Daddy-Daughter Date

Faith and Joe got to go to the Rodeo for a special night out. Jensen got to go to Winegars with mommy and Jacob for blue ice cream with sprinkles on top! An all around perfect night for everyone!

Thanks for the Rodeo tickets Uncle Neal and Aunt Janice! Our little cowgirl and her daddy had a blast watching the show and eating cotton candy!

Big Girls Don't Cry

Joe is out of the woods from hunting for a few days and I've been keeping him busy. In less then 16 hours he's done laundry, emptied the dishwasher, a round of baths and bedtime, vacuumed, watered plants, made a LARGE pot of coffee, made pancakes for breakfast, straightened the garage, and taken Faith and Jensen in for flu shots. See why things fall apart around here when he's gone? He's ALWAYS this helpful. Although, I've noticed during hunting season, he's a bit more eager to help. You know, less heavy sighs, and other signs of being completely irritated by chores.

When Daddy and the kids got home from flu shots this morning Faith bounds in the house and says, "I didn't even cry for my shot! We'll actually just a little at first." Apparently, she has a bit of an inflated sense of what ACTUALLY went down at the Valley Clinic this morning.

As the story goes from Joe: The whole ride down there she laughed and giggled and was EXCITED to get a shot. She was even going to go first so Jensen would see it didn't hurt and he wouldn't be afraid. THEN when the nurse walked in she was singing a different tune. Long story shortened into bullet format:

-Jensen had to go first and cried because he was being held down by Joe.
-Faith's turn resulted in being restrained by Joe (sitting behind her pinning her arms down, two nurses holding her down, one nurse administering her shot, SCREAMING like Joe has never heard before out of her during the preparations, and our Doctor (who hates being present for shots...he likes to be the "good-guy") rushing in to be sure everything was alright.
-THEN as soon as she looked down and saw the needle in her arm, all mayhem ceased and she declared, "oh...I didn't even cry!" Apparently all adults in the room were doubled over in stitches from fits of laughter.

Joe said on the way out she was strutting her stuff with a swanky little walk, flitting her sticker in the air with a HUGE smile on her face saying "That didn't even hurt one little bit!" The halls of the clinic were lined with people watching her leave like this after they'd all heard her in the exam room! That's our girl!!!! Never without "spirit" and drama!

And this my friends...would be why she got her Kindergarten shots at age 4 versus age 5. Dr. Larson knew she'd only get stronger and stronger and harder to hold down.

Dyson Update

If you recall in a previous post, I really like my Dyson vacuum. Okay, I LOVE my Dyson. I've already told Joe, if we are ever to divorce, I get the vacuum. He looked at me with a bit of a blank stare. Not sure if that's because he knows me well enough to know that the vacuum IS one of my favorite things or because it's the only thing I mentioned. No mention of the house, the debt, or even the kids. I just wanted to be sure I get to take my vacuum! And NO, divorce is not in our future. Anyways, back to my post one thing I love about my vacuum is THIS (taken straight from their website):
All Dyson upright and canister vacuums have:
No loss of suction
Root Cyclone™ technology means Dyson vacuums don’t lose suction power as you clean.

Wow! I love the fact that my precious Dyson is so powerful. Yet, for the past few months, it just hasn't been working up to speed. When working in "normal" mode it runs like a dream. When I'd attempt to use the hose, it made a terrible noise, lost all suction, and didn't pick up even the tiniest of Polly Pocket parts. I'm sure Faith has sabotaged it, after seeing numerous Polly shoes,whirling around in that cyclonic tank.

One of the deciding factors in splurging for the Dyson Animal was their fabulous 5 year warranty. This week, I had "Call Dyson" on my to-do list. Let me tell you how thankful I am that I did NOT get that done. Yesterday, I decided to attempt to unearth the problem myself. After a few minutes, I discovered just how easy it was to take off a few parts, even with the help of a five year old, a 2 1/2 year old, and a 7 month old. Yes. They love the "Animal" as much as I do.

Now, once again, Dyson advertises

All Dyson upright and canister vacuums have:
No loss of suction
Root Cyclone™ technology means Dyson vacuums don’t lose suction power as you clean.



Anywhere up there does it read: "Dyson suggests using the hose devise to suck up household objects like a knife?" Huh? Yes, I pulled a plastic baggie full of YUCK (a full hair cut full of hair, toys, rubber bands, food, stickers, etc.), you know all the "normal" things you'd suck up with a household vacuum, out of a 4 inch section of my precious. Including...a plastic knife. Really. I'm a bit confused why it couldn't make the hairpin turn, up the pipe into the canister. With all that Dyson power and all. Are you kidding me?!? A knife?! Now I'm not 100% certain how this happened, but for the record THIS IS NOT A SHOP VAC!

I AM happy to report that my vacuum is fixed and can't wait to tell Joe all about it when he gets home. He has been complaining lately how "YOUR Dyson doesn't seem to be all it's cut out to be!" Hmmmm....sabotage?!?

Jensen's Prayers

Every night (or at least most nights) when we put the kids to bed we "pray on them" (they call it) and then they say their own prayers. It is so, so sweet to hear what they pray about. Faith has the sweetest most innocent prayers and I love hearing her heart in work. Jensen on the other hand, prayers the same EXACT thing every night. It's touches my heart to hear him talk to God and also makes me giggle a little:

Chank-chew (thank you) for my mommy.Chank-chew for my daddy. Chank-chew for my Daith (Faith). Chank-chew for my Gake (Jake). Chank-chew for the hic-ups. We're assuming that one night he had the hic-ups and has just said it ever since!

The picture has nothing to do with his prayers, but isn't he the cutest?!?

"I'll Always Be Your Baby!"

Those are the words Faith said to me seconds before the last picture was snapped. Exactly 5 minutes and 18 seconds before we loaded her in the car for her first day of Kindergarten. Was she trying to make me cry? Is there some sort of competition at school for the kid with the most hysterical mother? Is THAT how she got to be "teacher's helper" on her first day. Way to go Faith! You made me bawl and won my heart over once again!

Today was such a bitter-sweet day for me. Faith is more then ready for school, but I'm just not ready to hand her over to the "world." I didn't sleep a wink last night, but I did manage to hold it together when dropping her off at school. Until...I walked away. Then I bawled like a baby. Baby? Wasn't SHE just a baby?!?

Anyways, Faith LOVED school and I loved that it was only half day. I think half-time is a perfect fit for her (and me). She gets one last year at home with me in the mornings, but gets to learn all about school!

Jensen's Big Boy Summer

There's not much "baby" left in Jensen these days. Two major milestones have happened over the past three months. First off, the day after school got out, I tackled potty-training Jens. It went MUCH better then I had expected, considering when ever I'd mention it he'd literally FREAK out and shout things like, "Mommy, yikes (likes) to change my poop!" Guess I learn something new about myself every day, because I simply was not aware that I even remotely liked to change stinky, 2 1/2 year old boy poop! Anyhow, we had a big countdown, went and bought "big boy" underwear the day before, and completely went diaper free, except for nap and bed time. The first morning, he cried the better part of two hours and was MORTIFIED to be wearing underwear. He had a couple of full-on accidents that first day, but by day three was pretty much trained. Refused to use the little kid potty (THANK HEAVENS!) and has been a dream ever since. A few funny things about him being in underwear now:

-He calls them "my wonderwears"
-He's so stinking skinny that even the smallest ones are baggy
-Jensen prefers the boxer-briefs, like daddy, which again are too loose
-He INSIST on wearing them all backwards, so he can see the picture on them

The other big news in our house IS (insert DRUM ROLL) he's kicked the habit and is now binky-free!!! Actually, I should give a more accurate description of what really went down in our house, because that sounds a bit like Jensen woke up one morning, cheerfully threw out all of his binkies, and declared himself "clean and sober." Beautiful picture I just painted there, but not so much how it happened.

What REALLY happened was one exhausted, sleep-deprived mother found herself up nightly dealing with the binky-woes of her two precious boys. Binkies were disappearing and falling out of little mouths left and right, leaving this hear said mommy blindly searching the corners of the crib (Jacob), inside pillow cases, under the cavern of the bed (Jensen) multiple times each night, seeking out the precious, prized binkies that could be shoved in the mouths of her children and allow her to steal a few precious minutes of sleep. Running on severe sleep deprivation and loads of coffee, mommy formed herself a MAB (Mother's- Against - Binkies) group, consisting of a whopping one whole member...yes herself. When dear sweet daddy left for his hunting trip, mommy decided the time was right. See, she knew had both mommy and daddy been there they would have talked themselves into giving in. Here is how the first meeting of MAB went down.

The following events took place on September 7th 2009:

-6pm: Kelly is exhausted from the previous nights shenanigans of binky searching decided tonight Jensen is done with binkies and breaks the news to him that they are all gone. Jensen says, "we buy more morrow (tomorrow) at Meyers (Fred Meyer)." Mommy insist they are all gone. Jensen insist Jacob will share his. Mommy insist we are done with binkies. Jensen insist there has got to be one last, remaining artificial nipple in this house that he can get his hands on.
-6:17pm: Mommy realizes if the binkies are going for Jens, they've got to go for Jacob at the same time.
-6:40: Kelly finishes collecting any binky she can find, shoves them all into a plastic bag while no one is looking, and throws them high and deep onto the top shelf in the garage. Just in case. You never know what may happen at 3:00am. She just knew she'd have to be pretty desperate to get out the later, move all the junk from the ground below the shelf, rummage through God-only-knows-what on the top shelf to retrieve the binkies.
-7:30 Bedtime rolls around. Jensen cries. A lot. Really a lot. Kelly feels VERY guilty, but holds strong. Jacob goes down like a dream (and sleeps much better then the previous months).
-Fast Forward to 10:00pm. Jensen is STILL awake. Anytime mommy goes in his room, he's out of bed rummaging around and says, "go away. my yooking for sumfing."
-Jensen woke up twice in the middle of the night, but has had no problems ever since.

For being such a big boy he got to go to the store and pick out any toy he wanted. Of coarse he wanted the 12 foot long, bazooka water gun. Really. What 2 1/2 year old boy wouldn't. Luckily he was persuaded into the Light Saber. I did learn something new about Star Wars (seeing as how I'm not a fan), after 31 years of calling them Light Savers, apparently they are Light SABERS.

I do miss his sweet binky kisses every night at bed time, but am loving his new "real" kisses just as much! :)

"Who Stole Our Baby?"

Yep. Another unhappy Rotter kid! Look at that smile! Seven months old and really coming into his own. Jacob's favorite activities include: eating puzzle pieces, unraveling the toilet paper, teething (he's determined to show those teeth whose boss yet), climbing on top of Jensen and Faith (I'm thinking the tackling has already begun), holding his own bottle when mommy is away, moving from crawling to sitting and back again, feeding him self finger food, crawling all over the house, army crawling, pulling himself to standing-followed by falling down and hitting his head, playing with his toys, laughing at the cat, eating toilet paper, chasing the vacuum (our kids all love the vacuum), smiling like crazy, babbling and "shouting" along with the other two, attempting to keep up with his brother and sister and simply melting our hearts one smile at a time!

Reflections of Summer

WE'REEEEE BAAAACK! After a long summer break from blogging, we are back and at it. Be rest assured, the lack of updates wasn't due to a lack of happenings! We simply were busy and having so much fun just being a family. Our blogging break was actually quite intentional. Reflecting back, we actually squeezed lots into summer. Here are a few of our favorites:

-6 weeks of swimming for Faith and a new friend for Jensen to play with there
-Long walks in the morning
-riding bikes and scooters
-play dates at the park
-pajamas as long as we liked!
-Pat and Kat's wedding at Hood Canal with the Thorson side of the family
-Camping with Grandma and Grandpa Rotter
-Swimming at the new lodge at Red's
-play dates with our many, many friends
-planting our first garden: radishes, lettuce, carrots, basil, tomatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, beans, peas
-visiting cousins Harry and Arden in Walla Wall at their fun, fun Bed and Breakfast, Nine Trees Inn
-Ephrata Water park with Grandma Beth and then again with friends later
-Fourth of July festivities at Reds and West Ellensburg Park
-Face painting almost every Saturday at the market
-Ellensburg Rodeo and Fair
-school clothes shopping for our big kinder kid
-visiting Auntie Shayne in Wenatchee (and allergy testing for Jensen)
-making pesto with the kids- THEY LOVE PESTO!
-trip to Small Woods Farm (LOVE it there)
-drinking my morning coffee on the deck while the sun rises
-playing board games with the kids
-family walks in the evening
-story time and cuddles
-many milestones for Jensen (potty training and kicking the binky habit)
-watching Jacob grow before our very eyes
-Faith learning so many new things


I simply loved the lazy days of summer this year. We were always busy and hoppin', but it was so nice to be on a "family" schedule versus work schedule! Can't wait for June to roll around again! :)