Lots of Updates

So I drank a coffee tonight and that was dumb. It is now 2 in the morning and I'm wide awake. grrrrrrrr. I haven't gotten much sleep lately and i need to be somewhere tomorrow so this is lame. Oh well, I'll update here, though it may seem disjointed and then try again to go to sleep. This will be kind of random.
Clothes are annoying me. First of all I am not a size of pants. All pants are either too big or too small. I am an imaginary size and it's driving me crazy. Secondly, when the weather cooled off I realized I had one sweater and two long sleeve tshirts - but they were maternity shirts. I'm not sure how that happened but off to the store I went. I was able to get a bunch of clothes for a reasonable price so that made me happy. what makes me mad is that since having the boys i'm ALWAYS staining or tearing my shirts. I finally started using zout and that does a pretty good job of getting out stains but it doesn't save them all. Now, I do not buy expensive clothes so this is not the end of the world but they aren't free so it's making me mad!
We vote by mail in Washington and I think it's wierd that we're having to put on our own postage. It's certainly worth the price of a stamp to have the right to vote, I just think it's wierd because I'm pretty sure I remember in the past not having to put a stamp on it.
If you're in the area and want to see Jared's band play they will be leading worship at Word of Life Church in Lynden this Sunday (2nd) at 10am. I was going to give you the website for Jared's band but I can't find it. I'm thinking maybe it's not up yet.
This year instead of carving pumpkins we let the boys paint their own pumpkin. I got this great idea from Jenni (I know you love the links ;)) so check it out! Anyway, had I thought more carefully I would have chosen more colorful paint. I picked black and white since i thought we might do eyes and a mouth. Nope. Now we have gray pumpkins. The boys did these all on their own. The one where you can barely see eyes and a mouth we helped Jackson with (that part). They both seemed to have fun but at first Jackson seemed to wonder why we were messing up this perfectly good pumpkin. As a result he didn't do quite as much painting. Keep in mind, they're a year and a half people! The funniest part is that I left the pumpkins on the table for a few days after painting and one morning Jaden pulled out a kitchen chair, climbed in and pulled his pumpkin toward the edge. He grabbed a dry paint brush I had left on the table and began to "paint" his pumpkin. This actually occupied him for about 10 minutes which, for Jaden, is quite a while! Here are some pictures and a video....

As you can see, Jaden decided to paint daddy's face. Here are a few videos of the boys painting. In the last video Jaden decided to eat the paint. yuck.



We got a new toy bench and the boys like to stand in it.

And jump in it...

I accidentally caught Jaden on film climbing in his chair for the first time. I know, I know, most kids are doing this younger than this age. My boys aren't really climbers. They can climb and they like it when they do it, but they never think "hmmmm... I wonder if I can climb that" and I typically don't suggest it.


Ok, it's almost 3am. This is ridiculous. I hope I fall right to sleep!

Random

In the middle of a bunch of busy weeks we have a slow week. But Jared is sick. This is lame except that at least he now has time to take a break (?)
On Tuesday I met some friends to take the boys swimming. However, I was at a traffic light and my car completely died. Some guy had to push me to a parking lot. The boys didn't care, so that was nice. Jared met me there and realized the car had "simply" overheated. So now it's getting repaired. Add that to the incredibly LONG list of car repairs this month. Anyway, after that ordeal I was terribly late to the pool but I went anyway and we ended up staying an hour! The pool was designed so that you entered on a slope, not a step, so the boys could choose how deep they wanted to go at any given moment. The second we stepped in the building jaden started screaming (we'd never been there before) and both boys were screaming as I paid. Fortunately I could skip the whole locker room thing because I had us all in our swimsuits with our clothes on top. The boys screamed as I got us down to our suits. They screamed as I took them to the water. I sat in the water and held on to both of them and they screamed for several minutes. Then they calmed down but hung on for dear life (keep in mind that at this point the water is maybe ankle deep) After a few minutes Shannon threw a ball to Jaden and he was willing to bend over and pick it up. Then he thought it was fun and started taking steps on his own to get the ball. The rest of the time he went in up to his waist and splashed and threw the ball and played with boats. He did go head under once and when Shannon pulled him up he looked TERRIFIED but I acted like all was well so he didn't end up crying but it definately freaked him out. Jackson had to hold on to me the whole time. We were in waist deep water (for them) and he'd sometimes think he wanted to go but it's different walking through water so he'd get wobbly then scared and come back to me. He had fun though. He splashed and sat in the water and threw the ball with Jaden. This is serious progress people! Now if I could only get them to like the bath.....they still think they're going to die.
Here is a video taken of the boys practicing their jumping....

Here are the boys looking at a book with dad and making animal noises...

And here's a picture of the family singing me happy birthday. As you can see Jackson is anxiously awating the cake on his tray and Jaden is crying. They know what candles are but I think Jaden was concerned because it looked like the cake was on fire :)

The Big 3-0

Well, I'm officially old ;)
I had a wonderful birthday. Jared took Friday and half of Thursday off and Jared's parents kept the boys overnight on Thursday. We went to the Chrysalis (very nice hotel on the water in Bellingham) and stayed the night in a corner water view room. It was very nice! Jared also bought me a massage in their spa and it was WONDERFUL and relaxing. We hung out in Fairhaven for the day Friday then picked up the boys and went home and had cake. The boys really liked it, but especially Jaden! Then Jared fixed me a yummy steak and shrimp dinner with fresh bread! Yum!
The past couple weeks have been pretty busy and we (thankfully) have about a week here where things are a bit slower before it picks up again!
Here are some birthday pictures!
Hint: I've switched to the picasa slideshow since it's SO much easier for me to do! It will scroll through the pictures automatically but if you'd like to do it yourself hold your curser over the pictures and a stop/pause/play/etc bar will pop up. Click pause and then you can click the forward and backward arrows to view at your own pace.

Drivers License

Well I will soon be turning the big three o. Bummer. I'm sure I'll get over it as soon as it happens.
ANYWAY...this means I have to renew my drivers license. For some reason they wouldn't let me do it online this year so since I all ready had to go in I decided to get an enhanced license so I could skip the passport and easily get into Canada since we're only a few minutes away. You have to make an appointment for this kind of license so I arranged to have Jared's sister watch the boys, got all the paperwork they told me I needed (and double checked online)and went in. The two guys I was working with were super nice so that made it easier. However, when they asked me my social security number they couldn't find it. The reason is because I never reported my name change when I got married (EIGHT years ago!) At first I tried several times to get it done but was on hold so long each time that I gave up. Jared gets on my case every year at tax time to get it done and I never do. I know I need to of course but it's just such a pain. Anyway, they tell me I can't get the enhanced license until I fix that. On top of that they told me the SS office needs my marriage license but told me what I have is not the real thing (it's the one people frame I guess) and I have to send for it. WHAT? Why don't they just automatically send you one copy? So I went ahead and got my regular license since I can't accomplish all this before it expires and just figured I'd skip the enhanced part. But they were really nice and did all the stuff they could so I can just come in for a couple minutes after I get my stuff together. So, now I have to send for my marriage license ($15) then after that comes and my new license comes I have to go to the social security office and take care of that, then wait again and then make an appointment at the dmv and pay another $15 to get an enhanced license. Lame. Oh well, at least Jared will be happy my name is changed with the social security. Oh, and I think my picture might not be awul. We shall see. I might have to get another one when I go in again anyway.

Cool Plugin

Logos Bible Software (Where Jared works) created a cool plugin for blogs/websites/etc and it's free! It alows you to easily show Bible Verses on your site. Before explaining, here's what it looks like in the end....
John 3:16
If you hover over a reference the verse pops up. If you click on it it takes you to that verse on bible.logos.com. When putting it on your site you simply have to enter a code one time (and it tells you how to do that. I did it in about 5 seconds) then whenever you type a reference it automatically makes the verse link. Pretty cool! Anyway, if you want to use it go here...
http://www.logos.com/RefTagger

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch as a family on Saturday and it was quite interesting. Jaden was so tired when we went but we all had fun. It was difficult managing 2 boys and carrying pumpkins. They boys were also very bored when we had to wait in a line. Jackson loved the hay ride but Jaden was nervous until he realized a tractor was in front of us. They liked to try to pick up the pumpkins especially the tiny ones. One of these days here we'll paint or carve them but until then here are some pictures.

Catch Up

We have had beautiful weather here in Blaine and I'm so thankful! It's definately Fall around here but we have still had sunshine.
The boys are growing too fast and love to communicate. I love it when they say a big long sentence to me that's all gibberish and expect me to understand. They are learning lots of words and like to repeat everything we say. Of course it's not clear English but it's obvious they're copying us. I love it! They are also working on two syllable words. The funniest thing is when we say a phrase and they "repeat" it. It always has the right number of syllables no matter how many there are, but it makes no sense. Sometimes they will say thankyou which is funny because it's not clear but it's two syllables and you know that's what they're saying. Here are some of their favorite or new things to say...
Metk - milk, Bit - blanket, pot - plant, muhhhhhhhnnnnnn - moon, cuck - truck, mamaine - airplane, cahcah - smoke stack (on a train), tix - kix (cereal), bus - brush, botk - book, jax - jackson, dahee - daddy, dadadadaaaaaar - guitar, sips - chips, gis - juice, sege - sausage, gugul - turtle, bur - bird, doah - no, tax - tracks (train), uto (Jackson uh oh), UUUUUHHHHHHOOOOOOOO (Jaden Uh oh)
When Jackson wants to read a book he picks one up and goes to the couch and pats it really hard and looks at you and says eh? eh? It's hillarious. I think he does this because I will pat the chair for him to sit next to me to read :)
They currently love trains, cars, airplanes and all animals. They don't often call an animal by it's name they just make the sound the animal makes. Sometimes those are pretty funny.
They know the sound that several letters make and Jackson recognizes O and E. Jaden thinks all letters are Os. I think if I work with them on their letters they'll pick them up pretty quickly.
They are getting good at feeding themselves with forks.
They are both completely obsessed with the moon. I have no idea why. When this began the moon would show up outside our front window. Now they think that is always where it is day or night. They beg to see it when it can't be seen. When they see it they are so excited they can't contain themselves. The other night we saw it driving home and when we got home we took them to look at it from the very front of our yard. However, you couldn't see it from any windows inside. When we got inside Jackson was running everywhere to all the windows flailing his arms, pointing and saying da mun? da mun? da mun? He was very disappointed that it could not be seen.
We took them to chucky cheese (sp?) this weekend and that was interesting :) They had fun though.
They can climb down the stairs though I don't completely trust them on their own yet.
They love shoes and jaden puts my shoes and Jared's shoes on and walks around the house.
One of their favorite things to do is watch a worship video (usually Hillsong) before bed. They dance and clap and raise their hands and Jackson is learning to clap on beat.
Jaden is going through a mommy phase and just recently started getting upset about going in the nursery (as Jackson always has) but they're both fine less then a minute after getting in.
They are good at picking up their toys and getting their chairs out for lunch.
They love to look at and read books. Their favorite book is goodnight moon for obvious reasons and second is their three train books. Jackson likes to look at a page and point to all the same objects (like all the wheels, all the flowers, all the steering wheels, all the clocks, etc) on a page and then find that object in the house or out the window and point to it.
They are learning to kick a soccer ball and Jaden is pretty good at it.
They love the pets and Bob is getting annoyed but can't hang out outside because it's starting to rain. Both boys have been scratched by Joey several times. It doesn't really upset them but they don't understand.
Jackson must clear his tray somehow when he doesn't want more food, if we do anything to Jaden we must do it to him and if we do something to one hand we must do it to the other. Jaden doesn't really care except when it comes to "fairness". When I get the boys up from the night or a nap Jackson wants to point to all the animals and letters in his room for me to tell him what they are.
When I do the laundry for some reason they know which clothes belong to each person of the family and like to tell me so.
They love babies.
There's probably more to update on but I can't think of it all. Here are a few pictures :)