Valentine's Day

A little late due to our recent vacation... but we had a fun early Valentine's Day with the kids! They learned all about the holiday to celebrate love, both at school and at home. We had helped them make cards for each other, decorated heart shaped cookies (Jackson helped make the cookies with Steph), and gave them little tokens of our love. Jackson got a transformer toy, which he loves, and Kenzie got another my little pony!

this & that

Just some quick updates from the last week...

It's just amazing how life's little milestones can come out of nowhere. This week all the neurons lined up and Jackson figured out how to read. He's not on war and peace just yet, more like "spot did sit" but it blows us away nevertheless. We are so very proud of him! He learned his letters at a very early age (right after his 2nd birthday if my memory is accurate) and has been working on all of the sounds ever since. His biggest hurdles have been learning his lower case letters and learning to naturally look at his letters from left to right. It fascinates me to watch little kids learn because it really sheds light on some basic building blocks of learning that we wouldn't typically think about. The left to right thing is a classic example. It takes hours of practice and effort to make the mind just default to looking at letters left to right, and that must be mastered before reading is possible. Anyway, blah blah blah, our little reader has done all the behind the scenes work and is now seeing the rewards of his efforts. We are so happy for him!

Another little milestone from this week was Mackenzie saying her first prayer. Every night we pray at the dinner table and Mackenzie has always been too shy whenever we ask if she'd like to pray, usually saying "but I don't know how!" Well she finally just did it on her own, but sort of showed her hand early, allowing me time to get it on video...

another fun moment from the week was having the Clark family over for Marsha's birthday dinner, with the kids getting to interact more with their cousin Gracie who is just showing more and more personality.

Last night we took the kids to pajama story time at the public library. We definitely should have done this a long time ago. it was a super fun time for them... very interactive while being educational at the same time.

This weekend we'll be celebrating Valentine's day with them, as Steph and I will be in Belize on the real Valentine's Day!

Cooper

Mariner's Fan Fest

January... snowing... a team that lost more than 100 games last year with a $100m+ payroll... hey who's ready for baseball?!!

Despite the bleak state of Seattle Mariners baseball, we were very excited for the official kickoff to the 2009 Mariners. (I won't comment on the fact that the star acquisition introduced to the fans during fanfest, Aaron Heilman, was promptly traded 3 days later for a journeyman middle infielder and another mediocre left handed pitcher, never playing a single game for the Mariners...)

Kenzie finally got her own baseball mitt (pink of course), as well as her very own Mariners jersey, to match the ones Jackson, Steph and I were all wearing.

The kids got to see the locker rooms, sit in the dugout, run the bases, and play "catch" on the field. Jackson nearly turned into a popsicle because he adamantly refused to wear his jacket because you couldn't see his Mariners jersey. We finally cut him a deal that he could run the bases with no jacket on but had to put it on promptly afterwards. What we forgot to do was tell him that in this case, running the bases really meant run from first to third.

Now we are officially ready for another season of our own lovable losers! Go M's!!

Goin' back to Cali

Stephanie takes the blogging plunge:

What a perfect trip! The kids have been missing their great grandparents, and just loved soakin' up the sun and their other adventures in California.

Day 1: A great day! Our little pro travelers enjoyed their plane ride. Jackson MUST have gum for takeoff and landing (I think this is a great excuse to try a forbidden treat). We arrived to Grandma and Grandpa's friends Mike and Trisha's house to find out they are grandparents too. Translation: a whole new world of fun and games that we have never seen before. This California place is the best!

Day 2: Wake up to homeade Orange Julius- "This could be a great business idea! These things taste good!!" Finally, we got to see Great Grandpa and Great Grandma. Much to Mommy's relief, Kenzie has gotten past her "I hate all men" phase and was SO excited to hang out with both of her G. grandparents.

Day 3: Due to inclement (err...really warm) weather, we just had to hit Broadway Plaza for some summer gear. This was a huge disappointment to Mommy and Grandma :) The highlight of this little shopping spree for the kids was throwing about 40 pennies into the fountain and soaking up the rays. The highlight for Mommy was the fabulous $7 shirt find.

Day 4: Another day visiting G. Grandpa and Great Grandma. We had a little preemptive swim in the morning to burn off some energy before hanging out again. Jackson decided that this was his one and only swim because he doesn't like shivering. Grandma and Mommy get to work on a new idea for tomorrow's little activity.

Day 5: Our last day. Grandma takes the kids for a ride on the train that we see every time we come and go from our hotel (BART). Kenzie gets caught in the gate on the way in. It takes about 40 minutes from drop off to getting on the train and the train ride lasts about 3 minutes. We have one last wonderful visit with G. Grandma and G. Grandpa. The kids really bonded with their great grandparents and still talk about them frequently. We can't wait to go back and visit again!

Moments from our flight home include Kenzie falling asleep in her stroller with perfect timing- right before we went through the security line, Jackson making friends with a couple of sports fans and showing off his sports knowledge (ie: favorite Husky basketball player: Isaiah Thomas; favorite Mariner: Ichiro; Richie Sexson used to play for the Mariners, but got traded to the Yankees; Husky football is bad, etc.), Kenzie making friends with the man next to her on the plane, telling him, "I like you.", Telling Grandma, "I like him.", telling the man, "I like your watch", pushing buttons on the watch, telling him, "I like your shoes", flashing her flirty grin, showing off by "reading" the entire "Pinkalicious" book from memory.

I think that about wraps up my first and probably very infrequent post. Now I can say I contributed.

Chocolate pudding... it's muy tasty, no?

Weekend update

No Steph, no kids... so does Coop take advantage of his newfound time?

Last words from Steph before leaving for California with the kids were "bye! I love you! oh... uh... if you get bored..." ... the dreaded honey-do list.

Well, if you are reading this Steph, you will be disappointed to hear I have yet to get bored.

Last night after a little bbq action I went up to the new Snoqualmie Casino with my buddy Matt to test out my new blackjack "system" that I invented and won big with in Palm Springs last October. 2 hours later, we both walked out with very handsome returns on our investments. I often tell my friends about how I know I am relaxed on vacation when my everyday problems transition to "vacation problems", such as those umbrellas in your drink hitting you in the nose... your beach towel getting pushed through the slats on your lounge chair, etc. Well last night I was having similar problems. They put these granite borders on all of the blackjack tables, I assume because everyone likes granite, and it's real classy like. Well they didn't factor in that it makes the felt on the table slightly angle down at the edges, thus me endlessly battling my ever growing pile of chips that wanted to slide into my drink holder. Casino problems!

Today was even better. Matt, Dre and I drove to Crystal Mountain to go skiing, which was in the midst of an "inversion layer", as Matt so artfully explained to us. His very thorough story boiled down to this: even though it's freezing and foggy in Seattle, this freak weather event is making it sunny and warm on the mountain, and the higher you go on the mountain the warmer it gets. He was right, it was 50+ degrees at the peak, and I saw the sun for the first time since mid December. That last part is not an exaggeration... I swear, SWEAR!, I have not seen the sun in over a month. I missed my one chance on Monday when I forgot to go out after the fog lifted, worked through lunch, and by the time I remembered at 4:30 it was already dark again. Anyway, it was even more beautiful than I remembered it!

Coop/Torr/Dre... excuse the grainy blackberry pictures!

Mount Rainier

Uh.. Iceberg Gulch, Sunnyside, or Lucky Shot (the 3 runs we did over and over, I never knew which was which)

Steph returns Monday night, with a treasure trove of video clips and pics of the kids in "Calinfornia" as Jackson calls it. So stay tuned!

Coop

Indoor fun...

So we're back to the great sog pattern that is Seattle weather. This week brought record flooding, with half the state seemingly covered in mud or water. Fortunately our area is pretty high up and far away from flood prone areas. To us it is just another week of slog that feels the same whether it's November, February, or June-uary. The nice part is that all the indoor playtime has enabled me to become an expert at "baby doll house"!

Steph had a nice overnight getaway yesterday with friends from her drunco, er.. bunco group, and I've been hanging with the kids at home. Kenzie continues to work on her ballet, and Jackson took some pictures of her with his fisher price camera. The highest quality pic he took is shown here.

Soccer is quickly becoming Jackson's favorite winter time activity, and here he displays some nice moves during the "strobe light" portion of red light / green light. Jackson conveniently wore a red jersey to make it easy to follow his every move.

Yesterday afternoon I took Jackson to the huskies basketball game again, a very painful afternoon from a fan's point of view. We lost in triple OT, and should have won 3 different times. Jackson constantly wants to know the score and how much the Huskies are winning by. Near the end of the second overtime he said "I'm so tired of it always being tied up!!" ahh well... still a great afternoon with the kid, even if the wrong team won.

This week Steph takes the kids down to California to visit the great grandparents, Jack and Doreen Nankin. We may be reading her first blog entry soon!