Family, Friends, Fun, Festivals, and Frogs

All right, so I haven't really posted in a while, so I have a lot of catching up to do. This post might be a little long. Lets start by going back to last Saturday, April 19. Becca had a girl's lunch with her four cousin's and sister and all of the kids. Cody had lots of fun playing with the other kids, but his favorite part was playing with the yellow lab. I guess we need to get him a dog. Here is a picture of all the kids that were there. Can you tell which kids are ours?

Since it was just for the girls and kids, I decided to spend the day kayaking. I went up sea kayaking to the Thimble Islands off of the coast of Conneticut. It is about a 2.5 hour drive from our house. It was a fabulous day for kayaking, clear skies and 70 degrees. The Thimble Islands are made up of hundreds of little islands all within a mile or two of the coast. Some of them are just little rocks above the ocean, some are big enough for one house, and some hold several houses. Here are a few of the pictures I took while kayaking.

The picture below was a little bridge that went between two of the islands.

That night after I got back from kayaking, we all went over to the Dueker's house for Mellisa's birthday. Here is a picture of the kids there.

The rest of the week went pretty well. Here are a few of the highlights below. First off is Cody slaughtering me at a game of chess. I haven't quite figured it out, but somehow everytime we play, he kills all of my guys before I can even make a move. If you ever play him watch out, he's good.
Let's see...Next I guess we'll talk about Jade's feeding test. So Jade went to New Brunswick to St. Peter's Hospital. They put Barium in her milk and used different flow nipples to feed her while they X-Rayed to see where the liquid ended up. Well, it turns out that when they used the fast flow nipple all of the milk went directly into her lungs. Basically, her epiglottis (a lid-like flap of elastic cartildge tissue covered with a mucous membrane, attached to the root of the tongue), wasn't protecting her airway when she swallows. The dangerous thing about it is that when it happens, she doesn't cough or choke. With the slow flow nipples, none of it went into her lungs, but they could tell she was still having difficulty. What we have ended up doing now is putting rice cereal in her milk to thicken it up, that way she is better able to swallow it, without it going into her lungs. She has also started to eat rice cereal a little bit, and seems to be doing well with that.


That was pretty much all we did for the week. Let's move on to the weekend. Yesterday we went to the New Jersey Folk Festival and the Rutgers Agricultural day, which was being held at Rutger's University. It was a ton of fun. They had all kinds of stuff going on there. Cody got to see some cockroach races and pet some cows and pigs. The Folk festival had a lot of good music, food and free kid's activities. Here are some of the picture's below. First up is him getting his face painted.

If you can't tell, it's a snake.

Here Cody is sharing his balloon animal with Jade, while she gets a tube feeding.

Here is Cody bouncing at one of the games they had set up for the kids.

Here is Jade, chilling in the sun at the Festival.
And finally, here are Becs and Cody chillin on a tree.

Well, that's about all for now. My parting shot below is me holding a frog that Cody and I caught this week. Cody told me he wanted to keep it and feed it flies, but Becca would have none of that in our house. I told Cody the frog would miss his family, so he let me go release him. Have a great week!

Open Wide

So Cody had his first ever dentist appointment this week. The dentist said that his teeth look really good. No cavities. The only problem is his mouth is really small, and so he will need braces when he's older. (If you haven't noticed, all of his teeth are pretty crooked). That got me to thinking. If I had gone into dentistry I could just check his teeth myself. I'll bet most of you didn't know I was a pre-dental major in college for one semester. Then again, I tried pretty much everything in college. Wait, that came out totally wrong. I meant to say that I took a lot of different kinds of classes. I even took underwater basket weaving. I'm serious. Ask me about it some time if you want. Anyway, you know why I decided not to continue on with dentistry?

Can you imagine sticking your hands in that guys mouth? Disgusting.

Jade did really well this week also. We just found out that she has passed the 12 lbs mark! Yeah!! You know what that means, only one time waking up at night. We now feed her at 11pm, 3am, and 7am. We get to trade off who gets to sleep through the night every day. That is pretty exciting. She also did really well with the Physical Therapist. The PT said she was impressed by how much Jade was moving and held up her head and stuff. Go Jade!

I've been bored of my background lately so I keep switching it up. In case you wanted to know the last background picture I had up I took from the top of Squaw Peak looking out towards Mt. Timpanogas in Utah. (Can't remember what my last background pic looked like. Click Here) I took the picture from the real top, not the parking lot you can just drive to. It's a good hike if you ever want to do it. Start by hiking up Rock Canyon for about a mile and a half or so. You'll come across a trail that goes off to the left that should have a sign that says Squaw Peak. It looks like this:
Anyway, you can follow that right up to the top of squaw peak. It is about four miles or so to get to the top I think. You'll get a fantastic view.

The background I have up now is another picture I took while hiking. I'll let you see if you can figure out where, then I'll tell you where it is the next time I decide to switch backgrounds.

Jade's Milestones

I'm sure all of you know that since Jade was a few days old she has had a feeding tube. However, since mid-January we have been bottle feeding her also, in the hopes that eventially she would be able to eat solely from that. As you can imagine it has been an uphill battle. She has steadily increased the amount she has taken from her bottle, but as she has done that the amount she is given has also steadily increased. Anyway, on the advise of her speech therapist, who is working with her for her feedings, I got some new bottles with faster flowing nipples. We started using them mid-day yesturday. At her 7am feeding this morning she drank 80 of her 90 ml. I am happy to report that at her 10 am and 1 pm feeding she finished her first entire bottle! Go JADE!!!! I am so excited that she has hit this milestone. We hope that in the weeks to come she will be able to do all her feedings from a bottle and be able to remove her feeding tube. But, until then we are so happy that she is atleast showing wonderful progress.

She is becoming very aware of the tube being down her nose and pulls it out a million times a week. Not really but sometimes it feels that way. It's hard to believe we ever were nervous to have to put it back in. Now it just seems like second nature. Anyway she took her tube out today and I thought it would be fun to take some pics of her without it in. She is really starting to smile more, accept when I want to take a picture of her. But, I managed to get one off today, so hear it is.

She is also starting to really move around and she really enjoys playing with her toys. Since all of Scott's family, except his parents, have never seen Jade we decided to take a video of her playing today. Luckily she was willing to show off a little at the right time.

Spring Barbecue

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!" ~Robin Williams

I couldn't agree more. Isn't it great that spring has finally arrived? I love it!!! I even took Friday off from work to try and enjoy the nice spring weather. Unfortunately it rained on Friday, so that kept us indoors. However, we were able to find this great indoor playground place. I think it was called Funtime Junction or something. It was kind of like a Chuck-E-Cheese's, however, it had a lot more tunnels and slides and even had some sand art and stuff. Plus, it was way less crowded and noisy than Chuck-E-Cheese's. It was pretty cool. Well, it was good for Cody anyways because he got a chance to exercise and run around even though it was rainy outside. We could barely pull him off of the toys. Sorry, I forgot to bring my camera again, so there are no pictures.

Saturday, however, was a perfect spring day. We went rollerblading over to the park and played for a couple of hours. Ok, actually I rollerbladed and carried Cody while Becs pulled Jade in the wagon. We switched on the way home. I know what you're thinking. How could you switch rollerblades? Simply put: I have tiny feet. In fact I think my feet are shrinking. My feet used to be a size 7 1/2, now I think they are more like a size 7 or even a 6 1/2. That can't be good. I can wear Becca's rollerblades no problem because we have the same size feet. I can fit in Becca's other shoes also, but let's not go there.


Saturday we also had our first Barbecue of the season!!! I am what you might call a Barbecueaholic. I love it. There isn't much better than throwing some charcoal in the grill and throwing on some meat and veggies. And yes, it has to be a charcoal grill. None of that propane or gas stuff. That makes it way to easy, and not near as fun. Besides, who doesn't like to play with lighter fluid, or as Cody calls it "Magic Juice". We went out on our little patio and grilled up some chicken and corn on the cob. It turned out delicious. In fact, I'm drooling just looking at the pictures.
We prefer to grill the corn with the husk still on it. The juices from the corn steam the corn, and it turns out perfect. In fact Cody even ate two pieces and literally told me "This is the best corn in the whole world." Although, come to think of it, what would he know? He's probably only tasted my corn on the cob before. Oh well, I was flattered none the less. Even the chicken turned out well. The outside got a little bit crispy, but the barbecue sauce didn't burn too much. It was a great barbecue. Next time I think I want to try grilling a loin of pork. Anybody know of any good recipes? I was thinking of using a spice rub or maybe wrap it in bacon. Or maybe both. I don't know, we'll have to see.

Saturday and Sunday was General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. For those of you who were able to watch, I'm sure you'll agree it was a great conference. I especially enjoyed watching President Monson wiggle his ears in Priesthood Session. That was pretty cool. I'm going to have to learn how to do that.

Parting Shot - Becs and I at Zion's National Park in Utah in 2003. Man I love those pants. What did I ever do with those?

Mr. Mom

Our friends the Bradshaw Family had this posted on their blog and we thought it was hilarious. Enjoy!!

The Next Survivor Series

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks. Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.

There is no fast food. Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of 'pretend' bills with not enough money.

In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week. Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time. Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment, a dentist appointment, and a haircut appointment.

He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care. He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function. Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flower s outside and keeping it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done. The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed. During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting. They will need to read a book and then pray with the children each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child's birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name. They will also need to know each child's weight and length at birth, time of birth, and length of labor, along with each child's favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last man wins only if . . . he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18 to 25 years, eventually earning the right to be called ‘Mother.’