Merry Christmas!

Christmas takes on a whole new sense of fun when you have kids and this year with two kids, we had double the fun! Zachary this year was old enough to be excited about opening the presents and seeing what joyful toys were inside. He actually made it through opening all of his presents, which last year he got stuck on the first toy and didn't want to open anything else because that toy was so fun - so Christmas stretched into a week long affair of opening a toy each day (although unconventional, it was also fun to stretch out the excitement of Christmas past just a few hours on one day).

Kaleb is a much more tactile child than Zachary was, so he was immediately enthralled with the paper - pulling, crinkling, eating it...as you'll see in the pictures below, we had a Santa hat for him that he was hilarious with - he kept moving his head back and forth trying to see the fluffy ball on the end of the hat but of course the hat moved with him, so he could never catch the fluffy ball! :)

Amy's mom came over for Christmas Eve and stayed the night, so we had a lovely family affair. A. Louise came over the next day for the meals with us, which was really fun. We had a Christmas Eve where we focused on the birth of Christ, which was the first year that we did that, and it turned out really well. We had a birthday party for Jesus, complete with candles and singing Happy Birthday! Zachary thought that was so much fun that we must have re-lit the candles and sang the song about 3-4 times! We read the Nativity story, sang Silent Night, and had a Christmas prayer reading. All in all, not too bad for our first time of a hopeful annual tradition!

We hope that you all had a wonderful time making warm memories with your loved ones!

Phrase of the week: Rather than a phrase this week, we've decided to honor a "sound" - the sound of Kaleb laughing - if we could bottle that sound for sale, we'd be millionaires - there is nothing better than the joy of a child laughing, and he's got it in spades. If you catch him right, you can get him on a roll of laughing and it just makes you laugh right along with him!

Photo 1 - Christmas apparel - "Tis the Season to be Happy"

Photo 2 - Christmas sleeper (Yes, Mommy is sucked into the special clothes for the first year of life)

Photo 1 - eating the Christmas wrapping paper - yummy stuff!

Photo 2 - looking for the fluffy ball....how can he get that thing!?

We've never told the kids that Santa is a real person (don't worry, we'll do our best to be sure that they don't let the secret out for other kids!) but at the AHS Christmas party, there is always a Santa so we took the opportunity for the photo op - not so enthralled, but no screaming this year (refer back to last year's Santa picture with Zachary - definitely not thrilled with Santa that year!)

Christmas Upside Down

Our church had a new pastor come several years ago (maybe 3-ish years now) - Pastor Morris - that has been such an amazing person who is so on fire for God, that the church has grown tremendously over the last few years and the church has become much more active. One of the things that he instituted a few years ago that has been such a change in thought is that Christmas is really not about the commercial side of things, scurrying around buying presents for each other (that's not to say that we shouldn't think of others during this time), but the real origination of Christmas is the celebration of Christ's birth - the birth of the planet's Savior. So each year, the church has the opportunity on Christmas Sabbath to bring gift offerings to church to help bring the news that Christ died to save every person to more folks who do not know about that amazing gift today - hence "Christmas Upside Down." Today was the Christmas Sabbath, and it was awesome to be a part of celebrating the birth of Christ and giving to something that is bigger than ourselves - Zachary walked up to the manger (the "offering plate for this particular Sabbath") and put in his gift. One of the media team members took a picture of him at the manger, so we're hoping to see a copy of that picture - we'll post it if we ever do!
Last night we had a family get-together over at Aunt Louise's house (or Aunt Too-wheeze in Zachary language!) - we don't do that nearly enough so it was really fun. A. Louise's house is lovely, but does have a fair amount of "breakables" which you don't notice until you have a rambunctious 2-year old....and then you realize just how "on your toes" you need to be! But, all was well and Zachary fell "in love" with cousin Kelsey and followed her around, cajoling her into playing "peek-a-boo" under the afghan throw until the poor girl was too hot! :) She had the patience of the saints, to be sure!

We are all looking forward to a few days off from the hustle of work and spending time with family. Amy's mom and A. Louise will be joining us. We're hoping that Zachary enjoys opening his presents, and we're clear that Kaleb will think that the wrapping paper is cooler than anything else!

Zachary standing in front of the tree - our tree is not a "designer fashion tree" by any means, but we buy an ornament for each other annually, so it is fun to put up the tree and see each ornament as they are each so special

Merry Christmas to all - our love to each of you as you celebrate with your family.

Phrase of the Week: Can't resist repeating the "Aunt Too-wheeze!" - just too cute!

Kaleb's 8 month picture

Zachary's first attempt at a self-portrait

Mr. Yard of the Month!

The big news for the Zbaraschuks that we've been remiss in posting before is that Karis received the Bear Lake Woods subdivision "Yard of the Month" award! This was very unexpected as we typically feel like our yard could use more TLC than it gets currently - in fact when the HOA president came to give us the sign - we both almost started to laugh but held it in with great effort! :) Anyway, Karis does a fabulous job really with the yard in light of all of the many things that he juggles, and we think that the new stone retaining wall might have helped us with a little pizzazz!

Other than this news, it has been a relatively quiet week for the Zbaraschuks (good thing as this is a crazy time of year for Amy at work, so no need to have craziness everywhere!) :)
Kaleb has mastered sitting up, so it is fun to watch him be able to explore life from a different angle. He is very tactile, and is constantly reaching/grabbing things which is a lot different than Zachary was at this age. It is fun to see how the kids are similar/different as they pass through these phases. Kaleb is getting so big that he won't be in his infant car seat much longer- which may be nice as he is so heavy it is getting hard to carry

We finally got our Christmas tree up this week, and our Christmas letter out in the "email world" - we decided this year that we'd reduce our carbon footprint by emailing it rather than mailing it the old fashioned way. If you haven't received one (and want one!) - let us know what your email address is and we'll be happy to send one your way! We love to hear from everyone, and Christmas letters have started to slowly trickle in so we're happy to hear how your lives are!

When Zachary was little, we took a picture of him "reading" the paper with Daddy - well, Kaleb was in a similar state a few weeks back, so Amy took a picture of the two men "reading" their paper. Now that we've compared the pictures, it was funny (and completely coincidental!) that the babies are wearing the SAME sleeper in each picture! What are the odds!!?

Phrase of the week: "So anyway, ..." - oh how familiar that phrase is - it comes from Amy's lips often as she's telling a story about her day. Zachary has picked it up - and said it the other night at dinner - how adult-ish!

Bye-bye to the Z-Grandparents

This week saw the end of Gram-Z and Papa-Z's visit - the house feels so quiet now - it is fun to have visitors, so it always takes a bit to get used to it just being the four of us again! Thanks for the great visit to the Z-grandparents! Papa-Z's arms got very tired holding our latest jumping bean - Kaleb. No-one can remember Karis and Amy jumping as babies, but it sure seems that our kids have gotten the jumping gene in spades!

Photo 1 - Kaleb jumping on Papa-Z's lap

Photo 2 - Kaleb's shirt "If Mommy Says No, Ask Grandma!"

We went to the Science Center last Sunday which was really fun. They have a great children's section where they can "pick oranges," play in make-believe kitchens, work on creating water dams, pretend to be mechanics and much more. In another room, they have a booth where you can feel the equivalent of 75 mile hurricane force winds - although we frankly would be happy if that is the only place that we ever experienced them again!

Zachary picking his oranges

A few weeks back, we had professional pictures taken of Kaleb - the photographer has posted a few on her blog, so we thought that we'd post a link here so that those interested could see how a few of them turned out - Kaleb's pictures are under the blog post "Gerber Baby". We are excited to see the rest of the pictures!

http://www.soltrenphotography-theblog.com/

Happily there isn't a lot else exciting going on - so thought that we could post some of the miscellaneous pictures that we've taken over the past few weeks that are just a mish-mash of this and that!

Photo 1 - Zachary "fixin" his car with a screwdriver

Photo 2 - Daddy and Zachary enjoying their "rides"

Phrase of the week - "No, I'm too big" - this new phrase has entered into Zachary's vocabulary and is now used for any situation that he doesn't want to do something, such as putting on his PJs, eating his supper, giving Mommy a kiss etc. - all responses lead to "No, I'm too big."

Happy Veggie-Turkey Day! :)

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Just teasing with the title of this week's post - a little good Adventist humor! We don't eat a lot of meat anymore, but we do have turkey on Thanksgiving Day still!

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving Day with the Deiningers, Johnsons, Johnsons, Heisler (no S as it was just Lorene!), Lysiuks, Zbaraschuks, and Zbaraschuks. We were commenting that after about 10 years here in Orlando, this might be the first time that we've all had Thanksgiving together. We've posted some pictures of the fun below!

Photo 1 - Kaleb enjoying a toy while the others ate!
Photo 2 - Zachary and Luke enjoying some good old fashioned cereal - the big dinner apparently didn't really appeal too much!

Photo 1 - Karis and Dennis enjoying a bit of snooze after the big dinner!
Photo 2 - A photo of the big bunch together - about 16-17 including the kids

Dennis - dubbed "Papa Z" by Zachary arrived safely on Wednesday night. It is so great having them here, and having Amy's mom in town, as these are such great memories to create as a youngster with your grandparents!

Karis and Connie went to the FH Thanksgiving concert last Friday night so that was a fun way to start off the week. It was the choir from Oakwood, Mark Masri, and an Eli (saxophone player but I don't remember his last name).

On Sunday, we had Kaleb's official "6" month pictures (yes, a bit late) taken by Jennifer Soltren. Amy's coworker had used her for her twin newborn pictures, and we like to try out new photographers, so decided to use her for this set. She was fast, friendly, creative and relaxed, so if the pictures turned out as well as the actual experience was, we'll be very happy!

The week ended yesterday with a trip to the zoo in which Zachary actually was brave enough to feed some of the animals so that was really fun! We are now the owners of an annual pass, so that will provide hopefully many fun nature-oriented outings! We also put in a couple of quick trips to the stores to check out the doors - doing our small part to keep the economy going!

Kaleb seems to be getting the hang of rolling over - at least from his stomach to his back. Amy keeps threatening having a pediatric therapist come out to evaluate him if he doesn't get his act together, so maybe just maybe we're making some progress!

Oh - as an update to last week's mystery illness for Zachary - apparently Rotavirus is going around so it would appear that he got a touch of it. Sadly, Amy now has some sort of gastrointestional issue this weekend, so here's hoping for a speedy recovery as that is just no fun!

We wish all of you a wonderful holiday season now that Thanksgiving has kicked it off officially. Our wish for each of you is that you will see the many things that you have to be thankful for, and the many blessings in your lives - both the big and the small.

Phrase of the week: Muzaack! Zachary loves to listen to his music CDs in the van, lucky for us as this is a good incentive to get into the car when we need to go somewhere!

Action Packed Week!

This has been an eventful week with the start of our week beginning with the night out at the FH Gala - entertainment provided by Michael Buble. It was quite fun as always to get dressed up and head off to the resort - this year the auction was not as "lively" due to the economic slump, so there were some good deals to be had but we kept our wallets in our pockets even in the face of such temptation! The night was a little nerve-wracking as about 30 minutes before we left, Amy went in search of Zachary (the house had become suspiciously quiet...bad news as any parent knows) and she walked into his bedroom to discover that he had pulled his top dresser drawer out all of the way and somehow pulled his body up into the drawer (he basically do a pull-up as he could stand on a low chair to reach the edge of the drawer, but there was nothing from that point to climb up on - apparently the child has strong arms!). After managing to heft himself up into the drawer, he then stood UP in the extended drawer so that he could play with the humidifier on top of his dresser. While having an instant heart attack, Amy managed to get him out of the drawer and down while a stern lecture immediately began. It was a testament to the seriously solid piece of furniture that it didn't fall over on top of Zachary - we'd have been going to the ER instead of the gala! Where, oh where, did Mr. Safety-man go?? We want him back! :) (This feat was not documented with a camera as time was of the essence, and we don't want to do a live re-enactment so that he doesn't get any more ideas!)

Later in the week, our excitement began one night about 45 minutes after Zachary went to bed - he had been quite (presumably fast asleep) when all of a sudden he started to cry. That being unusual (the silence and then crying....not so unusual for him to fuss immediately when we leave the room if he doesn't want to go to sleep), so Amy went in to check on him - as she opened the door, she was met with projectile vomit flying towards her as she stood in the doorway. GREAT. That was a 2 parent clean-up job (clean-up on aisle 2 please! :) as it was all over Zachary, the crib, the walls, the floor etc. Once we cleaned him all up, back into bed he went (no fever, no other symptoms and he frankly was in a great mood saying that he wanted to play, play!!!). Sadly, this repeated itself twice more that night about once an hour until it finally seemed to pass. Poor kid - it is never fun to be sick. It seemed to just be a short bug as he was right as rain the next day.

Two weeks ago was Kaleb's first hair "trim" - definitely not enough hair to actually call it a hair cut but it was time to even up his hair - he had really long hair on the top (ha ha, it was starting to look like an old man's comb-over!), so Grandma B came over with her magic scissors and evened everything up. Kaleb was definitely not an easy customer like Zachary's first hair-trim - he kept wiggling and moving his head around frantically trying to see what was going on up there - so the adults were laughing most of the time trying to contain his head!

The weather has cooled down here and we're enjoying the lovely Fall weather. Tonight is the FH Thanksgiving concert, so Gram-Z and Karis have gone to enjoy the music. We're looking forward to Papa Dennis coming this week to join us for a short vacation, and Sunday we're having a photographer come to the house to catch Kaleb's over-due 6 month pictures (yes, we know that we're late, but better late than never!). Zachary's been having a fun time with Gram-Z.

Phrase of the week: "Mommy, I dripped" - after the projectile vomiting episode - drippin' is code word for "spit-up, puke, vomit, drool" - any short of liquid that comes out of Kaleb or Zachary's mouth is referred to by Zachary as "drippin'" - we guess that it's better to call it drippin' than anything else! :)

Lift Off!

This week has been an exciting one with it beginning with Grandma Z's arrival and culminating in watching a night launch of the space shuttle!

Gram-Z arrived without mishap and Zachary has been having a great time playing. Kaleb at this point still pretty much just cares that his basic needs are met! :) Papa (Zachary's name for Dennis) will be arriving the week of Thanksgiving.

It has become tradition for the "Farming Game" to be played every time Connie visits

The week ended with the two minivans making the trek out to the space coast to watch a night launch of the shuttle. This is the second time that Karis has been to a night launch and the first time that Amy and family have gone. It was definitely an experience to see although the traffic back was CRAWLING - we waited around to let some of the crowds disperse and it still took us 3 hours and 45 minutes to get home. The boys and Amy slept in the back while Grandma Z kept Karis company on the way home. With that long of a drive back, it may be a while before the family attempts to do this again!

Luke & Zachary munching their PB&J sandwiches together

Photo 1 - Zachary perched high up on Daddy to watch the "Fire!!!" (Zachary seemed to relate to the fact that he was about to watch fire in the sky than to the fact that it was a shuttle

Photo 2 - As we waited for the crowds to disperse, Amy played "Ring around the Rosey" with Zachary

Kaleb's 7 month birthday came and went this week - he is now 18 lbs 10 ounces with clothes on, (so probably slightly over 18 lbs without) and is 26 inches long.

Phrase of the Week: "I'm tired Mommy" - Zachary has started to tell us that he is tired - although he still doesn't love to then have to lay down! When he wakes up especially early he has shared this with Amy - to which she's thinking "So are we - why didn't you sleep in longer!?"

Super Daddy!

This week went off without a hitch - well, almost - as Daddy was all by himself with the two boys when Amy had to drive up to Amelia Island for a conference. The only "eventful morning" (Karis refused to say nightmarish morning!) was Tuesday when he got Zachary up, changed his diaper, put on some diaper rash cream from a lovely new tube of cream, and then left the room to put the diaper in the garbage in the garage.....well, by the time that he returned to the room to put on Zachary's clothes for the day, YOU GUESSED IT - diaper rash cream = Zachary's a mess! Zachary can't seem to resist the temptation of a tube with any form of cream in it, so by the time Karis got back, it was all over him. Having to bathe your child first thing in the morning before going to work is not the brightest way to start off of your morning, but Karis, whoops "Super Daddy" took it all in stride.
Amy thought that she would enjoy a luxurious three days up at Amelia Island, sleeping in and in general lazing around while she wasn't in the meetings. Nope - sleep was not to be had. So, even though there were no baby sounds coming from the dual monitors on her bedside table, she still woke up at the regular times as if her body was trained to wake up and listen for the kids. Oh well, it was worth a shot! She did manage to catch a bit of laryngitis while she was up there, so her voice is messed up - it sounds like she's turning into a man! :)
Daylight Savings is definitely not our friend - whoever thought that moving the times back and forth by 1 hour was a good idea did not have kids! Kaleb woke up last weekend at 4:30 in the morning - even though we put him to bed later than normal to try and help him sleep longer during the night. Ouch - very painful! It does seem like we're over the hump again though as the boys are starting to sleep again until 6:00-6:30. Kaleb is doing fabulously without the swaddler blanket, so he's officially done with that business now!
Zachary is spending the night at Grandma B's tonight, so he will be having a grand old time. We have dinner plans with friends, so Amy's aunt Louise is going to come over and watch Kaleb while he sleeps. It's been a long time that we went out for dinner with just adults, so we plan to enjoy the conversation immensely! It is strange to not have both boys - it is so quiet!
For those who know Amy well, know that she is a bookworm. She has recently been reading a book about raising children based on biblical principles that is absolutely a great book - it is called Shepherding a Child's Heart. It is quite revealing on the motivations and attitudes that drive most of our children's behaviors (and frankly it applies to adults as well) and encourages parents to use the Bible as a foundation for the values and character traits that we develop in our children. Instead of just focusing on our child's behavior, it talks about focusing on their heart from which all behavior comes - so fix the heart's attitudes = fix the behavior. Now, the one caveat to the book is that it does involve spanking as one aspect of raising your children using biblical principles, but even for parents against spanking, it is so much more than that one aspect that it is very much worth the time to read it.
Phrase of the Week: "wash hands, wash hands!" - Zachary is apparently like his father in many ways, one of which is his desire for cleanliness. Karis used to apparently tell his brothers to wash their hands all of the time, and Zachary now insists on having things clean around him - even if he's in the middle of supper if his hands get dirty, then we must wash them!!! Oh well - the daddy genes are strong! :)

Picture of Karis and Zachary in similar poses (Kaleb on the left, Zachary on the right)

I'm a Big Boy Now!

Kaleb has made the final transition to not sleeping with his swaddler blanket - the last bastion was the night-time sleep, and we finally took the plunge on Thursday night and didn't put it on when he went to bed - Amy was trepidatious to say the least as he'd been waking up this week about 5:30A or so - she was sure that he'd be awake in the middle of the night with no swaddler! But, he surprised us and slept in until 6:15! Yippee!

Anyone with kids knows that when the time changes for Daylight Savings, these are not fun times - we're hoping that the boys switch over quickly to the new time - Zachary has also been waking up early (something with a 5 in front of it - so we're desperately hoping that it isn't 4 something tomorrow!

Amy heads off to Amelia Island to a conference this week, so Daddy will be batching it with the two boys. She is wondering if perhaps this will be most restful! She'll sadly still probably wake up at 5 wondering if the kids are about to wake up! :)

Amy's friend Maria from college is down visiting her sister this week, so they had a wonderful visit today catching up on all of the news that is going on with our families.

Zachary has clearly caught on to what "time-out" means - this week he has been testing the boundaries by doing things that he knows he's not allowed to do - such as play with the remote - well, when one of us comes into the room and catches him, he has started to automatically take HIMSELF to time-out when we say "Zachary, you know better". It took Amy off-guard the first time - she hadn't intended on putting him in time-out but rather intended just take it away and give him a scolding, but hey, seeing as he put himself in time-out that settled that!

Phrase of the Week: You're cute Daddy! Daddy thought that was quite funny as Zachary told him that he was 'cute' - not something that Dads get called very often!

The first co-bath between the boys!

Kaleb enjoying the jumper while Zachary lounged in a child's rocking chair that Amy's grandpa made.

Ready to go to bed - without the swaddler blanket!

Our little chick!

Kaleb's 6 month picture

Precious Moments

Zachary has provided us with some precious moments this Sabbath - we have managed to make it through multiple weeks now in church with fairly good behavior (we say "fairly" as there have been moments where an outside voice was used, and when our feet just somehow kept kicking the pew in front of us until a parental hand could grab hold and take care of the situation - but fortunately there have not been many instances of this, so we'll stick with fairly well behaved! :)) Today in Sabbath School, he seemed to really enjoy it - he would jump up to participate in the songs. During story-time, he ran up to the front to sit right in front of the felt story board (imagine about 6 inches from the front!) - the teacher slightly moved the board back to create a little more room, and Zachary scooted himself forward to be closer! Ha ha! He wanted to be up close and personal with the story of Jairus! :)

When the teacher brought out the felt characters, before she could identify Jesus, his little voice rang out "Jesus!!" - it was clearly one of those moments that stick in a parent's mind. He usually isn't very 'bold' with other kids around, so this was truly a first for him to sit at the very front of the room in the midst of all of the other kids and to be so engaged in the story.

Later, when we were at home, we went out onto the deck to enjoy the beautiful weather, and Zachary was playing in his toy car - he told Amy that he was going, and when she inquired where he was headed off to, he said "I'm going to church!" - not a bad place to head off to on Sabbath! :) We have a GPS in our van which he always insists is turned on, so in his play car, he always informs us when he is turning the map on and off, and then he pushes a button in the "ceiling" of the car (the GPS is stuck onto the top of the windshield in our van, so he mimics the location of the map in his car as well!). He also has to have his "muzac" on in both the van and the car - so driving his pretend car on the back porch is serious business! He has also finally gotten the hang of the motorized three wheeler as well - he was always trying to move it with his feet before, but now he understands how to get it to move on its own. The strangest thing with this motorized trike - in the middle of the night the electronics seem to go "haywire" and the horn starts to beep constantly - Amy has heard it several times as she gets up to pump so had to go out and unplug the wires under the seat to get it to stop. Well, Zachary long ago figured out how to plug everything back in (going to have a mechanical little mind it appears!) but couldn't figure out how to drive it until now! He still sometimes forgets to look where he's going though....:)

Photo 1 - definitely not watching the road - EYES ON THE ROAD ZACH!! :)

Photo 2 - just hanging out - oh to be so limber again!

He has also become very affectionate towards Kaleb - hugs and kisses, wants to sit near him, and mimics Kaleb's sounds (clearly some of this is to get parental attention but he does seem to be having a good time with Kaleb now!)

Bad hair day for Zach - and Kaleb seems quite thrilled that big brother is hanging out with him!

Kaleb is doing well - he has become so alert and aware of his surroundings in the last 3-4 weeks, it is just amazing. He is sitting and reaching for things constantly now. While Zachary seems to need a fair amount of personal space, Kaleb loves you to be very near to him, in his face where he can see you and interact with you. It'll be so interesting to see their little personalities as they grow older. His naps are all over the place - some mornings he sleeps for 1 hour and others it is a marathon 3 hour nap - poor Jennifer snuck in there one day to be sure that he was still breathing he slept for so long!

Kids grow WAY TOO FAST - Zachary only got to wear this outfit once, and now Kaleb has worn it once. So, this outfit has only been worn twice in its lifespan!

Our church is hosting Mark Finley's "Discoveries08" series beginning last night. There were 1,300 people at the 7P service last night in the church, plus it is being broadcast over the HopeChannel network and over the Internet. It'll be amazing to see what God does during the next few weeks.

This week is going to be busy for Amy as she is hosting the AHS controller's conference - it isn't too bad to handle but it is always a relief when it is done. Next week she has to head off to another conference for work, so Daddy Karis will be "batching" it for 2.5 days with the boys.

November is definitely going to be a fun-filled month as Grandma Z is coming for a visit on November 11 and then Grandpa Z will be joining her over Thanksgiving.

Phrase of the Week: "You're cute, Daddy!" - this was out of the blue one day - apparently Zachary was feeling extra love for his daddy! He has become quite the little parrot, so we really have to watch what we say but it is so cute to hear him put phrases together!