Preschool!

Caleb has just started his first preschool.  We are doing it as a co-op, with 3 other three-year-olds, and rotating through our homes.  The first day, Letter A Day, was at our house.  Here the kids are doing Apple Art :)

We also talked about alligators, singing songs and rhymes about them.  We had applesauce, apple juice, animal crackers, and cheesesticks (by request;) for a snack.  So much fun!

I was nervous that Caleb would cry when I dropped him off at the other kids' homes each week, but he has loved it!  He did get sad a little on Letter B Day, the first time I left him at their house, but he has done wonderfully ever since.  Yesterday we had Letter E Day at our house, and had a lot of fun talking about elephants and eggs, mostly.  Daddy was even around to play "Jumbo Elephant" on the piano for us to sing to :)  We also talked about eyes and made Mr. Eyes with these cute little googly eye rings I found at Party City.  Unfortunately I forgot to take pics.

Cinnamon Rolls with Mommy...Yummy!

Ella naps everyday still, and that leaves Caleb with some alone time with mommy. This is one of the things Sally gets him to do. Along with the bread she makes about once a week, she frequently will do something different with a portion of the dough. What I love is that she also gives Caleb the chance to make something along with her. He does pretty good on his own, and we all enjoy the end result: fresh, hot, homemade cinnamon rolls!

A random bit of everything...

We realize that it has been quite some time now since we've posted. It's always in the back of our minds, but life seems to just keep marching on without any time for updates. So here goes. This is just a mixture of all sorts of stuff from life with explanations below each pic.

Hospital pictures are few and far between. A nurse in the cardiac cath lab took this of me and one of my attendings before a case we did there. Good times were had by all. ;)

Gramps and Grandma Jo made it home from their 2 year mission in Uruguay! July was an exciting month for our family because of their return. This is Ella enjoying a sit on Gramp's lap while he and Ella's cousin Nate play a bit of chess.

Caleb trying on mommy's old wet suit. It almost fits! Hahaha.

A cute boy...and a very common sight. PBJ is, of course, a staple in our home. What makes it better is the homemade wheat bread and homemade peach jam that Sally makes. 

Sea World has been a lifesaver this Summer. This is at the Shamu show (I think...I obviously wasn't there). We made it a tradition to go as often as possible this year to make it worth the season passes. It has been well worth it. Ella LOVES the dolphins (which we got to feed this last week), and Caleb loved the aquarium with fish, sharks, frogs, and other sea critters. 

Grandma Jo has a great time playing the piano with Caleb and Ella. Growing up, we played the piano and sang together all the time, so it has been great to have the kids get to join in on the tradition already. They both break out into song frequently. Ella in particular is quite vocal in her church nursery group during singing time. It makes us proud! :D

Getting serious with hair :)

Ella...growing up!

Hanging out with Caleb on the last morning at the beach house

Our little Ella doesn't seem so little lately!  She turns 2 this weekend, and she really is becoming a "big girl".  She's starting to potty train, and last weekend we officially moved her into her "big girl bed" and put away the crib--no going back!  And she loves it; she has even started staying in bed at bedtime (or almost:)

Both kiddos love jumping on their beds!

Her hair is getting so long--and so beautiful!  We are learning, step by step, how to do it.  We've found that, so long as we comb it through every day (or nearly), it is MUCH easier to do, and really doesn't get all that tangled.  She is getting better at sitting to have her hair done without complaining, too--though not without wiggling! :)  I think she likes to hear people tell her how pretty her hair looks when it is done.

Trying to get some pics of her hairdo :)

A few things about Ella at "almost 2" years old:

She still loves water; she is miss indepedent, nearly always--and sometimes water and being independent get her into trouble!  But she continues to be fearless.  She loves her big brother, and they get along REALLY well--that is, when they are not overly tired :)  When she is tired she actually likes going to bed!  She loves to jump on Caleb and try to wrestle him when he is trying to watch a movie; she is definitely an even match for her brother, who also likes to tease!  She is very social--she loves to say "hi" and wave at people everywhere we go.  She LOVES going places in the car, and doesn't like to be left behind.  And every day, when I ask her if she had a good day, she says, "Yeah, I go walk."="I went on a walk", whether or not we actually did.  The last couple days, though, it's turned into, "I go sweemeen"="I went swimming".  She can get into just about anything--Joe and I have been realizing that pretty much nothing is safely out of the kids' reach anymore!  She LOVES to push a chair across the kitchen floor and climb up to "help" me cook whatever I am working on.  And she has started pretending to cook like Caleb does--she'll get a bowl & spoon, ask for water or something in it, and stir and stir!  She seems to have endless energy--when she is in a happy mood, she will dance around, dance from one room to the next, jump & hop...and she is so fun to watch!  But when she is mad, watch out!  She is good at throwing 2-yr-old fits ;)

Our beautiful, happy girl!

The thing that inspired me to write this post was hearing her today asking Caleb about something in a little video they were watching:  "Wha's sat, Kee-ub?"="What's that, Caleb?"  SO cute--it is so fun to see her looking up to her older brother so much, and asking him her questions.

Buddies!

This pic cracks me up--They were having so much fun dressing up,
and I'm sure they were saying "cheese" under their masks,
but it just looks like a mugshot of miscreant zoo animals :)

Having a picnic in the little pool we bought at the grocery store

Jumping with the big boys!

The next growing-up step:  getting rid of the binkies!  Her birthday at the end of this week is the planned date for taking her to the store to "buy" some little toys with the binkies, so we'll see how that goes... :)

Peaches!

There is a pick-your-own fruit orchard about an hour from where we live, and my brother & his fam went there last Saturday to get peaches, so I decided to be brave and take the kids with me to do the same this week.  It turned out to be a harder thing than I was expecting--but the kids were troopers!

Cons--the mosquitoes were HORRIBLE from the recent rains; it was hot; the kids were "done" with the experience when the box was not yet half-full.

Pros--we got a half-bushel of peaches which I turned into jam (my first time making it--yum!); we got out of the house and went somewhere new; the orchard workers gave us a ride in their golf/work cart back from the orchard to the office/house (this perked the kids right up--went from crying to smiling almost instantly :); and we ended the picking with a picnic on the lone picnic table that was sitting in the shade next to their office!  

Thank goodness it ended with that picnic, because even though the mosquitoes were awful & the kids were crying by the end of the picking, they remember the experience as "fun"!

They both fell asleep on the way home--Ella wearing her new favorite "bracelets" (baby teething rings we found in our closet last week), & Caleb holding the empty package of dried fruit he'd been snacking on.  These kids make me so happy :)

Best Birthday Week Start Ever.

I turned 31 on May 3rd. Wow, time doesn't slow for anyone. I almost have my first real job, too. ;) Just one more year. That'll be nice.

I really had a great week. Growing up with 6 siblings, it was fairly common to have 2 or 3 different family members have activities on your actual birthday which sometimes made it difficult to make the actual birthday special. So, my mom came up with the tradition of a birthday week. That way special things were done all week and birthdays that got overshadowed by other family obligations sometimes weren't anticlimactic. Sally has thankfully picked up the habit. It's pretty fun.

My birthday week kicked off with me coming home to Caleb, Ella, and Sally's drawings posted on the front door declaring "Happy Birthday, Dad!" to the whole neighborhood. When I walked in I was greeted by truly happily screaming children overjoyed to see me. Wow, talk about a good start to the week! They had no idea how awesome that made me feel. :) That was immediately followed by Caleb yelling and running to my bedroom, "Dad, come see your present!" which command I of course promptly obeyed knowing full well that Sally probably hadn't intended on giving me the gift until Thursday. (Haha! I love having kids! ;) That was a true assumption, but by the time I got in my bedroom Caleb was already lifting up the covers hanging around the bottom of the bed and trying to pull my present out. It was an exciting moment, especially for Caleb. Sally was smart enough to keep one present separate though (new game, "Bohnanza") to give me on my actual big day.

Here are some random pictures to spice up this post a bit.

 This is what I turned around to see on the way home from my brother's house on the night before Easter. Pretty great moment to see your kiddo's being best friends. :)

Shopping with Daddy is a bit different than shopping with Mommy. We tried everything on.      :)

Posts without pictures are kind of boring, aren't they? We'll have none of that here anymore. :D

Goodnight Stories

To start off, I apologize for no pictures on this one. Sorry! Tonight I was talking to my youngest sister, Dawn, and telling her about tonight's bedtime routine with Caleb and Ella. Typically our routine is take a bath, attack Ella's hair with a comb during bath time (that can be a challenge...more on that another time :), slather the kids with lotion because they both get eczema pretty bad with dry weather (Ella always has it, sweet girl...it's under control again, though), brush teeth, read stories, read scriptures, say family prayer together, and then...

..."Once Upon A Time" time. I'm really not that great of a story-teller but Caleb LOVES stories. Especially ones with dragons, eating bugs, "bad guys", or pretty much any random animal which he gets to name. We have a faithful star dragon in our stories named Apple-do (no idea where he came up with that one but it stuck). The whole reason I wanted to share all this, though, has to do with our standard introduction (which I think I've talked about before) which tonight was followed up by a comment by Caleb that made this Daddy proud. This is how it went:

Daddy: Once upon a time there was...
Caleb: ...a little boy named Caleb.
Daddy: And Caleb had a little sister named...
Caleb: ...Ella.
Daddy: And they were...
Caleb: ...buddies!

Wow, talk about being proud of this little guy. The best part is that it's true. We got to church this morning and the first thing they did was stand up on the chairs (we were in the back) and give each other a big morning hug and started giggling. I love seeing my kiddos love on each other. They are going to make very sweet and fun older siblings for their future siblings. :)

The Post-call Trip to the Zoo

I had a pretty rough call the other night. Pretty much an all-nighter with a major trauma I got to do the anesthesia for. They are exciting and very intense and very long cases. Being "Post-call" means I worked from 7am on one day until 7am the next day. When I get off I'm what is referred to as "post-call". It's usually a pretty rough day from a being tired standpoint. Usually Sally insists I go to bed immediately because I'm otherwise incoherent and a very poor listener on those days. She is usually pretty burned out herself, too, but I tend to make things worse if I don't sleep a bit. Sounds logical, I know, that I should go sleep after being up and working for pretty much 24hrs straight, but it is still a hard decision when I haven't seen or played with the kids at all. When I walk in they typically scream, "Daddy!!" and make me feel like a  million bucks. That makes it hard to then ditch them for the bed. That's my struggle for one more year of residency, and then things will be MUCH better. Thank goodness! :)

Having said all that, last Saturday I was post-call, and it was time for some family time. We ditched my morning nap and took off to the zoo. It was a BEAUTIFUL Texas day. A bit cool, sunshiny, breezy...the animals were out, especially the monkeys. They were swinging everywhere. Our zoo just got a family of otters, too, so that was pretty cool to see them swimming, fighting with each other, and just slinking around. 

 Caleb and Ella both love to climb all over the lion statues at the front of the zoo. It's the classic picture place at our zoo. Today started like every other day with some gymnastics all over them. :)

 During lunch, Ella watched another little girl get her picture taken by this huge set of butterfly wings. She promptly copied the girl once she left.

If you look closely you'll notice one carrot left in her baggy along with some monkey cages in the background. That's where we headed next and where Ella noticed that the monkeys were also eating carrots for lunch. At that point (and before I could stop her) she decided to share. That girl has an arm! She chucked the carrot to the monkeys who snagged it before I could. We kind of guessed that it would be okay despite all the signs saying not to feed the animals. Oops. What do you do? Ella was really proud of herself, so we just left it at that. Hopefully she doesn't make it a habit! :)

We didn't stay long, but it was great to be together post-call. Sally just taught a lesson to the young women at Church about being happy in the moment and not always waiting to be happy someday in the future. This was one of those days. My schedule is a bit crazy right now at times, but we've learned over the past 3 years that we can still make things work and make a lot of great memories despite the craziness of residency. We still look forward to me finishing my training and moving on to new adventures! 

Burgers and Fries with Daddy

A new restaurant showed up in our area of town a few months ago, and last Friday became a Daddy/son/daughter date night. Mommy needed a bit of a break after a long week, and the kids will never turn down the opportunity to drink soda (Caleb below) and to eat ketchup (Ella below :). I know, the ketchup thing is probably pretty nasty, but Mommy wasn't there (hahaha) and I couldn't stop laughing. Sally just informed me that ketchup is probably more healthy than soda anyways. Either way, I wasn't stopping anybody. :D

So, this restaurant is ingenius.  The layout inside is just a bunch of folding tables with folding chairs in a huge hall. There is a huge outside patio that is fenced in along with a HUGE astroturf field for the kids to play in. Everyone brings balls and toys and just runs around with the kids. The kids are hilarious. They chase each other, run around in packs, roll down the mini slope, climb the pitiful looking trees...and they LOVE IT. It's awesome. The parents can sit on the patio and see the entire field from their dinner table. I opted to chase these two around the whole time, and we had a blast. Ella loved our smiley face volleyball we brought and at 20 months has quite the ability to throw and kick a ball. Caleb just chased people, tackled his sister, tackled me, and dropped his pants over and over again. Thankfully it was an accident, but the poor kid needed a belt and I forgot to throw one on him. Oops! At one point I heard him say, "Dad!" and I turned to see him standing and pointing down at his ankles where his shorts were all bunched up. I'm just glad he's too young to be embarrassed yet.

The greatest moment was the melt down at the end when I tried to leave the restaurant without refilling the kids sodas. :) Wow, big no-no. Caleb dropped to the floor crying and Ella was already trying to figure out a way to get back out to that field. I admit, I resorted to bribery. It worked swimmingly, and we made it back home and got to bed before Mommy returned from her girls-night-out. It was a much needed break on both our parts. I'm gone so much at work that it's nice to come home and have all the kids' attention on me for awhile. Sally works hard all day trying to keep these two busy and out of trouble, and she needed a little down time. This will be a tradition we'll be keeping up for years to come, I'm sure.

Caleb's Surprises

It's amazing, you never really know what you're going to get with a three-year-old. He is amazing at keeping himself awake usually. Sally said the other day she was sitting in the kids' room holding Ella (who was falling asleep), and she watched Caleb rocking his head back and forth while lying on his back and then start bouncing his bum up and down in bed as he's half asleep just fighting with all he had to keep from falling asleep. It's so funny. When does the love of sleep develop in people? It's definitely not there yet for these two. :)

Having said that, Caleb just barely got over being sick. The pic below was taken 2 Sundays ago when we had some friends over for dinner. We were all sitting and talking at the table, Ella was just running around playing, and I looked over to see Caleb laying across two chairs, out like a light. The sweet boy woke up soon after when Sally tried to sneak him into bed. I have to say, it's pretty much the cutest thing in the world to see the crazy places an overly tired kiddo can get some shut eye. :)

While we're on the subject of Caleb...this is the result of going to dinner at some friends' house this last Sunday who have twin 8 year old girls and a 3 year old girl. Their dress up box was irresistible, and he came downstairs while the adults talked to show us some of their awesome outfits. He loved this one! :D We called him Joseph with the coat of many colors. It was probably a dress, but you can't just tell the kid to take it off when he's so proud of himself, right? He ended up in a very cool pirate outfit for most of the visit, though. That is pretty typical of my boy! :)

Gramp's Racquetball Eyewear :)

Caleb's grandpa (my dad), AKA "Gramps", was into racquetball back in the '70s and '80s. I'm telling you, these eye protection glasses were totally in back then! I picked up racquetball from my dad and therefore inherited all of his now antique racquetball gear. Caleb and Ella love rummaging through the bottom of our coat closet where I keep all my sports equipment and pulling out random things like this. :) He is a doll, isn't he? ;D We love his faces. (Oh, and sorry for the missing pants. Sometimes by the afternoon it's hard to keep the kids in their clothes. So it goes... :)

Cool Caverns!

Last week Joe was off from Tuesday through the rest of the week, so we took the opportunity to go see some natural caverns that are not far from where we live. The kids were wary at first of the semi-darkness, and so we carried them for a while, but eventually both wanted to walk along with the group of school kids that were sharing our tour. The tour was supposedly 75 minutes long, so the kids did really well!

Getting ready for the tour...

Every time I see this pic I have to do a double-take--

cuz it looks like they are swinging next to a river-!

I promise it is just concrete behind them :)

See the green light in the background?

Caleb & Daddy decided it was a dragon egg.

Oh, and that the caverns were a dragon's cave--

which made it WAY better for Caleb :)

Since our caves tour, Caleb has remembered quite a bit-- A couple days later, he said to me, "Remember the tights? And the columns?" I had to think a moment to realize he was talking about the caves--the stalactites and the columns. And then I was impressed! :)