Our 1st Valentine’s Day together. I woke up to find the room covered with post it notes!  It was amazing.  Each note was unique.  I still have most of them.  ;)

Wesley’s 1st Valentine’s Day.

His 2nd and last as an only child.

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

I love you Joshua with all of my heart.

 

After we moved to Anacortes I got a really nice dart board from Amber and put it up in shop. Sometimes when I’m stuck on a programming problem I’ll throw a few darts and see if it comes to me. So far I’m not getting much better at darts or programming.

The problem is that Wesley and Jillian wanted to throw darts as well. I was fine with that. But it became obvious rather quickly that their aim was not good (genetic I suppose). They were filling the door, wall and floor with little holes. The board itself was mostly safe.

So we bought one of those plastic tip dart boards and hung it below my board. But frankly they suck. You throw the darts, they bounce off. Or if they do stick, they frequently fall out on their own. It was frustrating for the kids and for me. Next we tried a regular dart board, but hung it lower thinking their problem was one of height. It was not.

Finally we got a Doinkit Darts dartboard. We hung this below my standard board as well. These use strong “rare-earth” magnets and they really work. Of hundreds of throws I don’t think any have bounced off. They are safer than the plastic tip darts (as long as you don’t swallow them) and work so much better. Plus because they don’t bounce off we have a special oche at a Jillian distance without fear of her getting poked.

We got ours on Amazon, but you can also get a set at your local toy store. Ours is Read Me A Story. It costs about as much as a good set of standard darts, but is really worth it if your kids want to play darts and you care about your walls at all.

Highly recommended with one caveat. Because the tip is so much wider than a normal dart you’ll need to decide what scores. Do you score whichever field the majority of the tip is in? Or do you let the thrower pick whichever of the touching fields they want? We go with the last one because it lets the kids do better and makes the game less frustrating for them.

 

Stuff from us is wrapped by the tree – Stuff from Santa is on the couch

With our gift from Jillian

His reaction to the DS he wanted

With her CuddleUpPet from Santa!

Then after they thought they were done we gave them the Wii controllers to open

We had it hidden behind the TV

Wesley and Jillian are having a great day – and can’t wait for the rest of their time with family.

Merry Christmas!

 

She really loved the bat I put in her hair.

Then we went to Wesley’s school.  After school he had practice for the play he will be in this weekend.  He is in The Secret Garden, he will be playing “The Garden”.

Here he is with some of the Garden cast.

Then we rushed home, ate dinner and then put on Wesley’s makeup for his Zombie costume.
Jillian was a bunny (her plan was to be a rock star, but she was a bunny at Wesley’s school and wanted to stay in it.).

Waiting patiently while Wesley becomes a Zombie.

Wesley the friendly Zombie.

Then it was off to scare the neighbors…  We were only able to go to 7 houses, but they got 30+ houses of candy from them.  :)

Here is a link to a video of Wesley as a Zombie.  He is not so friendly in this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hunterji/8143562883/in/photostream

Wesley: 6 years, 11 months, 5 days
Jillian: 5 years, 2 months, 18 days

 

She may still be small, but she sure does look like the big kid she truly is.
Over the past 5 years, here is how she has grown!

• 5th Year: Height – 39 1/2″ (20th %tile) ♥  Weight: 36 #    (25th %tile)
• 4th Year: Height – 36 1/2″ (3rd %tile)    ♥  Weight: 32.5# (25th %tile)
• 3rd Year: Height- 33 3/4″ (<3rd %tile)  ♥  Weight: 28#     (25th %tile)
• 2nd Year: Height- 31 3/4″ (8th %tile)     ♥  Weight: 23#     (8th %tile)
• 1st Year:  Height – 26″       (<5th %tile)   ♥  Weight: 16.5#  (<5th %tile)
• At Birth:  Height – 19″         (25th %tile)   ♥  Weight: 6.5#    (25th %tile)

5th Year

4th Year

3rd Year

2nd Year

1st Year

 

I took each kid separately to Lam’s Golf Links while the other was at camp.

The course!

We sure had a fun time!

First up was Wesley:

The 1st hole

Hole 3

Relaxing on hole 8

Got the ball in at par on hole 9

Trying to line up his perfect shot on hole 11

Saying hello at hole 15.

Hole 18!

he got a HOLE-IN-ONE!!!

He is one super excited boy!

He is very proud of himself.

We had a very fun time together.

Our scores for Tuesday July 10, 2012:
Par = 47
Wesley = 69
Amber = 64

Next it was Jillian’s turn:

Ready to go on the 1st hole.

J’s technique is all her own…

She was super excited to be golfing like Wesley got to.

Working hard to get it up the ramp of hole 3.

Happy that she got it up the ramp.

At hole 11

HOLE-IN-ONE on hole 13!

She is super excited!

She was too funny… she would not let go of the putter between holes once she had a “good grip”.

Hole 18 – she also got a HOLE-IN-ONE!

Happy times.

Our scores for Thursday July 19, 2012:
Par = 47
Jillian = 71
Amber = 60

Until the next time… when we all go together.  :)

 

So she will be going to playschool 2 days a week through June.

She is very ready to go in!

Let's GO!

With her new teacher

This is the first thing she did in the backyard.

Meeting the other kids.

They have a zipline - and she LOVED it!

Snack time!

She enjoyed 4 hours of playing, laughing and singing.

She can’t wait to go back!

 

Amber was gone when the tooth fell out and wouldn’t be home before bed time so Wesley drew her a picture explaining the whole thing.

The red circle is his mouth. You can see his throat and uvula in the center. Teeth all around the circle and the red mark on the bottom is the bloody part of his gum where his tooth used to be. In black you see the tooth popping out of his mouth. In pencil you see me and YaYa looking around on our hands and knees for missing tooth. At bottom-right are two pictures of Wesley. On the left, “Sad” and on the right, “Hapee”.