I’m making a Christmas dinner tonight for my brother and sister (Jordan and Joanna and Jon), since my parents are out of town and we haven’t had a chance to have a Christmas together yet.  That being said, I have a bunch of things to do today that revolve mostly around the kitchen.  This morning, while making Jayden some oatmeal, pouring him some milk, and making myself some tea for the cold I’ve been fighting, this happened…

those little dots on the floor…well those are the almonds I roasted up last night, thrown there this morning by a little angel with a good case of bed head.

I can tell, he’s gonna be a lot of help for me today!

Royal, Jayden, and I spent all of Christmas weekend down in Kelso with Royal’s family.  My parents and Jordan came down to Kelso on Christmas Eve and stayed through Christmas.  Jayden made out like a bandit.  I was sitting on the floor and they kept passing me more and more presents for Jayden.  Eventually the stack of presents got so high, I could no longer see over it.  Royal and I kept trying to get Jayden over to us to rip into some of the presents, but there were so many people and so much going on, Jayden really didn’t want to have anything to do with it.  He wanted to be in the kitchen washing the dishes.  Usually, Jayden has a great time with presents, he loves ripping paper and sticking bows places, but I think it was just to overwhelming for him.  So, in order to get him out of the kitchen where he was demanding to ‘wash! wash! dishes!’, I opened the present that we were saving for last for him.  I knew if this present got opened, all the other presents wouldn’t be touched.   It was the present from Aunt Kay-Kay.  Jayden loves to clean.  He has a broom that he uses all over the house, and he is always getting into the closet to pull out our vacuum to push all over the house.  However, our vacuum is way too heavy for him, so he bangs it into the walls, gets it stuck and then gets mad, so Royal and I hid it from him in a different closet he couldn’t get into.  Well, whenever Kaylee was on the phone talking with Jayden, he always talked to her about vacuuming, and she always seemed to work him into a frenzy about getting into the closet to get the vacuum out.  So, for Christmas, Aunt Kay-Kay sent him his very own vacuum.  Battery powered no less, so it actually makes noise and sucks stuff up.  Once the present was unwrapped, Jayden looked at the box and goes, ‘VACUUUUUUM’.  So, I try to get it out, but the way those darn companies put toys in the boxes makes it nearly impossible.  This vacuum cleaner happened to be screwed into the box.   So, I had to go find a screw driver to get it out.  All the while, Jayden is trying to get through the plastic to get ahold of the handle, saying, ‘ready…ready….ready….VACUUUUUUM’.  FINALLY, I get the sucker out, the batteries in, and Jayden is in heaven.  I’m pretty sure the vacuum was on all day, he pushed it all over the house.  The vacuum has been on ever since we got home.  Yesterday, I couldn’t get Jayden to finish his breakfast.  He had 2 bites and then he spotted his vacuum cleaner in the corner and that was all the breakfast he was going to have.  He vacuumed all day.  He even puts it in the hall closet where we used to keep our vacuum.  He finds his other toys that play music, turns the music on, and then dances while vacuuming.  The boy is out of control.  Although, it has come in handy, because the vacuum cleaner actually sucks stuff up, so he’s been going around with the dust buster attachment and sucking up little pine needles off the floor!

Jayden loves to do whatever I’m doing in the kitchen  and now he’s discovered he can do it at the right height.   He stands on his little stool, which makes puts him perfectly at the counter and he gets into whatever I’m trying to do.   I usually just let him in on the action, unless of course I’m cooking at the stove, or using a sharp knife or something, then he just stands down the counter from me.  So, last night, Jayden and I worked on some treats for some Christmas tins we’re giving out to some of our friends.

Here Jayden’s waiting for me to finish separating the eggs, so he’s making sure the whisk is good and attached.

Here Jayden is pouring the sugar into the egg whites.  You have to keep a good hand on his wrist, or he’ll be more likely to fling it all across the room before he gets to putting it in the mixing bowl.

Jayden’s not yet good enough to help with the piping yet, but I’m sure that soon he will be, and it will probably be his favorite part, or maybe the part where you get to fling melted chocolate all over them.  Here’s our finished product!

Here are a couple of pictures that we took while we were in Wichita.

This one is of the frozen Arkansas River that was in front of our hotel.  It was getting down to 8 degrees at night, so needless to say, it was a bit chilly.  Brrrrrr

This one is of the Wichita State University Campus, right outside the NIAR building.

Our trip to Wichita was successful.  We flew in on Saturday evening and got our car and to our hotel no problem.  It was freezing cold outside.  Of course, if anybody has been paying attention to the news, you all know that a huge ice storm just moved through the area, so there was snow on the ground and a super cold wind blowing.  Once we got to our hotel, we decided we would just eat there than try and get lost trying to find something.  Our waiter, decided to fill us in our why Wichita was so great.  One of his reasons was that there is hardly any crime.  People are nice, they are nice to each other, you don’t have to worry about someone shooting you in a dark alley.   We thought, “hmmm, great”.  Seems this waiter, who had lived in Wichita his entire life, never stays in the hotel he works in.  The first night we were there, I was laying awake in bed trying to go to sleep sometime after midnight, when I hear really loud yelling down the hall.  Some guy is just laying into some girl.  And this girl is crying histerically and he won’t stop yelling.  I try to wake Royal up to get his opinion if he thinks this is really bad too, but he pretends he doesn’t hear me.  My theory for why he wouldn’t wake up was because he probably thought I was going to send him out in the hallway to tell them to be quiet.  So, I get up and look out my little peep hole, but can’t see them, but I can still hear them.  I can only really understand the man, because the woman is crying so hard and then she starts going off in Spanish.   So finally, Royal wakes up and is like, ‘what are you doing?’.  I told him I was going to call the front desk and have them come check it out, just in case.  So, Royal gets up, tip toes down the hall to try and figure out what room they are in, and I call the front desk and they send security right up.  We never really found out what happened, but I did hear the women leaving with security, saying that she just needed to grab her stuff and she was going to stay somewhere else.  Sad…

Then the next morning, we get up, eat breakfast, and are waiting in the lobby for a real estate agent who was going to show us around the city and show us some neighborhoods and houses and stuff.   While we are waiting, this small little woman starts screaming at the front desk clerk.  Something about, the hotel didn’t let her boys back in in the middle of the night, because they didn’t have a key and they had to go stay somewhere else.  She was using every profanity in the book, ‘I didn’t pay f***ing $100 to stay here and you guys treat us like sh**.  I know I’m f***ing white trash compared to the other mother fu**ers that stay here, but…” blah blah blah.   Then her son gets in on the action and threatens to physically harm the hotel manager, who they wouldn’t let get a word in edgewise to explain anything.  Then they storm off saying they are “getting their sh** and getting out of there”  to stay someplace where they wouldn’t be treated so horribly.   Well, a few minutes later the hotel security walks through the door.   This is about the time our realtor shows up, so we have to leave before we see the conclusion to all the drama, but as we pulled out of the hotel driveway, 2 more security cars show up and 2 Wichita police cars.   Wish I could of stuck around to see what would of happened.  But so much for the waiter’s “super nice” city!

Looking at houses and neighborhoods was pretty overwhelming.  I couldn’t figure out where I was most of the time, I was completely lost.  The houses were great, really big, all of them have super big basements and doors from the basement into what they kept calling “storage areas”.   But, come on, we all know what they are.  Doors into big cement rooms with shelving, that are completely underground and away from all windows.  I’m sure they are calling them “storage areas” to not scare off people by calling them tornado shelters.  Because we all know, that’s where I’d head if I saw a tornado ripping towards my house.

The next day, we met with NIAR (National Institute for Aviation Research).  They were great.  The job sounds much better than what Royal is doing now.  A much bigger opportunity to be involved in lots of different projects.  Projects from what he is currently doing now with Toray, to working with NASA and the Army and the Airforce, to working with doctors on how to make artifical knees and hips that bodies won’t reject.   It just sounds much more stimulating and interesting.  Royal just wouldn’t have the opportunity for this at the job he has now.  Not to mention that they would pay for any of his graduate studies that he decided to do.  So, Royal is going to accept the job.

So, now we are going to put our house on the market and wait for it to sell.  The people at NIAR said they would wait for Royal until our house sold, so that we didn’t have to live apart, which is fantastic.  That was one of my issues that had to be resolved before I would be okay with moving there.  Time to start packing, I guess.

I’m trying to be excited about it, but that’s not going too good yet.  I’m excited for Royal, but I’m not excited to live in Kansas.  I’ve decided that I won’t totally form an opinion about Wichita yet, because it’s hard to figure out what all a city has to offer until you spend some time there.  But, it’s hard to imagine moving somewhere, where I know absolutely nobody.  I’m sure I’ll make friends, and I’m sure I’ll be fine, I just have to convince myself of it first.  I’m sure it won’t be that bad.  It’s an adventure.  I get to start over somewhere.  I get to get a new house, and that’s a little exciting.  We don’t know when we’re moving, it all depends on when our house sells, so really we could still be around for another year or so!!!

I’ve never really given it much thought as to what I would tell my kids about Santa Claus. But now being a mom, with friends who are moms, the topic seems to come up..what are you going to do, are you going to lie to your kids? 

Some people seem to have really strong opinions about telling their kids that Santa Claus is real because it would be a lie, and they don’t want to lie to their kids.  That makes some sense to me.  But really, when I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real, I don’t remember it being a big deal.  I don’t remember feeling devestated that my parents had lied to me all along, that my mom was the one who bought the stuff and filled up my stocking.  I do remember being super excited Christmas Eve about waking up extra early with Kaylee, and then later the rest of our siblings, to go through our stockings with a flashlight, being really quiet, and then repacking everything (which it never seemed to fit back in right) and going back to bed, only to wake up my parents a few hours later and going through them again, of course acting surprised like we had no idea what we were getting.  It was totally part of our Christmas tradition.  Even in the last few years, when we’ve all stayed at my parents house on Christmas Eve, the 5 of us kids still wake each other up, and now the spouses too, at 2 or 3 in the morning to sneak downstairs and go through our stockings.

Kaylee, as one example, really hasn’t told her kids about Santa Claus.  She hasn’t made a big deal about him, but she also hasn’t said that he wasn’t real.  So, a couple weeks ago, at the Chrismtas parade in Shelton, we were watching the parade from the balcony at the funeral home and the final float came by with Santa Claus waving to the crowd.  Brendan, looks at Kaylee and says, ‘I’ve never seen Santa Claus before!’   It was like all of the sudden, he was real to him.  He’d seen him in movies and books, but never in real life.  Brendan had figured it out on his own, and then was excited to actually see him in person.  Brendan though isn’t sure he wants to be friends with Santa, I guess later he told Kaylee that he wanted to give him a hug, but not right now, maybe in a couple of years.  ha ha ha!

Really, is Santa Claus any worse than any other fictional character?  Is it any worse than letting your little girl read princess books, and watch Disney movies, and then take her to Disneyland to see Cinderella in real life?  It doesn’t really seem so to me.  They are both lies.  Cinderella doens’t exist anymore than Santa Claus does.  Yet, I’ve never heard a big debate on whether or not going to Disneyland was ok, because it’s basically a big park filled with life-sized lies that you are going to have to explain to your kids later.   Is Santa a bigger deal because he revolves around Christmas, and we want our kids to understand what the real meaning of Christmas is?

I guess I don’t have real strong feelings about making sure Jayden knows right now that Santa doesn’t exist.   I do have strong feelings about making sure he knows what Christmas is really about.   But as a kid, you get wrapped up in presents, who doesn’t like to get presents?  Especially ones that just magically appear!   I guess I figure if he asks me about it, I won’t tell a huge, elaborate lie just so he’ll believe longer.  And I’m probably not going to make a big deal about Santa coming either.  It all just seems to be part of this time of year.  And besides, last year, I knitted up these huge, kick-ass stockings for me, Royal, and Jayden, and gosh darn it, they are gonna get filled with stuff, whether it’s from me or Santa!

It’s freezing outside and if it’s going to be so cold, it might as well snow!

Hallelujia the week is almost over!!!!   Royal has been in Florida all week, living the high life in the Ritz-Carlton in West Palm Beach.  Alright, so he has been working, he had to go to a conference down there, and as I have been to many a meetings like that, I know they can be boring.  But while he does call to complain that he’s sick of the meetings and that he misses me and Jayden, I have a hard time feeling sorry for him when he tells me he just went for a run on the beach.   He’s going for runs on the beach, while Jayden and I are back here drowning in the northwest weather.  Sheesh.

I didn’t think this week was going to be all that bad, we had lots of things planned, so I figured it would go by fast….sadly, half our stuff didn’t work out.  Monday, Jayden and I were going to go to our baby bootcamp class, but that got cancelled due to all the flooding.  That evening, my mom was going to come over and babysit so I could go to my dance class at SDC.  Well, Shelton lost power and my dance class was cancelled.  But we did have some unexpected visitors.  Royal’s sister, Lisa, and one of her classmates carpool up to their classes at St Martin’s together from Kelso.  Well, when they came up, one lane of I-5 was open, by the time they were done with school, it was all underwater.  So they stayed the night at our house.  They made it back home on Tuesday taking back roads, which only took them 4 hours instead of the normal 1.   Tuesday, Jayden and I were suppose to do his swimming lessons, but I get a message on my phone that they were going to be doing maintenance on the pool for the next month, so all of our swimming lessons had been cancelled.  Bummer.  But my great friend Nicole, came and stayed at our house Tuesday night, just to hang out and visit.  That was great!  Wednesday was suppose to be my day to have a “break”.  I had an appointment at 11, and Royal’s mom was going to come up from Kelso and babysit Jayden.  She doesn’t work on Wednesday, so she was going to stay for the afternoon so I could get away from the house and maybe do some Christmas shopping.  Well, with all the flooding on I-5, she obviously couldn’t make it.  So, Aunt Jojee came over from Shelton for an hour so I could make my appointment, but she had to go back to work, so once again it was just me and Jayden.   Jayden and I made sugar cookies, he loves to help bake.  He stands on a stool next to me, turns the mixer on, licks the flour off the counter while I roll the dough out (saying, ‘mmm, nummy’), helps push the cookie cutters down, and steals little pieces of dough.  It creates a big mess, but it’s pretty fun.  Our neighbor, Dee, whose husband is now working in Alabama, came over in the evening and had dinner with us.  Thursday, we made it to our baby bootcamp class.  Jayden ran around with his friend Brady while I worked out.  Finally, I got to do something for myself and get a little break during the day!  And now today is Friday.  I’m worn out and can’t wait for Royal to come home.  He won’t be home until late tonight, but it’s nice to know it’s my last day as a single mom.  Jayden is in a frustrating phase, where he wants to do things, some he should, some he shouldn’t, and he can’t communicate very well.  So, it results in a frustrated kid who seems to be yelling at me all the time.  My nerves are about fried.  I was talking with Kaylee on the phone this morning, and she told me she was about to get off the phone because she couldn’t listen to Jayden whine and yell anymore. ha ha ha. Only half a day to go!   Tomorrow, Royal is taking care of Jayden, while I go for a 9 mile run and then do some Christmas shopping with Joanna.  I can’t wait!

It’s been a long time since I have posted anything.  Not because there hasn’t been anything worthwhile to post about, but because I have been totally preoccupied with a major life changing decision… Nope, I’m not coming out of any closets, I’m not pregnant, then what could it be????

Thanksgiving was alright.  It wasn’t as horrible as I thought it was going to be.  It was hard for sure, but on one hand I’m glad we got the first big holiday out of the way, and I’m grateful we had 7 months before we had to do it.  Kaylee and her family were here, which made it sooo much better.  Jayden got to play with his cousins, and I got to hang out with Kaylee and Rand.  On Friday, everybody except mom and Jordan, went to the beach to dig up razor clams.  Brendan and Jayden had lots of fun digging holes, playing in the sand, and picking up the clams off the beach.  Brendan carried his whole limit of 15 clams around in his clam bag!  They didn’t seem to mind it was freezing out.  Wyatt had fun until his hands got cold and sandy and he wiped his nose, then he was ready to pack it up and go home.  We dug up a total of 105 clams!  It was so much fun!  Poor dad and Royal had to shuck and clean all those clams (except for the little bucket of clams we gave Grandma Joann), but we fried ‘em up as fast as they could clean ‘em.  Delicious!!

Saturday, Royal and I went to the Apple Cup.  Kim hooked us up with some tickets and she gave Royal’s sister her extra one.  So, Royal and I put our Husky sweatshirts on, and Kim and Lisa had their cougar colors on.  The seats were great, right behind the student section.  We got to see a lot of kids get thrown out of the game.  ha ha ha.  Kim, with all her connections, of course knew an owner of a boat that was driving over to the game.  We got on at South Lake Union and rode it over to the stadium, which is way better than driving and trying to find parking.  The boat is owned by a Husky (as you can see from the picture) and every year, there is a bet on board between the Huskies and the Cougs.  The losers have to jump in the lake on the ride back home.  Did I mention it was 35 degrees out?  I wore my dad’s battery powered heated vest under my sweatshirt and I was still a little chilly.  Well, if you watched the game, you know who won.  So once we got back on the boat, the owner and the now loser of the bet, was downing quite a bit of scotch, which I probably would of too if I had to jump in the lake.  But I was totally impressed, he didn’t back out, he put on a shorty wet suit and jumped off the top of the boat.  Brrrrrr  All I can say is thank goodness for battery powered heated vests!!!

This past week, Jayden started swimming lessons.  I can’t say it’s going to well, I think Jayden might be getting traumatized.  But we’re sticking it out, I’m sure he will love it by the end of the session.

On Wednesday, Kaylee, Joanna, Kim, JC, Amy, and I headed up to Everett and watched the So You Think You Can Dance Show.  It was awesome!  Once again, thanks to Kim for the hook up!  Way better than on TV.  They showed some clip about the 5 worst falls in SYTYCD history, and the #1 clip about killed me.  I don’t think I have laughed that hard in a really long time.  What does that say about me, the I couldn’t stop laughing at someone else who really hurt themselves?  I was laughing about it a good 30 minutes later in the car, on the way home.  But the dancing was great, I was so glad I got to go.

Today, Royal, Jayden, and I went Christmas Tree hunting.  Luckily we got our tree before it started snowing.  So our little tree is now in our living room waiting for me to decorate it.  I love it when it snows!!  The hotdog stand wasn’t open at the farm while we were there, so we stopped by Costco and got hotdogs there.  You just can’t hunt for Christmas Trees without getting a hotdog afterwards.  Jayden obviously agrees, because once we got our tree and were heading down the road all he kept saying was, ‘hot dog, hot dog, hot dog’  And we don’t even eat hotdogs very often at all.  The last time, was when we went pumpkin hunting.  So once in Costco, we settled down with our dogs and Jayden ate the entire thing.  I couldn’t believe it, I figured Royal would be having to finish Jayden’s off, but nope, I was wrong.  Jayden downed the whole thing.  Little piggy, I’m totally impressed.  He does have Lovingfoss gene’s after all!

So, now that you’re all caught up on the latest happenings, I guess I will tell you what is going on.  While Royal was off on a business trip last October, he got offered a job.  I wasn’t too surprised, Royal always seems to get offered jobs when he’s traveling.  Obviously, he’s a smart guy and knows what he’s talking about, and these people are impressed.  Who would of thunk???   So, when he called home to tell me about this one, I didn’t think anything of it.  The job would be at the National Institute of Aviation Research.  I didn’t really know until he got home that he was serious about this one and he wanted to look into it.  Come to find out, one of the main draws for him was that they were going to pay for all of his graduate work, he could get his doctorate for free.  So, I told him to go ahead and look into it, we might as well have all the info before we make any decisions.   Well, so far everything has panned out.  What they are offering is good, they really want Royal to work there, and Royal thinks he’d like what he would be doing there, so the job is his if he wants it.  So, in 2 weeks, Royal and I will be flying out to finalize some details, get things on paper, look around at houses, and make a final decision on if this is what we really want to do.  ‘Where are you flying to?’, you ask.  Wichita, Kansas.  ‘Where?’  Yes, you heard me right, Wichita.  ‘They have tornados there’  Yes, they do.  ‘It’s flat and there are no trees’  Well, that’s so you can see the curvature of the earth and there is nothing around the stop the wind…  I know, I can hardley believe it myself.  I never even really wanted to visit Kansas, much less move there.  Greg and Linda, if you are out there…we’ll only be about 4 hours away from you!

So, there’s the big news.  There is still a chance that we might not do it, but at this point it looks like that is what is going to happen.  We would be there for around 5 years, until Royal can finish up school, and then I plan to catch the next tornado out of there back to the northwest.  Who knows, maybe I’ll like it there.  It is the 4th sunniest state, and I like the sun.  And I already checked to make sure they have a yarn store.  I won’t be moving anywhere that doesn’t have a nice supply of fibers for me.  So, we’ll see… :)