Happy Birthday, Brother Jordan!!!

To quote Jordan : “Today is the day we celebrate…by…..by…..sweet relish! Mom, can I have a strawberry?”


(This will have made no sense to the majority of you out there. The only ones who will know what I am talking about are the ones that were on our family Yellowstone camping trip 14 years ago, or have been privy to watching the video tapes of it…before all the video tapes mysteriously disappeared…)

to Washington and back...

WARNING: lots of pictures ahead. proceed with caution, you might get overwhelmed. :)

Since we were flying out to Washington on Christmas Eve, we did our Christmas as a family on the 23rd. We figured Jayden would be up before 7, and we could open our presents and eat breakfast together before Royal headed off to work. Of course Jayden picked this day to sleep in until almost 8. Jayden really isn’t a rip into the presents kinda kid. He pulls one little piece off at a time and makes sure that piece is either in the garbage or handed to mom or dad before he gets another. He did love having presents though.


Jayden got a set of working power tools, which he promptly set off around the house trying to drill holes in things. He told me he was fixed things.


He also got a bunch of play dough tools and spent a good part of the morning making green worms.


Miss Willow pretty much just sat around and stared at the Christmas tree…lazy bum


We got up really early on Christmas Eve to get to the airport. Waking Jayden up at 5 wasn’t easy until we reminded him this was the day he got to go on an airplane. That pretty much was like giving him a shot of adrenaline and he perked right up and ripped his pajamas off. He was really excited to get to Nana and Papa’s and play with their “big” trains. The kids did really good on the planes. No freak outs from Jayden and Willow pretty much slept the whole time. Hallelujia!!! Once at Nana and Papa’s, there were many people waiting to meet Willow. Here are a few:
Aunt Jojee - the person to send your kids to when you need to get them to sleep… just so you know incase you want to hire her out.


Great Aunt Nancy - the self proclaimed marshmellow


Cousin Heidi


Great Grandma Leona


Jayden didn’t waste anytime getting out in the snow that was piled around my parents house.





And here’s a familiar site. A happy Royal bringing more wood to the house for fires. Royal was a happy camper to be around stacks of wood and fires that needed poking and bothering again. He’s been going through withdrawls out here in Kansas, the land of no trees.


Royal and Jayden got busy building a snowman. Well really Royal built it, Jayden just threw snowballs at him the whole time. Good kid.


Aunt Kay-Kay had sent special gifts for Jayden and Willow to open on Christmas Eve. Here is Jayden in his sweet Christmas pants.


And Willow in her Christmas skirt with matching blanket of course!


Jayden found and played with my mom’s big train set for hours and hours. We found him sneaking out of his bed at night and since my parents house is so big, he was able to get across the house and play with trains for quite awhile before anybody found him.



Christmas morning brought lots more presents with it. And one of Jayden’s favorite was this microphone. I love listening to him sing!



And Great Grandma Joann braved the snowy roads and made it out to the house Christmas morning, just like she has always done as long as I can remember. I’m sure the fact that she was going to get to meet Willow helped too.



Jayden was so glad to be reunited with Papa again. They flew back to Washington 2 weeks before us and boy did we miss them here! Jayden and Papa have their own “special” language, and they sat in this “story” chair and told each other stories in gibberish over and over and cracked each other up.





Willow was also really happy to be reunited with Nana and Papa. Papa and her have a special relationship too, she gets fussy and he puts her to sleep. In fact Aunt Jojee and Papa were competing the whole time we were there to see who could get her to sleep the fastest. It was fantastic for me!




Once our week was up in Shelton, we headed down to Kelso for a week to spend time with Royal’s family. One of the first things Jayden did was get into Grandma’s flour drawer. Every grandma should have a drawer full of flour and sugar for their grandkids to play in.



Willow got to meet her Uncle Gabe and Aunt Brynn, who got engaged while we were there. Congratulations to them!!!





And of course there is always Great Grandma Mary


Somehow, we didn’t get any pictures of Willow with her Aunt Lisa or with Grandma and Grandpa. Who the heck is in charge of this camera anyway????

There are pictures of Jayden in the kitchen with Grandma though. Helping her make pizza dough. If it involves flour, Jayden is in!





Of course with the freaky Washington weather that was going on, the snow had all melted around Royal’s parents house, but then it snowed again!



We just got back to Wichita on Wednesday and we’re lucky we flew out when we did. Thanks to all the snow melting and the rain that started pouring, I-5 got flooded over and was closed for about 20 miles. Royal’s mom took us up to the airport and was one of the last cars they let pass through when she was headed back to Kelso. If Royal and I had tried to fly out any later, we would of been stuck in Washington. Although that really isn’t a bad thing if you ask me. I loved listening to the rain pound on the roof while we were there. It was worth getting up to feed Willow at 3 in the morning just to get to hear it. :)

Cooking' With Jayden

As usual, Jayden is usually following me around the kitchen, trying to partake in whatever I am doing. I’ve kept him out of the cooking scene for obvious reason…things are hot and well I’d rather not deal with little burned fingers, especially since he refuses to let me look at, much less touch or put ice on something he’s hurt. I’m guessing it all stems back to the unfortunate toenail incident…I KNEW that was going to scar him for life. But today, for the 100th time, he drug his stool over next to the stove while I was cooking dinner, so today I humored him. I could manage to finish dinner using just once side of the stove, so Jayden got free reign of one burner.

Here’s what he made. It’s a delicious combination of a broken up breakfast egg and cheese muffin, a couple of carrots, and a whole lot of salt and pepper (an entire shaker full if you were wondering).




When Royal got home, Jayden wanted him to eat some of the dinner he’d prepared for him. Royal of course could not disappoint.


Here’s a close up of what Royal actually took a bite of and swallowed. Black pepper crusted carrot. yummmm

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….