A Visit from Santa Elf

This year, our family started a new tradition with the help of this book.


The book comes with this cute little elf, who hides around the house watching the children all day and then returning to Santa each night to report if they have been naughty or nice. Sammy LOVES him and looks for him faithfully every morning. We wanted to think of a creative name for him, but we really wanted Sammy to name him. When we asked Sammy what his name should be, he said, "Elf." (we're working on creativity - maybe next year, he'll be given a better name)


The night we started this tradition, Sammy was heart-broken that he didn't get to play with the elf. So, we gave him a little Santa Claus instead. And from that point on, any Santa that Sammy see's is "Santa Elf." (Driving down the street past a Santa lawn ornament, "Look mom, Santa Elf! See it? See it Mom??" The Santa in the mall = Santa Elf. If he's wearing red, has a beard and carries gifts, he's Santa Elf.)

So here's our sweet Santa Elf wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone has a happy holiday season!

Happy Halloween!!!

Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!

As we walked down the costume isle a few weeks ago, we saw a Buzz and a Woody costume. Sammy LOVES Toy Story. He'll watch it and right when it's over, he'll ask to watch it again. If I say no, he starts crying, "I wanna see Buzz!!" So, his choice of costume this year wasn't very surprising.

Our little punkin!
(I love that she's got her arm around one of them! What a doll!)

We had a great time this year carving our jack-o-lanterns! Sammy was super excited and even scraped out his own pumpkin. We lit them and put them on the porch. Every time we drive out of our house, Sammy says, "Look mom, my punkin!"

Happy Halloween everyone!

Thoughts: On time, and kids, and pooh.

Time flies: Cliche? Yes. True? Yes!

Where did the summer go. For that matter, where did our infant go? She is growing and growing. When I look at her I am always amazed at how big little Katelynn is! Next week she will be 5 months old. Here are my two favorite girls:

I can't believe how much she has grown. She is all smiles and all drool! (I'm not kidding about the drool! I swear she gets de-hydrated every day with the amount of water flowing out her mouth. You can see in a couple of shots the wet spots around her neck. Unreal!) And seriously she is as precious as these pictures.


I think right here she is trying to say go Aggies, but all that came out was YUM!

We've been meaning to post some things for what we've been up to this summer, so stay tuned, hopefully it won't be another month and a half before another post comes up. In the mean time, here is a fun video of Sammy making Katelynn laugh. Sammy loves Katelynn and enjoys holding her and hugging her and touching her face (Sam! Stop touching her face!) I love to see how she absolutely loves her big brother. There are a number of pictures that we've captured that show how much she idolizes and adores Sammy. Already, nobody can make her giggle quite like him. Here you go!

It's moments like these that make you forget all about how they try your patience!

Here's that giggle video I mentioned:

One final thought: Michelle picks me up from work and we're sitting behind a truck waiting to pull out. Sammy from the back seat yells, "Go Go Go!... Come on, My Gosh!" Oops, I guess the road-ragedness is contagious. We'll have to watch how we express our frustration!

Second final thought: Cute: Sammy calls all stuffed animals pooh (because Winnie the Pooh is his biggest bear). Not as cute: Cinnamon bears are therefore called pooh, thus comes: "I want to eat pooh!" (To myself: "be mature, be mature, be mature ... Nope!") Dad: "You want to eat pooh?! Bwahahahaha!!"

Cute Kids

Surprise! We aren't dead! Sorry about the lack of posts in July, and June...and May and pretty much all of 2009. I have lists of things I'd like to post about and zero time or drive to do so.

Here's a quick update on our cute kids.




Katelynn is growing so fast! I can't believe that my newborn has been replaced by this darling baby girl! She started smiling and giggling about 5 weeks ago. The best sound in the world is Katie's sweet giggle!

Here she is on her 3 month birthday! She loves to suck on her knuckles and hands. The drool that comes out of her mouth is positively amazing. She can soak the entire front of her onesie in just a few minutes.

Katelynn has also learned how to kick! She gets so excited to sit in her bouncer and kick at the spiders to make them swing back and forth. Here comes our next soccer player!

Sammy is officially 2 (in June, yeah, I'm behind!). Whenever I try to take his picture, this is the face I get.

He loves to cook with daddy. In the last week they've made cookies and waffles together. When I ask Sammy what he want for breakfast in the morning he says, "awffles, okay" and then runs to his high chair.

And finally, we have started potty-training! Sort of. I'm just not that motivated to actually hunker down and get started on it. I'd much rather change a diaper where the poop is supposed to be, than clean up an accident. But he's starting to notice when he needs to go - he'll come up to me and say, "Mommy, potty." Problem is, the potty is already in the pants... He is getting used to sitting on the toilet and has had a couple successful drips which I guess is a start. He does love the toilet though, and has been caught a couple times at other people's homes with a toothbrush in hand and an open toilet at his side. Gross! Sorry you had to replace your toothbrush Heather & Tanna... :-)

Sammy and Katelynn love to be together. Sammy loves his little baby "kaybin" and loves her toys too. He will even set a football next to her face so that he might take the cute toy dangling above her. He isn't as gentle as Katelynn (nor I) would like, but he is learning. He occasionally will read to her as well which just melts my heart. I am so grateful for my cute kids!

Air Show Preview

This weekend is the Air Show and Open House at Hill AFB. There will be a lot of cool things going on with different planes on display and planes performing and all that stuff. One of the most anticipated, of course is the performance of the Thunderbirds - the F-16 show planes.

I guess the inside scoop is that the day before the actual air show, there is a practice performance by the Thunderbirds that they put on for those with special needs and the families with employees on base, a way for them to come see all the stuff without the crowds. I decided to get off work a little early and go get the family to see the performance. We were not disappointed.

I'm just impressed with how close they fly together and stay in position, and of course having them come screaming close overhead is pretty sweet too! Here are a couple of cool pics:

Dave, Sam, Kate watching the show. We just parked on the North side of the runways, pulled out the chairs and had an awesome show! Kate is in the car with her window down watching (sleeping)

Quick, take a picture!

Quick take a picture again!

Just a note that we read in the air show pamphlet, the F-16 engine puts out 28,000 pounds of thrust which is more than the entire starting line-up of the Indianopolis 500! Impressive, yeah?

So here is a collection of some cool flybys and maneuvers. The video seems like the planes are a lot farther away than they were, but you can get an idea of how awesome it is! We are probably going to go see it on Sunday again.

Under the Lights

Friday May 8th - Katelynn came home from the hospital! Yeah! It is so fun to have a brand new baby in our home!

Monday, May 11th - We took Katie to the doctor so he could check on her jaundice. She hadn't been jaundice in the hospital, but had started to look a little bit yellow before being discharged from the hospital. Katie had her blood drawn to check the biliruben levels and we got a call directly from the doctor telling us that her levels were quite high and he'd be sending some bili-lights to our home for her to use. She would need to be under the lights as often as possible and we would need to have her blood drawn the following morning to check the bili-levels again.

Tuesday, May 12th - Blood is drawn, bili levels still too high, another night under the lights.

Wednesday, May 13th - Blood is drawn, bili levels still too high, another night under the lights.

Thursday, May 14th - Blood is drawn, bili levels are down. Katie can sleep in her own bed! Parents are thrilled! We have our sweet little baby back!

Wednesday, May 20th - Katie is 2 weeks old! We take her in to the doctor to have her PKU done. They poke her foot, but it only bleeds enough to fill half of one of the seven circles. They poke her foot again, and after about 10 minutes of squeezing her little foot and listening to her scream, the PKU sheet is done. I hate PKU sheets. The doctor comes in and says she's looking a little yellow again, so he just wants to check her bili level one more time just to be safe. WHAT! They just took a quart of blood from this girl's foot and you want to poke it again??? ARGG!

At this point, baby has had her blood drawn on 7 different days, and she's only 14 days old!!!

Later that evening, doctor calls and says her bili levels are up again...WHICH ISN'T NORMAL. He has never seen this. Put her back under the lights, but now we are going to check a little further for a more serious metabolic issue. This means more blood gets to be drawn - 4 tubes to be exact. YUCK. Mom is starting to lose it and doesn't want to watch them poke baby's foot anymore. Doctor also requests that baby is breast fed every 2-3 hours (she'd been sleeping for 6 hours at night...bye bye mom's sleep), and when done given a bottle of formula to supplement. This means feeding takes mom about 1 hour from start to finish and translates into 1 hour of sleep every other hour (bye bye mom's sanity).

Thursday, May 21st - Blood is drawn, bili levels still too high, another night under the lights.

Friday, May 22nd - Blood is drawn, bili levels are down, but doctor wants to make sure they stay down, so he puts her back under the lights for one more night and wants to see her again on Tuesday after the holiday.

Tuesday, May 25th - We take Katie back to the doctor for another check. He thinks she looks really good, the yellow is gone, but wants to check her bili level to get a base line. YES, MORE BLOOD WORK!

Now Katie's feet are starting look like she's a drug addict. All of the tests so far have come back negative (phew!) but there are still a couple more we are waiting on.

Doctor calls and says her bili level is still down (sigh) so we can finally send the lights back.

Through all of this, Sammy has become quite the protective older brother. Each time he'd see her under the lights, he'd walk over and say "Hi baby." The last time I took her to the doctor, Sammy screamed and flailed and grabbed at Katie whenever the doctor came in.

Today, May 28th - Baby is doing great, although I can't tell if she's looking yellow or not. Hopefully its just the lights in my house! I hope and pray that the jaundice doesn't come back and that she can just be a "normal" baby.

Big Brother

What do you mean "I'm not the only child anymore?!!"

For the last few months, we've tried to get Sammy excited about babies. Whether it has been talking about the baby in Mommy's belly or pointing out babies that we see. And in fact, he is a fan of babies and loves to play with dolls. Yes it's true. Necklaces and dolls, he certainly has a tender heart.

So far he has been super sweet about baby "kit-ty." He loves to give her kisses and hold her, and he is learning to be soft. He of course makes us nervous because he is so strong and sometimes quite quick. We have to keep an eye on him because if he sees her, he is going to go and touch her. Everyone loves to feel soft baby skin, and Sam's no different.

It is truly amazing how similar these two babies are. Both have a ton of beautiful little hair and have pretty similar faces with those same adorable chubby cheeks!

Here is a collage of a few videos we took of Sammy and Katelynn. Whenever I see Pete & Abby together I think of how lovely a relationship these two will have.

Here is our first family photo as a foursome

Being a big brother certainly must be tough work! I'm sure he would love to put little baby Katie on his sleepover list, but I think we'll hold off for a little while!

Welcome Katelynn -- with pictures

Michelle really was a cute pregnant girl. Some people have a really rough time, and don't look so cute; but Michelle continued to glow throughout and actually lost weight through most of the pregnancy right up to the very end. Our cute neighbors told her that she should be a pregnant model. This is the final bulge right before we went in.

We checked in at the Davis hospital right around 7am. They got her all hooked up and plugged into the Matrix and started downloading some Pitocin by 8. Here she is, all ready to go!

I was coach, and must say our team executed flawlessly. I certainly was instrumental in watching from the sidelines and she wouldn't have been able to get the baby out so impressively without my strategizing. Not to say she didn't play an important role, it just helps when the offense is executed so well.

The Not-so-flattering photo. Typical girl: throw a fit when Dad is trying to take a picture and your makeup isn't perfect.. The first of many "Dad don't take my picture!"

7 pounds 10.2 ounces (21 inches)

Here she is all cleaned up and ready to pose for the pictures. My camera isn't fast enough to take it with her eyes open. She sees the little focus light and quickly shuts her eyes.

All done with the first bath.

Great job Mom!

Great job Dad!

We love you Katelynn!