this and that

There's really no rhyme or reason to this post, just some random pictures I feel like launching into cyberspace.

This is one of Jayden's favorite toys right now

Lately Joanna and Jaclyn have been going into our bedroom, messing up my bed, and slithering themselves into our king pillowcases. At first I wondered what in the heck was going through their minds to concoct such an idea.
Listening to their chatter, I realized they were pretending to be caterpillars who were making their cocoons so they could turn into beautiful butterflies! I decided that stretching out my throw pillows in the name of pretend play was ok.

Me: "Joanna, what did you draw on your easel?"
Joanna: "It's Joanna!"
Her first self portrait. I love how her arms and legs come out of her head. ;-)

Despite having 2 older sisters and being surrounded by a house full of girly toys,
Jayden came out of the womb loving cars and trucks. One of his first words was 'guck', or truck. He'll spend hours playing with his toy cars and 'gucks'.
One day we put on the movie "Cars". As you can see in the picture above, he was mesmerized!!
He sat perfectly still for about 45 minutes of the movie, just taking it all in. He was in car heaven.

Jaclyn always sleeps with toys. The toy(s) changes on a regular basis, but you can always guarantee that she's snuggling with something. One night I found her ready to catch some zzzz's with her toy broom. She told me that the broom was a princess....alrighty then.

This is how Jayden often waits for his food!! Hands neatly folded. But if you make him wait too long, he makes his disgust known. ;-)

Recently we had our kitchen sink repaired. Jayden was very interested with what the plumber was doing. He sat there the entire time and observed. I hope he was taking mental notes so that he can fix our sinks some day. That'll save us a lot of money!

Joanna taking a long winter's nap. Doesn't she look comfy?!

joke's on me

April Fool's Day 4 years ago...

Me: "Josh, I'm pregnant...again." (Joanna was only 6 months old at the time)

((hand Josh a pregnancy test doctored with pink pen for the "evidence"))

Josh: "Duhhhh....."

...10 minutes after all color had left husband's face...

Me: APRIL FOOL'S!!!!!!!!

...three short weeks later...April 18th to be exact... I found out that I WAS pregnant. For real.

Looks like the joke was on me.

of course, 9 months later, we were blessed with Jaclyn, so it was a sweet surprise.

Tommy and Sally sitting in a tree....

k-i-s-s-i-n-g
first comes love,
then comes marriage,
then comes the baby and the baby carriage....



I'm just sayin'.

Seattle Children's Museum

Just as a side note, does anybody else have the same problem as I do? Whenever I get on the computer, my glorious children seize the opportunity to ransack the house! They know that my attention has been drawn away--even for 5 minutes--and they start getting into anything and everything they know darn well they're not supposed to be in. Like gum from my purse. Both big no no's!! And the dvds and the pantry and climbing on the table..... Things that make you go Grrrrrrrrrrr.... anyway, moving along.....



Waaaaay back in January, Joanna's preschool class met at the Seattle Children's Museum for a day of learning and fun. Since Seattle is about 1.5 hours from Ellensburg, I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to go see our good friends, Pete and Sarah Nielsen and their two boys, Clifford (5) and Kristjan (4). They used to be our neighbors when we lived in student housing but they have since graduated, got a "real" job, and live in Lynnwood (about 20 min. northeast of Seattle).

The children's museum was Friday, Jan. 29th. So the day before, me and the kids went to the Nielsen's and stayed the night. The next morning I took Joanna and Clifford to the activity museum and Sarah stayed with Kristjan and my two younger youngins. Joanna and Clifford had a b.l.a.s.t. being there together!! And I spoiled them with lunch at the food court, then ice cream and candy afterward.

One of the areas of the museum was a true-to-life exhibit of Sesame Street.
Here's Joanna and Clifford in Elmo's world.

Joanna grocery shopping at the mini store

Joanna's attention in the firetruck lasted about 30 sec. Clifford played in it for 10 minutes!

Inside the belly of the whale. Literally! hmmm. All of a sudden I find
myself humming veggie tales. ;-)

Playing in the forest exhibit. There were caves to crawl in and fake boulders to climb on too.

Okay, before you watch this video, you need a little background. One of the exhibits was all about the human body. Kids could learn about the 5 senses, about the muscles and bones, about breathing and circulation, and so on. I think the favorite area of this exhibit was the one on digestion. Mainly because part of it was pretty disgusting. But the kids all thought it was hilarious!! Enjoy. You may want to put down your sandwich before watching this.

Above is Clifford learning about the nose. When you push the mucus, dust, or pollen buttons, they make the nose sneeze, and then water mist comes down from the big nose above!! It grossed Joanna out! She said, "ewwww!!"

After we left the children's museum we got ice cream and walked around the Seattle Center grounds. The kids chased some of the fattest seagulls I've ever seen. Then we walked up to the Space Needle and then Clifford said that it was the biggest elevator he'd ever seen.

There are little carnival rides nearby so I let them get tickets to ride one ride. They chose the carousel. Then we went back to the Nielsen's where we stayed the rest of the weekend!

Information Overload

I'm back, blog-o-sphere. I have been on a self-prescribed blogging hiatus. More of a technology hiatus, really. Where have I been? At home reading a newspaper. You know, that rolled up bunch of thin paper that stains your fingers black. And if you subscribe to my hometown newspaper like I do, you inevitably wind up feeling dumber after reading it. (The Daily Record is usually filled with immaturely written/typo-riddled/outdated news and feature articles. Sorry, but it's true.)

How blessed are we to live in an era of human history where an infinite supply of knowledge and information is possible. Instantaneously. Around the clock. With so many techy devices and media formats at our disposal it's easy for small, Daily Record-exposed brains like mine to become saturated and overloaded with it all.

This is Jolie's brain.

This is Jolie's brain after reading too many news articles, magazines, blogs, facebook, etc.

Perhaps you have found yourself feeling like the people in the video below. I know I do some days.



For this reason I have been limiting my time on the computer lately. Alas, I feel compelled to update the world at large with the happenings of my little family. In other words, I intend on further congesting the already overloaded information highway with more words and more images.

Stay tuned over the next few days. I intend on maxing out your brains with loads of useless and yet pertinent information.