if I put her up by the high keys it's not as ruinous to my attempt at a song.

If I'm making dinner she'll pull a stool (or lately its been a kitchen chair!) to watch and grab at then eat whatever food is within her reach...the entire block of cheese, if she's lucky. Can you spy her sneaky little hand? In the second picture, I believe she is holding a bag of frozen peas eating them one by one (funny thing is she usually hates peas and refuses to eat them).

If I'm at the computer she'll bring her stool over and stand up looking at the screen trying to reach for the mouse or keyboard keys.

If I'm folding laundry she'll pull a chair over and sit by me; handing me items of clothing and saying, "ee-uh" ("here") faster than I can fold them.

If I run upstairs to turn on the oven or run downstairs to switch a batch of laundry she notices I'm gone within seconds and if she's tired she'll start crying for me sadly making her way in my direction. If she's not tired she'll call after me and/or just start following. Most of the time it's kinda fun to have a side kick.

Getting Out

2011-12-03T18:46:00.000-08:00

Its intimidating to take the three kids out by myself to some place new but Chris could really use a quiet house in his post-chemo days. So while Tiffany was here, we capitalized on an adult's set of hands and exploring companion and had a lot of fun vising new parts of Edmonton.

First off, we got our hair cut! Tiff and I have petitioned Chris for admittance into his Hall of Baldness. (He's trying to get out one post a day and its a little backed up at the moment... we had NO IDEA we'd get such an awesome turnout. It practically brings him to tears with every new inductee) I don't have a good picture of our final cuts, yet. It was dumb of me not to get one on the first day, since my friend who cut my hair got it to look better than I ever will be able to replicate.

Another day we checked out their (indoor) Botanical Gardens at the Muttart Conservatory. Very pretty and it was nice to have a change of scene/climate for a few minutes in each of the glass pyramids. The boys favorite was the Tropical Pyramid. The "Seasonal" one was full of blue and white poinsettias...really cool.

We also went to the West Edmonton Mall, rumored to be the biggest mall in the world. It has a casino, hotel, ice skating rink, water park, amusement park, pirate ship, sea lion show, miniature golf, climbing wall, restaurant alley, food court, and of course lots and lots of stores....all under one roof.

Throughout the week we explored the local craft options and found a cool/cheap fabric store. I'm making a big bean bag for the boys for Christmas. I hope I finish it and that it turns out OK... I'm not so sure those will both happen.

We also kicked off the Christmas Season by getting a REAL tree from IKEA for $20! They're all wrapped up so you don't really know what it'll look like but I'm quite pleased with ours! Chris had to cut a bit off to fit it in the house.

Also there is something here called the Festival of Trees and with Tiffany, I was brave enough to drive downtown and try and see it with the kids. So many trees donated and decorated by various organizations and then you can buy them and proceeds go to charity or something. There were lots of elementary school musical groups performing while we were there and the kids decorated gingerbread men, visited a make-believe hospital and sat on Santa's lap! I didn't know he'd be there and we've not had good success in the past getting the boys to sit on his lap, but this year they did great. It was Gwen who wasn't too sure about the whole situation.

Gwen loved her cookie so much she wouldn't let go of the bag. Even to eat her cookies, one in each hand, like usual. She has got such a sweet tooth. I don't know where she gets it...oh wait, I do, its from me.

Tiffany made us yummy food: baked egg rolls, Chinese chicken salad, white bean turkey chili, and lime/cilantro burritos, and arrived bearing gifts from her, others and Mom and Dad: shirts, candy, Christmas music, banana bread, spiced nuts, someone's old iphone for Chris! We really had such a fun time, fit a lot in, and as it typically turns out with Tiffany and I, still didn't do all we planned to do. :)

Helping for stickers

2011-12-02T21:18:00.001-08:00

I started another chart with the kids to reward kind, helpful and obedient behavior. It's a sticker maze and the boys have been really motivated, at times.

One morning I woke up to both Alec and Charlie already dressed and telling me they have a surprise for me. Charlie picked up all the toys downstairs and Alec unloaded the dishwasher! I didn't even know he knew where anything went! (to be honest I think he asked chris about some things)

Also this morning I got up at 4:30 to drive my sister Tiffany to the airport. She's been with us for a week and helped out with Chris' most recent chemo round. It was soooooo great to have her here and I'll put more pictures up soon of all the many fun things we did (including my new short haircut!). But as I was saying about getting up early today, I was a bit grumpy with the kids before and during breakfast and instead if crying over my snappishness Alec quietly deals with me and then says;

Mom I have a surprise for you. I'm going to try and be so nice today. So I can get lots of stickers and finish the maze.

What a helpful little boy. It was just what I needed to hear. I told him that he's a good example to me and that I would try to be so nice today too.... And that he could have 5 stickers.

Thanks to Alec, today was a good day even despite little sleep and no morning run.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

Alec is thankful for his new bunkbed, turkey, Jesus, healthy food, paper to draw with, leaves to jump in, toys and being thankful.

Charlie is thankful for a clean blanket, new house, his best friends Ally and Lukey, muffins, church, bananas, Mommy and Daddy, and snow.

Gweny is (I'm sure) thankful for her lovey and blanket, necklaces, trains to drive "choo choo", Mommy's and Daddy's laps, grapes, raisins, milk, her entertaining brothers, and markers.

Chris is thankful for neupogen, blankets, our nice van, life cereal, doctors, and me and the kids.

I am thankful for music, Chris, Charlie, Alec and Gwen, holidays, Jesus Christ, books, a dishwasher, visits from family and friends and dark chocolate.

Chris' boss is also American and he and his wife and 2 sons invited everyone in his research group over to his house for Thanksgiving dinner at 6:00pm. Knowing the place/time and the number of kid-less people there, we opted to find a babysitter for our kids and enjoy a night of adult interaction and yummy food. But we couldn't leave our kids ThanksgivingDinner-less so we had a lunch with all the fixings as a family.

It was fun. Besides Chris' help with the mashed potatoes and the jello, I made everything else by myself taking a few shortcuts for sanity's sake: boxed stuffing and canned cranberries and sherbet with sprite instead of the traditional homemade slush drink. We tried to ease up on the stress of the day so I prepared well the days ahead making the rolls, pies and jello earlier in the week.

Cars and rugs

2011-11-18T12:56:00.001-08:00

The boys do this all the time and while I'm glad they are playing nicely (for the moment) it drives me crazy that they do this with the carpet. I'm not even sure why it bugs me so much. Maybe it's because they leave it like this and it makes the rug wrinkled traps little toys under it to be stepped on.

Anyway this reminds me of a conversation I overheard and wrote down last week:

Alec-"do you love Lightning Anne McQueen?"

Charlie-"yea, he's my best friend betause he can win."

Alec-"yea, but be careful because Lightning Anne McQueen, sometimes he is bad to some people. There are police."

Hahaha I love the way they think. Charlie has been talking a lot about his best friends (ally and luky) recently. I'm not even sure where he picked up that phrase. Alec doesn't really say or and neither do Chris or I.

Snow!

2011-11-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

It snowed over this past weekend! The first snow. The boys (and even myself if I'm honest enough) are so excited! Before breakfast...so this is saying a lot with my hungry boys... they put on all their new-to-them snow gear and headed outside to play. Gwen, of course, wanted to follow but on her first walk about, she fell, got snow on her face and started crying.

I thought this would be the end of it for her. But she's a tough cookie and continued to play along side the boys for much longer.

Alec was actually a bit of a help shoveling the driveway. Charlie also likes to "noe plow" the snow with his Daddy. For some reason he has a hard time saying the "s" in "snow" so it usually comes out "noe." In this picture Alec is shoveling and Charlie is laying down int he middle of the driveway. He LOVED to lay down in the snow.

Alec asked if it was going to snow every day and I said " No, like tomorrow, it won't snow but it will happen more... I think next Thursday." Later that night, Alec had a hard time going to bed. He was crying pretty loud and told us he didn't want to go to bed because there wouldn't be snow tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure many Edmontonians would be laughing at us, crying for more snow and playing like crazy people in the measly 1.5 inches we got.

Family nap

2011-11-14T15:05:00.001-08:00

I went to bed after midnight got up with kids at least three different times and had to wake up at 6:10 to go running. I am so tired. So when Charlie kept having meltdown after meltdown over the silliest things I decided he needed a nap (he hasn't taken regular naps for a month or two now). The only way to get him to lay down is to lay down with him and the only way to get him to be still is to read books. Two chapters into The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe Charlie was fast asleep and Alec was close. 5 min more of resting and they were both out.

Although the sad thing is this probably means they will both be difficult to put to bed tonight. At least they look so precious sleeping next to each other, next to me. I know the day will come when I can't cuddle them like this. In fact Alec is already giving me instructions on what not to say when I drop him off at primary. "Ok, I love you, Alec, Be good" is on the "don't say that to me" list. Pretty soon he might not ever want to hug me or hold my hand.

Family Home Evening

2011-11-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

We've been reading about King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon as a family and so for FHE on Monday when we suggested building some scripture stories out of Duplos the boys thought of the big tower and all the tents. We had fun building it all and even took turns being the King and announcing stuff to the people. We were trying to focus on the whole, "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God" spiel but when it was their turn to be Benjamin, somehow both boys only remembered to say that Mosiah would be the next King. I guess that is more exciting. I took my moment in the spotlight to talk about how we should all be kind to everyone, all the time. Wouldn't we all be happier? One of these times at least some of it has got to start sinking in, right?

The funny thing is Gwen starting doing it too! She'd walk up behind the duplo tower and say gibberish in a commanding and loud voice. We all laughed so hard at that. It was such a fun moment I wanted to take a picture and, of course / as usual, it took only the few moments while I got the phone out to have it all break down into utter chaos. The pictures are still funny though.

First Hall of Baldness inductee!

2011-11-10T06:44:00.001-08:00

And so it begins! Our first member of the Hall of Baldness is Chris' cousin and roommate: Steve. Welcome! See Chris' blog for more info and later inductees.

Go Bald, be bold

2011-11-07T19:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, the time some of you have been waiting for has finally come. The time to go bald and be bold. We shaved Chris' head this morning. I guess he gave a good tug on his hair in the shower and came away with quite the handful. We've had a good run with keeping most of his hair through the first 4 chemo treatments. It lasted longer than we thought but... now its gone.

We'd like to extend an invitation to any of you who want to join us in this venture. Shave your head or get it cut short, make a big change of some kind and SEND US A PICTURE. (preferably before and after). We'd love to do a little post about you on this blog to help document the love and support we've been so blessed to have been given.

And to my mom, I want to say I'm sorry that its come to this, I know you were really hoping we wouldn't have to do it and also I think it is important to say that even if any of you don't shave your head or make a big change, we still know you love us, so there should be no pressure for anyone to do this. Personally, I think I may have been waiting for a reason to go short myself and here it is! I hope Canada does Locks of Love or something similar. I'll post pictures of my haircut as soon as it happens. :)

Gwendolyn watched the entire procedure and Alec and Charlie ran right up to him at the end to feel it. As Chris leaned toward Gwen to let her have a feel, she slowly backed up a step at a time until he stopped asking her. I know he felt a little sad and was nervous she would be scared of him. He got all cleaned off and slowly walked to her to give her a hug and reassure her that he's still "Daddy." I got the camera out to shoot a video, half expecting her to run away crying based on her behavior so far, but check out her reaction:

So tender! She gave him a kiss and a hug. We love that little Gwendolyn Rose.

Friday night

2011-11-05T13:16:00.001-07:00

"it's Friday, Friday...." can often be heard as it's sung around our house on, you guessed it, Fridays. The boys practically live for that day because of our dinner and a movie tradition. It used to be pizza and a movie tradition but tomato based foods (we think) are giving Chris stomach issues now thanks to the chemo drugs. As a result I'm having to get more creative for dinner and try and substitute other "fun" dinners that can be eaten over a blanket downstairs. Last night we ate chicken pot pies and watched Quest for Camelot.

Trick or Treating

2011-11-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

I wanted to get Alec's perspective on Trick or Treating and asked him to say some things for me. Chris will do something similar with him sometimes when Chris writes his brother, Edward on his mission. I'm not sure who Alec thought we were sending this to but its still fun hear his voice in the conversation.

Me: "Alec, What do you want to say about Trick or Treating?"

Alec: "We had so much fun! Do you don't 'member what I was? Hmm.... I want to say... Say.. I know if I say Trick or Trick (write that down.. trick or trick) I know you're not going to give me candy. We got a lot of candy from someone else.. and you. And I want to say, we got a whole bunch of candy! And we heared some fireworks but they were so far away, I know that. I didn't know (write that down) I didn't know Max, one time at the last one, I didn't know we were at Max's house with the dog. Did you meet Max's house? He's our neighbor... Max is our neighbor. Man, I got a lot of stuff to say! He loves to bark. When we woke up we didn't know it was Halloween and we were so essited to go trick or treating. We first did pictures before, and we did a game. There is, we hanged donuts on strings and we hang it on a hard thing thats round and so long and we put the ribbon around it and then we tried to eat the donuts without using our hands. That what game I'm talking about. Write that down..."Th-Th-That what guh-guh-game I'm talking about. Now you write your thing about Halloween."

Ok, Its my turn I guess. :) Chris had his blood work appointment in the late afternoon and then had to pick up our van from the tire place, since we got snow tires put on, and didn't get home until 6:00 but we still managed to have a fun Halloween party as a family. We ate chips and dip

Alec wants to interject: "and the most yummy thing I liked was..the dip and chips. does that rhyme?"

and root beer floats and another of my baking experiments. I tried crossing a biscuits and rolls to try and make something similar to those crescent-rolls-in-a-can you can buy at the store. It turned out close but not quite there. ANYWAYS, (sorry for the tangent) we played the donuts of the string game and then started Trick or Treating at 7:00. The kids only lasted 30 min because after 25 minutes we heard some soft booms in the distant (we're assuming fireworks?) and both boys got scared and tried to plug their ears and said they wanted to go home. Although we did have time for one last house -- our neighbors who have a dog named Max. When we got home we dumped out all the candy in one big pile and let the kids choose a couple to eat right then. Lucky kids. Then Chris and I put them to bed and watched a movie and ate more than 'a couple' candies. Luckier parents. I told Chris it'll be a sad day when the kids start to notice that we've eaten their candy and he said, "well that's when we'll just start teaching them about taxes."

Charlie was giving me such odd "smiles" I told them to pretend like they were laughing and I would take their picture:

Corn Maze and Pumpkin Carving

2011-10-31T13:04:00.001-07:00

We went to a corn maze a few Saturdays ago. It was a first experience for me, that I can recall. Alec really enjoyed leading us through the maze. He really enjoys doing (and making) mazes on paper and the magnadoodle so he absolutely LOVED the concept of walking through a maze. They had a fun bouncy pillow thing too that the kids and I jumped on. Personally, that was a lot of fun for me. I think its been too long since I was on anything like that.

The kids and I also devoted a few days of playschool devoted to "P is for pumpkin." We traced the letter, drew pumpkins made pumpkin cookies, a pumpkin jelly roll, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin muffins, roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin Chex mix. Of course, we also carved pumpkins.

Alec did his ENTIRELY by himself. With those plastic kid-friendly carving utensils he was having a blast. It actually made the whole experience really great for me. I love seeing him do a fun art project all by himself. Charlie did really well too, although his attention span lasted only as far as taking the seeds out. He really liked the idea of roasting the seeds and eating them. Gwendolyn, like most babies her age, didn't like the goopy pumpkin innards. She didn't want to touch them and instead tried to contain the mess better by picking up stray pumpkin seeds and putting them in the bowl. She's an excellent cleaner-upper and is the first one to help me pick up. She also is the first one to make the messes in the first place.

The finished products! Pretty good! There still is one big pumpkin left to carve....maybe Chris and I will get to it tonight.

At the dinner table

2011-10-30T20:06:00.001-07:00

Anyone else hearing this in their heads?

"Could somebody please remove these cutleries from my knees..."

Pre Halloween treat

2011-10-30T14:45:00.001-07:00

"To infinity and beyond to the rescue!!!"

Charlie is 3

2011-10-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

Our impish, smiley, whiny, adorable, independent, basket-ball-short-loving, chipped teeth Charlie turned 3 last week. The day started off with breakfast in bed since Alec has been wanting that ever since Fathers and Mother's days. "When is brother's day? When we will get breakfast in bed?" He had asked. And yes, I am talking about Alec, not Charlie. But everyone knows whatever Alec wants, Charlie wants, so breakfast in bed it was for our little Charles Leland. He woke up at 6, excited for his birthday and I had to tell him to go back to bed because it wasn't 7:00 yet. Amazingly he obeyed and a bit later I got up to put together eggs, toast and a sprinkled donut for him. And we all went in there to deliver it to him singing all the birthday songs. He beamed through out all of it and opened up a small present...or two...or three. Wait, I think I kept him to just two. Personally, I like to save most of the presents for later so there is still something to look forward to.

We went to the nearest pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins. It was an hour North of the city. I couldn't believe that was the nearest one... and in fact its the only one and was more of a Halloween Carnival with mazes, tractor rides, puppet shows, food arena, pumpkin painting, petting zoo, haunted house, bands playing etc. It was pretty cold and windy and expensive so we just got 3 of the smallest pumpkins, sat in on a short puppet show and rode the free tractor-pulling-a-big-trailer thing.

Then we had cake and ice cream at home as a family. He wanted a "rainbow cake with light buzz in a rocket." So we ended up having this:

Rainbow chip cake mix cake swirled with the usual Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate cake and a Duplo Buzz Lightyear standing on a rocket drawn on with frosting surrounded by rainbow sprinkles. I think it worked for him because he didn't complain. He usually eats just the frosting and ice cream and leaves the rest of the cake anyway.

He had said he wanted a party with his old EV friends so we did a little virtual party using gmail's video chat on Monday. It was a costume party and we played freeze dance and ate cake. It was fun to see our old friends again and Charlie loved the attention.

We've told him for a while now that he'll be too old to use pacifiers once he turned 3. He happily cut the tips off and threw them in the garbage. He's not complained or even asked for them once. Although he no longer naps and has the HARDEST time falling asleep now...it usually takes 20 minutes of crying. Poor kid, he has no idea how to fall asleep on his own. But I believe he'll learn pretty fast and I'll gladly take 3 years of almost drug-induced sleeping behavior for this adjustment period.
Our Charlie loves following Alec, waking up early, wearing underwear to bed, kicking balls, running "sootah fast", trains, Thomas, trucks, race cars, "Lightning an' Mcqueen", "Light Buzz", helping me in the kitchen (meaning liking bowls and eating dough), taking things from Gwen and giving her hugs, eating off of yellow dishes, drawing race cars on the magnadoodle and has recently really gotten into coloring. He brightens up our life and has the most kissable cheeks of any 3 year old. Happy Birthday Charlie!

Little ham

2011-10-25T17:41:00.001-07:00

Gwen already loves to make people laugh. She'll tease me by telling me she's all done with a meal (when she's clearly not) and then laughs at me and whines when I start to take away her tray. Then she'll do it again as soon as I give it back to her. Today she put this crown on upside down and backwards by herself and the boys laughed and laughed so she kept doing it and strut around the house with it on. Silly girl.

Food Fail

2011-10-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

This week has seen its share of kitchen fails. Two nights in a row dinner was just off: too much salt/seasonings in the chicken broccoli rice thing, and too much tomato and/or BBQ sauce in the chili I tried to whip up in 10 minutes mixing cans of everything into a pot. UGH! I guess recipes do exist for a reason and I should learn to cook with them more.

But tonight's fail beat them both. We were safe with dinner, since we grabbed some fast food on the way home from picking up Chris from work. But I have had this craving for a good donut ever since we moved here, I was hoping to find a nice mom-and-pops kind of shop that made world class donuts. There's one in my home town (or to be more precise the town right next to my home town) called "Donuts" or lovingly referred to as Lakewood Donuts for any local. They are perfect. Light, Big, Substantial, Soft, and not too sweet.

Anyway I'm sure you can see where this is going... no good donuts here = try to make my own = FAIL. I guess the temperature of the oil is pretty tricky and important so just throwing some yummy dough into a bunch of hot-ish oil for however long it takes to think they could be done is not a good idea. I made two kinds, chocolate cake donuts and regular potato flake donuts with maple glaze. The chocolate ones looked like burnt pieces of cow pies and tasted like crunchy sugar. I haven't fried up the regular ones yet because I gave up.

I gave up because it was 30 minutes past bedtime and NONE of the kids had naps today and the doorbell rings. Oh yeah, we had home teachers coming over! The house was a wreck and smelled like oil and burnt chocolate and Gwen kept grabbing at my shirt because she was tired and wanted to nurse to sleep. Somehow amidst all of this I still found it cute. I've not nursed my boys this long where they were aware enough to ask for it. Still I felt like this:

Anyway, I finally got the house a bit cleaner and am waiting for Chris to get back from the store with balloons for Charlie's birthday tomorrow.... and a deep fryer with temperature control so we can fry up the rest of the donuts.

Tables beat plates and chairs

2011-10-20T12:03:00.001-07:00

Somehow during every meal all of Charlie's food ends up off his plate and on the table. I just don't get it.

Also, Gwen's recent trick is to climb up the chairs and onto the table. She's so proud of herself until she remembers that she doesn't know how to get down. But she's not that worried. She knows that she was given a strong, loud voice for just these occasions.

puddles + heaters

2011-10-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

What is so entertaining but frightening enough that my kids are content to just watch at the edge of the doorstep for so long?

Anyone guess right? The lawn mower! Its loud and big and its the first time they've seen (or at least remembered seeing) Chris do it himself.

I love this goofy cheesy smile Gwen does sometimes. She's so expressive and such a tease and cheeseball. She LOVES to run away from me whenever I say "bedtime" or "diaper change." She'll do it with a huge grin on and watch me out of the corner of her eye and stop running when I stop etc...

The boys saw some good puddles in our alley-way a few weeks ago and wanted to jump in the puddles. They still want to be California boys and refused to wear shoes or pants at least Alec wore a fleece jacket.

They did enjoy warming their feet up by the heaters and requesting "Chot Hocolate." I think they will start to realize on their own soon that it is just TOO COLD for shorts and bare feet. Its below freezing every morning now.

Hooray for Help!

2011-10-14T13:28:00.001-07:00

My parents came to stay with us last weekend to help soften the burden of Chris's second Chemo treatment. The fun started with a late night run to Dairy Queen for blizzards. I really enjoyed showing them around our place and I enjoyed even more giving my dad a list of all the things I'd love for him to fix. He put up hooks and mirrors; cut and laid down carpet, fixed two gates and installed motion-sensor lights! He also got my mom's old Iphone unlocked and helped me set up Canadian cell phone coverage! Finally! We're SO grateful and thrilled for it. My mom and I baked apple pie, cleaned the house, made meals, and shopped for winter gear. We now all have snow pants, jackets, gloves, hats (or I should start saying tuques)... well except Charlie still doesn't have a coat that fits him, Value Village has like zero 3T clothes. I'll keep looking for it and we have a big backup if we need it too soon.

They also played with the kids a lot: fake fighting, reading books and more books, outings to the park and play places. Saturday afternoon we went for a walk in the beautiful fall weather, had a picnic and jumped in leaves. Such a perfect afternoon. Sunday afternoon we did another walk up by the river before going over to my Bishops house for Thanksgiving Dinner. That was a really fun time too. My parents are very friendly and good conservationists... I love that about them.

My parents also treated us to pizza and watched the kids so Chris and I could have a date! Our first one here. We tried this Mexican restaurant called Julio's Bario. It was fine... real Canadian Mexican. We'll try the two other Mexican restaurants in Edmonton and look forward to getting some "real" Mexican food in the States.

A conversation between Alec and Chris

2011-10-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

Alec: "I want to skype, now, Daddy."

Chris: "Maybe Skype wants to alec"

Alec: " what?"

Chris:"Maybe Skype wants to alec."

pause....

Alec: "Does that make any sense?"

You know Alec is growing up when his own Daddy seems too silly.

Fall colors

2011-10-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

On my drive home in the early morning from a run I noticed this colorful tree along our alleyway. I took Gwen out to help me take pictures.

Later that afternoon we had to drop off and then pick up Chris at work for a few hours in the afternoon thereby giving us some time to kill around the University/River/Downtown area.

These Fall colors just keep calling my name and I thought it would be stunning to see them around the river. I drove around until I found some parks that looked promising.

Then we spied a trail that led down to the water.

We had to explore and ended up throwing rocks in the water for a while.

Charlie found a triangle rock.

It was pretty muddy so I kept having to pull Gwen away for the water's edge. She is really starting to have an opinion and did NOT like me pulling her away. In fact when it was time to go she threw the biggest fit I've ever seen her throw and kept trying to literally RUN back to the river no matter how far away from it we walked.

Turns out, Chris needed to stay a bit longer so we drove across a bridge to explore the river from the other side. We found this pedestrian bridge and decided to cross it. It was SO windy. I was curious if Gwen would be frightened by walking on this skinny, high, windy thing...but no. She loved it. Alec was nervous enough for both of them and always kept a hand right by her.

You can see some of Edmonton a bit in the background. In some places it has a bigger city feel than I expected.

We've really enjoyed our Fall here. It is BEAUTIFUL and its everywhere. I kept saying over and over in an excited voice, "Isn't this pretty! Wow, this is so amazing" as we walked through leaves with a warm-ish wind on our faces. Alec started making fun of me by saying in a silly voice, "this is so pretty, this is so pretty..." Mock all you want, Alec... I will still keep saying it.

Ponytails

2011-10-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

Even though its not quite long enough to actually need a pony tail, I've been putting some in occasionally over the past few weeks. Its pretty adorable. For the first few times she just sort of stayed still enough for me to put it up, but lately she'll run away and start crying if she feels me start to pull back her hair! but um... I still put them in.

No, there isn't anything in her hair for those last two pictures. But she's just so stinkin' cute I had to post them.

Apples and more Apples

2011-09-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

Remember a month ago when we picked apples with a couple in our ward? Well Dixie helped get 2 batches of applesauce canned while she was here, but we still had 1/2 of the apples left to work with. We bobbed for apples, played with apples, made apple crisp and planned on canning some apple butter.
The boys have been BEGGING to bob for apples for a long time and we finally did it. It took them a while to get it and I had to switch to a shallower/wider container to make it easier for them. It was a fairly nice day and the kids just played out back bobbing all the apples from one bowl to the other. Not very sanitary but lots of fun.

My first batch of apple butter, I forgot about on the stove when we were downstairs having our Friday night pizza and a movie party with the kids. It burned....bad. After a few days I finally got the pot cleaned well enough to try again. The second try turned out pretty good! I don't think I simmered it quite long enough so its not super thick, it seems more like spicy and smooth applesauce. but for my first experience canning by myself, it sort of worked! I don't have a proper canning pot and with the apple butter not really boiling or hot before you put it in jars, I was thinking I needed to boil/process them. After a few mishaps I finally figured out a way to invert my steamer in the pot to set the jars on and use some big spoons like chopsticks (since we don't have any tongs) to get the apple butter processed. WHEW. I still have about 2 batches more of apples to do but having done it once, I think it'll go faster and be cleaner.

Magnadoodles

2011-09-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

I love these things. No messes or wayward scrawls but hours and hours of drawing fun anytime, anywhere. The only sad thing is you can't save a particular sketch. So we take pictures. Here is one of Alec's latest.

Its pretty obvious that its a train (the LRT ones we see) on the bottom track going one way, and the track above it is for the trains going the other way.

A while ago we were sitting around at bedtime trying to get the kids to pick out books and come sit on our laps to read them but were being too lazy to enforce them. The kids were drawing pictures for us with magnadoodle as a delaying tactic. Although I really was trying not to encourage their behavior I couldn't help but make a cute fuss over this one particular drawing of Charlie's.

He walks up to me and says, "Look mom, a p'ess... Foy YOU." I don't really understand him and give a non committal, "oh." But Charlie persists, "A p'ess...foy you. a'cuz you loss it on the tain." Finally, it clicks, "a purse! for me? because I lost mine on the train?" What a sweetie. It had been a few weeks since I lost it and we hadn't even talked about it recently.

Its a good thing we have so many magnadoodles since, like always, if one boy starts drawing on it... the other one HAS to be drawing on one too. And lately this is not only true for the boys but Gwen is starting to get in on all the action. She loves to copy what her brothers do. Especially reading books and drawing on magnadoodles, running loops around the house, and hitting the table loudly with her fists during dinner, oh and taking baths, making silly noises, kicking balls, wrestling with mommy, and throwing rocks in the river...BIG rocks...the size of her head.

No, there aren't any pictures of Gwen and those big rocks because I thought it better to be on make-sure-she-doesn't-crush-her-toes-or-fingers duty. You're welcome, Chris.

Saturday hike

2011-09-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

A few Saturdays ago, I was determined to get out of the house and move. It's been REALLY hard here to exercise as much as I was used to in California with my awesome friends/running/gym/dance class buddies. Seriously, it was exercise heaven. I have been lucky enough here to tag along with some ladies in my ward who do about a 5 K Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays at 6:30 in the morning. I would prefer to go a bit faster and longer but I'd rather run with people who entertain with conversation! Two runs ago it was beautiful. We run in this little ravine on wide hiking paths, littered with vibrant fall leaves, and on wooden bridges over a small river. The sunrise came up pink across the valley, so peaceful and yet energy-giving. Unfortunately, Fall is coming to a close, and fast. The very next run we had to use a head lamp for the first half and most of the bright yellow leaves are now a muted dirty brown.

ANYWAY...I always pictured our first month here full of hikes and other outings as we try to live up the warm weather here, but with Chris not able to walk very far without needing to sit or lay down, I figured our hiking days were over, for this season.

Then I realized, I could still go on hikes, just myself and the kids! Especially if we just stick close to home and explore more of that ravine right near by. So that's what we did and the kids loved it. I put Gwen in the hiking backpack and drove close to the ravine so the boys would last longer walking. It was fun and I think I'll try and do it a few more times before the weather gets ugly cold.

BTW - I love these close ups of Alec's silly grin and Charlie's smile. In Charlie's you can see where his front teeth got chipped when he fell down in mid-July. I was holding him with his arms wrapped up in his towel after swimming lessons (which.. I think I never blogged about yet! ...lets add THAT to my TO DO list). I put him down for a second while we waited for another kid and he tried to take a step but tripped and had no hands to brace him. BANG! right on his mouth/teeth. It wasn't very bloody but his teeth were obviously chipped and felt a little loose. When Alec accidentally whacked him in the face a little later that day and made it bleed much worse, I took Charlie for an emergency dentist visit. Nothing they could do really, but we still need to keep an eye on it. It could get infected and fall out or need to be pulled at any time in the following three months! So far, so good, although one tooth is starting to look a little discolored.

Picture this...

2011-09-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

Alec gave a talk today in primary. He is really uncomfortable with speaking in front of people like that. One of his first times we only got a word or two out of him for a primary scripture, talk or prayer. He did pretty good the last time he did it (just a week or two before we moved away from CA) and he did even better today! It was really really cute and I wish I would've had a video of it, but alas, we didn't do that so you'll just have to picture this:

Alec is wearing a green/brown/blue plaid shirt with a tan, yellow, red and blue striped vest and stands up tall to the microphone with a nervously muted grin. Charlie has been recruited to hold the props and stands on his own stool next to the podium looking impishly handsome wearing a nice white shirt, tie and khaki pants. I'm kneeling behind/beside Alec whispering in his ear and putting things on Charlie. (The Theme was, "The Gospel is preached in all the world")

Alec - "Jesus made the world."
"It is sooo big."
"Lots of people live on it."
"Some people don't know about Jesus."
"Missionaries go all over the world teaching people about Jesus"
"My dad went to Lithuania"
--I put two dolls dressed in traditional Lithuanian garb in Charlie's hands who holds them up tall for all to see.
"My uncle Justin went to Mongolia"
-- I put a camel-hair-made-in-Mongolia scarf around Charlie's neck
"My uncle Ryan went to Canada"
"My uncle Thom went to USA"
"My uncle Todd went to Africa"
-- I put a bright, thickly beaded African necklace on top of the scarf.
"My uncle Jared went to Thailand"
-- I sling my famous purple purse that Jared brought be from Thailand over Charlie's shoulder....He still is just patiently standing there holding the dolls up high.
"My uncle Jordan went to an Island, called Kosrae"
"And even now Uncle Edward is in Mexico"
"They all taught people about Jesus and Jesus wants us to teach people about Him too."
"In the name of Jesus Chris, Amen."

He did so well! Both boys did. The Primary President gets up with a smile and chuckle and says, "That's a lot of Uncles!" It sure is, and we even forgot our newest Uncle: Justin/German. He served his mission in Brazil. It would've rounded out the geography quite nicely.

to do list

2011-09-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

My head hurts (I feel like I've started 1/2 my posts out with something like this in the past month). There is so much to think about, remember and do. Someone dropped by a plate of cupcakes last night (so nice and yummy!) and said something like, "I had time to kill tonight and thought I'd fill the time with baking." and my first thought was..."oh! I remember that! I had time to kill at one time... maybe 5 months ago..." Granted, the guilty part of me knows that the night hours from 8:30 on, are usually spent doing nothing important aside from folding laundry sometimes in front of the TV. I really should just go to bed, that would actually be helpful.

Even now I'm thinking, "you're wasting time..." but I sort of just need to get out a list of things to do before I forget them. Some are important some are not but I'm not very good at deciphering between the two. For me, if I have the thought that I should do something, it can often drive me crazy until I do it...no matter how small it seems.

To do:

Ha! what do you know, I'm drawing a blank...this is not a good sign. Wait! its back, 1. get to a Scotia bank to pay back the cash Chris' cousin lent us when we first moved here and couldn't get enough Canadian money to pay for our house deposit.
go grocery shopping: milk, bread, fruit, vegetables
Make dinner: rice and stir fry vegetables with the pork Dixie froze for us
clean and sanitize the bathrooms...gotta keep the germs down
mow the lawn (I have a feeling this one won't happen for a while, but it still needs to be done)
Get to a Rogers Telecommunications store and get set up with Canadian cell phone stuff.
Write or email thank you cards for all the thoughtful things people have given/sent us
go through finances to pay bills: electricity, American credit cards
Get my lesson together for Relief Society (at least I have two-ish weeks for this)
sweep or wipe down all the upstairs...dust builds up fast on hardwood
clean up the backyard and find somewhere indoors to put our big camping buckets that are just strewn about the patio.
organize all the paperwork we got at Chris' first chemo treatment into a binder...just in time for his next treatment on Monday.
water the house plants
finish unpacking the books and pictures and arrange them better on the bookcases
finish getting the bathrooms settled with places for hand towels and toothbrushes
find a better system for jackets/purses...maybe another board with hooks by the back door?
Make separate church bags for the boys (not a need, but I think it would GREATLY improve Sacrament Meeting behavior)
organize the medicine so its not spilling out all over the pantry and falling where kids can get at it all
better yet, organize the entire pantry better so things don't fall off the shelves.
When do we need to get snow tires? or even snow boots/pants/jackets for everyone in the family...its probably better to have them before you need them.
I think the gas in the van is almost out
The front room "needs" some color and pillows
tidy the top of our dresser...which means figuring out a better system for my necklaces and such...any cute ideas? I'm thinking something in an empty frame on the wall....
continue the daily clean up of kids messes, in and out of the kitchen. Like the following baby powder party Gwen and Charlie had last week:

Well... that feels better a little bit. Now hopefully there's enough time left of quiet/nap time to have some personal study time. I really just want to nap, was that on my list somewhere? First though I better go see why Gwen is STILL crying. She probably has a little surprise for me in her diaper.

Wedding

2011-09-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

My little sister, Sarah, got married last week! In some ways its odd to see her married since I've never really seen her around any significant others but in other ways, she reminds me so much of myself when I got married that it seems totally natural to see her in white, exchanging smiles and hugs with a good looking groom. Sarah and Justin (German) seem to fit each other so well, I think they will be one fun, totally awesome couple. I'm so happy I was able to be a part of their start. Going through the temple with Sarah was probably my favorite part of the whole shebang. All of my adult siblings were there and it was the first time we'd all been in the temple together, like that. Pretty special. I love my family.

I was a bit emotional at times and all my siblings took good care of me. Tiffany watched over me, housed me, drove me places, gave me an awesome back rub; Justin and Jordan even tucked me in at night! I also got a chance to hold and kiss my week old niece, Amelia, and talk with Jared and Ashley.

Also it was really fun to see so much extended family and other friends at the temple and reception. We even ran into my cousin, Emily, on her Temple Square mission! So fun. I especially enjoyed seeing my sister in law, Jess with her kids and my father in law, and also my cousins at the reception and talking with them. It was pretty fun being there without kids to be distracted with. It was a great trip and many thanks go to Mama Dixie for taking care of my home and family back in Canada so I could make the trip.

first round of treatment

2011-09-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

--By the way, Chris is starting a blog where he can vent about his cancer experience... but I'll still write some things about it here on our family blog --

First round of Chemo was on Monday. We were told to allow 3-4 hours, although it took more like 5 and a half. Other than the time, things went really smoothly. After checking in we walked up to one end of the 4th floor. We were instructed on the basics of chemo therapy. Grab a warming bag, put it on your forearm, find your bed/station number and lay down or take a seat if your assigned to a chair. The middle of the room is a half circle with windows looking over Edmonton. Its actually a beautiful day and with the flat terrain we can see for miles, or (I should get used to saying) kilometers.

We see almost all of the beds or chairs already filled with patients, most of them bald, quietly sitting, reading or sleeping, attached to an IV with machines occasionally beeping. A nurse comes over and explains what drugs she's going to give Chris today. First an anti-nausea drug that will take about 20 minutes, then a saline flush for 10 minutes, then we'll start the first of the 4 drugs in Chris' ABVD protocol with saline flush in between each drug.

Because of Chris' intense back/leg pain he's been having for the past few days (a herniated disk from coughing so bad...we think... we still need to find a family physician...they are SO HARD to find one taking new patients here) we lay him down flat on the bed. They have these warm blankets they keep in a heater and the nurse puts one on Chris and I tuck him in.

The nurse has a hard time getting the vein and pokes around for a bit before letting another nurse have a try. Luckily, she gets it in first shot. Chris is a bit nervous, I can tell, but we actually keep a relaxed manner and talk, joke, read or sleep for the 5 hours. Chris can get up and go to the bathroom, which he does about 4 times (with all the fluids they're pushing in him, its a wonder it was ONLY 4 times).

Volunteers come to deliver water, juice, tea, coffee, and or cookies to everyone in the wing every 2 hours or so. I eventually go grab Chris some lunch and in my 10 minutes of being gone, I miss Chris' oncologist who has come to check on him to see if his back/leg pain is any better. After 2 days of Ibuprofen around the clock it does seem to be getting slightly better. Chris can't be standing or sitting for longer than 5 minutes before its too painful and he needs to lay down completely flat again. Usually, his doctor won't come up and we'll only see him on our Friday-before-treatment meetings.

The second drug they give him is inserted into his IV from a big needle the nurse holds and slowly pushes in over 15 min. Its red and will turn his pee the same color for the next while. The last drug is also really hard on the veins so its given with more saline over the course of 1-2 hours, depending on if the patient starts to feel sore/a little bit of pain and needs a break. Chris mostly sleeps (or appears to be sleeping) through this one and does it straight through...it still takes about 2 hours!

He's tired but otherwise normal seeming and we walk out to the car wondering with anticipation when he will start to feel completely awful.

Luckily, that hasn't really happened yet! almost 48 hours since the start of the treatment and he's feeling not-TOO-bad. Still tired, and nauseated enough to take the prescription drugs every now and then, but mostly Chris seems to be in a good mood. They say it gets worse over time and I bet his treatments won't all go this smoothly, but we'll take just about any good news right now. Including the news we got the previous Friday when the oncologist said that based on the CT scan showing the disease ONLY above the diaphragm, he thinks Chris is only at a stage 2! We were thinking 3 or 4 and it still could be 4 if its found in the bone marrow (the results still weren't in on the bone marrow biopsy...ugh!) but stage 2 is great news.

Ok, thats enough details and my flight is about to board so I'll try to upload this quick. I'm on my way to UT for my sister's wedding! Chris' mom has been with us, watching the kids during all this, and will now take care of my little family until I get back in 2 days. Its hard to leave, but with Chris doing so well, I'm not as worried as I might have been. I'm also pretty excited to see my family and get a little break. :) If only I didn't have to wake up at 3:15 AM to make my flight.

A is for Apple

2011-09-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

The kids have suffered a bit with getting little attention from Chris and I. Like my dad, I have a tendency to --bulldoze-- (as my mom calls it) when it comes to working on something. I just want to work work work until it gets done and be as efficient as possible while still getting the WHOLE project done right. So the job of "settling in" has taken up most of time ...or at least whenever I'm not doing immediate caregiver tasks like meals, cleaning up in-your-face-messes, naps, baths and bedtime.

Ok. Hold back. I can tell I'm giving this more detail than I intended. Basically the kids have been crazy for attention. So, this week I wanted to try to do some fun school-like activities with them. We've done a lot of things with apples since we picked boxes of them last weekend.

The boys really liked acting out the legend of William Tell shooting an apple off his son's head. We used cones for sons (since we were fresh out) and balls for arrows (but only because I didn't want to go find our arrows) and had a blast. They both actually had pretty good aim after a while.

Now this has nothing to do with apples but everything to do with Gwen being stinking cute. Remember I said she loves shoes? Today she threw a fit when I didn't put a pair of Charlie's flip flops on and didn't accept my reasoning of "you already HAVE shoes on, see? Sandals!" I gave in and put the flip flops on over her other sandals thinking she'd walk a few steps and want them off, but no. She wore them for hours that way. And it was making her walk funny. Style over comfort for this girl.

I'd like to add that most of the apple activities were done between bouts of very nearly uncontrolled anger on my part. I feel SO short of temper with the kids recently and have only enough energy for a sweet voice on the first 2 or 3 repetitions of any given phrase...after that its like I've unleashed a monster. Many people have commented about me keeping up a good attitude and I was pretty surprised to read that since I feel very NOT positive. To combat this I usually try to focus on the good things in conversations and blog posts but the marjoity of the time I'm feeling and thinking pretty miserably. Life is just hard right now. I wonder if I could see even 1 year into the future, what it would it be like?

spontaneous tour

2011-09-05T18:52:00.000-07:00

So, the kids were being pretty cute this morning. I started taking pictures and realized they also showed a good tour of our upstairs! So, while its not exactly clean and pretty, it does give you a better idea of what our house looks like than those last pictures. The kids are playing snake monster ( a game started by Peter in our courtyard) where someone runs around with a blanket dragging behind and everyone else tries to jump on the blanket and catch a ride. Pretty fun. Also, pretty crazy.

First is Gwen being cute, standing in the L shaped living space. I'm standing at the front door. The boys are trying to entice her to play snake monster.

Which she likes to play if she can be the one pulling the blanket.

Two steps to my left, I'm now standing in the doorway of the boys room, looking down the hall where Gwen's room, small closet and master bedroom are on the left, and straight ahead is the bathroom section. Its a 1/2 bath connected to a contained bath/shower room, which is connected to another 1/2 bath which is connected to the master bedroom.

Following the kids I'm now standing by the doorway of the bathrooms (there's a nice little pantry to my right) and I'm watching Gwen start to get frustrated that she can't pull the blanket with Charlie on it through the kitchen/eating area.

somehow she made it around the corner out of the kitchen and almost back into the living space but by then the boys were getting frustrated with Gwen's I-can-only-pull-an-empty-blanket participation and commandeered the reigns from a now, very unhappy Gwen. You can see the coat rack/shoe landing area that leads to both the basement stairs and to the back door which takes you through the small yard to the garage.

Downstairs is mainly just a play space with toys and our couch/TV. There's also a mini bar thing and another bedroom that is now a craft/sewing/office/guest room. Pictures coming, but I'd rather just post what I've got now and eat apple crisp and watch a movie with Chris. Which is the 2nd time we've had such a fun (movie with a treat) and relaxing night in the past month.

Well, one more picture and a movie:

Gwen is just so fun. I only just barely get annoyed with something she does maybe once or twice a day, but other than that, she just brings joy to my life. She snuggles a little, likes to give kisses, say Hi and smile for the camera, "cook" with me in the kitchen, and wear shoes...especially boots. She also likes to lay down on pillows or sit on blankets to get all cozy. Here is a video. Oh, at the end, she's saying, "Bath" and "up" because she wants to get in the bath again, but I don't catch it while I'm filming.

Update... and some blubber

2011-08-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

I know many of you are wanting an update on Chris. Sorry to not have emailed you all personally, and while I know Chris doesn't want our blog here to become a Cancer Blog, I'll just put a little update on here anyway and try to remember to post about others things too. This is our life and cancer is now a part of it, but we also have the rest of life to live and document. I hope I can maintain a good balance for everyone and myself.

He had a doctors appointment yesterday and finally met with an Oncologist here! Based on Chris' concerns and symptoms, the Dr. is guessing that Chris is at a stage 3, potentially stage 4 depending on if its spread to his bone marrow. Yikes! Not exactly what I was hoping for but I knew it was in the realm of possibilities. We'll know for sure what stage after the full body CT scan (scheduled for tomorrow) and the results of the bone marrow biopsy they did yesterday after meeting the doctor.

His treatment plan so far consists of meeting with doctors to discuss and do lab work on Fridays, then a round of Chemotherapy the following Monday and repeat that every 2 weeks for about 6- 8 months. The side effects of the 4 drugs they're planning on using are disconcerting and I think we're just barely getting an idea of how awful this is going to be. I guess we're slowly being eased into it as this past week Chris has had cold that has just knocked him out. He's constantly tired and coughing so bad he can't sleep. Today was a little better than yesterday so hopefully he's getting over it and can be fully healthy before his first round of Chemotherapy tentatively scheduled for next, next Monday.

So.... how are we all holding up? Chris is in remarkably good spirits. He's really responsible about keeping track of all of his appointments and other random tasks to do since we moved to another country like insurance, bank stuff, registration stuff etc. The boys have taken it all in stride and pray for him but other than that seem completely normal and unfazed. Gwen is totally oblivious (obviously) but really LOVES her new house and walks around like she owns the place. I... I have tough periods mixed with I'm-doing-fine periods. I miss my normal Chris who wants to cuddle and kiss me. I'm having to change my perspective of what kind of normal help I can expect from him and also try to stay positive and feel/show sympathy for him. And the actual treatment hasn't even started. I'm a bit overwhelmed, but at least am blessed with a numbness about it all. I still haven't felt any real sense of dread or despair. Although, it just feels like I can't get a break. I start to feel a bit settled and good about life and then something else comes up.

Yesterday, I did a really dumb thing and left my purse on the LRT (the public transit monorail system here). I was distracted with the getting the kids all off and safe since I was by myself.
So I had all the kids and the stroller and was locked out of our house, without any money or a phone for 5 hours, over lunch and nap time. They still haven't found my purse with my wallet, keys, map, planner, etc.

The day before we realized as we were trying to get a new cell phone plan straightened out, BOTH our drivers licenses were expired! We can't renew them because we don't live in CA anymore and we didn't think we qualified for an Alberta license since we're classified as temporary residents. Luckily it turns out we can, and it took us all day just to figure that out and get temporary licenses (although mine, of course, is now lost or stolen). That in turn, means we can no longer keep our car registered in the U.S. and now need to pass tests here to register it, which also means we need to first get insurance here....and on and on and on it goes.

My dad feels really strongly that this is all happening for a reason, specifically the whole finding out about cancer + moving to Canada thing. I'm grateful for his perception and have relied heavily on it since I still just mainly feel numb. Thanks for all your prayers and emails and love. I know I sound pretty pathetic but I also know that somehow we'll make it. God will protect my family and that feeling is a blessing I should try harder to remember.

----

Man, when I started writing this post I had no idea I was going to be so blubbery again. Sorry for the length and ..uh..blubbery-ness (whatever that means).

New House

2011-08-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

So, we moved into our new place this week! Its a house. And it feels like triple the size of our last place. Although, at 650sq ft, that's not too hard to do.

The pros:

The basement is finished and it has a HUGE carpeted main room that is only devoted to playing. All of our toys are down there and the boys love it. There is even an extra bedroom (sewing room or... GUEST ROOM!? who's coming?) and a bathroom down there!
It has 3 bedrooms and 2 toilets all on the main level! (there is no upstairs)
There's even a little pantry next to the kitchen.
Wood burning fireplace -- which makes me feel good about emergency preparedness.
Small backyard with a big garden space and a DOUBLE car garage!
A brand new dishwasher and washer and dryer.
Its in a great (safe) established neighborhood with 3 excellently rated elementary schools within walking distance.

It seems that most people live in townhouses or other old/small homes and just thinking about the two homes we've been in already, we'd rather live in our house, so we feel pretty lucky. I bet you want some pictures! The boys had the camera out while we were moving in, so while we have pictures, they're not all that informative... except for one fact: CHARLIE IS THE DARLING-EST BOY EVER! See what I mean?

Lest anyone think my life is perfect, I feel the need to have balance in all things.

The cons:

Its pretty old. It was built in '76 and probably has the same wallpaper/toilets/sinks/curtains/carpet/closet doors. (at least the fridge and stove and heater are only a few years old)
The garage is detached, so we've still got to walk outside to get there.
Its laminate "hardwood floor" upstairs and the landlords are pretty nervous that the boys will destroy it so I have to be super vigilant about what toys are upstairs and how the boys play on it.
There actually aren't any kids in the neighborhood... VERY different from our last love, EV.
The kitchen, while there is more counter space, the cupboards are really small so our pots and pans don't fit and its crowded with more than 1 person in it. Also, there is no disposal (called a garborator here). I didn't think this would be a big deal but it actually is pretty hard for me right now. I probably just have to get used to it.

Another Challenge

2011-08-18T15:47:00.000-07:00

The day before we left UT for Canada, I got a phone call from Chris' doctor about the results of the biopsy/surgery they did last week. Turns out, Chris has cancer. Specifically Hodgkin Lymphoma, nodular sclerosis. To say the least, we feel crushed. I feel about 50 lbs heavier (I think at least a tenth of that is quite literal thanks to all the vacation food etc).

Its been rough, but we're thankfully moving beyond our first impressions: numb shock and wary sadness. I felt the latter only lightly because I knew that's what we're supposed to feel. Actual sadness has come little by little as it slowly starts to affect our lives.

I actually don't feel like rehashing all my emotions out now, but I'll back post a blurb I wrote but didn't post the day of the surgery since I couldn't find my journal in whatever box it got placed.

Currently, we're in Edmonton! We got in last night and already we've viewed 2 places to live (1 of which will hopefully work out) gotten a Social Insurance Number for Chris and his University of Alberta ID, and a Canadian Bank account. We've just got to settle out a place to live so we can get an address so we can apply for insurance so we can get a family doctor so we can get a referral for an Oncologist so Chris can be seen and obtain an order for a whole body CT scan so we can find out what stage his cancer is in so we can map out a chemo therapy treatment plan so we can beat this. Let me repeat, SO WE CAN BEAT THIS. Hear that Mr. Golf-Ball-Sized-Lump in Chris' neck? We're going to win, so you may as well stop trying to wreck our lives.

Still here

2011-08-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

Its been a while. Its been crazy.Its been busy. Its been stressful, tear-filled, unknown. Its been waiting and praying. Its been incredible and full of love from family and friends. Its been LIFE. That includes packing up our house, driving to Utah for my and Chris' first trip away and for a family reunion camping trip, flying back to CA to load up our moving truck, clean our house, turn in our keys, and for Chris to have surgery and then driving back to Utah to spend a bit more time with family before making the trek north to Canada on Tuesday.

I just crave normalcy. I crave feeling at home. It'll come. Hopefully in a few weeks.

too many tears

2011-08-10T20:28:00.001-07:00

My head hurts. I've been crying on and off for a good few hours and I think I might explode. Chris had surgery today to remove a portion of an inflamed lymph node. After the surgery the doctor expressed concern that this doesn't look normal based on its large size and the number (a lot) of nodes involved, although the range of possibilities for diagnosis still extends to being completely benign.

I don't really feel like talking because I burst into tears the moment I see a kind face or think about calling family (and they all so deserve personal/detailed updates but I just can't talk anymore about it. I don't want to cry anymore. However, I also feel like I can't process things well enough to move on mentally until composing my thoughts into words. And "move on" I need to do in quite the literal sense.

I've felt numb all day. I knew the surgery today was a bigger deal than I was preparing for, yet I didn't know how else to act. I guess I was thinking today would seem more like a doctors visit, like the fine needle aspiration biopsy was two weeks ago. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We had plans to order Indian Food and eat it with friends and celebrate one of our friend's birthday upon arriving home. In reality, the whole experience took about 3 hours longer than we thought and involved prescriptions and pharmacies and insurance issues and the like.

The biggest wild card was how Chris was going to react and recover and it turns out he's REALLY exhausted and sore and uncomfortable and emotional. I think in terms of the strictly medical side of recovery he's doing well, but is also pretty out of it. I want to comfort him and help him and focus on him which is turning out to be easier felt than done because I feel like my hands are tied. We're moving tomorrow and I've still got Gwen to attend to. I couldn't even find a cup to pour juice into so he could have something to drink down his pain meds with. I found a plastic bowl in a box that was just folded down, not taped, and handed that to him with an apologetic grimace that just got bigger as I watched him try to sip from it laying down, resulting in a wet shirt and pillow.

He can't lift or carry anything thats over 10 lbs for a few days and shouldn't drive for at least a day or two. The moving trailer is being delivered tomorrow and we have 1 day to load it and get it picked up so we (I guess, mostly I) can drive back to Utah on Friday to be with our boys again and help my sister host a bridal shower for my little sister getting married in a few weeks.

I just want to tuck Chris in bed with his favorite pillows and pajamas and make him some chicken noodle soup, popcorn and apples. Yet we have no food in the house except for the instant macaroni meals/soups and crackers I found at the pharmacy earlier today. I just want to eat some dinner myself and then sleep off this migraine I feel coming on now that Gwen is down for the night and Chris is asleep. Yet I need to sort out my feelings, read the scriptures and a small part of me still feels the need to finish packing.

Alright, this is helping, I think. But enough with the hardships and depressing thoughts. I think I need to find the Lord's hand in all this in order to actually feel the comfort and support I've been craving.

First thought - what a blessing my friends here have been! Instead of wondering why I'm feeling support from friends but not the Lord, I need to realize my Heavenly Father put those friends into my life in the first place.

Second thought - our families have been praying for us and thinking about us! Instead of stressing over keeping them all updated without wanting to talk, I need to thank the Lord for their concern and love.

Third - I need to seek comfort and love from Christ through prayer and reading the scriptures. Its too bad we've been on vacation/camping/family reunions this past while since it makes it so hard to maintain regular scripture study, but still I believe had I kept it up, I would have felt more peace today.

Fourth - Todd and Jared gave a nice blessing to Chris last night before we flew out this AM and he was impressed with how confident and good he felt about Chris' overcoming this.

Ok. Now, enough babbling, I need to get out the scriptures and welcome their peaceful spirit into my empty, now dry, self.

Get Away

2011-08-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

For our 7th anniversary this year, Chris and I had our first get away trip. We drove to UT, left our kids with Grandma and Grandpa Dixie and drove down to Southern Utah. We stayed at a fun Bed and Breakfast, Amid Summers Night, for 2 nights an a Cedar City hotel for the third night. We had planned to stay a bit longer, but when we found out about Chris' biopsy we decided to cut back a bit, to have less time away from the kids.

We saw 4 plays at the Utah Shakespearean Festival: A Mid Summer's Night Dream, Noises Off! A Glass Menagerie and Richard III. So fun to be there, and so fun to have the Bard Card and buy lots of treats. We went to a session in the St. George temple, did a small amount of shopping at the outlet stores there, ate at yummy restaurants and hiked up in Cedar Breaks.

One day we drove out to Zion's National Park. I convinced Chris to do Angel's Landing with me. I wanted to do something we wouldn't have been able to do if we'd had kids with us. It was AWESOME! And not as hard as I thought it would be, although it was actually a bit scarrier than that I thought it would be. We hiked it FAST, like an hour total, or something. Chris got to the part where you needed to hold onto chains because the drop off on either side was SO FAR and the rocks you were standing on were SO NARROW. He hiked through it for a quarter of a mile or so, and decided he'd experienced enough and found a nice little shadey tree/ledge to wait on while I went to the top, yay, the very tip of the outcropping.

I was more scared hiking by myself without Chris in so perilous a spot, but I saw other hikers for most of the time and they were all kind and noticed I didn't carry any water with me (I left them with Chris so I could move faster) and shared a sip or two with me. Anyway. It was a really fun thing and I'm grateful Chris let me do it and even did it with me!

We ate a picnic lunch by a river before heading back to check into our hotel and see one more play. I was excited about the pool/hottub at the hotel and was quite distraught when a glass bottle slipped out of the bag I was holding, dropped on the doorstep of our hotel room and shattered, slicing Chris in the leg. He was brave enough to let me do a novice tape job and after a short rest, sat by the edge of the pool dipping a leg in so I could still take a dip myself.

We did well with eating treats but not over doing it and making ourselves sick and we so enjoyed some time away alone together. Although I was surprised at how no kids doesn't equal marital bliss. Not that we had an awful time, it was really great, but it wasn't an only-Zen-like-happy feelings-all-the-time kind if romantic get-a-way like I foolishly dreamed up.

Like everything, our first vacation without children was a fun and good learning experience. Something we need to do more often and we're both really grateful for Dixie and James for watching our kids and letting us take a break.

Packing

2011-07-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

Packing, packing and more packing. It just never ends. Should we take this box?

(almost) Embarassingly, All About Me

2011-07-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

My birthday was this week. We are in the middle of packing and dealing with other stresses, but we still managed to have a fun day. I came back from the gym to find all my kids at the table waiting for me to come home to eat breakfast (German pancakes!) all together. I LOVE eating meals together, especially breakfast since it doesn't happen all that often with either Chris or I exercising.

Also my friends and Chris organized a last minute potluck for dinner so I didn't have to cook anything and we ate yummy Mexican fare. To top it all off my good friend and I wanted to make one last ice cream cake together: five layers - chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake mix cookies, cookies 'n cream ice cream, chocolate cake and a chocolate gnanche frosting. WOW. it was A LOT of chocolate and still so good. I loved it.

Not related to my birthday in ANY way, was a Girls Day the Saturday before. Over the past few months with Chris having been gone so much to conferences/ job talks etc, I asked for a day off sometime. Now its July and we realized that we would have to do it soon if I wanted to do it with my good friends here, and even then it was pretty sudden and not many dates to choose from that we didn't get to do it with everyone I would have liked to do it with.

Those things aside, it was a wonderful day. Really a WHOLE day, all devoted to enjoying myself. It felt a bit extravagant and was so. much. fun. I think almost my favorite part was being able to tell my kids, "Go ask Daddy" anytime they wanted something from me. Chris was such a trooper to do this for me. Especially since he just few in from Spain the night before. He never even complained and really seemed to just be happy for me. I'm not sure I could've done that had the roles been reversed. He's amazing.

MY DAY

We started with a 5K run, with a time goal to beat 9:00 miles. We smashed it!! We did 8:30 min miles which is really fast for me. It was hard and felt so great afterwards.

Next up was a leisurely shower at home and then off to breakfast at a local fancy place, Mayfield Bakery. Then one stop at home to feed babies, followed by shopping at the Great Mall, with mall pretzels to boot! Retail Therapy? Check.

Then came horse back riding. We went on a trail ride for 1 hour. I kept feeling these two extremes: loving the peace, space, quiet and motion and then feeling quite anxious and wishing it all to just be done. My rear was pretty sore for a few days but it was worth it. Adrenaline high? Check.

Then more shopping at REI and smoothies at Costco followed by a quick stop at home to feed the babies before going out for deluxe pedicures and eating out at an AMAZING local Mediterranean place. One word - Baklava. I love Baklava. Pampering and Gourmet food? Check.

We planned to finish the day with a movie, projected at my house but we all fell asleep and turned it off to go to bed. Did we over do it? Not at all. It was perfectly relaxing, exciting, exhausting and rejuvenating. I really truly really love my good friends here and will be sad to leave them.

So Big

2011-07-25T20:34:00.001-07:00

Gwendolyn is really acting so big since turning 1. She's starting to let her personality show and complains when she doesn't get to do what she wants to. Its cute to see her demonstrating her opinion about life. She'll tease Charlie and take away whatever he's playing with and then run over to me to protect her with this grin on her face! She'll offer to give it back and then take it away at the last second and laugh at Charlie's protesting howl.

She's tough and persistent in climbing on things, falling down, and getting back up to try again without much of a fuss. She particularly likes to stand on a stool or potty but doesn't quite know how to get off from that position and will make grunting noises until someone comes to rescue her.

She's in the process of being weaned and doesn't like it one bit! Neither do I to be quite honest, but I know that I do not want to take her on a get-away/anniversary trip that Chris and I are planning in 1.5 weeks. She doesn't really take a bottle and she doesn't much like cows milk, but I'm trying to trick her into liking it by giving her Chocolate milk and slowing diluting it. It worked with Charlie but I guess we'll see how it goes with our little Gweny.

She loves to take baths and be outside. She likes to wear necklaces and sit in cars or on scooters. She has a big sweet tooth and adores her older brothers. What fun.

More Potty Training and Bikes

2011-07-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

So Charlie did so awesome with potty training that a couple weeks ago he finished his sticker chart and earned his reward: a bike! He was so happy to be able to pedal some wheels whenever he wanted and not have to ask to borrow a friends or ride a too-slow-little-boy-trike.

Within days of getting this bike, Charlie also showed more interest in riding his balance bike and promptly became an expert on balancing. He started begging us to take off his training wheels. A week later we consented and found out two things: he can do it! Charlie can balance and pedal at the same time! However, the seat is too tall for him to start or stop on his own. He's pleaded with me to let him ride his bike places, but I just can't be right there to catch him and start him at the same time as push a stroller. I'm thinking we need to put the training wheels back on until he grows a little taller. He's such an athletic kid. Its really fun to watch.

Back to potty training. One week after he got his bike, I gave up. He would never want to sit on the potty and only tell me he needed to go AFTER he had already started, wetting himself and practically anything or anyone nearby! Couple that with moving stress and I just couldn't handle it. We put him back in diapers until he could have no accidents. He prefers to wear underwear but usually doesn't throw too much of a stink to put on a diaper. The very next day he was dry all day. He's only had a few wet diapers ever since and those were mainly during naps or night time.So, he's back in underwear today and doing great! But I am only 1 accident away from switching back. I just can't deal with one more thing. I can't wait for Chris to get back from Spain this weekend. I'm lonely without him.

Passports

2011-07-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

Getting passports for the kids was pretty interesting. We opted to try and take our own pictures and I'm glad we did since it was hard to get just the right look/expression. Its pretty funny to see their attempts at NOT smiling. Actually turning in the paperwork and having the right documents and getting it all officially signed off was pretty challenging. We went in to the post office and the kids were one of the worst behaved they've ever been. They were jumping around the room, trying to turn off the lights and disturb the piles of paper on the big desk and escape out of the room. Oh boy. Its experiences like these that make me as reclusive as I am. We really don't get out much, at least not by myself with all the kids to anywhere thats NOT specifically designed for kids.

O Canada

2011-07-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

Life is pretty stressful right now. Yesterday I ran 10 miles to keep up those distance muscles, took the kids to swimming lessons, Gwen had a Dr. Appointment got 3 shots, Alec got his 5 booster shoots, AND Charlie fell down and chipped both front teeth and then got whacked in the face again later to make it bleed even more so we had an emergency visit (and our family's first visit) to the dentist. To top it all off, Chris had a CT scan this morning (they keep telling us everything is fine, this is just to get more information on what seems to be an inflamed lymph node).

Hopefully everything will calm down a bit, at least for next week when Chris is in Spain for a conference.

Oh. And I keep forgetting to mention on here that we're moving to Canada in 3 weeks. Chris is doing a 2-year Post Doc at the University of Alberta! We're really excited to move on in life, and pretty sad to leave our wonderful friends and lovely life here. Also we're super nervous about living somewhere that has an average temperature of 10 degrees Fahrenheit in winter. But, the research lab is a great match for Chris' career plans and the people are really nice.

So, we're packing, planning, apartment hunting online (not actually fun), and trying to simplify our possessions on top of our normal busy messy lives. Some days I feel fine about it all, and other days I start bawling simply because I miss my sisters in UT.

Exciting times. I'll try my best to enjoy them.

Gwendolyn turns 1

2011-07-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

Gwen LOVES blueberries, strawberries, grapes and cheese. She's our pickiest eater yet and doesn't really seem to like vegetables, meat or milk. She's also our cleanest eater yet because she doesn't always throw food whenever she doesn't want to eat it, she only does that 1/2 the time. She likes to sit on the bottom step of the stairs and play with things and do her own thing when she's playing. (As in, she doesn't usually need to be entertained. yay!)

We sang her all the birthday songs on the morning (a family tradition started by my mom) and dressed her in her fanciest dress and went off to Church. Lucky for her, I was asked to sub in nursery again so she was able to tag along and actually enjoy herself instead of either squirming on my lap or roaming the halls. We had one of her favorite meals: burritos, for dinner and opened presents before going out back for a little cake and ice cream with a few friends and neighbors. She really likes the cell phone Alec picked out for her and the baby bottle that came with a doll I got for her with money from my parents. I know those are gender specific but I just can't help myself. I don't really want to own more balls, cars or trains. Besides, everybody needs at least one doll, right? In fact, Alec played with it the longest...feeding her, putting her to sleep and the pacifier in. He's going to be a great dad, just like his dad.

She liked the chocolate cake but wasn't really a fan of the ice cream. I think mostly she just liked eating the blueberries off. I tried getting a nice birthday picture of her in her dress but she wasn't really interested in smiling for the camera. I got lots of her side/back and the top of her head.
We all love our Gwendolyn and can hardly believe she is a year old! I know all parents say that but this time I really really mean it.

American Love

2011-07-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

We had a fun and low key 4th of July. In my opinion there are 3 'musts' for a complete Independence Day celebration: some kind of craft, flag cake, and fireworks. We barely got those all in this year. The craft was a last minute painted flag thing and the cake was missing the whipped cream but luckily my friend stepped in and made a regular frosting for the blueberries and strawberries to stick to. The fireworks simply consisted of a few sparklers for the kids... but it worked! Brave little Charlie was the first kid to take a sparkler. So cute watching them love it. Although they were always sad when it burnt out, Charlie would say, "Sparkler turned off. It turned off! Turn it on!"

We busted out those flags again today to show some American love after watching the US women win their game against Brazil in the World Cup quarter finals. HOLY COW, it was AMAZING!! I've never scream so loud or jumped so high, for any sport. Just incredible. Gwen started crying she was so nervous about Chris and I just completely freaking out and the boys loved it and joined in the screaming and dancing fest. Seriously, it was such a high-adrenalin moment.

It was a nice Birthday Present for our little Gwendolyn. She turned 1 today, but that deserves its own post.

Fun in Washington and Oregon

2011-07-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

We met my family in Sunriver for the Pacific Crest race events in the end of June. We stayed in this awesome 6 bedroom 7 bathroom house with my aunt and uncles family too, complete with 12 bikes and 2 bike trailers! It seriously was the perfect reunion house. There was a juke box in the main room, an arcade game room and hundreds of VHS tapes. It was fun having so much time chilling with family and cousins, laying around chatting. Although mostly we were laying around because we were so tired from running the 1/2 marathon. My dad did awesome and ran it under 2 hours! So did my brother. My sister, my cousin and my friend and I started it together and all ended separately. I did my fastest yet and ran it in 2:09! It was actually fun.

Somehow my Aunt and I and my cousin's husband didn't make it into this post-race picture but this is all the runners from my family. Cousin Ben, Uncle Loren, Cousin Kelsey, Sister Sarah, Dad, Brother Jordan and Friend Darcy.

Then we followed my family home to Washington for a quick 3 day trip. We helped them do finishing touches on the new basement apartment they're fixing up for my cousins to live in. It looks really nice, and its bigger than my own apartment...I am a bit jealous.

We also went to the zoo and saw elephants, tigers, sharks, snakes, birds, lemurs, and played in the kid zone. The kids loved the slides and climbing structure.

My good friend from here, was also up in WA for her marathon! (I'm still in awe). Her family met us at my house for a day and I had too much fun showing them around Betteridge Bluff and Anderson Island. The kids really enjoyed the ferry ride and "watching the bridge go up" - Alec "and down" - Charlie. Also the rope swing and swimming hole were a big hit. Like typical Puget Sound weather it rained and sprinkled off and on throughout the day, but it didn't stop us from having a blast.P.S. Thanks go to my wonderful Mom for all the pictures!

Potty Training: the beginning

2011-07-01T19:32:00.001-07:00

So before we left on vacation last week, we started potty training Charlie. I wrote the following paragraphs but forgot to post it!

Damage count: 3 accidents, 2 successes (albeit spilled successes)! Not bad for our first morning of potty training Charlie. We've all be working really hard at it. Alec works hard to coach and is acting as verbal manager, "first you go in the potty, then you pick it up and take it upstairs and dump it and then you get to flush it!" "if you drink lots of water it'll help you go potty" etc.... Gwendolyn is working hard to get her hands into the little potty whenever the small window of opportunities arises like when Charlie doesn't remember to close the lid fast enough. I am working hard at keeping Charlie happy and motivated (stickers, M&Ms, with a promise of a new bike at the end) and keeping calm when cleaning up accidents and dissuading Gwen from getting in the thick of things.

Charlie, the sweet boy, is working hardest of all. He doesn't seem to be able to tell much before he goes and after having a particularly frustrating accident all over my freshly folded clean laundry, I can tell he feels bad and nervous and has sat himself on the potty all throughout lunch and before naps. While sitting there, "washing" duplos he leans back and says with such a tired face, "oh, this is hard work." But at least we ended with a success and now he is happily falling asleep in pull-ups and shorts. Whew. We're all exhausted.

And I can't find the cell phone that I know I had 2 hours ago but now its too late to take pictures of Charlie sitting on the potty, or Gwen walking around with play rings on her wrist like bracelets! How does she even know to do that? Hopefully, we'll replace our actual camera soon...thanks Mom and Dad.

Well, I did end up finding the cell phone and snapped a picture of Gwen and her bracelet. Details about our trip to OR and WA are coming soon.

graduation details

2011-06-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

Over graduation weekend we were so lucky to have family able to come visit. First came my mom and my sister, Hailey. They helped get the kids and I outfitted for summer and graduation! Thank you! Then came Chris' brother's family: Thom, Brittany and Jackson, followed closely behind them was Chris' parents and later on my dad. They graciously helped Chris watch my and my friends' kids so we could go run on our last long runs before my friend does her marathon this Saturday and I do another 1/2. She ran 20 miles and I did 14! I've never run that far in my life. It was hard, but strangely felt good.

I'm sad we didn't think to take a picture with everyone who came. But Thom was nice enough to take some pictures for us. Here is their little Jackson:

Sunday was Graduation, we only went to the Computer Science Convocation and watched Chris get hooded by his adviser. Pretty special. I loved hearing the kids cheer, "go daddy!!" as he walked across the stage. We got lots of looks as I'm pretty sure we were the only ones with kids under the age of 10 there! They served lunch after and Martinelli's. Then we had a delicious stake dinner with Chris' freshman roommate and his family, who also graduated that weekend. Fitting to start and end their post-high school academic careers together.

But, of course, the highlight of the weekend happenings was the AGA golf tournament that Chris, Thom and James all played in: Saturday at Stanford's beautiful course, and Monday at Half Moon Bay. Maybe it was long-drive/jet-lag or maybe they were being nice to the man of honor, although probably it was just the fact that Chris is extremely talented....but anyway you look at it, Chris won! Farfel Miller III, one of the usual AGA Tour reporters, wrote about it on the AGA blog.

It was so fun to have family share this huge milestone with us. I'm grateful they could all come. At the top of my emotions; however, is pride....the good kind. I'm SO proud of Chris. There have been some real challenging periods but mainly he's balanced work with family life so well and took the brunt of the balancing act which, for me, will make our time here remembered as one full of fun, sweet, relaxed memories. He is amazing.

graduation

2011-06-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

Chris and his advisor, Yoav Shoham

getting ready...

Pictures with Yoav and his daughter, on old officemate, Thuc and our little family.

more details to come...

Chris' Birthday and EV Carnival

2011-06-02T14:22:00.000-07:00

That's right. Chris turned 30 last month! He's so old. :) I had lots of his friends and family write something for him and I compiled those thoughts into 30 emails that I emailed him every hour for 30 hours on the weekend of his birthday. So many of them made him laugh and some of them were really complimentary, I think he enjoyed it. At least, I enjoyed reading a bunch of Chris-isms.

We had cake and ice cream with our friends that night, and as you can see from the picture, we broke our camera!! The strap came off and it dropped on the pavement. The LCD screen is cracked and all fuzzy looking and since the viewfinder was already broken by being stuck on a totally zoomed in view, one can no longer see what they are taking a picture of. We've got graduation coming up and family coming in town and a lot of other big expenses on the horizon so we're not sure when we can replace it. Its just too bad.

Also a few weeks ago we went to the EV carnival. The boys enjoyed cotton candy, snow cones and train ride. Alec also rode the ponies and visited the petting zoo.

The thing I'll remember most about this carnival was how much Alec LOOOOVED the magician, Daffy Dave. Mostly the jokes were about silly things like singing the ABC's like " A, B, C, D, E, F, Giraffe!" or potty jokes about stinky diapers or wearing pants on our head. But man, Alec was belly laughing for almost the entire show. Charlie was entertained and totally focused too, but mostly with a "why-is-this-guy-so-funny type of expression on his face.

It was great fun and it was sad to think that that was our last EV Carnival since Chris is graduating and we're moving somewhere else next fall for a post-doc.

the end of Yosemite

2011-05-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Our last morning, I took the kids on a walk so Chris could clean up camp and load the car without distraction. We found a fun rocky beach on the river and had fun skipping rocks across.

We drove to see some of the things we didn't get to hike near, like El Capitan. We saw some cool views of the valley and said goodbye.

We stopped at Tunnel View on our way south to Wawona to see the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees.

Our first close look at a giant sequoia. Pretty big, and quite amazing.

The Grizzly Giant has a sign that said the big branches near the top of the tree are bigger than the trunks of any other tree you could see nearby.

Alec reeeeeeally wanted to see the tree that we could walk through. All the way up the shuttle bus and while we were hiking, it was the only thing that he talked about. I wasn't positive they would still let us walk through it, since I wasn't expecting all the fences surrounding the trees preventing anyone from getting close. We were all very relieved when we found out we could still walk through the California Tunnel tree.

This concludes our trip to Yosemite. It was very memorable and makes me want to go back again. (maybe sometime when we don't have to camp in snow and rain).

Yosemite Day 2

2011-05-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Our second night in the park, we woke up to snow. But it melted fast and with rain boots and jackets and lots of other layers we stayed warm and dry.

We fortuitously ran into our friends who were staying elsewhere in the valley on the shuttle so we decided to hike to Mirror Lake with them. It was fun watching the kids romp together. Alec did awesome hiking the mile in and we enjoyed a little rest at the meadows around the "lake" before hiking back to the shuttle. Right before heading back the clouds cleared a little bit and we could see Half Dome. Charlie wanted to take a turn hiking so we let him and he did AMAZING! He kept saying, "oh! anuder ticky part!" whenever we'd get to the "tricky" parts where we made him hold our hands to walk up rocks or puddles or roots or something else slippery. It was really fun.

We ate a picnic lunch around the Visitor's Center and then took the shuttle to hike to Vernal Falls. This was way steeper than we realized and the .8 mile there was hard, but with promises of treats at the bridge (where we stopped to turn back) we were able to keep Alec (and ourselves!) going. Chris was pretty nervous about the steep drop off the cliffs right off the side of the trail, but it was such a beautiful hike. My favorite one we did.

Here is a poor attempt at stitching together a panorama of the view along the hike.

Yosemite

2011-05-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

We'd planned to go camping in Yosemite the week after Chris' defense for a family vacation. As the weather predictions got worse and worse, we had second thoughts about going. In the end, we decided to just do it ... knowing that if we didn't go now (when we had reservations) we'd probably never get to it. Yosemite was at the top of my "Must do before we leave California" list.

Come rain, snow or sun we were going.

And it did; they all did. It rained every night and all day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning we woke up to 2 inches of snow covering everything around camp. Luckily, we had reserved a spot in Housekeeping Camp, where they have these hutch-like concrete walls/canvas covered "tents" with electrical outlets. We borrowed some space heaters from our friends and brought every blanket we own (which is A LOT). Chris did some awesome insulating with hanging and stuffing blankets over all the open-air spots and we stayed warm while we were sleeping. Gwen was dressed like a Russian doll with tights, onesie, thermal pjs, socks, footsie pjs, fleece suit, topped off in one of my old fleece jackets.

We even brought a portable DVD player so we could keep the kids entertained inside where it was warm while we made dinners and breakfasts. Not your typical camping activity but it worked and I loved it.
We borrowed a second hiking backpack so Chris and I could each carry a child, leaving only Alec to walk. It made the hikes SO enjoyable only having to worry about one kid running around leaning over scary cliffs, tromping through huge puddles and slipping around slush.

Day 1 - Yosemite Falls and keeping dry around camp

Thesis Defense

2011-05-13T10:22:00.001-07:00

Chris had his Oral Examination and Thesis Presentation yesterday! He passed! Thanks to the babysitting help of my friends, I was able to go and listen to him. He was sooo great. He looked so prepared and you could tell the flow of the presentation was well thought out. It was story-like which made it easy to follow...although many of the slides were full of numbers, signs or graphs that was completely above my head. He handled the questions during his presentation without hesitation, and used non-research related examples to clarify points that was really helpful. He had the timing down perfectly and never seemed either rushed or long winded. It really was quite superb. It is tradition in his department to provide refreshments for the people attending your defense so I had made some lemon-poppyseed bread and had fruit, juice and bagels. To the amazed (disappointment?) of some, we didn't provide coffee, and I was actually a bit nervous that the lack of it would reflect badly on Chris, but it doesn't matter now. Its over, and he passed! (the blobs are supposed to be balloons but Chris came home in the middle of decorating and we just stopped)

I had a baby shower the night before and I came home to find him sitting on the couch testing out the suit he thought he might wear, typing out cues to reference during each slide. so cute. (although he didn't really appreciate me taking this picture... I just couldn't resist.)

Quite selfishly, my favorite part was the last slide where he had this picture of our family and he said how much he appreciated and loved us. Although he didn't tear up, his voice was full of emotion. I love to hear him talk about us! I also loved the surprised comments in the room from the people who didn't know he had 3 kids! "you did that (thesis) AND all this (kids) at the same time?" And comments to me after, "You need a congratulations too! 3 kids in 3 years?" Actually its 3 kids in 4.5 years, but pretty close.

Mothers Week

2011-05-10T13:07:00.001-07:00

With Chris gone in Taiwan the week before Mother's Day, I had lots of opportunities to mother. In fact, the opportunities never stopped. I started off with zest and productivity on Monday and as the days followed I got progressively snappier and ineffective. As I wrote out cards to my mother, mother-in-law, and grandmothers I realized how hard it was to follow in their footsteps and how far I was to becoming like them. The climax resulted in tears and making a deal with Alec that we would both try to behave nicely for the rest of the time and reward ourselves with ice cream. Then Chris came home and life is better. He kindly offered me a break Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning! I have increased respect and compassion to all the mothers who have (or had) to parent alone for both long and short periods of time. Even with Chris home its not easy being a mom. The boys still are testing limits on how far they can escalate their back and forth teasing before someone hits/pushes/throws/kicks/cries and consequences come into play. The worst part is, I can see in their angry "I'm mad so I want to throw something" behavior shadows of my own reactions in the past week and a half. I hope I haven't ruined them for life.

Happily, I still happen to think my kids are the cutest things on the face of the Earth. Charlie can still melt my heart with his rugged adorable-ness, lone-wolf tendencies, and sweet high voice while Alec still leads our little family by his typically kind and tender example. Gwendolyn, in particular, is giving me so much joy recently. She is growing so old, aware, and playful. She really does deserve the phrase many are attributing to her "smiliest/happiest baby." In fact, someone told me the other day, they've never heard her cry or whine. Despite her best efforts to CONSTANTLY smile, she does lose it sometimes and just last night I got a good picture of it.

Most of the time, however, we see this as a typical "did-you-say-my-name?" expression:

Gwendolyn walks!

2011-05-03T13:44:00.001-07:00

Its been a while since she's taken a few steps every now and then between couches and chairs, etc... but now she's walking across the room all the time! Its been developing over the last day or two. The longest string of steps I've counted is 15 or something like that. Its not ridiculously long, but she's trying to do it constantly. Its too bad that Chris is in Taiwan for a conference, its an exciting time he is missing and he has our camera. But, we have a webcam that takes videos and so I made one of Gwen walking for him. She'll be 10 months next week. I can't believe how fast its gone.

Saturday Morning Fun

2011-04-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

Chris got back from Canada late last night. He was out visiting the University of Alberta for a possible Post Doc. Hopefully the next few weeks will bring to light a solid offer from somewhere. Here is an aerial view of Edmonton.

Then we decided to have some fun to celebrate his being home so we all got up at 4:30 to drive 2.5 hrs up to Sacramento so I could run a 1/2 marathon! It actually went really well. My arches didn't hurt as much as they could've (I've been having a hard time with them) and although I was tired and beat beyond all belief, I didn't feel like crying at the end! Also we ran it under 2 hrs and 20 min. Success! Maybe another one in another 2 years.

Easter

2011-04-27T15:25:00.001-07:00

We had a fun Easter. I tried to do some of the same activities as I did last year throughout the Holy Week, but forgot for some of the days. We had a ward Easter Egg hunt and breakfast on Saturday, and the kids were a bit overwhelmed by all the other crazy kids but they really enjoyed watching and finding a few eggs.

Then we dyed Easter eggs later that night in anticipation of my Mom's family traditional Egg Roll Competition.

I had made these Easter baskets out of cotton string wrapped around a balloon and starched with boiled sugar water earlier in the week with some friends. Chris' grandma Claudia gave me the idea and all the supplies. It was really fun, although it took longer than I thought it would. I'd love to keep it as a tradition. Its fun to have Easter-specific baskets that I don't have to store throughout the year.

At church the Choir sang this beautiful song called "Alleluia! Christ is Risen" by Andre Kopolyoff. It was quiet and staccato and so fun to sing. After church we got together with friends for a nice pork roast, salad, rolls, mashed potatoes and Roasted nuts n' Butter Chocolate Cake dinner extravaganza. Lastly, we finished the day with our Egg Roll Competition. This year, Chris made a bracket for us. The winner is...

GWEN! She actually seemed to understand some of what was going on because the only time she wasn't crying was when it was her turn to roll her egg. I'd hold her on my lap and hold the egg in her hand in my hand, swing it back...1....2....and on 3 I'd flick the egg out of her hand across the blanket. She never complained about having it flicked out! Really fun.

bunkbed love and a dance party

2011-04-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

The boys LOVE their bunkbed. They both get excited to take naps and go to bed. Alec doesn't take naps usually, but he asked to the other day when I excitedly asked Charlie, "Who gets to sleep in the bunkbed for naps!?!" Earlier, Alec had offered to let Charlie sleep on the top so I was nervous to find out what would happen when Alec decided he wanted to take a nap too.

Well, they both just slept on the top! Or at least tried to. Alec didn't ever fall asleep but he lay there quietly for 30-40 minutes and woke Charlie up accidentally by climbing back up to the top after a bathroom trip. Despite the late night the day before and the interrupted naps yesterday, it was SUCH a good day. I was so full of happiness as I played with my children more than I usually do. I particularly enjoyed laying on my back on the floor with Charlie laying on his back on top of me while we tried to throw balls up to the ceiling and catch them again. Alec would patiently get the ball for us if he rolled beyond our reach and Gwen happily crawled around us babbling and smiling. Yesterday was also my turn to receive dinner from my good friend/neighbor, Amanda. We swap meals once a week. A yummy lasagna, salad and homemade garlic bread arriving at my back door at 5:30 was a perfect addition to a fantastic day.

Then we topped that all off with a dance party before Chris had to go to scouts. Charlie had some AWESOME moves... all slow and deliberate when he was trying to show/dance with Gwendolyn. What a cutie pie. Alec wanted to take a picture of Chris and I dancing and never seeing any flashes or hearing any clicks I thought he either got distracted or didn't take any so I continued to dance/move all out. Turns out he was taking a movie! haha. I haven't deleted them yet, but I'm definitely not posting them here. Here are some of the kids instead.

Ok the movie I was going to post is taking too long so here is a short one of Alec dancing with Gwen. My favorite part is the huge smile Gwenyrs has when Alec picks her up. He's so gentle with her!

Wait, I think I got the first movie ready. Here are Charlie's awesome dance moves in all their glory.

Bunkbed!

2011-04-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

So our bunk bed saga comes to a close. After waiting all day for the UPS truck, it finally came around 4:30. Chris rushed home and we immediately started putting it together. No real instructions along with no pre-drilled holes for some of the screws made it a bit challenging. It started off like this:

All of us in their room watching Chris work. But it quickly turned to this:

The boys watching a movie in our room while Chris and I (half watching Gwen, half helping Chris) continued to work.

Enter dinner time. Luckily I had made chili and cornbread earlier, so it was just a quick break and then back to work. By this time Chris had half of it together enough to realize that the slats we bought at IKEA yesterday were barely too wide for the bed frame. (Actually, the bed frame was built too narrow) At least the mattresses were squishy enough to fit so all he had to do was cut down all the slats 1/4 an inch. 2 stores later, Chris came home with a circular saw and a ratchet wrench to get the job done as soon as possible.

By this time Gwen was past ready for bed, and the boys were tired so we put Gwen to sleep in our room and let the boys watch more movies downstairs. When the UPS truck dropped off our mattresses earlier we excitedly invited all of Alec's and Charlie's courtyard friends over for a PJ-Bunkbed-Slush party when it was done, so through the whole process we had Alec and his friends asking about "The Party" about every 5 minutes.

Finally around 8:30 the bunkbed was finished and Alec and Charlie were climbing into it for the first time. They are really excited to sleep without kicking or touching each other and can't wait to show it to their friends tomorrow. :) There was no way to connect the ladder to the bed frame but both Alec and Charlie can climb up without it.

It fits the room really well and feels very solid and sturdy and its not scary high off the ground for Alec and there still is plenty of room for them to stretch out. We're really pleased to have it! I'm not sure it was really worth the wait/stress/anxiety/hassle but I've learned a lot about patience and trying to think the best of others. It is very cute and I can see us loving it throughout the years.

Masters induced obsession

2011-04-17T20:13:00.001-07:00

Ever since watching the Masters a few weekends back, Golf has firmly taken its spot at the very top of Archibald interests. I've had to go to the running store three times in the past month to work out a foot/shoe problem and right next door is a golf store. The boys (all three of them) out-lasted the girls during those shopping trips. In the end we came away with some new golf clubs for Alec and Charlie. ("Wait, aren't we sort of on a tight budget?" I ask. The answer: "but ... this is golf." ) At least, I insisted, we should have the boys earn their clubs. So we made a sticker chart rewarding obedience the first time, being kind, staying in their beds (meaning NOT climbing into Gwen's crib), and asking for food (meaning NOT opening the fridge and making a mess).

After a few days the boys filled up their charts. I think the concept was a bit beyond Charlie's attention span but Alec might have earned it all on the first day or two if we weren't trying to get them to finish at the same time.

In one word, Alec is obsessed. He constantly asks to go golfing or go to the driving range, or to get out his clubs and hit balls. He practiced hitting out back for hours on Saturday, and didn't even want to come in for dinner. And he's good. He's really good. 8 out of 10 hits are solid contact, he's averaging 30 to 35 yards and his longest drives are 50ish yards...all the way to the fence.

Charlie is doing awesome too. He reaches back and swings through. His longest drive was 15ish yards and straight as arrow. He likes to hit a few balls, watch Alec hit some, go play with some other toys and come back to hit balls again. Over and over and over.

Even Gwendolyn got in on the action. She got so excited about it all that she stood up to standing without holding on to anything and even took her first steps unaided today!

Memorial Church

2011-04-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

The weather was nice last Sunday so we took a family walk to Memorial Church. Actually maybe it was too Sundays ago. Either way we all enjoyed it and we remembered to take our camera!

For any of you interested in our future, its all still up in the air and there are no new developments. Hopefully we'll know where we're going by the end of May. For those of you interested in our Bunk bed Saga. There IS an update. They sent two more packages and should arrive on Tuesday. The only thing they forgot in this set of shipments are the bolts and the slats for the mattresses to lay on. Instead of waiting another month for them to send those, we decided we'd just buy/make some here. So, if everything goes perfectly smooth (which I'm beginning to doubt) the boys could be sleeping in their new bunkbed Tuesday night!

Ogre Attack

2011-04-10T19:57:00.001-07:00

Last week were we attacked by an Ogre. Well, it was only after little Gwendolyn. Actually, I think she was Princess Gwenyrs that day.

Lucky for the princess, she had two brave and courageous brothers to protect her.

The ogre was no match for their skills in archery, swordsmanship and overall destruction.

The cardboard box monster didn't even last 1/2 a day, but what a glorious few hours it was. I can't decide who had the most fun: the boys shooting, tearing, poking, and ripping or Chris watching his masterpiece give such entertainment and laughs to his children. Gotta love General Conference weekend.

correction...

2011-04-07T17:08:00.001-07:00

PART of it came: the headboards and the ladder. There is no way to connect them, no place for the mattresses to go, no side rails, no instructions and no screws/etc... The shipping info says 1 of 1.

Maybe another shipment will show up tomorrow morning. But now that we have the boys twin bed all taken apart, looks like they'll be sleeping in sleeping bags for a few days or months or years. Ok. not years... I'm just trying to fight the depression.

IT CAME

2011-04-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

Surprise of all surprises....

Our custom-made-extra-long-good-price-toddler-sized bunk bed was delivered to our house this morning!! After 1 year and 3 months, its here. I can hardly believe it and I can't stop smiling. We're waiting for Chris to come home from work before we open it....then build it...then drool over it and sleep in it (literally). Here's to patience!!

I think we'll have an open house for it and invite all our friends who've supported us and ached with us over our Bunk Bed Saga to come celebrate. I really hope its as awesome as we've dreamed about.

Small Spaces 2

2011-04-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Another benefit of living in a small space is how much it "forces" you to get out. If I had my dream home, I can imagine how comfortable I would be to just stay in it all day. Admittedly, I know the main benefactress of our constant outings is the nice California weather, but living in a small apartment contributes in its own way.

One of my favorite spots we affectionately call, Lake Lag (pronounced 'log'). Sometimes there's no water, sometimes there's a lot. There are zillions and zillions of teeny tiny frogs in the late spring and theres a nice path that goes all the way around it. My running buddies and I often go by it, or through it or around it on our runs.

This is last month - lots of water:

This is last year - hardly any water

Visit with Great Grandmas

2011-03-31T13:08:00.001-07:00

While in Utah we took a morning to visit with Chris' grandma. She has kept great care of the toys her boys played with as kids and so its fun to see the "classics" and read the names of Chris' dad and uncle written in crayon on some of them. She has many things that the boys don't get to play with very often: old wooden tops, tinker toys, balloons, Easter eggs, snow, etc.

The boys wanted to play in the snow but we didn't have any snow gear, so GG thought to bring it inside in a bucket and play with it with cookie cutters on a cookie sheet. Genius! Alec and Charlie loved it. We had to take a few breaks so I could run warm water over their cold hands. You can see Gwen wants to be where the action is and is CONSTANTLY looking for ways to stand up. She is sooo happy when she is standing.

Of course, GG Claudia fed us a yummy "dinner" of meat sauce and spaghetti, homemade rolls with spun honey, milk and to top everything off her famous peaches and raspberries with cream. I've never eaten fruit like this until I married Chris. We had "bananas and cream" for breakfast some mornings but it was always with milk, never with actual cream. Charlie loved sitting in a big chair (on top of phone books!) and I couldn't resist his cute messy face.

We also took an afternoon to visit with my Grandma Hardy. I was happy to get time to see her and it was fun to have her write us in her schedule. We played with toys downstairs and the boys loved turning on and watching the artificial fish tank that my aunt got for my grandpa when he couldn't read anymore but still wanted to have something pretty to look at. I wish I would've had my camera with me to get pictures of our afternoon with her. Thankfully she had some jobs for Chris to do for her! I love being useful. (haha, well I love Chris being useful). Most of her clocks on the walls are too big/heavy/high for her and they were all out of batteries. My handsome, tall, sweet Chris was happy to help. Before we left, she offered the boys a snack. They were happy to eat everything she put before them: applesauce, string cheese, wholesome oatmeal animal crackers (super super good!), apple juice, ripe juicy pears. Lucky, it was almost time for dinner so I had a reason to put a stop to it all, otherwise we might have eaten everything in her cupboards!

I love visiting with family... and I especially love how they want to cuddle, kiss and drool over my children. Makes me feel lucky to have them and it makes me feel a bit important to be the one in charge of raising them.

Spring Break 3

2011-03-30T14:20:00.001-07:00

We also did some fun things with our Betteridge family. We took a look at Jared and Ashley's and Tiffany and Todd's new houses...or at least the foundations of the new houses. Its crazy to think that the next time we're in Utah, both families could be moved in! I can't wait to see them. We just played around at homes, got together for a fun pre-General Conference FHE, ate yummy food. The girls went out to eat to celebrate Tiffany's golden birthday, and of course got some shopping in!

One afternoon we went to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. It was beeeeeeautiful. Seriously, so serene and peaceful. We had a picnic lunch down by the shore and went on a really fun hike to Buffalo Point to see some great views of the island and lake. I couldn't believe how big Salt Lake was. We saw buffalo, big rabbits and coyotes. I'd love to go again and do some biking or running on the island, but not in the summer... you could tell it would be very hot.

Spring Break 2

2011-03-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

We did lots of fun stuff on this Utah trip and enjoyed doing so many things with family and friends. With our Archibald family we watched a bunch of basketball and movies at Chris' sister, Jess, and her husband Ryan's new house. That house is incredible. So beautiful and spacious without being over the top. Seeing Jimmer play on a real TV station on a big TV was awesome. I, for one, am happy with what BYU did this season in basketball. They were so good and fun to watch.

We played at grandma's house with cousins dressing up and blowing bubbles and racing marbles and cars and playing with playmobile toys. Charlie fit perfectly into a real pair of lederhosen.

We went bowling in the WILK and I even bowled a turkey!! Gwen sat happy in her car seat for most of it, what a trooper. Alec loved throwing the ball all by himself and you could tell he wanted to aim better but wasn't sure how to do that since it took all his energy just to get the ball down the lane! Charlie liked to use the metal stand and roll the ball down it. He tried to put his fingers in the holes and pick up the ball like that, but always had to resort to the two hand carry.

Also we made Grandpa Archibald's dreams come true with all the grandkids outside hitting golf balls. They got a jr. sized set of golf clubs complete with a driver which all the kids loved. This was Alec's first experience with a driver and he enjoyed making it go "Waaaa - POWIE!" Its so satisfying to hear that solid ding and watch the ball fly far.

On the drive home we encountered snow at the pass which was enough to require chains... but just barely. Chris was great about it all and put on the chains himself to avoid paying 30 bucks. We had to drive 10 mph over the pass since I think we bought the wrong size of chains or something because one of the extra bits of chain kept clanking against something on the wheel and we worried about breaking our car. It was a hassle and stressful and made the drive SO much longer, but we got home safe and sound and our car isn't broke so we're only grateful.

Spring Break

2011-03-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

So for Spring Break we drove to Utah to see family. The boys were SO excited to go. We've been counting down the days for a month or two. They loved to help me get the car ready, fill up water bottles and pack the day before we left. The drive out was awesome, probably the best one so far. The boys had new maze books and sticker books and watched a movie and took naps. Gwendolyn was awesome but I really wish she took a pacifier instead of crying to sleep for all naps and bedtime.

We stayed 1 night with my sister, 3 nights with chris' parents, 2 nights with my sister, 2 nights with chris' parents, and 1 night with my sister. Surprising the kids did awesome going back and forth. It probably helped having the same setup at both places. People in UT are ready for spring, but we were excited to see it snow the morning after we arrived. Alec and Charlie LOVED going outside and trying to catch it in their mouths. Gwen didn't really care about the snow, but she loved the space to crawl around and new toys to play with.

teenager in a toddler

2011-03-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

Chris has often made the comment to me about how Charlie is already acting like a teenage boy. He'll roam around the house and every hour or so, find his way to the fridge whereupon he opens it up and tries to find something to eat. Most of the time its milk, or strawberries/blueberries or yogurt. He'll pull it out and say in a low sing-song whine, "I want miiiiiiillllk." If he doesn't get to eat whatever it is he pulled out, he'll throw a fit. Also, soon after coming downstairs, he'll strut into the kitchen and with arms hanging low and his chin jutting up and a pouty face saying, "I want br-EAk-FAst."

Also, Charlie is perfecting the one word answers. If I ask him "why" anything (why did you go in Time Out? Why is it not Ok to hit Alec? etc) He'll look at my beneath those long lashes of his and push his lips out and say, "Um... 'cuz"

Other times He shows us a glimpse of attitude by putting "No" or "Yes" in front of whatever we just said to him. He says this with his head tilted back and his eyes crinkled and barely open.

Charlie: "I want cih-meh row " (cinnamon roll = donuts)
Mom: "Sorry... not before lunch"
Charlie: "YAH, 'foh lunch"

Also because Alec often threatens in the extremes, (I'm going to eat it all! I'm going to play with it for 100 days" or "...for all the days!") Charlie gets really bent out of shape with this.

Alec: "I'm going to play outside for all of the days" (when Chris asks him to come inside)
Daddy: "Come on, Alec, Charlie, time to go in"
Charlie: "No go in, Alec outside"
Daddy: "No, Alec is coming in right now too"
Charlie: "Alec outside, all the days!"

Small Spaces 1

2011-03-11T08:29:00.001-08:00

There are lots of things to love about living in a small space. First off: the kitchen/laundry/dining room. I can be folding clothes and switching laundry while watching to make sure the beans don't boil over before turning down the heat all the while monitoring the boys playing with playdough - all without taking more than 3 steps.

Also, I really love the cupboard space in this kitchen. It goes all the way to the ceiling. The above picture was taken standing on our table. The below picture was taken standing outside on our patio.

The below picture of our "dining room" was taken standing by our computer desk. One benefit to having our toys stored behind the table is that some of the more messy toys like, playdough and paints are visible and handy but still hard for the kids to get to, since they'd have to move our table to pull it out.

BY THE WAY - As our time here starts to get closer to the end, I want to take pictures to remember how our house was. Our first tiny apartment was pretty pitiful; complete with broken stairs, mini-oven, ice-box freezer, and cardboard/ducktaped-covered holes in the walls. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures from that place to laugh at now. I don't want to make that mistake again, so although I know our house isn't "feature-able" I will feature it across a few posts purely for the sake of remembering. I was going to wait till my house was super cleaned and de-cluttered, but its never going to be like that so... here's to remembering it how it really is.

documentation

2011-03-04T14:12:00.001-08:00

Gwen's first experience with Sunshine Pancakes. This is an important milestone, people.

Alec has really been into letters. He tries to read words and sounds like that one fish from Finding Nemo speaking, "whale." He also tries to spell words, all on his own. Its pretty exciting. He may be actually reading within a year or so! Chris did this duplo creation (he really enjoys playing with duplos just as much as the boys, sometimes even more!), but Alec insisted on taking a picture of it before Charlie destroyed it.

Also, the boys wanted to document this funny Mr. Potato head ensemble. Charlie and Alec can be so silly together!