Chunky Cheese

Jerel and I believe in bribery and we can't wait until Zay's old enough for it to work. In the mean time we satisfy ourselves by bribing other people's children. In this case we bribed Karee's kids, Isaac and Ellie, with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's. Ellie has spent the last few months working on potty training while Isaac has been working on sleeping all night in his own bed. Once Karee gave the okay that they had made enough progress we agreed to fulfill our end of the bargain and spent an exciting evening at Chuck E. Cheese's. As it turns out, Trudy has always thought it was called Chunky Cheese, which I think is a much funnier name so I will probably call it that from now on. Trudy watched Zay and Jocie and we took Karee's mini van so we wouldn't have to worry about switching around carseats. So there we are in a mini van with a 5 year old boy and 3 year old girl, they're singing along to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a kid's cd, and I looked over at Jerel and said "this is us in 4 more years." Of course we're going to do everything we can to prevent getting a mini van, but aside from that detail Friday night was pretty much a sneak peak at our future!

Our little chief's other grandpa

Did you know Isaiah is part Native American? Yep, it's true. Here he is standing by a statue of Chief Massasoit, his great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather (13 greats in there). Massasoit basically met the pilgrims, taught them how to farm, and essentially prevented the failure of Plymouth Colony. So in some small round about way you all sort of owe your entire existence to Isaiah. Or at least his 13th great grandpa. You can learn all about Massasoit here.  Zay (and Jerel) descend from Massasoit's daughter Amie.  This statue of Massasoit is at BYU (not really sure why, as his tribe was in Massachusetts) and there is another statue of him at the capitol building in Utah. Sadly Zay is less than .05 % Native American so he'll still have to pay taxes. At least now we know why he screams so much--he's practicing his war cry!

It's a zoo over here!

As if 14 grandkids didn't make for enough of a zoo-like atmosphere, we headed up to Wheeler Farm for some additional chaos. Grandma Atkinson spent her summers as a kid riding around on tractors and wagons so she wanted all the kids to have a ride too (not all 14 came, just the ones you see here). Before the ride we wandered all over the farm and saw your usual farm animals, tractors, etc. Isaiah didn't really have any interest--I think it was just too hot (close to 100 degrees that day)--but he behaved himself nicely. Karee let us borrow her double stroller so Zay and Jocelyn (2 weeks older than Zay) were in the stroller the whole time. It was good practice for Jerel since we'll be demoted to double-stroller status in a few more months. After the wandering around the kids fed some birds and then had a picnic lunch. We skipped out on lunch because Zay has been having a hard time in the heat so we took him home to the air conditioning to cool off. We had a fun time and the rest of the pics will be posted soon.

Great Grandpa Weber

Zay only has one great grandpa, so we drove up to Preston, ID to see him and Grandma Weber. Grandpa Weber is in an assisted living home suffering from Parkinson's and Grandma Weber lives in a darling little house just down the street so she is able to visit him often. We were planning to leave early in the day but ZayZay (as usual) had other plans, so we ended up waiting for him to take a nap before we headed up. Grandpa Weber had been asking all day when we were coming and he smiled when we got there. We visisted for a little while, but he was pretty tired, so we left him to nap while we went over to see their new little house. Grandma fed us Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches, which I guess are made there in town, and Isaiah wandered all over her yard and garden. Grandma & Grandpa spent most of their lives working on their dairy farm. They have 30 grandchildren and 40-something great grandchildren (Isaiah was number 40, and our new baby will be number 46 when she comes, but I'm not sure what the current count is). We were delighted to be able to spend time with them!

The Booger Barn

Actually it's Burger Bar but Jerel's mom kept forgetting what it was called. Burger Bar is in Roy, Utah. We (Mandy, Jerel, ZayZay, and Grandma Atkinson) drove up to Preston, ID to visit Jerel's grandparents and on the way we stopped at this Burger Bar place. We heard about it on the show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives so we decided to check it out. You can see the video of the Burger Bar segment here.  It's an old side-of-the-road joint where you walk up to order, wait in the stifling heat, then eat in your car. They are famous for their Big Ben burger, which is what I had. I asked what comes on it because I don't like gross things like lettuce or other veggies on my burgers, and ketchup wasn't even on the list. I forgot we are in Utah where everything has fry sauce (mayo & ketchup combo) instead of ketchup. So I did the Big Ben, ketchup only, and a pb cup milkshake. The milkshakes were more like a DQ blizzard, which was fine by me. Jerel was kidnapped on the way there and replaced by some man I don't know who likes to try new foods, so he got the buffalo burger--as in, made with meat from a buffalo. He said it tasted just like a regular burger. They come on homemade buns, which were especially yummy. Trudy got the little Ben and a shake. We all agreed that it was good food, the buns were excellent, and it was okay since it was on our way somewhere. But Jerel says he'd never go out of his way to eat there and that "out of his way" means more than 1 block from his normal route. But I thought it was pretty delicious, but would've been deliciouser if they had an air-conditioned eating area!

Incompetent Dad Seeks Help

Meet Dave.  Dave is Jerel's sister Karee's husband.  Dave has two main loves in his life (aside from wife & kids) namely BYU football and food.  When does Dave come visit us?  Only when BYU is playing in the northwest.  What does Dave want to do while he's at our house?  Try all the good restaurants and have Jerel cook his latest recipes and me make desserts.  It's all part of his charm.  It's actually refreshing for me because Jerel doesn't like food (seriously.  He will stop eating and I ask if he's full and he says "no, I'm just bored of chewing.  This is something I cannot understand) so it's fun to talk to someone who appreciates it as much (okay, more) than I do!  When Jerel and I first got married Jerel wasn't really aware of how much Dave liked to talk about food, but I pointed it out to him and it's fun to listen to group conversations.  Someone will say "So I was in New York watching the world series ..." and Dave will say "oh, did you go to such-and-such restaurant?  They have the best authentic Mexican cuisine..." and go into a full description.  Or you say "Hey, remember at our wedding..." and Dave finishes with "when you had that great salmon at the luncheon?"  It is pretty funny.  In truth Dave has many fine qualities, but they aren't fun to make fun of, and teasing people is mostly what my blog is all about.  So when Dave asked why he was never on my blog I told him it was because he needed to give me something good to make fun of him for.  I didn't have to wait long...

We met Karee & Dave for dinner

and Dave mentioned that he and Isaac (their oldest, 5 years old) were building a rocket (Isaac LOVES rockets) but they had gotten stuck and were hoping Uncle Jerel could help them finish it up.  Isaac asked if Uncle Jerel had ever been in a rocket to outer space, which he hasn't, but he was pretty sure he'd be able to help anyway.  So after dinner they brought the rocket over.  Dave pulled out the instructions and said "So it looks like we're stuck on step, um, let me see, oh Step 1."  I think they had basically gotten the package open and that was all...luckily Jerel makes a pretty good impromptu rocket scientist and he and Isaac were able to succesfully build it, while at the same time making Dave feel like he was contributing!

Game time with Grandma

Trudy has 14 grandkids (so far) ranging from 11 months to 10 years old and while we were all staying at the house together she did a great job getting them all involved in playing games together.  Here they are playing Red Rover.  Later on they played The Candy Game, which involved trying to get a piece of candy out of the bowl using only chopsticks.  Zay wasn't too successful, but grandma helped the littler ones, and then Zay's mommy helped him by eating the candy he got.

Later that day she took 10 of them on a walk to a park, and amazingly came back with the same 10 kids--quite an accomplishment I think!

I think there are 26 family members all together, so it was a bit squishy in the 3 bedroom house, but it was fun to be with everyone.  Ryan & his family slept outside in a tent, Jerel & I got a bed thanks to my pregnancy status, Karee & her family got a room with a bed, and I'm not sure where everyone else was.  I think this was the first time I've really been glad to be pregnant because I really don't like sleeping on the floor!

Speaking of head trauma

Well, we avoided head trauma during the haircut, but weren't so lucky later on.  We spent Monday night up at sister-in-law Amy's grandma's old house in Heber.  Nope, not Heber, but somewhere close to that.  Isaiah landed eye-first on a cement flower pot and got a nice bruise/scrape along his eye socket.  All I can say is I'm glad it happened on Jerel's watch and not mine...see, Jerel is always worried about Isaiah getting hurt and I'm a bit more relaxed about it.  It's not uncommon for Isaiah to be sitting on my lap on the couch and make a slight wiggle and have Jerel yell and jump across the room to catch him in case he might fall.  Jerel's also good at explaining what he was preventing. It's not just "he might have fallen" but "He almost fell off and landed right on his head and cracked his skull open and had to be rushed to the ER and spend a week in the hospital."  I've tried to explain to Jerel that this is called "catastrophizing" but he's holding firm to his belief that he has legitimately saved Isaiah's life at least 8 million times :)  Anyway, it's not like I'm glad ZayZay got hurt, I'm just glad it didn't happen while I was watching him because that would just verify Jerel's unspoken belief that I don't watch him closely enough!

Time for a haircut

ZayZay was starting to look a little shaggy, and now that we know we have a girl on the way I can stop girlifying Isaiah!  Aunt Mandy (yes, there are two Mandy Atkinson's in the family) was elected to do the First Haircut Honors.  Here were the assignments:  Isaiah:  cry, scream, try to climb out of the chair, and wiggle as much as possible.  Mandy:  attempt to cut Isaiah's hair without scalping him at the same time.  Dad:  hold onto Isaiah to minimize wiggling, and thus minimize risk of major head trauma or stab wounds (this is not a reflection on Mandy's haircutting abilities, just on Isaiah's inability to stay still).  Mom:  take lots of pictures.

Over the river and through the woods

to grandma Atkinson's house we go!  Jerel drove all night to minimize the amount of baby screaming we'd have to hear.  It worked fairly well, Isaiah slept all but about 3 of the 12 hours.  I keep crossing my fingers that pretty soon we'll be insanely wealthy and able to fly instead of drive, but it hasn't happened yet.  Apparently Intel doesn't give out 600% raises, so for now we'll be driving.  I sat in the front seat, and sometime during the night I was looking at the empty backseat next to Isaiah and it looked a lot more roomy than my front seat (I can't put my seat back all the way, or recline it at all, because Zay's carseat is behind me).  So I moved to the back seat and spent the rest of the trip looking at the roomy front seat that I should've stayed in.  Oh well, we made it.  Jerel drives the whole time because he can't stand my driving (I don't blame him, I'm not a good driver at all).  When we got to Utah, Jerel stayed up with Isaiah while I took a five hour nap . . . I know, I'm so selfless!

Isaiah has an announcement to make

Zay's monthly pics (take 2)

I think my slideshow quit working on that other posting, so I'm posting the monthly pictures I took of Isaiah during his first year. If you look really fast (left to right, top to bottom) it's like you can see him growing right before your eyes...okay, not really, but it is fun to see how much he's changed this year!

Kitchen is Finally Done! (Almost)

Here are some before and after shots. We took out the side cabinets and put in an island. Switched from oak to a dark-stained alder, changed from linoleum and laminate to ceramic tile, and opted to discard the peach counters for a beige quartz. We also took out the pantry closet to the right of the fridge and had a pantry cabinet built instead--it gives us so much more usable room and we love that! It was overflowing before and this is much better. New light fixtures & several new overhead lights (before it was mostly lamps). We moved the table from the window area to the empty room next to the kitchen and had storage/seating put in under the windows. Also put in a microhood because I hate having stuff on my counters. Not because I'm such a neat freak, more because need that space to store dirty dishes...

That doesn't sound like much for how much mess and hassle it was! But it's all done now, except for a few cabinet handles which we had to order later on. Eventually we'll switch the appliances out for stainless steel, but for now we're just enjoying having more storage space and having a more updated look. The sad thing is it isn't a self-cleaning kitchen so I still have to do dishes, and Zay still likes to throw his food on the floors even if we tell him it's fancy tile.

It's true, they really DO grow up so fast!

I started this when Isaiah was born--once each month I took his picture wearing the same outfit, laying on the same blanket, with the same doll next to him to provide perspective (and also to bug Jerel, who believes boys shouldn't have dolls).  Anyway, it's kind of cool to see how much our little ZayZay has grown this year!  In the first pictures the outfit is way too big, and by the end it's way too small (unless you're into short shorts).

ZayZay's First Birthday

Isaiah turned one on Saturday. Neither Jerel nor I are big believers in throwing a huge party for a baby who's just going to cry, so we kept it small. The two of us sang happy birthday to him, then he opened presents, then had a cupcake. Actually he had two cupcakes...I bought him a fancy one but the frosting was too stiff for him to dig into, so he ended up with a plain one. He wasn't too interested in either of them. He generally won't eat unless he has a spoon (not to eat off of, just to hold and use as a drumstick) so Jerel gave him one and after that he did a bit better. He also doesn't like to have things stuck to his hands. This picture is as messy as he got. Sorry for those of you who were hoping for chocolate frosting smeared in his hair and stuff, I guess that's just not his style.

Jerel and I got him a set of DVD's and CD's. He really likes music and these ones are full of kid songs so he won't have to put up with mom's soft rock or dad's 80's party hits anymore.

Jerel's parents sent him some gifts, which he opened a day early while they watched him over the computer. My family is having a joint party for him and cousin Cooper on Saturday. So don't worry, he's not neglected!  See play-by-play photos of Isaiah daintily approaching his cupcake by clicking here.

A day at the beach

Isaiah and I went to the beach today with my friend Stephenie and her two little ones. Jerel stayed home from work to let in the plumbers for the kitchen, and also to get his not actually broken hand x-rayed, and also because he has a terrible cold. It probably seems un-nice to leave my sick husband home alone while I went to the beach, but honestly I'm sure he got more rest with us gone than if we'd stayed home.

Raelee is 4 years old and she was stuck in the backseat in between the two screamers (Isaiah and Finley) but she was a good sport. You can tell she is used to having a screaming baby around because she sang Isaiah a song and without even taking a breath she started into another song (she's obviously learned that if you pause long enough to breathe it gives the baby enough time to remember he was crying).

It was close to 100 degrees today and was supposed to be around 80 at the beach. In reality it was 60 and windy. We brought jackets for the kids so Stephenie and I wrapped up in towels to keep warm. Just a typical day at the beach in Oregon!

When we got home we had a working faucet in our kitchen (a Delta Touch2O faucet, so cool) and a running dishwasher! Hooray! No more doing dishes by hand in the bathroom sink! Either tomorrow or Saturday the electrician will come by and then we'll have our light fixtures and a working oven/stove which will make our kitchen fully functional, leaving just the ceiling to finish it up. Finally!

See the rest of the beach pics here

Owen Beach Family Reunion

Rick and I threw together a last-minute family reunion at Owen Beach (part of Pt. Defiance park).  We didn't plan it far enough in advance to have everyone there, but we did have 30 people or so from my dad's side of the family.  The weather was perfect, unless you're a baby--Isaiah had had enough of the sun after a few hours.  First he rubbed the sunscreen into his eyes, then later I realized I should've sprayed it onto his head so now his scalp is a bit burned.  I think spending a whole day outside (after a three hour drive to get there) just wore the little guy out.  But overall he was in a good mood.

Here are the stars of the show--my grandma and her sisters--that's my grandma on the right.  They are the cutest, I think not one of them quite hits 5 feet tall, and they're nice as can be.  My grandma is planning to move from AZ to Bremerton pretty soon so it will be nice to see her more often. 

Okay, so I think it's funny how with babies at this age we get all excited to put them next to each other so they can "play" but really they have absolutely no interest in each other.  This is Zay with his cousin Clara and you can see they're not really into interacting with each other.  The only time they approach each other is when one has a binky and the other doesn't; it's fun to see which one is more of a bully.  Zay has the size advantage, but Clara spends time at the daycare Theresa works at so she's used to defending herself against a dozen kids at once.

When do kids learn how to color and draw?  Isaiah liked to hold the chalk and tried to eat it several times, but made no attempts at making lines with it even after I showed him.  Good thing he was happy to just wander around with a piece in each hand.  Sadly his outfit didn't have any pockets in it--his new thing is he loves it when you take his toy and put it in his pocket and then he says "where'd it go?" like you're playing peek-a-boo.

See the rest of the pictures here.