Thank You Jon!

This post is in honor of my awesome brother-in-law, Corporal Jonathan Wallstrom. Today is his last day in the Marine Corps and I want him to know how proud and grateful we all are for his service. He joined the Marines right out of high school, has served for over 5 years and through two deployments to Iraq. He is a true Marine, through and through. He loves his work, loves the Marines, and is proud to serve his country.

Thank you Jon for your courage, dedication, sacrifice, patriotism and willingness to serve in the military. We're all grateful for your service and incredibly proud of you! We're so thankful to God for keeping you safe through two deployments and bringing you home to us. And we're excited to see what path God leads you down next. We love you and can't wait to celebrate with you when you visit us this week!

Preschool and more...

"Pre-school" started last week and so far the boys really seem to enjoy it. They don't quite have long enough attention spans for some of the activities (such as circle time where they're supposed to sit quietly on the floor during a story or something) but neither do any of the other kids. Over the past week at home, I've been practicing having them sit still and raise their hand to answer a question. They're already doing much better so I don't think it will take them long to get used to the "school" format.

They love getting to spend a few hours with their friends each week, doing fun "games" as they call some of the activities and they really LOVE showing their Daddy the crafts they made when he comes home from work that night! Here are all the kids (and moms) during their first pre-school lesson last week.

Cullen refused to have his picture taken so I only have a "first day of school photo" of Jackson. Don't mind the black eye, it wasn't his first and I'm sure it won't be his last.

Jack really liked the signs from circle time

I must have jinxed the weather with my last post because it rained nearly every single day in September. The first week Sari was here, we actually had record-setting rainfall over 5 days. And as I write this there's thunder booming and torrential rain coming down. Who says it rains more in the Northwest? After living her for 4 years, I seriously have my doubts... Anyways, we filled up our time with indoor activities. Here's a photo of the boys' first time painting with brushes, and they loved it! Cullen got so into it, he wore a hole in his paper!

On one of the few dry days, we drove to the city and got some Good Stuff burgers and fries for dinner and then to the park next to the airport to watch the planes land until it got dark. This is probably one of our favorite things to do and it's free, so we go often.

I got a Groupon voucher to the Playseum in DC so Sari and I took the boys one morning and they played inside for 3 1/2 hours. The cowboy and tractor room was probably their favorite.

As you can see, they wanted to buy pretty much everything at the "farmer's market."

Rockin' out

The two cutest little pizza delivery boys I've ever seen

Showing off their backpacks before pre-school yesterday. They insisted that I take pictures from all angles, but I'll spare you the 20 photos of their backpacks from behind.

Grandma builds great train tracks!

Sari left this morning and we miss her already! She was such a blessing to have around for a few weeks, she took such good care of us all and served us so joyfully. For 3 1/2 weeks, she cooked, cleaned, organized, did the laundry, and drove us everywhere we needed to go. We are so thankful for all of her help, we never could have made it without her! Thank you Sari! We all love you and really appreciate you coming out! Thanks to Grandpa Gary for letting her come out for so long and holding down the fort by himself too!

And now I'll leave you with a funny quote from each of the boys while eating a piece of cake for dessert tonight:

Me: "Jackson, are you excited? Are you going to eat a lot of cake?"

Jack: "YEAH! Mine have a big piece of cake.... Cullen eat a little piece."

Cullen was finished with his piece and scraping the frosting off his plate so I picked the the towel to wipe him off. He turned to me, frowned, waved his arm at me and said angrily "Go away Mommy! I eating cake!"

Recently

Oops, I guess I lied about having more time to blog! We've been having lots of fun with Grandma Sari the past couple weeks, she got here on Labor Day and has been a HUGE help! Seriously, we could not get by without her! She's been cleaning my house, cooking for us, driving me around everywhere and taking care of the boys. What a blessing it's been to have her here caring for us so well! The boys are loving having so much extra grandma-time too!

This is what happens when Mommy's out of commission, Grandma hasn't arrived yet and Daddy's in charge. I love this picture, they look like tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum :-)

I threw a tea party bridal shower for Renee last weekend. The food was delicious, but then again, the food is always my favorite part of showers. I made some cream scones, tea sandwiches, a salad, and that strawberry cake.

I used this recipe here for the cake (it's a keeper) and just a general buttercream recipe. I had never made a buttercream icing before (I generally stick with cream cheese icing, which I could eat by the gallon) and the texture didn't turn out quite like I had hoped, but it sure tasted great. What I hadn't taken into account was that I had to add strawberry puree which made the frosting too liquidy, and then I had to keep adding stuff to keep the texture stiff. Eventually I decided it would be too sweet if I added anymore powdered sugar so I just left it a little bit gloppy, frosted the cake and then refrigerated it to keep the frosting from getting runny. It worked but wasn't quite as pretty as I'd hoped. Of course now I have a great excuse to try again and make another strawberry cake, so all's well that ends well!

Oh! And as an accompaniment to the scones I made Devonshire Cream (also called Clotted Cream in Britain) and all I can say is that you absolutely MUST try it! I used this recipe from Joy of Baking which is supposed to be a pretty good substitute for real clotted cream:

4 ounces mascarpone
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 or 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar (I used powdered sugar)

You just beat the cream until it forms stiff peaks, then mix in the vanilla and sugar, then fold in the mascarpone and you're done.

It's the perfect mix of rich, creamy, sweet and tangy. My words can't do it justice so I won't even try. This stuff changed my life and now I desperately want to travel to England to try the real clotted cream. I've heard that it can sometimes be found at specialty markets and nice grocery stores here (maybe Whole Foods?), so if anybody spots some, let me know where! In the meantime, do yourself a favor and make a batch of fresh scones and this Devonshire Cream. You'll be seriously missing out if you don't!

Ok, enough about food, moving on...
to this classic Renee face

I made her this apron, she looks great in it!

Jack and Cullen baking with Grandma, good thing we don't care too much about germs in our house ;-)

Decorating Daddy's birthday cake

Happy 27th Birthday Daddy!

I just got my cast put on this morning. They're going to let me have it cut off a little early so I'm not wearing it at Renee's wedding, so I have exactly 25 days until I'm back on my feet... but who's counting?

In other news, we had a great opportunity to join a pre-school co-op with some friends of ours from church so we're going to do it! Maybe it's just DC with all of its ambitious, type-A people, but we've been asked/told for months that we should be enrolling our boys in pre-school this fall. I was totally against the idea because 1.) I don't think a 2 1/2 year old needs to be in pre-school and 2.) who wants to pay thousands of dollars to send your kid off to pre-school at such a young age anyways?

Well, while we were in California, my old small group leader emailed me and asked if we'd be interested in joining her and 2 other ladies from the group in doing an at-home co-op once a week. There will be 6 kids, including Jack and Cullen, all between the ages of 2 1/2 and 3 1/2. I thought it sounded fun for the boys to spend time learning with their friends and for myself to be around my friends too. So after talking with Brandon about it, we decided to join. We're using a book called Kitchen Table Play and Learn by Tara Copley and Andrea Custer and rotating teaching a chapter each week. So once a month, I'll be responsible for leading the lesson and preparing the activities and the rest of the weeks, I'll be helping the kids do the crafts and activities or helping care for the two babies. We're starting next week and we're actually getting really excited about it! I think it will be fun for all of us!

The temperature dropped dramatically overnight and today is a crisp 67 degrees. YES! I'm so ready for fall! It's my favorite time of year in DC, the only season when the weather isn't unreasonably hot and humid or cold and stormy. We will definitely be enjoying the perfect fall weather over the next couple months.

Catch

Six more weeks...

Remember how I said there was more to my broken foot story? Well, unfortunately the worst part is still to come. Even though the doctors I'd seen in California said I wouldn't need surgery and not to schedule a follow up for about 4 weeks, I set up an appointment as soon as I got home, and I'm glad that I did. I'm not a doctor, but I could tell just by looking at my foot that it didn't seem like something that would heal properly on its own. So on Tuesday, I saw another orthopedist here in Alexandria and it turns out I was right. It does actually need surgery and to have a screw put in to hold the bone in place.

To say that I was furious would probably be an understatement. It is so frustrating that I was sitting around with absolutely nothing to do in California for 2 weeks when I could have been recovering from the surgery and getting lots of help with the boys. It's been quite a challenge taking care of Jack and Cullen these past few days and I'll admit, there have been times where I've just had to drop the crutches and limp around with the boot on. If I didn't, my kids would probably starve and/or have broken everything we own. To think I have another 6 weeks on crutches is depressing. Especially since it's my right foot and I can't drive. Thankfully, Sari is going to fly out early next week and stay for a while to help us. I don't think we could manage without her coming!

My surgery is later this afternoon, it's a quick, easy surgery and Brandon is home today so he can take me and watch the boys. Please pray that it would go smoothly and that this would allow my foot to heal once and for all. And mostly, please pray for my attitude, that I wouldn't be so frustrated and angry. For some reason, God has allowed this to not only happen but to be dragged out for an extra 3 weeks. So pray that I'd trust him during this trial and not be so discontent with it.

On the bright side, I'll be sitting around with not much to do for a while. I'll have lots more time on my hands to post new pictures and stories of the boys :-)

California

Actually a few of these are still from Idaho, they were on our other camera and I forgot about them.
Family hiking trip. The boys actually did pretty well and didn't complain too much at all.

Roadtrippin!

We got to California late on Saturday night and Brandon had to fly back home Sunday afternoon. The boys and I really missed him but he couldn't take much time off from his new job and he had to start his classes. Even though it sucked to be away from him for so long, it worked out for the best. It was so nice for me to be in California after my injury because I really didn't have to lift a finger. I was able to keep my foot elevated and rest it and was pretty much waited on hand and foot thanks to my Mom and sisters!

Here's Part 2 of my broken foot story: I went to the orthopedist on Monday morning fully expecting to have surgery. But after looking at my foot and the x-rays, the doctor there told me I wouldn't need surgery and that my foot would heal on its own. I kept asking her if she was sure (because I'd seen how far the bone was sticking out immediately after the accident), she consulted two other doctors and they all agreed, no surgery. They just gave me one of those hideous walking boots to wear while it healed. I was obviously excited and relieved that I wouldn't be having surgery that day, so I just said thanks and left. They told me to make a follow-up appointment with my doctor a few weeks after I got back to DC. So I headed home with my Mom and spent the next 2 weeks "recovering." Every morning when I'd take the boot off to shower, though, I felt uneasy. It was much less swollen in the mornings and I could see that the bone was still majorly jutting out of the side of my foot (between that and the fact that half of my foot was covered in huge black bruises, it was a pretty disgusting sight). I kept thinking, "there's no way that's going to heal properly," but I decided to trust what the doctors had told me. Anyways, enough about my foot for now. Here's a ton of pictures from California:

My Mom took the boys to a place called Pretend City. It's exactly what it sounds like, a pretend city just for kids. Here are the boys playing at the grocery store.

Just like Mommy :-)

Me and Vi

All the cousins cooking with Nana

On the way to the pool

This is how I spent pretty much every day in California. Relaxing in the pool, keeping my feet up and playing with the kids :-) It certainly didn't suck!

All worn out from swimming

At the park with Grandpa David

Beach time!

I love this picture of Cullen with his Uncle Jon!

Sliding with Brian at the park

She's so cute, she just kills me!

Disneyland! Jack and Cullen are patiently waiting for their turn on the carousel. We got to go through the handicap lines on most of the rides, which are much, much shorter than the regular lines. It was awesome! There aren't many perks to having a broken foot, but this was a big one!

We watched Cars earlier this summer and the boys loved it! They were very excited to find Lightning McQueen and Mater at Disneyland.

My Grandma Sue with all of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (minus baby Max who couldn't stay awake quite long enough)

The whole family on my Mom's side (again, minus baby Max)

Playing cards with my sisters

More pool time, I think we went nearly every single day!

Jack doing some poolside "baking"

Auntie Rachel with her boys, we wish she could have stayed longer!

Disneyland again, we waited in line for 20 minutes for the boys to meet Winnie the Pooh and they kept yelling "Hi" from the line. They seemed super excited to meet them... until it was actually our turn of course. Then Jack and Cullen freaked out and refused to get near any of them. We held up the line for a few minutes trying to get them to agree to take a picture. No luck. As we were walking away, though, Cullen gave Eeyore a high five.

Jack and Cullen with their Great-grandpa Dennis and Great-grandma Ann who came all the way from New Hampshire to visit all of us.

Jack went around the entire outside of the pool several times just holding onto the edge and scooting along.

Cousins at the pool, there's baby Max!

Violet can't get enough of the water, she would swim all day if she could!

So brave!

Cullen loved shooting people with his water gun

The boys and I flew home early Sunday morning. We actually had a red-eye which turned out to be very fortunate after I broke my foot. The airport allowed Renee and Jon to help me through security and wait at the gate with me and the boys. Then one of the flight attendants carried my bags and held the boys' hands while we boarded. I set up the DVD player as soon as we got our seats and the boys were asleep within 30 minutes. They slept the entire flight, never needed a diaper change (good thing, because I'm not sure I could have given them one anyways) and didn't wake up until we landed in DC. Then the flight attendants carried them off, put them in their stroller and walked us out to the gate where Brandon was waiting with a wheelchair for me. I was majorly nervous about making a cross-country flight with my toddlers while on crutches but God was kind to us and worked everything out perfectly. We loved every minute we spent with our families, but it is really nice to be home with Brandon again. We all missed him a lot!