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...

Colin's Sixth Birthday

We celebrated Colin's Birthday last week - twice. First on Monday on his actual birthDATE with just the four of us. This is Colin and Megan on Monday.Then on Saturday we celebrated with a bigger crowd at the Power Rangers party. We didn't have as many folks as usual. So it was a calmer atmosphere.


I made up a party game the kids seemed to like. In fact, last night before bed Colin and Megan wanted to play it again. It was a version of a scavenger hunt. Here's how it went.

1. I took a picture of 5 different things in our house like the blue chair below.
2. Then I cut the pictures into 3 or 4 or 5 big pieces.
3. I put the pictures into envelopes.
4. Wrote a number on each envelope.
5. Then hid the clues at the appropriate locations.

So I gave the kids the first envelope. They put the "puzzle" together and saw it was a picture of Megan's doll stoller. They went to there and found the next envelope. Lather, rinse, repeat. At the last place (the blue chair) I was sitting there with stickers as a prize. And every kid loves stickers!

This is just a funny picture of Megan being silly the other night...

New Mexico

As part of the RailRunner project, they sent me to New Mexico this week. It was a pretty beneficial trip - workwise.

Otherwise, WOW! I was expecting something like San Antonio, I guess. But New Mexico is completely different. I do love San Antonio, don't get me wrong. But I have never seen ANYTHING like where I was this week. So beautiful. Unfortunately my camera was dead. But I found a few websites with pictures of some places I saw. These first two links are my favorite. They scroll through different pictures, so be a little patient.

http://www.abqstyle.com/bernalillo/bernalillo_photos.htm
http://www.abqstyle.com/rio_grande_bosque/rio_grande_bosque.htm

http://photo.net/travel/us/sw/new-mexico

http://www.milebymile.com/main/United_States/New_Mexico/highway_photos.html

One of the amazing things about where I was is how far you can see. 50 miles...100 miles...maybe more. And I saw real mesas. I always pictured them to be ~1 acre in size on top and ~50' high. What I saw were the size of a county on top. And height - hundreds of feet tall. I saw mountains. Desert. Canyons. A lush, green strip about a mile or two in width along the Rio Grande.

I can't wait to go back. I still love Indiana. I always want to live here and raise my children here. But God has created some pretty amazing places in the world. I want to see more of them.

School Bus Update

Monday has turned out to be the worst day.

Tuesday was better. He got to the daycare 2 hours and 15 minutes after school let out. But they had told me what bus he would be on, and that is the bus he got off of, so I give them credit for having a plan and working the plan. I was still pretty mad after he got off the bus at 5:55pm.

Wednesday (today) has been dreamy - an answered prayer. They started a new bus. The "Snake Bus" (they assign an animal to each bus to help the kids remember which to get on). Or as Colin said the "Shortcut Bus"! This bus picks the children who attend the two daycares up at the ECC and goes directly to the daycares! No switching buses. No stopping to pick up kids from other locations. No sitting there while 40 other kids get dropped off at home. He returned to daycare today by 4pm!!!

Colin's First Day of Kindergarten

It was bound to happen eventually...Colin started Kindergarten today. As you can see above, he was nervous. In his words "I'm so nervous I can't stand it." He is a student at the ECC (Early Childhood Center) of the Decatur Township Schools. He is enrolled in All Day Kindergarten which is going to be great for him. His teacher is Mr. Dennis. And everyone at the school has been great. Almost everything has gone on without a hitch...

Let me start by saying everything is fine. Colin is safe. But today, my worst nightmare almost came true. The school was scheduled for a half day today with dismissal at 12:40. I called around 1:15pm (before my 2 hour meeting started) to check and see if he made it back to the daycare center where he is to be bussed to. Nope, not yet. I thought that was still pretty reasonable, especially given that this is the first day of school and things might have been a little more chaotic than usual.

I called back after my meeting about 3:25pm to make sure he made it back to the daycare. NO!!!!!!!!!!! HE HAD NOT!!!! You can only begin to imagine the terrible things racing though my head. The daycare had 19 kindergarteners missing. The poor daycare director was trying everything she knew to track these kids down. She said she would call me when he arrived. She said she had heard there was some confusion getting the kids on the right bus. In my mind, at least they all were missing...that was strangely comforting.

She called me at 3:55pm saying that Colin had just been dropped off with most of the other kids. Thank you, God.

So here's what I'm wondering...
Since when is it ok to have kids on the bus for 3 hours and 15 minutes? The school is a mile, MAYBE 1.5 miles from the daycare. And it was HOT today. Wouldn't it be reasonable for the school to call whoever was expecting him to be dropped off (in this case the daycare or the parent) and say they're running late? And wouldn't you halfway expect some kind of explanation phone call this evening? Nothing yet...

I've left a voice-mail with Colin's teacher, the ECC principal, and the bus garage. Tomorrow, I'll be getting to the bottom of this. I don't like to be mean. But he is my little boy. If they can't be trusted with his care... Surely we can get this figured out.

Jen made the HNTB News Flash

Below is the contents of an internal news email that was sent out today. This type of email goes out whenever something great happens. Maybe this will give some of you a glimpse of why I've been so darn busy lately...Lots of other folks I work with helped too - including Nate. Now that we've won the project, I'll likely be working on it until around the first of the year.

HNTB-Kiewit Expands Design-Build Experience
with Mega Rail Win

**Content Deleted**

Indiana State Fair

Colin, Megan, Lindsey, and I went to the Indiana State Fair yesterday. It was pretty fun. The weather was beautiful aside from it being a little warm. We went early in the day, before it really heated up.

We ate some fair foods...corn fritters, corn dog, milk shakes from the dairy barn, dippin dots, deep fried snickers, popcorn... plenty of the once-a-year junk food.

The fair theme this year is "The Year of Corn." They had planted corn all over the place.

In the midway, the kids rode a couple rides and thought they were awesome.
You'll notice that for whatever reason, Colin has started to pose for pictures like a pirate...not sure where he's come up with this idea.
We saw plenty of tractors...
And we saw lots of animals...cows, pigs, horses, mules, donkeys...This little baby donkey took a liking to Colin and Megan - and vice versa.

Remote Control Tarantulas

Colin and Megan want to give a special thanks to our friend Joyce who gave each of them these super fun remote controlled tarantulas!

New Opportunity

Ok, for once this post isn't about the kids...

I just wanted to say how proud I am of Nate...as of today, he has been transferred into our corporate office to serve on the help desk. He will be joining a group of well-respected, talented, incredibly smart people that focus on CADD, plotting, and other technology related questions/problems. Our corporate office is in Kansas City, but he will be able to perform his duties from Indianapolis. We're still not sure how much travel will be involved. It may average out to a week a month?

This is a pretty nice promotion. Nate has been only working in CADD for 4 years, and he is now technically a "corporate resource." I think this proves yet again that HNTB provides opportunities for those who hunger for them. I think it also proves that Nate has a natural talent for technology - this is the cloth he's cut from.

July 4th

Our Independence Day was a pretty quiet, relaxing day. The kids spent the previous night with Aunt Lindsey and Uncle Bill. Nate and I had the pleasure of not argueing with anyone or negotiating anything for almost 24 hours...

When they came home, we just chilled out all day. And that evening we did sparklers and watched other people's fireworks in the neighborhood from the comfort of our own backyard.