Those of you who read this blog that are friends of Carter and Marilyn probably have already heard, but for those who haven’t, last night at a little after 7:00pm, Richard Loeppky – Marilyn’s brother, Katie’s Uncle and Godfather, and one of the boys’ surrogate grandfathers – passed away.  This was not unexpected, but no less sad for the anticipation.  There was enough time for his family to come and say goodbye (including ourselves and the boys), though by then he was unresponsive.  I can’t imagine how hard these last couple of years have been, to have his body fail from under him while his mind was still going so strong.  But on the other hand, in the last couple of years he’s seen both of his children re-married to wonderful and loving people, the birth of two grand daughters, and spent a great deal of time with his family, even if that family did perforce include Carter.

I was looking back through our photos trying to find pictures of Dick.  It’s unfortunately difficult, in part because we haven’t seen him as much lately, and also because my camera tends to be always pointed at the boys.  I suppose it’s only fitting, then, that he was in the background of so many photos of family gatherings.

He was there for Christmas and Thanksgiving, birthdays and other celebrations.  Celebrations recent and a little further back.

And back further to a time before time, before I can remember any more, before Boys, and the first family celebration in which he was, to me, family.

Not long before that photo, I’d met him for the first time.  I had the University of Michigan Alum camaraderie going for me, but then the grilling began in earnest.  I had gotten off too light with Carter, it seems, who didn’t really understand the concept of being a father-in-law.  Carter certainly questioned by intentions, but he was trying to warn me away for my sake, not his daughter’s.  And still if I complain about a peccadillo of Katie’s, he’ll remind me that “I warned you…”  Uncle Dick stepped up, but again seemed to misunderstand the role.  He grilled me, but it was about the failing of my undergraduate curriculum and how could it be possible that I would call myself and engineer without ever having taken Linear Algebra?  Oh well.  Loeppky’s and French’s are a little special, I suppose, but they’re family, so what are you going to do?

We’ll miss you, Uncle Dick.  I’m glad our boys got to meet you.

When was Easter again?  Thank you all for waiting so patiently for us to get our act together.  As it is, the only way I got out of giving the boys a bath tonight was to promise to write this post.  :)

Our Easter adventure comprised of 3, no, make that 4 5 Easter egg hunts and many practice hunts.  The weather Easter weekend was spectacular – sunny with no rain.  You couldn’t ask for better weather here in the Pacific Northwest.  Anyway, the weekend before, we had attended a very rainy Easter Egg festival put on by the twin mom group I belong to.  At that wet hunt, a fellow twin mom told us about the one in Mill Creek the next week.  Upon waking up Saturday morning and finding it a beautiful day, we thought we would check it out.  WOW – so did everyone else.

Two football fields at a local middle school were roped off and plastic eggs were dumped everywhere.  One was for babies to 2 year olds and the other was for 3 to 4 year olds.  Following those groups in the next half hour, were to be the older kids.  No one seemed to follow direction and everyone just lined up around the caution tape.  It was literally a 10 second count down and run for it.  I figured just the kids would go, but no, the parents were out there too.  Nicholas and Dexter stood still with a look of shock on their faces.  I grabbed their hands and we tried to find an egg.  Each boy ended up with 1 egg and a couple of pieces of candy we found on the ground.  I’m not joking when I say all the eggs were gone in 3 minutes.  Joel had to actually stare down a ~7 year old kid who tried to take the one egg Dexter got to.

Needless to say, that was our first and last big egg hunt experience.  The boys didn’t seem to mind that much but it did take us about 5 minutes to convince them that they did in fact, not want to stand in an hour long line in order to jump in a bouncy house for a couple of minutes.

That afternoon, Joel, Nicholas and Dexter attended the 1st birthday of a little boy we liked to call Baby Cai (now known as Big Guy Cai), while I stayed home and prepped for Easter.  Do you know how hard it is to put Lego people together and stuff into eggs quickly because you know the garage door will open at any moment?  Heads were flying everywhere.  Luckily, I didn’t get caught.  In the end, naps were skipped and the day ended early.  ;)  Thank God – because we had to help the Easter Bunny clean up and hide eggs.  That was a long day and a very short night.

Guess who woke up way too early?  I think we got the wake up call around 6am that morning.  We set the boys up in our bed, found the Thomas episodes on You-Tube, I took my shower while Joel got the boys snack cups.  This was their perfect morning.  Finally, we were all dressed and ready to go downstairs.

Joel forgot to tell the Easter Bunny to wipe his rabbit’s feet off by the front door.

We made the mistake of letting the boys dive into their Easter baskets first.

Dexter was so enamored by Nigel Gearsly (Cars II racing car) that he forgot to hunt for Easter eggs.

I think Nicholas dumped eggs into Dexter’s basket twice because his basket got too full.  It was odd, because with all of the other egg hunts Nic just kind of stood around and looked wherever Dex had just found an egg.

Seriously, Dexter could not put down that car.

Here you also see Joel dividing all the colored eggs evenly.

Each color had a specific item in it – green eggs had quarters, blue eggs, stickers, pink eggs – candy, yellow eggs – Lego people, etc….  The gal who gives me my allergy shots gave me that idea.

Oh, and to top things off, Easter just isn’t complete until you get a black eye.

That’s dedication to the search is what that is.  Poor Nicky.  He hit the corner of the train table looking for an egg that Malina hid.  (Now Malina would tell you we told her to hide it there but really, who are you going to believe?)  ;)

Pictures not shown – we went to church.  The boys loved the music.  They refused to climb through a Papier-mâché tomb which made the congregation smile (okay, so I corrected this one for Katie – she wrote “paper machete”, which I am choosing to mention because I think it perfectly reasonable for the boys to decline any request to climb through a machete of any form).  Maybe next year…..   And they went on their 4th egg hunt.  This time the eggs contained puzzle pieces that when put together, made a map to the location of the burried egg treasure.  This way it didn’t matter how many eggs any one child found – everyone had to work together, and everyone got the same prize.  I thought the idea was brilliant.

Then it was off to my parents’ house for food, festivities, and the last egg hunt of the weekend.  Dexter got back into the hunting groove and located quite a few eggs.

Nicholas and my dad tried to capture a Kodac moment.

Uncle Too Tall had the boys laughing up a storm.

My mom, as always, served up a delicious meal – with TWO PIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   And here they conned their Dad into reading them their new Mater’s Tall Tales book (courtesy of Malina-bunny) for maybe the fifth time…

It was a lovely Easter.  

The next day, Dexter told us we needed to take down our Easter decorations.  No rest for the weary.

Well, not only was it tax day in America today, it was also Grandpa Loren’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Loren!!!!  I was hoping to get the boys to sing you a little ditty along the lines of “Happy birthday to you….” but we just ran out of time.  However, don’t think you were forgotten because each step of the way, we reminded ourselves that we needed to get back to wish you a great day.

It was a whirlwind of activity starting with a 6:15am wake up call by the boys. Can’t they just sleep in for once????? Joel and I took turns longingly looking at our bed to see who would be the first to move. Joel did, but then I helped. Joel, being the best husband ever, said I could even go back to bed, once we had the boys moving towards downstairs but I couldn’t be that selfish and instead went and hopped into the shower in the hopes that it would wake me up.

Once downstairs, we tried to get the boys to help us decide between three scenarios for the day. 1) Go to the zoo (that was Dexter’s pick). 2) Drive up to the tulip festival and back down through Whidbey Island, capping the day off with a ferry ride (Nicky’s pick). 3) Stay home. In the end, we talked Nic into the zoo. The weather, which was suppose to be sunny, ended up gray and cold in the morning and I was not prepared. We kept moving and by lunchtime, the sun was out. All the animals were on the move this morning, which was totally cool. A kangaroo hopped on over to us, grabbed the fence and pulled his/her head up to check us out. (Laura – it made me think of Australia.) The wolves were tracking a squirrel up in a tree, hoping that the next leap would be the one that brought lunch to their mouths. It was a very fun morning. After lunch, we played in a park just outside the zoo and helped Dexter with his climbing abilities. Back to the van where we had hoped the boys would fall asleep, but no, not this time.

Then, on the spur of the moment, we decided a ferry ride was in order. After all, it was now a sunny, beautiful day. Nicholas bought into the idea when we mentioned ice cream cones. J So, we headed to the Mukilteo beach. We found a close parking spot, bought our ice cream cones, showed the boys how to eat one, and Dexter ended up with a very chocolatey beard. We walked onto the ferry and enjoyed the ride. The boys especially loved watching all the cars get on the ferry.

As we drove home, this is when we finally got a chance to call Loren. Nicholas fell asleep just after we started driving. Dexter was a close second. Hmmmm – what to do now? We decided to take the long way home via downtown Everett, Snohomish, and up the valley. Just as we got close to Fred Meyer, the boys woke up and it was time to grocery shop.

The boys all went to look at cars and legos while I shopped. Nicholas has no problem pooping in store bathrooms. However, apparently he does get a little freaked out when the toilet flushes before he had finished his business. Very understandable.

Back home, pop in a movie for Sunday night movie night, fix dinner, open Katie’s barber shop, shower boys and now all are in bed. We made it through with some early morning tantrums and then a delightful day.

I hope all of you had an equally fun day. Loren, once again, Happy Birthday. The boys miss their grandpa. Hope you like your birthday card.

Ok, here’s the latest round of “you know you are in trouble when…..” stories.

This weekend, I was feverishly prepping to get ready to sell a bunch of baby and toddler stuff at the semi annual SNOMOM (Snohomish County Mothers of Multiples) sale. We have a lot to get rid of, now that we know we are done attempting to have a baby. As I was pricing shoes for the sale, Joel brings in this big bag of Thomas the Tank Engine trains. This is the bag he had hoped to never fess up about – an ebay sale (actually about 4 e-bay purchases, but whose counting). As he pulls out engine after engine, probably totaling 20 or so, my eyes widen. Those of you who have visited our house know we already have about 20 to 30 Thomas friends engines that the boys currently play with. I don’t think we can physically put any more of them on the train table without serious derailments occurring.  (in my defense, I bought them a long while ago while we were mostly playing on the ground, and when we were actively using prizes as part of the sticker chart offensives, and I was down to only extra Thomas engines and The Flying Scotsman, whom we’d never heard of, so I did what any decent parent would do and stocked up.  Then we stopped, and I was left holding the proverbial bag).

Anyway, as we are sorting through them, I identify those that I think we can sell. Then we come to Gordon and Henry. You see, we already have a Chinese knock-off Gordon and a re-purposed James’ tender that we painted to be Henry’s tender. The boys have been playing with these versions for at least 2 years. Joel wanted to know what to do with them. I said, and I quote “the boys won’t know the difference, just swap them out with the others.” Famous last words.  (and yes, I told her that they absolutely would, and Dex would recognize them instantly)

The next morning while I’m drying my hair from my shower, Joel pops into the bathroom. “Katie, you’ll never guess what Dexter said. Dexter said ‘Hey Daddy, Daddy, Henry got a new tender! Gordon got a new tender, too!  Ohh, we got a new Gordon too. Daddy, the new Gordon has a better color than the other one. Where did the other Henry tender and Gordon go?’” I smiled at Joel. That was fast. Guess we can’t do that anymore.

Dexter is a pretty observant kid, isn’t he?

Story #2 – the boys must have taken giggle juice tonight because they were laughing and wrestling up a storm, and not just with their dad. They tackled me. Nicky kept shouting “EAT ME. EAT ME” and putting his ear right smack next to my mouth. (Does the thought of an Oedipus complex enter anyone else’s mind?) At the same time Dexter was pinning me down and wiggling all over. It was hard to move with someone on top and someone’s ear blocking my ability to breathe. Finally, I got them to move wrestle-mania back to their dad so that I could catch my breath. The next thing I know, Nicholas squats over, sits on Joel’s face and says “Pssss, I peed on you.” Where did that come from? It probably didn’t help that both Joel and I started to roll with laughter. Then Dexter had to do it. So, Joel one upped them, pinned them to the ground, and pooped. The boys squealed with laughter.

Just before going up to bed they grabbed the syringe and started giving us shots.  I got “Happy” shots, then “Angry” shots, and “Ouchie” shots, and even “Silly” shots.  After Joel broke the syringe defending himself from a shot in the buttocks, we switched to the thermometer. Just before we headed upstairs for bath time, Dex came over to take Joel’s temperature, looked up at him solemnly, and said, “Daddy, you have a case of the wiggles.”  Then he dropped the thermometer and ran up the stairs.

It was a good night.