Until 4pm – we did nothing.  It was a nice and relaxing day.

Then we went out and did a couple of fireworks.  Wesley and Jillian both shot off a gun, we did a couple of crackling balls and the tank.

Her gun really shot out the streamers.

Watching the tank.

It did not move...

Then we had several hours before we needed to leave to watch the big firework show in Edmonds.   We did not bring our camera.  But I did a search on Flickr and found George Bentley’s great photos from the show.

We did manage to get a family picture in before we left for the show.  The kids thought it was cool that we were all wearing red shirts.

We got back from the fireworks show a little before 11pm.  It was time to shoot off the fireworks that Aunt Dri picked out for the kids.

1st one.

Wesley and Jillian were so funny watching the fireworks.  Their expressions are great!

They did a lot of running around in with excitement.

ground flower

They tried many different "views".

This is the last picture of Jillian happy.

Then she got cold and wanted to be done.

His excitement just grew with each firework!

Sparkler time.

All of the ones we shot off were very tame.  None of them whisled or made very much noise.  I guess the firework people knew what they were doing – Adrianne picked out a little backpack filled with fireworks for the kids – and they were very calm fireworks.

Then we had one last firework.  It shot out the bottom and tipped over and started shooting at us.  One hit Wesley in the leg and then a couple shot out at us.  We all ran and got out of the way.  Luckily Wesley was wearing pants.  He was not hurt and is pants have a small singe on them.  Wesley thought it was scary and cool at the same time.  He kept saying how fast he was and got out of the way.  It was pretty cute.

The one that caused all the problems.

Next year should be very fun.  I can only imagine how excited Wesley will be next year.  And maybe Jillian will try a sparkler too.  This year she would not go near them.

Being a mother to Wesley and Jillian is the most amazing job I will ever have.  I am grateful each and every day that I have such wonderful and brilliant children.

I hope that all the mothers I know get lots of hugs and kisses from their children – young children and old children. 

It started off on Sunday 3/28.  We went to my mom’s house where Aunt Ashley and Grams put on quiet the spread.  The their Easter buckets were overflowing with books, candy and toys.

Then on Wednesday Grams and Auntie Ashely came to play and decorated cookies with us.

All of our yummy cookies.

The day before Easter we did our Easter egg coloring.  It was nice to have an extra adult to help the kids.  Ashley worked with Wesley and I got to work with Jillian.  Joshua did a great job documenting the process.

All set up.

Hands…nothing gets eggs out of dye better.

We wanted to share the experience with Redmond too, so Joshua gave him a peeled egg.

But he is not sure what to do with it.

The kids broke open the egg and tried to force feed Redmond.

Easter morning the kids woke up around 8.  That never happens during the week…

Easter baskets were waiting for them at the table.

Then we put boots on and started our search for the 3 dozen eggs.

We got more pictures of Jillian because she searched pretty slowly.

Look how full his basket is!

Then after all the eggs were accounted for, we got ready to drive up to Sedro-Woolley to spend the day with family.

Our first stop was at Grandpa Geoff’s house.  No actual “Easter” celebrating went on – but we had a great time exploring the property.

Joshua found a baby snake.

Then we found this big one. We thought is was just cold, but after we left Geoff told us that is had died. Poor thing.

Then we went to Yaya and Papa’s house.  The bunny left quiet the spread for these little bunnies.

Let the egg hunt begin!

Wesley gets his paper mache dinosaur egg open by using the fire hydrant to smash it.

Jillian saw what success Wesley had, so she tried to do it herself.

Got it!

Playing with the toys from inside the dino egg.

We had such a wonderful day.  This is our first holiday back home in Washington.  It sure felt good to see the kids with all of the family!!!

Last Christmas I had the idea that Jillian and Wesley needed their own special stockings. We looked at some while Christmas shopping, but didn’t find anything that we fell in love with. So in January I made a note to remind myself in August that I was going to have get to work making them myself. Because I loved the latch hook stocking Grandpa Joe made me (and the other Hunter kids) I wanted Wes and Jillian to have the same kind.

In September I ordered two kits from Shillcraft: A snowman for Wesley and a teddy bear for Jillian. The kits came with almost everything I needed: the pattern, yarn and mesh. I bought a latch-hook tool and set to work. Here is what the snowman kit looked like when I unpacked it.

Once I had it unpacked I realized I didn’t have a clue what to do. So I hopped on YouTube and found a few videos that were rather helpful. One key tip: count out your yarn for each row before you start. Following the pattern on the mesh is asking for mistakes. The actual process is pretty easy and you get much faster at as you go. Which is good, because I was very slow at first. When I calculated how long it was taking me to do each knot and that I had 1700 to do on each stocking, I got a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to finish. In fact I posted this to Twitter:

“math can suck. at the rate I’m going it may take 22hrs for each stocking. about 1700 knots each. ignorance is bliss.”

I decided to share the process with the kids from the start. This was a very good idea. They were very interested in the whole thing and their enthusiasm kept me motivated. Another way I kept motivated was by tracking my time for each row of the stockings. Yes, I know I’m a geek. But I did it and it helped. I used a great free application called Klok to track my time worked which is how I know it took me 14 hours and 54 minutes to latch hook Wesley’s, but only 12 hours and 43 minutes for Jillian’s. I started onWesley’s first and that 2 hour difference is the learning curve for latch hooking (at least for me).

Being the kind of person I am I also took pictures of each few lines.  This is the time-lapse movie I made.

The only problem with the kit was putting their names on the top. My stocking from Grandpa says “Josh”. Of course mine is twice as big as theirs (and due to its enormous size I realized this year it has probably fetched me thousands of dollars of extra stocking-stuffers over the years. Thanks Grandpa!). And it didn’t take long for me to figure out I could shorten Welsey to Wes, but Jillian was going to be tough to fit on there. Just not enough little squares to make it happen. So after some back and forth I decided on initials. I’m still not thrilled with them, but they are stuck with them now. Sorry kids.

Yes, despite the fact that Jillian will likely get married and change her name someday. She’ll just have to limit her choices to people with last names starting with “H”. It worked for her mom after all.  This limited space is the reason Adrianne as called “Dri” for a bit there. I thought the stocking said Dri because that was her nickname, but no, her nickname was Dri because it fit on the stocking.  Who knew? (Maybe everyone knew this. I’m slow on this kind of stuff.)

Once the pattern and initials were finished I kind of panicked. Now I had to sew. Not a skill I actually possessed (or do now). So I basically did nothing for two weeks. Then panicked some more because I’d wasted two weeks. What to do? Back to the internet of course. I found this page and this page to be really helpful with types of stitches. Then the kids and I bought fabric. Amber said nope and we went back and got some different fabric.

A mere 11 hours and 20 minutes of hand sewing later and Jillian’s stocking was done.  Another 7 hours and 12 minutes and Wesley’s was done. An even steeper learning curve on the sewing. I had to redo multiple parts of Jillian’s as different stitches didn’t work the way I thought they would. In the end I ended up using whipstitches and backstitches for the visible parts and for the inside parts a whole bunch of stuff that I made up that would make people who know how to sew cringe deep down inside.

I am so glad to be done! And I’m done before Christmas! When I was ordering I asked Amber if she wanted me to make her one to match the rest of us and she said “no”. Thank you, thank you, thank you! If I had to do another one I’d probably break down in tears. Which would probably ruin the holiday for all of us, frankly.

I’d hoped to have included a bunch of nifty graphs using Open Flash Chart v2, but sadly there doesn’t seem to be a plugin built to make charts for WordPress that isn’t really lame. So instead of being able to show you all kinds of nifty data I collected while making these things I just have this one sad chart I made in, embarrassingly, Excel.  The big flat stretch there in October was when we went to my Mom’s wedding and then again in late November early December that is when I was pretending I didn’t have to learn how to sew to complete the project.

We got there right at 6, but Santa was a bit late…

Sitting in Santa's Chair.

The kids were really excited while we waited in line.  But as soon as they got up close to him… that was a different matter.

So I showed them that Santa was nice.

Then Joshua told Wesley that, THIS was his chance to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas.  But he was pretty nervous and a bit terrified.  But he really managed to pull it together an conquer his initial fear and sat with Santa like a champ.

Drying his tears...

This is right before he said he wants a FISH TANK from Santa.

We really wanted to try a picture with Jillian too…

I was really surprised that she even sat with him.

This was after about 10 seconds, she had really calmed down. If only we had 10 more, she may have even smiled.

I promised the kids cookies, to try to get them to cooperate with Santa, so we went over to the rec center and had cookies and hot chocolate.

Enjoying their snack.

Yummy!

He just did not want to smile for me!

Time to go home.  But first, a few more pictures…

It was about 50 out tonight.  It felt pretty good.  But we (When I say we, I mean the kids and Joshua.  Of course I was in a jacket.  I even had a scarf on too.) were the only family without jackets on.  And most kids had on mittens and a hat!

It was a good night.  We are looking forward to walking along the trails tomorrow and looking at the luminaries and the Christmas lights.  The tractor train will be out tomorrow, so I can’t wait to get photos with Joshua and the kids!

This year we got our Christmas tree at Home Depot. Which makes me a little sad because I really enjoy the hours of agonizing over which of a thousand identical trees is the just the right one. Unfortunately the trees in Texas are terrible and Costco wasn’t selling, so we went to the hardware store. On the upside it came with a 90 day return policy which might come in hand if we don’t need a Valentine’s Day tree.

The kids had a great time decorating it just the same. They were almost busting at the seams to get the ornaments out of the boxes.

We let them do nearly all of the decorating.

So we had a little bit of bunching …

To encourage a more even distribution Amber and I got involved.

And of course we needed our traditional tree topper, a large glass snowman.

While Amber was up north we added some chains with the “lick-and-stick” paper that YaYa sent. The kids liked putting them together better than I would have expected and I really like how they look on the tree.  Wesley wanted to send a photo of the tree to YaYa so we took this one (J was asleep).

After the chains we did tinsel. I don’t know what we were thinking. The kids loved it of course. We’ll probably need to buy a new vacuum cleaner after sucking up all the extra from the floor.

And of course the final product:

We had another great year of Trick or Treating in our Wells Branch neighborhood.  Like last year the Godfrey and Myers families came to beg candy from our neighbors.

This year Wesley wanted to be a ghost. He was keen on the idea of running around saying Boo!, but less keen on the idea of getting his hair sprayed white.

Jillian was less clear on what she wanted to be. A duck, a turtle, a ghost-duck, a ghost-turtle. Since she actually fit into the costume we made for Wesley’s first Halloween (after cutting out the feet) she got to be a turtle.  Plus, I wanted pictures of them both in the same costume.

The only downside to having Jillian dressed as a turtle was that she walked as slow as a turtle. She only hit every third or fourth house and was often being carried. On the upside she was pretty well content after she got three pieces of candy and would often stop to show me how much she had gotten.

By the end of the night the kids were ready to come home. Wesley raked in 3.25lbs of candy!  His bucket was pretty much full to the brim. He is currently hording it in his room. I just don’t understand that boy. I never could have let it sit like that. I’m more of an eat until I’m sick kind of a guy.

All our Halloween 2009 Photos on Flickr!

For all of Jillian’s crafts and her earlier pumpkin she has wanted happy face pumpkins, Wesley wants mean or angry faces, and Redmond just wants to eat them.

Both kids did  a good job assisting in the gutting of the pumpkins and neither was too grossed out (different than last year).

The finished product. From left to right: Jillian’s Happy Face, a Redmond inspired dog paw, and Wesley’s Angry Bat. He drew it on the pumpkin himself. I just did the cutting.

Jillian and Wesley enjoyed watching the bouncy bus go up in the backyard!

Joshua is laying it out in the backyard...it sure is big.

It's getting bigger...

Ready to go... and it sure is HUGE! Good thing we have a big backyard.

Let the Bouncy Party Begin:

Then after all of that jumping, it was time for cupcakes!

They are all waiting very patiently for their cupcakes.

Everyone got to pick out a cupcake.

Gift from Gina and Parker - Thank you!

Jillian opening her gift from Tara, Maia and Matías. Thank you!

Then it was time to go outside for one last bounce…

Wesley and Maia are trying to fix the bus.

Going in for one last bounce - this really was the last time.

Thank you coming over to play and celebrate with us!