The "Happiest Place on Earth"

The babies weren't smiling, so we kicked them out of the picture.

 

 

This year we took our family to Disneyland.  I will admit that we really didn't have any plans to take on such a grand endeavor, but as more and more family signed on for the trip, we didn't want our kids to miss out on all the fun. The only real hesitations we had revolved around budget and whether or not the twins were old enough to not be a pain in the butt (keep those two reasons in mind)

I think its always nice to pick out souvenirs to remember your trip together as a family.  That cost can add up quick but it's so worth it when you look back and remember your super fun vacation.  When we got to St. George, I saw the cutest water pump that I just had to have for the suburban.  Later that day in Barstow Jackie picked out a new transmission to remember our time in the high desert of California.  Seriously though it was a little bit of a shocker starting out the trip by rebuilding the suburban.  I honestly don't know what we would have done with out Mike and Shyrleen being everything from moral support, to cracker distributor, to guidance/financial counselors. We are in debt for all there help. Not to mention all the vehicle assistance we received from family. Mike B. who was selfless enough to drive the hour and a half back to Victorville and help haul our sorry butts to Disneyland, and everyone else who helped get the rest of our family from point A to B.

Other than the crappy start we had a lot of fun.  The kids rode everything, and we didn't have to worry about too many height restrictions.  Lindsay over came her fears and rode the Tower of Terror several times (yea peer pressure!) I did notice that as I'm getting older I seemed to have lost some tolerance for motion sickness.  I mean I can still ride everything once, but thank goodness the kids had Jackie otherwise they couldn't have rode California Screamin 12 times in a row.

I'm okay with slowing down. I was perfectly happy to push the babies around and check out the rest of the sites.  Bryn and Owen did decent. I hate to play favorites or point fingers, but since they can't read, I will say that Owen was a champ. He pretty well just kind of sat and hung out. Brynn had less patience. She really hates to sit still, especially when Jackie is in her line of sight.  But I guess she is only a year old so we'll let it slide this time.  We did have some pretty late nights, so the babies weren't the only tired souls. We even had one night where we came home and I went to get pizza, when I got back we literally couldn't do anything to wake the kids up to eat. I will admit Jackie tried to wake them harder than I did, but they wouldn't budge. I even waved a candy wrapper in front of Kade and Kalli's nose and nothing happened, scary.


Owen pretty well sums up the end of each day.



I think as whole we all had the most fun at the beach. Again I'm not putting labels on kids, I'm just saying Owen dove into the water and laughed and squealed and played in the sand, while Brynn screamed in terror of the water and cried and reached for Jackie the whole time. Other than Brynn's theatrics it was a really fun day.

 

 

 

 

She's happy if Moms got her.

 

 

 

 

 



 

All in all it was a successful family trip.  We had fun, and ate poorly, and definitely made some memories. The drive back was much less eventful (thankfully) and we all made it safe. The babies may have snapped a bit from being strapped down that long, but they'll bounce back.

 

 

 I guess we'll see how it goes in another 5 years when we've forgotten enough to try it all again.

 

 

a few more pics:

 

Happy Birthday Lindsay & Kalli

The Girls had their birthday again, and are one year older and wiser.  Jackie had the great idea to redo their bedroom as a gift. She recruited Caroline and her sister to come up with a design and to do the shopping. The plan was to tell the girls that they had been invited to stay at grandma Loveridges for their birthday. While they were out we would redo their room.  Everything worked pretty well. There were a few "exciting" and unexpected" moments  but with Caroline and Alisha's vision and a whole crap load of work from family members it was a huge success.  yeah those room makeover shows got nothing on our crew.

 

Job list:
clean room out
3 new paint colors on the walls
paint the beds
paint new shelves
paint picture frames
paint new curtain rods
paint other accessories
paint 3 panel art piece
paint wall treatment on purple wall
build floating desk
re-upholster chair
re wire new lights
hang curtains, shelves and pictures
put room back together
decorate

time:
30 hrs.

results:
2 ecstatic girls!

Easy "A"

Lately I feel moderately to severely sleep deprived. This could be for a number of reasons, most obvious being the twins, They really are a lot of work, but they're adorable, babies, and don't know any better so I won't pin it on them.  There's work. That's always exhausting, but it's necessary and everybody works, so I've got no excuse there.  Then there's the illustration. I finally got a legitimate illustrating gig, and they signed me for 4 books. I was ecstatic, but a little overwhelmed when I found out that they want them all completed in about 5-6 months (yikes!) But I remind myself that I brought that on myself. It's what I've been working towards so I can't blame that either. I could blame it on all the time I spend reading to the orphans at the orphanage, but that would be a lie so I won't say that. The only thing I can think left to blame is my kids homework. 

 I don't know when the great shift took place in schooling to require 2 hours of homework from elementary aged school kids happened. My memory may be foggy , but I seem to remember doing my school work at school.  The other night we had Kade(kindergarten) working on his reading, sight words, sounds of the letters song, and an art project.

 Kalli (3rd grade) working on her reading, math worksheet, spelling list, and reading comprehension sheet. That is the same list of home work she has every night, and her math homework is ridiculous. She had a story problem that sounded like 5 exchange students had played the telephone game and wrote down what they thought they had heard. I re-read it 5 times before I got what it was trying to ask. In a nutshell, it was telling you that there was an average price of something, and that one boy had bought a dozen of that item, and another girl estimated that he spent x amount on it, so to answer it you were simply supposed to say whether the girls estimate was correct or not. Yeah that's pretty simple for a third grader.

and Lindsay (6th grade) doing her 5 page report on Egypt, along with accompanying visual display, while asking me questions about imaginary numbers in math ( I never made it past Algebra 2 so I'm no help).

I mean no disrespect towards any teachers, I know homework is necessary, and I'm sure there is a study somewhere out there that says this amount of homework is necessary if you want to keep your kid off drugs, and I'm sure that study was conducted by somebody who didn't have homework when they were in elementary school. And I'm also sure that any English teacher who happens to read this will vomit at my gross misuse of grammar and punctuation.

I guess if we had only one child it would be no big deal, but we have 3, and 3 kids x 2 hrs. of homework a night equals 6 hrs. of homework a night which is too much. And I know I got that problem right because Jackie checked my work, and I used a calculator.

"a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down"

I feel like one of the advantages to having these twins a little later in our life is that now we have our older kids to experience it with and enjoy the fun. It's important to remember to have some fun every once in a while. If you don't then I'm pretty sure it's more a case of "when" you'll crack rather than "if" you'll crack. One way I like to unwind is to mess with Jackie and the kids. An oldie but goodie that I like to do with Jackie, is wait until she puts a baby on the couch and surround them with pillows to keep them from falling off while she runs to grab their diaper. I wait until she's gone and I carefully move the baby onto the ground then wait and see how fast all the color drains from her face when she comes back in the room. Now that every mom reading this hates me, you should know that I've quit doing that one because Jackie threatened me physically, and I don't want be the boy who cried wolf , just in case they do fall off something for real.

I do think the kids get the worst of of the pranks. Case in point, when we were in the NICU with the babies they had these huge syringes that they would feed them with. When I saw those syringes naturally I had the same thought that any dad would have, "That thing would scare the crap out of my kids!" so I borrowed one of the humongous syringes from the hospital, filled it with apple juice, threw a huge needle on it and told the kids a story. I told them that Grandma Shoell had called and told us that all the local pools had tested positive for kryptospiritum (sp) and that if they wanted to be around the babies they would need a Gamu-globulin (sp) shot. How they reacted at the sight of needle said a lot about how each of our kids handle pressure. Lindsay immediately broke into tears; Kade looked frantic and started crying; Kalli impressed me the most, she kept quiet, made herself look smaller, and located the nearest exit. Me and Jackie couldn't keep a straight face for long, and eventually the kids were able to laugh about it. I like to think that by the time they are grown, our kids will have built more character than any of their friends.

Kalli's really getting into the role.

 

Kade still needs to work on his acting a bit.

 

Brynn & Owen

It's been two months since Jackie had the twins, I would have posted sooner but honestly who has time anymore.  It's funny when we first told people that we were going to have twins, quite a few people made the comment " I always wanted to have twins". At the time I could understand that, twins just seem like they would be fun. Now that we have them here my perspective has changed. Now when I hear people say " I always wanted to have twins" all I hear in my head is them saying "I love the sound of crying babies and I hate to sleep". 

Luckily things are much better, than the first week, which I honestly don't remember much. All I do remember is that I was sure not to put my head on my pillow, because that would upset the babies and then they would start crying again. Now we only have to get up about once a night and we've got a pretty good system of changing the diaper, feeding, burping, wrapping, and passing out.

Me and Jackie were talking the other day about how glad we are that we had the twins last now that we have a little experience.  We're glad because now we are a lot less uptight.  With our first few kids you would jump up at any little noise and try to sooth them, or want to hold them all night long, but we're kind of over that. Don't get me wrong I still love them and I love holding them, but it's amazing all the things you can get done when your not holding a baby (like napping, and eating brownie batter).

Here is one of the pictures we took of Owen & Brynn. If you ever want to test your patience I would suggest having a photo shoot for one month old twins. After 8 hours, 3 arguments, 5 disagreements, 17 bowel movements, 31 peeing incidents, a fifth of vodka (to steady my nerves),12 costume changes, 8 backdrops, and 765 pictures taken we ended up with about 6 usable pictures. I'll try to post the other 5 pictures after I can pass them through photoshop.



Owen & Brynn

The passing of Gwock

We've had to say goodbye to a dear friend in the last few months. Here is the obituary that was printed in the Daily Herald.

Gwock A. Mole passed away some time in this April. Born in California and raised in the kitchen window sill. He spent his days bringing joy to all those around him. His dreams were to grow five feet tall and then move to St. George where he planned on continuing to grow as he studied avacado production.  Eventually he hoped to provide the Loveridge family with avacado's for guacamole, turkey bacon sandwiches, and salads.  He was preceeded in death by his nine beautiful leaves, and survived by the thousands of flies that may have played a roll in his death. 
A viewing will be held at the garbage can in front of our house. in lieu of flowers, Matt has asked that mourners buy some chips and salsa and enjoy them with your family.

Rest in peace old friend.

Kade is 5!

Kade loves his treats, he thinks they're neat,

he'd like use both hands and feet,

to shovel all the treats he'd eat.

He's not too picky about the treat,

as long as it's something good to eat.

Sometimes salty, but mostly sweet,

 a treat will make his life complete.

If hidden , the challenge he will meet,

like a missile programmed to seek heat,

like a bloodhound he'll sniff through concrete,

to find the most well hidden treat.

He'll beg, and whine and kiss your feet,

then weep and wale (he's not discreet)

but eventually you'll admit defeat,

with his patience few compete. 

(but we still love him)

Adventurer

Excited

observant

Handsome devil

Good tidings we bring!

We had another great Christmas this year with some exciting things happening. The family got a piano (used) as well as some other news. The Loveridge family is up-sizing! Jackie is pregnant, and from what the doctors tell us from the ultrasound, she's having twins. This news has brought mixed reviews. Everything from cheers and slaps on the back to awkward silence, but either way we are pretty excited. It's still early and considering our past attempts at getting pregnant we are still a little cautious that everything will turn out good, but we've done a lot of praying and fasting over the past 2 years and definitely feel like this is an answer to our prayers.

We've received some good reactions and feedback from the kids, they are all super excited. We told them on Christmas morning, which got some "happy" tears from Lindsay, and a little bit of confusion from Kalli. I tried to load the video but it's not letting me, so just text me if you want to see the video.

Kalli is a bit more of a realist. Me and her ran to the store yesterday, and as we were walking down the aisle she said "Do you think you and mom can handle 5 kids?" I had to hold back a laugh, but I asked her what she meant. She said " Well Kade pees in his bed a lot, and baby's don't sleep very good, so you and mom won't get a lot of sleep." Just when I start to underestimate one of the kids they show me just how observant they are.  Yeah we're a little nervous. I guess we're hoping for some divine intervention.

Kade has been nothing but giggles and one liners since we told him. He is convinced that they will be a boy and a girl, and he wants to name them Hopo, and Chopo. I'm not sure which of those is the boys name, but we'll cross that river when we get there. He also said that the boy can share his room, but not the girl. And that his new roommate won't cry at night because he'll tell him not to. I can't wait to see that work so we can use his own technique on him.

He also told me that he know what we need to do when the babies need to go poop. We can hold them over the toilet while they poop, because their bums won't fit on the circle part (seat) of the toilet. That's a pretty good idea. It should really help us save on diapers. (I'm realizing just now that a lot of Kade's stories involve poop, I hope that changes)

Well regardless of whether we're crazy or not, we are excited and are hoping for the best. All prayers for Jackie and the babies health are welcome.

Tiff's Married!

Well the last of the Shoell girls got hitched.  Tiff and Sean got married on December 20th 2011!  I thought the whole day went great. Tiff looked beautiful, Sean didn't faint, and the reception was a big hit. The man who sealed them did a great job, and had some very inspiring things to say about taking care of each other, and giving your whole effort into the relationship. Like he said " This is where me turns into we."

Here are some pictures of the reception. Caroline had a great plan for the look of the whole thing, and between Mom's, and sisters, and aunts, and cousins the whole thing looked great.

Tiff lookin' beautiful!

Here are some of the decorations
(I think this picture kind of looks like a CD cover)

Back drop made of sticks. Made by a local struggling artisan.

The Smores bar.
It was a big hit, and nobody started a fire.

The centerpiece.

   

The happy couple!

Kades still pretty funny

I feel like Kade gets a lot of face time on this blog, but he's just at that age where he's trying to figure things out, and he's pretty goofy on top of that, so he has a lot of "moments".

When he's not whining for a treat he's usually giggling, which is really cute for the most part, unless you're trying to be serious. (Now I know how Jackie feels when she's trying to get me to have a grown-up conversation).

1. Kade has learned the symbols for men's room, and women's room. The other day we were going into a family restroom, that has both symbols. He impressed me by telling me that boys, and girls can both go pee in this bathroom. I confirmed that they could. Then he said "but dogs and cats can't pee in here, they just pee on the grass".

2. I had my hands full and asked kade to open the garage door for me. I said thank you, and told him what a good helper he was. He asked me "Am I the best"?
So I said  "yeah, your the best".
Then he said "but I'm not always the best, like at night when I cry. Then I'm kind of a baby". Yeah it's good when your four year old has figured out that they have room for improvement.

3. Kade went to Crew's birthday party, where he got a bow tie. He wouldn't take the bow tie off for the rest of the day. When we were getting ready for bed he walked out of his room to tell me good night, and this was his outfit.

 4. We've put a video of Kade's sweet moves on here before, but here's a new one. We were shopping for a dress which is always exciting. So to pass the time me, Kade and Lindsay spent the whole  shopping trip in front of the fun house mirror playing around.