Visit with the Hicks

We had a grand time with the Hicks last week during the Thanksgiving vacation. The kids all had a really fun time playing together. In fact, now that they've left, Zachary has taken to asking for "Erick, Kayley, Leah, Sophia and Lucas!" and telling Amy that she needs to call their moms to come back. Sophia and Lucas were here in September. It's a good thing that we don't have any more visitors with kids his age coming for while otherwise the list of people that Amy needs to call to come back would be quite long! :)

Thursday was as you'd expect - full of just catching up and eating yummy Thanksgiving food! On Friday, we headed over to Busch Gardens. It was the first time that we'd been there in probably 5 years, so it was fun to see what changes had been made. There are quite a lot of kids rides - much more than we were expecting, so the kids REALLY had a good time. We left Kaleb home with Grandma so that he'd be able to get his naps in without being drug around in a stroller all day watching the others have all the fun.

Leah & Zachary in the bounce area - they had SO MUCH fun!

Leah & Zachary on the glider ride

On Sabbath, we headed over to the beach to join the Deiningers with their holiday visitors we enjoy the sand. We flew kites, buried kids in sand mounds, swam in their heated pool, and generally had a fabulous time. Grandpa Deininger was a terrific "monster" for Luke, Leah and Zachary - who had a ball hiding in the closet every time that he'd growl at them and then immediately coming out to find the monster again! :)

Leah & Luke - the "alligator" sand mounds!

Kaleb enjoying the sand and breeze

Sunday we headed back to the Petting Zoo - that place is just cool for kids - if was any closer we'd be there a LOT. We saw even more animals than the first time that we went. The chicks were a repeat hit.

All 5 kids - Kaleb, Kayley, Erick, Leah & Zachary

Monday was a quieter day with a trip to Monkey Jo's and then putting up our Christmas tree. The boys love the Christmas tree - very fascinated with the lights . Zachary has taken to laying underneath it and trying to walk behind it (it is up against the window) so of course Kaleb follows him.

We're sad that the Hicks have left us - it was so wonderful to catch up with them, playing games and playing with the kids! We're already looking forward to the next time that we'll see them!

It is hard to believe that we leave for Canada in three weeks! We have so much left to do between now and then - we haven't bought any presents nor have we done the Christmas letter! The pressure is on!! December is always crazy in our home - not sure about everyone else's holiday season but how can so much be crammed into one month?!

Phrase of the week: Daddy freaked me out this morning! Kaleb's new word this week is "Up" - his favorite word because he ALWAYS wants to be carried around. He's quite picky about his position when being carried as well - if you pick him up and have him stomach to stomach with you - he'll push with his hands against you until he maneuvers himself onto your hip! :)

Kayley enjoying the slide at the park

Erick riding the tractor like a bull-rider!

Star Dust

We went to the Florida Hospital gala on Sunday night, and a funny thing happened. Jennifer Hudson was the performer, and she was very engaging (that's not the funny part! :)). She came down into the audience and would talk to people, take pictures with them, and at one point she was walking around the room singing one of her songs. During that portion of the evening, we realized that she was actually over in our part of the room (we were watching on the big screen projectors at the front of the room as the room is so big that it is hard to see what is going on) - when she walked right over to our table! She put her hand on Karis' shoulder, and sang into his eyes for a few seconds before moving on! We all had cameras but none of us thought to grab them and take a picture before she walked on. It was really funny! Karis joked later that Amy should be careful when they were sleeping that night, not to "taint his shoulder, as he had star dust on it" Ha ha ha.

Happy Thanksgiving! We're looking forward to Hicks' coming this morning - we'll have some very fun memories over the next few days!

Super Flosser

Zachary will never believe that he used to do this, so it is going to become part of "history" by being mentioned in the blog as proof! Our nightly routine has for a while now included brushing our teeth AND after brushing his teeth, we also floss his teeth! He loves to floss his teeth (although it is Mommy doing the flossing), so she calls him the "Super Flosser" - hopefully this habit will continue into the future so that there are no cavities! Our next dental visit is in December, so we hope to have another perfect check-up.

This has been a quiet week - our big event is actually on Sunday night when Mommy and Daddy are going to the Florida Hospital gala! The guest this year is Jennifer Hudson - we know who she is, but as usual being non-music people, we don't know any of her music! :) But, it is always fun to get dressed up and go out to the black-tie event.

Kaleb seems to have been holding back his ability to talk because he seems to be coming out with lots of new words this week. He seems to try them on for size for a day or so, and then he's done with that word - it is hard to get him to say the word again the next day!

We are excited to have the Hicks' family joining us for Thanksgiving - coming down from Indiana and staying until next Tuesday. Erick, Kayley and Leah will have grown so big since the last time that we saw them! We have a packed agenda while they're here, so we might not have a blog update next week, but we wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Phrase of the week: Zachary has become very complimentary of his parents (we'll see if it lasts when he's a teenager!) and after prayer this week, he very seriously said to Karis "Daddy, you're very nice - you're a good person." Of course, when he's being disciplined his opinion is a little different of his parents! :) Kaleb's new words this week "shoes", and "dog." We're still not 100% that he's actually mastered "Dad" but there was once that Amy thought that maybe he'd managed that word - Daddy is anxiously awaiting! :)

Zachary and Kaleb cuddling for a few short minutes

The new favorite past-time - shredding paper!

Fun in the tub

Kaleb discovered a very cute person's reflection for him to talk to! :)

Mommy's a fan of Zachary's new favorite play activity - washing the glass doors! We hope this one sticks around for a while!

Kaleb trying on the snowsuit (thank you Ebay) that we bought for our Christmas trip to Canada (although there isn't ANY snow there yet - we're crossing our fingers that there is some when we get there for the boys!)

Petting Zoo!

This week, we went to the Green Meadows Petting Zoo - the boys had gone before with Jennifer, but Amy and Karis had never been. We went with a large group from church, so there were lots of kids for the boys to play with. The petting zoo has tons of different animals that the kids can pet (turkeys, sheep, goats, , ducks etc), plus they get the opportunity to hold baby chicks/ducks, catch chickens, milk a cow, ride a horse! Along the way, there is also a train ride, and a hay ride. We were very impressed by all of the fun things to do, and the 'tour' took about 2-3 hours. The weather was perfect, so we were very pleased. The craziest thing that we learned about the animals is that if a turkey looks up in the rain, it can actually drown! Who knew!

We rented a wagon to pull Kaleb around in for the day, although he was only in it for a very short time as the older boys ended up wanting to pull it around all day! Ah well, they had fun!

Zachary and Cole holding baby ducks

Kaleb is afraid of the animals, so this was the closest that he'd get to the baby chick that "Auntie" Lisa was holding. We hope that he outgrows this fear!

Zachary having a delighted moment with a sheep

Thank you Daddy for catching the chicken!

Zachary holding a chicken

Petting a turkey

Riding a horse (We tried Kaleb as well, but it was a bit traumatic for the poor child and he was crying!)

Phrase of the week: Zachary was very intent on doing something in his room with Amy one day (can't remember exactly what) and it didn't go as planned. Zachary muttered under his breath "Oh, for heaven's stakes!" Ha ha - too cute, and of course it is so precious when it is an actual phrase that is slightly blundered! Kaleb has potentially added a word to his vocabulary of 1 (Mama) - "what?" Jennifer said that he's been saying it constantly this week, and Amy was finally able to confirm that she heard him say it as well!

Sleep Anyone?

Every year our mantra is - "Time Change is NO FUN!" - and this year can be no different. Prior to children the fall "fall back" time change was always looked forward to with anticipation for the extra hour of sleep. No longer - no matter which way the clock is moving, it only spells bad news in the Z-household. Before making it out to be too horrific, we will share that after the week has passed it does seem like both boys have transitioned over to the new time, but it wasn't pretty for a few days - the worse being a 4:40AM wake up call - after which Zachary did NOT go back to sleep - those are bad days, very bad days! We may have to move somewhere where the time doesn't ever change!

Last weekend, the adult portion of this Z-family went to the Isidro Pumpkin Fest - it is truly amazing as they do this every year, and there are well over 50 people there. There is a cooking contest, games and just a lot of fun. Karis contributed a pumpkin lasagna this year (Amy hates pumpkin, so the cooking of a dish simply wouldn't be right coming from a pumpkin hater). Our friend Jennifer actually won the dessert portion of the contest with her chocolate pumpkin cheesecake cake (it is a chocolate cake with a layer in the middle of pumpkin cheesecake!) Yum! Congratulations Jennifer! Amy's mom stayed over night, so we were able to stay as long as we wanted - it was kind amazing to actually stay out past 9PM! :)

This week, aside from the time change, has been a bit interesting. Wednesday night, Zachary didn't want to eat his supper (pizza - who doesn't like pizza!) and so Amy gave him the choice of eating his supper, or just going to bed without eating. He chose going to bed which was a little unusual, but that was fine with us. We put him to bed, and almost immediately he got up and said that his stomach hurt - but he did it with a Cheshire cat grin on his face, so Amy was in a quandary of whether this was really true or whether it was a ploy to get out of bed. She offered up a drink of water and he went happily back to bed. Karis went off to the gym, and no sooner had he left (sans cell phone - all part of his grand plan to be unreachable), Zachary got up and began to throw up. Amy figured out what was going on as he started to open his bedroom door, and in a stunned fashion ran over and stood there saying "Do you feel okay, is it over?" Note to self - in the future, grab the child and run like mad to the bathroom instead of standing there having a conversation!!! As you can imagine, it WASN'T over, so the hurling began again, narrowly missing Amy. Amy had quite the fun time cleaning up Zachary, changing clothes, cleaning carpets etc while Karis happily exercised at the gym! :)

The next morning, Amy was well on schedule to getting out the door on time, fully dressed etc, and the last thing that she does is wake Kaleb up and walk out the door. He woke up about 10 minutes prior to her being quite ready to get him, so she rushed around and then went in to get him. As she opens the door, it hits her - the stink of puke. Yep, poor baby Kaleb threw up in the middle of the night, unbeknownst to us, and was covered in it. For all of you who didn't know, puke makes curly hair REALLY CURLY. His hair has never been that curly!! It was quite fun trying to bathe him in a hurry, Amy had to undress in order to not get soaked. Now, as an aside, Jennifer's kids had been sick earlier (that's where the Z kids got it from), and both of them were acting fine, so Jennifer was actually very gracious and watched them so that Amy could actually go to her dentist appointment that has been rescheduled a thousand times already. Both boys seemed to just have the one true episode thankfully - although they've been a bit puny for a few days since.

Phrase of the week: "You're ticking me off, daddy" Now, this was treading on the line of being disrespectful, so let's be clear, Amy was doing everything that she could not to laugh when this very grown-up phrase came out of Zachary's mouth. It was in conjunction with a very minor offense, but Zachary seemed to want to try it on for size. Afterwards, Amy questioned Daddy where perhaps Zachary would have picked that up, and Daddy confessed that he in fact had been using that phrase around Zachary because Zachary was ticking Daddy off---hmm, important lesson to watch what we say because it is sure to be repeated back to us!!!

Zachary and Daddy playing catch on the back deck

Kaleb and Mommy at the park

Kaleb eating a tomato like an apple!

New Bike!

The exciting news in our household this week is that Zachary has his first bike. He has been very interested in riding bikes - we have lots of riding vehicles on our back deck (it is like a car lot!) but he's also been asking for a bike. So, we took him to Toys R Us last weekend and tried out a bunch of bikes. We ended up getting a 14 inch bike, which are VERY hard to find as they don't make very many but we lucked out as it was the right size for him and they had one left - and because it was their last 14 inch bike, they gave us a great deal!

A few weeks ago, Jennifer took the boys to Green Meadows Petting Farm - this is their first trip to the petting zoo, and they had a really great time. Zachary got to milk a cow (although he wasn't too sure that he should be touching the cow there....we're pretty sure that he thought that the cow's teats were the cow's "pee-pee"! :) Jennifer had to convince him that it was okay to touch the cow there! Zachary also caught a chicken all by himself - he was grinning from ear to ear! We're actually all going as a family in a few weeks with a group of our friends, so we'll all get to experience it. Kaleb is a bit nervous about getting up close and personal with the animals at this point, so he enjoys from afar.

Zachary has reached a fabulous age - he seems to have crossed the bridge finally of the terrible two's and even worse three's (not to say that he doesn't still have his moments) but he is definitely much improved in terms of mood and behavior. He is so sweet - he tells us that he loves us, that we're his best friends, that we're nice to him, gives us tons of hugs and for the most part he's very loving to Kaleb. In fact, this week Kaleb was laying on the floor crying about something and Zachary walked over to him and rubbed his belly and tried to console Kaleb by saying "It's okay Kaleb, I love you. Daddy will come pick you up."

Kaleb is also at a really sweet age - he really hasn't reached the "fits" stage of life (which we're thankful for!). This is always the age that makes a parent say "Perhaps we should have another kids, because they are just SO cute and precious right now!" - and then the terrible 2's hit and you run from that idea! :) He is very cuddly, and loves to laugh. He is always laughing at Zachary's antics. He has mastered the art of walking now and rarely do we see him crawling at all. He is very independent and insists on feeding himself, although as long as he starts feeding himself and keeps the fork, he will allow us to begin feeding him some bites in between his attempts. He definitely likes to sleep in longer than Zachary ever did - and usually sleeps until about 7:30'ish every morning - whereas we have to enforce the rule that Zachary can't get up before 6:45 in the morning - otherwise he'd be up before 6:00!!

Amy is in charge of crafts in November at Sabbath School. The story is 'Paul and the Shipwreck.' Now, for all of you who know Amy well - she is NOT CRAFTY. What was she thinking volunteering for crafts??? So needless to say it has been a bit of a struggle to come up with ideas, but there is now a plan for all four weeks of crafts, so hopefully it will go well. She volunteered to be the Sabbath School secretary in February, so we'll see if that is better.


True Bizarre Story - Yesterday at work, Amy was sitting in her office working when she heard a helicopter approaching, and getting closer and closer and closer until it was so close that you could feel the vibrations of the blades. She jumped up and ran to her window to look at and sees a military Blackhawk helicopter screaming towards our building. The doors of the helicopter are open, and a military guy in full gear is sitting in the back with HIS GUN. The helicopter flies parallel to our building between us and the restaurant to the lake behind us, when he reaches the lake, he turns around and flies back between us and the restaurant so low that he is level with the third floor of our building (the building is a four story building) where Finance is located. Once he gets to the front of the building, he just flies away as if no big deal. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, people are naturally skittish so the buildings occupants were pretty freaked out. Two ladies in the corner office on the third floor had run out of the office when he flew by because they thought they were about to be shot - imagine, you're in a meeting and all of a sudden a Blackhawk helicopter flies by right beside your window with a guy with a machine gun hanging out the open door!! We're in the middle of town, and the closest airforce base is over an hour away, so this has definitely never happened before to us. Anyway, it all ended well but it did seem very irresponsible for the pilot to fly so close and so low to our building but we're all clear, we'll never know the true story of what was going on.

Phrase of the week: Zachary is very clever about coming up with plausible excuses for getting up after we've put him to bed - the typical excuses of needing to go pee, needing a drink etc. We've solved those excuses by putting a sippy cup in his bed, and having him go to the bathroom right before lights are turned off. So, Zachary then decided that he'd ask for another hug, and what parent can say "No" to another request for a hug! So, we started being very specific in giving him a hug before he went to bed (he'd always been getting a ton of kisses but we hadn't been doing a special hug prior to going to bed). Well, he figured out how to get around the fact that he'd already had a hug when he came out one night and said "I need a hug." Amy replied "We already gave you a hug - you need to go back to bed". He looked at her, thought a minute and said "Yes, but it wasn't your BEST" Ha ha ha - who could argue with that clever logic - so one more night he got to use that excuse - we fixed it the next night by telling him when we gave him our hugs that the hugs were our BEST hugs. So clever!

Zachary insisted on vacuuming - who are we to argue?

Haircut & Birthday Party!

Well, we're clearly 'milking' the whole last baby thing for all its worth, because Amy has steadfastly been avoiding cutting Kaleb's hair because she doesn't want him to lose his baby look, and those cute curls! But, she did have to in the end relent - just a little bit - and so his bangs have at least now been cut so that they're no longer in his eyes. The back was trimmed enough just to make it all even, but that's it, so he still has retained his curls. Karis is appalled when we give him a bath because you can see how long his hair really is - it is past his shoulders in the back when it is hanging straight! :) Good thing Grandma is an expert at cutting hair!

We had a birthday party last weekend for Cole Hilliard - and it was also our first foray into truly Fall weather - it was FREEZING out at the park (and windy). The kids had a fun time though with the construction themed party games and pinata (Zachary's first!).

The day before, we went to the park to enjoy our "crisp" weather, and had a great time with Blake, Evan, Zachary and Kaleb. There was a baseball game going on at the park, and at one point all three of the boys (Kaleb, Blake and Zachary) had set themselves down to watch - very cute! There was a hill beside the ball diamond, and Blake and Zachary discovered the fun of rolling down hills! We remember those days as kids as well - great fun!

Karis is at a local continuing education class this weekend, so it is just Amy and the boys hanging out. Amy's Uncle Gene and Aunt Bert are here, so we had a family get-together at Aunt Louise's Friday night. It was great fun to see everyone - especially Kelsey as she is back on a break from her first year of college! One mortifying moment though is when Kaleb managed to break away from adult supervision and broke one of Aunt Louise's glass decorative tea cups - first time a Z-child has broken something there - but we've been waiting for it as there are lots of fun glass things to explore there at eye level!! Aunt Louise was very gracious, but one would wish we had avoided that unfortunate event!

Phrase of the week: "Uncle Kelsey" - Zachary was quite pleased to call her Uncle Kelsey until several adults tried to givve him gender lessons - we all had a bit of a chuckle about his choice of words for Kelsey! :) He does love her dearly, so we're sure that she forgave Zachary! :)