Silent Night

I just went in to check on my little sleeping beauties. Just a quick look was all I needed and my heart melted like it does every time I watch them sleep. I don't know what it is about a sleeping child/baby, but it sure is precious. Plus, my girls are always sleeping in some new, funny position, so it adds a little comic relief to my life.

Tonight, I was taken by surprise as these sweet thoughts entered my mind. As I put them to bed a couple hours ago, I was very frustrated. Today was just rough. Kylie refused to nap. This resulted in many breakdowns and she was a complete bully to her sister. Eve must be going through a growth spurt because she ate a bottle almost every hour, and that's not counting all the solid food she gulfed down throughout the day as well. She was also quite fussy, maybe because her sister kept pushing her down and stealing her toys, or maybe it had to do with how hungry she was all day. Whatever the reason, I tried to cuddle her often to soothe her, but every time I held her, she found great enjoyment in pulling my ear to her mouth and squealing as loud and high-pitched as she could. By the time I put them down to sleep, I was emotionally exhausted. Jason didn't get home from work until after bed time, so that just added to my stress. He is such a calming presence {and a great helper too, I should add! He might be upset if he reads this and finds out I only called him a "presence"!}

It was just one of those days. This post was not intended to complain, I understand that every parent has days like these. It's not really that big of a deal. What IS a big deal, however, is how quickly all my "bad" feelings disappeared as soon as I saw their peaceful faces sleeping. I instantly thought how adorable Eve looks all sprawled out in her crib. I laughed at all the animals that were in her crib with her, since those are all "gifts" from her big sister. Kylie always fills Eve's crib up with toys, to the point where we had to take out most of the toys from their room for Eve's safety. I smiled when I saw that Kylie was still clutching her night time book. She had insisted that she keep it in bed with her after we read together. {I should have left it there for the picture, but I put it away before thinking of taking pictures.}

My sleeping babies just reminded me that tomorrow is a new day. A new day to make {better} memories. Yeah for having a great day tomorrow! {I just hope that Eve waits until morning to wake me up. She likes to wake up in the middle of the night to "play", but that's a different story.}

Mr. Potato Head

The title of this blog post really says it all. It's what Kylie has been obsessed with ever since she received a couple "mister tato heads" (as she calls them) for her birthday. She and Daddy have played so many times together with this toy, I'm not sure which one of them loves their 'tato heads more. Regardless, I love to watch them having fun and spending some quality father/daughter bonding time. I know it requires a lot of patience because she is never satisfied with a final poduct of Mr. Potato Head, she continuously wants to change every little body part. It just makes me fall in love with Jason even more as I notice how well he takes care of our children. Such a great feeling.

This crazy lady potato head got arrested and handcuffed. I don't remember this toy having so many accessories!

Two years ago

Kylie one hour old

Kylie 2 years old

On December 15th 2007, 6 days past my due date, I was pouting. Jason was the one going to see the doctor, and not me. Turns out he had a hairline fracture on his foot. I was so jealous, why couldn't it have been me who was seeing a doctor to deliver my baby? Little did I know that later on in the day, I would be getting my wish. I remember everything else so vividly from that day:

• My grandma's house filled with family from the area who didn't have any electricity due to the ice storm that happened 4 days prior.





• The chili I made for all those people, made extra spicy in hopes it would cause some contractions.





• Letting my sister Kelly play with my stomach as I got contractions. She was fascinated with how hard my tummy got! I had been having contractions for weeks, so it didn't strike anyone as odd that we were 'playing' with my contractions. They were painless at this point.





• Walking the dogs with my mom on the icy roads.





• Driving to Walmart with my mom to find special shoes for Jason's broken foot





• The guy in Walmart who took one look at my big belly and said: "Woah! Congratulations!"





• Timing my contractions as we shopped, and when we noticed they were 2 minutes apart, I said: "We must be doing it wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm not in labor."





• Having some serious painful contractions in line at Walmart and trying to figure out if I should tell the people in front of me that I needed to go ahead of them since I was pretty sure I was now in labor. [I decided not to say anything, I didn't want to look crazy for purchasing shoes, chapstick and toilet paper while in labor. But boy was it hard not to cry out in pain while standing in line!]





• Calling Jason from Walmart to tell him to meet me at the hospital, but to tell everyone at my grandma's house that he was just bringing my mom and I our 'forgotten' wallets. [I didn't want anyone to know when I was in labor. I wanted it to be a surprise. Even to my mom, but she was the one who ended up driving me to the hospital.]





• Arriving at the hospital in the most pain I have ever felt in my life, and getting an epidural right away.





• One hour later being told it was time to push, and being shocked by how quickly it all happened.





• Telling myself that I didn't want my daughter to have a cone head, which motivated me to push as hard as I could.





• 5-10 minutes later, holding my daughter for the first time and checking immediately to see if she had my ears. She doesn't.





• Watching Jason hold Kylie for the first time as they stitched me up. [ouch]





• Falling in love with Jason all over again as I watched him pace the floor holding our girl and tell her how much he loved her and was so happy she was here.





• Telling Jason to sit down and get off that hurt foot!





• Waiting a little bit to call anyone, so we could enjoy a little bit more time alone with Kylie.





• Watching each one of my sisters and my parents fall in love with our little sweetheart as they came to visit.





• Being completely amazed by how this little darling girl was for Jason and I to 'keep'. It's a strange feeling and I really can't explain it. 'Keep' is not the word I want to use, but it's the only thing I can think that could hint at what I'm trying to say.





• Being disappointed that I still looked about 5 months pregnant.





• Taking as many pictures as I could. Before having Kylie, I never took such an excessive amount of pictures!

Really I can't describe how quickly I fell in love with my sweet little Kylie. I know that some people say that it can take a while to bond with your new baby, but that was not the case for me. I was so amazed about everything about her, from her thin sandy-colored hair to her "huge" [for baby standards] feet and long toes. What's really amazing is how, even though I loved her so much when I first met her, my love for her has grown right along with her! Now she is 2 years old, and I am still loving her as much as ever!

I will post pictures of her 2 year old birthday party later. I won't in this post because this post was supposed to be about how my life was changed so much 2 years ago! It was a wonderful day and I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Tiger outside and happy birthday with a hat

Kylie has been saying some pretty funny things lately. It's kind of fun because I can still say "She says so many things and she's not even two yet." I only have one more week that I can use that phrase, so I better take advantage. Here's a little conversation we had tonight as I was tucking her in bed:

Me: Kylie do you want me to go find your night night pig?

[We had cleaned her room earlier and she had put her stuffed pig in her toy box. She usually sleeps with him every night.]

Kylie: No mom. [She thinks for a minute.] I want the tiger!

[The problem is I don't think we have a stuffed tiger anywhere.]

Me: Sweetie, there is no tiger in the house.

Kylie: Yes! Tiger outside!

Me: Kylie...

Kylie: Roar [giggle] I want the tiger please.

Me: Let me go look in your toy box and see if we can find another animal for you to sleep with. No tiger, sorry.

Kylie: Ok [thinks for a minute] I want hat!

[There is a toy hat in the toy box. I'm pretty sure Kylie had that specific one in mind.]

Me: [surprised] You want to sleep with your hat?

Kylie: Yes, hat.

Me: Ok, honey. Here you go. [I hand her the hat.]

Kylie: [starts singing as she holds the hat on her head. It's a toy hat and so it doesn't stay on her head unless she's holding it.] Happy birthday you, happy birthday you...

[I really don't know where she heard the happy birthday song, but she's been singing it for about a month now. It's not as if she has had a birthday recently - she turns two next week remember?- and she hasn't been to any birthday parties that I know of. The first time I heard her sing that song was a month ago out of nowhere. Well actually it was when I gave her a small candle that was "kylie's" so she could only touch that one and not "mommy's". Not that I light them when she can get to them, it's just that she is obsessed with them, so I gave her one and her obsession with my bigger ones ended. How she knew that the happy birthday song goes with candles in a mystery to me, but now I've let myself get sidetracked.]

Below is a picture of the hat she is now cuddling in bed with. The picture is several months old, but you get the idea:

Wonderscope

Jason has been working every Saturday from noon to 8-9. Or some similar shift. During the week, I work during the day and he works in the evenings.Sundays are busy with church and Awana. So we haven't really had any time to do any fun family activities recently. Today, however, he somehow managed to not be scheduled until early afternoon. I don't work Saturdays, since there is no school. So we finally were able to plan a fun family trip. We took the girls to the wonderscope in Shawnee, KS, which isn't all that far away. It was lots of fun!

I charged my battery the night before, cleaned my camera lens and of course forgot my memory card! So I could only take as many pictures that could be saved into the internal memory of my camera. That was kind of a bummer. But thankfully I got some good ones...enjoy!

As you can see, Kylie was upset she was being held when there were so many fun toys in sight.

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time. It doesn't get much cuter than babies playing with mirrors.

She was having a hard time getting over that hill. It was a lot steeper than it looks in the picture.

Jason was laying her down and letting her go down the slide "all by herself." She LOVED it.

Jason painted the letter "K" on her cheek. That's about the extent of his artistic abilities :).

When we visited this room the second time, Kylie discovered that all the toy cars were scattered around the room. She exlaimed: "Oh no! Mess!" and picked them all up. It made me laugh.

Family Picture Update

Here's a picture of Eve at 7 months. She's very photogenic, which makes my job as "Marsh family photographer" so much easier. We have to put her hair in a ponytail or put clips in it because otherwise it will hang in her eyes and whenever she has a runny nose, she likes to wipe it all over her face. It's just way too disgusting when her hair is in her face for her to get her snotty little hands as well, I'm sure you can imagine what that looks like. I'm also a firm believer that no baby should ever get a haircut before they are at least one year old.













Kylie on the other hand is more difficult for me to capture in a picture. She doesn't often want to look at the camera, much less smile for it. Plus whenever it seems that those conditions are met, I seem to have "forgotten" to fix her hair that day. Well, it's not easy to fix the hair of a busy 22 month old. We are growing out her bangs, so it's pretty important that I try to pull her long bangs out of her eyes. But she's still a doll and such a sweet little girl.
















Jason is doing well, there's not too much to update. He's still working at Sears, in fact in this picture he is wearing his new blue Sears shirts since their dress code now requires blue shirts instead of white or black. So that's the big news lately... :) He is still taking classes obviously and is very busy trying to keep up with all the reading, papers and tests. He also still has his internship at our church and is busy running the Awana program [with my help, of course! :) ].













And here I am, with my new haircut. I think it's the same haircut that I had way back in 8th grade, only updated with a side part instead of down the center. Oh, and I will never curl my bangs the way I did back then, I promise. I can't believe I woke up early to spend time making my hair look so ridiculous. I also think it's the first time since eighth grade that my hair is not colored in any way. And I've course I took this picture of myself since I'm the "Marsh family photographer."

It's too bad that although this photography gig gives me the opportunity to store many memories in pictures, it doesn't bring me any money (Actually it costs me money when you think about it). I'm still working as a substitute teacher, and still looking for a full time job that would allow Jason to be more of a stay at home dad and student. I'm still hopeful.

In other news, I have stopped breastfeeding. Eve was not sleeping at all at night unless she was physically attached to me, using me as her pacifier. After over six months of this sleeping arrangement, I was becoming very tired and grumpy with terrible back pain from the way she was forcing me to cuddle with her all night, every night. So we started giving her more bottles at night to stop her from associating sleep with breastfeeding. My job as a substitute teacher allowed me to pump, but once we started giving Eve more bottles, it wasn't enough. We started formula, which of course made my supply drop until she was eventually all bottle fed. I was a little sad about it, because there's a good chance she's my last baby, but the fact that I could sleep soundly in a comfortable position made up for any sadness. Also, after being pregnant and/or breastfeeding for over the past 2.5 years, it feels nice to finally be able to have my own body back! (Let me tell you how exhausting that "and" part was!) Caffeine here I come!

All about Kylie

Current Age: 22 months

Wow, I can't believe how much Kylie has grown up lately. I have to constantly remind myself that she is still only one year old (this helps especially when she is driving me NUTS :] ). She can now do so many things that I know I will not be able to put everything in this blog post. I'll do my best!

She has definitely reached her language explosion. There is no possible way for me to write down everything that she says now. She also puts words together in sentences and it's fun that we can have conversations. Besides common everyday vocabulary, here is a sampling of words/concepts she knows:
* She can count to eleven. Why stop at eleven? She gets it confused with seven so when she gets to eleven, she says eight next. So she gets stuck in a circle: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,8,9,10,11,8,9,10,11... You get the idea :) As we were driving to church once Jason and I could hear: "8,9,10,11,8,9,10,11" the whole entire drive there.
*She knows lots of animal sounds. It was so funny that she refused to say them for the longest time and then at 18 months, she all of a sudden knew all of them. I'm not going to list all the sounds she knows because she knows lots of random ones like fish and turkey. (I love hearing her version of gobble gobble).
*She knows the words for different colors but she doesn't identify them correctly yet. I wasn't even working on colors with her, so imagine my surprise when we looked at a magazine and she pointed at a car and said "yellow car mommy!" and then a different car and said "Look, blue car mommy!" I told Jason about it and he told me that he had been working on colors with her. I had no idea he was doing that. So ever since then, I've been working with her too but she thinks almost everything is "blue." It's kind of hard teaching her though because she hates to be corrected even if you do it with a positive voice. It's made her cry before when I've told her that something was really green, not blue. So, I'm not really working that hard on the color concept with her. She'll learn eventually, it's not worth making her upset.
*She calls herself "Kytie" which is weird because she used to be able to say her name correctly.
*She can sing lots of songs: The alphabet song is her absolute favorite and she has lately been singing each letter very clearly. When she sees words/letters anywhere (billboards, someone's shirt, books, store signs...) she says: "Look, ABCs!" And they are everywhere, so we hear that a lot. She can identify O and Q and the rest are all hit and miss although she thinks most of them are the letter "E." She also sings "Row row your boat", "Old MacDonald", "Jesus Loves Me", "I love you- Barney song" and "If you're happy and you know it" pretty well but none are as perfectly clear as the alphabet song.
*She tells me when she has a "stinky" but that's what she says also if she's just wet. It pretty much means that she wants a diaper change. I really haven't started potty training yet, I'm waiting to get some absorbable panties but she's really interested in the potty. She will ask to go sit on the potty but she just thinks it's fun to sit on her little potty chair. I always tell her when I'm going potty because I want her to come follow me so I can keep an eye on her (I don't always trust her being alone with Eve. She's usually sweet, but she has some moments) and she will usually reply: "I go potty too mommy!" and she will come sit on her potty. So I pretty much have no privacy!
*She has definitely learned the word "mine". Not only is she in a "mine" stage but she's also very interested in figuring out to whom everything belongs. For example if there are some shoes in the room, she will put mine together and say "mommy's shoes" and put Jason's together and say "daddy's shoes." What's funny is I love to drink my Coca Cola and whatever I'm drinking (even if it's coffee or something else) Kylie will point to and say "Mommy's coke". It's pretty embarrassing when we are in the grocery store and my one year old is yelling "coke! coke! coke!" in the pop aisle. I hope people don't think I'm giving her any soda drinks!
*I have also heard many times the infamous phrase "Look at me mommy!" The first time I heard it, Kylie had dragged one of the chairs from the kitchen into the living room and was climbing up, standing up and jumping off. We have a little dare devil on our hands.
* Every time she sees a big book, she calls it a "bubble" meaning "bible."
She learns so many new words every day and she has become an expert at repeating things, so I think I will stop here before I get carried away :). On to other things besides language.

She is a pretty good dancer and can copy different dance moves which is lots of fun. Sometimes she doesn't want an audience and will stop if we are watching her, so Jason and I will put music on the computer or TV and sneak around the corner to spy on her dancing. There are sometimes, however, that she enjoys being the center of attention. She's so funny. If ever we have extra income I will sign her up for toddler dance class. I think that if she had one talent it would involve music or dancing. I have had nursery workers tell me how impressed they are with the way she copies music. She really does copy tunes very easily. We will see if this continues to be a trend as she grows up. I am NOT musically talented at all, in fact I am quite the opposite. I didn't have any interest in it either growing up, so I know that I'm not forcing Kylie to follow some childhood dream of mine if I get her involved in music/dancing, because it was never a dream of mine in the first place. I just see that she really enjoys it, so I would like to keep her interested as long as she continues to enjoy it.

Last time I posted about her favorite TV show it was Barney (gag!). Well now it has changed. She absolutely LOVES Dora the Explorer, or "Rera and Boots" as she calls it. I don't even know when she first saw it, she never watched it before. I think I must have left the TV on once when it came on. I was surprised when she asked me one day to watch "Rera and Boots". I didn't even know what she was talking about until she added "Map" and "Backpack." In fact right now the only reason I'm able to write this blog post is because we DVRed the new Dora movie that was on yesterday and I'm showing it to Kylie now (and Eve is taking a nap.) She loves it, she interacts with it too. She will repeat the things the map tells and answer the questions Dora asks. Jason even bought her a real Dora backpack toy. It's kind of annoying because if anything else is on TV, she will whine "Rera... Boots...". Seriously, she's crazy if she thinks that all we are going to do is watch it all day. She can dream all she wants.

It's a good thing Kylie also loves books or I would be worried by how much she is obsessed with a TV show. I remember last year, I was worried because she didn't enjoy sitting for more than a minute to look at a book. But that was just her personality, she was enjoying exploring and being mobile and now she is finally content to sit and read books for long periods of time. She is also pretending to read books herself with lots of babbling as she flips through the pages. Her new favorite thing to do is to bring me a book for me to read outloud while she sits next to me "reading" another book outloud. She gets mad at me if I'm not reading mine outloud, what a weirdo :).

My little Kylie Bear is such a fun little girl! She does throw some tantrums and has earned some time outs when she decides to hit her sister, but overall she is a very obedient and loveable sweetheart. I also think she is starting to look more like me when I was her age. She still looks a lot like Jason but now she is also resembling me as well, finally! I will post some pictures when we get the charger to our other computer. I never thought I would have a blonde and blue eyed daughter, that is definitely not the part that looks like me :) I think she might have my facial structure though. Well whoever she got her looks from, she is absolutely a doll baby. The only thing is that she is not very photogenic and I think I take more "blooper" pictures of her than normal ones. Those bloopers are pretty funny though...

All about Eve

It's been way too long since I've posted! Oops! I'm going to try and write a post about each family member so I can get this blog updated, starting with my baby. I know this is going to be very long, but it's more for me to remember than anything else, so I won't be offended if you, as the reader, do not want to read everything. I love this age and I want to look back and remember everything about this stage in her life. My little Evie (or "Evie Stevie" or "Everz" as we call her) is my sweet little doll baby and I absolutely love her to pieces in a way I could never quite explain in just this blog.


Current Age: 7 months


Eve is my tiny little girl. When she was last weighed at the Doctor's office for her 6 month appointment, they tried to tell me she was only 11 lbs. 3 oz. I was very worried about this because I knew she has gained more than that since her 4 month appointment. So, I weighed her myself and showed the doctor. And she did weigh more by a whole pound! I knew it. The doctor told me that it was hard to weigh her because she's so wiggly, but I'm just really good at those old fashioned scales. But that's not the point of this story, the point is that she barely weighed 12 lbs at her 6 month appointment, which is in the 1%, not even on the charts. I think her length was 24.5 inches which put her in the 20th percentile for length, but I'm not sure about that. It's so strange to me because her sister was always average or just a little less on weight and in the 90s% for length. But Eve is very healthy and there's absolutely nothing to worry about. She's still in 3-6 months clothes but the good news is that they fit her pretty well. I always struggled dressing Kylie because she was always so much longer than she should have been based on her height so everything fell off of her. Eve on the other hand, even though she's small, her weight and length percentiles are closer together so the fit of baby clothes is much better (even if the size itself is much smaller than what she should wear based on age).


It's funny that she's so small because she loves to eat. Within the last week I have stopped breastfeeding her and she's now taking bottles (That's a whole entire story coming up later). She loves bottles and eats them at least every 3 hours. In addition to that, she loves solid food and eats a couple baby jars a day and lots of table food. She loves mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, potato soup, yogurt... pretty much anything that I feel is safe to give her she will gobble up. It is exhausting trying to feed her but I have so much more energy now due to not breastfeeding/pumping around the clock. Did you know that breastfeeding takes on average 500 extra calories? Not to mention if the baby wakes up at night, guess who gets to wake up EVERY TIME with her? That's right, me, the mommy.

That brings me to my next update: nights with Eve. Everything started out fine with her. The first couple months really didn't seem that bad. I was able to sometimes get 4 straight hours of sleep which is more than I expected since Kylie had her nights mixed up as a baby so I was ready for the worse with Eve. So waking up every 3 to 4 hours didn't seem that bad with Eve at first. However, she never really started to sleep longer and it became convenient for me to just let her sleep in bed with me and I would breastfeed her in my sleep. This was great until she became so attached to me that many nights she wouldn't sleep unless she was cuddled up to me and using me as her personal pacifier, if you get what I mean. Jason eventually moved to the couch to sleep because I wanted as much room as possible with her by my side on our small full size bed. So, at about 6 and a half months we started sleep training... which included giving her bottles instead of breastfeeding... and letting her do some crying it out. We moved her bed out into the hallway and plan to move it into Kylie's room whenever we trust Eve not to wake her up in the middle of the night. So far it's been a whole week that she has slept through the night and I feel like a whole new person! It's amazing what an uninterrupted night's sleep can do for a person :).

Eve is a very active little girl. She is crawling everywhere. She does a combination of real crawling, the inch worm (where she gets up on all fours really high and lunges forward) and the bear crawl (where she stays up really high with her bottom up in the air and crawls that way.) She's a momma's girl so she follows me around everywhere. When I'm cooking in the kitchen, she's hanging out at my feet. When I'm in the laundry room, there she is. You get the idea. She can easily pull herself up to a sitting position and tries really hard to stand up on her own without any success yet. We don't have much in our apartment for her to use to pull up on, so she might not be cruising anytime soon. I'll see what I can find for her to use. I might have to pull out some of Kylie's toy boxes. Eve is a very happy baby (most of the time :] )and makes some pretty funny happy sounds, usually very loud squealing or loud "ba ba ba" talk. Oh, and I'm reluctant to admit this, because I'm not proud of it, but she LOVES TV, unlike Kylie at this age who would usually ignore it if it was on. If the TV is on, Eve will twist around until she can see it... not good. Thank goodness, she also loves books and playing with her sister as long as she is being nice to her :).

She never lost her hair, so she has lots of long honey brown hair sitting on top of brand new baby hair that's growing in. It looks pretty funny, but also adorable. She has very defined and beautiful bone structure and chin and the same dimples as her big sister. I love dimples! I truly think she is a gorgeous little baby. Everyone tells me that she looks like me, but based on my baby pictures, I don't really see that much resemblance. I'll put up some of my pictures sometime in the future, right now they are all at my parent's house. I had a long face, long forehead and ears that stuck out. Eve's face is more angular and more "compact" and her eyes are almond shaped which makes her look like she might have some Asian ancestry. I was also bald, so I'm sure that makes me look a lot different just looking at the pictures. I do see some of me in her, and I also see some of Jason in her especially in the facial expressions. I also had very dark brown eyes and Eve's eyes are a mixture of many different colors. I'm not disagreeing 100% when people say she looks like me, I just don't think she is a clone of me like a lot of people tell me. I think she's cuter than I was :). We'll see who we are comparing her to as she gets older. It's weird how it can all change in a couple years.

Eve is a very friendly little girl. I've called her my "little flirt" because she loves smiling at strangers and very coyly looking away. Kylie, as a baby, went through a period where she was scared of strangers, especially men and if the man had a beard, he had NO CHANCE of winning her affection. Eve never went through that. She smiles and squeals at any new face who looks her way. She loves other babies and young children the most. I have caught her giving huge slobbery kisses to other babies her age. However she's still a mommy's girl and she won't be friendly with anyone until she has gotten in enough "mommy's cuddles" for the day. This really can drive me nuts sometimes, but I'm trying to remember that someday I will long for these fun cuddles when she wants nothing to do with her dear mommy.

I will post pictures later. Right now all our pictures are on the other (faster and better) laptop and we are waiting for a new charger to come in the mail before we can get on it. I might take some pictures and upload them to this computer, but it doesn't have any great editing options like the other one, so it might be a while before I upload any pictures. So stay tuned ;)

My little problem solver

For some strange reason, Kylie wants to use eating utensils instead of her fingers in most situations. There are some times she enjoys using her fingers, but she definitely loves her fork and spoon. A fork is just kind of hard to use when you are eating straight pretzels:
The solution: Just stuff your fork and pretzel in your mouth at the same time.

Busy, busy, busy...

Summer is definitely over in the Marsh household: Jason has gone back to school, I'm taking a class myself and I'm working almost everyday as a substitute teacher. As if we aren't busy enough, we are starting an Awana program at our church. The first day is this Sunday. I'm very excited about it, but I also know from experience just how much work it will be.

Now, I'm not writing this post to complain. I enjoy our life, and embrace the chaos. I just wanted to remember this time in our lives down the road. One day I'll be able to say: "I can't believe we did all that with 2 babies under the age of 2."

Jason is still working at Sears in the evenings and weekend. This means that as soon as I get home from a teaching assignment, he has to leave for work. I miss seeing him, but he is usually able to come home and eat dinner with us on his break which is nice. We cannot afford childcare right now, so we never work at the same time. The girls do, however, go to a friend from seminary's house twice a week for several hours while Jason is in class. I'm sure their house is very chaotic during that time since they have 4 young kids of their own, still at home.

Jason always has Thursday evenings off from work... but that's because he is taking a night class. I am also taking a night class once a week, and thankfully the seminary provides childcare for the seminary wives classes, so that Jason can still work.

Jason is still doing his internship at our church and that's why I took the day off from substitute teaching today: so he can go get some work done at the church and meet with the pastor. We have a lot to do so we can start the Awana program this Sunday, so we are going to do some organizing together when he gets back from the church today.

Well that's a brief summary of our lives right now. I know it will be a while until Jason is done with school, but I can't wait for us to be full time missionaries, so I know this journey will be worth it. Of course I am open to whatever God has in store for us and I will enjoy each day He gives us instead of longing for the future. I will try to anyways!

Family Fun and Goat Tackling

Here's everyone at Deanna Rose (minus my mom who was taking the picture). Eve is there too, she's hiding in the stroller.

A couple weeks ago, my youngest sister Kelly had a week-long softball tournament here in Kansas City. So she, along with my parents, stayed in our apartment with us. They were very busy with the tournament, so we didn't see them during the day very much. There was one day, however, that Kelly only had one game. Jason also had the day off, so we took advantage, eating lunch with my great aunt in a fun family buffet complete with bumper cars and laser tag and then going to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead along with said aunt's granddaughter and her children. We all had lots of fun, except for my mom during laser tag. She hates being chased. I do not have pictures of our lunch/bumper cars/laser tag experience, but I do have lots of Deanna Rose:

Kylie and Johanna in the old schoolhouse







Kylie in the goat pen: at first all she wanted to do was run around in circles like the wild child that she is.


















Then a nice lady gave her a bottle to feed the baby goats. How fun!


















And here it is: the moment we've all been talking about (i.e. when Kylie decided to tackle this poor goat). Here she is putting him in a headlock before throwing him to the ground. The poor goat is so docile, he just got up and ran far away.















This goat is pretty smart and is trying to escape from Kylie Bear.

Same expression...

...but very different faces. I can't figure out if this is their serious, bored or annoyed with the camera look. Oh well, at least they are cute.

Kylie is 9 months in her picture, while Eve is 4 months in hers.

Spelling Bee

My Grandma Ginny was visiting last weekend. She and I were sitting around the dinner table eating and chatting. Kylie was also eating with us in her highchair. I was asking my Grandma if she would want to help me give baths to the girls after dinner. Jason was working, and I always enjoy extra help when it comes to bath time. Plus, my grandma loves anything that has to do with taking care of her great grandchildren. I was spelling out the word "bath" since Kylie would have refused to eat anymore and would have begged for a bath instead. Grandma started spelling words like "water" because she doesn't know which words Kylie gets excited about. Kylie was listening to us and heard us spell out all these words. She recognized that they were letters because she loves the alphabet song and even sings it with about 50% of the correct letters. Well, she didn't want to be left out because she looked at us and said in a normal conversation voice: E. I. E. I. O. as in from the "Old McDonald" song. So funny.

Two year anniversary

Life as boyfriend and girlfriend:

Wedding Day 06/22/07:

One year anniversary:

We had a small wedding, yet we wanted to be able to celebrate with friends and family. The solution: a reception one year later.

Two year anniversary:

Compared to our very busy one year anniversary, this one was very uneventful. We spent the day at home together with our two girls. Jason went to pick us up some Chipotle for dinner, which is our favorite. We wanted to take the girls somewhere fun, but the temperatures were just too hot and unsafe for them.

My mom took the following pictures the day before. She was in KC for Kelly's softball tournament.