We have finally had a nice break from the horrible cold that is the winter here in Kansas.  We actually got up in the 50’s.  It was so nice, and it actually felt like spring was coming.  Although spring here, while it is a bit warmer comes with some pretty scary storms, and I did watch the movie Twister last night while ironing Royal’s work clothes, and I’ve pretty much freaked myself out about tornados again.  I’ve been here for a little over a year and a half, and I’m still not sure I’ve found a Kansas season that I like the best.  :)

Here’s some pictures of the kids swinging in the backyard, taking advantage of the warmish evening. I can’t wait ’till we can play outside after dinner again!

And on a side note, Willow has learned that she does indeed love cherry dum-dums.

While I was getting lunch ready, Jayden told me he had “thought about it” and that it was going to be okay for him to play in the snow and ice outside, “right now”.   So, out he went.  And then I glanced out the window to see what he was doing and I found this:

This has been some of the longest couple of weeks ever! We’ve had so much going on that I should of had tons of post about, but there has been sickness running rampant around my house and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write anything.  So, here’s kind of a catchup with ALOT of pictures to satisfy all you suckers out there who have been muttering mean things under your breath each time you check my blog and see the same post up.  As you know my parents got back here from Pennsylvania at the beginning of December.  And then Jordan flew in on the 13th to spend Christmas with us.  It has been so fun to have him around, even if it feels like I still hardly see him.  He stays up way too late for me and then sleeps in a good part of the day, but when he finally gets up, its fun to have another McComb in the house.  I’m just not sure there is anybody else out there who gets the McComb sarcasm that gets thrown around when there is more than 1 sibling together. :)  We have gone around and looked at Christmas lights a bunch of times.  My mom and I went to a Christmas dinner cooking class.  And we have played inside alot because it has been soooo cold.

Willow has gotten very good at throwing and catching balls.

Jayden has continued with his obsession of all things dinosaur and we are now building them out of blocks.  This is flying Little Foot.  And I don’t have a picture of a later version of him that Jayden and Papa built, but he had guns on his wings.  It was pretty awesome.

Christmas Eve came fast around here since we’ve all had the flu at different times this week.  But we were wishing for a white Christmas and in the form of extremely high winds (like 50 mph) and snow that came down sideways, we got one.

Jayden all decked out in his Christmas T-Rex outfit went outside to check it out. And then later, we put a few more layers on the dinosaur, so he and Papa went outside to “swim” into the wind.

Here is the Christmas Eve dinner my mom and I cooked together from the recipes we got from our cooking class.  We made a roasted pear salad with candied pecans, beef wellington that looked like presents, and duchess mashed potatoes that were pipped out to look like Christmas trees.  (My potato trees could still use some work, they actually looked better than in the picture.  In the picture they just look like a blob) But it makes a pretty little plate!

After dinner we went to the Christmas Eve service at our church.  The kids did pretty darn good during the service, even if Jayden did keep the rows in front of us entertained.  Jayden sung pretty loudly during the worship part, which is great, it was just funny because he didn’t know the words so he was just singing loudly. (best way to spread Christmas cheer, right??).  He then let out a very audible gasp when our paster said something out Jesus dying on the cross. And then at the end of the service he had his candle lit and Papa was kneeling next to him to keep him from lighting the church on fire and Jayden yells out, “Papa, hold your candle up higher!”  “Papa, STAND UP!”  It was pretty darn funny.

After church we came home and the kids got to open their Christmas pajamas, which I made this year.  And I also made a matching pair for Royal. :)

Christmas morning didn’t start as early as I thought it would.  Jayden slept in until almost 8 and Willow slept in until 9!  Christmas miracle?  I think so!  Since my dad had come down with the flu last night, Jordan, Jayden, and I went and picked my mom up at the motorhome this morning so she could come and open presents with us.

Jayden had to try out his new sand chomper in some snow that blew up on the deck!

Jayden then proceeded to help everybody else open their presents by pulling all the presents out of the stockings and handing them to you.  Once our stockings were finished, and it was time to open the other presents, Jayden would grab a present from under the tree, run over to me, ask who it was for, then run to the person it was for, open it right in front of them, and then hand them their present.  He was quite the helper.

Jayden helping Uncle Jordan.

Jayden helping dad…

Jayden helping Nana…

Jayden helping Willow…

There’s not much cooking that happens in the kitchen on Christmas day.  I did the cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole on Christmas Eve, so all I had to do was pop them in the over in the morning.  But on Christmas day, we try and focus on the fact that it is Jesus’ birthday, so ever since we have had Jayden, I have made a birthday cake for Jesus and after dinner we sing Happy Birthday to Him and eat birthday cake.  Even Jesus got to use the Thomas the train candle this year!

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Jesus!!!

The weather here has been so great lately! 75 degrees and sunny! And while I think this weather is a little freakish and I kinda wish it was colder, it has been nice to play outside without worrying about hats and coats and stuff!
On Saturday, the kids were starting to come down with a cold and I just couldn’t handle an entire day of cranky, whining kids at home, so Royal and I got them dressed, loaded them up, and headed to the zoo. Well, we forgot the zoo is now on winter hours, so we got there a good hour before it opened. Bummer. There was no way I was going to drive all the way home, so we went to a park and played there for an hour and then went back to the zoo when the gates were open. Wouldn’t you know it, but I forgot my camera, and Jayden got to feed the giraffes! I can’t believe I didn’t have my camera! It was sweet! He got giraffe slobber all over his hand and arm. Willow kept acting like she wanted to feed them too, so we gave her a leaf to give to the giraffe, but when his long, black tongue licked her arm while reaching for the leaf, she kinda freaked out..sad… Oh well, I have one more free coupon for giraffe feeding, so maybe we’ll try to hit it up again next time I’m at the zoo with my camera!

I managed to get a lot done this weekend as far as projects were concerned, because pretty much once we got home from the zoo, we stayed here because the kids and their colds went downhill in a hurry. :)

I finished Willow birthday cake hat! Here’s a little preview. It’s not her birthday yet!

I also made a happy birthday banner. The pattern is here!

And since I was on such a roll on completing things, why stop there?
I made Jayden a new apron because we are going to be taking a cooking class together and making gingerbread houses! I love this apron because it doesn’t have ties, so he can put it on himself. The neck strap has eleastic in it so it stretches over his head and the waist strap velcros around his back and to one side. Genius! You can find the pattern here

And last, but not least, I made a giraffe rattle because there are a ton of people I know who are pregnant and I’m going to be sending them presents and why not include a little cloth giraffe that even has a bell on the inside so it jingles when it shakes around! So, prego friends, don’t be surprised to be getting one of these in the mail!

Despite the chilly weather this morning and the chance for extremely muddy conditions (thanks to the rain last night), we bundled up the kids, grabbed papa and nana, loaded up the car, and headed to the pumpkin patch. And. It. Was. Cold. Way different from last year when it was quite warm, but I think we had fun anyway. And thanks to myself and my mom armed with cameras, we managed to take a ton of pictures. :)

Willow got to wear Jayden’s old camo fleece outfit. Good thing I made her pumpkin hat pink this year!

Jayden and I did a little teeter-tottering

Jayden raced some ducks!

And then it was time for the big slide!

Then we hit up the good ‘ole corn maze! They did have a small milo maze for little kids to do by themselves, but Jayden had no interest in that. He only wanted to run and get lost in the corn.

Then onto the pumpkin patch to find our perfect pumpkins!

On Monday night, I got word that my grandma was not doing well and that she may only have a few days left to live. So, I found some plane tickets back to Washington that night and bought them. All I have to say is some airlines that I thought were my favorite (ahem, Frontier) have very poor customer service when it comes to booking bereavement filghts. While others, (not naming names, but United) who were my least favorite airline thanks to some poor seating arrangements and rude flight attendants when I was flying with Jayden, totally redeemed themselves. So, I spent all day Tuesday doing laundry, packing, writing lists, shopping, packing, oh, did I say packing? I was having a bit of anxiety about flying with both kids alone. Jayden on the other hand wasn’t leaving without everything he owned. So, I opened up another suitcase that I wasn’t packing and let him put every book he could find in there, zip it up, drag it to the front door and tell me it was time to leave for the airport. He was a bit excited. Wednesday morning, I got up at 4, finished packing the last of our stuff, got the kids up, dressed, and headed off to the airport. On the way to the airport Royal kept asking me what I was doing. I kept saying, “I’m praying. This could be a disaster of an experience for me”, really expecting things to turn bad at some point and leave me fried. Turns out, God DOES answer prayers. :) The airports, security, changing planes, departures, arrivals, flight attendants, not to mention the kids, were all perfect. It was so nice. You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson and start to pray about everything, all the time, no matter how small, because I didn’t think to ask God to help us all get some sleep once we got to my parents house and I think I got about 3 hours last night between Jayden and Willow waking up. Oi, I’m pretty darn tired.

My grandma is still with us and is now out at my parents house, so me and the kids have all been able to see her. Jayden keeps asking why she’s so tired and why is her body so worn out and why this and why that. He is so cute, he’s totally got his dad’s soft spot for little old ladies. He wants to make her a bowl of hot soup to make her feel better. And after today, we talked about how pretty soon great grandma is going to go live with God in Heaven and that God is going to give her a new body that isn’t old and worn out. He sat and thought about it for awhile, then said, “I think great grandma is going to have a red one” I said, “Her new body is going to be red?” And he said, “Yes. Well, no, I think yellow with blue dots. Well, no, I think it will have cars on it. No, I know! It is going to have a black train on it. Yes, great grandma is going to love a new body with trains on it”

Despite the sadness that goes with losing yet another member of our family, it is so nice to be here. I love Washington. And we have been taking full advantage of the freakish heat here (even if it does feel a lot like Wichita) and the lake!

Here’s to show that big bugs live here in Washington too. I think they are starting to follow me around. I found this spider on my towel when I was pulling it out of the bin. I quickly dropped it and found a new one.

Joanna and Willow. Willow is slowly warming up people. Jordan still makes her cry just by looking at her.

My dad enjoying some delicious cupcakes my mom made. I think I ate 3. Well actually I know I did.

My mom

Here’s how the lake looked last night.

Sister Jo - she makes me laugh a lot

Pancakes for breakfast this morning and what looks like could be coffee is really just milk.

Evidence that Jayden has been helping the puppies escape their enclosure.

Willow

Going swimming!

Jordan’s going in!

Today it got up to 98 degrees. And because I have so much McComb genes running through my veins, well actually Einarsson - from my mom’s side - it seemed like a good idea to go and do something outside. Something that didn’t involve large pools of water or shade or anything like that, ya know, things that would be really good for a hot day. Instead, we met up with Tonya and her husband, Justin, and daughter, Skylyn, and went to Tanganyika Wildlife Park. It’s a park that takes care of and breeds rare and endangered types of animals and tries to create for them habitats that are as close to their natural habitats as you can get here in Kansas. The animals that don’t need to be caged in, don’t have big fences around them, so you can get really close to giraffes and hold birds and pet lemurs. It’s pretty sweet. But thankfully, the rhinos and tigers and stuff were off limits to touching.

See how close the giraffes are back there??

Anybody see those 2 teeth that Willow has? She popped those babies through last weekend!

Indian Rhino

We walked around inside the Lorikeet exhibit and I got a couple birds to sit on my finger. Sadly, I was the one holding the camera, so there’s no photo. But one little birdie got annoyed at me and bit into me real good and made my finger bleed. It was traumatizing for Jayden a bit, even though I didn’t scream or anything, and we had to leave that exhibit right away. Jayden has always had this fear of birds dive-bombing him and pecking his head and stuff.

Cute little kookaburras

Clouded Leopards

Here’s the kangaroos. You got to walk around inside their exhibit too and if they came up to you, we were told we could pet them on their back. Sadly, it was too freaking hot for the kangaroos to get up out of the shade and come over to us. They just laid in the shade and stared at us like we were crazing walking around in the sun and stuff. I tried to call to them, but I guess I don’t know kangaroo very well, because they didn’t do what I asked.
This kangaroo has a little joey in it’s pouch! I’ve never seen one of those upclose!

Here’s Tonya and Skylyn petting the donkeys and miniature horses and goats.

Hello Goat!

Royal has been so excited to buy Willow her own camp chair. Jayden and I sit in ours, out on the deck, all the time during the day, and sometimes in the evenings Royal and I will sit out on the deck and watch the sunset while swatting away all the bugs. The bugs here are brutal. There are mosquitos out during the day! What is up with that???? Anyway, Royal insisted Willow’s chair be pink. He’s totally embracing her girlyness, as long as she’s tough and knows how to fight and fish and stuff.

“Hey, will you guys look at me, so I can take a picture of you in your camp chairs?”

“Come on, Jayden, just one picture. Just put the chips down for a sec”

Willow: “What? He has chips?”

The weather here has been so great. It’s in the 80’s and sunny and now that Royal and I went out and got a portable canopy to provide some shade in our backyard, we’ve been hanging out in our camp chairs in the yard. Guess it’s time to buy some outdoor furniture or something. :) Right now, as I’m writing this, we’re chillin’ outside, in our portable shade, watching Jayden get all wet. I finally found all of Jayden’s outdoor water stuff in the garage yesterday. It didn’t get brought out last year because our grass had just been put in and we were trying to give it a chance to grow. I think Jayden forgot he had all these things to play with because it has been like Christmas around here.

Jayden gets wet then runs over to me and lays himself on my legs and says, ‘See mom, I feel just like an ice cube.”

There is a lot of yelling while we’re outside. Got to get it out of our system before we go inside and have to use inside voices again.

(this should help make up for the lack of Jayden and Willow photos in the last few posts…why the heck isn’t anybody complaining about not getting to see me??? i’m cute too you know) :)

It is MUGGY here in Wichita thanks to all the rain, but yesterday turned out to be quite the hot sunny day. My favorite thing about online weather stuff is it tells you the real temperature and then it tells you what it feels like. Yesterday it said it was 85 degrees out, but it felt like it was 89. Hot enough to break out the present Jayden got from Jojee for his birthday, the wiggling water snake. I’m gonna have to hook it up to a different water faucet next time, because my garden faucet just didn’t have enough water pressure to make the snake wiggle around. Jayden had fun anyway, even if he was asking me every 15 seconds or so, ‘why won’t it wiggle mom? hey mom, is it gonna wiggle? oh! i think it’s starting to wiggle…nope, why isn’t it wiggling?’

One of Jayden’s new things that he loves to do is push Willow around in her “chair”. He pushes her all over the kitchen taking her to birthday parties. Birthday party for his coffee maker, birthday party for his trains, brithday party for his dinosaurs…obviously we’ve been doing a lot of birthdays over here. He then usually ends up over at the window benches where he plays with lots of his toys and pushes her real close so she can watch him and he can show her stuff. It’s pretty darn cute and Willow LOVES it. It’s so nice to have someone else entertain Willow for awhile.

We had a typical wet Washington Easter…even though we are in Kansas…Kansas, the 4th sunniest state…whatever… I’m just not sure what an egg hunt looks like without rubber boots, hats, wet clothes, the dyed eggs dye running when they come back inside. Maybe next year. :)

We bundled up the kids and Jayden got to business.

Willow hung out on the porch with dad, under a blanket, with a hat on. It just wasn’t very warm. This Kansas, it just really keeps you on your toes.

“I’m looking for something about this big”

“Ahhh, yes. Here it is!”

And since it was so rainy and Jayden has come down with a nasty little head and chest cold, we stayed inside and did inside Eastery things, like decorating bunny sugar cookies with some fantastically bright sprinkles that Grandma and Grandpa sent in their Easter package.

And then things got all crazy : Jayden eater of much too much Easter candy and all hopped up on cough medicine, Willow refuser of afternoon nap and cranky-pants yeller, Royal and Rachel seriously thinking of drinking all the alcohol in the house. But then, miraculously, (thank the Lord for miracles!) both kids in bed and asleep before 7:00. This just proves there is a God, and He knows how much we can handle. Hallelujia!

HAPPY EASTER!