Three months of photos
Really, I haven’t posted since late February? One day, classes will be over and I will theoretically have more free time.
In the meantime, here are photos from the last couple of months. Enjoy.
February
March
April to-date
Berry’s birthday party
This deserves a post of its own — a houseful of 4-year-olds, all screaming about the Roomba cleaning the basement. Who knew they’d make up their own party games? They also enjoyed an impromptu princess dressup out of Berry’s closet. What does it say that Berry has enough pretty dresses to outfit her entire pre-school class (well, 8 of them)?
Then there were the Princess Peach-themed games that I came up with — making window clings with puffy paint and a Yoshi egg hunt. Those went over well, too.
Here are the pics:
Snow Day
Working from home with 4 excited kids in the house is challenging. But how often do we get snow days in mild Eugene?
It was the perfect snow day. Big, fluffy flakes of sticky snow fell on and off all morning. The world was white and pretty. Then a small horde of children built a fort and had a terrific snowball fight.
They came in cold, with sopping wet gloves and bottoms. I stripped them off, they warmed up, and moved onto art projects, workbooks and Minecraft. The sun came out and melted all the snow away.
Work today was something of a relief. The ordinariness of a quiet office. Concentrating amidst laughter and negotiation of kiddos, getting them dressed for the cold and staying occupied throughout the day was a nice change, though.
Changes, they are a-coming
Changes are probably coming to this lovely little, much neglected blog of mine.
Why? Why fix something that’s already broken? Well, I’m taking two courses this semester in a desperate bid to finish my undergraduate degree. One is Communication Through New Media and the other is a Capstone in Communications project.
Both involve looking like I know what I’m talking about when it comes to social media. So I thought I’d turn my blog into an awesome, I-know-what-I’m-doing commentary about the latest and greatest in all things sparkly and new media. It will garner me attention as a social media guru, communicator extraordinaire and online fundraising mogul. Or something like that.
I’ll also be launching joannabartlett.com (which currently points right to this blog, I think) and taking down earthscribe.com (which I haven’t updated since I started a full-time job).
I’m not sure when exactly I’ll find time to be an awesome new media professional, since I can’t seem to find time to post pictures of cute children doing endearing and sometimes naughty things. And I haven’t yet figured out how I will reconcile my desire to talk about the little ones with the goal of presenting myself as a wonderful, ambitious professional.
How does everyone else do it?
Perhaps I’m better at accepting other people as multidimensional, whole people with lives full of family and professional aspirations, than I am myself. That probably says more about me than anyone else.
Or maybe I’m still haunted by being taken to task by a former boss about posting that I’d spent the past few months post-maternity-leave mostly staring out the window in a sleep-deprived state, missing my baby. (I started my own business, the aforementioned Earthscribe, shortly after that. It wasn’t my boss’ fault. He was a bachelor and had yet to experience parental yearnings.)
In any case, changes are a-coming. Let’s find out what they’ll be!
What we’ve been doing for the past month
I think I’ll start every post with: sorry I haven’t been blogging lately! It can be my default disclaimer. Seriously, I barely have time to remember to upload photos into my Picasa gallery, let alone talk about them. Adam does a much better job of posting family news on www.familyofadam.com. He does videos, too.
Ballet classes
Duncan and Berry are taking ballet. Choosing their outfits was lots of fun (for them).
Berry wore hers all day.
Berry continues to love ballet and Nanny reports that she smiles widely through the entire class. Duncan…he says he’s getting bored because they do the same thing over and over again. He’s got 8 more weeks of class, though. Last week he seemed to enjoy more, even sporting a few smiles. We’ll see how this week (and the next 7) go. Then he can try soccer or t-ball or something.
He’s got some good dance moves, though, and makes an awfully cute boy ballerina.
Girly ears
The next biggest thing that happened in January is that Berry got her ears pierced. She has a pair of clip on earrings that were just squishing and bruising her ears, yet she insisted on wearing them for the sake of beauty. So I told her when she was ready, she could get her ears pierced and wear real earrings. Within a few weeks, she decided she was ready, so off we went to the mall.
She’s a tough cookie. She said she’d be brave and wouldn’t cry. All she did is blink.
Then we went to the movie theatre, got a giant tub of popcorn and watched Tangled. Both kiddos sat through it perfectly. Within a week, of course, Emma got her ears pierced, too. 
I don’t have the rest of January’s photos uploaded yet. They involve Dr. Princess Barbie Berry wrapping me up in bandages, hiking up Spencer’s Butte, doing science with Duncan, dressing up in a bunny suit to tour surgery areas at the hospital, kids hugging each other and watching movies in the basement. You can expect those in another six weeks or so…
Bric wol
You are not a laood to cum in ene ding!
Our December adventures
December has been quite an adventure — full of Christmas preparations and excitement.
In early December, we drove out to Grandma Sue’s abandoned Christmas tree farm. Trees were growing wild! After a trek through the beautiful spooky forest, we picked out a tree. First, we had to check out all the woods had to offer, including this stream.
I love getting the kids out in nature. The trees have such a pull for me, that I want them to develop that same connection.
That said, we did bring Adam and a saw to cut one down and take it home…
After wandering for what probably felt like miles, I chose a tree. The kids watched as Adam cut it down.
I don’t seem to have photos of it, but it was huge. We took the top half, plus some branches to make a wreath for the front door. We tied it to the roof of the mini van, while the kids got warm inside — while rocking out to music from Glee – took it home and propped it up in the corner of the dining room.
You can watch the movie of the event here:
Once it was ready to decorate, I had many willing “helpful” hands. We eventually got all of the ornaments on. By all, I mean ALL, regardless of free tree branches to hang them from. What started out as a lovely, fresh tree cut right from the forest turned into a very well decorated, brightly lit Christmas creation.
You can see part of it behind Princess Berry.
A few days, later, Advent presents from Gramma arrived and Duncan and Berry very much enjoyed opening one each morning when they woke up.
I neglected to take a photo every day, but you get the idea.
The Sunday before Christmas, we went to church. So did Santa. Berry seemed very comfortable in his lap.
She wanted some odd combination of robot toys that all worked together. Duncan, however, just wanted a bell from Santa’s sleigh (we’ve read the Polar Express).
I’m not sure what Emma asked for. And the pic is on Adam’s phone. 
I made egg nog, snowball cookies (pictured below) and mini apple pies. All gluten-free and delicious, even if some of the snow balls were more like snow mounds.
Mysterious boxes kept arriving at our door every day. Lots and lots of presents were wrapped from all corners of the globe. On Christmas Eve they made their way down the stairs to the tree. We had to move the table.
And, finally, on Christmas morning, little children work up bright and early to begin unwrapping them. They Skyped with Kevin to unwrap presents from him, Aunt Karen, Uncle Jonny, Gramma and Papa Rog. They Skyped with Uncle Christopher and Arthur to unwrap their presents. They waited for Nanny to arrive so they could unwrap presents with her. And, finally, Emma and Sam arrived home and more presents were unwrapped.
I fell asleep, exhausted, at 2:30 pm while children frolicked and played. Helping Santa is hard.
Snow invechr Duncan wiv hobz a lit (Snow adventure, Duncan with Hobbes)
Qyout osum fun!
Winter school concert
I am a proud mummy.
Last week, Duncan and Berry had their school winter concert. As they go to the same school for part of the time, they both got to be up on stage together.
I was running late from an after-work meeting, so hurried to the school auditorium/cafeteria, dropping my phone with the almost-dead battery on the way. People were still milling about and children were lining up getting ready to get on stage. Just in time!
I’m not sure how to describe the incredible cuteness of your 3-year-old child, standing proudly on stage in her sparkly red dress, singing out loud above everyone else. If you hear a voice standing out above all others in this video — it’s Berry. 
Duncan did a great job, too. His dancing and motions are quite animated and somehow he remembered the words do the 3-minute-long song about pigs.
Here it is, for your delight and enjoyment. (Note: my cell phone battery was about out, so I didn’t record the first 2 clips — my mum did. The last 2 are from my phone, which are steadier, but the sound isn’t as good. Sorry.)
A visit with Santa
I’ve never stood in line at the mall, trying to get the elusive Santa shot. It just never mattered that much and I didn’t really want to chance the screaming.
As it turns out, apparently I didn’t need to worry about that. Berry had quite the snuggle with Santa at church yesterday. She asked for a robot dog connected to a cat connected to a Barbie that moved. Good luck, Santa!
A weekend cross-country trek
This past weekend, I flew across the country. Twice.
Three times a year, Kevin and I fly the kids back and forth from Eugene, OR, to Rochester, NY, so they can spend time with him and his family.
In July, I spent a couple of days and had a bit of Rochester relaxation time. This time, we flew out on Saturday afternoon, arrived at midnight, and I left again at 2 pm on Sunday. I got home at 11 pm on Sunday night. And went to work at 8 am on Monday morning.
It’s a 2+ hour drive from home to the Portland airport. I put a movie on my netbook for the kids.
Fortunately, they travel well. We got through security with no problem (no invasive scanners at PDX) and arrived in Chicago. Duncan and Berry loved the moving walkways and Duncan thought the changing ceiling lights in Chicago were especially cool.
He also liked the pizza.
We have pizza at home once a week or so. It’s an Adam tradition: Pizza and Mythbusters. Unfortunately, Duncan is fickle about the pizza. This Chicago airport pizza, however, this he declared he likes. Hey, it’s only a 4-hour flight away.
Then the kids needed to get their wiggles out–apparently by climbing airport fixtures.
I kept them occupied on the flight with picture drawing and Dora watching. I thought for sure they’d snooze off to dream land at some point. But nope. Until we were landing in Rochester.
After waiting a bit for our cases, we got them, met my friend Karen outside and zoomed off to her house. Her guest bed is a King size, so the kids and I piled in together.
At some point during the night, I decided that it would be more comfortable to lie across the end of the bed, rather than sleeping between them. So, I lay, like their dutiful doggie, at the foot off the bed, while they loudly slept above. (Berry snores.)
During the night, Duncan woke up a bit, sat up in bed and realigned himself with me. Berry did the same. And this is how I found them in the morning.
After they woke up, Kevin came to pick them up. They jumped into his arms.
And then told him about the things they’d made and brought for him (there was lots of picture making on Saturday morning before we left, as well as during the flight).
And then they were off, leaving Karen and I to hang out for a bit, then go out for lunch and back to the airport.
My return trip was fine. I almost ended up being scanned by a millimeter wave scanner at the Rochester airport. But then it needed to be calibrated and I was sent through the regular metal detector. Phew. Hopefully the kids and Kevin will have the same good fortune on their return trip on Tuesday.
It’s odd not having the kids around. Mornings are much easier. Evenings are long and quiet. I have time to do things like organize photos and blog! I miss them, but I know they’re having a good time with their dad and that connection is really important.