First sleepover!

Henry and Bryn were invited for their first sleepover with their good friends Emily and Elliot before the holidays and they could barely wait till January when they were back in town so they could head over for the night. H and B have spent enough time away from us at our parent's houses and such but never at a friend's so they were super excited, yet a little anxious when the day finally arrived.

Bryn said to Jay on the way over "Daddy do you think we will have a little time to play with Emily and Elliot before we go to sleep with them?" She literally thought that a sleepover is just that, you go there and go to bed, case closed. So she was surprised to know that they were going to eat pizza, play games, and watch a movie.

Jill told me later that while Henry was munching on the pizza he said "Miss Jill I really really like this pizza and I just want to tell you that I was a little nervous about sleeping over but I am really having fun!"
When Jill got back from her soccer game, they were in the last 10 minutes of watching a movie. When she asked if they were almost ready for bed, Bryn quickly said she thought it was time to go to bed (it was WAY past their usual early bedtime) and within a couple minutes B and H were asleep!

Jay and I had a relaxing morning with a very quiet house! Now we need to host!

Welcome baby Rose!

Our trip to Iowa started off a little bumpy when we left on a Friday night during less than ideal conditions. After seeing a couple accidents and driving 30 mph on the highway I white knuckled it home and we tried again the next morning. It was well worth the anxiety the night before to see H and B's newest cousin!

We all love her! So much so that I had to bribe Bryn with my camera so I could hold Rose a little more. Every time I had her Bryn was as my side asking when it would be her turn. She is a baby magnet and just adores little Rose. Didn't matter if she was crying or not, she just snuggled her up.


Rose made Bruce aware she does not like him taking her warm layers off, even for a little photo shoot we wanted to do!

Rose and Mommy!

I could just eat her up!!! Look at this face that Bryn captured.

Henry wanted to hold her too, not sure she was as excited as he was to cuddle on the couch!

Of course they had a blast with Liam and burned off some energy playing at the park across the street and skating in Liam's backyard ice rink that Bruce made.

The new family of 4! Can't tell me she doesn't have personality.... check out this little ham! Thanks for letting us smother her with kisses and hugs.

Badger Mania

Henry and Bryn have been Wisconsin fans for a while but it went into overdrive when their kindergarten class found out they were going to be visited by the Badger Women's Hockey team. They were the first kindergarten class to win the "golden cone" award for being quiet in the halls. Thanks to some great staff with some sweet Badger connections, they got to hang out with the women and were each given an official WCHA hockey puck. You can barely see H and B's head since they were standing as close to the players as possible.


The players who had come to their class invited them to come to "Skate with the Badgers" which followed a home game. Henry took that as an order and insisted we all go since the girls told them to come. We met friends at the game and brought along the hockey skates so they could skate around and get autographs. Bryn was serious about getting as many as she could and came home with a poster full of Badger players by skating to as many as she could. She was on a mission. Above they posed with good friends Jocie, Maya and hockey player Meghan Duggan.

You can see that the hockey ladies were in large numbers around H and B. After he got this autograph another player knelt down and asked him if he wanted her autograph and he said "no thanks." I felt so sorry for her to get dejected by a 5 year old and she was rather surprised too. Henry later told me that he didn't hear what she said and then got nervous. Later on I saw him on the opposite side of ice rink flanked by two hockey players and they were having their picture taken by the team photographer. Leave it to the little man.

Badger fever didn't end as they cheered for the Badgers in the Rose Bowl with friends.

Last but not least... they signed up for a hockey clinic with the Badger women to learn some tricks. Turns out they weren't on the ice long since the majority of kids there were in full out hockey uniforms and gear and B, H and some school friends were clearly out of their league. Since the numbers were so huge they took some kids off the ice which was them and their pals and they got to play some agility drills in the gym instead followed by pizza with Bucky.

Holidays..... just a tad delayed

Due to our crazy life after the holidays it has taken me forever to gather up the stamina to browse through pics and find the time to get some pics posted. I figured I better hurry while my memories were just barely retrievable to write a little something.

Mrs. Carlson (their new teacher) gave them each a bag of reindeer food for Christmas and they made sure to sprinkle it all in one heap in the front yard in hopes of attracting Rudolph and his gang.
They decided that they should sleep in the same bunk bed in case one of them got scared by the hooves and such that they would be landing on the roof that night.

Bryn's favorite gift came from "her brother", which is how she refers to him lately. He picked out a ring at Art Gecko that had two blue stones and said "one stone represents you and one stone represents me." How sweet.

Henry's best surprise was the set of Russian dolls that Miss Jan gave to my mom when she couldn't find them at any stores. I think we all had similar expressions on our faces as we watched how tiny the dolls continued to get.


We spent as much time outside while in Suamico. We snowshoed to our favorite sledding hill in the woods with Grandma.

We also managed to have two Finnish saunas while at my parents. Jay got the fire toasty hot with temps over 150 degrees. The heat inside inspired Henry to run outside and jump in the snow and later for them both to RUN laps around my parents yard in their swimsuits! I could barely stand still on my barefeet long enough to take the pics.

Although you wouldn't guess it from the pics, we did spent a good portion of our vacation with sick kids. The stomach bug that Bryn had earlier came back to get Henry so our time at the cabin was cut short when I had to drive poor Henry back to Madison. Jay and Bryn stayed and played with their cousins, Grandma, Grandpa, Jen , Shawn and the Beckers. Henry and I headed back up as soon as we could but were bummed we missed most of the fun.

Winter gear we hauled up for fun at the cabin!

Sledding onto the frozen lake is even more fun with a crowd!! And no light fixtures were broken this year, added bonus! Alli joined Bryn for a sled down the hill.

Mike, Emma and Bryn enjoying a run.

Nothing like snuggling up with Grandma for some nighttime stories before heading to bed. We all enjoyed the new addition now complete with Grandma's new piano!


Everyone was patient enough to wait for our return back to the cabin to exchange the kiddo gifts so Henry could be a part of the action.


And what would Christmas be without heading down to a local house that has their entire front yard turned into wonderland of lit up Christmas trains, a parachuting Santa, dancing Santas, and my favorite, a Santa whose eyes follow you as you walk by him....

Thanks to both our parents for sharing their Christmas spirit and their homes with our travelling gang of germy kids.

Kindergarteners cuttin' the rug

So we're clearly way out of date with the blog scene, and we'll try to crank out an update of the holiday action, etc... later this weekend. For now, hope you enjoy this footage from their very first school dance last night. After a few awkward minutes of hanging around the edges, H and B joined their KG friends and showed everybody what's up. Will these guys all be friends for the long haul? Hope so.

Good deeds jar

I owe thanks to my friend Kristi for passing on the BEST holiday idea ever. I am always looking for ways to remind H and B about the amazing power of giving. The genius idea that she shared was to make a good deeds jar. So, on November 30th we sat down and each of them came up with 24 things they could do for someone else to make them smile. They each had their own mason jar that they decorated with pictures of Santa and every morning this month they ran to their jar to pull out a slip and find out what they got to do for the day. They called grandparents to say "I love you", cleaned out the dishwasher, did something nice for a friend at school, gave a compliment to someone , gave treats to neighbors and cleaned their room (to make mommy happy)......

Last night Anna came over to babysit while Jay and I went out for dinner with friends and we came home to a display of paper snowflakes that they worked on until they went to bed. We decided to make them even more fancy by taping the good deeds on the ends of the flakes. Only two good deeds left in the jars for tomorrow and then they will see if Santa takes a minute from his work tomorrow night to read their 48 slips of paper.

I just had to post this below pic for remembrance sake. Before school let our last week I joined some other moms and we helped the kids decorate gingerbread girls and boys. Moms brought all cookies and fixin's and the kids went to town. It was painfully obvious which kids don't have this fun candy at home.... i.e. our kids. They(Henry and Bryn) decorated their cookies with one goal.... to see how much candy they could smoosh onto the icing. The cookie became the vehicle to bring candy home, of course. They never ate the cookies once they got them home, but they did sneak every piece of candy off within a day or two! What have we done?

Bring on the snow!

Henry now refers to our after dinner walks as "winter wonderland" walks and rightly so. We are getting a beautiful snowfall of monstrous size flakes tonight. What better thing to do than take our boards up the hill to rock canyon for some runs in the new powder and watch Jay show off on his second hand snowboard find. Last night we (Henry and I) celebrated winter solstice with lots of neighbors for a bonfire, drinks, smores, poetry readings and of course sledding by moonlight! Poor Bryn missed out since she caught the stomach bug the night before but she got to cuddle at home with daddy after some tears for missing the big bonfire. Shhhhhh we plan on inviting friends and having another party in the canyon soon.

Kids trying to hitch a ride home without falling off.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Last weekend we drove out to the tree farm to find us a Christmas tree. Jay was convinced he spotted the perfect one from our car but I couldn't make a decision that quickly so we hiked around enjoying the wintry wonderland.

Jay couldn't make any decisions until he shook off the snow. We left in our wake many snow-less trees....

Henry kept finding little baby trees that he thought would be fun to have. Fewer needles to sweep up for sure!

Heading to the car with Finn by our side.

Richgels brought dinner over and then we all decorated the tree, accompanied by some perfect Pandora "Christmas swing" mix of tunes.

This Santa I made from old nylons back when I was little. Not the happiest of Santas but he keeps gracing our tree year after year. Maybe he will scare H and B into keeping their room clean!


It's so much fun to listen to the kids talk about each ornament, most of which they have made over the last several years, and hear them reminisce about Christmas's past.




A job well done! One of the last pics of Henry with his obstructed view of the world, thanks to his bangs.

Turkey day

We headed to Iowa for the Thanksgiving feast since my sis can't travel far. For whatever reason I have been lacking on the photo taking lately and we failed to even get a family picture of us all. Oh well, who really wants to see us anyway? As always, they LOVE their cousin Liam and the three of them had a blast playing dress up, fusion beads, turning his room into some kind of restaurant, swimming at my parents hotel, and playing at the park across the street.

Breaking news..... my parents are going to have photo cards this year for the holidays. I won't spoil the surprise and post the version that made the cut. Above is a reject pic. Somehow I was the pied piper of photography. I told them to head outside, sans coats, hats and mittens, for a better photo and sure enough they all followed me out the door and we managed to get a cute shot!

Thanks for the fun and fabulous Thanksgiving feast!

Sports nut

Walking out of school today Henry unrolled this sheet of paper and read off all the sports teams he jotted down during his free time. In case you can't read "Henry style" I will help with the not so easy ones.... obviously starts with a W and G in correct colors for the Badgers and Packers. Memorial -daddy's school. LES is for the JETS, he sometimes flips the J around. Bokis is the Buckeyes for Ohio State. Now he is downstairs with Bryn and they are yelling for me to tell them what city the Cowboys are from... really?

It takes a village...

Henry and Bryn have met some awesome neighbors and it's so gratifying to watch these relationships evolve as they grow older. One of these special people is Miss Elspeth, who fed us gourmet meals when we were trying to survive the sleepless days and nights after H and B were born, is the only person we know that finds a 4 leaf clover within minutes of searching, and has the best accent this side of the Atlantic. She now walks to school to pick them up on the 3 days I work and they spend their time playing at the school park, reading books or cooking up some treats until Jay gets home from school. It's worked out so well that it's easy to take it for granted. Yesterday she invited them over as I was studying and Jay was doing some basement project. They made a dress up costume out of boxes for H- town, learned a new rhyme and were given a new book about Arthur Ashe and his daughter. Oh, almost forgot the new gloves she bought them..... Today I got the below email from her with the picture that she took of them after school one day.


Thank you, Sarah & Jay,
For letting me spend time with Bryn & Henry. I don't think of Tues. Th. & Fri. afternoons as a job, but as a privilege. Elspeth

Thank you Miss Elspeth for being the positive, warm, creative and fun person that we all adore.