Beautiful Spring in Florida

Floridians really suffer in the heat for much of the year, but this is really the BEST time to live in Florida - it is so beautiful this time of year!  We try to take advantage of it by going outside as much as possible, and it is this time of year that we have our annual picnic with a group of friends.  Sadly this year, not many of us "usuals" were able to come, but we were pleased to have some new families join us.  The weather cooperated and was beautiful all day.

Kaleb and Kieran are two peas in a pod - and they just play SO WELL together!  We're thankful that the Cochrans moved here for many reasons, but this is a big one!

Braelyn hanging out with Zachary and Luke

Kieran - a dream child who will actually take a nap in his Daddy's arms out at the park!?  Whose child does that?  Certainly not the Z children! :)

Crazy Kaleb - walking around with a camp chair bag completely over his head - waiting to see when he'd run into something or trip!

Playing the tree made for a perfect picture moment

Last weekend we went over to the Isidros to celebrate Braelyn's birthday with a arts and crafts extravaganza.  It was very fun, but the true highlight was when the Dads had to do a three-legged race - our friend William and his partner won the race!

William and his partner in the heat of the battle (middle of the picture both in green shirts)

Crafting it up

The highlight of the party - a pile of puppies (aka children!) piling onto the hammock and swinging wildly!

Phrase of the week:   "Red!"  This has probably been mentioned in the past, but Amy swears that Kaleb is color-blind for greens and reds.  Now, we will confess that we've been wrong in the past (such as we thought FOR SURE that Kaleb was going to be left-handed and it is now quite clear that he is right-handed), so we'll see what happens in this situation.   Kaleb has been a little slower than his brother (okay, much slower) to learn his colors but he's finally getting many of the colors right (blue is always right, and the others are a little more hit or miss).  However, he NEVER gets green right - he always calls it red.  Karis swears that Kaleb only does it when Amy is around, so she must be the weakest color link in the Z-family (as an aside, Karis says this last night to Amy as she's drinking a glass of water - to which she begins to laugh, then cough, then choke so badly that Karis is asking her if he needs to do the Heimlich maneuver on her!  Thankfully she did not need to undergo this technique, but it was sweet relief when she finally got an unencumbered breath of air!).  So, this documents the 'wondering' of whether Kaleb is color-blind and hopefully we'll remember in a few months to come back and give an update!  Zachary's favorite phrase lately is "Mommy, where does [fill in the blank - usually animal related] live?" so we've been making good use of our map in our dining room lately to discuss where our relatives and wild animals live.

Fifth Disease

Welcome to the world of parenting - all kinds of crazy illnesses that you've never heard of before.  On Wednesday, Kaleb woke up with a red rash on both checks, but when Amy picked him up from the bed it just looked like he was flushed from sleeping (the time zone change has meant that Kaleb has been sleeping in until 8A when Amy has to WAKE the poor kid up every day in order to get out the door) - but the rash didn't go away throughout the day.  But, he didn't seem to be feeling bad, no fever etc.  The next day the rash is a bright, fire-engine red color - so our dear friend Jennifer & babysitter extraordinaire offered to swing him by the doctors office on the way home from the library.  Diagnosis......Fifth Disease - aka "slapped cheek."  Apparently this is fairly common for kids to have, and when the rash appears on their face, they're no longer contagious.

This is the day after we started putting Cortaid on his face, so it is MUCH MUCH better (not the fire engine red that it was the day before), but you can still see the remnants of the rash on both of his cheeks.

We're waiting to see if anyone else will get it (although about 50% of adults have already been exposed and thus are immune).  The one stinky thing about it is that it isn't great for pregnant women to be around, as it can be a risk for about 5% of pregnant women to the fetus.  Our friend Kelli is of course pregnant, and she saw Kaleb last weekend at church (although thankfully he did not sit with her the entire church service), so we were a bit concerned that she could have been exposed but so far so good.

The other thing that occurred this weekend which really could bring Amy to tears is that Kaleb has discovered how to get INTO his crib.  Why would this be a downer, you ask?  Because we can only imagine that it will be a short amount of time before he figures out how to get OUT of the crib!!!!  Soon, the random middle-of-the-night wake-up calls will begin.....ouch, it makes us tired just thinking about it.  That transition phase is just not fun!

Phrase of the week:  Zachary and Kaleb are REALLY into animals right now, and so we read a lot of animal books for bedtime stories.  Kaleb is always particular about telling you which animal is the mommy, daddy, Zachary and Kaleb (so cute that he calls the baby animals by his and Zachary's names!).  When we get to the kangaroo portion of the books, he'll say "Look, baby kee-roo!"  A few weeks ago, Zachary was playing a game with Grandma and informed her "Grandma, you're pretty good at this game for being old!"  Just what a lady wants to hear! :)

Getting filthy in their mud pies - what great fun!

Kieran & Kaleb getting a ride upside down on Uncle William!

Kaleb and Kieran playing in the sand

Riding tandem on the tricycle

Grandma Norma!

Last week, we had the treat of Grandma Norma coming to Orlando.  It was the sad event of her sister's funeral, but we did enjoy seeing her very much.  Zachary remembered Grandma Norma and how she taught him to play the "Numbers game" (aka Trouble), so he insisted on having a game with her.  She beat him twice to his one win which did result in a near cry, but she taught him a little about the fact that life is like that, and it doesn't mean that someone else is smarter etc, and he seemed to handle it alright.

Other than that, it was a relatively quiet week with Amy flying up  Atlanta for a day trip to do some training while the boys stayed close to home.  We're looking forward to the end of allergy season here, as we're beginning to wonder if Amy has allergies - it seems like she has been getting a sore throat and swollen lymph glands every 1-2 weeks for the last 6 weeks or so but it has never developed into an actual cold.  It is hard to tell, and fingers crossed it isn't something else.  Amy's mom went back to work after her hip surgery, which she recovered from amazingly fast.  The minimally invasive surgery that she has had now both times really does seem like the best way to go.

This was the week that Amy was able to sneak away from work in order to go watch Zachary in his gymnastics class.  He is the oldest child there, and as such, the teacher has him go first etc for the different exercises.  He has really come a long way in his coordination and abilities - it is really fun to watch since he began last Fall.  With being the "first" in most things, he's also getting a lot of confidence and really trying hard to catch on to what the teacher is asking them to do.  Hopefully we'll start Kaleb next year into gymnastics.



Phrase of the week:  Mommy, what is a EP?  A leader (he was trying to say VP).  What does a VP do?  They make decisions.  What kind of decisions?  At this point in the conversation, Karis can't help himself and starts to laugh - saying "Zachary, those are VERY good questions that the rest of us workers would like to know - what are they DOING!?" Kaleb's favorite word this week is "blue" - perhaps this is the one color that he knows consistently, and he wants to have a blue spoon or fork at every meal!  Good thing over the years we've accumulated a lot of them!

Just like Daddy, ready to shave with shaving cream on his face!

First Time Skiing!

This was the annual trip to the  CFO conference, which is also the annual skiing trip.  This was the first year that we took Zachary - believing that he was at the optimum age (in that 5 range, although he's technically one month shy of 5 years old!) to learn.  We headed off to Deer Valley, Utah on an early morning flight in which Amy was a bit nervous about that long of a flight with a plane full of coworkers.  She brought an arsenal of entertainment options, with the fallback option of the DVD and kid-friendly educational apps on the I-touch.  But, we're pleased to say that both the trip out and back, she managed to entertain him the whole time without the use of electronics!  This feels like quite an achievement as it would be SO MUCH EASIER to just turn on the power button and sit back to relax the trip, but she  wanted to keep him engaged rather than mesmerized.

Anyway, we were fortunate to have our friends the Johnsons, Deiningers and Cochrans come with us.  We were able to get an early check-in, so we headed up to the condos (we had rented two side by side to accommodate everyone) to see if Zachary, Luke, and Kieran would take naps (which they did) while Karis, Kent, Rob, Adam and William headed off to Brighton to ski.

Monday was the first day of ski school for Zachary and Luke - while Lisa and Amy nervously waited for the outcome.  Zachary was emphatic at the end of the day that "I didn't learn anything, I didn't like it, and I'm NOT GOING BACK"   Zachary is a bit of a perfectionist, and if he doesn't master something in the first day, he doesn't want to do it again - and it appears that he had a hard time making the 'pizza' shape with his skis that first day.  So, Amy gave him the pep talk of "you learn a little bit every day - and someday you'll be able to ski with Daddy!"  That didn't work, so she moved on to "In life, you have to learn perseverance because lots of things are hard, and you won't learn everything in one day."  That didn't work either, so she moved on to "I'm sorry you don't like it, but we've paid for a week of ski school and you'll certainly be going whether you like it or not.  I only expect you to TRY your best, and to LISTEN to the instructor."  At that point, Zachary finally seemed to capitulate and informed her "Fine, I'll go back tomorrow but I want a LADY instructor this time, not a man!"

Thankfully, Tuesday through Thursday went fantastic in ski school and on Thursday the Z-parents picked him up from ski school and actually skied down the bunny hill with him 4'ish times.  He could have kept going on all afternoon but we decided that a nap was necessary as we'd be on the plane again the next day.  He LOVED it, and seemed to be doing fantastic with the pizza shape (with a little help from the 'edgie-wedgie' elastic bands which help them from getting the skis too far apart) - he turned and stopped very well and loved going fast down the hill.

The other highlights of the trip was a sleigh ride at the conference dinner (which actually came in handy as an incentive (aka bribe) in order to go back to ski school the next day) and a tubing adventure at Gorgoza Park.  Zachary loved the tubing experience as well, so it was a smashing success.  Sleep was at a precious minimum with Zachary waking up at 3:30A, 4:30 and finally 6:30 on each respective day.  The last day was also in the 6 range, which we were thankful for!

Karis hurt his back before we left, but managed to recover enough to where he enjoyed himself as well.  Amy had a great time skiing on the first and last day, but will admit that her quads were screaming on the second and third days! :)

Kaleb stayed at home with Grandma to have fun with her, bonding over all kinds of fun activities.  The big highlight is that he's definitely gotten the hang of going "pee in the poddy" so now we're trying to figure out a good weekend to really launch the full-on poddy training.

Phrase of the week:  Zachary informed us on the last night that he wanted to live in "Ew-Tah!"  Kaleb's phrase as he would tell Grandma that he needed to go poddy "It's coming Grandma!"

Zachary in the tube, getting ready to go down the hill

Luke & Zachary

The newest ski lover

A family picture in our ski gear

Skiing on the last day with Karis through the hoops course - very clever for getting them to turn as their skiing in order to go under the hoops!

Zachary is in the blue looking at his instructor in the middle of the picture in the "magic carpet" ski school area

The Deiningers with Adam & Luke, the Cochrans with Kieran, the Johnsons with baby on board, and of course the Z-family

Getting ready for the sleigh ride