Today, being Valentine's Day, I thought it would be appropriate to express my love to my family:

Rachel is an amazing person, wife, mother, and friend. As I write this she is organizing crayons, stamps, markers, and finger paints for Evelyn to play with. She has fed the twins who are sleeping soundly and there is a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. Earlier today she surprised me with my Valentine's day present- she has enrolled us in dance classes for the next six weeks! This is very appropriate since we fell in love while dancing in each other's arms and these classes will be a fun way to remember those days while simultaneously creating new memories. I am so excited to see what the upcoming years bring and to know that she will be there with me every step of the way. I truly love her and want her to know how much her love and friendship means to me.

Evelyn will always be Daddy's Little Girl. I look forward to her big smile and squeal of "Daddy!" every day when I come home from school. And her hugs. She can give some good hugs. It is so much fun to watch her amazement and delight as she discovers the world around her. It is enlightening to see things from her point of view and helps me to appreciate the little things even more. It's not even been two years and I can't even remember what it was like without her. How did I ever live without my little Bugaboo?

Adalie is my blue-eyed angel. She has started to interact in fun new ways and it melts my heart when she looks up at me and her chubby little cheeks curl up into a grin that causes her whole face to light up. I love feeding her bottles; she just cuddles into my arms and makes herself comfortable and drinks away. Often, when she is just about done drinking she will give this sly little thin-lipped smile. And then she spits. What a little lady.

And then there's Jack, my little man. Jackson impresses me with his good attitude. He has sort of had a hard introduction to life with sickness and allergies and stuff, but he takes it all in stride and will grin at anyone who will give him attention. He has become a little talker lately and it is so much fun to just listen to him jabber away at the world. He is also a very affectionate cuddler and I love having him fall asleep in my arms. Sometimes I feel like I could hold him forever.

Needless to say, I am a very lucky guy to have such a perfect little family. It is amazing how I can love them each so fully and how, as I learn more and more about them, that love continues to grow stronger.

Happy Valentine's day to my family.
From Logan/Dad

We're free at last...for a while

Rachel has decided to write a book on weight loss. Her secret? Have a baby who is allergic to both milk and soy. You never really think about how reliant we are on these two staples until you have to go without. Only then do you realize that your food options are pretty much limited to Special K with rice milk. At first glance you might think that we'd save money on groceries with this diet. But when you look at the $8/gallon for rice milk, and $30/can for Jackson's formula (lasts about a week) it just doesn't work out that way. Add to it the fact that he is still constantly scratching his head and it just makes you want to throw your hands in the air and scream.

And then there is Addy. Watch out for this girl. This week her waking hours were all spent either eating (16 oz. at one sitting the other night) or crying, and her sleeping hours were very limited. I think we have an insomniac on our hands. Seriously, she is the cutest little baby girl in the whole wide world when she decided to be happy, but that just hasn't happened this week. Rachel just called her a "little brat."

And Evelyn has pink eye and is a grouch. Enough said.

We love our children.

But we wanted to get away from them for a while.

That is why Rachel surprised me with an afternoon date on Saturday. We dropped the kids off at the baby-sitter's house (a very brave friend of ours) and drove to this great little ski lodge in Kirtland. There, we rented x-country skis and spent the next several hours exploring the winding trails in the Ohio woodlands. When we were through we sat by the fire at the lodge and sipped hot cider and enjoyed each other's company. It was a very nice, much needed break.

I love my wife. She is amazing.

Evelyn wants to be treated like the babies. She wants to be swaddled, drink through a bottle, use a pacifier, and sit in their car seats. Here she is trying out the jumper.

She also loves to be treated like an adult. Before she reaches that stage, however, she needs to realize that it is not acceptable to run around naked. Here she is modeling my jacket, glasses, and hat.

We had a fantastic time being "just us."

This week has been ok...but not spectacular. There really isn't a whole lot to say about what we did. Why? Because we didn't really do anything.

You see, Saturday is our day to be active. It is our play day. I have often said that while Sunday may be a sacred day of rest, Saturday is a sacred day of fun. I have made it a personal goal to not have to work or study over the weekend. I feel like this has given us at least one day each week that we can go out and do something sort of special.

Unfortunately, this Saturday was stolen from me. Once a year the school does "prophy day" where we do free teeth cleanings for the community. While this day is great for the community, it is actually driven purely by self interest; the day acts as a generalized screening of potential patients for the seniors to use on their licensure exams. For everyone except for the seniors it means that we get to waste a perfecty good Saturday cleaning people's teeth. Gross.

These aren't your normal patients either. Oh no. These are the kind of people that don't go to the dentist at all unless it is free. Pretty much everyone I saw needed to just get all of their teeth (or what was left of them) yanked out and fit with a denture. After days like that I seriously don't understand why anyone would want to be a hygienist.

And I'm still bitter that I was doing this on a Saturday...all day. But I guess I'll be grateful when I'm a senior if I get a patient out of the whole ordeal.

Other than that, everyone is doing fantastic. Have a good week :)


Here are some of Jackson and Adalie's noises. You can compare them- especially Addy's- with Evelyn's sounds when she was this age (see 6/1/08)



Jackson is quite the little roller. He does this on both sides. We are so proud.



Evelyn LOVES to help make dinner. Here's a lengthy video showing Rachel in her very attractive PJs helping Eva with Sunday dinner.

Monday was MLK day. Here in Cleveland that means two things. First, that I don't have to go to school. And second, that all of the museums are free. Taking these two things into account, we looked at all of the museums and tried to decide which ones to visit. But then we realized that our Boonshoft pass (see entry for 8/24/09) already granted us free access to all of the worthwhile family-friendly places except one. And it was settled.

The Botanical gardens are a fun place to visit and Evelyn loved looking for the birds and butterflies that were flying around. She also liked it when it started "raining" from the sprinklers on the ceiling of the gigantic green-house. Jackson and Adalie also liked it as evidence by the fact that they slept for the whole time we were there.

We also visited the Children's Museum a few times this week. I know we have mentioned the children's museum several times on this blog before, but now it is different. During the winter time they convert one of their entire rooms into an enormous sandbox. The theme for this year's sandbox is dinosaurs, and there are "dinosaur bones" hidden in various parts for the kids to discover using a map. There is also a tent, a jeep (power wheels), and lots of buckets and shovels. Evelyn loves it and it is fun to watch her interact with other children.

Speaking of Evelyn, she has a new favorite hobby. Cooking. For Christmas she got a set of play food (and a little kitchen set which we haven't gotten yet) and she LOVES making meals with it. Yesterday she got one of our rugs and laid it on the floor as a "tablecloth" and then proceeded to arrange a delicious looking meal on it. She is constantly carrying around a pot or pan or bowl- or all three at once. Whenever we can't find one of our utensils we just have to look in Eva's tent. She is so cute.

Rachel and I have also embarked on a new culinary adventure. After realizing that we rarely venture outside of our comfort zones of fifty or so dinners, we have made it our goal to explore new foods. But not just to eat them, but to learn to cook- and *perfect* these dishes. We have always enjoyed cooking together and it has been fun rediscovering this activity with each other.

Jackson and Addy are both doing great. We don't have any sick people in the house anymore. They are all happy and healthy. Both of them have also become very vocal- in a cute way. They will lie on the floor and squawk, squeal, and sometimes even giggle. Our home is a very noisy place, and (I'm sure this comes as a surprise to my family) I love it.

In last week's post I mentioned that our babies were getting sick. Well, on Monday we went to the doctor and here is what we found out:

• Evelyn has a double ear infection. The poor girl was miserable, but thanks to some antibiotics she is back to her normal happy self again.
• Adalie has bronchiolitis. She wheezes when she breaths and it is sometimes scary to watch her struggling for breath. The doctor gave us an inhaler to use in case of emergencies, and told us how to recognize signs of respiratory distress so we could get her into the ER if needed. So far we havn't had to resort to any of these measures, and we are hoping that she will recover soon.
• Jackson has a milk allergy. This explains why he has recently looked like a burn victim, sounded like an asthmatic, and acted as if he had head lice. It was actually great to finally figure out what was going on. Unfortunately, this also means that Rachel is on a strict no-cow diet for as long as she is nursing. No milk. No cheese. No beef. Our meal planning has just gotten a little trickier. It is worth it though (easy for me to say), since Jackson is looking so much better now that it is hard to imagine that he is the same sick little boy. Every time we meet his gaze his whole face lights up with the biggest smile and the brightest eyes that I can't help but feel like the luckiest guy in the world to be his dad.
  

So, to put it simply, all of our children were sick, and all are well on the road to recovery.

Other than that, it has been a really fun week. Evelyn, by the way, is still the cutest little toddler in the world. Just in case anyone was wondering. She has started to pick out her own clothes which has provided us with a constant source on entertainment. She is so sweet with the babies and will occasionally just stop in the middle of whatever she is doing to run over and give them hugs and kisses before resuming her normal activities.

Rachel and I went to see the movie Avatar in 3D. It is not often that we will spend full price for a movie, but I think that this one was well worth it. The movie was amazing, and it was fun to have a night with Rachel without having to take care of babies. We also were finally able to finnish our gingerbread house. This is one of our Thanksgiving traditions. This year it sort of extended out due to babies, vacations, and school. We are proud of the result though and are glad that we saw it through to completion.

We are looking forward to tomorrow. It is MLK day. We are so thankful that this great man was born to give us a holiday from school and a chance to get out and play. In Cleveland, all of the museums are free on this day, so we'll get out and see what we can do.

Here are our pictures of the week:

Evelyn is so good at interacting with the babies.




And she is so good at picking out her outfits.


Here's our gingerbread house- straight out of the movie Up!




Here's a video we took. It really isn't much, but we posted it here because, as I've said before, we use our blog sort of as a family journal. One thing it does go to show, however, is how busy our little Evelyn is.

And here is a video tour of our gingerbread house. Really, everything except for the roof and the balloons was done the week of Thanksgiving.

What a week! Rachel's family was still in town and a lot of what we did revolved around them and showing off our town. It didn't help that it is the middle of winter, and it snowed the whole time, but we had fun anyway. Rachel took them all out to the West Side Market where they bought more fruit then we could ever eat. They also went to Kirtland, Lakeview Cemetary, and the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame. At night times we had fun cooking together, eating together, and watching movies. It was wonderful having so much help with the kids which sort of helped us ease back into being home again. All told, it was a wonderful visit. Even though they are family, we still feel like we got to know each one of them a little bit more, and that we were able to create some memories that will help tie us together as we are all going our separate ways.

On Monday my Christmas vacation officially ended when I had to return to school. It was sort of a reluctant return to normal life, especially since Rachel's whole family was still here doing fun things every day. By the end of the day, however, I had changed my outlook. I had forgotten how much I loved this stuff! Call me nerdy, but I actually had so much fun that I was already looking forward to the next day. I know it sounds weird, especially since dentistry is not exactly toted as the most glamorous profession, but I love it.

Anyway, Rachel's family flew out on Friday (it was supposed to be Thursday, but their flight was cancelled due to bad weather) and now we are trying to establish a routine again. Apparently, routine at our house means complete chaos, seeing as all three kids decided to get sick as soon as our help (Rachel's family) said goodbye. Evelyn is the worse; she had a fever of 104 and is miserable. Poor girl. Rachel is taking them in to the doctor today, so hopefully things get better for them soon.

So as not to end on such a bad note, I'll post some pictures of our wonderful week. We really had a great time with the Almonds.

Rachel's Family: "Cleveland is Awesome!"

Eva: "I love bath time!"

Brandon: "My nieces/nephew are the cutest kids in the world!"

Jackson: "Look at me- I'm cute!"

Rachel's siblings: "Look at us- we're...uh...cute?"

Addy: "I can't put my arms down!"

Home Sweet Home

Today Addy spit up right into Rachel's mouth while Rachel was playing with her. Yuck!

We have had a fantastic vacation. We spent time in Sandy, Rexburg, Provo, and Hurricane. We saw a lot of family. Our babies were great. And now we are home. It's really true that there is no place like home.

But first, lets take a step back and do a recap of the week. As mentioned in our last blog, we blessed our babies last Sunday. It was nice to be with friends and family for this event. Later that day we drove down to Sandy with Rachel's family and got to have Christmas all over again by exchanging the presents to/from them.

The next morning we went down to Hurricane where there was an Almond family reunion. It was good to see people that we havn't seen in a while. We really enjoyed meeting Rachel's cute new cousin, Landon, and we had bunches of really good food for every meal. Evelyn enjoyed going to the park, and me and her took a long (cold) walk one day and looked at all the farm animals. She didn't seem to mind the weather at all.

After the reunion we all drove back up to Salt Lake where we all caught planes (Rachel's family included) back to Cleveland. I have to say, it was sure nice to have some help at the airport. Here in Cleveland we have all enjoyed spending time together. Yesterday we went to the science museum which was really cool. Her family will be here until Thursday so we have a lot of fun things planned.

Here are some pictures of our Christmas vacation. Not all of them are from this week.

For Christmas, Rachel got footie pajamas (very stylish), Evelyn got a stroller (a little scary), and we both got new jackets (nice).

The science museum was fun for everyone. Addy was so cute there, actually giggling at some of the exhibits.

My grandma and grandpa on the day of the baby blessings. It was so nice of them to drive up, even though it was only for a couple of hours.

My brother, Griffin, doing his happy dance because he beat us all in bowling.

Marissa and Wendy climbing. Shannon Belaying. We don't know the other guy.

Cute Bennett (he's the baby) rides a horse for the first time. I'm certain it is not the last.

Evelyn actually loved this inflatable slide and would happily dive down it by herself, but the look on her face in this picture was too good to pass up.