Jack-O-Lantern

There are two reasons that there is such a large time gap between the last few posts.
#1 - All the pics I took the last month got erased from my camera. No pics, no posts. You don't want to hear about Jack's toothy grin, you want to see it. And the chance of capturing it twice is unlikely. I'm no photographer. It requires yanking that binky out of his mouth and trying to get him to smile, instead of screaming for it back. No easy task.

#2 - We have been crazy busy. Between teaching preschool, Real Estate classes, and livin' it up this October, there has been little time left for blogging. But I will do my best to catch you up with the pics I attempted to take yesterday.

Since his surgery this summer, David has morphed into an active, reasonably daring boy. He announced one day, after seeing a clip of it on Playhouse Disney, that he wanted to "do gymnastics." This is perhaps the last thing on earth we ever thought he would want to do seeing as until recently he was still crawling up playground equipment steps and deathly afraid of the "playcenter" at McDonald's. He begged us daily for two weeks until we consented to sign him up. We were elated to discover his best friend Silas in the same class. It's been a month and he is LOVING it! He refuses to participate in half of it but has mastered the somersault, which he proudly demonstrates every opportunity he gets.

Jack clutching his beloved blankey that my brilliant friend Jaime gave him and reaching for his binky that I popped out of his mouth momentarily in attempts to catch a photo of his toothy pumpkin grin. This is as close as I got. Wait... I found one taken a while ago, I will post it at the top!

Jack often imitates his brother's gymnastic skills, already being an equally fast runner and nearly as physically agile as David. He spends the time during Dave's gymnastic lessons yelling "DAVID!" and attempting to break his way into the class. Jack is nearly always dancing, swaying back and forth as he walks and giggling. He is a silly one. Unless it's nighttime, then he is screaming. The kid has never been much of a sleeper. He now has 4 teeth, which he is quite proud of, touching them often and attempting to bite you with. All he wants to eat is cheese and his favorite phrase is "All done!"Yesterday he started saying "Hot dog!" He is always mumbling something seemingly serious and important with great hand gestures, though we are yet to decipher any one these messages. If he wants something he gets it himself. He has the strength of Bam-Bam from the Flinstones (which happens to be one of his nicknames), opening the fridge and hoisting out 2 gallon cartons of milk. The other day, he brought me an entire unopened box of Capri-Suns. His little arms were shaking! I was shocked. Those things are heavy.

Rich is awesome. He continues estimating with accuracy with Sorenson Moving & Storage and has become quite efficient at eliminating the enemy on his XBox games. He supportively cares for the kids and home while I am out on my "Bucket List" adventures and inventively solves every mechanical problem we face as well as cleaning up the messes of my frequent Amelia Bedelia moments, like last week when we ran out of dishwashing tablets, so I poured in a hefty amount of dishwashing soap and watched as piles and piles of bubbles oozed out of the dishwasher onto our lovely rented kitchen carpet.

Jodi completed another item on her "Bucket List" a couple Saturdays ago when she got certified as a Zumba aerobics/dance instructor. If you haven't heard of it, it is the latest craze in fitness, combining latin-based and international dance with aerobic moves to create the ultimate body shaping work-out. I discussed it in greater detail in an earlier post. I'm addicted to it and have gone to so many classes this past year, my gym instructors have encouraged me to start teaching my own. Maybe they were being sarcastic (I've never been good at catching that) or it was a collaborated joke, but I took them seriously and traveled to Redding for the day to get certified. It was intimating, since most of my classmates were fitness instructors, dancers or both. I am neither. But I passed! Now I can start putting together choreography for my first class... I plan to integrate my high school group's signature moves: the Russian, the Skankin' Step, the Floppy Arms and The Lumber. If LuAnne Preston could see me now!

(I had some pretty funny pictures of this endeavor as I never miss an opportunity to dress up silly, but unfortunately, they got erased with the rest. You'll have to use your imagination).