Correction

I don't know why I'm always having to do this, but here's another correction. Dave says I've been stuffing my face with chocolate. Well, I think he likes to substitute my name with his when he's doing something he's not proud of. The Halloween candy IS a real problem this year. We're used to getting mostly suckers and smarties, but with the more wealthy areas here in Oregon, chocolate is the favorite treat to distribute on Halloween night. We brought home 3 HUGE bags of it, and I'm proud to say, I've only had 3 mini candy bars, total. My 4 boys, on the other hand, have depleted the supply by nearly half already. Stew has been a big part of that half. We've been working on potty training, and candy is a great motivator for him...
AHHHH... Potty training. I live in fear of the time when my kids reach about 2.5 years old. I don't know why, because both Braden and Chris were really easy to train. Braden had it down in about a day and a half, and Chris took less than six hours. It's TRUE, I promise. He was about 2 years and 8 months old and one morning I decided I'd had enough of Dave's complaining about changing diapers, so I showed Chris how to use the potty, and half an hour later I sat him down to 'practice' and left him there while I answered the phone. About one minute into my conversation, I heard a cry of elation/surprise come from the bathroom. Ever since, Chris has been using the big boy potty without any urging from me. He even gave up nighttime diapers that same day (Braden was totally out of diapers, even at night by about 2 yrs, 8mos as well). I guess the fear and trepidation I always felt before potty training was all for this particular time in my life. Stew has not taken to the whole potty thing quite as readily as the others. He just had his third birthday, and shows no sign of caring about that big, squishy thing stuck to his behind. Do they let kids go to primary if they're still in diapers????
In Dave's last post, he left many of you, our devoted readers, to wonder what the heck is going on with us. I admit, he kind of made it sound like he just didn't want his job here. Well, that wasn't exactly what happened. His company had to shut down, so everyone at his office, the California office and the Korea office are now unemployed. We're thankful it happened when it did, because we were just about ready to buy a house here. I don't really want to try and sell another home in this market:). Dave has had some good job prospects, and we hope to get one in particular that is located in Salt Lake. Our lease here is up as of the 10th, so we are going to move down to Gunnison, UT with Dave's parents until we figure out the whole job thing. We leave a week from today. Off on another adventure!

We're going to miss it

Well, it's been a good 12 months here. Too bad it all has to come to an end. Things aren't going to work out with work here in Portland and we're going to move - again. The plan is to move now even though we don't have the final destination decided on, but we're excited to be making the change. We've had a great time here and it's going to be tough to leave. We've met a lot of great people and have had a lot of fun in the outdoors around here. There's so much more we were planning on doing, but figured we had more time to do it.

Ellie turned 1 on the 13th and Stew turned 3 on the 24th. Those were fun days. We just quickly threw the parties together and had a great time. Stew was especially excited even though we told him he wasn't 'big' unless he quit utilizing his diapers. All the talk about not being big enough at Disney World for the rides made that a very sensitive topic for him.



Halloween was a success. We took the kids out to a more upscale neighborhood for the trick-or-treating. Turns out that is a double-edged sword. Tiff has been stuffing her face with chocolate for the last 3 days. Stew was the funniest - running from house to house in his bug costume, yelling "Happy Haaaoooooeeeeennn!" at every door.



The weather has been great for the last few weeks which has been fun since normally we don't get outside much in the fall. Plus we wanted to get out and take some more pictures of our favorite places since we're going to be moving soon.



They even have a giant pumpkin boat race here in town which was quite the site. Huge pumpkins hollowed out and people just register to paddle them around a community lake. It looked really difficult to try to get those melons moving in the right direction.



We made it to the coast a week ago and it was great. 70 degrees with a slight breeze. The forecast called for big waves, so we figured it was a great time to head out there. It was a lot of fun.




We've had quite the adventure here in Portland and are glad we had the chance to move out here for the last year. We're excited to hopefully be moving back closer to family though. I would love to live here, but it's hard to justify when we have the choice of where to live and the kids need to know their extended family. I expect that should we move back we will have warn out our welcome within 7 months.

Life in the slow lane

It was good to take some time to try to relax after the pace life has been at for the past 3 years. Florida was just the ticket, and it was even nice to have the kids with us. I - in particular - have a hard time spending any money on the kids since they don't appreciate it at all and would have just as much fun fishing for crawdads in Mayfield.



What made this such a good trip was that two of Tiff's sisters came, along with her youngest brother, to help out with the younger kids. So we ended up with 4 adults and 5 kids most of the time we were wondering around. It worked out well.

We also met up with Joe and Jessica Ashurst while we were there which was great. Hillari and Heidi even babysat all the kids twice while the four of us went out to dinner where we could discuss Joe's golden slacks in a more adult environment. It was good to see them again and the kids flipped out seeing their old friends again.





The weather held up enough to where it was plesant to be at the pool or out mini-golfing most of the days. The kids had a lot of fun since we were practically the only ones there most of the time. In fact, we pretty much had the parks to ourselves too. The crowds were minimal and the lines were mostely non-existent.

Dues to Mickey --> Paid

Mickey got his dues from us. The little rat soaked as much from us as he could. We have diffused the situation where the kids complain "but you've never taken us to Disneyland!" And we have the pictures to prove it. We had a great time. The kids did really well - everything considered. I was surprised how well they all did on the plane. No real meltdowns to speak of.

Poor Stewie was too short to ride some of the rides, so he had to watch. He was rewarded with some ice cream though which kept him occupied while the rest of us rotated through the lines.


We spent ~ an hour by the sword in the stone cause I told the boys if they pulled the sword out they got to keep it. We were well rested by the time they gave up.


We were able to save some money by taking pictures of the boys with souvenirs we didn't buy. The plan is to tell them later that we bought all these things from the park but the boys either broke them or lost them. That way we retain the reputation of being cool parents while simultaneously opening an avenue for us to complain at the kids for not taking care of their stuff.


The best was the Tower of Terror 4. The boys wanted to illustrate exactly how big they were by fronting how 'not scared' they were. The ride is prefaced with a story of a family that gets in an elevator and is struck by a bolt of lightning, thus zapping them into the Twilight Zone - Do DO Do do, Do DO Do do. The ride itself was the elevator car and it went up and down sporadically and suddenly which was great fun. Chris had the hardest time on the ride. The second time through he went to keep Mom safe, but ended up crying through the whole ride part with his head buried in her lap. Braden talked all day about how un-scary the ride was, but as bed time grew closer he couldn't stop talking about the story of the family who got zapped. Turns out all the kids took the story as the truth and Dad singing the Twilight Zone theme tune flipped the we're-no-longer-in-reality switch. Oh what fun. Luckily the kids were so absolutely exhausted at the end of the day that the nightmares stood no chance keeping them from going to sleep.

So, we rode the rides, saw the characters, and pretty much walked our feet off. Poor Ellie only got to get out of the stroller a few times through the days. Her favorite was just back at the resort out in the swimming pool.


I think we have to label the trip as a success. We had a great time and it's only taken a week or so to recover from the entire 'vacation'.

Don't believe (almost) a word he says...

To all of you souls who are inexperienced with Dave, I decided I'd better jump on here and correct some fallacies from his last post. I guess that means Dave succeeded with his ultimate goal on the last post... to get me to actually write something on this blog. Yes, I do have many excuses for not blogging (4 really big ones, to be exact), but I couldn't let Dave get away with his most recent breach of all of your trust. He has a tendency to exaggerate, blow things out of proportion, and sometimes, flat-out lie. Well, his last entry was coming mighty close to the latter.
I did NOT, I repeat NOT leave my precious camera on the hood of my car for any passer-by to take. Seriously, if you believed that (and I know some of you did, Jessica), how dumb do you think I am?! Never mind, don't answer that. I admit, I still have baby-brain. Anyway, my baby brain was never THAT bad. Here's the real story of the camera:
It was a bright, beautiful Tuesday morning; perfect for visiting the zoo with my 2 smallest excuses (AKA Stew and Ellie). I was supposed to meet an old friend at the gate at 10 (or was it 10:30). Anyway, my trusty GPS wasn't being so trusty that morning and led me astray. It took me about 20 minutes longer than it should have to get to the zoo. By the time I rolled in to the parking lot, it was 10:37 and there were no parking spaces to be found. Why, you say, on a Tuesday morning would the whole zoo parking lot be full? Good question. It was $2.00 Tuesday AND there was a new baby elephant on display, so everyone and their dog (which is saying a lot, because EVERYONE in Oregon owns a dog) came to the zoo that fateful day. I drove around the parking lot for about 10 minute, when they finally started putting up signs to divert traffic to the shuttle lot. Problem is, they hadn't yet put up signs to direct me to the lot, just signs telling me I had to go there. 20 minutes later, I found the shuttle lot, and to my great disappointment, discovered that the 'shuttle' was a school bus. Have you seen how wide the isles in a school bus are? I had a 2-seat jogging stroller, a cooler, diaper bag, and camera bag... something had to stay in the car. I have to eat, my kids have to poop, and I can't carry 2 kids all day, so I opted to leave the camera bag. Now here's where I made my mistake: after unloading the stroller, cooler, diaper bag, and two kids, I threw the camera bag back in the car (instead of the trunk). I must have forgotten to lock the doors in my haste, because when I returned from our lovely jaunt to the zoo, there was no sign of forced entry, therefore, I was not alerted to the fact that my camera was missing until 2 days later, when I decided to unload the car. So there you have it. I hope you have a better understanding of what I go through every day, married to Dave. Yes, he has a warped sense of reality, but I love him, just the same.

Tiff won't, so I'll have to...

Well, Tiff refuses to post anything on here for whatever excuse she can think of at the time, so I'll have to fill that void. I guess she likes talking to everyone individually or something - which to me is so less effective. Why not get all the info out to everyone instead of playing the 'you never told me that' game. With a blog all the guilt is lifted and my heart is light as a feather since now all the responsibility of finding out what the Judd's are up to lie's solely on the shoulders of the interested. Not to mention the blessing of the delete key -- ohhh the countless relationships that have been spared thanks to a well working delete key. So anyway, since Tiff won't put anything out there I get to tell the stories in my own words for all to see without the fear of being corrected. Let the inaccuracies and fabrications commence. It's up to you the reader to decide what's true.

Pirates! The great Portland Pirate festival was this weekend. Some of the weirdest people attend the pirate festival... so we went. You would not believe how many people dressed up for it. People really get into it, and not just the people involved in the event. It's like a free pass for the ladies to really wench it up. There were more than a few I was uncomfortable with the kids being exposed to. It was a good time though. There were sword fights and canon shows and all kinds of activities for the kids. Their favorite was the puppet show which was actually quite entertaining - I'm not ashamed to say. We had a good time, and even convinced Braden that he might be able to be happy even if we didn't buy him another sword to add to his collection. Actually the collection mainly consists of mangled plastic, torn foam, and sharpened sticks.

So, down here at the bottom of this post I guess I'll report that Tiff lost the new camera we bought just a couple of months ago. I'm doing this 'cause I'm guessing it will reach a limited number of readers since this post is getting a bit wordy - which eases my conscience. She was going to the Zoo and had a bunch of stuff to carry with her on the shuttle bus, so lost track of some stuff. She took the camera out of the case and left it on the hood of the car while she got the kids on the bus. That doesn't excuse the person who swiped it, but there are certain measures that can be taken to guard against these things. I'd probably have a hard time walking past such a setup without thinking it was my civic duty to relieve the person of their unwanted items. Bummer, but hopefully our renters insurance will cover it.

Stew broke his foot

So Stewie took the advice of his brothers and jumped off the couch. Not a new idea by any means. Stairs, railings, chairs, books, rocks ... all fair game for our kids. Can you ever imagine a situation where if one of your kids came upstairs and said "Mom, Braden jumped on my cheek" and you weren't surprised? It has happened, and we were not surprised. We just check to make sure the cheek in question is functional and try to finish dinner in peace. It just so happened that this jump caused a little breakage. We try and try to tell the kids that they're going to get hurt, and I even go as far as to tell them that when they do get hurt I'll be laughing - then I demonstrate the laugh I'll be using.

So anyway, Stew has just been crawling around everywhere since his foot hurts so bad. The X-rays showed it's likely just a hairline fracture that will heal on it's own. Today Stew got tired of seeing everyone going outside so he asked Tiff to go get his shoes for him. She told him he didn't need to wear shoes because they would hurt his feet and he couldn't walk anyway. So he crawled upstairs anyway and called Tiff to come up and open the door. He said "See? Shoes on." lifting up his arm to display his shoes on his hands. Problem solved.






Ellie has been pulling the funniest faces lately. She does this one where she tenses up like you've just farted in her face. It's funny when she just does it once, but hilarious when she does it all the time on command. All you have to do is just fart in her face... no, just kidding -- pull a similar face back at her and she does it again. Maybe just to show you how stupid you look - I dunno. Cute though.