Haven't heard from me in a while

In the last 16 months our lives have changed drastically. Amalia was diagnosed with several food allergies (ranging from life threatening to mild intolerance), several chemical and synthetic allergies, Eric graduated with his M.Div and we moved off campus.

We are currently living in Wisconsin, while Eric continues working on his counseling degree and helps out at his father's church. I still work as a grant writer and am directing a musical this Fall at Trinity College. We started more intentional preschool with Gareth (4 1/2 with a very loose tooth!), and Amalia is much healthier and happier having gotten rid of so much that was hurting her or making her sick.

My blog posts basically stopped when Amalia's allergy diagnoses opened up a gigantic project for me to find out how to take care of her and keep her safe. That and getting an iphone. With posting pictures to facebook and emailing videos instantly, the blog wasn't as important for keeping grandparents and family members connected with our family.

We'll see what the becomes now...

Adler Planetarium-Apollo 13

In March I found out that April was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 space flight. Gareth is currently in love with all things space and air related and very specifically Apollo 13. He watches the lift off sequence and explosion sequence from the film on YouTube regularly. So when I found out the Adler Planetarium was having a special Apollo 13th month I had to take my astronaut boy. Aunt Mikayah went with us and we had a great time.


The Planet Explorers area for kids was fantastic for Gareth. Here he is with a flight jacket and space pack.

I don't get to be in pictures with my kids very often and especially not Gareth anymore, so I really like this one.

Preparing the rocket for launch.

This is a really neat video game type program that talks you through a launch. He had to push the right buttons and then got to dock the rocket using the joystick. I have a video of this but can't get the video clips to work right on the computer I'm using. I'll keep working on it.

Aunt Mikayah and Amalia exploring "Planet X".

Just a little spacewalk.

Gathering some space rocks.

Sliding down a space slide :)

Amalia had to have a turn, too.

February-April and some of May

Gareth and Amalia Easter 2010.

Gareth got a guitar and amp from his Grandma and Grandpa for his birthday. Here he is playing along with his favorite band, Imagination Movers.


Gareth and Amalia January 2010
So, I have finally found a way to upload photos and videos from my sometimes working camera to the blog. So I'll try to provide a broad view of our lives since February. Basically, we've been sick for the last 4 months. I think we've gone one full week without one member of the household having something. We're currently celebrating day four of being sickness free (most recently an ear infection, Gareth's first). Here are some highlights of the past few months.

March: Discovered Amalia has a severe egg allergy. She will go in for the big allergy testing in June.
April: Visit to the Adler Planetarium (will have its own post)
May: Eric is finished with his third year of seminary (yay for 3/4 done!) in three days

Belated Posts

I have many Christmas pictures, New Years pictures, Gareth's 3rd birthday pictures and video of Amalia crawling, pulling up (and soon to capture the cruising she started in the last week). However, technical and medical difficulties have prevented me from posting any of the above. While celebrating Christmas and Gareth's 3rd birthday in Oklahoma with grandparents, aunts, uncle and cousin my camera stopped working. Well, started over working really. It turned itself off and on anytime you tried to do anything. Then upon returning home and settling in (after celebrating Christmas in Wisconsin with the other grandparents and uncle) the kids decided to get sick. First Amalia, then Gareth, then Amalia again. We're starting week 4 of having a sick kid in the house and hopefully she'll recover this week. It's already February and I feel we haven't had a chance to begin the year yet. We haven't even had a chance to go to the library! On top of that last week my laptop where all the pictures and videos are stored stopped working. Now everything is stuck on a hard drive that is inaccessible. So until we can resolve the computer situation, get people better and work with the camera, I won't have any pictures or videos to post (which, after all, are the point to this blog).

First Food for Amalia

First bite of some organic brown rice cereal-mmmmmm

Yeah, not a fan.

The much watched event (witnessed by Daddy, Gareth, Aunt Mikayah and Titus).
I let her play with the spoon afterwards to try to get her to suck on it and swallow a bit of the cereal.

Crawling practice. She can really crawl now (12/11) but this is when she was just rocking.

A little downward facing dog to strengthen and stretch a girl. (She tried to move forward by doing that.)

Gareth's debut

Our church has an annual Hanging of the Greens service in early December. During the opening number all the children in the church bring banners, lights, garland, etc. The last group to come are the Jingle Bears (the 1-3 year-olds). They have bear hats on and bears with jingles on them to shake to the music. Gareth didn't want to participate last year (which did not surprise me). I thought he was ready to do it this year and started talking it up a few weeks before it happened so he'd know what was going to happen. He was pretty excited about it. Grandma and Grandpa came down from Wisconsin to see Gareth's theatrical debut. And Aunt Mikayah and Titus (boyfriend) came up from Chicago to see it as well. Thanks to Aunt Mikayah for the pictures and video. There are many people in the way of seeing Gareth, but just look for the cream colored sweater vest and that's him.

Beatles Rock Band at Thanksgiving

Lead Vocalist=Aunt Robyn
Harmonies=Grandma
Guitar/Bass=Daddy and Uncle Josh
Bass=Gareth (unplugged)

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with Eric's parents in Wisconsin and had a nice, low key time. That was good considering the kids went into it with 2 colds and an ear infection between them and came out with 2 colds, an ear infection and a virus. We spent the following week recovering.

Amalia and Mama before her first Thanksgiving dinner (to attend, not eat).

Amalia met Great Aunt Robyn.

Gareth got in some good play time with Grandpa.

Uncle Josh helped make the meal (see the yummy brined turkey in the back).

Amalia had duck.

A lovely meal.


A little post-turkey Beatles Rock Band. Gareth had this guitar (unplugged) and was playing bass (so he informed us). He played watching the screen for about 20 minutes straight. He's a serious rock band guy.

The day before Thanksgiving we got to tour a business that works on train cars. It was in a giant old tractor factory in Milwaukee and Gareth just wanted to run up and down the train tracks. The business restores, repairs and creates fantastic passenger/train cars. They did Obama's car that he road in across country.

Here's the outside of the car we toured. It is a fully restored 1912 train car for repopulating fish populations. (There were tanks for ice that they'd put buckets of fish in to carry and some places for the crew.) They do metal, wood, paint (almost everything) in shop, hiring out to local artisans for what they couldn't do. They were in the final phase of a 2 year project that cost something like a million dollars (can't remember exact details, was too busy making sure a 2 year-old didn't ruin the ridiculously expensive car). It was being redone for a museum and we got to go inside (no one will get to when it's in the museum). It was really neat.

Gareth talking about motorcycles

This is for those of you who don't get to hear Gareth talk very often. He's particularly interested in motorcycles right now so I tried to get him talking about that.

Amalia can really sit up now!

The Music of Our Lives

Over Halloween weekend, Aunt Mikayah was visiting. This is her hanging out with the kids. Gareth is humming "All Aboard the Choo Choo Train" (Disney channel thing). Amalia is complaining because Gareth has her book.

Quotable Gareth

"I will never walk again"-while throwing a fit and walking down the hall
"I got flewed by a chicken"-referring to a chicken flying by his face when Abba opened the chicken house in the morning, it was very traumatic
"I want Aunt Mikayah to go in the potty chair and flush away"-while being tacky about his Aunt when she was visiting
"I want Aunt Mikayah to go to her train station and go to Chicago"-while being tacky about his Aunt when she was visiting (yes, he is tacky about her a lot, haven't figured out how to stop that one yet)
"I wipe my spanking off, wipe, wipe, wipe"-after receiving a spanking
"Yes, Ima loves me"-to the tune of Jesus Loves Me

Gareth's big boy bike

Gareth's Grandma got him this bike about the time Amalia was born. He can go "super fast" on it and "lean into the turn" just like motorcycle drivers do. He also has knee pads that he wears sometimes. He really likes his bike, needless to say. And has taken a few tumbles, but gets back on after an appropriate grieving period.

Halloween 2009

Aunt Mikayah was able to be with us Halloween weekend and was part of our festivities. Here she is with Amalia, the chili pepper.

Daddy and Amalia. Before the cold trick or treating.

I asked Gareth to stand like a football player :)

Close up showing the last minute though, mascara smeared under the eyes.


The obligatory pre-trick or treating pose. Gareth decided this summer he sometimes does not like having pictures taken of him. So here he is sitting next to Amalia, helping her because she was having her picture taken.

In the stroller, how she spent the entire trick or treating outing.

After getting some candy.
Finished with trick or treating, a little foggy looking because the camera was fogging over from the warmth inside.

Amalia really wants to sit up

Amalia practicing sitting up. She does not face plant at the end of the video, it just appears that she does.

Amalia having tummy time

Not an exciting video, but interesting if you love her and don't get to see her very often :)

Amalia has discovered her upper register

A taste of how she "talks" by squealing...and a little spit up at the end.

Gareth and Liam racing

Two two-year-olds racing :)

Amalia having tummy time-Summer 09

Amalia did not really enjoy tummy time. This is her trying to get out of it at 2 months old.

My adorable nephew and son dancing-Summer 09

Liam doing his ballroom dancing, while Gareth makes up his own dance.