2015 :: week 4

January 18

Sunday evening my dad showed us some old home videos. He and some of my sisters have been working on getting the old VHS tapes transferred to DVD. I had a lot fun watching the movies. What is crazy is that when I watch these videos I am instantly taken back to myself at 10 years old, and it doesn't feel that long ago. Then I look at my parents and realize that they are only a few years older than I am now and the reality that a lot of time has passed hits.

January 19

We cashed in a Red Robin gift card Monday night. There was a balloon artist in the house and he made some really cool balloons for the kids. Will got a rattlesnake and Lauren got two dogs kissing with a heart between the two.

January 20

We got ready for bed a little quicker than usual (the kids are usually anything but quick, searching for ways to elongate the bedtime process), so we had time to put a few puzzles together. Will got this sea life puzzle for Christmas and enjoys correcting me when I misidentify the fish.

January 21

Sometimes all my library holds come in at once and I have to read like crazy. Unfortunately I got a migraine over the weekend that slowed my reading progress (my eyes hurt to much to read when I have headaches).

January 22

We've been spending a lot of time with Lauren sitting on the toilet lately. Her toilet-usage skills regressed a bit during and after our trip to Boston, but she is finally starting to where we'd like her to be. People told me potty training girls was easier than boys, but in our family the opposite has been true.

January 23

Reading scriptures before bed. We recently finished reading the children's New Testament and started reading the Old Testament.

January 24

I got a migraine this weekend. I tried to push through it but after playing around with the idea of laying down in my trunk in the Costco parking lot for a bit because I didn't know if I could handle the five-minute drive home I knew I needed to surrender. I typically stay my dark room with a fan on while I'm trying to get through a migraine, but it is hard for me to sleep and so I slowly go crazy. I came out to the couch for a bit in the afternoon and Lauren volunteered to be my doctor. She gave me a checkup and lots of shots, but don't worry she had a kitty band aid ready for me.

2015 :: week 3

January 11

Sunday evening we had dinner with my parents. After we feasted on fried chicken, mashed potatoes and carrots Will took on Pepaw in a few rounds of Spot It! We survived our first week of afternoon church, and the first time the kids have had afternoon church in their lives (though we did have 11:30am church the in 2010 when Will was a baby). They were confused that I made them eat lunch before church, didn't each much, and then were frustrated when I made them wait an hour for dinner.

January 12

I don't know why this picture flipped, it was landscape when I took it. Will helped me with our FHE lesson by illustrating some of the stories we talked about. He insisted on writing what the picture illustrated in the life of Christ on each picture: 'Blessing' the Nephite Children, getting baptized in the River 'Jordan's flow,' and the 'First Vision.' The final picture is Will and Tony at a Royals game on Fireworks Friday. Our lesson was about Christ being an obedient son, so Will decided we needed a picture of him and his dad having fun together too.

January 13

After water aerobics Tuesday night the kids played in the Explorer Room at Matt Ross for awhile. Will climbed to the very top. I have distinct memories of having to climb up in this equipment 18 months ago to help him down because he was too scared to move up or down.

January 14

The weather finally got above freezing (37 degree high) and the kids decided it was playgroud weather. Will begged to go to the park and though I wasn't in the mood, I knew that spending another afternoon indoors with restless kids would be a punishment to me, so we walked to the park. They climbed a bit and then both wanted to get in the swings. They felt a lot colder after spending time in the swings. Also worth mentioning is we went grocery shopping and saw the actor who played Al in the TV show Home Improvement (he's in town preforming at the New Theater Restaurant).

January 15

It was even warmer Thursday so I decided I'd spend an hour raking leaves in the front yard. When we came home from Boston our front yard was COVERED in leaves. Some had fallen from our trees and most had blown from down the street. Will was excited to help and very proud of the rather large pile he raked all by himself. Jokes on him though, now I know he is capable so he's stuck raking leaves with me as long as he lives at home.

January 16

We had a rough week behavior-wise with the kids. We're all experiencing a bit of cabin fever, Will especially likes to get outside and run around. I took the kids to Pump it Up! and they were able to jump and run and play to their hearts' content. Both kids had a lot of fun, they especially enjoyed ganging up on me in the Coliseum inflatable, pelting me with the balls. Lauren would help retrieve the balls and give them to Will who would then throw them at me. They seem to get along best when they have a common enemy, me.

January 17

Saturday evening the sister missionaries in our ward (Sisters Fa'anunu and Buckhave) came over and helped us rake the leaves in our backyard. They heard me complaining about the leaves and offered to come help. I wasn't going to push them to do it, but then they texted me Friday night and said they wanted to come over and help the next day. They were awesome helpers and again Will had a great time working with them to amass a giant leaf pile. The trees in our yard (pin oaks) tend to hold on to their leaves longer than most and drop them a bit at a time all winter long. Most of the leaves are finally bare. It was nice having the missionaries help, they had better attitudes than Anthony and I do and the additional adult labor made the work go so much faster.

first snow!

The day after Will's birthday (Dec 18th) we got our first snow of the season. I had a lengthy list of things I wanted to get done that day, but because I was hosting book club that night I decided shoveling the driveway should be at the top of my list.

The kids were quite pleased when I suggested we venture outside and clean the driveway. They usually have to convince me to come outside and play in the snow. I bought their snowgear a size up two years ago and thankfully it mostly still fit. Poor Will outgrew his boots and had to wear his regular sneakers. I'm still looking for a pair at a good price. Luckily it hasn't really snowed again.

It was pretty easy to shovel the snow and we made good time. Lauren waited until we had about half the driveway clean, then she brought out various bikes as Will and I continued to chip away at the snow.

After shoveling Will and I built a small snowman. This snow was great for packing. Unfortunately, we still had a fair amount of leaves on the yard before the snow fell that rolled up on the snowballs, so our snowman looked dirty. (We even spent several hours earlier in the week raking leaves!) We used blueberries for the eyes and a carrot for the nose. When I went inside to get them I also grabbed Will's Royals hat and we added his glasses to complete the our Snowman Willy.

We couldn't go back inside until after we had a quick snowball fight. Will was adamant about it. In his mind snow = snowball fights and snowmen.

When Anthony got home from work he took the kids outside and they built another snowman. This time in our neighbors' yard. They had left town for the holidays and had fewer leaves in their yard. Even though at the time I found it inconvenient, I'm glad we took the time to get out and enjoy it. It's now almost a month later and we haven't had a snowfall to match it. I can be a grinch about winter weather, but even I can admit that it's fun to get out and play when in the snows.

2015 :: week 2

January 4

Day 2 of our traveling saga. We caught a 7am flight which meant we had to wake up around 5am to get to the airport on time. If you remember from last week's post it was 8 hours earlier that we found out our original flight was cancelled. Not a lot of sleep happened in between. We were all exhausted, but poor Lauren had the hardest time handling things. She was inconsolable for the first half hour of our first flight and then she passed out. Hard. I was very excited to find a Auntie Anne's pretzel stand close to our gate.

January 5

Monday morning we were all exhausted. We woke up to a very minor blanket of snow and the kids really wanted to play in it. I was much to tired to go out in the cold, so I told them they could only go out if they went on the back porch where I could watch them from the comfort of the couch. They lasted for about twenty minutes. During this time they made some insightful observations. Will: the cold makes my nose run. Lauren: snow tastes like cold water.

January 6

First Tuesday of the month means free mini-build at The Lego Store. This month it was an green alien/monster guy and his dog.

January 7

Lauren and her kids are flying to Boston to visit her grandparents. The kids brought these chairs up from the basement and played with this set up for hours. Lauren continued to play the entire time Will was at school. She can be really great at entertaining herself. She gets very into her little world with her kids and their supplies, but most of the action that happens already happened to someone in our family. For example, she had her 3 year checkup recently and had to examine bunny and look for kitties in her ears just like her doctor did to her. And sometimes her kids are loud and she tells them to stop screaming because it's "givin' me a headache!" Which I'm pretty sure she's heard me say...

January 8

The John's helped us buy a new kitchen table for Christmas. Thanks, Doug and Tina! Anthony put it together this week and Thursday night was our first time eating on it as a family. Despite their pained expressions, the kids actually really like the table. They are just not excited about the dinner I had made. Not an uncommon occurrence I'm afraid.

January 9

How long can you use traveling as an excuse for feeling tired and not motivated to do much? Or the cold? I have abused both this week. Friday night we went to the gym and after exercising let the kids play with basketballs for a bit. It has been cold and we have been tired, but we could all feel the effects of lounging around the house for a week. A day or two is cozy and relaxing, but after a week we were all starting to feel lethargic. 

January 10

The stakes in our area set aside this weekend as a time for members to go on team-ups with the missionaries. Stephanie and I went with the sisters serving in our ward and an investigator to a baptism Saturday evening. It was fun to spend time with the sisters and observe how they teach and to meet Donny from Ethiopia.

2015 :: week 1

December 28

Lauren crashed around 6:30 pm Sunday night. It's always such a gamble with kids and sleep. She had been really grouchy so we decided we'd take the sleep when we got it. It was dark outside and she hadn't fallen asleep until about 10:30 pm the night before so we knew she was tired. Unfortunately she woke up about an hour later when we were putting the rest of the kids to bed. Adapting sleep schedules is probably the most difficult part of traveling with young kids.

December 29

Happy Birthday, Anthony! In the ten years that I have known him I think we've celebrated his birthday in Boston five times. I guess that's what happens when your birthday is so close to Christmas. Hillary made an amazing white chocolate raspberry cheesecake for the adults and brownies for the kids. We tried to go see a movie that night, but it was sold out and ended up renting The Giver from redbox instead.

December 30

I was pleasantly surprised with how much Will liked the babies. When Lauren was born he was pretty indifferent, but lately he has been saying he wants to have another baby at our house. He didn't dote on them nearly as much as Lauren did, but that's a pretty high bar. From left to right: Derek, Will and Nolan, three of the four John boy cousins.

December 31

Elder Matthew John returned home from his LDS mission to Boise, Idaho on New Years Eve! His homecoming was the reason we traveled to Boston and we were there to greet him.

January 1

We took the kids to the church Thursday morning and let them run around the gym to let them work off some excess energy. We had a large group spending the day at Papa and Nana's house which made it hard for the kids to really spread out and play. The kids had fun pulling Nana around the gym. Actually, Sadie pulled Nana and the rest of the kids held on to the rope.

January 2

Families started heading home Friday. Will was sad that his best-buddy-cousin and partner-in-crime Sadie left, but thankfully Papa got tickets for the remaining John men (5 and up) to go to a Celtics game. Will had fun cheering for the Celtics even though they lost and has added Celtics related signs to his artistic repertoire. 

January 3

Ugh. Our direct flight home was schedule to leave at 7:15pm, but kept getting pushed back. The only time it snowed while we were in Boston started about an hour before we left for the airport. Our plane was coming from Baltimore and it was temporarily diverted to Vermont because it wasn't safe to land in Boston. The ticket agent promised me that the flight would not be cancelled. We might not get home until 3am, but they weren't going to cancel the flight. We decided we were in. It was going to be awful, but we were going to hold out. Unfortunately around 11pm the flight was cancelled because the crew had maxed out their hours. I opted to rebook us on an early flight because I just wanted to get home asap. This meant that we had about 6 hours between when we left the airport and when we had to get back. It was a rough night.

2014 :: week 52

December 21

Sunday evening my parents invited several families over to their house for a Christmas sing-a-long. People requested Christmas songs and there was almost always someone in the group who could accompany on the piano. There were lots of desserts to munch on and visiting going on too. Before the crowds came I did my best to get a smile of out of Tyler. He's a bit of a momma's boy right now, but as long as she was close by he was willing to share a grin with me.

December 22

Will has taken to tying knots again. He tied a series of knots in his room that have made access to his drawers a bit difficult. He's quite proud of them and was annoyed when I took one down so I could put away his clean clothes.

December 23

For Christmas Eve Eve we spent the afternoon at Crown Center and Union Station with the Staritas, Wilsons and Jill.

December 24

Since we had a large cast available we decided to put on a full ensamble production of the Christmas story Christmas Eve evening. Tony did double duty as both the donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem and a wise man. It was so fun having the entire Crane family in town and to celebrate Christmas together.

December 25

The kids woke up before we did on Christmas morning. Will dressed himself (he could only get shorts out of his drawers due to the aforementioned knots!) and Lauren was upset we made her stop and pose for a picture. These kids made Christmas morning magical, even if they don't cooperate with my goal to have a cute Christmas-morning-stair-shot. Five and three are pretty magical ages. I don't have many more years before Will realizes that it's more than a coincidence that Santa shops at Target too and buys things we saw on sale together.

December 26

We spent this Boxing Day literally boxing up Christmas. We left the next morning for a week in Boston and didn't want to come home to a dried out Christmas tree. I was sad to put things away so early, but when we walked into our house after being gone a week I was very glad we'd made the effort. We spent the morning cleaning while the kids played with their new toys, and the afternoon at my parents house playing games and eating leftovers. My dad always makes a ham for Christmas, so we've been eating leftover ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches on rolls December 26th for as long as I can remember.

December 27

We flew to Boston! And Lauren was in heaven when we got there because she loves babies and there were 3 eight month olds and one 15 month old (who is more of a toddler, but because she was a baby last time we saw her Lauren treated her like a baby too). Even though it looks like she is trying to choke Camille in this picture, she was actually very tenderly touching her and telling her she was "so cute."