Not quite as originally planned, but we’ll take it.  I’ll have to leave it to Katie to fill in a few more of the details as time permits, but in the meantime, here’s Mig Mayday Emma Piper Yates (say it to the tune of “John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt”, if you happen to know the song).  She’s about 14 weeks old and has more energy than all of us combined, and peed on the carpet before I even made it into the house.  Oh well, such is life.

Today, I had classic rock on the radio and we listened to “Life in the fast lane” by the Eagles. Nicky really liked that song so he asked me what the fast lane was and I said it was the left most lane on the freeway. Yes, I know, not quite right but I didn’t think he would understand the other context. All the way to and back from gymnastics, he asked over and over again, “Mommy, are we in the fast lane? I love the fast lane, Mommy. Love in the fast lane.”

Then later, at dinner, we got on the topic of Transformers (cars that turn into robots) because we had played with Uncle Ryan’s Transformers at Grandma’s house earlier that day. They love BubbleBee, which Ryan doesn’t have anymore but, we do have the McDonald’s version of them. Anyway, there were way too many questions flying and not enough eating going on so I told them for every question you want an answer to, you have to take a bite of dinner. I would answer anything they asked. I honestly didn’t realize how well that little gamble would work because they basically cleaned their plates. I love it when something works well.

I really wasn’t sure what to title this post. I wanted to call it “My first paid vacation as a stay at home mom” but that just seemed to be a bit long winded. Instead, let’s call it what it was, our first official spring break trip. And, where did we go, you might we wondering???? Cannon Beach in Oregon – home of the cannon museum, which is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday – the only full days of our trip. Lesson #1, when selling your kids on a destination, always make sure that if there is a particular thing you want to see, find out the times when it will be available to be seen. That caught us not once, but twice this trip, both times involving cannons, go figure. We also visited Tillamook, Oregon, (home of my favorite cheese and ice cream) on the way to a night in Portland, Oregon. Can I tell you how fun the Oregon Zoo is? Totally cool, even in the rain.

Anyway, our trip began Monday, April 1st and life played a cruel joke on me. For the months of January through March, I have been healthy, which is good because the rest of my family has been trading all sorts of colds. Case in point, Joel had just come off his antibiotic for bronchitis, Nicholas was a couple of days into his antibiotic for his sinus infection and Dexter had been rushed to the walk-in clinic Saturday night, one hour before it closed, to be diagnosed with an ear infection. It seems as though my luck had just run out. That Sunday was Easter and oh, what an absolutely beautiful day. The sun was out, the day was warm, my mom fed us a wonderful Easter meal, I ran up and down the street being chased by two boys on bikes and then Nicholas sneezed into my face. About two hours later, around 5pm as I was fixing dinner, I began to sneeze. An hour later, I had a Kleenex shoved up my nose to prevent it from running all over my face as I finished up the packing and loading of the van. The next morning, I looked like Rudolf, the red nosed reindeer. What the Heck! It was like a scene out of the movie Contagion. I finally get a vacation and I’m packing extra Kleenex boxes into the car. Life is just not fair sometimes. However, some planets must have been in alignment because we actually got out of the house on schedule, around 9:15 am. The flip side to this amazement was that our first stop was the walk-in clinic for Joel and Nicky, who had both taken turns for the worse. The next 1.5 hours were spent there, seeing doctors and getting drugs. Drugs always make road trips better, right?

So, in the end, we didn’t leave Everett until 10:45am and thus our first stop was axed from the schedule (the Olympia Children’s Museum). Instead, we stopped just outside the Joint Base Lewis/McCord base to get lunch. The boys saw so many people in uniform (and we had passed some tanks and artillery pieces outside the base museum along the freeway) and we had many conversations about war after that. It was a long haul to Long Beach with Nicky getting tired of being in the car. We found out how tired when he unbuckled himself from his car-seat before the car had come to a complete stop outside a random kids park we found along the way. Everyone, except the girl with the red nose, had a fantastic time running out some wiggles. We found out how cool a skateboard park could be without skateboards. What’s a little dirt on your pants? The Kite Museum in Long Beach was our next stop. We got there 15 minutes before closing and rushed to make kites with boys who were tired and irritated. It was just a tad difficult waking the boys up and getting them cheerful enough to make a kit but Nicky took on the challenge. Dexter declined to participate. Let us just say that my kite is a flier. The Nicky/Joel kite wants to fly but can’t seem to get much air time (in my defense, Nic insisted on positioning the curved strut horizontally which didn’t do much for the aerodynamic stability).

Dinner in Astoria (pizza – good, old fashioned grease soaked pizza) and finally, we arrived at the Surf Sand resort in Cannon Beach. Oh, our room was amazing and looked out over the beach and Haystack rock. Joel and I had a separate bedroom and Nicky and Dexter bunked on the pull out couch in the living room. After being shut up in our room as we waited for the boys to fall asleep that first night, I concocted a better night time attack plan that had the boys falling asleep in our room while we watched the campfires outside, listened to the waves crash, and chatted. Then, I would transfer them back to the couch mattress placed on the floor so that Nicholas would stop rolling out of bed in the night. It worked wonderfully and Joel and I really had a chance to reconnect those nights. It’s nice to think that after 7 years of marriage, we can still have a great time talking to one another. I smile just thinking about it.

Our first full day in town was a gray and colder day. We headed to Ecola State Park to look at tide pools and shovel some sand around. We suited up in our rain gear and boots and down to the beach we went. All was going ok until Nicky stepped into too deep water and one soaked foot emerged, attached to a very upset boy. I had found a starfish by accident and was so excited to share my discovery with others, that I forgot to help Joel bring the boys over to me. Oops. Then Dexter got his hands sandy and wet after catching himself from falling over and he had a small meltdown. Thank goodness we had packed extra socks and a towel with us. Those two items enabled us to stay on the beach for another 1/2 hour or so. There was also the small disconnect that the boys were planning on digging for pirate gold and building sand castles, while we thought we were there to look at the tide pools. It didn’t help that we had accidentally scared the boys with talks of being very careful when the tide comes in. We forgot to explicitly explain what a tide was, and that a wave was not something to fear. Oops. Joel headed back up to the van with the boys to eat our packed lunch and track me by binoculars while I headed to some more tide pools for a looksie. It was nice being by myself for a bit. Then it was back to the van and off we went to Costco, then Fred Meyer, in search of new rain boots for the boys. We did not want a repeat of water leakage into a boot or fights over who got to wear the new pair of boots so in the end, I bought two new pairs of monster truck rain boots. I just can’t help myself sometimes….

Because of this side trip, we didn’t make it to Fort Stevens State Park until a bit later in the afternoon. We’d been talking up the Fort with its cannons for weeks and the boys were excited to see them. The tide was out so our first stop was to the see the wreckage of the Peter Iredale. They were not so impressed. What caught their attention and put smiles on their faces was me finding two sticks – one long and one short. They had so much fun running up and down the sand hills carrying these sticks. Boys. We grabbed the kites as well, and took advantage of the steady breeze. It was hard to get the boys to give up their sticks and get back into the van to get to Fort Stevens. Here’s where we failed again. First we stopped at Battery Russell, the closest part of the fort and where we thought there would be cannons. There were just some concrete ruins and a lot of stairs, and the boys were not impressed. We failed to check what time the Fort closed and by the time we showed up, the gate was shut to people coming in. After a day of pushing and new things, this led to a Nicholas melt down. Dexter joined in just because. To make matters worse, they fell asleep in the van on the way back to Cannon Beach. This was bad. We hardly ever eat out and the boys are not restaurant people. We stopped at Safeway so that I could make cheese quesadillas in the microwave for them. I got tasked with waking them up and getting them happy again. Thank God for the 4 chocolate pieces I had stashed in the lunch bag. I had brought one for everyone but when I offered one to Dexter, the “I’m mad” look turned to a “Ha Ha” look and he took two. Little Bugger. That meant I had to give Nicky another one just to be fair. It did the trick though and smiles were restored. It was around 5pm when we got back to the room and by that time, I needed food. Room service, Mickey Mouse Club House and we were back on track.

Sunshine greeted us Wednesday morning and back we headed to Fort Stevens, climbing all around the fort and blowing up the British. Joel taught the boys to sing “The Battle of New Orleans” and that’s why we were focusing on the British as the enemy (supplanting the Germans, and most recently the Pirates). It has since been sung many, many times over the past few weeks. The boys are moving past the toddler attention span and starting to want to see more and understand what they’re seeing, so we got to spend a bit more time exploring and running all over the place. Then, hindsight being favorable, after walking around Cannon Beach and eating at Pig in a Pancake for lunch, we played in the sand near our hotel for the rest of the afternoon. The boys played pirates while first Joel, then I, walked over to Haystack rock to look around. I finally got them to take their boots off and put their toes in the sand when Dexter shouted “I’ve got to pee.” Joel raced back to the room with the boys while I dug for buried plastic pirates. By the time I got back to the room, everyone was in there swimming suits and off we went to take a dip in the hotel pool. A picnic in our room for dinner followed and then new Legos needed to be built. The day was incredible.

Thursday saw us packing up our room and loading our belongings into the van while rain started to come down around. Of course, what follows a good day but a bad day and Nicky was determined to be grumpy. Nothing could cheer him up. Not even an incredible (but not as good as my mom’s) grilled cheese sandwich and ice cream cone at the Tillamook cheese factory. The ice cream was too crunchy. What??? Soft serve vanilla at Mukilteo Beach had won over Tillamook Vanilla Bean ice cream. I rolled over in my grave, but wait, I’m not dead yet. Too pass the drive time away, Nicky slept some on the way to Portland while Dexter happily looked at a Playmobile catalog for nearly 2 hours. We got into Portland around 2pm and headed to the Oregon Zoo with rain coats and umbrellas in hand. What a fantastic zoo, even in the rain. We saw lots of different animals, close up, ranging from cougars, to hippos moving and wiggling their ears, to wet cheetahs, a baby otter and a baby monkey. I think the most impressive though was the male giraffe who definitely felt Spring was in the air, if you get my meaning. While we watched him stay super close to the female giraffe, I wondered if we were going to be having a “how baby giraffes are made” conversation but we moved on before anything more exciting could happen. We knew it was time to go when the boys really started to drag their feet. Six minutes of rush hour traffic and we were at our hotel. The Silver Cloud hotel in Portland is a nice hotel and in a good location for the zoo and children’s museum. We walked to a restaurant for dinner and watched people run up and down the street wearing Urban Running? green t-shirts. It was quite fascinating. Because we were done being good parents for the day, I turned on the TV and the boys and I watched Maine game-wardens on “North Woods Law” on the Animal Planet. The next day, their stories were all about catching poachers. Then we all had an absolutely horrible night’s sleep and I kept waiting with anticipation for day to come.

Up the next morning, Nicky skipped breakfast, a sign for the day? and we headed to the children’s museum in Portland and I have to say, we were not that impressed. The place was packed and I guess the boys are just starting to get a little old for that type of Children’s museum? Out by 11am and off to see my “Aunt” Joanie in Washougal, Washington. A quick lunch at Jack in the Box, where this time Dexter refused to eat. What is up with these kids???? We had such a good time at Joanie’s, working on puzzles, playing with pool balls and running around her house. But alas, at 3pm, we had to head back home for a very rainy drive north. Luckily, dinner at IHOP in Lacy managed to coincide with missing rush hour traffic through Seattle. Dexter crashed a half hour before we got home. Nicky, who through a 1/2 hour fit after leaving Joanie’s house (remembering that he didn’t get a souvenir, except for the tub of pirates, and pirate coins, and new legos, and new cars), peacefully napped for an hour in the car, so he was wide awake and HAPPY when we made home at 8:30pm. We unloaded the van and basically just dumped everything in our hallway to take care of the next day. And, when I say dumped, I mean dumped. Unfortunately for Joel, he went downstairs and on his way through the hallway and tripped over the suitcase I had opened and left on the floor. Oops.

Saturday saw me working on laundry, grocery shopping and getting everything put away from 8am to 7pm at night, with no overtime pay. Boy, I was tired and needed another vacation. All in all, it was a great trip, with much parental learning so that when we do it again, we can do it better. Isn’t that how it usually goes?

Enjoy the photos from the trip!

Ha ha!  Look – a link to 108 pictures for your viewing pleasure, complete with captions on most pictures.

Today, Tuesday, March 26th, was our free day. No school, no OT, no gymnastics and seeing that the weather was fairly nice, we headed to the zoo. Nicky has just not been our Nicky for a while. We are not sure if it is a lingering cold, or growing pains but he was a bit on the lethargic side this morning. And because of it, it was a struggle to get him to see any animals, let alone the new lion cubs. After lunch, we headed over to Zoomazium, an indoor playground inside the zoo. Joel and the boys had a great time stacking blocks and playing with felt cutouts of animals. Then, we talked them into going to the outdoor play area. A burst of energy was had by all. Before I knew it, Joel had two sets of twin boys chasing him around the enclosure. Yep, Joel had picked up identical twin boys, a month younger than our boys. Their mom didn’t seem to mind and two sets of twins really wore Joel out. I thought I would have to carry three boys back to our van after that 45 minute session of running about.

What was totally cool about today was the fact that because the weather was nice, we were able to not go straight home but instead, treat us all to ice cream cones at Mukilteo beach after the zoo. We found some nice shells and rocks too for Nicky’s collection when about 5 minutes into our throwing rocks into Puget Sound, Dexter stuck his shoe into the water enough to get his sock wet. For those of you who know Dexter, that was the end to our beach trip.

It is now 8:30pm, the boys are asleep and Joel and I want to be too. I love it when we can get outside and get into nature.

Oh, and one last comment about the day. It started with me having Dexter clean the boogers off the wall next to his bed. I figured if he had to scrub the 10 or so boogers stuck solid to the wall, maybe he wouldn’t put anymore there. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

Here are some pictures from today:

In retrospect, this blog post is a bit dated.  It’s now February and Joel has had surgery on his arm and I no longer work for Boeing.  However, the boys singing always puts a smile on my face and hopefully yours.  Enjoy this dated blog post.

in retro-retrospect, it’s now 6 days from Easter and Joel is just now helping me with this…

In families, there are jobs for specific people, or as my friend Monica states, that job is/is not in my column.  Due to Joel’s arms being just about useless through no fault of his own (genetics can be cruel), in my column falls writing blogs.  I bet there are many of you out there that just gave a groan.  I agree, Joel is incredibly funny when he writes but alas, his arms are in braces right now and another surgery has been scheduled, but I digress.  Blog writing: me – picture/video upload: Joel.  It just so happens, that I had to upload the current crop of pictures to our computer.  Holy Cow – there is so much we need to share with you all.  I am sorry we are so far behind and so much has happened.  Little did I realize that in staying home the past three months, I would get nothing done during my day.  I had this unrealistic picture that I would be productive.  But no, I actually have to play with the boys.  ;)  Play, chore, play, chore, play, chore – that is my day.  Blogging and exercise somehow haven’t found a time slot yet.  Working on that.  And yes, come early January, I will officially be a stay at home mom.  Bye bye Boeing – see you in a couple of years.

Anyway, to bring this monologue back to the title “Holiday Cheer”, in the wake of all the tragedy that has occurred on the east coast and that has left me in tears, I thought we could all use some good, old fashion, holiday cheer.

The other day, the boys picked up their cardboard guitars and started to sing.  Future American Idol contestants?  One never knows……  Enjoy their show and I hope it gives you as much joy as it does me.  I LOVE MY BOYS!

Ah children.  Don’t you love how they repeat everything you say?  That happened to Joel today, a couple of times.  First, when hustling the boys up the stairs for a bath after gymnastics, Dexter had clearly pushed Joel’s button and Joel responded with the count to a time out.  Dexter turned around and threw it right back in his face, using the same words.  Hmmmmmm -how does one respond?  Then, sometime this evening, Nicholas walks into the family room and says in a non religious way “Jesus Christ ….” to which I turned to Joel and raised my eyebrows.  I walked away to Joel explaining to Nicholas that we should not take the Lord’s name in vain, that he (Joel) had made a mistake and that Nicky should never say that at school or around me, I think.

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I had my moments too.  Dexter and I got into a fight right before bed that ended with Dex in a timeout that he then self extended so that he missed all his stories.  That kid is incredibly stubborn.  I think the strain of repeated sickness and lack of firm routine with Joel still home is wearing on everyone.  I know that Joel really wants to be back at work but that his arms are not fully recovered yet.  We are losing track of time – the weekend feel seems to go on forever, and yet we are not accomplishing much.  It is kind of frustrating.

But enough venting.  Two other interesting events.  The boys are greatly improved in their gymnastics class.  It is amazing to see.  At one point in time, Coach Annie had the boys all attempting head stands and had put a round plastic bulls-eye on the floor mat for them to put their heads on.  She said to Dexter, who had gotten tired of not being able to do the exercise, to put his head on the bulls-eye.  In typical Dexter fashion, he picked up the plastic circle and put it on his head.  That was that for that exercise.  :)   We also went on our first light saber walk.  Both Nicky and Dexter were bouncy after dinner.  Seeing them start wildly swinging their light sabers around in the house, I suggested we all go for a walk after dinner.  So, we trudged around our neighborhood, with light sabers in hand, defeating the Sith who attacked up, cutting up Joel’s legs and yelling at Nicky to stop and let Dexter lead for once.  Nicholas never wants to let Dexter go first, unless it’s deemed an unpleasant experience, in which case he volunteers Dexter to go first.

So, that was our day.  Nothing too exciting anymore.  Just cute and not so cute moments from time to time……

Times flies when you are busy.  It doesn’t help that Joel keeps getting sick on the weekends.  First he had surgery.  Then he caught the flu.  Now he has a cold with laryngitis and sounds super squeaky.   And the boys want me to do everything.  Not a minute goes by without them saying “play with me, Mommy.  NO, play with me, Mommy.”  I’m tired and overworked.  The day off I had for my birthday, which was absolutely fantastic (my Mom took the boys for their first overnight and gave Joel and I a night at the Silver Cloud Inn in Mukilteo (Thanks Mom!)) was then undone due to an interview with a prospective birth mom that led to disappointment.  Hard to look in the mirror and not feel a decline in self worth when you consistently fail to be chosen.  We are good parents.  Why won’t someone else let us parent their child?  Enough whining.  The boys had so much fun sleeping in sleeping bags at Grandma’s that Grandpa had to growl in order for them to finally stay in the den and fall asleep at 9:30pm.  ;)

The past two nights I been slogging through kindergarten admission forms.  Twins are fantastic.  I love that the boys are twins except when I have to fill out paperwork for them.  That just absolutely sucks, especially when the online forms make me print them out in order to fill them in.  Needless to say, Joel is cranky because he is always sick (except for my birthday – I wouldn’t allow that), the boys are a bit cranky because I have too many chores and can’t play with them all day, and I’m a bit cranky because I can’t find the time to clean the house and it desperately needs it.  Thus, I’ve been lobbing hard for a paid vacation.  Don’t stay-at-home moms qualify for vacations?????

Oh, and because we said over and over again for the boys to use their words when they are mad or frustrated, Dexter today told me how much he hated me and wanted to hit and kick me.  I gave him a look and told him to think about what he was saying.  He then stopped.  Later tonight he was on my lap, showing me love so the night ended well, but it does hurt.  Nicky’s new trick is to run when he gets a time-out.  He thinks it a game of chase until he gets caught.  As much as I don’t want to laugh as I’m trying to catch him, I inevitably get a smile on my face that I quickly hide once the chase is over.  I do love my boys and I’m so happy that I lucked out and got them.

Ah, the Star Wars movies. Joel and I have dreamed of the moment when the boys would watch the movies instead of having us retell the story verbatim over and over again.  Do you know how hard it is to tell six separate stories in detail because Dexter is a detail kind of a guy?  Do you know how hard it is to listen to the Star Wars movie sound track and have to link music to story?  ”Mommy, what is happening now?  And now?  And now?…..”  After trying to watch the original Star Wars movie a couple of months or so ago and having the boys bolt at the first sign of Vader, we gave up and thought it would never happen and then bam – we’ve now seen movies 1, 2, 4, 5 & 6.  We’re skipping 3 because we didn’t want to expose the boys to brutal deaths of nearly every character from the first 2 films, and to spare them an further exposure to Hayden Christensen’s acting.  Now they know what the Force is all about. Little did we know that they would start using it against us.

It started with random light saber battles that strangely enough, always occurred right before bedtime.   Now, even though they are on the good side of the Force, they have developed their Jedi ways to use against Joel and I.  Good thing Joel takes his Force immunity pills each morning – very important if you want to finish a meal without choking, either on the food or by the hand of a Sith.  I tend to forget.  Oops.  Today, Nicholas looked at me, smiled, raised his hand and started to pinch his fingers together. (For those of you who are a bit rusty on what that means, that is what Darth Vader used to do to strangle people.) Seeing that I am Darth Katieus, I regularly try to strangle them with the dark side of the force. Their force use is better than mine and I’m the one that collapses to the floor, out of breath.  Although, sometimes Dexter will to or our Force battle will collide and knock us both to the ground.  This using of the Force actually works really well when I’m mad, like last night before bed. Instead of yelling at Dexter to go to bed, I used my dark Force stranglehold on him. He grinned from ear to ear, jumped up, raised his arm, and tried to Force strangle me. It made me laugh and the bedtime routine resumed peacefully.  It is an excellent tension reliever.

At lunch today, in unison, Dex and Nicky turned to us, raised their arms and pinched their fingers in the direction of Joel and I.  Joel’s use of the force is much stronger than mine and he was unaffected.  He was a little overconfident, though, after Dexter’s attempts to use the Force to strangle him were unsuccessful.  Dex was whispering, and Joel leaned over to hear better, and Dex skipped the “Force” part of strangling and just went for the jugular.  I, however, collapsed with choked laughter because of their grinning smiles and the fact that they threatened to tape me to the wall and have Joel look after them so they could “break all the rules.”   After the past three days of looking after all of them, I really didn’t mind that thought.  Joel has found out that waving his hand in front of Dexter’s face and saying “you want to finish your peas” really doesn’t work.

Also, in order to watch all the battle scenes, the boys needed to have their guns with them – oops, I mean, “blasters.”  At the first sign of trouble, aka bad guy, they would fire away.  It didn’t matter if they were just in their underwear, (we had to strip down after home haircuts today), they would sit cuddled up in the chair, ready to fire.  As the battle of Endor was heating up, Dex grabbed his bowl of Jelly Bellies (our typical haircut sit-still incentive), ate one, grabbed another and pushed it into Nic’s mouth.  ”It’s bravery pills, Nic!  They’ll help you be brave!”

One of my favorite memories of this time with them was during a rather poignant scene when C-3PO was carrying a dead Jawa to a fire pit.  We try to skip the worst scenes, and Joel had just fast-forwarded past the part where Luke discovers his aunt and uncle’s bodies, but he hit play a little too early.  We were trying to skip around the fact that all the Jawas were dead when Nicky asked what was happening.  Dexter, deadpan and matter of fact, “those are just dead Jawas, Nicky.”

Joel tried to scare them tonight, telling them about the terrible monsters on Endor, and how scared he was when he was younger, but the boys weren’t buying it.  ”Those are just Ewoks, Dad.  Nobody’s scared of Ewoks.”  Then Joel failed again when, while watching the AT-ST Walkers walk through the forest, he said to me, “How cool would it have been to see this on the big screen when it was first released?”  I replied, “I did.”  Apparently he’s forgotten how afraid he’s supposed to be of me, and it isn’t safe for him to make me feel old, especially with my Birthday only 4 days away…

For now the movies are done, but already the boys are asking about movie 7.  At least we can honestly tell them we don’t know the story, and we’ll all just have to wait together – because you know how well that works with almost 5 year olds, right?

I just saw Katie’s post, and figured that if I didn’t put something up soon people would start preparing to send her condolences flowers as she prepared for the funeral.  Whatever it was, it peaked about when Katie put up her post.  I couldn’t move for about the next 18 hours, but fortunately there was no emergent need to run for the bathroom either.  Yesterday I was able to get up an around, though I felt a bit like Dexter whenever he’s asked to help clean up – just too tired to move, with no energy.  Today is much better.  Still not great, but at least I can eat, and turn my head without having to wait for the world to catch up.

Hopefully I can give Katie some time off later so she can put up a better update, and share some of our more entertaining recent adventures later.  For now, though, I’m at the limit of how much I’m allowed to use the computer while my arms are still recovering, so this is about it.  Now I’ve got to go make sure I have things ready for Katie’s birthday on Thursday.  She’s had more than she bargained for on her hands these last few weeks, with the two little buggers and an invalid husband, so hopefully we can show her how much we appreciate her for at least one day.  That’s assuming no one else catches what I had, whatever it was…