That being said extremely late and infrequent posts are better than no posts at all? Amiright?
Since typing a bunch of stuff will just slow me down, I will just go search my computer for a bunch of pictures now and then tell you a little bit about them, ok?
this is back fallish of 2013, noah really, really enjoying that kitty was letting him sit and pet her. she is not the most tolerant kitty ever. there has been quite the learning curve with noah and kitty, and i thought the day would never come when he went a whole week without any scratches. it didn't help that he was so insanely excited by her presence that he didn't even seem to notice the scratches, so there was no real deterrent to batting her roughly the way you would a burly dog. but now they are quite used to each other and i think it's been months since any bloodshed.
We went to my brother Jake's wedding, which was lovely and windy and cold and outdoors, hence the less than fashionable outerwear. on top of it being windy and cold and the fact that Caleb is in the 0%ile for weight (I have more body fat in my forearm than he probably has in his whole body) he was also apparently feverish, which we didn't notice because everyone was shivering. He went home early and missed the reception, sorry to say.
this lousy picture taken with my lousy (but still fulfilling its duties as a phone) phone is my boys' shoes with their cousin's shoes in between. they rarely sat still long enough for me to get a pic of the three of them together so i decided this was representative enough!
here's noah and ror snuggled up for a show, which is really the only way to get them still for long!
december 2013, the boys love decorating for Christmas especially in their room with 'their' decorations. one of their favorites is this little wooden nativity they actually get to play with instead of just looking at.
they also have had their own tree for years, that they decorate all on their own with the ornaments they have made. they hate that once the big tree is decorated we tell them to leave it alone, but this one they can rearrange as many times as they like (and they get to keep it in their own room!)
last year we were blessed enough to have uncle rodney come spend Christmas with us. his chosen career path has given him little in the way of vacation time and so this was a real treat for everyone. the boys loved teaching him all their favorite wii games and it also meant when daddy was tired of chasing and wrestling there was fresh meat available to devour.
the kids got bunk beds shortly after Christmas, and love having their own little lamps for 'reading books in bed' time. i never had bunk beds (no sisters to share it with) so i am able to live vicariously through them. noah can't wait till he turns 6 so he gets the top spot.
we don't get much snow our way, and when it does accumulate once or twice each year it doesn't stick around for long, so when it's here we make use of it as much as we can.
noah and i would have weekly breakfast dates at panera while caleb was in school (who can resist a 4 y/o boy asking for scones?) during these outings i got into the habit of snapping shots of him to send as good morning greetings to yaya. on this day in his eye-matching sweater he was looking especially photogenic. I really wanted to use that last year that caleb was in school to give noah as much one on one special time as i could, since he was the second child and therefore didn't have much of a window for it.
this year also marked the end of the naps, at least until he hits his teens. this wasn't THE last nap, but i could see it coming and cherished every last one.
my kids are a conundrum at breakfast. they are either not hungry at all and way too busy to even think about food, or, they are starving and needed their breakfast 5 minutes ago. on this day after requesting something that took a little more prep, they decided they wanted to wait in the kitchen so they could start eating as soon as it was ready. the tiles are not soft at all but they are heated, which is almost comfortable. tushy-pillows help.
noah has been a professional eye crosser ever since he did it randomly for the first time over a year ago and I laughed so hard I cried. he has that ability, to just stun you with some hilarious, unexpected thing that you have no defense against, and then of course do it obsessively until you're begging him to stop. he is always looking to make his audience laugh. but he still doesn't get the idea behind telling a real joke and he is so dismayed when he rambles some nonsense together and looks at you expectantly and no laughing ensues. why did the elephant cross the road? because the cow has spots! no?
they got super-mario wii for Christmas and became utterly obsessed, and since they still needed a little 'help' to succeed in the game, daddy was roped into the business. by daddy's birthday the obsession was still going strong. here is daddy's birthday cake, with decorations they made and then we laminated and stuck in there because mommy's efforts to pipe the characters on would have been not much better.
another product of mariobsession - we were always building the characters with legos. here is a koopa troopa noah made.
over this summer the boys and i came out to the midwest to visit the grand folks. there they are helping yaya repaint an old table. this is really the only bad part about living where we do: the visits with family are just too far apart and always fly by too quickly.
yaya instructed them to show me their muscles. this is the result. noah looks like he's cursing someone in frustration, and caleb looks like he's stretched just a bit too far.
nana and grandpa took them to the transportation museum. I need to dig back and find a photo for comparison, because we were in this exact spot when they were much smaller and i love looking back at them and seeing what's changed and what's stayed the same in their little faces.
after getting back to our neck of the woods we took a week to have a family trip. we went to seaside OR and just chilled on the beach and did all the typical stuff they had there to do: eating too much fudge and ice-cream, bumper cars, carousels, kite-flying, etc. we set no schedule or agenda, just did what we felt like day to day, and didn't worry about the clock. we were eating dinner at 9 and putting the kids to bed at 11 after the first day (but they slept in for real which almost never happens!) and it was awesome. just nice to have no business to attend to and just enjoy being together.
one of their favorite things to do was to comb the beach and check out the tide pools. we stayed at a rental house just a few minutes walk from the beach so this took up a good part of our stay. we are all nature bugs so everyone got in on it.
whatever they found it is fascinating!
on our way back we drove up to see mt. st. helens. we asked another tourist to take this shot, they only took 2 and obviously weren't looking very closely. this is literally the only shot with any open eyes, and that is just me, and you can barely see that because my glasses are covering them.
it's an awesome visitor center, I wish we had more time to check it out but we were on a mission to get home. definitely worth the time if you are ever in the area. the whole time we were there, caleb was nervously asking if it was going to explode while we were there, afraid that it would. and the whole time, noah was excitedly asking if it would explode while we were there, hoping that it would. what a difference 2 years makes!
their summer time obsession was going to yeti yogurt. froyo with toppings? that means happy kids. happy kids means good pictures with real smiles, not cheesy squinty faces.
caleb highly approves of this venture. he is also really into weather his food is healthy or not, and really prefers his food be more than less healthy, which is why given the choice between cold stone and yeti yogurt he'll actually choose yeti yogurt. wants to be healthy and live to at least 100, this one.
but you can't be healthy all the time, right? when you've survived a whole extra year of life the natural way to celebrate is to consume a lot of things that will work against that trend. and so we eat buttercream.
their birthdays are less than a week apart, and while we still do combined parties, we let them each choose how to celebrate on their actual birthday. this was caleb's choice, to throw all that health to the wind and chow down on as much volcano cake as the rainforest cafe could throw at him before he started throwing it back. luckily noah was willing to help.
and that is about as updated as my photos are for now, and surely it misses a lot that went on in the past year, but if experience has taught me anything it's that trying to meticulously recount the vast gaps in time on a blog will only result in other vast gaps on a blog. so here we are for now, and all i can do try not to go another year (plus) before i remember that i even have a blog.
ta ta for now!
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