Sequence of Events

It looks like I'm out of the running for "Mother of the Year" this year. I have a fear of my babies falling out of things; high chairs, strollers, swings, bouncy chairs, etc. Therefore I ALWAYS buckle them in as if they were going to the moon. But the one time I don't, Jayden decides to get a little frisky. I'm so relieved that he had a death grip on that bouncy chair!!




































Nobody panic. He didn't fall. I quickly picked him up after taking that first picture. I put him back in the chair and he went right back to his usual routine of giggling, kicking, and smiling.







**Disclaimer: No babies were harmed in the making of this blog post**

Back in Business

Jaclyn (January)

Joanna, newborn Jayden, and me at Suncadia's Annual Fall Festival (October)

Jaclyn saying 'cheese'

Joanna's first pony ride!! Saying that she was in heaven is an understatement. I so wish that she could have rode that pony all afternoon. This was also taken at Suncadia. (October) If I had a million dollars, I'd buy her a pony!

One day I realized that my 6 week old son was about the same size as Shrek. (October)

Jayden and I, he was almost two months old (October)

Jaclyn at the park (October)

Jaclyn and Joanna enjoying the sunny weather (October)

Story time!! (October)

This weekend I was tinkering around with our broken digital camera. Apparently that stupid thing decided that it needed a vacation for a few months because out of the blue, it has decided to work again. I hate technology! But I suppose I better not say that too loud or else the camera will hear me and then decide to go on strike again. These pictures are a little dated because they've been "trapped" inside my finicky camera.

Fun With Cousins

Joanna being a goofball. I still have yet to get a picture of her with her glasses on!

Me, Jayden (5 months), and Josh

I LOVE this picture of Jaclyn hugging Benjamin! Aren't they cute?!

Joanna and Josiah. I think they are kindred spirits. They ADORE each other. Notice Joanna's lazy eye in this picture. That was the only outward indication we had that she may have a vision problem. Her eye does that often when she's not wearing her glasses.

This past weekend we visited Josh's family on the west side and had a blast spending time with his sister, Megan, her husband, Jesse, and their 3 boys, Isaiah, Josiah, and Benjamin. It was also nice to see his grandma and grandpa Jones. Because we stayed at gma and gpa's house, it gave us an opportunity to chat with them, which was nice.

I love that we live close enough for our children to spend time playing together. I have TWO cousins. That's it. Two. And growing up I think I saw them twice. We lived far apart, for one. And as much as I wanted (and still want) to know my cousins better, it just never happened. For this reason I want to make sure that my kids have a closer, more solid relationship with their cousins.

This weekend the kids got to play together for hours. On Saturday we met up with Megan, Jesse, and the boys at the LDS church in Yelm for a Primary activity. The kids made Valentine's cards to give to nursing home residents. They played bingo, a balloon game, and had a short lesson about loving others. Then it was on to the nursing home to sing "I Am a Child of God" and hand out the cards, along with flowers.

That night the kids got to play together some more. Megan and Jesse went to the temple Saturday evening, so all the kids were together for a slumber party at grandma's. Josiah and Joanna wanted to sleep in the same bed, so I let them (against gma Patsy's wishes! shhh). Sure, they were up until 10 p.m. giggling and talking in their top secret toddler language, but the friendship and love they have for each other is just so darn cute I didn't want to deny them the opportunity to bond.

We went to church with them Sunday morning, and went over to Megan and Jesse's that night for dinner and games. The kids played together again while us adults played a rivoting game of Phase 10 at the table. It was getting late and one by one, the kids dropped like flies. They were so tuckered out from the long day! So we decided to let the girls spend the night there instead of carting them out into the cold and back to gma's house. So Josh and I got to enjoy a night and a morning of having only one child again! Wow. What a difference that was. Jayden let us sleep in until 9 a.m. Apparently he can do that when he's not woken up by his loud, rambunctious sisters! Then Monday it was back to Ellensburg. Thanks to Megan, I have these pictures to post from the weekend.

Picture Tag

You already asked me! I'm pretty sure I said yes!!!

Tag, I'm it. Jamie tagged me to post the 6th picture in my 6th picture folder. Here it is. It's hard to believe that we will celebrate 6 years of marital bliss this year. Well, in some moments of some days, I'm not so sure about the 'bliss' part, but we're a work in progress!! And we still love each other!

I tag: Lore, Lottie, Megan, Anna, and Shara

25 Random Things

Just in case you ever needed to know some useless facts about me...

1. Whether I was a boy or a girl, my dad wanted to name me Reno. And no, I wasn't conceived there or anything. He just liked the name. I was named 'Jolie' because when my mother (who speaks fluent French) was in labor with me, she kept talking to herself in French. My dad says that she was hallucinating from all the pain. Ah, the days before epidurals. My mom kept repeating the phrase "jolie bebe" (pretty baby), and it stuck with my dad. After I was born he asked my mom what it meant. When she told him, he wanted to name me Jolie instead of Reno. Thank goodness.

2. I was born in Whitefish, Montana and I grew up in Dickinson, North Dakota. My family and I lived in the same house for 18 years.

3. When I was 19 I worked as a typist for The Dickinson Press, the local newspaper. I typed everything from feature articles to the police blotter. But my main job was typing obituaries!!

4. I've been skinny dipping. In a lake. When I was 15. With coed company. At night. At Bible Camp.

5. I can name all 50 states in alphabetical order along with their state capitals.

6. On August 6th, I will be 30. I know that it shouldn't bother me, but it does.

7. I am the oldest of three children. And I'm the only girl. My brothers' names are Derek, 26, and Dylan, 23.

8. I despise sit-ups.

9. I love cinnamon rolls. Bad combination.

10. I read the Twilight series. And I loved it. I play for team Edward. I even liked the movie. (Sorry Stephanie, I guess that means that we can't be friends anymore!) I know, I know. What is this? True confessions of Jolie Ramsey? Anyway, did anybody else besides me notice the gazillions of typos and editing mistakes in those books? Holy crow. For a New York Times bestsellers series, this was pretty disappointing. But speaking of Stephanie.....
(not Stephenie, as in, S. Meyer, the author of the books, but Stephanie, one of my mission companions)

11. ....while serving with Stephanie as sister missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vila do Conde, Portugal, we were flashed by some creepy guy while walking to district meeting one morning. ~~~shudder~~~ Yes, that's right. He...err...umm....showed us his junk right there in broad daylight. Not only am I grateful that we weren't harmed during the incident, but I have since been able to completely erase that disturbing visual from my head.

12. I was a Girl Scout all throughout my childhood. Well, except for a year during middle school when I decided that being a G.S. was way too geeky so I quit. But then I realized that being a G.S. wasn't going to make me any more geeky than I already was. And I grew a backbone and stopped caring about what others thought about me. So I rejoined. When I was a Brownie, my troop watched Halley's Comet in the night sky. As a Junior scout I sold lots and lots of cookies. As a Cadet our troop went on a week-long archeological dig in South Dakota. We dug up artifacts from an 18th century Indian tribe.

13. I am the queen of the power nap. A sound 10-15 minute nap can recharge my battery completely.

14. When I was a newborn, I didn't go poo for the first 10 days of my life. Being first-time parents, my mom and dad worried that there was something wrong and took me to the doctor. The doc reassured them that I'd go eventually and when I did, to watch out. Well, that doc must have been inspired because as my dad was loading me into the car upon leaving the doc's office, he figured that he'd better change my diaper before putting me in my car seat. He laid me down on the back seat of the car, held my legs up to wipe, and that's when I unloaded and exploaded. Apparently, a week's worth of baby poo has the projectile power to spray the inside panel of a car door, the entire front side of a stupefied father, the back seat, the floor of the car, and some of the ground outside the car.

15. When I was 18 and newly graduated from high school, I rolled my car on a gravel road driving no more than 35 mph. It was Halloween night and my brother Derek and I were on our way out to a bonfire at a friend's house. Luckily neither one of us was injured. This earned me the nickname 'Roley Jolie' from my friends.

16. Speaking of nicknames, my parents called me Roley Poley Jolie as a baby because I was a super chunk. In high school my nickname was Jolly Tweeters. (my maiden name is 'Teeters'.) The 'Jolly' part came because everybody who didn't know me mispronounced my name. On my mission one of my companions called me Sister Titters. (You know I love you Sarah!) Nowadays, my brothers refer to me as 'Angelina' because 1) they think I'm going to have as many kids as she has and 2) obviously, the 'Jolie' part.

17. I used to own a 6 foot tall cardboard cutout of Darth Vader. He stood in my living room in my first apartment in college. Then I got a roommate and she and I would decorate him for holidays. He was known to wear a Santa hat, a Shamrock tie, Easter Bunny boppers, a Superman cape for Halloween, and an Uncle Sam hat for the 4th of July.

18. I play the clarinet, piano, and trumpet. I started piano lessons when I was 6. I began the clarinet when I was in the 6th grade and played until I was a sophomore in college. I actually got pretty darn good at it. I was 1st chair most of the time, always went to state music festivals, and was even voted 'band president' my senior year. Should I really be bragging about this? Does holding the title of 'band president' mean that you are good at what you do and that your peers esteem your accomplishments, or does it mean that you have achieved the highest level of the Order of the Geeks and you were simply chosen to be their fearless leader?? You decide.

19. I learned the trumpet when I was 19 in order to participate in a Drum and Bugle Corps. I was a member of the Troopers from Casper, WY, from 1998-2000. Drums corps from around the U.S. compete against each other during the summer months, touring the country and performing in football stadiums. The shows are nothing short of exhilarating and electrifying. Being a part of a drum corps was an amazing experience and I made so many endearing memories. Plus, it was friends I made in the corps who introduced me to the LDS church and dared me to talk to missionaries when I got home at the end of the summer in 2000. In so many ways, this was a life-changing experience for me. If you want to know more about drum corps, check out Drum Corps International's website.

20. I am left handed.

21. When I was 4 years old, my best friend was a boy named Dane who lived across the street from us. We were playing together in our front yard one day and my mom overheard me say this: "Okay Dane. Let's play house. You be the daddy and I'll be the boss."
Maybe I should have told Josh this story prior to our wedding. Then at least he would have received a heads up that I've always been a strong-willed, pig-headed person at times.

22. And along those gender-role-defying lines, when I was in kindergarten, we were supposed to make pilgrim hats out of construction paper for Thanksgiving. The girls in the class were given white paper to make a bonnet-looking hat. The boys were given the option of using black paper to make a top hat or brown paper to make an Indian hat with feathers. I did not like the girl option one bit and wanted to make a black top hat instead. Well, the teacher, Mrs. Karn, took a picture of the class donning our crafted hats. The girls in the class knelt in the front row while the boys stood in a row behind them. And who was standing in the midst of the boys?? ME. Smiling wide and proudly sporting my top hat.

23. Among his other inventions, my great-grandfather invented the revolving Christmas tree. What was the impetus to his "grand design"? Every Christmas season he'd take the agitator out of my great-grandmother's new, state-of-the-art washing machine (a fact that annoyed her to no end every holiday season, I'm sure.). He would attach it to the base of the tree and let 'er spin in their living room window. Their neighbors in Cambridge, Ohio enjoyed walking by their house each year to witness the famous revolving Christmas tree and it quickly became the buzz of the town. So he had his idea patented.

24. I am so uncoordinated, it's pathetic. Growing up I attempted sports like basketball, volleyball, ice skating, and track and field. Let's put it this way. My junior year in high school I tried out (again) for the volleyball team. When the coach was going to put me on the sophomore "B" team (yes, not the J.V. team or even the sophomore "A" team) I took that as my sign to bow out with a shred of dignity still intact. Oh, but I did play softball as a teen and did pretty good at that. As long as they put me in the outfield. ;-)

25. My biggest pet peeve? Four-way stops in Ellensburg. It's not so much the intersections that annoy me. It's all the stupid people who can't seem to understand the elementary rules of the four-way stop. C'mon people. I really don't want to sit in my car and die of natural causes while you figure out whose turn it is to go. Guess what. You are to the right of me. IT'S YOUR TURN!!! JUST FREAKING GO!!!!!!
I need to work on my patience.

Pictures

Joanna

Jaclyn eating a cupcake with her friend, Dalan, on her 2nd birthday

Josh with Jayden, 3 months

Jayden at 3 months

Jaclyn, Jayden, Joanna. I think this was taken in December.

A couple days ago I picked up some pictures from Rite Aid photo lab and one of the rolls turned out really fuzzy. So they reran one of the rolls and it still turned out crappy. As an "I'm sorry we screwed up your pictures" gesture they gave me a free photo CD. Which means that I now have a way of getting pics onto my pc!! Hurray. So here are some more recent pictures of the kids. Sorry they're not very good quality. They make it look like a ghost is haunting our house.

Can You Solve This Riddle?

Q: How do you know when you may be serving your children too many pre-made convenience foods for their lunches?

A: When your three year old [after hearing the microwave beep a few times] exclaims from her bedroom, "Lunch is ready!!"

Ketchup

It has been a long time since I've written about us, so it's time to play catch up. I'd love to add some recent pictures to this post but our digital camera has been broken for quite some time. We've been using my old fashioned camera to take pics until we can afford a new camera (you know, those ones that take film?!) and our printer is from the stone age and doesn't have a scanner. We're pretty ghetto over here right now. It's really too bad that I can't show you pictures of my glorious children because they are so cute!! ;-)
So here's a quick blurb about what we're all about these days. We'll start with the patriarch of the family. ;-)

Josh: He is liking his job as fiscal analyst very much. His co-workers are awesome. And he seems more confident with his work load every day. (He's working in the Accounting dept. at the university. The admin side of it, that is. So no, he's not a professor or anything. Yet.) He's also starting to fill out! He's been skinny all his life and has never had to worry about weight gain. (Oh boo hoo hoo, I hear you cry) But two things have caught up with him: 1) a desk job and 2) a fast-encroaching 30th birthday. He's looking more robust these days. Personally, I think it looks really good on him!! It reminds me of how Leonardo DiCaprio's physique has evolved over time. He used to be a skinny, almost gangly guy. Then, out of nowhere, he starred in The Departed as a bulky, muscular, thick-necked and cuter-than-ever man. It's like, where did that come from?! Here's to our handsome husbands!!

Jolie: It's like someone threw the e-brake on my joyride though life when I graduated in December. I guess I'd grown so accustomed to life being incredibly stressful and chaotic that when finals week was over and the reality of completing my degree sunk in, I collapsed on the couch and took the next month off to decompress. Just ask Josh. I didn't do anything for a good month and it felt GREAT!!! I took a shower every day and all, but often times, I'd just throw some sweats on and pop in a good movie. Am I a lazy tubolard for doing so? Well, maybe. But I don't care. I think that for my own sanity, I needed that time to be lazy. Hey, at least my kids were fed, groomed, entertained, and loved during that time. 'Cause I think that's all I accomplished. ;-)
I am really enjoying being home with the kids right now and I consider it to be a tremendous blessing.
I may not have college woes to bog me down anymore, but I'll tell you what. Life is still wild and crazy with the youngins. And most days seem to whiz by like a blur because the kids leave little to no time for repose. I gotta say, adding a third child to our brood has made things downright overwhelming at times. It's not Jayden, per se. It's just the magic number--3. I think. My great friend Rachel explains it perfectly on her blog.
What's next for me? Probably a lot of catching up on the kids' baby books and photo albums, reading for pleasure, giving piano lessons, and baking. And definitely plenty of romping around with the kiddos.

Joanna: Three years old. Typically she enjoys playing with trains and cars, riding her bike, and bossing around her sister. But her tomboy shell is cracking! As of late her most favorite thing in the world is pretending she's Sleeping Beauty and dressing up like a princess. She asks to put on a dress and her church shoes, then spins around in the living room. She'll ask Josh or me to dance with her while we sing "Once Upon a Dream" over and over again.
She's getting a lot better at keeping her glasses on. She realizes that she can see better with them on. I've noticed her looking at books more often these days, just like she used to do when she was younger. I think that as her eyes got worse, her desire to look at books diminished. Now she'll sit forever with me and read story after story. Amazing what glasses can do! She knows pretty much every color now and knows many numbers and letters by sight. She is still in love with horses. In fact, this morning she came to me with tears in her eyes and whimpered, "I wanna ride a horsey!"

Jaclyn: Two going on 16. What can I say? She certainly came equipped with an attitude. But there are times when her true nature shines through the terrible twos cloud and she is the most tender soul. She loves giving hugs and "tisses" and saying, "love you mom" or "thank you so very much". She has a great sense of humor and likes to play games. She's a weenie when it comes to heights. She climbs on anything but then freaks out when she realizes that she's more than, oh, I don't know, 5 inches from the ground?! I think that one of her strengths so far is being able to self-monitor well. She recognizes when she's overstimulated, tired, hungry, etc. She will remove herself from loud and crazy scenes by playing independently in another room. When she's tired she'll either come up to us and tell us "I need my pillow" or she'll just put herself in bed!! Yeah, cool I know. And when she's hungry she will go in the kitchen and pretend to make herself some food.
She grew a little bit jealous of the new baby for a while, but it appears that this has passed. She's never done anything to hurt him but she'd throw fits on the floor. I've been trying hard to give her one-on-one time every day and that has helped.
She speaks pretty darn good for a two year old. Every day it seems like I can understand her better. I suppose it helps that she has an older sibling.

Jayden: My little chunk of a hunk man. He is SO cute. He is 5 months and weighs 15 lbs. He's in the 80% for his height and weight. (The polar opposite from the girls when they were babies.) Jayden has good hand-eye coordination and can reach for and grasp anything that comes his way. He likes holding on to your fingers; especially as he's falling asleep or nursing. So cute. He's a rolling and scooting fool and likes to be on the floor to practice his moves. He is such a happy, smiley little guy. When he was born he looked 100% Ramsey but now he looks more like me. If you compare pics of me as a baby with him, the resemblance is uncanny. He's still not sleeping through the night. Ug. I normally get up with him once around 1 a.m. and then again around 5.