jacko.

so, here he is. in all his crawling, standing up, smiling glory. coming up on 8 months, can you believe it!?




oh and (most of) the bathroom is up and running...

getting out!

We spent the weekend at a friends cabin up near Talkeetna. It was awesome. The weather was phenomenal. Getting out of the city is what summer is all about. It's so easy to stay home, but so worth it to get out. I am lucky to know these nice nice people. Thank you S.A.Z.L. for sharing your treasure of a place with us.

the snow is nearly gone.

Spring is coming. The snow melted this past week. The tree buds have doubled in size. We're finding fiddleheads and worms under the leaves. I can hardly wait.

Jack sits up all by himself and is really working on crawling.

Everett and Matt built a birdhouse together. And tonight they worked on the snowbank along the street.

Oh, and we tore out the terrible bathroom.

It's not spring here.

okay. I know that it's been too long since my last post.
Lately, I'm spending very little time near the computer.
We were preparing for a trip to visit family in Kansas.

Happy Birthday Grandma Jane!


It was great to see the cousins altogether.



We went from that (sunshine and flowers) to this (snowflakes and slush). Sigh.

theories.

This theory was announced in the car ride home yesterday evening.
So beautiful and inspired. This might have been the 4th time he's told it so it might be a wee bit rehearsed, but honestly, it's all him.
of course there are other theories, such as...
"clouds are a kind of storm" and
"horses are a kind of donkey"...

baby jack. skwish.

He's just so darn cute!

trains and dogs.

Iditarod 2010. Model Train display at the depot, dog sled teams taking off from downtown, plus the Fur Rondy carnival.

big ol' baby.

The snow sculptures were pretty nice (one of the best years yet!) but for Everett the puddles were even better. The big baby was a little scary. The highlight, I think, was the looooong freight train that went right past, so close, sounding it's horn.

new sweater.

i know i know. another post!



I was posing Jack in his sweet new sweater, hand knit by gr8 Aunt Mary of Whitehorse, but of course Everett must include himself. So, I caught it on video.

sticky snow.

We've had some warm weather :) It's been hanging around +34 F (+1 C) and we've had some fresh snow. That makes for some very VERY fun snow building.

first barber cut and catch-up.

Matt took Everett for his first professional hair cut at a real barber shop. He was very well behaved. I haven't been taking many pictures because we haven't been getting out of our pajamas much. Or a version of pajamas. However, we are getting outside almost every day, snowpants over jammies. I made an effort and here is Jack dressed up in a pair of vintage overalls sent by Auntie April, while chomping on a teething ring care of Auntie Gracie. And of course Everett (with his new hair cut) holding Jack.

brothers.

ice sculptures 2010.

Last week we went downtown to look at the newly carved ice sculptures. Last year we missed them because we waited too long and they all disappeared during a pineapple express that melted almost all the snow the last week of January. This year it was cold and the ice rink was hard and smooth. Everett hasn't done much skating yet but he has no fear of falling... intentionally running just to fall down over and over again, just so he could yell 'ouch!'.

Here's a link if you want to learn more. It even has a video showing the artists doing the carving.

A funny story about New Years Eve. We went downtown to take part in the "Fire and Ice" Celebrations. There were some ice sculptures, fire throwers and jugglers and then of course, fireworks. The evening had its ups and downs, but I think what we'll always want to remember is that Everett renamed us all (we'll often have several different identities in one day) for the next few days; he was Fireworks, I was Ice Sculpture, Jack was Sparkle and Matt was (and he says his all time favourite nickname ever) Downtown.

2009 in review.

For days now, I've been trying to cleverly summarize our year into a few paragraphs and since I repeatedly lost the battle using pen and paper(surrendering my pen and paper to Everett)I realized that most of the significent things that happened to us are already here on this blog. Between this and playing with spoons, it's a pretty good synopsis of our day to day life. With that said, I looked through our photos and compared them to what was on the blog and there are some glaring omissions. The trip to Ontario for example. I have unpublished, neverbeforeseen pictures of Fiona, Molly and Everett, and Everett's birthday party. Plus the many photos of Jack taken over the last three months. Not that you're that interested, but for arguments sake let's pretend you are. I certainly am and will be forever so hopefully this blog doesn't dissappear.

I've kind of gone overboard with the photos, but really there are just ten contact sheets. Each photo is labeled underneath. If you want any of these images, just email me or comment and I will send you them as soon as possible.

As we finish this year, we continue to be in awe of our parents, and frankly, all parents out there. Raising children could be the most challenging thing we’ve ever done.  
This is hard work.
Bring it on 2010.