Easter
We went to the Easter Eggstravaganza at church on the Saturday before Easter. We had a pancake breakfast first, then there was a bunch of activities for the little ones. First was the egg hunt, then was craft and story time, and finally a puppet show. Shaun had a good time. Sunday, Easter, we went to church and then over to Grandma & Grandpa’s to have an Easter brunch with the family. Shaun & Antonio got to have another egg hunt in the basement and open a couple of gifts.
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Ocean
We took our annual weekend trip to the ocean. The weather was okay, but could have been better because it rained much of the day on Saturday. However, we didn’t let that stop us from walking on the beach! Some of us took a pretty long walk in the rain on Saturday. It was still fun. Next year we are going to try out a new place just down the road at Pacific Beach that I heard about from a coworker. It is the Navy “resort” complex with “cottages” on the bluff above the beach. We stopped by on our way there and got to tour a cottage. They are really 4-5 bedroom rambler houses that are nicely updated! Plus, one of these “cottages” is much cheaper to rent than the 2 bedroom condo we currently rent in Moclips. Plus there is room for my Aunt & Uncle that rent a 1 bedroom condo also, so it makes it even cheaper! Nice Navy perk! Two bedrooms are just getting too small for 6 people!
Big Boy Bed
My baby is growing up! We had to break down Shaun’s crib and transfer him to a twin bed because he is falling out of the crib! It happened over a few weeks. We were hoping to make it past the time when Shaun was spending the weekend at Grandma & Grandpa’s, but that didn’t happen. First he started hiking his knee close to the top of the rail. It still really hadn’t totally crossed his mind that he could climb out. Then one day he did climb out onto the changer and then down. Then the next week or so it was directly to the floor with a loud “THUD”. We knew that was the end of the crib. He did that a week ago Sunday a few minutes after we put him in bed. So, we did an emergency fix by taking off the side of his crib (it is a convertible crib) and kind of rigging the bed rail we had bought for a twin bed on it for the night. Technically it isn’t supposed to go on a toddler bed and didn’t quite fit under, but it worked for one night. Then the next evening we broke apart the crib and brought in the twin bed from the guest room. It was a sad day. Hopefully we will get to put it back together sometime in the future. We will be getting him a new mattress and bed in the next month or two so we can still have this one as the guest bed and also because the mattress is really old; it was my first bed! We had been debating about whether to do a toddler bed, keep his crib in the converted position or just go to a twin bed. We decided against the toddler bed to avoid the intermediate cost of buying a bed and the bedding, and against the crib in the toddler bed position because it didn’t seem right and would just be another transition down the road to a twin. We didn’t buy the crib because it could convert; just most of the cribs out there do unless you buy the really flimsy ones. The weekend before we had actually bought all the bedding with Shaun’s help because we knew it was coming soon. He helped pick out the Cars theme!
Shaun has done great sleeping at night in his new bed. We tuck him in and he pretty much goes straight to sleep. The first night we heard a few minutes of jabbering, but that was it. The rest of the nights have been even less than that, even at Grandma & Grandpa’s for 2 nights! Naps, on the other hand, are another story. The first day he didn’t sleep at all. Instead he played in his room for 3 hours. The 2nd day he fell asleep for the last half hour that we would let him (so he would sleep at night). That meant he played for about 2-2 ½ hours. The third and fourth days he played for an hour and then got a 2 hour nap in. We have used the baby monitor more in the last week then we ever did when he was a baby. At Grandma & Grandpa’s he only napped for half an hour, but I’m just glad he slept well at night! Hopefully the napping gets better over time because he still needs one. He is a major grump in the afternoon/evenings if he doesn’t get a nap or gets a very short one. If he gets between 1-3 hours of sleep he is pretty good, depending on the day.
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Weekend to Remember!
This past weekend we went to a “Weekend to Remember” marriage conference put on by Familylife. They do these all over the country and usually come to the Seattle area twice a year. There were some couples there from all over the country too. We met one couple from Ohio in the elevator. It was an amazing time! When we checked into our room, there were flowers waiting for me from Bill! He had sneakily ordered them to be waiting in the room when we arrived. I recommend the conference to every married couple out there no matter how long you have been married. They took a poll at the beginning to see who had been married the least amount of time and the longest. The shortest was 3 months, the longest 40+ years! There were also some engaged couples too. They said it started out as premarital counseling, but then so many married couples were interested in it because they hadn’t gotten the info or had forgotten it. At the very end on Sunday, we even had a mass renewal of our vows ceremony; it was very moving and tearful.
The conference is Jesus centered and shows how marriage is designed by God. The conference started Friday evening at 7 and was over at 12:30pm on Sunday. Each session was on a different aspect of marriage from what pushes a couple towards isolation, to what brings a couple together towards oneness, and everything in between. One session was even broken out and had the men and women in different rooms. There were application projects to do along the way to apply some of the things talked about. All Saturday evening, starting at 5pm was date night, open to do whatever each couple so desired. We had eaten a fairly big lunch at Red Robin with the other couples that came from our church, so we weren’t all that hungry at dinner time. So, instead we went on a nice romantic walk on the “River Walk” just a couple blocks away. The conference was in Redmond at the Town Center, which is a nice little shopping area I never had been to before. Then we decided we wanted ice cream instead of dinner so we got some Coldstone Creamery and went back to our room and watched Fireproof and then the soccer game.
It was so nice to have some couple time. We haven’t had time like this since before Shaun was born, over 2 years. We knew we needed to reconnect with each other, that is one of the reasons we decided to go to the conference. It doesn’t take much, and having a child is a lot, to push a couple towards isolation. We have been on the isolation road since Shaun was born. We both feel so much better and connected and on the road to oneness since this weekend. You don’t even realize that you are on the path towards isolation until you are brought back together in an intentional way or worse. Marriage requires work, hard work, but is so rewarding when you are on the road to oneness! We have also decided that we need to have some couple time like this more often, so we are going to try and go on a little weekend getaway twice a year or so; and maybe go back to the conference every 5 years or so. At a future conference, the material will probably be mainly the same (we may have forgotten some though), but the speakers will probably be different since there are so many of them, and each speaker brings their own experiences to the material and presents in their own style. The speakers were great! Two of them were a husband and wife and took turns speaking on the subject at hand. The husband was an ex Wall Street broker currently living in Pennsylvania. The third speaker was a pastor from the Portland, OR area. If you are reading this and are interested in going to a conference in the very near future; the next one around here is just around the corner the weekend of May 15th in Bellevue, or in Yakima in June. Otherwise; around here it will be another year probably before the next conference.
We went to the Easter Eggstravaganza at church on the Saturday before Easter. We had a pancake breakfast first, then there was a bunch of activities for the little ones. First was the egg hunt, then was craft and story time, and finally a puppet show. Shaun had a good time. Sunday, Easter, we went to church and then over to Grandma & Grandpa’s to have an Easter brunch with the family. Shaun & Antonio got to have another egg hunt in the basement and open a couple of gifts.
Ocean
We took our annual weekend trip to the ocean. The weather was okay, but could have been better because it rained much of the day on Saturday. However, we didn’t let that stop us from walking on the beach! Some of us took a pretty long walk in the rain on Saturday. It was still fun. Next year we are going to try out a new place just down the road at Pacific Beach that I heard about from a coworker. It is the Navy “resort” complex with “cottages” on the bluff above the beach. We stopped by on our way there and got to tour a cottage. They are really 4-5 bedroom rambler houses that are nicely updated! Plus, one of these “cottages” is much cheaper to rent than the 2 bedroom condo we currently rent in Moclips. Plus there is room for my Aunt & Uncle that rent a 1 bedroom condo also, so it makes it even cheaper! Nice Navy perk! Two bedrooms are just getting too small for 6 people!
Big Boy Bed
My baby is growing up! We had to break down Shaun’s crib and transfer him to a twin bed because he is falling out of the crib! It happened over a few weeks. We were hoping to make it past the time when Shaun was spending the weekend at Grandma & Grandpa’s, but that didn’t happen. First he started hiking his knee close to the top of the rail. It still really hadn’t totally crossed his mind that he could climb out. Then one day he did climb out onto the changer and then down. Then the next week or so it was directly to the floor with a loud “THUD”. We knew that was the end of the crib. He did that a week ago Sunday a few minutes after we put him in bed. So, we did an emergency fix by taking off the side of his crib (it is a convertible crib) and kind of rigging the bed rail we had bought for a twin bed on it for the night. Technically it isn’t supposed to go on a toddler bed and didn’t quite fit under, but it worked for one night. Then the next evening we broke apart the crib and brought in the twin bed from the guest room. It was a sad day. Hopefully we will get to put it back together sometime in the future. We will be getting him a new mattress and bed in the next month or two so we can still have this one as the guest bed and also because the mattress is really old; it was my first bed! We had been debating about whether to do a toddler bed, keep his crib in the converted position or just go to a twin bed. We decided against the toddler bed to avoid the intermediate cost of buying a bed and the bedding, and against the crib in the toddler bed position because it didn’t seem right and would just be another transition down the road to a twin. We didn’t buy the crib because it could convert; just most of the cribs out there do unless you buy the really flimsy ones. The weekend before we had actually bought all the bedding with Shaun’s help because we knew it was coming soon. He helped pick out the Cars theme!
Shaun has done great sleeping at night in his new bed. We tuck him in and he pretty much goes straight to sleep. The first night we heard a few minutes of jabbering, but that was it. The rest of the nights have been even less than that, even at Grandma & Grandpa’s for 2 nights! Naps, on the other hand, are another story. The first day he didn’t sleep at all. Instead he played in his room for 3 hours. The 2nd day he fell asleep for the last half hour that we would let him (so he would sleep at night). That meant he played for about 2-2 ½ hours. The third and fourth days he played for an hour and then got a 2 hour nap in. We have used the baby monitor more in the last week then we ever did when he was a baby. At Grandma & Grandpa’s he only napped for half an hour, but I’m just glad he slept well at night! Hopefully the napping gets better over time because he still needs one. He is a major grump in the afternoon/evenings if he doesn’t get a nap or gets a very short one. If he gets between 1-3 hours of sleep he is pretty good, depending on the day.
Weekend to Remember!
This past weekend we went to a “Weekend to Remember” marriage conference put on by Familylife. They do these all over the country and usually come to the Seattle area twice a year. There were some couples there from all over the country too. We met one couple from Ohio in the elevator. It was an amazing time! When we checked into our room, there were flowers waiting for me from Bill! He had sneakily ordered them to be waiting in the room when we arrived. I recommend the conference to every married couple out there no matter how long you have been married. They took a poll at the beginning to see who had been married the least amount of time and the longest. The shortest was 3 months, the longest 40+ years! There were also some engaged couples too. They said it started out as premarital counseling, but then so many married couples were interested in it because they hadn’t gotten the info or had forgotten it. At the very end on Sunday, we even had a mass renewal of our vows ceremony; it was very moving and tearful.
The conference is Jesus centered and shows how marriage is designed by God. The conference started Friday evening at 7 and was over at 12:30pm on Sunday. Each session was on a different aspect of marriage from what pushes a couple towards isolation, to what brings a couple together towards oneness, and everything in between. One session was even broken out and had the men and women in different rooms. There were application projects to do along the way to apply some of the things talked about. All Saturday evening, starting at 5pm was date night, open to do whatever each couple so desired. We had eaten a fairly big lunch at Red Robin with the other couples that came from our church, so we weren’t all that hungry at dinner time. So, instead we went on a nice romantic walk on the “River Walk” just a couple blocks away. The conference was in Redmond at the Town Center, which is a nice little shopping area I never had been to before. Then we decided we wanted ice cream instead of dinner so we got some Coldstone Creamery and went back to our room and watched Fireproof and then the soccer game.
It was so nice to have some couple time. We haven’t had time like this since before Shaun was born, over 2 years. We knew we needed to reconnect with each other, that is one of the reasons we decided to go to the conference. It doesn’t take much, and having a child is a lot, to push a couple towards isolation. We have been on the isolation road since Shaun was born. We both feel so much better and connected and on the road to oneness since this weekend. You don’t even realize that you are on the path towards isolation until you are brought back together in an intentional way or worse. Marriage requires work, hard work, but is so rewarding when you are on the road to oneness! We have also decided that we need to have some couple time like this more often, so we are going to try and go on a little weekend getaway twice a year or so; and maybe go back to the conference every 5 years or so. At a future conference, the material will probably be mainly the same (we may have forgotten some though), but the speakers will probably be different since there are so many of them, and each speaker brings their own experiences to the material and presents in their own style. The speakers were great! Two of them were a husband and wife and took turns speaking on the subject at hand. The husband was an ex Wall Street broker currently living in Pennsylvania. The third speaker was a pastor from the Portland, OR area. If you are reading this and are interested in going to a conference in the very near future; the next one around here is just around the corner the weekend of May 15th in Bellevue, or in Yakima in June. Otherwise; around here it will be another year probably before the next conference.
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