Weird Weather

Ok, this is just to prove how odd the weather is over here. Yesterday, as you can see from my post, it was all icy and snowy and just plain cold. Well, yesterday after the sun went DOWN, it warmed up. What?, you say. Yes, it got warmer at night. I left the house around 5:30 to finish up the last thing I needed to do for Christmas and the thermometer in my car said it was 37 degrees out. When I came home an hour and a half later, it was 40 degrees out. I know, I don’t get it either. Then this morning, Jayden came into our room asking, ‘Where is the snow?’ During the night, it stayed too warm that all the snow melted. Does this seem backwards to anyone else? It seems to me like when the sun - the sun which is our source of heat - goes down, usually the air gets cooler. But not here in Kansas, nope, the sun goes down here and things warm up. Here’s a picture from today. Yesterday things were white and beautiful, now we’re back to brown and ugly. Ugly compared to when things were covered in snow, anyway. No need for the foggy dew song today!

Fog

One of the things I’ve noticed I’ve missed the most, when it comes to weather over here, is there is no morning (sometimes all day) fog that comes in the fall and hangs around until spring sometime. There is just no moisture here to get any of that fog like there is in the pacific northwest. I had a really hard time feeling like it was fall when I had yet to see any fog, then I had a harder time decorating for Christmas when there had been hardly any rain and it was still super sunny outside. I have even missed the rain over here. I know, it’s hard to believe, I didn’t think I would ever say I missed the rain. But we went to bed one night and it started raining and it sounded so nice pounding on the roof. This morning, however, we woke up and were completely socked in with fog. Of course, with this being Kansas, it couldn’t just be any type of fog, it had to be extreme. It, of course, was freezing fog. The freezing fog did however put some ice on the trees, which there hasn’t been any of either. With all the snow around, it looked so wintery!



UPDATE: FOGGY FOGGY DEW
In honor of my dad, the man who dropped us off at school every day (telling us to tell all our friends hi for him), sometimes in an old mustang or sometimes in an old dotson pickup (both an odd lime green color) where he had to wipe the condensation off the inside of the windows because the defroster really didn’t work that well and only had the AM radio to listen to (we heard a lot of Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story), this is the song he would sing to us when the roads were so fogged in you couldn’t see 5 feet in front of your car :

“And the only, only time
I held her in my arms
Was to keep her from the foggy foggy dew
The fooooggggyyy deeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww ”

Next time you see my dad, you should ask him to sing it for you. He can really hit that high pitched last note really well. :) (Your welcome dad!)

Hangin' Out

With all the snow and super super cold temps (like -13 with wind chill), I’ve pretty much been trapped in the house. Not really a lot to post about, but here’s some new pictures for you to stare at. :) Willow will be 4 weeks old tomorrow, and in exactly 1 week, we will be on an airplane flying back to Washington for Christmas! Yaaaahooooo!!!!

3 weeks

Willow is 3 weeks old today! My parents are back in Washington, Royal’s back at work (although, he really didn’t take any time off when she was born, so that’s not that new), and so far both kids are mostly clean, dressed, and really most importantly, alive! So far, so good :) Here’s to making it through another week….

Happy Birthday, Brother

Happy 28th birthday Willie!  I miss you everyday.

Snow

It finally snowed today!!! It seemed a little freakish to me, being from the northwest where the weather is very consistent, once it gets cold, it stays cold, usually rainy and cold, but pretty much every day is about the same. Yesterday, here in Wichita, it was 60 degrees. Even when the sun went down, it didn’t cool off, it was still about 60 degrees outside. So, maybe you can see how surprised I was this morning when I woke up and it was snowing outside. I checked the weather and today’s high is a whopping 30 degrees. What the heck? A drop of 30 degrees in 1 day? It just doesn’t seem right. However, the wind is blowing here today like there’s no tomorrow, so while the temp outside says it’s 26, the wind chill drops it about down to 11, so when Jayden said he wanted to go outside and play in the snow, I wasn’t that excited. So, I enlisted Papa, especially since today is Jayden’s last day to play with Papa… :( sniff sniff





Papa was freezing!


Once they came inside and warmed up, Jayden decided he needed to wear Papa’s clothes so he could go back outside and make some snowballs.

For Whiny Aunt Kay-Kay

Here are a bunch more pictures for poor Aunt Kay-Kay (and the rest of you who are complaining silently about not getting to hold and stare at little Willow).

Here’s Willow at 8am this morning, we were just rolling out of bed.


Here’s Papa and Jayden at 8am this morning, they’d been up for a couple hours. Jayden, after a failed attempt to get mom and dad out of bed at the crack of dawn that got him put back in his own bed, managed to sneak out of his room and go downstairs and wake up Nana and Papa.


Jayden’s been real protective of Willow. If anybody he doesn’t know very well comes over and tries to hold her, he tells them to put her down and give her back to mom.




Jayden loves to get his back scratched. Lucky for Papa, you only need one hand, so he can drink his coffee with the other. :)


Willow wanted her back scratched, that’s what she’s staring at.




Here’s what Willow was doing while I took a shower this morning. Sleeping. Shocking, I know. There’s just nothing like the newborn coma…



 

Later on, she woke up for awhile. I told her we were going to the yarn store and she got real excited.




What? What is this? I actually made it in a picture???


Willow got so excited for the yarn store, she wore herself plum out….asleep again…

Cougar Kids

I know this is a little late…but give a girl a break, I just had a baby. :)

Let’s just say that Jayden and Willow were less than thrilled to have to root for the cougs, obviously Royal’s purple and gold blood has been passed on. :)



(I didn’t even ask him to frown, he did it all by himself)

More Pictures

Jayden was a little shocked that an actual baby came out. We’d been talking about it for months, I’m just not sure he thought it would ever happen. He goes to sleep one night, then wakes up the next morning and there’s a baby???



 

And in the spirit of the Apple Cup, Willow is dressed all in purple!



 

GO HUSKIES! However, Royal (a UW grad) has a bet going with his sister Lisa (a WSU grad) that our kids have to be dressed in the winning school’s colors, pictures taken, and then put where everyone can see. So…stay tuned…

Willow Elizabeth Lovingfoss

She’s here!!! This one was a quick one. Royal even described it as a little bit boring. He had to do a lot more work with me during Jayden’s birth, and Willow pretty much showed up before Royal could get in on much action. I woke up at 1:20am feeling like someone had just kicked me in the stomach. While laying in bed I counted 3 contractions about 5 minutes apart. I got up, walked around the house a bit and then at 2:00, I woke Royal up and told him we should probably call our midwife. Royal called Michelle and told her my contractions were 5 mins apart, then he had to call her back 20 mins later to tell her my contractions were now closer to 2 mins apart. Michelle kept calling every 10 mins or so while she was driving to check on me, knowing that things were happening fast. I was ordered to lay down to try and slow things down and was told to not push if I was feeling a little “pushy”. Michelle and her assistant Carrie got to the house around 3. They came running in the door, as my contractions were working me over at this point, they set up their stuff and by 3:43am, little Willow made her entrance into the world! Hallelujia! Only 2 hours! I am so thankful, I had been praying for a quick and “easy” birth. I think it was harder for me to decide to have my 2nd baby at home, as I knew exactly what I was going to have to do to get it out. With Jayden, there was definitely some ignorance, you just have no idea what it is going to be like until you are there. But I am so glad I had Willow at home and Jayden slept through the whole thing!

Willow was named after her Uncle Willie (and really her Papa too, as that is who Willie was named after) and Elizabeth is my middle name. She also happened to be born on her Nana’s birthday.
She weighed 7lbs 15oz and was 19″ long.




What a difference 2 1/2 years makes. Right after Jayden was born, all my brothers and sisters piled onto my bed with me and the new baby. Now, I am miles away from all of my siblings, and while Kaylee, Joanna, and Jordan were able to join by computer, it just wasn’t the same. I wish they could of been here. But here is a picture of me and Royal and Willow right after she was born

Free Haircut!

Royal has never had to pay for a haircut in his life, thanks to his mom being a hair stylist. She even has her shop attached to their house, so for the majority of Royal’s life, he never even had to leave the house to get his haircut. Then we moved to Wichita. He swore to me he would just let his hair grow out until we could fly home because there was no way he was going to pay money to get his hair cut. I started to panic a bit, because in reality it could be a long time between trips to Washington. And in case you didn’t know, this is what Royal looked like when we first started dating…a little bit like Harry from Dumb and Dumber don’t ya think?


I know you are wondering, why would I go on a date with him looking like that? But I had no idea he looked like that, I had met him 2 years before our first date and he had short hair at the time, but I hadn’t seen him since then, and he called me on the phone to go to a Mariner’s game with him, so I didn’t see him until I met him to drive over to Safeco field. Luckily, he had a lot more to offer than just a head of hair. :)

Anyway, we moved to Wichita in June and Royal waited until he was able to fly back to Washington in September to get his hair cut, and he really needed a hair cut by then. This time though, we aren’t going back to Washington until the end of December and 4 months is just too long to go. So, Royal asked a couple guys he works with where they got their hair cut, and Royal just stopped by the place on Saturday, without making an appointment. Remember, the boy has never had to make an appointment. Well, they were busy and couldn’t fit Royal in, and they didn’t have enough business sense to make an appointment for Royal before he left. So, Royal, deciding they had horrible customer service, swore he would never go back and that he was waiting until he could get back to his mom’s shop. That’s still a good 6 weeks away, and Royal could of used a haircut like a month ago. Oh well, I guess I was just going to have to get used to looking at Royal’s mushroom-like hair. Then my mom mentioned something about giving my dad a hair cut, and that she had her clippers with her. So, she brought them over tonight and hallelujia, Royal finally got his hair cut.

BEFORE :

AFTER :

Interesting…in each picture, Royal seems to have less and less clothes on. Royal is quite a bit thinner now than when we first started dating too…wonder if I need to feed him more…

The Nursery Update

My parents are here in Wichita now, awaiting the arrival of the next Lovingfoss and spending lots of time with Jayden. And with my mom, came the last pieces to the nursery. She had sewn up the valance and panels for the window, the crib bumper, and the crib skirt. So, here are some updated pics of the finished nursery!

Whenver She's Ready!

I’ve been given the green light! I had my homevisit with my midwife on Monday, she checked to make sure I have all the supplies and everything is ready for the birth and that she knows where I live. So, whenever this turkey decides she’s done cooking, she can come on out. I’m not actually due until the 24th, so it could, in reality, be a couple more weeks (or more…), but there is a full moon on the 13th, so maybe the extra gravity will help make something happen. Or if I get real desperate, I guess there is always caster oil, or sex…eeek

Here’s a picture for all of you wondering how big I am. I’m ginormous and can’t believe I’m actually posting this on the internet for all of you to see...

Mochas!

Royal and I don’t like coffee one bit. We don’t ever drink it, the only reason we own a coffee maker is for people in our family who can’t live without it when they are over…like grandma’s and Royal’s dad who averages about 12 cups a day…well actually I think he’s cut it down to 6 now, and I’m not talking measuring cups, I’m talking gigantic coffee cups full. And really, we only own a coffee maker now, we don’t have a pot. Jayden managed to break it awhile back. You see, Jayden is obsessed with coffee. He pretends to make coffee ALL the time, numerous times a day. He was carrying “coffee” outside the time he managed to drop the coffee pot on the cement. I didn’t care so much, other than I had to clean all the glass off our front porch. Now, Jayden just put his cup under the coffee maker and pretends it’s dripping into his cup instead of the pot. At Royal’s parents house, Jayden gets to grind the coffee beans with grandpa and then scoop the grounds into cups and then back into the jar and on and on until the counter tops, floor, and Jayden are covered in coffee. At my parents house, Jayden gets to help nana make her mocha’s in the morning with nana’s espresso machine. He gets to scoop the chocolate into the cup, turn on the steamer, watch the thermometer to tell nana when it’s ready, and help stir. And then when Aunt Jojee is working some coffee magic down at Riverside, Jayden gets to stop in and order a mocha. Jojee makes him a hot chocolate in his own cup and he gets to sip a mocha just like a big kid. Well, Jayden got a Halloween package from Papa and Nana a couple days ago. And in it, was a Halloween coffee cup full of candy. While Jayden was excited about the candy, once I told him his cup was for mochas he hasn’t been able to stop asking for one. So today, I found some hot chocolate and Jayden got to have a mocha in his new coffee cup after naptime. Boy is this kid lucky. :)

J: I’m so excited for my mocha!

J: Mmmm, Mocha

J:What do you think mom? Do you like mochas?
Me: no, no I do not. thanks for asking though…

J: Oh mom, you’re so funny. I LOVE MOCHAS!!!!

J: I think I’ll have some more

Carving Pumpkins and Some New Boots

We finally carved up those pumpkins we picked up at the pumpkin patch. It took Jayden awhile to touch the pumpkin guts, he thought they were pretty slimy and gross and he preferred to remove them with a spoon. He’s a strange one, but I really like him. :)












Jayden wanted to sleep with the lit pumpkins. I think he might of been a little cold since it’s getting down in the 20’s at night.


Jayden also got a new pair of boots tonight. He would of liked to sleep with those too.