Sports Camp

Alex's last day of sports camp was today. After trying t-ball, bowling, basketball, soccer, and track&field, it's official: his favorite sport is t-ball. Lucky since he starts a month of t-ball in a couple of weeks!

All week at camp, I've brought Alex's water bottle for him. When his coaches would tell the kids to go and get a drink, Alex would say "I'm not thirsty" and stay out in the field while his teammates took a water break. Today I forgot the water bottle at home. Naturally, Alex noticed his missing bottle and not five minutes into class it started: "Mommy, I'm thirsty! My coaches say to drink water.... where's my water?" Here he is standing by the water cooler. There were no cups, so he tried to drink out of it like a water fountain and ended up soaked, but happy!Isaac had a great time at Alex's sports week, too. I think his favorite was basketball since there were enough balls for him to play with one all by himself.
We had a busy week, and spent a good part of it at the library enjoying their excellent summer reading programs. Firefighters came and read to the kids, and then sent them home with their own fire hats. Alex has been putting out fires in our bathroom all week, now that he knows so much about firefighting. He is excited to talk to grandpa and learn even more about firefighting.

Pullman

Yes, we did arrive here.... six months ago! Jeremy bought me a cute little red netbook for my birthday this week, so I'm back online. We're settling in here, enjoying the summer. Alex, Isaac and I have been very busy with playgroups, story time at the library, and trying out all the parks in the Pullman/Moscow area.

Isaac, who could barely hold his own head up when last I wrote, is now officially crawling, and by the looks of it will be walking in no time. He pulls himself up to stand, and is starting to torment his older brother with his sudden ability to move towards any toys he hasn't been allowed to play with before.

Alex is having a fun summer. We have a playground just outside our door, so he gets to swing and slide and dig in rocks every time we leave the house. He's also signed up for Pee Wee Sports Camp through the city. So far he's tried out T-ball, bowling, and track. T-ball was his favorite so far.
Alex, Isaac, and I spent a weekend in McCall with my family a few weeks ago. One of the highlights for me: Isaac sleeping. Here is a rare photo proving that he does, on occasion, actually sleep. Sleep is apparently very highly overrated, and he generally does just fine without it. He was only resting here to save up his energy for the middle of the night.

The highlight of the trip for Alex was catching a couple of big trout and suckers while fishing with his granddad.
While Alex was learning to fish with granddad, Isaac was learning to knit with granny. We really need a little girl in this family....

Beginnings

The moving truck is here, Alex is at Grandma's house for the night, and we're loading up to follow the yellow brick road. It may not be paved in gold, but hopefully there is sunshine instead of snow.We had a wonderful Christmas - my only complaint was that there wasn't nearly enough time to spend with everyone that visited. Alex was old enough this year to sing Christmas carols himself and serenaded us all week with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells. He's been well entertained himself with all his fun new toys, and we've actually been able to sleep in and play board games, since he's so exhausted.We've been able to spend extra time with our families this week, thanks to the holidays, which has been wonderful, although it makes it that much harder to leave them. I've also finally attended board game night at Sara's shop, Rook's Comics and Games. I wish I'd been going every week, it was so much fun.
So, here's to a new year, and whatever it may bring. We miss you all - those who visited or didn't - and we're already missing those we're leaving here. We love you all and can't wait to see you in the year ahead.

Photos

Alex loves to play birthday party with his stuffed animals. It's Amber his kitty's birthday every day around here.

It's cold cold cold.... Here's Isaac ready to go out and play in the snow.

Life is Hard When You're 2...

All the unfairness of the world seems to hover over Alex these days. I guess having a brother take his spot as the baby of the family has finally caught up to him. He can't get enough mommy time.

So, on Saturday I took Alex by himself to a gingerbread house making event downtown while Jeremy kept Isaac with him. Alex enjoyed it, and especially enjoyed tasting all the different kinds of candy they had for him to decorate with.

I can't say I enjoyed it as much. We're busy potty training these days. Alex is doing great with it, and tells us when he needs to go. He hardly has any accidents anymore, except when he's actually sitting on the toilet. He can't manage to aim into the toilet. We're not really safe anywhere in the bathroom with him. It's not so bad at home, where he has his fancy little potty seat that sits on the toilet, but public bathrooms are awful with him. It's funny to me that there are so many handicapped bathrooms, but never a toilet sized for a child expect in elementary schools, and the children's museum in Omaha. So, I have to hold him to keep him from falling into the giant adult sized toilet. It's really frustrating. Well, he needed to go while we were downtown, so I took him and held him up over the toilet while he sprayed most of our stall and also managed to aim under the wall and soak the stall next to us as well. His underwear was also soaked from being anywhere in the vicinity of the bathroom. I wasn't too upset about this, I knew he had a change of clothes in the car, but what I wasn't expecting was that when I stood up, my purse was soaked. While I was holding Alex, it was dangling down into the toilet. Yuck Yuck Yuck! By the time we left the stall, we were both covered from head to toe with public toilet water. And then we had to walk through the entire crowded building dripping on the way to the car. Ugh...

The other great inequality in Alex's life is that he often comes into our bedroom to find Isaac in bed with me, as well as Jeremy and our cat. Alex is the only one barred from sharing our room. It's really not fair, is it? How sad to come into a room with your entire family snuggled up together, while you've been sleeping in your own cold room by yourself. So, he's snuck in in the middle of the night a few times this week. We've been too tired from staying up with Isaac to complain. Jeremy even slept in Alex's room with him one night, so perhaps Alex isn't too left out after all.

Travels

It seems that all we've done for the past few years is move. First to Washington with it's rain forests and so much water, then to cold and crisp Montana, Connecticut with its beaches, then back to Montana's dry heat. This summer to Omaha's bustle and famous zoo, then back again to Montana and Big Sky Country. Last week we visited Pullman for the first time to see where we're headed next. Rolling fields and high hills are what we found for our second Washington home. Dry and sunny Pullman will be a change from the other side of Washington we know so well.

We found a third story apartment to live in until summer when we may have more housing options as students leave town empty for the summer. Almost the entire town is dedicated to the school. I've never seen so many apartments. Mom and Dad came down to visit us at Julie's apartment (she moved to Moscow, just next to Pullman, after she married Ryan this summer, and will be in graduate school there for the next few years).

For Sale

We're on the move again. Jeremy accepted an assistantship position at WSU in Pullman, WA the day Isaac was born. His return to school has been somewhat overshadowed by Isaac's birth, but we're finally starting to really get prepared to move. School starts on Alex's 3rd birthday, January 12, so we still have plenty of time, but we also have a lot to sell before then.

Jeremy has listed various items on Craig's list, and we've had a better response than we expected, although we still have a lot to sell.

We also have to sell the WRX - Jeremy's sporty little car that has been replaced by my mom-mobile. We've had very little interest in it, but we haven't tried too hard to sell it, yet, either. Anybody interested?

And then there's our big sale item: our house. We spent the last week cleaning frantically to get it ready for it's debut yesterday. It's so nice now that it's clean and we've put half our stuff in boxes, we might not want to leave it.

It's exciting to be moving again. I'm really looking forward to Pullman. Jeremy discovered that there is a museum there that I can get into with my Bozeman Museum of the Rockies membership. Also, I have been receiving more phone calls from Julie than usual, anticipating our arrival. I'm glad to have the chance to get to know Ryan better, and spend more time with Julie, since we haven't been in the same town for more than a short vacation in over 10 years. If we could just sell all this stuff, we'd be ready to go.