Think Family.Net

Yes, I’m alive and well! It’s been so long since I’ve written. Things have been so busy around here…

• At the beginning of July we went to San Francisco for a week for Kevin’s grandmother’s funeral. That was a neat experience. I love the weather there.

• When we got home, my mother came for a visit. We shopped till we dropped and then tried to make some plan as to how I’m going to clean out my office/weight room and make it a baby’s room. You know… where to put the desk, the TV, the weights, and all the miscellaneous junk that has accumulated in here over time. That left me we a huge task and a huge mess that I am still trying to dig out from under it and figure out where to put another baby…
• On top of that, I’m just swamped with web design work….

Update on the kids

Jax:

• 22 months and STILL never stops moving…
• He has however been evicted from our bed and has his very own twin size big boy bed. He does pretty good. He still wakes up a couple of times a night and cries for me… I go and lay with him until he’s back to sleep and then go back to my bed…or sleep there…if I fall asleep. Man, I’m tired….
• He’s now taking a Gymboree class. He’s not much of a “group” person. He pretty much does his own thing until they break out the bubbles or the little purple clown.
• He’s saying quite a few new words and phrases such as oh-well, mine, GO, Ready-set-go, Natalia( NaTahyiah), bubble, Ashton(AhEEEY or Sissy) and baby… just to name a few. He knows a lot more… he just chooses not to say them most of the time.
• I’d like to say that potty training is in our near future so that we could get him out of diapers before the new baby… but I don’t think he’s anywhere near ready yet….
• His eating habits are getting better… He’s still eating ALOT of fruit and downing the soy milk like you wouldn’t believe..but now he eats chicken and steak and CORN on the COB!! He still won’t try the normal things kids love like mac and cheese and potatoes….I guess I shouldn’t complain.
  

Ashton:

• is getting ready for a big 2 week trip to west Texas. She’s going to visit Grandy, Nana, and Unca Bubba in August. I’ve heard them speak of trips to a huge playground and out to the farm to see her goat who has had babies recently( I think). There will be lots of golf and boating… She is super thrilled.
• She will be starting the 3rd grade at the end of August at a new school that is within walking distance. She is so excited to walk to school. I will be meeting her half way for a while.. I’ll walk to where I can see the school. I just don’t trust all those nuts out there and I need the exercise.
  

The new baby-

• Who we are calling Kylie Marie (unless something was hiding on the ultrasound).
• I think we are going to do a 3D ultrasound in a few weeks.
• I’ve sold some of Jax’s clothes and bought some girly things, but not a lot. I’m still a little scared!
• I’m now 23 1/2 weeks and she’s kicking like crazy.
• MOST of the morning sickness is gone…FINALLY.
• I have developed some weird issue where something is pinched and my arms go numb when I sleep or type (like right now). It’s quite annoying and painful sometimes. I’m seeing if a chiropractor can fix it. She thinks it’s pregnancy induced. I’ve been once and I think it’s helped a little. We’ll see.

That’s all I can think about right now. I have lots of random pics on my phone to share soon. Look forward to those. I promise I won’t wait another month to post again. Sorry!!! I’m off to the chiropractor now…

We stopped by to drop something off at Maimie’s house this morning. As we pulled up, I noticed Carmen standing inside the house looking out the window with her phone in hand. She ran out and told me, “Not, get out of car, mom - SNAKE!” I looked around to make sure the coast was clear.. I got out and she explained to me that a huge snake was in the bushes. I got Jax out of the car and we made a mad dash for the front door… Well, as mad of a dash as a pregnant woman could. (Picture - Hippo running from a lion or something)

Animal control was called. 2 very brave women were sent out. Animal control explained that most snakes in our region are not poisonous. She proceeded to walk through and wrestle her way through the bushes looking for the illusive snake. There is no way you could have gotten me to go in any bushes LOOKING for a snake.. even if it was PROBABLY not poisonous. The key word is PROBABLY. What if it was, and it was is lost or something? Poison aside - it more than likely still has large sharp and pointy fangs that would probably not feel too swell, were you to accidentally piss it off or something.

Anyways…  It was a 4 foot rat snake, so it wasn’t poisonous. She caught the snake and held it for Jax to touch. He wasn’t too sure. He would only get so close then he would run off. It was the funniest thing. His favorite part was when it flickered it’s tongue at him. He mimicked it perfectly. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that… but I didn’t have my camera out at that point. As the lady was packing the snake up in a pillow cloth to take it to where ever snakes are safe… it made a final attempt at freedom via a HOLE in the pillow cloth… We all screamed and ran off… She caught the snake again. It’s a good thing she found out about the hole before she tossed it under the seat in her truck… OR It would have been an interesting ride to snakeville.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get these pictures up. I’ve been busy with so many other things. Like playing World of Warcraft, cleaning my house, and just having a lack of desire to write… Sorry… Here they are!

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While we were in Mexico we did a lot of swimming. One of those HOT days, after a dip in the pool, I was getting ready to run Jax through the shower. I took his clothes and his diaper off and realized that I needed to make pee pee in a bad way. So I put Jax outside on the patio in a chair next to Kevin. I told Kev I’d be right back and ran to do my business. After finishing, I decided to gather Jax’s necessities for the bath.

All of the sudden I hear Kevin yelling, “DIAPER!! DIAPER! He’s POOPING!”

I hurried, as fast as I could, to get there with the diaper… It was too late. Much to my surprise, I walk around the corner and see Kevin holding a handful of POOP! His mother walks up and we are both laughing so hard that neither of us could help him. I was trying not to wet the floor.

Kevin then said, “laugh it up… at least it didn’t get on the nice chair.” For that, I am glad. It would have been hard to clean up. Needless to say, Kev felt like he did his duty and granted me diaper privileges for the rest of the trip… or he tried anyways!

It was a knee slapper…. Guess you had to be there! I wish I could have gotten to my camera in time… It was truly a Kodak moment! The look on Kevin’s face was priceless… Jax thought it was funny too.

Here is a slide show from our visit to Tulum. I’m sure there is some significance to each picture I took…. but all I remember was that it was darn HOT! I hurried between small patches of shade trying to keep from having a heat stroke while the guide told us all about the crazy beliefs of the Mayan people. I tried to make really educated captions for the pictures.. but frankly… I obviously wasn’t paying attention… sorry… I was trying not to die…. did I mention that it was HOT?

We are back from Mexico. We had a lot of fun, but I am glad to be home. It’s tough being away from home with a baby… and being pregnant too. I thought I would share two of my favorite pictures with you for now. Basically, I’m too tired to put up the other ones… soon….. I will get them up soon….

Here is Ashton - flying through the air!

Here is Jackson - chilling by the pool, looking cool in his shades, while holding his sucker with his monkey toes… The talent…

More to come later… along with some interesting stories about Kevin’s poop catching abilities and my apparent brush with a jelly fish or poison ivy or something…..

Saturday the kids and I went fishing with the one and only Mr. Whiskers who is my grandfather. We had a lot of fun. Captain Jackson searched for the perfect spot find fish.

He took us directly to the spot by using the on-board fish navigation finder.

We dropped anchor and cast our bobbers out, and low and behold we had hit it big. I believe I reeled in the first fish of the day. It was a lovely channel cat with a belly full of disgusting soured grain. Then Ashton, was next. She had to work really hard to bring in the fish.

She finally did it, many many times.

Next Jackson hooked him a nice fish. He wanted to touch it and hold it so bad!!

His interest only lasted a little while. He ended up bailing on us when we docked for a potty break. He found much more interest in the extension cord in the back of Granddad’s pickup truck. So him and Granddad stayed behind so we could fish a bit more. We ended up netting more than 30 keepers in a short amount of time. It was great. I guess that stinky bait really works! I was amazed. I always am!! The kids really enjoyed it!

Visit Mr. Whisker’s site to get some of this awesome bait or to inquire about booking a fun family fishing trip.

Click on the link below and enter our poll. See if you can be the one who predicts when our baby will be born. Tell us what sex you think it will be. And if you think you know… how big will baby #3 be?

Insider tips:

• Peanut #3: due date 11/15/2008
• Ashton: due date 2/13 born 1/27 (37.5 weeks), 6lbs. 4 oz., 19 3/4 inches
• Jackson: due date 9/12 born 9/05 (39 weeks), 9lbs. 7oz., 21 inches

Ok… Guess away!!!

WARNING: This will be a long post. I’ve been gone all week and I have a lot of catching up to do! It’s worth the grueling time it takes you to read it though. Yup..

Last Sunday the kids and I ventured out and took a 6 hour road trip to visit the family in W. Texas. We left the house before the sun came up, hoping that Jackson would sleep most of the way. He slept for a little while, but not as long as I had hoped. So Ashton had to find random things to entertain him in-between shoveling cheerios into his mouth. She tried baby dolls. But he wasn’t thrilled.

Trying to keep Jax happy is a hard job. It made Ashton a little crazy!

Being the only adult in the car made me a little crazy so I started taking random pictures of things on the way. Like these lovely windmills.

We did make it to our destination in time to rest… for a few minutes. We had quite a busy week.

Monday we went to a kids science museum. They had a really neat dinosaur exhibit showcasing the “new” dinosaur that they found in S. America, the Gigantosaurus. It’s supposedly bigger than the T-Rex. It was huge. I’m not sure what Jax thought of all the giant moving monsters, but his expression never changed from his normal very serious look. I’d love to know what goes on in his little mind sometimes.

Here is my “Ashyosaurus”.

Ashton and Nana had a great time doing all of the little experiments while Jax and I headed to tot land. There, Jax had a heck of a time playing in the water.

There were SO many things for him to get into, that he had a blast. He LOVES those kind of places. He was in heaven!

On Tuesday, it was COLD and WINDY. I HATE the wind in W. Texas. I’m quite sure that’s the reason that I never moved back there. There is just something irritating about constantly having sand in your teeth. Not sexy… Anyways… remember those goats? Well, Ashton wanted to go check on them. So we braved the cold wind and went to visit those stinky things. There is really no way that one could confuse these animals with one spec of cuteness. Their eyes are strange. They make the ugliest, tongue thrusting , BLAAAAAAAAAA, noise. AND… they don’t really care about hygiene. I suppose some people eat them and call it cabrito, but I can’t imagine that they taste good at all… They are nasty… They eat food covered in their own waste… (Ashton pointed this out)

That being said… We got a goat! KINDA… Well Ashton was given a goat. It WILL stay there on the farm, but she was able to name it. It’s her goat. It was 4 days old. Here it is. Introducing “Taylor”.

Jax wasn’t quite sure what to think about the goats. He seemed to want to squeeze their noses for some reason. He did perfect his “BLAAAAAAAAAA” and has now begun speaking the language of the goat.

Ashton was beaming from ear to ear.

Ashton was fascinated by the goats jumping on their mother’s backs.

While Ashton was playing with the goats and I was taking pictures… (I’m not going in their pin) Jackson took his great Nana on a hike.

On Wednesday the weather was MUCH nicer and we were able to take the kids to play with Unca Bubba at an awesome playground. I wish they had something like this in our neighborhood.

At first, Jackson was asleep, but I woke him up. This playground was too much fun to miss.

After a couple of hours at the playground we were enticed by the nice weather to go see the goats again, since our previous visit was cut short by the freezing wind. This time, Jax got a kick out of throwing baby pumpkins to the goats. He was so fascinated by the pumpkins that we somehow ended up bringing two of them home with us.

Jackson got really brave and was feeding the goats some bread. He almost got a kiss from one of the goats. Nana saved his life!

While Jax was fascinated with the pumpkins… Ash was worried about the “lop-sided” pregnant goat.

Thursday we came home. The kids watched movies all the way home.

We had a great trip, but are glad to be home.

1. Write a book about my life.
2. Obtain a degree in psychology.
3. Cruise the Mediterranean.
4. Tour Canada by train.
5. See my kids graduate from college.
6. Have grandkids(not too soon though).
7. Go island hopping in Hawaii.
8. Go to Disney World.
9. Tour castles in Ireland.
10. Celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary ( August 27, 2055)
11. See Kev happy in his job or see him CHANGE careers.
12. Visit Mt. Shasta..I’ve heard so much…
13. Take a gondola ride in Venice
14. Eat in one of the restaurants of the following people: Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Gordan Ramsay, Mario Batali
    
15. See a president elected that will do our country some good
16. Build a custom house (not with my hands… but have one built)
17. See teachers get the pay the deserve
18. Learn Spanish
19. Save someones life
20. Take a month long vacation exploring Europe
21. RV or SUV across the Eastern US.
22. Eat lobster in Maine
23. Visit Australia
24. Catch a Jackalope
25. Eat Swiss chocolate in Switzerland