Easter 2008

We had our family easter egg hunt this year...with a few changes...

First change was that it was at my parent's home instead of at our grandparent's home. Grandma and Papaw weren't up for a bunch of entertaining on account of some health drama. But they were able to come over to Mom and Dad's for lunch...and they brought the eggs for the big hunt.

The second change was that the weather stunk, so we did our hunt in the house. Luckily, the house is pretty big, so we were able to still have a fun time. Kraig, Megan, and Colin had a blast.

What was the same was a nice time with a tasty meal enjoying each other's company.

The kids got these bunny ears in their easter baskets from Grandma Smoker. We couldn't resist getting a few cute pictures.
It seems that each equinox, my dad enjoys standing an egg on end. When we were over for our easter egg hunt yesterday, it was no different, so we snapped this picture of it. You can balance an egg on its end only on the spring and fall equinoxes +/- three days.

When we got home from Marion, we colored easter eggs. We had a pretty good time. We didn't have the "girl color"/"boy color" drama to the extent that we did last year...



This morning we got our new Easter clothes on a headed to church. I think they were looking sharp...

Smuggler's Gulch

Nate and I have both worked on a project this year called "Smuggler's Gulch." It is a project to construct a portion of the US (California) /Mexico border fence and patrol road. Its a pretty interesting project. I went on a field visit last week. Here's a few pictures...

This first picture is a shot of the existing fence. Its a steel plate type wall about 15'-20' in height. In the Smuggler's Gulch project area, north of this wall (US side) is wilderness and south of this wall (Mexico side) is the city of Tijuana.

This second picture is from the top of Spooner's Mesa looking east over Smuggler's Gulch. Smuggler's Gulch is a canyon/stream that flows from south to north from Tijuana into the US. This stream functions as an outflow for the city of Tijuana's sanitary sewage. As the stream/sewage enters the US, it is diverted into a wastewater treatment plant. After seeing it and smelling it for myself, how neighborly...

Anyway, what you are looking at is a hill about 350' tall. You can see the fence as the black line in the middle of the picture. On the right of the black line is Mexico, on the left, the US. If you look closely, you can see a missing portion of the fence where there was a slope failure.

This third picure was taken from the floor of the gulch, looking east and up toward that slope failure. You can see the fence sticking up at the top. Again, Mexico on right, US on left. You cannot see all the way to the top of the hill in this picture. You can only see up to where the roadway turns north in picture 2 above. I'd guess the top of this cliff is about 200' up.

This pictures just can't do this place justice. It is a massive, amazing, beautiful place...if you just ignore the sewage. How lucky are we to work for a company which gives us the opportunity to work on these amazing projects?

2008 - The Year of Travel...

So far this year has had Nate and I on the road a lot. There have been 12 weeks so far... and Nate has been gone for 3 weeks and I've been gone for 2...while that might not seem like a lot to some people, its a ton for us. The next couple of months promise to be much of the same.


If you're keeping track, Nate spent 1 week in Kansas City and 2 weeks in San Diego. I spent both my weeks away in San Diego. There have been no overlapping travel, thank goodness.

The kids are doing pretty well with the whole thing. One thing we started when I was away was I called at bedtime and read the bedtime story to them. I think everyone has enjoyed it, including Nate since it helped him keep the same bedtime routine for them. The only trick is finding an empty room to read a silly story (including doing the character voices) in the middle of a contractor's office... So far, I've managed. :)

Vintage Photos

Our daycare had a photographer come in and take these vintage photos. We've purchased the proofs and the right to reproduce the photos, so if you'd like a copy, just let us know which one, the size, how many, etc... and we'll order them.

Enjoy.

Clothes Dryer

Heaven knows that Nate and I aren't the most proactive people in the world when it comes to home maintenance. But we discovered something this weekend that I want to share.

Our clothes dryer had been acting a bit strangely lately. The top of it was getting hot when it ran. And it started to get less and less lint in the lint screen. And the clothes weren't getting very dry. Then I ran a load of towels, and there was no lint in the screen. I knew something was wrong.

So after trying a couple of things, I pulled the dryer away from the wall and checked the vent hose - it was completely clogged with lint! I'm guessing we were a load or two away from a big fire. So we vaccuumed out the vent hose, where it connects to the wall, and where it connects to the dryer. We got LOTS of lint out of there. The hose easily connects back on both ends with a spring loaded belt type thing at our house. All of this probably took less than 15 minutes.

If you're as clueless as we were about doing this little maintenance item, you might want to check that out at your house. You may be able to prevent disaster - and maybe improve the efficiency of your dryer.

Babysitting

I had the pleasure of babysitting Calvin Koontz last Saturday while Nate and Adam were out in the woodshop. Calvin turns one this coming Friday and is just learning to walk. We had a pretty good time. He is a pretty easy-going little guy. It hasn't taken me long to forget how much work toddlers are. Shew. And how cute and innocent they are.

Visit to Grandma and Pa-paw Brooke's

A couple of weekends ago, Colin, Megan, and I stopped by Grandma and Pa-paw Brooke's house for a visit. We had a pretty good time. One thing we did was have Grandma cut Colin's hair. This is kind of a right of passage for the guys in our family. Grandma got out her big soup pot for him to sit on and her very experienced clippers and went to town. Colin wanted me to get his picture with all different expressions, so enjoy...:)

Normal

Mad Happy
Growling?
Scared
Shocked! What a ham. Grandma was such a good sport.
Then Grandma had Colin and Megan pose for the famous "Hand in the cookie jar" pose...of course they were rewarded for thier modeling services with a cookie afterwards. :)

It was a nice visit. Wish we could see them more often.

Kindergarten Work

Nate and I have been really enjoying Colin's learning process during Kindergarten. He is so smart. It is amazing to watch him learn. Here are a few of his recent papers.

The translation for this first one is "I love lunch at home with my family, peanut butter is my favorite."

This second one isn't from Kindergarten. He just made this one doddling at home when playing with Megan...so sweet.
Just so you don't think Colin is too angelic, this third one proves that he is a normal six year old boy. It is what I believe to be his first 'writing sentences' punishment. It says "Follow hallway rules" - five times.
Thinking about Colin's first sentence writing punishment got me thinking about my last (and only) experience with that. The sentence was "I will not participate in extracurricular activities in Mr. Schwartzendruber's General Music class." And in my defense, it wasn't me specifically who got in trouble, but the whole class...some of you Oak Hill alumni might remember a similar experience. He got every class eventually, I imagine.

Daycare Christmas Program 2007

This week we had the daycare Christmas program. Prior to the show, the kids posed in front of our tree. Megan LOVED her dress, so she was all about the pictures.

The program itself was pretty cute. Megan's class did Rockin around the Christmas tree and a poem. She and her friend shown here had the exact same dress on. Appearently her mom and I both shopped at Kohl's. They thought it was cool. I wonder at what age it occurs to us girls to be mortified by that.

Colin's class did Winder Wonderland and Silver Bells. I think the boys are ringing the silver bells in this picture.

Colin's Kindergarten Christmas Program

Colin had his Kindergarten Christmas program last week and it was super cute. I loved it. The students all filed in and lined up. They performed maybe 8 different numbers - songs, poems... for each one they had a different prop that they had stored in lunch-sized decorated paper bags which they had carried in with them. You can see Colin being a good boy during the program in the picture below. My favorite poem they did was...

I took a lick of my peppermint stick,

and I thought it tasted yummy.

It used to be on my Christmas tree,

but I like it better in my tummy.

Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving this year was a little different. Usually we have four get-togethers to attend. This year we only had one. So on one hand, it was nice to get to relax at home more and not overeat as much. But on the other hand, it was kind of sad not seeing some of our family we love. So to those of you we didn't get to see - Happy Thanksgiving! Maybe we'll see you in a few short weeks at Christmas.

We took this great picture on Thanksgiving. It may be Nate's first appearance on the blog...
And we took our annual Smoker family picture on Thanksgiving. We decided to all dress-up in Colts gear. I think it looks cool. Plus there was a game that day which the Colts won. You can't tell from the picture, but it was really cold outside. It was windy and it snowed some that day. So we had all sprinted out to this bench, posed, then sprinted back into the house. It was fun. And cold.

The day after Thanksgiving I went shopping with my mom and sister, Lindsey. It was the first time I have done that in several years. I had forgotten how much I like doing it. I got our shopping done from ~0% to ~90% in that one day. Not bad. All that was left was a few internet purchases and a few gift cards. Its not often that I get to spend that much time with them. That was the best part.

Later that night the kids and I went downtown to attend the Circle of Lights festivities with Mom and Dad. They had a hotel room down there. So we had some pizza in the room, walked down to the circle, went up to the warm HNTB offices on the Circle to watch the ceremony from above, then we went out the back way of the building. Just as we were walking out the back of the building on Ohio Street, the fireworks were being set off of the Regions bank building - nearly right over our heads! It was pretty cool to see them from so close.

After that we went back to the hotel and did a little swimming. Them Grandma and Grandpa thankfully sent us home... my angelic children were kind of being pills, so I think that the "send them home with their parents' " joy must have been pretty strong after we left. But in Colin and Megan's defence, it is exciting to get to see Grandma and Grandpa, be in a hotel room, go downtown where SANTA is, see fireworks, and swim!

Another good thing was Dad sent me home with a giant bowl of his homemade turkey salad. Eat your heart out Jason, Lindsey, and Sarah! Nate and I have been eating on it all week! It is sooo yummy! :)

It made for a long day, so we all were pretty tired by the time we hit the pillow.

I hope you all had a nice holiday weekend, too!

Lot's to Update

Work has been keeping me so busy lately that I've been slacking off on the Blog Updates....

I hope you enjoy.
Jen

Indianapolis Corporate Challenge

While Nate was away on a business trip over a weekend, the kids and I went and became the photographer for HNTB at the Corporate Challenge. The Corporate Challenge is basically a big track meet for professionals for fun. There are the normal events like runs and walks. And there are the Good Sport events like Football Throw, Frisbee Toss, Tug of War, Corn Hole... The HNTB'ers seemed to have a pretty good time.

Colin and Megan's 'Challenge' was to be good which was a struggle, but we survived... Colin ran in the kid race.

And they had a bounce house which is one of their favorite things EVER...

Halloween 2007

Halloween was pretty fun around our house as usual. Colin was Spiderman and Megan was a Fairy.


See...they can get along...



A crazy pose with the jack-o-lanterns...
Spiderman shooting some web...
Spiderman's muscles...
A Fairy pose...

Nate and I carved the pumpkins in cool designs again this year. His (& Megan's) is the happy quasi-traditional looking face. Colin and I did the spider with six legs :).

Annual Physicals

Colin and Megan had their annual phyisicals in September.

Colin (6 years old) is 95 percentile in height and 75 percentile in weight. If he stays on this growth chart height curve, he will be 6' 3" when he is 18. He has been on the 95 percentile curve since birth...so only time will tell, but I think he'll be tall.

Megan (4 years old) is is 95 percentile in height and 50 percentile in weight. If she stays on this growth chart height curve, she will be 5' 10" when he is 18...just like her mom. Meg also got her Kindergarten shots which she hated.

You can check the growth chart for your kids too if your curious about what the future may hold...
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/nhanes/growthcharts/charts.htm#Set%201

Baby Kate

On September 13, Katherine Grace Oldham was born (aka Kate). She is the daughter of my friends Dara and David. She weighed a perfect 7# 6 oz. She is now about seven weeks old and is beginning to sleep through the night her grateful mother tells me.

Her big brother Ben (18 mo.)thinks she is ok...he calls her 'Cake'.

Big sisters, Hailey and Diana, think she is pretty great too. They can pronounce her name perfectly. They have been a big help to their parents since Kate came along.



Kate at one day old...





Kate and I...