Visit from Gma and Gpa Checketts

Well, I honestly thought I was going to have a lot of free time on my hands with the anticipated shut down of the federal government.  I was not only going to get caught up on my blog, but I was finally going to write that novel I’ve been working on, fix the brakes on the car, work on my free-lance photography………ok, I was going to try and finally defeat Angry Birds but at least I had a plan.  If there was a furlough, I had thought about trying to go to the workforce services office to look for a temporary job, but as I started to list my skills I realized my only hope was for the government to stay open.  I mean, really, only the government sees bullets on a resume like “skillfully attends meetings”, “adequately applies 6th grade grammar to email correspondence”, and “usually stays awake” as commendable attributes.  Thankfully Congress came together and worked things out so I was able to return to “work” today.

In spite of my hard day’s labor (actually I ended up taking most of the day off because I accidentally left my laptop at home – yes that’s true), I figured I had procrastinated blogging long enough and that I needed to at least post something.  Thankfully we actually had something to blog about.  Grandma and Grandpa Checketts were in the neighborhood on business so they stayed in town over conference weekend to spend some time with us and the kids.  It was a great chance for Tyler and Reagan to reunite with Grandma and Grandpa and it was also nice for me and Thesha to have a few helping hands around to keep the kids occupied.  We really enjoyed watching conference and sharing some time with them too. 

Here’s a quick picture of the kids with Gma and Gpa Checketts.

Now, usually I would have at least a handful of pictures here but unfortunately we ran into some technical difficulties with our computer and the camera.  For some reason when we move our pictures from the camera to the computer, the images come out distorted, discolored, or fragmented.  This has happened in the past and I am usually able to get around it eventually, but this time was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.  It took about 10 minutes just to finally get this one picture over and even then I had to crop it a little to get rid of the distortion at the bottom of the picture.  So, we finally broke down and bought a new computer.  Of course, it will take a week to get here, so you’ll all just have to come back in a week or so.  By then we’ll have a computer that will match the performance of our camera, we’ll hopefully have something else to blog about, and maybe there will even be a federal budget that gets approved for the rest of the year instead of just another week.  Ok, well, we should at least have a computer.  I’ll just have to make up the rest.

Date Night and Other Fun Stuff

Well thanks to some of our good friends from the ward, Thesha and I were finally able to go on a date.  This was the first date since… well… probably since we were in Utah and we snuck out for lunch while Thesha’s parents watched the kids.  Needless to say, it was a much-needed break.  The kids stayed with the Nair’s who have two boys that are right around Tyler’s age.  As we pulled up and Brittany opened her door, Tyler headed straight in and never looked back.  Seriously, he was in the door, saying “Hi, guys!” to his friends and headed for their toys.  We literally didn’t even get to say good bye to him.  Thankfully Reagan was still willing to show us some love and at least shed a tear or two over leaving her with someone else.

For our date we decided to go out for sushi.  Tyler has a hard enough time with fish sticks so we don’t usually waste our money taking him to places like that.   Plus we wanted to go to a fairly nice restaurant.  Ok, as nice a restaurant as you can find that’s still next to a Quizno’s and a Verizon store.  As we entered the restaurant and asked for a table for two, the hostess asked if we had a reservation.   A reservation?  Now if I was joking about the Quizno’s and Verizon store I may have expected this, but when I literally parked in the same parking lot as the Quizno’s customers, I really didn’t think a reservation would be necessary.  The fact that there were ten open tables and that when we said “No” the hostess just said “Ok, follow me.” and sat us at a table just confirmed how ridiculous of a question this really was. 

As we were seated, however, I began to realize just what a reservation could have meant for us.  We were taken all the way to the back to a small table in a corner right next to the doorway to the kitchen.  To make it even more romantic, on the other side of our table there was a family of five with two boys (probably 5 and 8) and a little baby girl (about 6 or 7 months).  Here we were, finally out on a date and to one side of us we hear the suite serenade of Spanish vulgarities by the Mexicans preparing fine Japanese cuisine and an occasional “CORNER” shouted by the waiters and waitresses as they come in and around the corner leading into the kitchen.  On the other side is a gentle reminder of the life we not only tried to leave behind for the evening but also the life that awaits us as our kids get older and their kicking and kneeing and elbowing becomes more and more violent.  It’s amazing we were able to overcome the romantic ambiance and contain our overwhelming urge to start making out.

So instead we just stuffed our faces with spicy tuna rolls.

Ok, actually the family next to us was pretty well behaved and the food was pretty good so it probably wasn’t as bad as I’ve made it out to be.   And after all, a night out is a night out, right?

The next day was Saturday and after recovering from all the tuna rolls, I figured it was a nice enough day to go ahead and break out the Harley and take a little ride.  It was a little chilly, but I was bundled up so I figured I’d be ok.  As I started to pull out of the apartment complex, I didn’t even make it to the end of the road and a van started to make a left turn in front of me.  I’m sure in the back of their mind they were thinking “Hmmm, that looks like a guy on a motorcycle, but it’s obviously way too cold for that to be true so I guess it’s ok to go ahead and make the turn.”   Thankfully they realized they were wrong and there was a guy on a motorcycle headed straight for them and they stopped with just enough room for me to sneak by.  After about another five minutes on the motorcycle, however, I realized that this person’s inner voice was actually smarter than I had originally given him credit for.  It was quite a bit colder than I had originally anticipated and I froze my… uhhh… chaps off.  

I only ended up riding for about a half hour, but it was at least far enough to check out when our favorite crab shack will be opening.  As it turns out, they don’t open until May 1st.  I guess I could have waited a few more weeks to take my ride.

Like a smoked salmon sashimi prepared by a guy named Jose and served to you by a waitress named Karen, sometimes you just have to look on the bright side and just enjoy the experience as best you can. 

Ok, this next part is for all of you who read my last blog and called me names for treating Tyler like he was the intern who’s only purpose was to make my life easier.  I’ll have you know I’ve decided to use my powers for good as well.  Today after wiping Tyler’s nose with a Kleenex for the 5th time in a single hour, I was done.  So when he started to have a runny nose yet again, I told him to go get a Kleenex, told him to pull one out (accompanied by “hurry, hurry”) and then told him to wipe his nose (“hurry, Bud, I’ll time you.)   Like an old pro he wiped his nose.  Of course then he wiped his hands and then wiped off his clothes all with the same Kleenex, but hey it’s progress.  Now you may be thinking this is just me still being lazy, but wiping your nose is a critical life skill that will serve him well throughout his life.  Just like bringing his dad a Mt. Dew.

They grow up so fast

Well, once again there’s not too much to blog about in terms of fun activities or sightseeing adventures so I’ll just take a few minutes to share a few of the latest developments with the kids. 

Tyler is growing up into quiet a young boy.  He’s talking so well and is able to understand and respond appropriately.  So, for example, he was repeating Thesha word-for-word as she was trying to ask him to do something and she said, “Are you just going to repeat everything I say or what?” and his appropriate response was “Yes.”  Well, ok then.

The best part about him understanding and responding accordingly is that I now have someone who can start to do those menial tasks that aren’t real difficult but are just a hassle.  For example, we were getting ready to go out and I needed to change Tyler’s diaper.  So I just asked him to run get me a diaper.  Amazingly he ran and not only got a diaper but grabbed the tub of wipes as well.  Sweet.  “Ok,” I thought, “let’s see how well he REALLY understands.”  So I asked him to go to the fridge and get me a soda.  AWESOME – he totally just brought me a Mt. Dew and I didn’t even have to leave my indentation in the couch.  I felt bad that I had reached a new level of laziness, but I figure I’ve earned it and sooner or later he’s going to figure out that the whole “Hurry, I’ll time you.” bit is just a hoax to get him to do stuff he really doesn’t want to do.  I have to be careful with my new-found powers, however.  The other day we were at the grocery store and as we were checking out I almost tossed him the keys and asked him to pull the car up to the door.  Yeah, I really need to save that one for later when I can really use it to my advantage.

Another fun thing that Tyler’s been doing is stretching his imagination.  I don’t know where he picked this up, but lately he’s been “hopping” around on his hands and knees and referring to himself as “little froggy”.  “C’mon, little froggy.”  “It’s time for lunch, little froggy.”  “Stop kicking your sister, little froggy.”  I would worry about this but every once in a while he still comes up to me and says “Hi Dad it’s me Tyler.” so I guess it’s all normal.  Plus as long as that little froggy can bring me some chocolate donuts from the pantry he can hop all he wants.

Here’s our little froggy… ready to serve.

The other really fun thing lately has been Reagan’s furniture surfing.  She learned how to pull herself up on the furniture a couple weeks ago and there was no stopping her.  You can’t sit anywhere without a scene like this…

I know you’re sitting there thinking, “Ahhh, how cute.” and Thesha and I would agree with you.  Our pants that have puke stains all over them, however, would probably disagree.  Sigh… I’m sure some day she’ll stop puking all over.  I never thought I would want something more than a kid that was pottie trained until we had Reagan and found out what it was like to have a puker.  I haven’t walked through this many wet spots on the carpet since I had a puppy in the house as a kid.  But like the puppy, Reagan is too freakin’ cute to be too upset at.

The latest, however, is that Reagan took her surfing to a new level yesterday.  We have a couple of the little walker toys and yesterday Thesha stood her up to one of them and like a rocket Reagan took off across the room.  As if the speed crawling didn’t make her mobile enough, now she’s moving around upright. 

Reagan taking her first steps with the walker

Thankfully she hasn’t learned how to go backwards or turn around yet. 

As for us, it’s been pretty much life as usual.  Thesha’s been having fun learning all the in’s and out’s of our camera lately and stumbled on a neat trick.  She was able to make it look like Tyler is disappearing.

Now you see him…

Now you don’t…

I don’t know whether to be creeped out by that picture or not.  I mean, I know it’s just a weird effect with the shutter speed and aperture setting and stuff but that’s just creepy.  I mean, what if he really disappeared.  I might have to get off my lazy butt and actually walk five feet across the room to get the TV remote.  AHHHHHHH! Frightening.

Winters are So Boring in Maryland

Ok, so I know it’s been a while since I blogged, but winters out here are so boring.  Most of the things that we like to go see and do are outdoors.  Even though there’s not much going on, I figured I had still better go ahead and blog before I get any more hate mail.  So, here are some mostly-true stories that hopefully brighten up your day.

Well, Reagan is officially mobile.  She’s crawling all over the place these days.  As exciting as that is, it’s been a nice little reminder that we have a bunch of stuff that we now have to guard.  Baskets stand watch in front of the computer as chairs take their post as centurions blocking the pathway into the kitchen. 

The other day it all became worth it though.  Normally when I arrive home from work, Tyler will run and meet me at the door and give me a big hug.  Then I’ll give him either my lunch box or a piece of mail or something and while he’s distracted I’ll say hello to Thesha (or as Tyler like’s to say, “Hi to babe” – I give Thesha a kiss and say “Hi, babe.”).  Then I’ll go and find Reagan and hold her for a few minutes.  Well the other day she was following Tyler around so as I came in the door and got my hug from Tyler, here came Reagan following close behind.  She crawled – well, she was still lunging at that point – down the hallway to meet me at the door.  She came the whole way and was laughing and smiling the whole way.  It was adorable.

In addition to gaining mobility, Reagan’s personality is really starting to shine through these days.  I’m sure parent’s of daughters know exactly what I mean by that sentence.  When Tyler is upset he’ll cry or throw a tantrum or something.  When Reagan gets upset, she just yells at me.  Yes, she looks me straight in the face and her demeanor goes from this…

to this…

Yes, we’re all learning to get (and stay) on Reagan’s good side.

In addition to crawling all over the place, Reagan is learning to pull herself up onto toys, the couch, our legs, or whatever’s in her way.  One day she was crawling up on the little push cart (I don’t know what they’re really called, but you’ll see what I mean in the picture) so we decided to sit her in it and let her push herself around. 

I instantly became the dad in the car insurance commercials nervously watching as his daughter started to “drive” for the first time.  A proud but nervous moment.  Here she is so excited to go out and explore on her new toy.

In my mind I thought of all the scary, dangerous, and life-changing events that might happen when she’s really out on her own.  It went a little something like this…

It’s late on a Friday night.  Everyone was celebrating the homecoming victory of the local high school football team.  Suddenly the silence of the cool fall evening is disrupted by flashing red and blue lights.  Now pulled off to the side of the road, an officer shines his flashlight into the driver’s side window of a classic 1st driver car and asks, “Excuse me miss…

… but have you been drinking?”

To her relief, her brother is there to distract the officer.

“Whu sheems to be the problem… Occifer?

As the Officer turns his head to avoid getting contact drunk from their breath, Reagan quickly throws the half-empty cup from the car.  Looking back at the officer with her big blue eyes she asks…

“Can’t we just make this a warning?  Wink…wink…”

NO…No…, oh… it was just a nightmare.

Still.  I’ve already grounded Reagan for life and explained to her that driving is a total drag and that she should never learn how to do it.   Tyler’s punishment is that he now has to clean up Reagan’s spit-up off the carpet so he realizes how bad it would really be to spend time with a bunch of drunks.

Ok, back to reality.  If you look down to our blog about this year’s Christmas, you’ll see a picture of Tyler opening up a present that is full of books.  Those of you from Thesha’s family are probably thinking, “Oh that’s so great that you’re getting him interested in reading.”  Those of you from my side of the family are probably thinking, “You got him something cool, too, right?”  Actually, Tyler has gotten more enjoyment out of these books than probably any other gift we’ve ever given him.  I can’t imagine where he get’s his love of books from, but it looks like Thesha won’t be the only one around here getting books for every birthday, Christmas, or Cinco de Mayo … what? Mexican’s love to read.

Every night we get to sit together and read about Lego City, or Lightning McQueen, or the Cat in the Hat. 

Reagan loves to reach out and touch the pictures and this drives Tyler nuts.  He’s always pushing her hands away and sighing at her for disrupting the story.  Ahh the start of wrestling matches which are sure to come.

As the final thought for this blog, we are excited that Reagan’s hair has started to get long enough that Thesha can do a little styling.  We thought the earrings would be enough to help people realize she wasn’t a little boy (as if all the pink crap wasn’t enough) but apparently there are still some nice but dumb people out there.  With her hair done, it’s impossible to mistake her for a boy anymore.  Here are some glamour shots.  (Well, as glamorous as you can get with a runny nose and a bib on.)

If anyone mistakes her for a boy now I’m pretty sure I’m legally bound to kick them in the throat.

Little Gems

Well, there’s not much to blog about this week, but I couldn’t help but share one of the little gems that keep us smiling.

Ever since we got back from our trip, for some reason Tyler has started using a lot more adverbs, adjectives, and superlatives.  Things that used to be hot are now “really, really hot” and things that used to be fast are now “more fast.”  Well, tonight as we sat down to a bowl of ice cream for our family night refreshment, Tyler gave us all a nice little chuckle.  As he sat there shoveling the ice cream into his mouth as fast as Chadli at Oktoberfest, he looked up with a drip of melted vanilla goodness oozing down his chin and said, “It’s freezin’ cold.”  What are we going to do with this kid?

We also thought it would be good to share our family calendar pictures for those interested. 

Happy Holidays 2010/2011

Well, there are probably a lot of you reading this that have been waiting for several weeks for us to finally post our pictures of our trip back to Utah.  Well hold your horses a little longer ‘cause first you have to read through the obligatory Christmas Day stuff.

Well, we made it through our 2nd Christmas in Maryland.  With the trip to Utah scheduled for the day after Christmas we tried to keep the gifts pretty modest this year but Tyler and Reagan still seemed to love it.  It was really fun to see Tyler start to understand a little bit more about what Christmas is.  We found this site where you could enter information in about your kid then it would generate a movie of Santa Claus talking to your child.  When Tyler saw Santa and heard him say his name he was instantly mesmerized by it.  It was really fun.

We decided this year to get Tyler a little kitchen set.  For the last two months he had been walking around with Mr. Potato Head parts in a cup sipping it like it was soup and asking us if it tasted good.  Maybe it was all the times we had him help Thesha make cookies or something, but that kid loves to be in the kitchen.  Since we’re in a little apartment, however, having him in the actual kitchen with us is a pain because there’s just not enough room for us all.  So now we just let him pretend to cook in his kitchen and everyone’s happy.  Of course now I have to pretend to eat a plastic piece of pizza and say “mmmm, it’s good” but that’s better than potato head soup.  At 6 months old, Reagan was just happy to have something new to put in her mouth.  I could go on about what we actually got her but the reality is that we basically got her a bunch of different things to stick in her mouth or puke on. 

Here are some pictures of Christmas morning

Alright, assuming you didn’t just skip through that and jump to the pictures below, here’s the scoop on our trip.

It was kind of a different Christmas for us because once the Christmas morning activities were done we pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for our trip.  As we started to see a few snowflakes fall we began to worry about our flight.  I kept checking and checking throughout the day and everything seemed fine until about 8:00 at night (keep in mind that we were supposed to get up at 4:00 the next morning to get to the airport in time).  With basically no snow on the ground we found out our flight had been cancelled due to the weather.  We spent the next 2-3 hours trying to get rebooked on another flight but the website kept giving us errors and when you called the customer service center you got a standard message that “Due to extreme weather conditions, we’re unable to take your call.”  I realize different locations have different uses for words and phrases, but I’m pretty sure that “extreme weather conditions” means something a little more than just a few snowflakes. 

After hours of frustration we finally got rebooked but not until the day after our original plans.  We assumed we’d probably end up stuck at some airport half-way across the country, but we figured we should at least give it a shot.  If nothing else it would give us some material for the blog.  When our direct flight turned into a flight to Minneapolis then to Denver then to SLC, we thought for sure we were screwed.  Then when our flight out of Baltimore was 40 minutes late and we only had a 45 minute layover in Minneapolis we pretty much resigned ourselves to the reality that we would be stuck in icy Minnesota for the evening.  Luckily we got there early enough that they were able to fit us on a red-eye flight from Minneapolis to SLC arriving at Midnight (that’d be 2:00 AM for those of us on the East coast).  Oh the kids loved that one.  Actually they both did really well.  And in Minneapolis we actually bumped into a pilot who was really nice and gave us a little more information about why our flight was probably cancelled even though our weather was fine.  Apparently he was still trying to get home to see his kids for Christmas and he’d gotten stuck on the East coast as well.  When he hadn’t even seen his kids for Christmas yet, we pretty much had to come to terms with our anger about the whole situation and realize that it could have been worse.

So at 2:30 in the morning on I can’t remember which day we finally laid down to rest at Thesha’s mom’s house.  They made it so nice for us and the kids absolutely loved being with their Grandma and Grandpa Checketts.

Here are a few pictures of us catching up with Thesha’s family.

It was so much fun to see Tyler and Reagan with their Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Grandparents.  It was especially exciting for us to be able to introduce everyone to our little Reagan.  It’s great that we have this blog to be able to share pictures, but there’s just no way to share her personality except through first-hand interactions.

For New Years Eve, we got together with my family at the Spare Time Fun Center in Syracuse.  We were able to bowl, have some pizza, jump on the trampolines, play laser tag (which the guys totally kicked butt at, by the way), and just have a good time laughing and spending time together.

My favorite part of the evening, however, was watching Tyler climb in the inflatable jungle gym.  The first time through it was funny to see Corbin hoisting Tyler up the climbing walls, shoving him over the top, then sliding him down the slides.  It was fun to see him have a chance to interact with his cousins.  Although I’m sure Tyler enjoyed it too, I think he preferred going through the obstacles without a diaper-wedgie, however, so he quickly learned how to get himself up the climbing wall and down the slide. 

When he started up the climbing wall for the first time by himself I thought, “well, at least he’ll be falling onto something soft.”  I was pretty shocked to see him navigate up the wall all by himself, figuring out how to reposition his feet, reach up, then steadily move up each obstacle until he reached the top.  I spent time with 30 year olds that didn’t know how to climb up a wall when I was going to all those military trips a couple years ago yet here was Tyler figuring it out at the age of 2.  I was a pretty proud papa that night and I could have watched him do that over and over again. 

Here are some pictures of our New Year’s Eve party.  By the way, I think Reagan beat us all at bowling.  Whatever…

I know there are a lot of people out in Utah that we would have loved to see, but there seemed to be so many places to go and so little time to do it all.  Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip a reality.  We’re hopeful we’ll be able to get out there again soon – maybe for good if we’re lucky.  Until then, thanks for the memories and we’ll see you all again soon.

Catching up

I know it’s been a few weeks since our last blog post.  I’ve actually meant to write something a few times but just got sidetracked by one thing or another.  Excuses aside, let’s get caught up.

Probably the biggest news lately is that our little girl had her first milestone of woman-hood - - - she got her little ears pierced.  The weekend she turned 6 months old we took her to the mall and turned the swarm of sales associates at the Claire’s loose.  Reagan was such a good little girl in spite of the painful experience.  She was done crying by the time we got to the register.  Yes, her first milestone as a woman also marked my first milestone as the father of a woman – forking out an unreasonable amount of money for two microscopic pieces of jewelry.  Here are some close-ups of her new bling.

One of the reasons we were so excited to get Reagan’s ears pierced was to finally make it impossible for strangers to mistake her for a little boy.  Apparently the mountain of pick clothes, blankets, etc. weren’t enough.  Obviously a little baby with two diamond earrings (ok, Cubic Zirconia, but whatever) would clearly be a baby girl, right?  Well, the other night we were out and about and an older woman was commenting about our kids but still kept referring to Reagan as a boy.  At first we were kind of bugged about it, but after the lady left we came to understand that she was obviously just mistaking her for an NFL wide receiver – the only other boys that have two diamond earrings. 

In other news, we’ve been having lots of fun this year teaching Tyler about Christmas.  We have a couple of Christmas books that we read each night, we’ve had Christmas related lessons during FHE, and we’ve been introducing him to the most common Christmas tradition – making and eating Christmas goodies.  Here are some pictures of our Christmas Cookie making FHE activity.

While it’s been fun working with Tyler on his understanding of Christmas, it’s amazing how quickly he latched on to the words “Santa Claus.”  We’ll say, “Tyler, can you say Christmas Tree?” … “Santa Claus.”  “Tyler, can you say baby Jesus?” … “Santa Claus.”  “Tyler, what does Dad’s belly remind you of?”… “Solid Granite.”  "Good boy!”

Lastly, a couple days ago we celebrated my 33rd birthday.  Yes, 33… Old enough that there’s no big birthday bash anymore but not old enough that you can start doing stupid stuff and blame it on old age.  In spite of the mediocrity of the milestone, Thesha was so nice and made me a cake and everything.  Now that Tyler understands the whole birthday concept, she wanted to make sure that he saw that it was Dad’s Birthday.  What he saw was Dad making a goof of himself – like he needed a special occasion to see that.  Thankfully she spared us all the fire hazard and only used two sets of three candles. 

Well, that’s about it.  This will probably be the last post before the holidays and our trip back to Utah.  Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!  We’ll catch up with you all in 2011.