Jaycee's Birthday

I'm really behind on blog updates, but I am trying to remedy some of that. I am still in denial that Jaycee actually turned 5 years old on May 2nd. Time flies while raising children. She's such a happy kid and I'm so lucky to be her mom. She was so excited to turn 5 years old and even more excited to have a birthday party.

The birthday crew. It was pretty crazy with so many kids, but they had a great time. Starting from the left and going counter clockwise: Abbi, Eliza Odell, Katelyn, Eliza Merkley, Jaycee, Olivia, Braden, Drey, Alma, Myleigh and the wandering yellow hoodie is Caleb.

Jaycee definitely loved every present she got for her birthday and was so excited to be able to play with all of them. I know there will be plenty more birthdays to come, but every one is so different and so special. We love you, Jaycee.

Family Pictures

Back when we first moved to Wisconsin (it seems like forever ago) I was at a Relief Society dinner and ended up mentioning that I play the piano. The girl sitting next to me said she had always wanted to learn how to play and said she'd trade piano lessons for pictures with me. We were total strangers, but Danielle turned out to be a very dedicated student (I don't know how she does it with 4 kids...soon to be 5) and we were able to build a great friendship. It sounded like a great deal and it has turned out to be a very beneficial arrangement for me (and I hope for her, too) to have pictures taken every once in a while. Unfortunately, she's moving back to Utah very soon and these pictures I'm posting will be the last pictures she takes of us. I love how they turned out. Lance and I aren't extremely fond of getting pictures taken of ourselves, but luckily we have some cute kids to balance us out.

What was our winter like?

Dress-ups, pig's feet, cranberries, blizzards and mono. Yep, that pretty much sums our winter up for you. I looked through my collection of pictures from the winter (that I never blogged about because I lost motivation for blogging) and realized these will sum up the happenings of our winter. It all starts with Snow White Rydge. Poor Rydge has an older sister that changes her clothes 50 times a day and 99% of those times she's getting into a dress. What else could he do but just join in? He's a pretty good sport, but don't you worry: he's as boy as they come. All I have to say is that he loves watching golf on TV. If that isn't a pure love for sport, I don't know what is. Every time they hit the ball he erupts with laughter. It's pretty cute. He also has very good dental hygiene. Next up: Pig's feet. Lance had a suturing class, and they got to practice their skills on pig's feet. He has always loved surgery and suturing things up, so it was only natural that he would take the pig foot home and practice on it some more. Jaycee thought it was so awesome. Not that this comes as a surprise to anyone that knows Lance, but he has decided to go into Orthopaedic Surgery. It's nice having a decision, and now we can work towards it. I can't believe we are almost done with 3rd year. He's a senior medical student. I'm so proud of all his hard work, and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel (well, there's another 5-year residency tunnel waiting at the end of the med school tunnel, but who's keeping track). At least he will get paid for all the hours he will be putting in. Rydge was just excited we were letting him play with scissors.

Story #3: Lance came home one day from school to find a giant-sized bag of cranberries scattered all over the entire floor of our house. He thought for sure that I had died, which wasn't far from the truth. I got my first experience with a migraine, and I was dead to the world for 4 hours. I couldn't have gotten out of bed if my life had depended on it. I actually knew something was going on with the cranberries, but it was keeping Rydge entertained, which meant I had peace and quiet in my room. I don't know how much Jaycee helped with the mess, but she claimed she was watching TV.

Snowed in: I actually can't remember which month this happened in, but we had an extreme blizzard dump on us in good old Wisconsin. It shut the whole state down. Lance was on his orthopaedic trauma rotation, which was his favorite, but which also meant he had to get to work in the morning. His truck was not going anywhere, so he tried to take the car. He came back inside 30 min. after leaving and i was so confused. Then I realized he needed some major shoveling help. It was a neighborhood effort to get the alley shoveled enough to get cars out. He was really late to work, but there was really nothing he could do.

They had to get the truck unburied by putting the snow in front of the garage. Then when the truck was out, they had to move this huge mound of snow to the front of where the truck was, onto our lawn. It was so much snow. Luckily, that has all melted and we are experiencing amazing weather right now.

Right around the time of the blizzard was when Jaycee got really sick. She had an extremely swollen neck, and she had started antibiotics, but they weren't helping. Her neck kept swelling, and she just looked miserable. On the day of the blizzard I started worrying that she'd get sicker and I would have to take her to the ER because there weren't any clinics that were open. Luckily we were able to wait until the next day. We found out that she had mono, and there was nothing to do but just let it run its course. Rydge ended up with a cold at the same time, so I had two sick kiddos. They pretty much hung out on the couch together for a couple days.

Look at that! They're even cute when they're sick. I love those kiddos and I wouldn't change anything about them. I love their laughter. It was a pretty long winter because of all the sicknesses we contracted. I hope we're done with sickness so we can enjoy the warm weather heading our way.

Jaycee went skiing!!!

One of the first activities on our list of things to do in Idaho was to go skiing. Lance and I both went skiing quite frequently when we were younger. We were hoping to get Jaycee her first skiing experience and there's no better place to go than to Pine Creek Ski Resort in Cokeville, Wyoming. It's not a large ski resort when comparing it to the ones in Utah, but it's good for teaching kids. Jaycee said she'd go skiing, but didn't seem extremely excited. She was even less excited when it took so long to get ready with all the gear.

Look at the size difference between Jaycee and Cael (her cousin). There's only six months between them, but he is a big boy. They are the best of friends, though.
Her Grandpa Jacobson was so awesome to take her down. It is not easy work taking kids down while snowplowing the whole way. I know I probably couldn't do it. He enjoys teaching more than he enjoys skiing, so I let him have at it.



Jaycee went for two runs down the mountain, but was done after that. She had a few tumbles, but did really good. I think she could wait a year or two before she goes again. It seemed a little early for her.

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa J for taking us skiing. It was a blast!

Sledding Adventures

Before we left for Christmas break, we decided to take the kiddos sledding. There aren't amazingly long hills in our area of Wisconsin, but they don't have to be that big for our kids to have fun. It's also quite a workout getting them back up the hill. We had a great time, but the kids didn't last long with the cold wind.

Christmas 2010

Boy, did we have an awesome break from real life in Idaho for almost three weeks. My kids got spoiled and I did as well. For the week Lance was there, he got to go fishing 5 out of the 7 days. Our parents are extremely accommodating. We want to thank them one last time for the fun times we were able to have. This is about as excited as Jaycee got for Christmas morning. She was excited, but just didn't show it very much. She also told us after Christmas was all over with that she wished Santa would have wrapped all of her presents. We'll have to tell him that for next year.

This is Rydge's way of getting what he wants. He squawks really loud. This was Ty's toy but Rydge decided it was his. These cousins will get along great someday...
This picture doesn't have much to do with Christmas, except for the fact that it was Brad's (our upstairs neighbor) present and we all had to try it on. Jaycee's the only one that got a picture, though.
Oh, and by the way, Go Pack, Go!!!

A letter

Dear Grandparents of my children,

I'm sorry I haven't kept my blog up to date. It seems like something has overtaken our lives, which I affectionately term "crazy-ness". I don't know where all the time is going, but every time I think I have a great idea for a post it ends up being a week later that I finally sit down to post it and, not surprisingly, I have forgotten what funny things I was going to write. Your grandchildren say the darnedest things sometimes, but do I ever take the time to write them down? The answer is a quick "No, but I wish I did." Jaycee told me this very morning that she hates any outfit that I choose for her. Getting ready for school seems to be such a chore for her. I tell her she has all the control for choosing her outfits. Then she chooses shorts. Then I tell her some of the control has been revoked, change again. Then she comes out in a skirt. Then I try putting stretch pants on underneath and she cries and says she hates it. It's been a rough battle with this one. She definitely has her own sense of what she wants to wear, and if I try suggesting something to wear, she simply chooses the exact opposite. On any given day, she will have changed outfits ten times (at least), and that doesn't include changing into pajamas. One of her favorite outfits is her underwear. That seems a little incompatible with the current season, but she is undeterred. Thankfully, we are able to convince her to get dressed when we go anywhere, but as I mentioned before, that is no small task. Luckily, all problems with clothes pushed aside, she is very patient when I try to do her hair. She usually likes to get her hair done, and I have fun coming up with cute new hairdos. I decided to take a picture of one of her recent hairdos. She didn't want me to take her picture, but you can tell she even thinks she looks stinkin' adorable.

Her hair is getting so long and beautiful.

This picture is posted especially for Grandpa Dixon. Rydge's "dork dot" takes me straight back to my childhood. I was around middle school age when my dad had something like this on his forehead. Funny story: We had a little basketball hoop that had a suction cup on the bottom so it would stick to a table. One day my dad decided that it would be funny to stick it to his forehead, and it stuck really good. He left it on for a while because we were all laughing at him, and when he took it off he had a silver-dollar-sized bruise right in the middle of his forehead. He was finishing his education degree at that time and had to go student-teaching to Box Elder schools with that on his forehead. I'm laughing even as I type. Anyway, Rydge's story isn't as funny, but it's worth telling. It was a beautiful day and we decided to go out in front of our house to play and run around. Rydge was so excited and he loves running away from me. I started chasing him and I could just see him getting so tense because of the excitement. He got so excited while trying to run that he forgot about his feet and smacked down onto the pavement. So sad.

You will love reading Rydge's latest stats (not much different than last time):
Weight: 20th percentile
Height: 50th percentile
Head circumference: 99th+ percentile (or off the charts)
That's right, this kid is a lollipop.
But we sure love that lollipop.

I am sorry to report that while we had a wonderful Halloween this year, it has been poorly documented. I forgot my camera when we went trick-or-treating at MCW to all of the offices. As a sidenote, that is the best trick-or-treating there is. It's inside, you don't have to walk from house to house, they have lots of candy, and they feed you dessert at the end. When we went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood, my camera decided not to work, and I could only get it to take a picture without it being focused. Here's our little Spiderman. His costume had a hat and glasses to go with it, but the hat was about 6 sizes too small, and he never wears anything like glasses unless he's trying Brad's glasses on.

This is a picture of Jaycee with some of our neighbors' kids. I don't know why Jaycee turned around.

You might be wondering why there is a long black leg covering the pumpkin on the left. Well, keep wondering.
Just kidding. Story is as follows: Lance had a great idea for his pumpkin this year and he got right to work chopping and carving away. His inspiration came from the barfing pumpkin, except his was a victim of gun violence. On one side of his pumpkin he shoved the end of one of Jaycee's toy guns and on the other side he cut a very large hole with the brains spilling out (dyed red for a real visual effect). He was so proud of his idea...until our landlord came by the next day and had a look of utter disgust on her face. About an hour later, our mailman came by looking at it the same way. Poor Lance's idea was not so cool anymore, and he immediately went and took the gun out. I guess it's not so funny in a place where there really is gun violence. I was going to take a picture of the pumpkins before we went trick-or-treating, but Lance didn't want the picture to be taken without the gun in his pumpkin. But he also wasn't willing to go inside and get it. So there you have it.

Here is a picture of our noisy little man. That's what he does whenever he wants something. Along with that look he gives a horribly loud EEEEEEHHHHHHHH!!! We are still working on communicating with words.

Here is a good picture of our pretty little Snow White (even if her hair is right in the middle of her face).
Look at all the cuteness you missed out on because you had to stay in Idaho and take care of your own lives. Too bad.

Well, it was fun giving you an update on our life here in Wisconsin. If you ever feel like taking a spur-of-the-moment car trip, I know of one that would take you about 20 hours, but we would sure make it worth it for you. If not, we are eagerly looking forward to the Christmas memories we will be able to make with you in the near future.

Love, Chemene.