Where Have You Been?

Are you still alive? Have you just left the blogging world? It's about time to post again. What's happening in your life? How are we supposed to know how you're doing if you don't write anything new? Those are a few of the things that I've been hearing lately in regards to my lack of new posts. Okay, so I've been falling behind a little. Well, that might be a slight understatement since it's been over a month since my last entry. Okay, so maybe it's closer to two months than one, but the point is that it's been a while. I'm not totally sure why it's been so long since I've blogged. I've kept up with reading everyone else's blogs and I guess that by the time that I finish reading everyone else's blogs I don't feel like writing one myself or the kid that who was being quiet and allowing me to spend a few minutes on the computer was no longer being so nice a quiet and more than likely was destroying something and needing my attention in some way. It also might be that it's been pretty busy around here so I haven't had a ton of time to sit and think and write and when I've had the opportunity all I want to do is sit and blob. You see, blogging takes a lot of thinking for me. Stuff doesn't just flow smoothly and easily and most importantly coherently from my brain to my fingers and on to the computer. Even when I'm doing pretty good, like right now, there are still definitely some imperfect grammar and hard to follow sentences, but well, that's just too bad. I'm not writing an essay for school, and no one is going to be marking me, so you'll just have to deal with it and hopefully will be able to get the gist of what I'm trying to say.

So what has been happening in the past almost two months? I'm so glad you asked. I don't think I can remember what happened back in the beginning of February where I left off, so I'll just go as far back as my memory will allow and start there. Note: things most likely won't be in chronological order, rather the order that my mind recalls them so just try to follow along.

Jeff spent six days in the Northwest traveling to three different cities on a tour with Bobby Michaels and Scott Wesley Brown (I think that's his name, but I could be totally wrong) to do concerts for a radio station there that helped support Bobby's missions organization, Musicianaries, raise money to buy rice to give to people in Cambodia (at least I think it was Cambodia). Anyways, they raised enough money to buy like 500 tons or something, more than double what they had hoped for. So Jeff took two other members of his worship team and was the opening act or something like that for all the concerts. He had a great time and came back with a new desire to make a CD of his own. Which by the way is going to be happening very soon, so check back in a couple months and hopefully I'll be able to show off and boast about his new CD. Although, you can check back more often than every couple months, just to catch up on what is happening in our lives. Back to the CD thing... Jeff has written a ton of songs in the past year or so that we've been playing at the church and he's been wanting to make a CD, but the money just hasn't been there. But recently Pastor Dan has really grown to the idea of a CD and we received a gift to help us fund part of the project, so between the gift and the church's backing, recording should start in the next week or so, actually, next weekend I believe. So I'm gonna be a bit of a band widow for the next bit while recording happens because he'll be spending evenings and weekends working on it. It's a small sacrifice that I'm more than willing to make to see this dream of his take place. And well, I can't wait to brag on him and his amazing abilities and have something to show off.

*** Side Note *** Noah just started showing off his skills. He was sitting in front of the TV listening to the music that was on (the Imagineers or something like that from Disney Channel) and started dancing, well, his version of dancing while sitting on the floor. Arms waving, bouncing around. Then he started clapping, like real clapping. It was the first time that he ever did that by himself. Then after I started clapping for him he continued showing off by waving and dancing some more. It was so cute. He's now moved on to pestering Sydney and stealing her cereal, some of his favorite activities. Amazingly Sydney is actually sharing and not just yelling "me, me, me" (her version of mine, mine, mine) or "no Duhduh, no Duhduh" (her version of no Bubba, no Bubba, which is what we call Noah all the time, the Bubba part at least).

So to continue with the past two months... Noah started crawling while Jeff was away and of course Jeff had the video camera and digital camera so I wasn't really able to capture the moment. But he's been doing really good at crawling and has been picking up speed. He also started cruising - walking by holding on to furniture or other objects - and loves to walk holding hands. In more Noah news... he got his first tooth a few days ago and the second one is threatening to break through at any minute. He also has decided that baby food is for babies and he's no longer a baby (at least in his opinion) so I've had to work extra had to make sure that there's food for him to eat and not just pull a jar out of the cupboard, because that's just not happening. So he's been eating a lot of steamed carrots, baked sweet potatoes, bananas, extra ripe pears, any piece of tender meat that we're eating and well, whatever else I can find for him. It's been a little frustrating, but I'm starting to get used to it.

Hmm, what else... well, Jeff turned 25 just over a week ago, that a quarter century. I remember thinking that 25 was so old. For his birthday we went to Epcot with his parents who came in to town for the week around his birthday. It was a lot of fun, but I definitely would go to the other Disney World parks before Epcot. It was our first time going to Epcot and I'm glad that we went. The kids did amazing and we really enjoyed some of the rides and getting to look at everything. Sadly we didn't get to ride the Test Track one, which is one of the biggest rides there, but well, all the FastTrak tickets were gone (they get you on the rides a lot faster and you don't have to stand in line for like 5 hours to ride one ride) before we got there, like half an hour after the park opened. It was so frustrating, almost all of the FastTrak tickets were gone before we even got to the rides to check. So we went on all of the rides that we could, even standing in line for over an hour and a half to ride Soarin'. That was a total waste of time. The ride was not nearly as good as I thought it was going to be and was really short, but I guess that I'm glad that I rode it and now don't have to wait that long ever again. So we had a great time, a really long day, especially for the kids (we left the house at just after 6am and got back around 10:30pm I think). They did great in the park, but as soon as we left for the long drive home, Noah started freaking out, and I mean freaking out. He screamed and screamed and screamed. He wouldn't drink his cup and because I wasn't able to help him for the first few minutes while I was helping navigate our way out of the maze of Disney highways back onto the regular highways he got really mad and wouldn't calm down until we stopped at a 7-Eleven to find a microwave to heat up his formula (it has to be hot and I mean HOT! or he won't drink it) So after finally getting him to calm down a bit and drink his cup and change his diaper we were back off on our way home. He was so tired that he had a really hard time sleeping and started screaming again at random moments. I think that it almost ruined the whole day for Jeff as Noah's screaming really stresses him out, but hopefully those couple of hours of driving home have vanished in his memory and all that is left is the fun we had at the park. I would count it a great day in my memory and am so proud of how well the kids did, which makes me really look forward to going back in May with my whole family.

So what else... like I had said, Jeff's parents came down for a week over Jeff's birthday. We had a great time with them here. I love having family in town and the chance for my kids to meet their family that they otherwise don't get to see. It was so nice to have an extra couple of pairs of eyes to help with watching the kids and to have a reason to go and do some of the activities that we always want to do, like going to the beach, that we just never get around to doing. We went to the beach a couple of times and it was great. Harry, Jeff's dad, even went swimming both times. The water was freezing to me, but to him it was amazing, although really rough.

In other news... Congratulations to my brother Matt and his wife Carissa on the birth of their beautiful little girl Kaitlyn Joy. She was born on March 17th at 7:05pm weighing 7lbs, 5ozs. She's absolutely gorgeous and doing great and so is her mom. I still can't believe that my little brother is a dad, it's totally crazy in my mind. And I can't wait to meet baby Kaitlyn and my other new nephew Cole (who was born in December) when my family comes down in May.

Yesterday we finally got the patio tiles for our back yard and I'm so excited. Jeff and I pulled out our old rotting porch and worked long and hard, and I mean hard on leveling out the ground and preparing it for our new patio. After more than two weeks of waiting for our tiles they finally arrived yesterday and we got half way through putting them down and hopefully today we'll finish the tiles and be able to start putting the dirt and grass between them. The tiles are 24" x 24" cement tiles that we're placing 4" apart and putting grass between. I can't wait to have it finished and be able to buy a dining table and chairs and a gazebo and all of the other things that we've been wanting, like a hammock. It's finally happening, after like three months of working on it, actually, it's been a lot longer than that, but about three months ago we really started working on it. So that's the plan for today... finish putting out the tiles and getting the dirt down.

I know that there has been a lot more that's been happening in the past while, but well, you're probably tired of reading (if you've even made it this far, which I guess you have if you're still reading this) so I'll end here. Also the kids are definitely in need of some attention (I just heard a huge crash, but thankfully no cry, coming from Sydney's room - I think it was Noah because Sydney is in the room with me watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse). So this is the end for today. I'll try and put up some pics soon, so check back again soon.