Celebrations

This weekend we celebrated Amy's Mom's birthday, along with Heather C and Rob D's birthdays.  We also had a very belated Christmas gift exchange for the kids!  Zachary was counting down the days for this weekend as he knew that he was getting more gifts - oh the excitement! :)

We started off the celebration with Mom and Aunt Louise coming over for lunch - Amy tried out two new recipes - veggie burger roast (yum) and crockpot scalloped potatoes (very yummy when made properly!).  Unfortunately she went awry somewhere in the scalloped potatoes, so that was a little less than she had hoped for, but at least edible! :)

 After naps, the kids headed off to the park with the men and the ladies headed to Deiningers to put dinner together.  We had the pleasure of the Oliver family visiting from Sebring, so it was fun to be able to catch up with them as well.  Lisa made a delicious cheesecake to celebrate the birthdays, and delectable potato salad and roasted potatoes (to go along with grillers and taco salad).  We ended the evening with the gifts, and a quick tour through the Cochran pictures of their trip to New Zealand - beautiful! We definitely will be adding this to the future Zbaraschuk travel "bucket list!" :)

As a way of spicing up the fun of our blog, we decided to include a riddle this week and perhaps next.  Then, we'll provide the answers in a few weeks - so don't post an answer comment on the blog as we don't want to make the answers too easy for everyone else!  So this week's riddle is "What bakes in an oven but does not get eaten?"

Phrase of the week:  Kaleb is struggling at home with putting on his sneakers every day (even though he does it with no problem each day at Miss Jennifer's!!!!) when Mommy asks.  One day was particular difficult, resulting in much whining and fussing with him saying pitifully "But Mommy, it is just really, really, hard for me!!"  Then when she tells him to put his finger at the back of the shoe to hold the back from getting pushed down with his heel, he cries even more pitifully and holds up his finger in a pathetic bent fashion in front of her face to say "But Mommy, my finger really, really hurts!"  AHHHHH.  The child totally has Mommy's "number" and doesn't want to be responsible for even such a small task as putting on his shoes!  Our two children could not be much more different as Zachary knew how to put on his shoes (demanding to do it!), knew which foot they went on etc, at a much younger age.  Zachary's phrase this week comes from his sweet willingness to help out a 'bro' from time-to-time - getting exasperated and putting on his shoes for him, getting his vitamins for him, helping him with all sorts of tasks.  He looks up at Amy and says in an exasperated voice "Ugh, I have to do everything for Kaleb!"  Amy informs him that he does NOT need to do any of those tasks for his brother (and she's never asked him to help) but that it is awfully sweet of him to help out his brother.  Perhaps we should cut off all assistance - maybe that would help Kaleb get a march on! :)

Playing hockey with Dad - much to Zachary's delight, he "won"!

Sankey Sojourn

We had the pleasure last weekend of having Aunt Elaine and Uncle Murray come to visit Florida.  It was so fun to catch up and visit with them.  Zachary and Kaleb were intrigued to ask them questions about their bison, and of course see pictures!



Going for a bike ride with Uncle Murray

Reading a Canadian Wildlife book with Auntie Elaine

We spent the day at Seaworld on Sunday - the entire day, which was kind of fun as we don't do that very often, so we were able to catch almost all of the shows which was a real treat.

Missing Karis, and Kaleb's face is dark, but Zachary was not in a "photo-mood" so we took what we could get! :)

Kaleb on the other hand was pleased to take pictures with Uncle Murray!

Ready for the Shamu Show

Best Seat at the Show - talk about riding in luxury!

Karis headed off for his second "male only" ski trip in Utah on Saturday, so Amy and the kids are batching it until Wednesday. We went over to Cochrans yesterday as they offered to watch Kaleb while Zachary was in Adventurers, so that was fun. Today we headed to the zoo to spend the morning with Deiningers, Hilliards and Cochrans. The weather was perfect, so we were really blessed!

All the kids, but Kieran is perfectly hiding behind Kaleb so he's not visible in this picture.  Bad photographer! :)

Kaleb and Kieran plotting their path through the zoo on the map

Phrase of the week:  Mommy, I prayed to Jesus that my head wouldn't hurt because I didn't take a nap today, and it worked! :)  Yeah, thank you God, it is awesome to have some "yes" answers to prayer to help teach your children about the power of prayer!

New Year's Whimper

Well, instead of welcoming in the new year with a bang, we definitely welcomed it with a whimper.  Amy had a four day weekend off, so we joined Bergherms and Hilliards at the Science Center on Friday, which was very fun.  The kids had fun at the bug excitement, the cars activities, the dinosaur floor, and of course eating lunch at the Subway! :)  One scary moment, we lost track of little Maddie and couldn't find her anywhere.  Beginning to panic, Amy prayed and no joke, turned around and there was Miss Maddie - where we had just come from.  Thank you God!

We then went downhill, thanks for nothing.  Saturday the boys both ended up getting fevers, which weren't anything much to write home about other than it wrecked our plans to go with Hilliards to SeaWorld for New Year's Eve.  Bummer.  We were up part of the night off and on - not from celebrating but from listening to our neighbor's fireworks going off - even until 2:30A.  We know this as we were up with Kaleb, whose fever woke him up at 2A.  Why do people think that it is acceptable to still be sending off fireworks at 2:30A??

The highlight of the weekend was that we opened presents with Grandma.  The kids thought they had reached nirvana with all those presents to open and play with!

Monday, Amy ended up falling prey to a severe head cold - probably from the lack of sleep from the weekend.  The boys recovered nicely and Amy has marginally improved each day - with several days being in quarantine to try and keep the boys from getting the cold!

So all in all it's been a relatively quiet week, although the big event is that Zachary has a new bike!  It is two sizes bigger than his last bike, so our fingers are crossed that this won't end up in a broken bone, but Daddy believes that he can handle it just fine.

Phrase of the week:  Inhale breath, tilt head up into the air, put index finger on pursed lips and say "Hmmmmmmm."  Not sure where this new "trick" has come from, but both boys now have picked it up.  It is funny to watch, so we parents have a hard time keeping a straight face! :)

Holidaze

This was the Zbaraschuk family Christmas - and we celebrated together in fine style up at the farm.  We spent a total of 10 days there.  When we landed, there was NO SNOW on the ground in Saskatoon, which caused a bit of panic for one Zachary but thankfully as we drove the 2 hours to the farm, by the time that we got there about four inches of snow blanketed the ground.

The kids had a FANTASTIC time playing with their cousins Emily, Connor and Kaylie.  Kaleb adored Kaylie, and immediately began referring to her as "my little friend" - they were too cute all week playing together and laughing.  As the house is large, there was a lot of running around but the kids also went outside a few times each day to sled.  We were fortunate that the weather was quite mild, and the kids could be outside as much as they wanted.  In fact, we had a couple of times above freezing!  Who knew!?

Korey and Rachel joined the family there, so we had all of the Zbaraschuk brothers together. It was fun to catch up with everyone, REST, read (okay, that is just Amy's favorite thing to do), and play.  There was entirely too much eating (Lorie is much to blame as she kept making Amy's FAVORITE Ukrainian dishes!!) - in fact at one point Rachel and Amy were comiserating over the level of pain that we were experiencing as we kept over-eating at each meal! :)

We went to the bowling alley the first Sunday that we arrived, and it was quite fun as Kaleb was big enough to play.  It was 5 pin bowling where the balls are small, so the kids could actually bowl without too much difficulty.  They also have a small rides/activity area there, so we headed over to the bumper cars, bounce house etc afterwards for some final minutes of fun.

With the sun not rising until about 8:45ish, Kaleb treated us to several mornings of a post 8AM wake-up and Zachary did his very best to sleep until 7A each morning (pretty good for Mr. Z, so we'll take it).  The parents however stayed up playing games and working on puzzles, so we did not cash on on the extra sleep as much as we'd like! :)

Phrase of the week:  Grandma is the luckiest person I know.  Why is that Zachary?  Because she lives where it snows!  Kaleb's phrase occurred after he bumped his head on the headboard of his bed.  He looked up very worried to Amy and said "Am I going to lose the rest of my hair?"  Poor kid!  No you won't sweetie!  On that note, we should give an update that his hair appears to be growing back fast and furious, of which we are SO THANKFUL!

Korey and his Dad enjoying some relaxed time on the couch!

Playing "Up and Down the River"

The kids wrestling with Uncle Korey

One of our delicious meals

Playing with the very cool car track - the kids got the hang of it fairly quickly.

Holding hands with his "little friend" Kaylie - so precious!

The whole family

Grandkids and Grandparents

Party, Party, Party

Last weekend, we had a rare treat of going out for an "adults-only" evening out on Saturday night AND going to the Corporate party on Sunday to Epcot.  It was a true party weekend! :)

On Saturday night we headed off to eat at PF Changs with Cochrans and Johnsons.  The food was good but the company was even better!  We actually started the evening off with a bit of a jolt - when we received a letter from our Discover card indicating that there had been potential fraudulent attempts to access our credit card.  Karis called before we left for the restaurant, only to find out that Discover had actually issued an emergency credit card to a guy by the name of Mario earlier that week under our account.  Mario had charged 8,000 in the 2 days that he had the card.  Thankfully we aren't responsible for that, but it is deeply disturbing to 1) realize that someone has enough of your personal information to actually GET a credit card under your account and 2) that Discover suspected that it was fraud and yet still gave him a credit card?!!???  We're now in the process of trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from any further fraud attempts.  Fun, fun, fun.

On to truly fun things - the rest of the evening was as blast as we ended the evening by meeting up with Steinkes at Sak's Comedy Club. It was a hoot as always, and we laughed ourselves silly.

Jeff and William hamming it up for the camera, while Kelli and Kent are hidden behind Karis!

On Sunday morning we headed off to Epcot where we met our friends the Hilliards.  We had a great time exploring the educational exhibits and then the countries.  We stopped at France to have some pastries - YUMMY!

Zachary and Loghann posing nicely for a picture

Kaleb, Zachary, Cole & Loghann waiting for the China movie to start.

The fam....not too bad of a picture

Merry Christmas!  We wish everyone safe travels and a happy holiday season with family!

Phrase of the week: Zachary was talking to Amy one day and said "Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't - Mom, that's an 'spression, right?" Kaleb's discussion was with Mommy as well, in which he told her that he wanted to do something.  She responded "No, let's not do that" Kaleb's response? "I did it already" She turns around and sure enough, he'd already done it before he even told her that he was going to do it!  Good thing it wasn't anything too dramatic!

How Many Men Does it Take....

It sounds like the beginning of a good old joke, and it is in fact quite funny!  This story actually happened at the end of September, when Amy's cousin Jeff and Niesha moved down from Asheville to Orlando.  Uncle Ken and Aunt Ev had come over to our house, and Zachary had coerced Uncle Ken into playing frisbee with him outside.  Apparently one of Zachary's throws went wild, and landed high up in our tree.  Zachary uttered a frustrated "UGH" and stomped into the garage, emerging with Dad's hockey stick to try and get the frisbee out of the tree (smart thinking Zachary!).  That wasn't quite long enough, so back he stomped into the garage only to emerge with a long piece of baseboard molding.  That apparatus didn't have a hook to try and unhook it from the branch, so finally Dad to the rescue.  It took 3 men to rescue the Frisbee, with Zachary standing on Daddy's shoulders manuevering the hockey stick and Uncle Ken holding Zachary steady! :)  What teamwork!  They rescued the Frisbee!

While that was a random story, we didn't want to let too much time pass before we managed to get it into one of our blog posts, becuase it was such a great picture!  Last weekend, we had a very busy time on Sabbath when we went to Pastor Mark and Deborah Reams house for lunch with all of the other table teachers/Sabbath School assistants from Zachary's class.  It was really fun to get to know them all a bit better, and to talk with the teacher Miss Deanna without 40 kids running around! :)  After that, Zachary and Amy headed off to Adventurers where was once again named "Adventurer of the Day" - we're proud of you Zachary!

After Adventurers, we zipped over to the Bergherm's house where they were holding their annual Christmas party.  It was of course complete with beautiful decorations and yummy food!  Jennifer set up a "decorate your own cookie" station for the kids, which they of course thought was delicious!  Corey lead out in a game session, with probably 5-7 games that were very fun to play.

Karis and his partner trying to throw Christmas cards, one by one, into a bucket.  VERY hard!

The highlight (or should we say DOWNlight?) of the evening was......GASP.....discovering a huge patch of bald scalp on Kaleb - right on the crown of his head.  It is about as long as Amy's index finger, and about as wide.  He was sitting in front of her on the floor when she caught a glimpse of it, and she reached out to tussle his hair and discovered it.  Our friend Allen informed her that Karis must be messing with her, so she ran with Kaleb into the front room to inquire - only to have Karis be as bewildered as she was.  We have no done as much research as one can do on hair loss, only to remain as befuddled as we once were.  We've taken him to the dermatologist, only to have her remain in the land of uncertainty as well.  We truly have no idea - but we have a sneaking suspicion that it was the zip-line the week before at the Corn Maze.  The zipline ends rather abruptly, and the kids were taking fairly large "swings" at the end - somehow Kaleb managed to get turned around and when he "swung" up, he thunked his head REALLY hard on the wooden cross bar.  He didn't cry, but several minutes later he was still walking around rubbing his head because it hurt.  Kaleb's skin has always been incredibly sensitive, so we're wondering if the friction/impact of the zipline was enough to bruise his hair follicles, and it took several days for the hair to die and fall out.  We probably won't ever know FOR SURE, but unless other patches start to fall out, we can rule out alopecea (thank you Lord) and the doctor said that it wasn't ringworm.  Now we're just waiting with baited breath hoping and praying that it grows back, although she said that it could take several months to grow back.  Poor kid, he doesn't have very thick hair to begin with (long hair, yes, thick hair, no)!  Mommy's worst nightmare!  A balding three-year-old!! :)

The other big event this week was the grand opening of Amy's new workplace.  It was amazing.  Jawdropping.  Overwhelming.  Wow.   After a month it'll seem ho-hum, but for now it is eye-boggling.  Monday she reports to her new workplace - a whole 8 minutes from home, and CLOSER than Karis' workplace! :)

Phrase of the week:  "Mommy, I'm a super hero cleaner!"  Mommy's ears immediately perk up!  Let's try this out!  Super Hero Zachary, pick up the books in your room!  WHAT?  It's working.  Super Hero Kaleb, pick up the socks on the floor.  WOW!  It worked again!  In no time, the house was CLEAN!  Maybe these Super Heros will stick around and live here forever!!!  Having Super Hero Cleaners zoom around picking things up as their Mommy stands in the Central Command shouting instructions is fabulous!!!  Kaleb's conversation this week began with Mommy informing him "Kaleb, your nose is running."  Kaleb's answer: "Where?"

At school this week, they had a Christmas party, and kids dressed up as Florida "Crackers" (Pioneers?)  Not sure about our get-up, but it was the best that we had! :)  Zachary had a fun time dressing up!

Corn Maze-ing It Up!

Last weekend of course was American Thanksgiving.  We so enjoyed the four days off, and tried to cram in as much as possible on our "to-do" lists as we could.  It reminded us once again that we could REALLY do some serious catch-up if we ever could resign ourselves to a "stay-cation!"

We started off the holiday with Thanksgiving dinner at our house with Grandma and the Johnsons. It was a yummy meal and we have a fun visit.

The next day, we went on our second trip out to the Long & Scott Farms corn maze.  We went last year, and it was enjoyable enough that we decided to do it again.  It was a huge group this time (sorry, there were SO many people that I'm not even going to attempt to write down who was there, because I'll for sure miss someone, but let's just say that the usual suspects were there!) :). 

This year, we decided to tackle the kid's maze, which was just perfect.  They had five color stations where you would mark your fingers one-by-one, and at the end you'd have a fortune.  It kept the kids very entertained hunting for these things because it was fun to mark your fingers!  The kid's maze was much smaller, and so we were in there for about 30 minutes total - unlike last year where we wandered in the big maze endlessly until we found a map of the board and Amy "cheated" by taking a picture of the maze so that we could refer to her camera as a makeshift GPS to get ourselves out of there.  This time, we all walked out of there with smiles on our faces, so it was a success!

Marking his finger at one of the stations

A few of the kids at the top of a rickety bridge!

The other entertainment there is really fun, so the kids had a blast on the playground set, a bounce "pillow', and of course the famous zip line.  The kids could have stayed all afternoon, but the parents decided that afternoon naps should occur so we reluctantly left after a very fun morning.

What an action shot of Zachary in mid-air before landing on the bounce "pillow"

Zipline fun!

 We ended our Friday with having the Isidros and Johnsons over for supper.  We had missed Alan's birthday a few weeks back, so wanted to make it up to him.  The kids all had a fun time - especially when we made "rockets" out of alkaseltzer tablets and old film cases.

First time holding baby Erik - Zachary is in love!

 Saturday we hit the bowling alleys for a bit of fun - the kids really think that bowling is just wonderful.  We are hoping to go 5 pin bowling while we're in Canada, where the balls are perfect size for the little guys!

Sunday ended our fun, but busy, weekend with a Zbaraschuk "first".  We actually put up lights on our front hedge.....and tiny reindeer with lights.  We didn't want to go too crazy, so we haven't done anything else yet but it is a far cry from the old dark house that we've had in years past.  It is amazing what you'll do for a 5 year old, who is begging to have lights on the house.  Speaking of which, we have begun the nightly "Christmas light pageant" drive, where Karis and the boys drive around neighborhoods looking for the most amazing lights. Good times! :)

Phrase of the week:  We went to Amy's office to pick up some things (they're moving to the new Corporate Office building in a week), and Kaleb saw the baby pictures on her desk and said "That's Baby Me!"  So sweet.  Zachary's phrase this week was part of a conversation about school.  Amy asked him whether he had made a new friend at lunch that day by introducing himself.  Zachary said "no", and Amy replied that this is the method of making new friends, you introduce yourself etc.  Zachary then said "I have lots of friends, but I'm keeping it a secret."   Ha ha - not sure how they can be friends with you if it is a secret Zachary, but oh well!

Totally random, but I took a picture last time we went to Canada of them in their snowsuits.  Zachary was in the red one last time of course!  They're so excited, now cross our fingers for a lot of snow!