Snow Storm Jan. 2012

In January we had a big ol' snow storm. I thought we were going to be lucky this winter and not see any snow,but I was wrong. The first day of snow was actually pretty and it was kind of fun. The kids had a blast playing outside.
January 15th

Jett's first time playing in the snow.

The next day...January 17th

the girls making a snowman

Jett watching from inside.

The view from the front door...January 18th

The snow is getting deeper!

We convinced Cirdan to come outside and play. He helped us with a big snowman.

Ella was obsessed with getting a carrot for the nose. All we had was carrot shreds, which would make for a tiny nose. The neighbor overheard and gave us a carrot. I love our new neighbors!

Jett looks so small!

On Thursday, January 19th at around 5:00am the power went out. I woke up and realized that it was pretty dark and cold in the house. I thought it would be a few hours and go back on but that wasn't the case.

We ended up camping out in front of the fireplace for the next few days. The first day or so it was kind of fun. We were having some nice family time. After that it was just getting annoying. Life without tv or internet is rough! Ha ha. On Saturday we took Ella and Kaiya to dance and decided we weren't going home until the power was back on. Even if it was more than a day...we would get a hotel. After dance we went to the mall to do some retail therapy. A few hours into spending more money than we should we got the call from my brother saying that our power was back on!

The morning we lost power Cirdan headed downstairs to see if he could get our gas fireplace working before we got out of bed. Since we have never had a gas fireplace he didn't know how to get it on without the power. He opened up the fireplace and looked around to see if there was a backup deal or a start switch. My friend's needs batteries to work hers so he was looking for something to put batteries in. Cirdan called his dad and talked to him about troubleshooting. Still nothing. He decided to go on youtube to see if he could figure it out. He watched a video and the guy said...(in an asian accent) "so I am in my living room and I would like to turn on my nice warm fire. But my power is out...what do I do?" Then he goes through a 30 second shpeal about when the pilot light is on and there is no power you dont need electricity. He continues, "so I go to the wall and I turn on the switch. There we go...nice warm fireplace." So all that time of troubleshooting all Cirdan needed to do was flip the switch on the wall. Ha ha we sure got a good laugh out of it.

It was pretty creepy listening to the tree branches break. Hoping each one doesn't fall on our house. I was thankful that we weren't living in our old house with all those scary trees around.

I went to church on Sunday and that's when it started snowing pretty hard. I didn't leave the house until that next Friday. Talk about cabin fever!!

I take that back. On Friday night we went to my parents house. They have a generator and we went there to make some spaghetti and chili. I was so fed up with eating crackers, cereal without milk and anything else we could find in the pantry.

On Friday we went to Safeway to get some food. We stopped at Jack in the Box and it seemed like everyone else had the same idea. We waited in the drive thru line than no less than 45 minutes.

We did learn some things when the power went out...

1) Keep cash around the house. We went to get gas on Friday but the gas station was only taking cash since the debit card machine was down.

2) We really need to set up a food storage!!!! Some people had their water/sewer stop working also. This would be very scary. We need bottles of water included into our food storage.

3) We also need to know where are flashlights and extra batteries are.

Jett - 16 months

Jett's personality is getting more and more fun each day. He is now in the stage where he copies everything we do. Whenever we make a noise with our mouth, he does the same thing. It always makes me smile when I don't realize I do it and I hear a little echo. I need to get him on video.


Just like a lot of kids he loves to be outside. When we come home he does not want to come inside and will cry about it. Yesterday was nice outside so I took him and Ella out to play. We played for over an hour (and it was cold) but when I went to bring him inside he was so mad! He could have stayed out there all night.


He is getting a TON of teeth in. Around 9. All at the same time.


He loves eating muffins. They are probably his favorite thing to eat right now.


He still doesn't like very many people. It's going to be rough once the baby is born if he doesn't get out of this strangers are scary phase.


He loves to dance and hang out with his sisters. Whenever Kaiya is home he is around her. She makes up dances for Ella and he is right along side of them playing.

He loves to eat muffins but is getting picky (or maybe just doesn't feel good with his teeth) and it takes me a while to figure out what he wants/or will eat.

He has no idea what's in store for him after the baby is born but it's funny to see him look at my belly with a weird look. I am sure he wonders why my belly is getting so big.

He wants to be a big kid and walk down the stairs like the rest of us. He holds on to the banister and takes steps but it scares the heck out of me. He goes fast on his belly backwards most of the time.

He loves to wear other peoples shoes around the house. He usually wears them backwards but I guess it fits better that way.

He loves hearing dogs and saying, "dog". He also barks. He doesn't like dogs though and every time we go to my parents house he screams this loud high pitch scream when Kia comes around him.


The little guy loves taking showers or baths, he digs the water. Speaking of mimicking Heidi just came up behind me while I was writing this. She acted like she was going to chew on my ear while growling and what not. Jett saw, grinned and came over to me growling in my ear.

He likes to wrestle around, we wrestle on the couch a lot.

He loves doing his tickle thing... he mouths the words then says real quiet: tickle, tickle, tickle. It comes out in his native baby talk. Enunciating isn't his strong point :)

He loves to play with Heidi's hair and he insists on playing with it to go to sleep.

Kaiya's 1st Semester Conference

It was a very short semester for Kaiya since she was only there for a month but I still went to parent/teacher conference. It was nice to sit down with her teacher to see how she was adjusting going back to public school.
Kaiya's teacher only had good things to say about her. She was happy that Kaiya was in her class. I must say that her teacher seems really nice and wonderful. She is a fun teacher and all the kids love her. Kaiya got lucky! Oh and I don't think I ever mentioned that she is in a 4th/5th grade split.
Kaiya's report card was fabulous and she got almost all 3's. One 2 in math operations...which I kind of expected. Her old school was behind on what they were doing in this school. She got one 4 in reading, and her teacher said she never gives out 4's.
Kaiya's Dibels fluency score was 173 wcpm which was great! In 4th grade they want the kids to be at a 103 in the winter and by the end of the year be at a 125 so she is well above that.
This year has been great so far! Here is Kaiya's expository essay that the teacher gave me that was a winter writing assessment.

A Boy or a Girl?!!

Tomorrow we will find out if we are having a girl or a boy! It is surreal! My belly is starting to really stick out so this is becoming more real. So far it's going super fast! If it is a boy I will feel like I am 'cheating' on my momma's boy. If its a girl I feel sorry for Jett to have another girl around the house. Girls are always fun to dress up though and boys are just so cute!! I just want a happy, healthy baby! I am so ready to pick out a name and figure out if they will share a room with Jett or Ella. Fun times ahead!

Guesses
Cirdan - Says he can't guess. He has been holding it in since the last ultrasound and wont tell. I need to remember to have him write it down before so I know he was truly wrong/right. :)
Heidi - Girl (but I am always wrong)
Kaiya - Girl
Ella - Boy

The Man With a Few Words

Jett has really been saying a lot more words in the last couple of weeks. His favorite language is grunting. He grunts or yells at about almost everything but it's so cute.

Words he says
Banana (Nana)
Ella
Dada
Mama
Kaiya
Uh oh
Icky (ucky)
Hot (hhhhht)
Hi
Dog
Nose (no)
Diaper

Ella's Field Trip to Petco

Ella had a field trip to the pet store. Cirdan was nice and helped chaperone the outing. Actually I have so many blogs to write that I am going to have Cirdan do this one...
Ella and I were running a bit late to pre school. Heidi didn't want to take her on the field trip and I was planning on going to my office as usual. I wanted Ella to be able to go the pet store....too fun to miss out on. So long story short I ended up deciding to take Ella to the Petco. I called her preschool teacher to get the details because we were running late. The trip was to Petco right here in Covington. This was good news, Petco is only 5 minutes away. Instead of taking Ella to preschool in Auburn just to turn back and drive to Covington I just met the class there. Nice

We split in to two groups to walk around pet store

The first thing the kids did after the class arrived was to gather around in a circle.

Ellas buddy Logan with her.

Two of the ladies who worked at Petco brought out some animal one by one for the kids to enjoy. The kids were given some facts about each and then had the chance to pet them. They brought out Turles,Hamsters, Lizards, Snakes, Mice....I think that's it.

Stretching! Getting the wiggles out.

Monsters Of Hip Hop

Some of the dancers at Kaiya's studio went down to Vancouver for Monsters of Hip Hop Convention. It was a 2 day convention and the kids got to dance with famous dancers. Napoleon and Tabitha (TV show Mobbed and So You Think You Can Dance etc), Tony Testa (worked with Beyonce, Michael and Janet Jackson, Britney Spears and many more), A member of the Jabbawockeez, a dancer or Lady Gaga's and others.
We left as soon as Kaiya got home from school on Friday. That morning she complained that she didn't feel good but I thought she was just trying to get out of going to school. I told her if she is sick, tell the nurse and come home. When she got home she said she still wasn't feeling well but I didn't think it was anything big...she didn't have a fever. We all loaded up in the car but as soon as we got on Hwy 18 Kaiya told us she had to throw up. Cirdan pulled off the on ramp and had her lean out the car to throw up. We had to make a decision...go to the convention or go back home. Cirdan thought we should go home, I thought we should just go to Oregon. We ended up going to Oregon. Everything was fine until we pulled up to the hotel. As the kids and I sat in the car waiting for Cirdan to get the key to the hotel, Kaiya threw up again. This seemed to be a bit worse than I thought. We parked, grabbed our stuff and headed into the elevator to go to our floor. Thankfully no one was in the elevator because Kaiya got sick again. The elevator opened and she continued to throw up. There was a big group of people down the direction that were supposed to walk so I took Kaiya the opposite way. I felt so bad for her. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea .
We finally got to our room. That night we just relaxed and watched TV. Cirdan went to Target to get a few things, including pepto and Tylenol for Kaiya. I was beginning to get nervous about what the next day would bring. Kaiya woke up once to throw up.
We woke up on Saturday and Kaiya still felt sick. I had to make another decision. Risk it and try to go or keep her at the hotel. I made a bad mom decision and had her go. We drove all the way there and I didn't want her to miss all the fun stuff. Hello Dance Mom!! Yikes!! The first class was Tabitha and Napoleon which was awesome. They were the ones that I thought would be the most fun. Plus Kaiya has seen them on tv before. Kaiya made it for most of the class and then came over and told me she couldn't do it anymore. We left and I called Cirdan to come and get us. I really was feeling like a horrible parent. As soon as Cirdan picked us up Kaiya got into the car and threw up. Poor girl!! We took her back to the hotel to rest. She started feeling better that night. Cirdan and Ella went down to the pool and I asked her if she wanted to take a walk to go see them. She did and felt better. She was sad that she wasn't able to go into the pool. We stayed at a hotel where most the other dancers from ADA were staying so she saw a bunch of her dance mates. The hotel we were in made it convenient and served free appetizers at night. That night they had salad and soup. Kaiya just ate a cracker....which she managed to keep down. The rest of the night we relaxed in our room. It was a nice break from all the unpacking and chaos of Christmas and moving.
Kaiya was feeling much better so she decided to give it a go on Sunday. I made her dance a bit in the room to make sure she could do it. Sunday the kids danced with the girl who was Lady Gaga's backup dancer (I can't remember her name!) and then they all auditioned for scholarships. After auditioning they had awards ceremony. We needed to get out of town since Cirdan had the kids and they had to check out of the hotel. We stayed at the awards for about 20 minutes and left. The weekend wasn't a complete waste. Kaiya had some fun and we got to relax.
On the way back to Seattle we stopped at the outlets. It is a must since there is a Ralph Lauren outlet that we love! The kids and I waited in the car for about 2 hours (no joke) while Cirdan shopped.
After a long weekend we were finally home in time to unload and get ready for school the next day.
Some of the kids Kaiya's age group...

Tabitha and Napoleon...

Cirdan did Jett's hair crazy

Feeling better and ready for a new day

Lady Gaga's dancer

The kids getting pumped up for auditions!

Dance friends

Back In School

Once we moved into a better school for Kaiya, we decided it was time to put her back into public school. It was fun with her at home but it put a lot of stress on me. My day was Kaiya, Kaiya and Kaiya. The online curriculum was wonderful but the time that I had to spend with her was making it so the other kids and the housework was getting ignored. When I found out I was pregnant it was one more reason to put her back in school.
Kaiya was excited to go but as soon as we got to school she started getting nervous. We had to wait in the office for about 20 minutes before school started and the teacher came and got us. The teacher seemed super nice and bubbly. There class is out in a portable so she walked us out. There was a girl in the class that Kaiya has known since she was about 3 because she is in my parents ward at church. The girl (Hallie) told the teacher she knew Kaiya so the teacher let Kaiya have a desk right next to her (which was set up and ready for Kaiya). That made Kaiya's nerves better to see Hallie and have a familiar face.
I did'nt want to leave her, I wanted to stay there all day but I took a picture of her and walked away. I was so happy that she was at a school I knew she would love.
The school is where my siblings and I all went K-6 grade. There is even a few of my teachers that still work there. I know where most things are in the school and feel comfortable. Since we live right next to the school field Kaiya can walk to and from school. It's very convenient for me, especially since nap time always seems to be around the time school gets out!
Kaiya had a good few days then started to get sad about not being at home. She would wake up and cry and complain all morning about not wanting to go. But she always came home with a smile and a fun story. I knew it wouldn't last long but that first couple of weeks were rough. She now LOVES the school and would choose it over online or her old school.

Waiting in the office....

In her class...

See You Soon!

Ava was here and gone in a few short days. The kids played a lot....dancing and stuff. I wasn't really feeling very well and Cirdan had to work so we just laid low at home for the most part. Ava will be back for a week in April for Sprink Break. She will be here for Ella's birthday party and Easter. Yay!

Girl Stuff!

He needs a brother....

Too many girl things around the house.

New Years Eve

Ava was here for New Years Eve. We didn't really do anything during the day. The kids played together since it was her last full day here. That night we had snacks and yummy food, then the kids all tried to stay up until midnight. Jett and Ella were out around 10:30 and Kaiya fell asleep about 11:50 (no joke). Ava was the only one who made it (barely). We woke up Kaiya and all said our Happy New Years to each other. It was low key but nice to be all together as a family.