Well, you got to hand it to him – at least he thinks he’s got it all figured out.  You never know though, maybe I should call Caitlin’s mom and let her know so she can start saving now – just in case.

BASE jumping? No big deal.  Alligator wrestling?  Soooo last year.  In 2010 the new adventure for true thrill seekers has got to be sub-four-year-old slumber parties.  Plus, in addition to the adrenaline rush you also get the good feeling of knowing that, while it may not ever be you, somewhere there are two parents who are having a quite evening including uninterrupted conversation, restaurant dining that doesn’t include a free toy, and (assuming the night goes well) no diapers.

Thus, it was our birthday gift to our friend Jason to take their two kids Caleb and Sammy (Jonah and Calvin’s ages respectively) starting Friday night at six with plans to return them the next day around noon.   However, I’m happy to report that the evening went surprising well and without major incident.   (more…)

It’s been brought to my attention recently that many of you have been moving around and changing your phone numbers and emails without first consulting me if I approve of such life changes.  Sure, maybe it was convenient for your new job or spouse, but obviously you didn’t consider the ramifications it would have to me when I suddenly feel like randomly calling you and the number I have on my cell phone instead calls some random guy in Denver with a British accent.  So, since I have yet to plug into the gestalt of full-on social networking so that I know what each and every one of you is doing and every minute of every day, I was hoping for the moment to simply try and maintain my own contact info so that I can better pretend to still be personal friends with all of you.  If you have the time, drop me a line here (so as to keep your info off the web)  and help me out by including as much information as you’re willing to share (name, phone, email, IM, address, birthday, website, etc.).  Feel free to pass the request on to any mutual friends who I might have lost contact with.  I don’t know why, but as soon as I turned 30 I suddenly got nostalgic and wanted to know where all my friends went to and see what’s going on.  Maybe I’ll be on MyTwitterbook or something someday, but for now I’ll settle on hearing your voices and writing back and forth

I was very proudly presented with this the other day by Jonah.  Take note all current or future parents:  The most valuable thing you can give to children is your time; big shiny expensive toys are fun for a little bit (and trust me, Jonah has his share), but apparently are easily usurped by memories of bedtime stories, $2 army men battles, and even post-bathtime hair dentangler.  I love you too buddy, I’ll do my best to try and keep your world magical as long as I can.

Batman and Robin are so last year, these two bring a superfighting team that transcends even copyrights.  As long as you’re open to it, things have a way of working out.  Last Saturday I had really been looking forward to going to Home Depot with the boys to do a kid project they have once a month, but we ended up having a slower morning and didn’t make it.  When the kids came with me to walk down the street to send back our Netflix, we found a big cardboard box with an arrow pointing down the street.  Well, of course in the land of two and four year-olds such a thing demands to be followed lest one miss out out buried treasure or something better.  It turned out to be a garage sale which is apparently the most exciting thing ever.  The boys got the two costumes, a dinosaur book, a star wars book, and a DVD about tractors all for $3!  Suffice it to say the rest of the day was spent saving the day from evil villians (which turned out to be me in most cases).  So, today’s tip for kids and adults alike, if you’re walking down a path and there’s an mysterious arrow, follow it – you don’t want to miss out on superpowers.

I’m going to try and keep this short (for me) because otherwise I’ll never catch up on posting.  Personally I think that it is unfair that I have been blessed with children who are photogenic and do cute things faster than I can tell people about it, but I’m doing the best I can.  Anyway, here we go… (more…)

I didn’t write down the birth of Jonah or Calvin like I did Hazel. And I hope it doesn’t sound bad when I say that Hazel’s birth was the best of the three, which is maybe why I was more motivated to write it all down.  Jonah’s birth was preceded by such a long labor, and colored by my frustrations with nursing.  And Calvin was born after months of seeing the awful doctors at Wright-Patt and was very medical.  It felt more like a procedure.  Hazel was an experience.  And it was wonderful.  So this is as much for me (and maybe future Hazel if she wants to read it) as it is for you.  If you don’t read it that’s okay, I’m glad I did it just the same.  And thank you for the gentle prodding Christen, I wanted to do this and I just needed some encouragement to sit at my computer.  Side note: I tried to put pictures in where they were logical, but in some places th

This story starts on Monday, November 23rd.  I am 41 weeks, 3 days pregnant.  I have spent the last two weeks doing everything I can to encourage Hazel to come see the world.  Apparently she wasn’t interested.  So, back to Monday — I have a 10:45 doctor’s appointment which Chris is able to attend while my mom watches Calvin.  I was very sad on Monday because my mom was leaving the next day and it made me feel terrible that she would not get to see Hazel.  I wanted to enjoy my mom’s last day so I was trying to stay upbeat, but I don’t think I did a very good job.  The doctor’s appointment didn’t help at all.  I had progressed very little since the week before and they wanted to talk about induction.  I was mostly okay with this because my doctor had told me the week before that they did not have any inductions available for Thanksgiving week so I assumed we would be talking about inducing the next week which would still give Hazel time to come on her own.  My biggest reason at this point for not wanting an induction was that I really wanted a natural birth and pitocin (the drug they use to induce labor) causes stronger, more painful contractions than natural labor.  I really did want a natural birth but, despite anything I may have said to the contrary, I really doubted my ability to do it and I felt adding pitocin would make it impossible.

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I know this is a bit non-sequitur, but I’ve been having some issues with my host recently and almost lost some backup files. The point is that a while back when my sister decided that she was getting tired of both the first and second worlds and decided to check out that third one everyone was talking about I set up a temporary website to help her stay in contact. In an attempt to keep the posts for posterity and for those of you who missed them the first time round, I’ve copied them over to this site in the several posts below. So, enjoy them or ignore them (if you plan on enjoying them, read them chronologically, from bottom to top). Sorry for the lack of pictures, but as I understood it most of the time she was posting from a computer made of bamboo and birds were carrying the messages back to America.

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