Happy Thanksgiving

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving day with family and friends!  We had Amy's mom, the Johnson family, and the Isidros over for our Thanksgiving day.  It was quite fun - we had lunch at 12:30 and then kids then played all afternoon together.  We slightly miscalculated the time that it would take the turkey to cook (by an HOUR), so it was a bit stressful for a while.   Amy kept watching the meat thermometer, to which her mom aptly reminded her that "A watched pot never boils!"  All in all, it worked out so we ate about 1:30.

Kaleb was very enamored with the Isidro twins, and kept wanting to hold them.  Inevitably this leads to the Johnson adults egging him to tell Amy that he wants another Z-sibling! :)  Zachary had a fantastic time with Braelyn, and wanted to go to her house the very next day.

Black Friday usually is a non-event in our house, but Amy found a couple of deals that she wanted to take advantage of, so when Zachary came into the room at 5:50A, she just got up and headed out.  Can you imagine that at 6:30 when she got to the mall that the parking lot was FULL!  There were a couple of stores that she went into that had long lines, so she promptly left - she might be shopping on Black Friday, but nothing is worth that long of a line!  She did get a couple of things that she had gone for, so it was successful.

After the morning stint of shopping, we headed off to a local corn maze - the Long and Scott farms.  We've never been, but it was super fun!  Amy scored the tickets off of Groupon for 1/2 price, which was awesome.  We'll definitely go again next year.  There is a big corn maze, a mini corn maze (for the kiddos who have shorter attention spans), a tree maze, and then a whole adventure area for the kids to play in.  There was a putting green, play sets, a 60 foot slide, and........a zip line.  The zip line was a HIT, and Kaleb insisted on going as well - although Mommy was not too thrilled about this, Daddy insisted that he would be fine.  Karis ran alongside the swing as Kaleb was in it, so that just in case he fell that Karis could catch him, but Kaleb was a champ and never had a problem - but he had a HUGE smile on his face.  Zachary must have done it 5-6 times before we headed home.  The Cochrans came with us, so the kids all had fun playing together.

Amy actually went out shopping again after we got home down to Stride Rite in order to take advantage of their buy one, get one 50% off.  When you have to buy wide size's (Zachary), the only ones that we can count on are Stride Rite.  At the mall, they're about $45-50 dollars a PIECE (AHH, for shoes that they only wear for a few months!) - Amy just can't do it, so she braves the traffic periodically to go to the outlet mall.  Traffic was insane as you'd imagine with Black Friday, but she scored a parking spot pretty easily which was amazing - people were parked alongside the road for a mile from the outlet mall on a grassy shoulder!  Anyway, she did manage to get six pairs of sneakers/church shoes, so the trip was worth it because it was on average less than $20 per pair!  Yahoo!

Phrase of the week:  Kaleb was quite excited when he found out that Kieran was coming to the corn maze with us, and informed us "Kieran - REALLY fun!"  When we were headed back from the corn maze, we asked Zachary what his favorite thing was about the corn maze.  He clearly took that literally and thought only about the corn maze (instead of the adventure area with the zip line) and he said "Getting OUT!" Ha ha, apparently walking around amidst corn got a bit tiring for him!

Coming out of the bumpy slide on the burlap sack to make him go faster!

Going into the wind tunnel - this was appreciated after we were a bit hot from the corn maze to cool off!

Looking at one of the puzzle stations scattered throughout the corn maze

Posing in the corn

Trying out a teeter-totter

The zipline

Karis running with Kaleb on the zipline

This made Karis' heart happy - a tractor made out of hay bales!

Not a Moment to Spare

Every holiday season, it just seems like it is insanely busy - but every year we wonder how can it get so busy, did we imagine it last year?  Well, last weekend began the craziness once again of our holiday season - so hence no post because we didn't have time to sit down and write it!  Apologies!

We started off the weekend with Zachary (and many other little kids) participating in the church service at church.  The little kids were the "king's courtiers" bringing money to the church (we're fundraising to build a new parking lot at the church) - they all had costumes on, and then picked up the offering.  It was quite precious - and at one point Zachary and his friend Blake were standing right beside the pastor, and he had his hands on their heads - as if it was rehearsed, it was perfect for the "scene" at the king's court!

Immediately after that, we hurried over to the Bergherm home for their "Give Thanks" potluck - everyone brought over items for the Harbor House, which is a home for women and children. It was great fun to see everyone and visit. Jennifer is very crafty, and made a turkey cut-out for the kids.

That night, we began the "Celebrate William's 40th Birthday" extravaganza weekend. A group of of us went mini-golfing in the dark - which we haven't done in years, and it was quite fun. The glow in the dark venue was also something unique! We ended the evening with dinner at Cheesecake - how can that ever go wrong! :)

The next morning, Karis and I (thanks to Grandma) headed solo out for breakfast with a long-time friend, Tim Martin, who we haven't seen in years - he was in town for continuing education, so we had a lovely breakfast catching up with him. Not to waste a single moment, we then rushed from breakfast over to Zachary's final soccer game. They gave out little trophies to the kids after the game, so Zachary was pleased as punch! We'll sign him up again in after Christmas for the next season of soccer.

The kids were all lined up to receive their trophy, and Kaleb didn't want to be left out, so he ran over and sat beside Blake!

 The boys with their trophies

After the conclusion of soccer, we went over to the park for cake and ice cream for Will's birthday - this celebration was fun as the kids were able to participate. The gag gifts for Will were "princess" dress-up items. He was a very good sport and managed to put on all of the gifts that folks had brought for him!

 As soon as the cake festivities were over, we headed on home and began preparations for this year's Florida Hospital gala that night. This is always a fun event to get dressed up for a fancy night out. It was fun to see the folks who we sit with (they are lawyers from Chicago) - we've been blessed to sit with them now for three or four years, so it's great fun to sit with people that you know, because the evening is full of fun conversation and laughing. The food and the entertainment was not the best that we've ever had, but it was still a great evening out.

Whew - so last weekend was kind of crazy!  The week has been equally crazy with Amy having to work very long hours at work in order to prepare for a big meeting on Monday even in light of the short Thanksgiving week.

With that in mind - Happy Thanksgiving, and we'll try and do a faster job of posting this weekend!

Phrase of the week:  "My cah!"  Kaleb has always been much more interested in cars than Zachary has, and he has taken to going to bed with a little car.  When you go in the morning he's usually quite distressed if he doesn't know where his car is!  Zachary's question was "How did the angel get into the lion's den with Daniel if the door wasn't open!"  Auntie Kelli fielded that question as she was putting him down to bed - it sure makes you think about how to explain things that we've just taken for granted, and explain them in a way that a four year-old can understand!

Growing Up Too Fast

We've been told that the second child grows up much faster than the first one does (even when as parents we try and baby the second one...) and we can definitely attest to this in some ways with Kaleb.  Zachary for the first time started to go up at church for the story-time and would sit by himself listening to the story a few weeks ago.  After about two weeks of this, Kaleb decided that he was not to be left out of this, and so now at 2 1/2 he's also going up to the story-time!  Mommy goes with them, but she sits on the front pew while they sit up on the stairs - ready just in case Kaleb decides that he wants to wander around up on stage! :)  Thankfully this hasn't happened yet, although Kaleb does decide that he thinks other stairs look more interesting, so sometimes will move around during the children's story.  Harmless enough we tell ourselves!  He is also drinking out of a "big boy" cup at meals now as well (although he still perhaps isn't quite ready for this entirely as he tends to "dip" his utensils in the water instead of drinking it, and then invariably it spills everywhere if he's too vigorous!)

Kaleb is sitting on the left looking who knows where, and Zachary is sitting three kids to the right of Kaleb in the stripped sweater.

Zachary continues with his soccer league, and seems to be really enjoying it after a bit of a rocky start. The weather has cooled off, which helps him not to over-heat so much. It is amazing how much better the kids have gotten in only 4 games!  Zachary does still have a habit though of just kicking the ball in the direction that he's running - regardless of whether that's out of bounds or towards the OTHER goal! :)

Last weekend, the Adventist church school here, FLEC - had their Fall festival.  We took the kids after soccer and they had a blast with the firetrucks, ambulances, petting zoo, bounce houses etc.

Zachary on the fire truck looking at all of the levers

 Zachary inside the ambulance - we've seen enough of these to last a lifetime!

 Kaleb running through one of the bounce obstacle courses

 Zachary getting up close and personal with a duck

 Zachary and a baby goat having a little conversation (Kaleb was not interested in getting close to the animals or touching them, but he was intrigued from afar!)

Phrase of the week:  Ok - we all know that conversations like these will happen, but at FOUR???  So, Daddy was telling Zachary what he looked like when he was born and how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed he was.  Well, Zachary then looks at Mommy and says "Mommy, how did I get out of your tummy?"  Hmm, how to answer this......so Mommy says "I pushed you out" to which he says "What, do you mean like you pooped me out?"  AHHH - get us out of this conversation please!!!!!  Kaleb's phrase thankfully is benign and demonstrates how much he takes after his mother's love of peanut butter.  He has become obsessed with peanut butter, and asks for "appoes" so that he can have peanut butter, and he has figured out that he can just use the apple to get peanut butter up to his mouth to eat the peanut butter, forget the apple!  Well, he pointed to the peanut butter jar tonight and clear as a bell says "Pea-butter, I LOVE it!"  He then jams his whole hand into the peanut butter on his plate and shoves a huge glob into his mouth.  Yum - and his Mommy looked on wishing that she too was eating that peanut butter if it wouldn't all end up on her hips!!!! :)

Kaleb "flying" like a helicopter through the air with Daddy - oh what fun!

Drunk as a Skunk

This week, Amy quite possibly had her first "drunk" experience.  Never having imbibed a drop of alcohol in her life, this was of course a virgin experience and it happened through.....drinking too much water!  The caveat to this story is that we're not medical professionals, so it could all be made up, but the situation seemed to fit the explanation that we read on the internet later, so why not!? Never having heard of water intoxication before, this was a new term and while it can't be confirmed that is what she has, it makes for a nice title of this week's post! :)  Confession is good for the soul, so last Sunday Amy weighed herself to discover that she had gained a fairly big amount of weight in the last week'ish or so.  Horrified, she decided that it must be water weight, so decided to focus on drinking what used to be a normal amount of water when she was nursing (yet not nursing anymore, so perhaps a bit much...).  Amy loves to drink water, so this really is not a big deal. So as Monday went by, she drank about 5-6 large water bottles at work, along with a few other cups of water at home.  Sure enough, by the end of that day, she had lost 6 pounds!!!  CRAZY.

The next day, she just continued to drink the same 5-6 bottles of water, but noticed that as the day went by, she was not excreting the water and her head started to hurt, feel a bit lightheaded or "fuzzy," her stomach started to hurt and feel a bit nauseous, had hiccups at least 5-6 times in the span of a few hours, and her skin started to have a tight, "pulsy" feeling.  She got a wicked headache, so was pretty wiped out by that night. Odd.  By the end of the day, she had gained the same 6 pounds BACK!  The next day, looking at a glass of water made her slightly ill so she tempered her water intake, taking only about 3 water bottles throughout the day.  Her body seemed to recover from the wild swings of water that day and started to try and normalize itself out.  She's religiously been drinking the 3 bottles of water at work to try and keep a 'norm' for her body, and hasn't had a repeat of the experience - whew!

Last week we enjoyed having some friends over with their kids.  The children are all girls with the exception of baby Kohlden who is still a bit young to really play yet.  So, the whole "girls and boys" differences was very interesting to watch.  Our boys are quite rough and tumble, very rowdy, and very loud.  At one point, they were all on the back deck pushing each other back and forth in the cars, when Zachary bumped his car into the other little girl's car.  Now, just as an aside, this is quite normal for our boys - they'll often bash their cars into each other and then laugh uproariously.  However, this is not normal for this little girl, and she very seriously informed Zachary, "Zachary, that's BAD BEHAVIOR!"  Ha ha ha ha - too funny, we all cracked up.  We'll have to remind him of that in the future.  When they left, the same little girl walked up to him though and gave him a hug and a big kiss on the lips! So it looks like all was forgiven.  The kids seemed to have a fun time playing together, and of course much of this was due to Auntie Kelli who kept them entertained the whole time!

Yikes!!  Kaleb is playing with the barbies that Calleigh brought over!

Playing with the Thomas the Train book that makes sounds

 Duncan showing Karis the constellation app on his new smartphone, so they were figuring out what constellations were above our house (it has a GPS so shows you which ones are above your sky - very neat)

  This Elefun game rarely makes it out of the box, so it was nice that it was getting some use!

The weather has definitely turned winter-ish here in Florida with a high today of only 65 degrees. It was downright chilly going to church - brr!!

Phrase:  Kaleb's word this week to questions has become "cause" - as in "because" - so, it has started already with this one, so if you ask him why, he'll answer "cause."  AHH - even Zachary will say to him, "Kaleb, that's not an answer!" :) At least we've trained the older child well by this point! :)  Zachary's this week is actually just noting that he can count to 100, and he can also now count by 2s.  He LOVES numbers (counting, the time on clocks etc) so perhaps he'll be an accountant like Mommy or an engineer like Papa-Z!

Reading with Grandma a new story

What Makes Me Happy

One of the Adventurer campout homework assignments was to make a list of 20 things that make you happy.  Zachary did his assignment with Miss Jennifer this week, and the items below were his list:

1.  Playing with Blake
2.  Playing soccer
3.  Going to SeaWorld  (he got to go on Friday, so he was anxiously awaiting this outing!)
4.  Reading books
5.  Going to Sabbath School (what a blessed change from a year ago when he would be upset about going to church and even in Sabbath School he would be kind of dis-engaged)  Yippee!
6.  Playing dinosaurs
7.  Going to grandma's house
8.  Playing outside
9.  Eating!
10.  Listening to music (we received a child's version of the Lord's Prayer which he asks to play every day in the car)
11.  Riding his bike
12.  Going to Ms. Jennifer's house
13. Cooking with mommy
14.  Playing with Auntie Kelli
15.  Mowing the grass with Daddy
16.  Going to the Deiningers house
17.  Swimming
18.  Playing Thomas Trains
19.  Going to the park
20.  Taking gymnastics

He also had to draw a picture of his family, which this is the first family drawing that he's ever done, so we had to include the picture here!  It's the small things in life that we can be happy about, because this is the first time as well that his stick people didn't have legs coming out of their cheeks on their faces! :)

In other news, our friend little Luke D had appendicitis last night, so had to have emergency surgery this morning to remove his appendix.  Thankfully it did not rupture, and the surgery was done laproscopically so he'll soon be up and at it again.  Zachary has been enamored with having his friend Adam here for the day, and wants him to stick around rather than go home! :) 

Chef Adam helping to make the dessert for Saturday night

Phrase of the week:  Kaleb's thing this week was to ask for Mommy to sing "Jesus Loves the Little Children" and substitute "children" for names such as "mommy, daddy" etc - he went through many names but one kind of stumped her for a minute until she realized that he was asking for her to sing about Aunt Louise, but he said "Wheeze!" (phonetically that's what it sounded like, but he was trying to say her name! :).  Zachary phrase this week was: "Mommy, do trains eat food?"  Mommy's answer was "No." to which he said "Why not, they 'choo'?!"  Ha ha, he was dead serious but it was so funny we had to laugh!

Playing the memory game with Grandma

Reading a new story together

Action Jackson

Well, as promised, we'll give an update on last week's crazy whirlwind activities.  We're beginning to wonder if this might be our new life, because this weekend is going to be just as crazy! :)

We went off to Zachary's first ever Adventurer campout....or should we say camp-"in."  We went to the Pine Lake Retreat, which is complete with cabins that families can stay in.  We stayed in a cabin with Deiningers and Jennifer Bergherm and her son Blake.  The four boys were beside themselves with excitement, which translated into very little sleep.  We finally had to remove Luke and Blake to other rooms, which meant that the final sleep arrangements had Adam, Zachary and Auntie Lisa is one room (two twin bunk beds), Luke and Uncle Rob in another room (queen bed), with Miss Jennifer, Blake, Amy and Karis in another room that had two bunk beds.  Zachary woke up at 4:30 the next morning (after a 10P go-to-sleep time), which just about gave Mommy a stroke!  But, being outside all day is wonders for good moods, so the boys really did well.  We had a worship in the morning.....during which they announced that our beloved Pastor Morris is leaving our Forest Lake Church....many of us were super upset about this, and he will be greatly missed.  Our prayer now is that they find the right pastor to take his place, because these are big shoes to fill.  Anyway, after that there was much playing on the playgrounds, and MANY bike rides.  Deiningers went for a canoe trip in the afternoon so Zachary and Blake went down for a much-needed nap.

The boys wrestling in their room - it was quite the dog pile, and thankfully no-one got hurt!

The night we had a hayride, which the boys really enjoyed, smores (which Amy is not convinced that there is anything special about smores - they're just not that great!), and then playing in the bounce-house in the gymnasium.  The kids had a blast.

The glowsticks around their necks/wrists were a highlight as well, along with the singing on the tractor/hayride.

First campfire "smores"

The next morning we got up bright and early, and hightailed it back home to pick up Grandma and Kaleb (who had spent a well-rested weekend together!) and went to Zachary's very first soccer game.  He did very well, but between the heat, being knocked over several times, and perhaps general laziness he wanted to just sit and watch by the last period (bribes worked however in getting him back out on the field!).   

Zachary, Blake & Luke

Coach Eli with the kids - Zachary has asked for a whistle like Coach Eli!

Zachary's cheering fans

Love the little shinguards that Zachary has on!

Phrase of the week:  "Daddy, I want to be bald"  Zachary may just get his wish someday to have no hair like daddy, and then we'll remind him that he brought this on himself!  Kaleb's word this week was "tweat!!!" when he begged to get some of the M&M's that Zachary's Sabbath School had handed out.

Kaleb had a rough nap one day, so Amy ended up sleeping with him on the floor in his room for a while - after which she snuck out of the room, and he continued to sleep on the floor for another hour!  Oh to be so young and pliable!

Busy, Busy Bees

We have been busy bees this weekend, or rather busy Little Lambs! :)  We joined Zachary into Little Lambs this year for Adventurers at church, and this was the family campout weekend. We also had the very first soccer game, AND a birthday party today! :) We'll post all about it next weekend, but that's the reason for the late post.  With exhaustion reigning, this will be a short post with just some random pictures from the last few weeks! :)

The boys have a tradition when they get out of the shower on Sabbath that they MUST lay on their towel beds (two towels please mommy!!)  They usually end up wrapped like little burritos before it's all said and done as well.

Amy has become a serious coupon addict (it began when Karis complained that we spent too much on groceries, so she took the job of grocery shopping back and began to seriously work on reducing the cost - which we have successfully reduced the cost by at least $40-$50 per week from what we used to spend, and we have a lot more to show for it!).  Anyway, she stock-piled up on a bunch of cereal that we eat int his picture.  Our house isn't great on the storage space, so we became creative and used what SHOULD be the TV cabinet in our office to store it!  We don't have a TV there because we just don't watch enough TV to make it worthwhile, but it is a great place to store diapers and cereal! :))

The boys discovered the great fun of dragging the leather ottomans over to the couch and using them as launching pads - here you can see Zachary flying through the air.  Kaleb was not far behind, although he usually manages to just clear the arm of the couch at this point.

Phrase of the week:  "How many T's is it, Mommy?"  Zachary figured out that his clothes sizes usually have a T in them, such as 4T (although somewhere around 5, they drop the T and it just becomes the number itself).  So now Zachary will ask How many T's is it for clothes and for his shoes (which the T doesn't apply for shoes, but it is too cute to correct!).  Kaleb's word is "Fun!" - he loves to tell you the things that he thinks are "fun!" - and it can range from pointing at Miss Jennifer's (babysitter) van where lots of fun things happen to using it as a way of convincing you that he should be allowed to do whatever activity is next on the docket.  He is very convicted about "fun" activities, and truthfully he has never called anything fun that really wasn't, so he definitely gets it! :)