Obligatory Catch-Up Post

In 2010...

Sawyer turned 5 years old, and is attending the special education preschool program again with his beloved teacher Ms. Brenda. We're trying to get him as ready as possible for kindergarten in the fall, and at this point it's looking like he'll do well in a mainstreamed class. It's amazing how much he has improved. Still no diagnosis but we're working on it along with his teachers and developmental pediatrician.

I planted more tulips. I will not rest until every inch of flower bed is full of tulips!

We finally replaced the dirty white carpet in our family room with hardwood - so much easier to keep clean!

We had lots of playdates with cousins Caroline and Mary Grace, always Sawyer's most favorite friends.

I went to Girls Camp as a stake level leader, and it was the highlight of my summer. I'm now working with the young women at church, and I get to be a level leader again this summer - yay!

The other highlight of my summer was spending two whole weeks at the Outer Banks with my family. Relaxing, refreshing, rejuvenating...take your pick. Eric even came for about 5 days.

Penny picked up a bad case of scabies at the boarding kennel while we were gone. It took us 3 vet visits to finally figure out why she was so itchy all the time. Poor doggie in the Cone of Shame.

In September we adopted another rescue dog, Duncan. He's a 1 year old Golden Retriever and loves every human being in the world like crazy. We love him too, even though my vacuuming has tripled since we brought his furry butt home.

Sawyer had a blast being Buzz Lightyear for Halloween. He was a big hit at the town parade - even though he wasn't actually in it. Kids from the floats kept yelling "Hey! I see Buzz Lightyear!"

We attended the Rally to Restore Sanity on October 30. Sawyer loved it, especially when we had to force our way onto a packed Metro car to get there. He kept telling everyone we saw "I'm going to a rally!"

I completed the Couch to 5k program in preparation to run my first 5k (the "Freeze Your Gizzard" in Leesburg) but unfortunately got injured the week before the race (not from running - from Duncan running into my shin! No break, just a bone bruise but the doctor was scared about blood clots.) I'll do another one someday. 

Maybe.

In December Sawyer lost his first tooth. He didn't even tell us it was loose, I just went to put him in the bath and noticed that it was missing. We found it on the kitchen floor.

We stayed in Virginia for the holidays this year. For Thanksgiving we had dinner with Robbie, Michael, Erin, and her friend Avery, and a fun brunch at Megan and Ryan's the next day. We spent Christmas Eve attending church with Megan, Ryan and their kids and had dinner at their home (where Sawyer lost his second tooth - Santa and the Tooth Fairy came the same night!)

We took Sawyer to his first Kennedy Center performance - The Nutcracker. He loved it and, to our great surprise, sat still through the whole thing.

After Christmas we flew to Utah to see my little sister Tori get married to Billy Strong during one of the biggest snowstorms of the year. It was wonderful to be there for their special day as well as to spend time with my mom. Another shining moment was spending New Year's Eve in a sports bar called Wing Nutz trying desperately not to laugh as a group of very white Provo rappers "performed" a few feet away from us.

Concerts! I got a few good ones in this year - Ray Lamontagne and David Gray at Merriweather Post Pavilion in August, The Weepies at State Theater in November, Joshua Radin at the 9:30 Club February 15, and David Gray again just last week at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda. The last one was quite possibly the pinnacle of my entire concert-going career - front row, dead center, acoustic tour. Perfection.

Merry Christmas!

We've had a wonderful Christmas in our new home. I was neglectful today and didn't take enough pictures as we opened gifts and visited with family - a sign that I was really enjoying myself. If I remember to get the camera out, it usually means I'm bored. But I did take a lot of pictures of our decorations a few days ago, aren't you excited? Here's our tree in the day...


....and at night.
and closer up.

And the tree in our front room. We bought this artificial tree a few years back, but every year I can't resist buying a real one, so we end up with two trees.

Stockings hung by the chimney, and a sleepy dog in the corner.

The entry.


Sawyer was so excited this morning to find a basketball hoop from Grandma and Grandpa Watts.
He shoots...
and he scores!

We opened gifts (Eric: Battlestar Gallactica Blu-ray box set, Wii console; Me: food processor, Wii Fit; Sawyer: board games, V-Tech laptop, fort building set from Grandma Toone, books from SueSue and Granddad) and around 11:30 Erin, Robbie, Megan, Ryan, Caroline and Mary Grace came over. We had brunch together (egg casserole, cheese grits and monkey muffins) and then exchanged MORE presents. We were sad my grandfather couldn't make it - he had planned on coming but wasn't feeling well. After all the gift giving and visiting we were all tired so we put on a movie for Sawyer and Caroline upstairs and the grownups watched Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince. I say "watched", but really everyone but Eric and me fell asleep within the first 20 minutes. I got a cute shot of Ryan and MG:
Even Penny joined in on the napping. Once I took off her Christmas pajamas, that is. She was too humiliated to sleep while she had them on.

Pretty soon it was time for dinner.


We had standing rib roast with port gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, haricots verts, homemade rolls with creamed honey, and cranberry apple Jello salad. Dessert was my dad's famous ice cream pie (Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream smooshed into premade Oreo cookie crusts.) I meant to get a picture of all of us eating, but of course I forgot. But I think everyone enjoyed it, and we had a great time chatting and being together. I'm so glad we had family members close this year and we could spend time with them, especially Robbie who came all the way from Miami. We missed my parents and Tori and Tanne a lot, and Eric's family too - it's always hard that we can't see everyone every year.

The past year has brought lots of changes for our little family, and many new opportunities. Tonight I'm feeling very grateful for all I have - especially the people I love the most. Merry Christmas everyone!

Long Overdue...Our Trip to Utah

Back in July (was that really over a month ago??) Sawyer and I traveled to Utah to visit SueSue and Grandad. Here's what we did.

[Edited to remove the embedded slide show, because the automatic music is super annoying. Here's a link instead.]

Slide Show

Sickness

I fell off the radar screen for a while there because I was sick. We were all sick - Eric, Sawyer and I got the Worst Cold Ever. Eric missed several days of work. Eric NEVER misses work. After almost a week with no improvement we all went to the doctor. In the waiting room they had a big sign that listed the symptoms of Swine Flu and instructed us to put on a mask and use a squirt of Purell if we had any symptoms. I was pretty sure that's not what we had so we declined the masks. At least they're taking the outbreak seriously. When we saw the doctor she agreed with us that it wasn't Swine Flu (pshew!) but just a bad cold. She told us to wait it out for a few more days, and if we still weren't better to take antibiotics. A couple of days later (the day before Mother's Day, and the day of Sawyer's birthday party, which I have yet to blog about) Sawyer and Eric were feeling a lot better, but I developed an earache. So I filled my prescription and took a Z-Pak. 6 days later, my ear was still killing me. I went back to the doctor and she was surprised it was me and not Sawyer that was back with an earache. She took one look in my ear and said "Oh, that ear is not happy." No, it wasn't. I have newfound empathy for kids that get chronic ear infections, because it hurts like crazy. All I wanted to do was lie down and whine. She gave me a stronger course of antibiotics, and about 5 days later the pain was finally gone. I still can't hear well though - apparently it can take up to a couple months for the fluid to drain completely. Eric is calling me "old lady" because he is so tired of repeating himself to me whenever he's on my right side.

Like sand through the hourglass...

I was talking to my mom the other day about how crazy the past year has been for our family. To protect the innocent I won't go into (too much) detail, but let's just say there have been lots of surprises and enough drama that any soap opera writer would be inspired.

One of the recent developments happened after my brother participated in a deep roots ancestry DNA study. The results of the test tell you where your distant ancestors came from. Since my mom is an amazing genealogist, we have our family history going back for years, and as far as we knew all our predecessors were straight up European. So it was a little surprising when my brother's results came in and revealed that he was one eighth Native American. That means one great-grandparent was full Native (or multiple great-greats, or even more great-great-greats, and so on.) Despite her thorough research, my mom had no idea we had any Native American ancestors, so naturally she was curious about where that lineage could have come from. She remembered that my great-grandfather (her grandfather) Fred used to talk about his father working with the Indians in Colorado. And thus her theory was born. She thinks Fred was actually Native American and adopted. There's no proof of this yet, but the pieces seem to fit; he was dark complected and in pictures he looks nothing like his siblings who were all fair. At the time it was normal not to talk about a child having been adopted, especially a child of another race. Fred ran away from home at the age of 15 and had no contact with the rest of the family after that – my grandfather never even met his aunts and uncles even though they lived fairly close to them.

Here's where it gets juicier (and, coincidentally, ties into a recent post.) My grandfather's brother married a girl who happened to be their first cousin. They were shunned by the family and pretty much cut off all contact, especially after they had a child who was born with Down Syndrome. If my mom's theory about great-grandpa Fred being adopted turns out to be correct, they aren't really first cousins at all – in fact, they would have no blood relationship whatsoever. So the whole family drama would have happened for no reason. Does that sound like the plot of a depressing turn-of-the-century novel or what?

We may never know the truth, but my grandfather is waiting for the results of his own DNA ancestry test to determine if the Native American line goes through him. If not it may come from my dad's side. Either way, if the test is accurate I may have a whole line of family history I never knew about. Which is really cool. As long as I don't find out later in life that I also have an evil twin in a coma.

Merry Christmas!

Doesn't the house look great this year?






OK, I should probably mention that this isn't my house. It's my parents' house. But I can always pretend it's mine. (The snow kind of gives it away - they've had over two feet in the past few days, while it's 50˚ here.)

We've had a wonderfully peaceful Christmas. We went to a lovely church service with my sister and her family yesterday and then rushed home so I could make our big Christmas Eve dinner: standing rib roast with a horseradish/crème fraîche sauce, smashed potatoes, steamed French green beans, and my mom's famous rolls. For dessert I made my dad's ice cream pie (Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk in a chocolate cookie crust) and a gingerbread cake with spiced crème anglaise - but after dinner we were so tired and full that we never got around to eating either one. This morning we all slept in until 8:00 then went downstairs to open gifts. Sawyer got way too many presents from his grandparents and aunts and uncles (and some from us too) including a tricycle, Backyardigans dolls, an authentic looking pirate chest, the Fisher Price Little People airport, a Leapster 2 with games, Backyardigans DVDs, a Hot Wheels racetrack, and LOTS of books. Eric gave me a KitchenAid Professional 600 mixer, which I have been coveting for a long time, so no dog house for him this year! I gave him the Matrix trilogy on Blu-ray and a new Playstation game he asked for. We had a big breakfast of my mom's Christmas Morning Casserole (too much food!!) and spent the rest of the day playing with toys. It's been really nice to be home with just our little family - no stressful travel or family drama. We love being with our extended families, but it's also nice to experience the holidays in our own home together. We've had a lot of opportunities to contemplate our blessings and the foundation of our spiritual lives.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Watch Football!

Last night when Eric turned on the TV to sports highlights, Sawyer threw up his arms and yelled "Yay! Watch FOOTBALL!" Like father, like son. (I guarantee he didn't learn that from me!)

We had a nice Thanksgiving at the beach with the Watts/Buchanan clan. We went for walks and bike rides, ate too much, caught up with family, and yes, watched football. We came home on Saturday morning rather than Sunday to beat the traffic and it was nice to be home together for a bit before going back to life as usual again on Monday.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Congratulations Samm and Spencer!

Last weekend we traveled to Harrisonburg, Virginia to see Eric's brother Spencer get married. We had a great time visiting with family and sharing in the happy event. Sawyer did really well during the ceremony - although he did poop in his diaper 5 minutes before it started, when I didn't have time to run out to the car to get a diaper and change him. I'm more motivated than ever to get him potty trained! Here are some pictures from the weekend.

St Francis of Assisi church in Staunton, Virginia.

Eric and Sawyer

Saywer and his Grandad

Sawyer during the ceremony.


Spencer and Samm

The wedding party. Notice anything strange?

Sawyer and me at the reception.

Spencer and his mom.

You can see more pictures in my Facebook album. Congratulations Spencer and Samm! We're so happy for you and we had a fantastic time.

Beach 2008

I learned something this year during our beach trip. One week at the beach is not enough. You spend the entire first week just learning how to live the vacation lifestyle, and by the time the week is over you're just starting to get in the groove of sitting on the beach all day, reading, and eating whatever you want. It doesn't make any sense to go home at that point. Two weeks is infinitely better. Obviously, three would be even better than two. But I'll take two. Two is great.

The trip down was much better than I expected. Sawyer watched his Dora the Explorer DVDs almost the whole way. And it's a 7 hour drive. On the way home I stopped and bought another DVD player (you'll find out why in a minute) and he did pretty much the same thing, even though the drive home took 9 hours because we hit traffic. I've often wondered at home how long he would keep watching TV were I to let him just sit there and keep watching, and now I have my answer: pretty much forever! I'm not complaining though since it made driving without another adult a whole lot easier than it could have been. Especially since the little bugger seems to be immune to the sleepy side effects of Dramamine.

This year our first week was with my mom's family, the annual Stell reunion, full of all the usual subtle and not-so-subtle tensions that a family reunion always brings, and a lot of watching The Office in the evening. My cousins are spread out over Virginia and the US so the beach week is the one time during the year when we all get together and catch up.

The second week we spent in a sound side house with my parents and siblings who could make it (Rob had to go back to work in Miami and Erin was in the midst of moving to New Zealand.) It was nice to all be in one house (the Stell reunion is so big now that we need two) and a bit less chaotic since there were fewer of us. The weather got much better that week too, cooler and less humid. We spent almost every day out on the beach or by the pool. There were a few minor problems - like getting multiple mosquito bites every time we left the house (they were worse this year than they've been in a long time - this T-shirt would have been very appropriate) and having our cars broken into during the first week (mysteriously, my cheapo portable DVD player got stolen, but the punk left my $400+ GPS system right where it was on the windshield.) And it really sucked that Eric was only able to come for a short weekend; he drove down Friday night and left Sunday morning. Next year I hope he'll be able to take more time off. I'm already counting the days.

Another benefit of staying two weeks was that it gave Sawyer time to learn to love the ocean. The first week he hated going to the beach. I literally had to drag him kicking and screaming across the dunes. He hated the way the sand would shift under his feet ("It's slippery! It's slippery!") and was scared of the waves. But by week two, he loved it and it was all I could do to get him to come out of the water and go home for lunch. I had to watch him like a hawk because he would try to get into the water by himself. His favorite was going into the ocean with his Grandad - they'd jump up over the waves and Sawyer would yell "Arriba!" and "Abajo!" and "Don't drink the agua!" (Thank you again, Dora!)



One of the highlights of our yearly beach vacation is our trip to Ocracoke. It's on a small island south of Cape Hatteras and is a quirky little village with lots of restaurants, shops, local music and aging hippies. This year we went twice. We had a great time eating at the Jolly Roger (hush puppies=deliciousness!), browsing at the Hemp Shop, touring the lighthouse, and splashing in puddles on the day it rained.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

...because it's beach time! Sawyer and I leave tomorrow for a whole two weeks at the Outer Banks. My whole family (minus my sister Erin who's in the midst of moving to New Zealand) and my mom's family will be there. I can't wait to see everyone. Eric can't come this year because 1) he doesn't have much vacation time yet since starting his new job a couple of months ago, and 2) Verizon is going on strike next week and he has to be there to pick up the pieces (he doesn't get to go on strike because he's not a Verizon employee.) He's planning to come down next weekend, and I'm hoping he can extend his stay for at least a few days beyond that. We'll see.

I'm a little nervous about driving down by myself tomorrow, mostly because Sawyer has been a complete terror the last few days. Whiney, fussy and tantrum-y. Whoever said the Terrible Twos were the worst phase never met a three year old. Or at least they never met Sawyer. I think I'm prepared - portable DVD player with Dora the Explorer DVDs, check. Huge box of fruit snacks, check. Leaving in the evening in hopes he'll fall asleep, check. Dramamine in case he doesn't fall asleep soon enough, check (thanks for the suggestion Jen!) Not stopping at mean grandma's on the way, double check! So I think I'll be OK. I think.

Father's Day

Here are some overdue photos from our Father's Day celebration. We had a nice dinner at Megan and Ryan's house. My mom, my dad and my Grandy were all there. It was a gorgeous day and the kids had a great time running around the yard.

Caroline and Sawyer with their Granddad.




Sawyer's favorite thing ever, being tossed by his dad. Caroline doesn't like it at all, so she was pretty concerned about Sawyer. (I'm with Caroline on this one.)