This blog is about Evelyn, but before we get to that I'll say just a little bit about the rest of us.

Rachel and I had a good week- except for Monday. Monday was a terrible, horrible, no good,very bad day. Everything else was fun. On Monday I was supposed to have a half-day at school and then we were all going to go to the big beginning-of-the-year dental school social. Well, that didn't happen because I had the location wrong and by the time we figured it out it was too late because Jack and Addy had to have naps. And then on the way home Rachel got a ticket for speeding and for driving without a license (She is in the middle of renewing hers and has a temporary license for now.) Apparantly this is a criminal offense- she has a court arraignment she has to go to next week.

Just as an aside- I have come to despise cops. OK- I'm glad we have them, but really, do they go home at night thinking that they made the world a better place or are they aware of the fact that they just made a bunch of honest, well-meaning citizens angry and frusterated.

Whew- OK. On to the next subject.

On Saturday we went to North Chagrin Reservation and took a nice long walk with the kids. We love this place and the fact that it is pretty close. We even saw a little pond there with hundreds of frogs in it. When we approached it the water litterally looked like it was boiling because of all the frogs moving around inside of it. Pretty cool!

Later that night we had a nice BBQ picnic dinner at the park and played until bedtime.

So that is pretty much what happened this week. Here is an update on the kids.

Jackson, in a word, is inquisitive. I can see him as an engineer or a detective one day. He is into everything, but in an analytical sort of way. He just wants to figure things out. He will stare at a new toy or something and just sort of poke at it and try it out until he has a thourough understanding how it works. He is very smart and very cute.

On the other hand we have our dear Addy. Adalie, in a word, is destructive. I can see her in charge of a demolition crew one day. She loves nothing more that to pound things, be it a table, a ball, or a person. She usually sings a little song as she is pummeling whatever is closest to her, and it is actually sort of cute. She is also very adept at sticking things in her mouth.

And then there is Evelyn. Like I said earlier, this post is really about her. Evelyn, in a word, is independant. "I Gok it" (I got it) has become her catch phrase- For example the other day when I put her in the car. I was about to help her into her carseat when suddenly she turned around, pointed her little finger right into my face, and sternly told me "No help, Daddy. I got it." And then I watched her for the next 7 minutes as she figured out how to buckle herself in.

So what is her latest endevour? Potty training! She has suddenly decided that she is potty trained and has kept her diaper dry for THREE DAYS now. This is without any help from us (she won't let us help). We will be eating dinner or something and she will casually announce that she has to go potty. And then she will get up, go to the bathroom, strip down, and go. At the end she will proudly show us "the prize" and then flush it down the toilet, wash her hands, and then bring us her diaper to put back on (most of the time).

Earlier today we were at a friend's house for a birthday party. Suddenly someone asked us- "Did you know that Evelyn was in the bathroom all alone?" We didn't know, but we weren't suprised to open the door and see her on the toilet doing her thing. She is so good.

But sometimes her independance has gotten her into trouble. A good example of this is when she decided she wanted to try the big potty (the toilet). Rachel went to help stabalize her, but then decided to leave her alone after repeated crys of "No help Mommy. I GOT IT!" So...A little while later Rachel hears a little splash. When she goes to investigate she sees Evelyn folded in half inside the toilet with a very surprised look in her eyes. And then she very matter-of-factly states "I fall in." Yes, she fell in.

Actually, Evelyn got to use that phrase again this week. It was just after we had put everyone to bed. Rachel and I were relishing in the silence of sleeping children when we suddenly hear Evelyn start to scream. Now, Evelyn doesn't usually do that, so Rachel went in to see what was going on. What had happened is she was leaning over to see Addy in the Pack-and-Play and apparantly leaned too far, flipping over the edge and into the crib. Adalie (remember, the destructive one?) immediately capitalizes on her good fortune and throws her full body weight, which is substantial, on Evelyn's head and starts pounding away. And what did Evelyn say when Rachel went in to help? "I fall in."

Anyway, we are very proud of our independant little girl for potty-training herself. We know we are not out of the woods yet, but having a child who wants this for herself makes the whole ordeal a lot easier, and even a little bit fun. It is so cute to watch Evelyn's pride swell whenever she pees and she throws her hands in the air and exclaims "I did it, I did it!" What a cutie.

We are in deep trouble.

At church today Rachel had to take Addy out of Sacrament meeting because she was crying. The bad thing is that Evelyn saw this and grasped hold of an important concept- If she crys then mom and dad have no choice but to take her out of this dreary place. So what did she do?

First, she very politely announced that she would please like to go out too. I told her no. Then she very calmly announced to me that she was crying too and had to go out. I again told her no. So then she looked me straight in the eye, opened her mouth, and very deliberately let out a wail so loud that strangers on the street must have been wondering what exactly happened inside a Mormon chapel. At this point I would have loved to just ignore her and let her learn the important truth that crying was an innefective appeal to emotion that only served to weaken an already faultering argument. However, since her cry had actually stopped the speaker mid-sentance (sorry Lafe) I had no choice but to give in to her antics and bring her out.

So we went in to the primary room with the lights turned off and I made her sit in a chair facing the wall until she begged me to let her go back in and promised to behave. Here, I learned a very important lesson. Never trust a two year old who is in time-out. They will say anything to regain their freedom. Five minutes after we re-entered the chapel the whole show started over again.

Like I said- we are in deep trouble.

Oh- Also, Evelyn has decided to potty train herself. Essentially this means that every once in a while we will stumble upon a dirty diaper that she has undone herself, with her being nowhere in sight. This is usually followed by frantic searching arround the house to assure ourselves that she is 1) on the potty, and 2) not making a mess of the sort I won't describe on this blog. It is difficult, because we want to encourage her independance and reward her potty training efforts, but at the same time we need to teach her that some things just require help from a grown-up. Oh, the joys of parenthood.

And that's not all. Addy is starting to get teeth. This means that she will spontaneously undergo a complete metamorphosis from a darling smiling child to a soppy snarling monster.

We love our monsters...Children.

The highlight of the week for Rachel and I, however surprising this may sound, does not involve our kids. This week was part two of my birthday present from Rachel.

On Saturday morning we took our three lovely monsters to a friend's house and then drove to Mentor for SAILING LESSONS. Yep, we learned how to sail a boat. From now on you can call me Captain Logan, and Rachel is my first mate. It was really cool learning about the rigging of the boat and then going out and actually putting theory into practice as we sailed around the bay. We started out by each having our own set of jobs to keep the boat upright and moving, but by the end were able to manuver around pretty competently all by ourselves. It was tons of fun and pretty darn cool to learn how to harness the power of the wind to take you wherever you wanted just by pulling on a few ropes. I love learning new things, especially when it involves playing outdoors, so this really was a perfect birthday present from Rachel. Thanks again, Love.

Evelyn Climbed a tree.

Here is a picture of us and our little boat.

And here is a picture of what was going through my imagination. There's nothing wrong with pretending, right?

After reading this post make sure you scroll down and read the next two. These last couple of weeks we have been on vacation so we haven’t written much, but today we made up for it in the form of extra posts. Enjoy!

This week has been so much fun! On Monday we made the harrowing journey through three airports back to our home in Cleveland. I started school again on Tuesday and have been falling back into the groove of things. One word about school- It is almost over! As exciting at that thought is, we are also a little nervous because that means that I have to go out and find a real job. Next year at this time I will be a full-fledged dentist. Sort of cool. Sort of scary.

Rachel and I both feel strongly that we should ultimately move to Coeur d’Alene Idaho. The thoughts and feeling leading to this decision are a whole other story that I won’t write about here, but basically, we know that this is where our family will be established. Now the hard part is finding a job that will allow us to follow through with these feelings. We have been looking and have come across a few prospects, but none that are super promising. So, I guess we’ll keep our eyes open and hope to recognize the right opportunity when it comes. In the mean time, I am working hard to get things done at school so I can actually graduate. I am starting to feel the pressure to finish up with requirements and such.

On Saturday I became an old man. I turned 28 years old. I remember when I was on my mission I was doing some math and figured that I would probably get my first real job when I was 28. Well, now it’s here. It’s amazing that it doesn’t seem like that much time has gone by, but then I look at everything that happened between then and now and it seems like a lot.

For my birthday Rachel got me two things. The first was a trolley tour of the city of Cleveland! This is something we have been wanting to do for some time but have never had the time (or money) to go on. Well, we finally did it and it was totally worth it. Cleveland is such a cool place and has a lot of neat history. For example, we saw a church with a secret tunnel that was a final stop along the Underground Railroad. From Cleveland, the escaped slaved would make their way across the lake to Canada for their ultimate freedom. We also saw the site of an old Italian restaurant that was owned by the one and only Chef Boyardee. A lot of other cool things too- but you’ll have to go on the tour to learn about them all.

The second part of my birthday present is a surprise and you’ll have to wait until next week to find out what it is.

As far as the kids go, they are great. I just want to write a little bit about Jack here. That little man deserves some space on this blog. You see, he is sort of a shrimpy kid. He isn’t even on the growth curve, and he frequently crawls out of his pants because he has no hips. For this reason he is sort of picked on. Especially by Addy. She knows how to use her larger stature to get things from Jack, and the poor little guy can’t really do much about it.

Until now. Watch out world. Jack Man has come into his own.

First off, he stunned us all by scaling the play-ground equipment at the Children’s museum. Not even Evelyn could do that without help, and he made it look easy. That boy is a crazy monkey! But the best was earlier today when him and Addy were “playing.” Suddenly we hear a loud wail from our little girl and we look over to see that Jack had taken her bottle and was actually taunting her with it by holding it up above her while at the same time holding her to the floor so she couldn’t get it. This is the first malicious behavior we have seen from him, and I have to say I was a little bit glad to see him able to hold his own.

But then he took it to a whole new level. A while later we heard another unearthly cry from Adalie. We looked over again to see Jack with this maniacal grin on his face as he gouged his fingers into her eyes which she was desperately struggling to protect. The best is that when we noticed he just dug deeper and actually started giggling. He was very pleased with himself to say the least. As for me and Rachel- I think we are in for it. This could be the beginning of a very, very long rivalry.


This is after making "bear" (brownies) with Evelyn and her boyfriend, Josh.
Here we are on the trolley tour. Thank you, Rachel, for a very happy birthday!

Addy and Jack are just happy to be home.

Sunday 8/08/2010

This week has been so much fun! Again, I can’t really remember the order that things happened in, but here is what we did:

We climbed Lone Peak with Donny and Alyssa. Well, sort of. Lone peak is considered by many to be the most difficult summit to reach in the Wasatch mountain range. This is due mostly to the grueling 8ish mile ascent that is pretty much non-stop switch backs up the side of the mountain. Our plan was to leave late afternoon and climb to the Cirque (area near the top of the mountain at the base of the cliffs that form the summit) and then spend the night. The next day Donny and I would climb the Open Book route to the summit (5.7) where our beautiful wives would meet us with lunch after having walked up the back. We would enjoy a leisurely lunch on top and then jaunt down the mountain to be back for dinner. Well, sometimes things just don’t work out the way we planned them.

We started hiking around 7:00 in the evening. The hiking was hard, but it was nice to be moving and to have time to talk to each other without interruptions. We hiked and we hiked...and we hiked. As it got dark we kept expecting to reach our destination, but there was always one more rise to climb over. Also, Rachel and I had somehow gotten pretty far ahead of Donny and Alyssa without realizing it. Around 10:30 at night Donny called and said that he and Alyssa were going to stop and camp. Rachel and I hiked about a half hour further and then decided to do the same after we came to a place where it was difficult to make out the trail. We had a fitful night’s sleep on the trail and woke up early to hike for just 20 more minutes until we reached a little cabin someone had made. There we made a fire and waited for Donny and Alyssa to arrive.

About an hour and a half later they made it in and we ate breakfast with them. They were pretty much done hiking for a while, so Rachel and I left our packs with them and hiked up to the cirque to check out the beautiful granite scenery. It was gorgeous and we had a nice hike together before heading back. We all made good time back to the car and got home just as a tremendous rain storm got underway. It turns out the whole area had been issued a “winter storm warning.” Looking back up the mountain we couldn’t even see the peak because of the rain clouds, and I think it is probably a good thing that we weren’t climbing at that time- so I guess it all worked out for the best in the end.

This week we also went to Thanksgiving point with Wendy. Evelyn loved the cool activities, and really liked the dinosaurs and the exhibits revolving around them.

Later, we went to Grandma Hill’s birthday party where we got to see a lot of cousins that we haven’t spoken to in a long time.

Finally, toward the end of the week after Marissa and Wesley returned from their honeymoon, we all went to the Desert Star Theatre where we watched “My Big Fat Utah Wedding.” This theatre is a place where Rachel and I would go when we were living in Provo and we can always count on them to put on a good show. It was fun being there with Rachel’s family to eat, watch the show, and laugh together.

It really has been a wonderful stay in Utah and we have gotten to see tons of family. I feel like it has been a good vacation.


Jack and Addy enjoyed the museum too- they had a little play area for kids and they had a lot of fun there.

Evelyn proudly displays the dinosaur bone she found.

A shark! She doesn't look too worried.

We also went to a classic car show. Here we see Rachel and Evelyn between our two favorites. Rachel would drive the red one- I'd take the yellow.

These are all from the Lone Peak trip.

Sunday, 8/01/2010

This week has been so much fun!

On Monday we spent the morning time cleaning up the house so we could come home to a nice place. Around lunch time we got a ride to the airport and we were off on our adventure. I have to say, we are getting to be pretty good travelers. Jack and Addy have now been on 8 flights (layovers included) and Evelyn has been on many, many more. I have to give ourselves a pat on the back here, we have this travel business figured out. That night we arrived at our Utah destination and went to my Grandma and Grandpa’s beautiful new home in Draper.

The rest of the week was spent having a wonderful time with family. I don’t remember the exact order of things, but here is what we did.

We went to the Zoo! Evelyn loves zoos and this was no exception. We saw all of the animals, and Evelyn even got to pet a rabbit and a snake. Her favorite part, however, was the ice cream. It got everywhere, but it was totally worth it for the beautiful little smile she had the whole time she was eating it.

One evening we had a get-together with both mine and Rachel’s families. We went to a local park and had dinner and had a good time chatting and getting to know each other a little better.

We spent a lot of time swimming at Jill and Lee’s home (that’s my aunt and uncle). We got some swimmy things to put on Evelyn’s arms and they made her fearless! She would jump into the pool off the side, and insist that we let her float by herself without hanging on to her. She would even put her face in the water and blow bubbles and kick her legs. This is something we have never been able to get her to do before. The only thing that it got a little scary is after we took them off and she still thought she would float. She doesn’t.

Later in the week we went down to visit Grandma Hill with Allison and my mom. We played Scrabble and had fun talking with her. Next week we will have her official birthday party so Rachel and I will be back down for that, but it was nice to get some one-on-one time with her.

And of course there was the wedding. The main attraction. The whole reason we are down here in the first place. Marissa and Wesley got married on Saturday! We got to go to the temple with them a few days earlier to be with them as they received their endowment. And then again, on Saturday we were in the temple with them for the actual marriage. And of course we were there for the reception later that night, where Rachel stood in line most of the time and I ate my weight in chocolate brownies. I also have to put in a good word here for my cousin Anna Sophia. She came to the reception to help me with the kids and I have to say that she was a life-saver. She did an amazing job of watching them and I think that without her the whole reception experience would have been different. For EVERYONE. As it was, things turned out beautifully and the reception went off without a hitch (No pun intended).

Swimming.

Ice cream at the zoo...Can life get any better?

Evelyn and Jack.

Scrabble is always the order of the day at Grandma's house. And she always wins!
These were taken at the picnic.