CT Christmas

Ho-Hoe-freakin'-ho-ho-ho!

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There, now. Wasn't that festive?!

Jackson was so excited to play Joseph in the Nativity at preschool. Cooper was recruited "day-of" to be a wise man (so much for years of study, awaiting the signs of the Birth. Coop was just following the crowd).

We had heaps o' fun decorating the gingerbread house. Jon even tried to get fancy with the icing by trying a "pattern" but it was nixed because it ended up looking like a snowman pooped in front of the house. Good one and mental note for next year...

We thought the kids already had plenty of toys. After all the loot was opened on Christmas Day, well...no toys for 5 years. That outta 'bout work out. Next year I think we'll give them an empty fridge box. They should have plenty of fun w/ that, yeah?

Piece out, homies. Jon

WE MISS YOU DAVID&MINDY, JON&HEIDI&JACKSON&COOPER&GOUGLAS

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Kjar Christmas Party 12/24/07

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Hansen Christmas Party 12/23/07

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Ok, so we have the usual white elephant gift exchange. I thought my gifts (that I gave) were pretty cool. Emily ended up with one of them which was a compact travel umbrella with a case, and a hula girl, you know, which can go in her new Toyota.

Anyway, the kids had their own, and Jon-Jon ended up with a pair of binoculars-which he had never seen before. He opened it up, and looked up with the most joyous expression. "LOOK WHAT I GOT!!!!" "Well what is it?" Grandma Gray asked....................To which Jon-Jon looked up with a very confused expression, and a drawn out silence......"Those are binoculars!" I replied. "COOL!!!" was his excited response. Still had no idea, and boy was he excited about it!

Merry Christmas!

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Can you guess what it is?

The first shot of the next Gray baby. He was so cute in his ultrasound. Moving so much, opening and closing his mouth and moving his fingers all around; those 5 little fingers.


Well, we had the ultrasound this morning and the Gray name holds true. :) Caleb is sad that he is not getting a little sister, he was really hoping. This baby was quite the mover and he was also shy. The first few times the technician tried to determine the sex the baby either had his legs crossed, had his hand covering the view or he was rolling around too much. But finally the technician looked 2 times and said it was a boy and then the doctor also checked and he said it was a boy. I am glad. Of course I would have been happy with a girl, but I kind of know how boys work. I can do the soccer thing, the trucks and swords. Princesses and tea parties are not my speciality. The doctor said everything looked healthy with the baby and that he weighs a whopping 1/2 pound right now. See you in May, Baby Boy the Third.

Kids and their presents

Well, we just got back from the Rachiele Christmas party and boy oh boy, things are always eventful over there. I (Diedre) attempted to read the Christmas story to the kids, they seemed pretty interested in it. Afterwards Zach was walking around saying, "is that really true?" Then came time for the presents. Caleb is in love with his dinosaur dominoes and magician kit, it even came with a wand! And Peter is so excited to try out his new trucks puzzle. However, the rest of the Rachieles are ready to give up on Christmas and the whole gift thing. One mother was in full tantrum that her daughter got the wrong My Little Pony and she let us all know about it. Two of the little boys did not like their presents so they swapped. Boy oh boy, I am so thankful that Caleb and Peter showed genuine interest in their gifts and that they are who they are. Have a great holiday and I hope all of our children make it through the season will as little selfishness as possible. :)

Letter to Santa

So Jon-Jon wanted to write a letter to Santa Clause. These are the pictures showing his determination. Reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes. A mischievous boy who is constantly "in trouble" but an angel while sleeping, and for 5 minutes before/after writing Santa.

So Jonah stayed home from school today, sick. When Dacia came at noon/lunchtime to bring my security pass for work that I had forgotten, there was Jonah in his carseat-sluffing school. Obviously my first question was "Why is Jonah at school?" To which Dacia replied, "He's sick." Followed by a very loud, obvious, nose sniffle from Jonah, to slam the point home. Oh. He must be sick! Took several minutes for me to catch my breath, I was laughing so hard.



Island Park, Idaho. Ok, this pic is actually from 2 years ago. :} By the way, that's me...looking at the trout in the river...

Merry Christmas!

Hello, one and all! I know that we will see some of you at Christmas but for those of you not in Utah, have such a Merry Christmas! I know that our week leading up to Christmas is filled with parties and such, but it will be fun. For those curious about the pictures, yes the tradition of the vacuum tree still lives on and Peter loves wearing his cowboy hat so I had to get a picture of him in front of the tree.
Tonight we watched the short nativity movie done by the church and it is so nice to talk to Caleb and Peter about the birth of Jesus and see their excitement. And Peter is so cute as he says, "Geesus." Kids are so cool! We hope you have a wonderful, peaceful Christmas and that you can feel the spirit as you remember Jesus' love. We will talk to you all after the first of the year. We are going to California with Ed and Carole for a week so that will hopefully be relaxing and fun. Enjoy life and the holiday spirit. We love you all!

Snow!!!

So we had our first real good snow storm on Thursday. The kids thought it was so cool, but today it was a little bit warmer than yesterday so they got to go out and play in it. For two kids who've grown up in California until a few months ago...this was the coolest thing ever. The first 10 mins were just them walking around in the snow looking at their feet sinking and making footprints. Cooper would say "oh" with every footstep. Then I showed them how to make a snowball and throw it. After that they started looking for chunks of snow that they could just pick up and throw (the snow was too hard for them to try and make their own). They thought that the snow breaking up when it hit the ground was just awesome and that's all they did until I made them come in because it was getting late and much colder. One of the pictures is of Jackson trying to make a snow angel. He saw Goofy do it on this Christmas Disney movie we have so he had to try it out himself. The snow was too hard to actually make one, but he thought it was fun.

Howdy

So I've been a slacker at putting pictures of the baby on. He's already 2 months and is getting really good at holding his head up. He hadn't pooped for 6 days recently and then the blow out happened, and it was awesome!!! What a mess! Jon and I couldn't stop laughing. It was pooling in his pj foot and everything. So other then that not much has been going on here lately. The excitement...I know.

The last picture has a story to go along with it. The baby started crying so I picked him up to feed him, but Cooper was sitting on the couch and said he wanted to hold the baby. I told him I had to feed him first. Then Cooper pulled up his shirt grabbed his bellybutton (which sticks out) and says, "I feed baby Gouglas". I couldn't stop laughing!! So I grabbed the camera and took a picture of Cooper still sitting there saying, "I feed baby Gouglas" (that's how he says Douglas' name).

Hope you're all having a great week. I'll have to post pics of the boys playing in the snow from our first real snow storm later.

"Wise Men Still Seek Him"

For FHE this past Monday, we went to Kirtland to see the hundreds of nativity scenes loaned by members to the visitor center in an exhibit titled, "Wise Men Still Seek Him" (I think they stole that from a bumper sticker I saw the other day). It was really neat to see all the different sets from different countries all over the world. Mindy really like the German/Austrian ones, and also pointed out ones that her mother ones.

The one to the right was in the kids area they had set up. This set is the same one that was in Mindy's basement growing up; it was the 'kids' nativity set that they were allowed to play with. Apparently they played with it enough to destroy the baby Jesus, so her mom had to make a new one. They're crocheted or cross-stitched and look really tough to make.

There were a lot of really interesting sets from various artists from various eras. In one room, they had sets from Mexico, Peru, Japan, Africa, Vietnam, Thailand, Scandinavia, etc. They even had up little information cards about what the sets were made of and Christmas traditions of that country.

Sealants

Dave just finished two weeks of sealants in different elementary schools in the Cleveland Municipal School District. His class was divided into 4 groups, and he was put into group 1, or "the A-team" as he affectionately called it. Dr. Houston was the dentist that led the group and his good buddy Jason Cowden was his partner. He had a blast doing it and only got bit once by a second grader who didn't quite appreciate the bitter taste of the tooth drying agent they had to use in prep for placing the sealant. Dave's group went to 6 different schools all over the Cleveland area and will be going out for another week at the end of January.

What is that thing?

Hello! I already told Dacia what this is but for everyone else Caleb is holding a crawdad in his picture from our last blog post. We were at Scofield at the end of the summer and we had just finished playing in the water. Some people were fishing for crawdads (a tiny lobster) off of our dock and I took Caleb over to show him what it looked like. There were 2-3 in the people's bucket so I reached and picked one up for Caleb and the other kids to see. Caleb got interested, fished for some on his own (the bait is appropriately hot dogs and raw chicken tied to a string) and then he wanted to see a crawdad again. I was talking to someone and out of the corner of my eye I saw Caleb reach into the bucket, which by this time had 20-25 crawdads, and pick up his own. What a brave kid! He did not worry about all those pinchers, he just wanted to see one for himself.
This was Caleb's other cool moment of the weekend at Scofield when he helped PA catch a fish and then proudly showed it off to us. What a cool kid!

Cooper's big 2yr B-day

What's something cheap and fun that you can do for a 2 year olds birthday on a FREEZING cold day? Jonathan and I pondered this and decided that we'd go to the mall and let the kids play in the playarea. They had a blast and ran and ran. Then we had a picnic in the car (heater on), went home and napped, opened presents and had dinner and cake. Cooper got a Buzz Lightyear action figure, a play kitchen, a set of pots and pans and fake food, a Tickle me Elmo and a shopping cart. The boys have had a blast cooking up some wonderful meals and I guess Jackson pays attention when I watch Rachel Ray because I caught him saying "and now we'll just pop this in the oven for about 5mins." hah hah

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Big Day

Today was the big day! Jackson has been saving his money for awhile now so he could buy a toy he's been wanting. To earn money he has been doing his chores and then doing extra things like setting the table etc. Today he saw the fruits of his labor when we were able to go to the store and buy the toy he's been eyeing. He was soooo excited. It was so much fun seeing how proud he was walking through the store carrying his toy up to the front to buy. We put all of his quarters in a plastic bag and got lucky to get a cashier who thought this was so much fun and made it a great experience for him. She was very patient and dealt with only him after I made the comment that HE was here to buy a toy with his own money. I made sure to have the camera ready when he handed over his hard earned cash. He got his receipt and change and then he bounced out of the store. I even had another employee come up to me on our way out who said we made his day seeing me taking a picture of Jackson paying for his own toy. Jonathan and I are sooooo proud of him for sticking with this. It's taken him awhile to get enough money to do this. (If you can't tell, the toy he bought is Zurg, who is in Toy Story 2. Jackson loves him)

Jackson says..."I'm so happy that I got eight dollars to buy Zurg."

Love you all

We're On! We're On!!

Okay! We now have the internet in our home! Happy Birthday Rob! Maybe now I'll be able to put some of the junk in our garage onto Craigslist and get rid of it. . . oh, and post to our family blog.

So I usually feel like a whiner whenever I talk about myself, because it's all about work and how horrible my life is - so let's talk about what keeps me going - Diedre and our kids! They're brilliant. They're cute. One of them is even starting to show that she's pregnant. ;-)

Our family's happenings include: Rob - work.
Caleb and Peter discovered the museum of natural history and anything new to explore is wonderful for a boy. We had our first snowfall of the year and Peter discovered after enough bundling the snow can be fun. And Caleb rediscovered the joy of snowball fights. We also got out our Christmas music and have enjoyed dancing. Peter's most important thing as of late is new words and two word sentences. It's wonderful to see him get absolutely tickled by a picture of an "orse", a "toed", a "wuf", a "pgg", a "m-oww", a "gote", or a "dukk." The "orse" is his favorite though. We may be on our way to more coherent conversations. Oh, and the boys are also learning that having a brother can actually be fun, but do not push it, we still have our moments of "brothers can be a nuisance."
Diedre - where ever Caleb and Peter go, she goes too. To visit the horses, off we go. To discover the world of worms, off we go. To read Biscuit for the 10th time today, off we go. :) Oh, and Diedre is also pregnant, but we all know that.

Thanksgiving weekend

I'm flying!!!

Cute boys

East Rock Park

So all of the visits are done and we realized last night that we don't have anymore plans to see family until...who knows when. Kind of sad. :-(

Dave and Mindy came and stayed with us for the Thanksgiving weekend. We'd never met Mindy, and since she's now a part of the family, it was nice to finally get around to that. We had Thanksgiving dinner, cooked in our VERY small kitchen. We didn't have turkey because we were such a small group and Jonathan doesn't like turkey too much, so a ham was cooked instead. I did pretty much all the cooking (only one person can fit in the kitchen at a time) and I guess I wore myself out because I fell asleep on the couch at about 9:30. I never fall asleep just sitting somewhere! The rest of the weekend was spent watching lots of football (Dave and Mindy wanted to), eating Thai food, going to East Rock park, walking around Yale, and doing a little bit of shopping. For the most part though we just hung out at the house and relaxed.

The boys are doing good. Jackson it loving school and is a little sponge. He comes up with some pretty crazy things and when I ask him where he learned that he says "at my school". This morning it was something about how we need to use our brain so that it doesn't die.
Yesterday after church he told us the whole story of Samuel the Lamanite and asked some pretty deep questions about it. It lead to talking about Jesus being born and Jackson said that Jesus "gave his blood to us". Then we tried and explain that he didn't give his blood to us (like he was thinking)...yeah try explaining the Atonement to a 4 year old who keeps asking more and more questions. The answer, He died so we can live with Heavenly Father again someday wasn't enough for him.

Cooper is a walking injury. A few days ago he was sitting on the arm of the big chair and I told him he better get down before he fell. He looked at me and smiled and then proceeded to fall off the chair a few mins later and landed on his cheek bone and gave himself a blackeye. Then on Saturday he and Jackson were rough housing and Cooper ended up with a nasty rug burn on his chin. While walking around Yale on Saturday he also fell 3 times, once banging his knee pretty hard on the concrete. Will this stage ever end with him?

Jonathan only has this last week in internal medicine before going back to a two month rotation in oral surgery again. He's had fun in this last rotation and even got to do a rectal exam on a large overweight older woman. :-0 We aren't looking forward to the hours of surgery again. We've really enjoyed these last two months of him coming home at 5 almost everyday, and not being on call. As of right now we hear he's on call for the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th weekend of December. And we also heard that they've changed weekend call to having friday night, all of saturday and then all of sunday instead of just having either sat. or sunday. We haven't heard if he's on Christmas day, but there's only 3 residents that can be on call, and I heard from one of the wives that her husband is on call for christmas eve so it's between Jon and the other 3rd year for who's on Christmas day. I don't get a good feeling though. He'll be on call the weekend of our anniversary, but I had him atleast ask off this first weekend of Dec. so we can do something as a family for Coopers 2nd birthday. Back to being a single parent for awhile. :-)

As far as me...well things are going good. Having three hasn't been as hard as I thought, but getting the timing down is what I've struggled with the most. I feel like I'm always running 5 mins late to everything. And it seems that no matter what, Cooper always has to poop just as we're walking out the door to go pick up or drop off Jackson to school. I'm sure I'll get it down soon, it's just going to take some time.
Wow this is getting long. Well I love you all.

Opps...
I forgot to mention the biggest news in our family! We decorated for Christmas last night! Jackson has been bugging me to decorate for almost 2 weeks. We bought a skinny fake christmas tree a few days before Thanksgiving (it's the only thing that will fit in our crowded front room) and put it up, but haven't been able to find the time to decorate it until last night. The boys had a blast and were soooo excited. We're (Jon and I) getting more and more into this whole making a big deal out of holidays. We weren't so good at it when we didn't have kids or even when Jackson was a baby. But now we see how much fun they have with it and it makes it much easier.
Merry beginning of the Season! Have fun!

Autumn Family

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So...how does one put this delicately...

Hi family, so I have been meaning to say this for sometime but I always get too scared to when I work myself up to it, but I just need to let you all know that I am gay. No, no one broke into my account and is writing this as a joke, but it is true. I tried to muster up the courage yesterday at Rob and Diedre's birthday breakfast, but there was no time that seemed right to blurt out, "Mom, Dad, I'm gay." Now Jon and Heidi and David and Mindy already know this, but I haven't talked about it with anyone else in the family. Any questions, just ask. I hope I don't disappoint anyone with this little bomb.

Steve

Blessing Time

Thanks everyone for coming out and sharing this special time with us. We loved having you all here.

View of New Haven from East Rock Park

What a cute baby!

Tracing Douglas' feet for FHE project

Our FHE project all finished. Top is Jackson, middle is Cooper, bottom is Douglas

Baby Blessing-Whole gang

The guys

Douglas in his blessing outfit mom made