Need a Reminder?

Yesterday it snowed here in Chicago. This morning, the "real feel" was seven degrees when Matt left for school. SEVEN. Last year at this time, it was about sevenTY degrees warmer than this where we lived in Arizona. If I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel, this might depress me. BUT, we have had some scorching days in the thirties lately, so as far as I can tell, Spring is just itching to get started. We've almost made it through our first Chicago winter! 

I realized this the other day when I went out to my car and needed to rinse the windshield from some dirty water spots. Usually I try the wipers and the cleaning fluid with no success, since one of our wiper blades is broken from freezing to the glass over Christmas, and the fluid hadn't been unfrozen in months. But guess who got little warm fuzzies inside when she realized that the windshield cleaning fluid could squirt out all by itself in liquid form? ME!!! It felt like summer at that moment, with the sun shining into my car, warming the black leather seats like it's supposed to, and slowly melting every flake of snow that it touched. 

Then it snowed again a few days later.  And we're back to normal winter. 

In case everyone here forgot what warm weather is like, I decided to put up some pictures from September when we spent an afternoon at the beach on Lake Michigan (just a few blocks east) with our Clive cousins. This is to remind you what a wonderful place Chicago is in the summer! Here's what we have to look forward to in just a few months!

Taking our babies out with no socks on! Thereby decreasing our dirty laundry!

Tanks tops and shorts on the beach! (Heaven!)

More exposed baby skin to munch on! 

Sweet sandy kisses!

More beach work out videos with Campbell! 

You know you want the secret for how she gets such nice legs!

Oh yeah...it must be her awesome dance moves...

...that she probably learned from Cadence.

"O vos iniquos...."  This picture reminds me of one you'd see at church, where an old prophet is symbolically looking away from a wicked city in disappointment and despair. And then...destruction!!! Maybe it's just his face.

Checking out the water...considering his options...

...testing it out....

...then quickly snuggling up against Daddy to get warm again.

I guess the water wasn't too cold for a my crazy cousins. Just look at their faces! They're crazy!

Campbell's Uncle Trevor (my first cousin) left Chicago soon after we moved here. He's always loads of fun! We all miss him.

 Good bye for now, lovely beach! We'll be back as soon your water unfreezes! (I'll spare you a picture of the lake right NOW. We want to end with warm, happy thoughts.)

Josh Moments 2

I started this post on November 17th of last year. Never got around to publishing it because things got a little crazy preparing to leave for our long holiday trip. Plus, I kept adding more and more cute pictures and details about my little man, and the burden of arranging it all nicely was just too much. So here is a disorganized collection of adorable Josh moments from a few months ago.

SEPTEMBER '09

He looks so tiny to me here! Ever since we first got our bed set up in this apartment, Josh has LOVED climbing up on it and exploring the world through our window. (Don't worry, it's never opened more than this, and it's insanely hard to push up or down. He's not in danger of falling.) We live on the second story, so from our window Josh can see the whole playground, but isn't too far up to recognize friends and notice details like squirrels, dogs, slides, buses, fire engines, airplanes, and garbage trucks (some of his favorite things in the whole wide world). These days, he sits there with his hands and face smashed against the glass, whispering a running commentary to himself about everything he sees. "Oooh sgirrel! ha!...oooh swiiiiing! siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing go fasssst!... Ehhhpayne, zzzoooooommm! ...Doggie, bye-bye doggie, haa-haa-haa (breathing with his tongue out).......gobbage tuck, so noisy! beep beep...." I think he should be the narrator for a city life documentary. He knows what he's talking about.

OCTOBER '09

Why is it so sweet when kids try to read scriptures or the hymn book in church? I just love it. Especially in cases like this one where he was so interested in my reading the words to him as I pointed. Not so much in cases like a few weeks ago, when I walked back to my room and found my quad scriptures (which were a gift from my grandma the day I turned eight and was baptized) open, faced-down in the hallway, with loose ripped pages scattered around it. The pages are just so goshdarn thin and fun to tear! No worries though, a little tape fixed 'em right up.

I remember this night as my first Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Josh probably only appreciated it as the first time he tasted really expensive popcorn. He preferred it lined up on Daddy's leg. Or fresh off the ground.

Our apartment is not very big, so on days when we have to stay inside, Josh wanders from room to room looking for a change of scenery. I think that's why he loves our bed so much. It's just different from the front room. He loves to snuggle under the covers and pretend to go night-night. He thinks he's soooo funny. (And he kind of is.) I can't remember a day that we've been home and he hasn't played this little game.

This kid learned to climb up a slide before he even got walking down solid. He's such a monkey. One day I saw him crouching at the top of the slide and focusing on something for a long time. I figured he had found a rock that looked like candy or something, but when I got closer, I noticed that he was staring down his nose at this nasty-looking bee (of some kind) about three inches from his face! I would have freaked out, but Josh was so calm and fascinated. I could just see the wheels turning in his brain as he lifted his hand slowly to snatch up this new little creature and put him in his pocket. That's when Mom jumped in. Crazy boy. I was so glad he didn't get stung!

"There's a new sheriff in town, boys!" I don't know how Matt got him to pose like this....It's just priceless.

I've probably mentioned this before, but Josh doesn't walk. He RUNS! Everywhere. You can't open our apartment door without caution, because before you can even walk over the threshold, you'll feel a gust of wind and see a trail of smoke coming from a little diapered person jetting down the hall. Seriously. We go through this every time someone comes to the door. This has become an especially sweet routine on Monday nights, when the missionaries come over for dinner. It's almost like a ritual. As soon as they finish giving a spiritual thought and start putting on their shoes, Josh sprints for the doorway and starts laughing spastically in anticipation. He is their personal escort to the elevator every week.

This is how Josh used to keep himself entertained while I showered. He would open my contacts boxes, rip them apart, and scatter them across the bathroom. It just shows you what I'll put up with for ten minutes of  peace. One day I found a bunch of my unopened contacts in the garbage can. Then I realized that he learned how to open them. I had to start hiding them after that.

This lamp is barely held together with Scotch tape. Josh has been using it as a punching bag. Gotta sculpt those guns somehow.

NOVEMBER '09

This boy is so active and curious that he rarely has time to just relax and snuggle me. On this special day, we had just spent several hours exhausting his legs and his excitement at the zoo, and he totally sacked out as soon as we got in the car. We decided to try out a well-loved little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called "Flubba Dubb Chub's" afterward and ended up parking like five blocks away. I figured Josh would wake up when we started walking, but he was zonked. He slept as I carried him all the way there and even stayed asleep in the noisy little restaurant, on my uncomfortable lap as I sat straight up on a bar stool. It was so unlike him that I had to keep checking to make sure he was breathing! But it was pretty close to heaven for me. Matt was jealous.

I was cooking one night, standing on my little rug in front of the stove, not really paying attention to what Josh was doing. I was just satisfied that he was entertaining himself without my help. After about fifteen minutes of stirring and seasoning and what-not, I turned around to see THIS. Good work, honey.

We joined a bunch of friends on a spontaneous trip to the circus one Friday night. It was amazing! This was my favorite part. Josh loved every minute of it. The whole time he was sitting up, leaning forward, making animal sounds to himself, with wide eyes so he wouldn't miss a second. He especially loved the dogs, tigers, and elephants. Any kind of animal doing any kind of activity is entertaining to Josh. In the past few months, he's become addicted to YouTube and had seen pretty much every cat and dog clip out there. Matt loves when Josh goes up to him on the laptop, points to the screen, and begs to watch the animals. His favorite videos recently have been about big trucks, excavators, fire engines, and tractors.

I'm not sure, but I think this is the month we started spelling out words in his presence. Not to help him learn his letters, but to avoid freak outs when we said words like "juice", "candy", "outside", "park", "stairs", and "play." He knew what those words meant pretty early on. Sometimes I feel like he's a little puppy dog that walks on two legs.

He's way into cars and trains these days. If you can't tell by his grin, he was really proud of himself when he figured out how to climb onto this parking garage toy and sit on the top.

The boy's got good taste. He loves Giordano's deep dish pizza! He is a pretty good kid when we go out to eat, as long as you treat him like a grown up. He likes to sit in a big boy chair, drink water from a glass, use a regular fork, and salt and pepper his own food. Such a proper young man!

If you were this handsome, wouldn't you just LOVE looking at yourself in the mirror?  I have a full length mirror in my bedroom. One Sunday while I was getting ready for church, turning front to back and agonizing over which dress wouldn't make me look yucko, Josh stepped in front of me and started copying my check-out method. With a serious expression, he kept his head focused on the mirror while his little body did a 180 from left to right, pausing just a little longer to check out his rear end kinda like Mommy does. He also enjoys talking to himself in the mirror with his face smashed against his reflection. I can't blame him.

The picture below is actually from today, but it shows something he has loved to do since he could walk! Josh puts on everyone's shoes, and seems especially determined to learn to walk in my high heels. I guess he likes a challenge! He'll go into my closet and try to pick out my shoes for the day, so excited when he finds a match and drops them by my feet.

So many more stories and details I don't want to forget, but I'll stop there for now. I sure love my little boy! Being a mom is so much fun!

Happy Valentine's Day!

First off, I have to say in advance that this is Matt. Important information, considering the subject matter.

So, happy Valentine’s Day, to everyone! One of our new favorite shows, called “Community” (NBC, Thursday nights) has a very funny character called Abed. Aside from looking like a Human/Pterodactyl hybrid, Abed is known for comparing everything to people and situations in movies. So, on this Valentine’s Day, here is my Abed-style valentine’s card to my lovely wife.

So, to start off, why is Mimi so great? I’m sure that that reason is different for each of you, but there isn’t anyone reading this who doesn’t think so. It is one of the greatest thrills of my life to be able to spend all my free time with her. To compare, it would be like or a 14 year old girl (or my buddy Lincoln) living with Justin Timberlake. I have to say, that every time I come home, I get as excited as Augustus Gloop entering the chocolate factory, just because I know that my best friend in the whole world is there waiting for me.

Mimi is, quite literally, the perfect woman. Before I met her, I had three lists of things I was looking for in a lady – namely, the “must-haves”, the “nice to haves” and the “Hey, a guy can dream, right?”. Mimi had every single thing on all of my lists, and then as I got to know her I realized that she was wonderful in a ton of ways that I didn't even know that I was supposed to be looking for. Meeting Mimi was like being the panhandling hobo on UHF. I was hoping to get some spare change, and I ended up getting a double die Denver mint penny that was worth a fortune (“I had enough money to buy a whole bunch of shares, plus I got this neat watch. It’s a Rolex! See?”)

Everyone knows that Mimi is absolutely gorgeous, so much fun to be around, incredibly intelligent, very caring, a great mom, and spiritually in-tune. These are wonderful things that I don’t want to discount. But you all already KNOW that stuff. A Valentine’s Day card about that would be the equivalent of the six-fingered man asking Inigo Montoya “Did you know I was once acquainted with your father?”. So here are three things that I didn’t expect to need in a wife, but am SO grateful that I’ve got.

1.) I love the fact that Mimi is brilliantly, devastatingly clever. She makes Wayne Brady look like Brick Tamland buying suits in the toilet store. She has an incredibly sharp wit and impeccable comedic timing. Some of you might not even know this about her, because many of her best jokes are whispered into my ear and end up staying just between us. That being said, it is very obviously shown in the things she writes. Even reading over poems and short stories she wrote in the 6^th grade make me laugh out loud. I don’t doubt that she’ll write and compile something amazing in the near future. Watch out Shel. Your stranglehold on the minds of elementary school students is not forever.

2.) Mimi is a baller. While this term is typically used to describe one who is skilled at basketball, that’s not the area I’m focusing on here (even though I still haven’t managed to beat her even ONCE in a free-throw shooting contest or HORSE). Mimi is a very adventurous person. From our very first date when she said “Hey, lets go to Vegas”, to teaching ourselves how to make wedding cakes, to the uncertainty about where the money is going to come from over the next few years, Mimi isn’t afraid to take chances. I know that regardless of who/what/where our future holds, we’re going to attack it together, because that’s the way we roll. I love that about her. Its like being married to She-Ra, only more awesome.

3.) You know the scene in the Matrix when Neo learns how to fight? (Don’t worry—I would NEVER compare my wife to the Artist Formally Known as Ted Theodore Logan. Just keep reading.) He starts out a normal guy and then they plug him into this computer, and give him decades of Kung-Fu experience in the space of 30 seconds. I am pretty convinced that Mimi has one of these machines and is holding out on me. One day she’ll decide she wants to learn something new, and the next day she is doing it as if she has been teaching University level classes on the subject for 20 years. Mimi could be doing anything she wanted right now. She has 100% unlimited potential, with so much natural talent and learning ability that she makes the rest of us mere mortals look silly.

I’ll never REALLY be able to tell Mimi how much I appreciate her, and how lucky I feel every single day that she is my wife. As far as being suave and debonair is concerned, I would probably say that I’m on par with Kenneth Parcell. Nonetheless, the best part of it all is that even after 4 years, I am still recognizing new things about her that I couldn’t live without, and I don’t think that is going to change any time soon.

Happy Valentine’s Day Deer Heart. I love you.

The Sunshine Inspired Me

I woke up this morning to a BRIGHT SUNNY BEAUTIFUL WINTER DAY! Those five words don't usually appear together in the same sentence when you're talking about Chicago. I don't know if it was the extra sleep I got from Matt getting up with Josh today, the pleasant surprise of sunshine, or a combination of both, but I suddenly had all the energy in the world and wanted to run straight outside to roll around in the snow! ...With my bathing suit on, of course, because out here we have to take advantage of every ray of sun we get. 

Everyone knows you can't build a very good snowman with just one kid, so we invited Josh's pseudo big brother and sister (Carson and Brooklyn) to play with us!

Brooklyn always takes such good care of Josh. She insisted on pushing him in the swing, and you can tell by his face that he absolutely loved it!

We had lots of fun being silly together. I love five-year-old humor.

Sweet little Carson in the the cutest snow suit ever! He's such a stud muffin.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but Chicago snow is REALLY hard to pack down! I couldn't make a snowball for the life of me! It just kept falling apart. After many failed attempts at the pack-and-roll technique, we decided that trying to make a big three-section snowman was just out of the question. We settled for this little miniature. Don't let the spiked hair fool you -- this is a snowLADY wearing a long elegant dress. Just ask Brooklyn.

We totally made all the kids in the Tot Lot jealous. At one point there were four of five of them lined up against the window, faces pressed against the glass, staring out at our snowlady with longing eyes. Sorry to all the moms in there that we upset!

Brooklyn's a pro at snow angels.

Josh didn't understand all the fuss about a snowperson half his size. He refused to keep his mittens on, so his little fingers were half-frozen. And he was too scared to walk in the snow by himself, especially after falling on his bare hands and realizing that snow is cold AND wet. We kind of had a rough start, but he had fun watching the rest of us. Plus he looks soooooo cute all bundled up in his snow gear, so it was worth it.

Once he saw that the playground kept him away from the snow, Josh really started having fun! We have sure missed the tunnel and slide this winter!

Hey! Where did the snowlady's carrot nose go?!

I love this picture. Brooklyn is almost falling over after putting all her heart and soul into a big push for Josh, who is having the time of his life, while Carson's whole body is slumped in pout-mode because Josh is swinging higher than him. Sorry Carson, I shouldn't have taken a break from pushing you, but I just had to get some pictures of this fun day!

We learned that it doesn't take long for kids (and moms) to get worn out after playing in the snow. Here, Josh and Carson look about ready to take a nap...but of course Brooklyn is just getting started! 

Cutest kids ever. What a great day.