Shelly's 1st Hair Cut

It's official. Shelly has had a hair cut! I couldn't take it anymore! A person should only be expected to put up with so much! Those ends were horrible and hideous and a pain and a half to brush! They're gone now.

Here's the 'before'

Here's the fed-up mom trying desperately to get a decent cut with a horrible pair of scissors (they came with our clippers, and we've never used them before. I doubt we'll ever use them again - they were not good!!) Yes, I had already put her hair up in a half pony tail. That didn't stop me. I was quite bugged ... I mean 'determined' ... yea, that's what I meant. Determined. I'll stick with that.

The end result - after realizing that there was no way anyone would even notice that it wasn't a straight cut.

Here's what I cut off. It doesn't look like much, but it's so nice to have it gone!! Normally I'd say 'We'll miss you. Be sure to write.' But I'm not going to miss this - so I don't want to give it any ideas about trying to write... Don't mention it to them when you see them either. I'll know it was you!




Wow - I really need to get more sleep at night! That was a bit out of control.

Quote of the Day

[Shelly's holding a toy elephant]
Mark: Who's that?
Shelly: Beedee (we have no idea what she actually said)
Mark: Beedee?
Shelly: Yup. He's my brother
Mark: Oh?
Shelly: Yep, and I'm his mom.
[Insert Mark deciding he was tired because he was laughing so hard]

It's entirely possible you had to be there to find this funny...

Another D-Land Trip

We made it to D-land for the first time since Emily was born. It was rather fun! We're planning on going back again sometime soon.

I took Shelly and Jason on the Carousel while Mark stayed with the sleeping Emmie
Mark took the kids on Dumbo while I fed the baby.
Hah! Suckers, waiting in line...
I hear it was worth it
Here's Emily (and Shelly's back) on Small World. We're pretending she liked it... We're also pretending those cheeks are blimps and she can get airborn if we fill them with hot air. Not sure which of those pretendings will land her in protective custody, but we're keeping them both a secret. Don't tell.
Jason and Shelly trying to put with the folks wanting them to pretend they're in jail. It only kinda worked...
Driving. In Toon Town. In a pretend car. That crashed into a mail box. Pretty sure we're not letting either of them behind the wheel of a real car anytime soon.
Pretend you can actually see Shelly in there. Not sure why her hand is coming out the nose. I just hope it's not a habit that picks - I mean sticks...
Here's Jason. At least he's only poking the guys eye out.

School Pictures!

After spending the last week or so mostly pent up in the house trying to get stuff done (mostly failing, but that's not the point) we were ready to take a break from being inside and decided to take a walk. Grammy's co-workers hadn't seen the baby yet, and I'd been informed that they were anxious for a peek, so we decided it would be fun to take a jaunt over to visit. Out came the triple stroller that we're in love with (it's actually a two seater with a sit/stand part in the back) and - after some drama of who got to sit where - off we went. Amazingly enough the kids both stayed in the stroller the whole time! Usually they like to walk, but apparently the drama of the morning subdued them (see previous post). Once we got there we were informed that it was school picture day. Grammy thought it would be fun to have pictures of the kids taken. I had to scramble to clean Shelly's face from her 'breakfast' and try to tame some of the wispy hairs from her braid. I was glad that they had gotten clean shirts that morning at least, and the shirts were even sort-of picture ok even! We'll see what turns out... :)

'I can't go to Joy School without fingers!'

This was Shelly's observation yesterday morning. It was actually a fairly good one, really. It's also probably true to some extent (for her, at least). But it was also so tragic and pathetic sounding. If she hadn't been crying when she said it, it might have even been funny!

Mark was being the awesome guy that he is and making breakfast for us. I was being the lazy bum that I am and was feeding the baby upstairs while Mark had the other kids help him cook breakfast. So, I'm sitting upstairs not really worrying about much and all of a sudden I hear a scream that intensified for about 3-5 seconds and I assumed that Jason had hold of Shelly's hair (which if I had thought about it, I would have realized that I had just finished putting it into a french braid - so it wasn't likely that Jason could have grabbed just a small piece). Then I heard Mark's voice 'Put your hand under the cold water!' I was a little bit more nervous at that point... I jumped us, startling the baby - she started screaming - and ran down the stairs to see what happened and found Shelly screaming/bawling/crying/whining and Mark holding her hand under the sink.

Here's what happened: [name that show]
Mark was making scrambled eggs (the fast way, on high heat and you take the pan off the heat when it starts to cook on the sides, and then put it back on the heat to finish) and when the eggs were finished cooking he took the pan off the stove to dish the eggs onto a plate. We're not entirely sure exactly what Shelly was thinking - she probably wanted to see if the stove was hot - and stuck her fingers right onto the hot unit. That had just been turned off. Of high. Needless to say - it was hot! She ended up with burn blisters on all four of her fingers (not her thumb) of her right hand. Imagine you're being fingerprinted: the parts with ink on them - that's what burned. We went from thinking it wasn't a big deal, to seeing the blisters forming after less than a minute or two and thinking it was bad, to leaving her hand under cool running water for probably 30 minutes, to realizing the blisters had looked worse before we made her fingers wrinkly from being in water so long, to finally realizing she would probably live and even still have her fingers intact. I tried to take a picture of the injury, but her fingers were so prune-y that it didn't really show anything.

All this happened about half and hour before Joy School - so we let her choose if she wanted to go or not. Her half crying response (shortly after the incident while she was still in running water) was 'I can't go to Joy School without fingers!' We let her stay home and watch a movie and eat cookies and ice cream for breakfast. Of course, you can't let Shelly eat that kind of food and not have Jason notice... So, they both got pampered. After we drugged Shelly with some Motrin she was feeling better and we spent the rest of the day fairly normal. She even felt well enough to visit Grammy at work [and we had quite a treat there - but that's another post, this one is already forever long!]

[Update] I got the pictures I took off the camera.

This was the first day - less than an hour after the 'event'

This was the next day. Some are looking better - other's worse.

Jason was jealous of the attention Shelly's hand was getting - he wanted his hand to get some attention too.

What is going on here?!

I pulled out one my of my mom's old memory games to play with Shelly. We were taking a break from trying to get the house back in shape again - it still needs help from Doug leaving and the rooms moving around. Shelly and I were playing with 9 matches (18 cards) and I swear I was actually trying to win - but the first round we played she totally beat me 7 to 2. I would turn over a new card, and she would remember where the matches were! She only got lucky once, that I could tell. All the other matches she got were from cards we'd seen before and she looked like she knew right where she wanted to go. It was a little crazy! I was more than a little embarassed to lose a game I thought I was good at to my 3 year old! You see why I probably shouldn't be a parent? Instead of being proud of her so doing so well, I was totally selfish and thinking only of myself and how horrible it is to lose to a 3 year old! I'm sure there's something wrong with that picture...

We played a few more rounds and I won the next one - I was done with losing! - and I realized that the first game must have been beginner's luck, so I started to take it a little bit easier on her. [I did want her to still enjoy learning and playing with me, after all] I still won, but not by as much and I let her help me find my matches when she looked like she knew where the cards were. Mark came up towards the end of the first round and was amazed that she had won. Then he watched me play with her the rest of the time and saw me taking it easy on her and assumed that's how she won the first game - it wasn't. I don't want to talk about it.

Have to do this Quick

I was going to be in a hurry to get this done, but apparently Mom has woken up and the kids are probably downstairs watching a TV show - so I'm no longer in as much of a hurry to type before Mark leaves for basketball - but I still only have until the show ends... I have some stories I have to share

Funny Story:
I think we need some background first. Yesterday after bath time we needed to brush Shelly's hair (this is an adventure in and of itself!). She didn't want her hair brushed, so we gave her the option of having Mommy brush her hair, or Daddy brush her hair. She kept insisting that she didn't want her hair brushed - and I told her that wasn't one of her options. Daddy ended up brushing her hair...
Shelly woke up this morning while I was pouring Jason some milk and juice (I was filling Shelly's cups too) and practically demanded that she watch Curious George. I told her that we were going to go play in the play room instead of watching TV this morning (we'll pretend like they're not really watching TV right now... Somehow my efforts of getting the kids to do things other than watch TV in the morning get wasted as soon as they realize that I'm distracted upstairs and Grandma is awake downstairs... :) Shelly was still insisting that she wanted to watch George! and I told her that she was allowed to want whatever she wanted, but we still weren't going to watch TV - we were going to play in the playroom. In the most obnoxious and demanding voice a tired 3 year old can muster she told me that 'wasn't one of my choices!' It took a minute for it to sink in what she was trying to say (and copy from yesterday morning) and then I was laughing so hard I couldn't tell Mark the story until I had calmed down. Then he was laughing, then Shelly was laughing - and now the kids are downstairs watching TV... ;)

Another Story:
This morning Jason woke up at 5 while I was feeding the baby. Don't be alarmed - this is the time he's been getting up since we got back from Utah on Wednesday. We're working on adjusting his schedule back to CA time, but we're to tired to do it right yet - we'll get there! Mark sent him back to bed, where he apparently went for a while at least. Then after Mark put the baby back down he came back to bed to rest for a bit. Around 6 we heard Emily start to make some whining sounds (not normal so soon after eating and going back down) so Mark went out to check on her. His 'What The...!!' encouraged me to get out of bed. Quickly. Apparently Jason had climbed into the bassinet with Emily and was kneeling over her without a diaper on. Mark's first thought was that the only reason Jason would be doing such a thing was because someone had done something inappropriate to him, and he was immediately concerned for Jason (I had less happy thoughts about him... I was more concerned with him trying to kneel on the baby - and the diaper-less thing didn't even phase me - except that he might have peed on her too, and I didn't want to clean up the mess). Mark then went through all the people that we know and tried to see if instinct might lead to someone we should be concerned about associating with our kids. The awesome part of the story is that we couldn't think of a single person we were concerned about! (Turns out Jason's diaper was just rather full and the effort/angles of trying to climb into a bassinet pulled it off of him on accident) So, we wanted to say Thank You to everyone for being trustworthy and allowing us to not worry about our kids being around you!

Funny Story #2:
So, before I could finish typing the kids came upstairs - and guess what I did... Yup - Word World is now on... I can't even handle how strong my convictions aren't!!!

Emily in Utah

Some fun photos of the Baby on her first trip to Utah.

Here's our daughter Meggie holding her little sister Emily.

Emily at less than 2 months old - and we already need to raise the straps on her car seat.

Such a big girl!

She's a smiler at least!

This was her trying to smile. I'm not convinced it worked...

Is that a smile or a wink or a snort?


Since still pictures of her smiling weren't working, I tried to get some video or her smiling. I got this instead...

Are you trying to pull something on me?

Warning: This video has been shown to cause motion sickness. Blog owner assumes no liability. Proceed at your own risk.

Uncle Nate holding the baby.


On our way home from UT we spent a day or two in Cedar City with Aunt Katie and Aunt Grandma. Shelly took it upon herself to make sure that Emily wasn't sad or bored...

Labor Day

The traditional Labor Day Camp-out was almost ruined, but it was saved at the last minute by a shocking move from the offense that left the defense no longer needed! So off we went a camping.

We were among the first to arrive and the first with kids... So we got a great spot and then we got to sit around and wait for the entertainment to show up.

Oh, look! Here's some!

Aunt Jeanine brought some sand/water toys. The kids had a ton of fun with these in the creek!

Ethan has arrived! And not a minute too soon either. Those kids were bored and that water was cold.

He lasted about 2 seconds before screaming like a banshee and wanting out.
I tried it on the last day, and I only lasted about 3 seconds before doing almost the exact same thing.

It rained that first afternoon, before anyone else got there. We were nervous for a wet weekend, but it didn't happen.

Hanging out in the tent avoiding the rain

Braving the rain to avoid a disaster area in the tent.

Emily in a funny hat in Grandma's arms - it got cold at night!

Those kids had a blast all weekend! Those other two are Mark's cousin Bill's step kids. They were loads of fun for our kids.

Craft time! I made bracelets for the kids. There was a problem though... I could only find (and the way I looked, means there was only) one M and only one Y. I needed one of each for Emily and either a Y for Shelly or an M for Michelle... I couldn't do both, no matter how I tried. I could find a B. So Shelly got a Shell Bell.


This was hilarious! Jason was singing on the drive back. Sorry about how bouncy it is. We were in the car.

Farm Pics

The lens was still blurry from our visit with Grandma

Don't worry - I fixed it. The kids didn't even know! They were too busy eating their popsicles.

I could not get Shelly to turn around and look at me for a picture!


This is about as close as I could come...

Let take the wagon for a ride!

She takes after me - going barefoot everywhere!

It backfires on her on the farm though. There are prickly weeds. They hurt.

Jason's looking for the cats...

Here they are! Be gentle!

She Sleeps!!

I'm fully aware that I have TONS! of updating to do. It's been one crazy summer - which has left me with little time to update, and much stuff that needs updating. It's a horrible situation to be in, but it's been fun to live through! (mostly - there were some intense parts, but I forget what they were, so it's all good). So, since Katie has officially reprimanded* me (see the comments on Emily is Born), here goes nothing!

*I never exaggerate!

So, I've considered myself lucky with this most recent baby (not that I wasn't lucky with the last two - but they were harder as newborns). Emily has been the most calm and pleasant baby I've had so far. I'm not sure how much of that is me just responding differently to babies, or how much is her just being super easy to please - but I've found a new enjoyment of newborns I thought wasn't possible before :-) [for anyone willing to listen, I warn them that newborns are much more work than they're worth until about 3 months of age, when they can start to interact more and it's more than just feeding, changing, cleaning, screaming] While she is a rather pleasant baby who is fine to just lay around and be happy (read - 'not screaming'), I think a large part of it for me has been how well she sleeps. It's amazing how easy it is to feel sane when you're getting enough sleep. At about 2 weeks Emily was sleeping for 6 hours almost all the time (in the entire 7 weeks of her life, I can count only about 2 or 3 bad nights when she woke up more often than she had been previously waking). While in Cedar on our way up for our Utah trip for Education Week and Labor Day, she started doing 7 hours (that would put her around 5 weeks old). She's been good with that for the last two weeks and the night before last we woke up and had to make sure she was still alive after she slept for almost 8 hours. This morning - we fed her at midnight, just before bed (I have no idea why we were up that late!!), and it's now 8:58 and she's still asleep. She's at 9 hours and counting. Mark had to check to make sure she was still breathing... Now we just need to be smarter about when we get to bed!! Maybe we'll be smarter once we get back to California and have to actually wake up with the other kids. It's been nice to have the kids at the in-laws so we don't have to wake up when they get up (at 6 in the morning! who's insane enough to want to wake up that early!?)