Snicker, snicker, snort!

OK, so this afternoon I kinda cornered Bryan and made him talk a bit about names for this new boy. I want a name like yesterday, and he seems to think we have all the time in the world to decide. We both agree that there can't be anymore J names. Jake and Jaden are confusing enough in times of stress, or exasperation, or frustration... basically all the time! So we were looking in a baby name book and we came across "Blake" we both liked it a lot. Until I said, "ummm.... Blake and Jake? Are we really that dumb?" Bryan started to laugh and it set me off too. Bryan says "Yeah, Blake and Jake is as bad as using another J name!" All of a sudden he starts rolling in laughter again. He says, "It sounds like you are swearing at Jake" Huh? Then it dawns on me "Blankin' Jake". We lost it. Probably not our most dignified moment, but man, it WAS funny!

Love That Deco!!

My favorite Christmas Decoration of all time, isn't the fragile angel in the tree top, or the handmade blown glass balls that we got in Germany. It isn't even the homemade ornaments that adorn 99% of our tree. No, it is my nativity set. I never really appreciated it until this year. A few years ago, I found a Little People's Nativity play set on sale during an after Christmas sale. I bought it thinking that it was something that the kids couldn't break. This year, I got smart. ( Yeah, yeah, I already hear the shocked voices "YOU did??!!"). I cleared off the shelf that is Jaden's shoulder height on the bookshelf in the living room. I put that Nativity on that shelf and set it all up nicely. It took all of a day for Jaden to notice it and start looking at it. He looked at it all for a good 20 minutes until he finally asked me if he could touch it. When I said yes, his eyes got big and round and he was so excited. He and I played with that nativity for an hour at least. I told him the story over and over. The whole rest of the month that the nativity was out, Jaden would go and play with it, carting the baby Jesus ever so carefully all over the place, and he started telling me the story. He would show me a piece and tell me all about that person's role in the story. He told me "Mary. Jesus mommy." and "Baby Jesus... so cute!!" It was great. I love to see my little man learn more about his Savior. The excitement a small child shows is so refreshing! Not to mention... I love the donkey. He has a mohawk!

Christmas

Yeah, I know, I know!!! I've already been "informed" from several sources that it appears that I "forgot" to blog about Christmas. So not true!! I only had time for one post last time and I was too excited about Jaden being in Sunbeams that I couldn't help myself. For all you anal retentive types that reading about a January event before a December event, well... so sorry. My advice? Read 'em out of order! Christmas this year was really good. Really quiet too! We decided that we were really needing to stock up the family time since Bryan is never home and so we kept our holiday "commitments" to a bare minimum!! Bryan HAD to go to his works Christmas party. It was MANDATORY! Can you believe that? To add salt to the wound, it was $30 a person!! Needless to say, he went alone! We went to our wards Christmas party and the wonderful, stupendous Mallorys put together a "night in Bethlehem" for us. It was really nice. No Santa. Awesome!! Just what I needed! We got snow the night of the ward party too! Several inches before all was said and done. I'm good for the year, my snow quota has been met... just in case anyone with influence in the weather department is reading my blog! Christmas Eve morning we went to the Dubes' annual Christmas Eve Breakfast. YUM! They always cook a breakfast fit for kings and invite a lot of people to come and eat it! Christmas Eve we did the whole new Christmas pajamas thing. I hoped that it wasn't a mistake after I saw the way Jaden reacted. I thought, "Great. What did I just do??!! Now there is NO WAY I'm gonna get this kid to bed!!" To say he was excited over his Mickey Mouse Pj's WITH feet is an understatement. Which, by the way, is the picture that goes with this post. All the kids liked their PJ's and went to bed without too much fuss. It was a late night for all, but thankfully, Santa's elves were a little smarter than last year and had everything already wrapped. Christmas Day was nice too. It was quiet... well, Hutcherson standard quiet! It was just us. We did the whole "mom's turkey with Grandma's stuffing" thing that we missed out on at Thanksgiving. Our oven lost an element on Christmas day so we didn't eat turkey until like 6:00!! We had planned on a 3 or 4 pm meal, but the turkey took forever! It was sad too because it was dry and I NEVER make dry turkey! All was good though, 'cause we were together. I miss Bryan now that his company command makes him very, very scarce around here, but days like Christmas I am reminded off the years that we spent Christmas without him at all. It was a wonderful day.

Sunbeam!!

Today my BABY started Sunbeams!! Can you believe it???!!! I know I can't! He did great. He was a little confused that we didn't stop at the door to the nursery, but didn't make a fuss when I told him to keep going down the hall. This past week, we have talked up the fact that since he was 3, that he would get to go to the "big kids primary" now! He seemed excited about it and we were hoping for a smooth transition. Fortunately, we were surprised beyond just a smooth transition! He went to his class with no fuss, tears, or shyness! He sat still during class and then again during sharing and singing time. He wasn't fidgety or wiggly. He didn't talk out of turn or (more impressively for him) he did talk when called upon!! The only thing he did that wasn't perfect was during sharing time. He was humming "I am a Child of God" too loud! When I went to pick him up after it was all over, I asked if he had been good. He told me yes, and his teacher told me that it was the best behaved Sunbeam class that she had ever seen! I guess it helps that there are only two of them. Go Jaden and Kayla!

Toothless wonder...

Well, on Friday Jacob finally let me pull it out. His tooth that is!! It wasn't even connected and he balked at the last second and pulled away from me. I had a hold of the tooth though, so he really pulled it out himself! He didn't even realize that it was gone because he said "OK mom, I'm really ready this time." When I showed him the tooth that was already in my hand, his eyes got big and wide and he said, totally surprised, "that didn't hurt at all!!" The tooth fairy, with a big reminder from her husband, slipped him a dollar that night. Today he spent his dollar on Bubulicious Gum. I think it's a conspiracy on his part. Buy sugary gum so more teeth will fall out, so that tooth fairy will bring more money. It might just work as his other bottom front tooth is loose too. Hmmmm... with my luck it'll come out on Christmas Eve and I will be without a dollar! I better stash one away so that can't happen!

Last week we woke to a thick, thick, fog. You couldn't see anything past the grass in our front yard! It still hadn't burned off completely when at 11am I went to pick Jaden up from school. I got him loaded and buckled into the car (no small feat mind you!), when he starts yelling excitedly something about the moon. I couldn't understand him at all at first, mostly because he was so excited that he was squawking at a pitch high enough to shatter glass! He finally calmed down enough to shout it loudly, but within human ear range instead of hummingbird range, "It's a moonhole!" It was the sun. The fog and low clouds were so thick that you could look at the sun direct and it just looked like there was a full moon out visible in the day time. I'm sure he actually meant "whole moon/ Full moon" as he tells us "half moon" or "quarter moon" as appropriate, but that didn't stop Daddy from posting "moonhole" as the "Word Of The Day" at work. As in "Quit being a moonhole!"

Gladi-bone-spidey-soldier-jedi man!

Gladi-bone-spidey-soldier-jedi man is Jaden's new name. Anybody want to guess why? Last night, Kaylee took Jacob and Jaden upstairs to play to get them out of my hair while I cooked dinner for the crew. About 15 minutes later, I hear yelling and screaming coming from Jacob and Kaylee and fierce "growling" coming from Jaden. What in the world is going on up there? I head up to see what the ruckus is all about. I am hoping for no blood at this point. I walk in to Jaden and Jacob's room and see only Jaden standing there. He is wearing dress up clothes; army camo pants, a gladiator breastplate, a skeleton glove, a Spiderman mask, and he is brandishing up in the air a Star Wars light saber. I look at him and say "nice dress ups , bud" and immediately I hear, "mom help us!" coming from the closet. Jacob and Kaylee are being held at saber point in the closet. Jaden chased them there with his "deadly" hard plastic light saber and was holding them as prisoners with a few well placed smacks with the Jedi weapon of choice when they tried to leave. Yes. A three year old trapped a 5 and 10 year old in the closet and was a talented enough guard to keep both of them pinned. Do I really want to know what he is going to be like at 9 or 10?

Where has the time gone?

So much for my goal of writing at least every 2 weeks! It's been a month since the last post and, oh boy, what a month!! Literally. I do mean, oh boy. As in "oh boy, yes it's a boy!" It seems statistics are working against adding a girl to the Hutcherson bunch! He is beautiful though, gotta love the 3-D ultrasounds that they can do these days!! Everything looks good with him. Nice strong heart and measuring just fine for our estimated, "best guess" due date! I am feeling a bit better, for which I am truly grateful! I was not looking forward to 7-9 months of morning sickness that I have had in the past. I have stopped the weight slide that seems to plague me. I know, how fair is that? The one time in my life that I can lose weight easily and quickly and it's not good for me or the baby! I am doing ok health wise. There is a slight problem in that area, but its TMI, so I won't go there. Don't want that floating around in cyberspace! If you just HAVE to know or it'll send you to the loony bin, you can call me and I will fill you in. Not a big deal, just a situation that has potential for bad things. The only good thing about it is that I am limited to 30 pounds of lifting, so... guess what Jaden? You are 30.2 pounds! Time for you to WALK! I am 22 weeks today, only 18 more to go! And before you ask, we have NO idea on names for him yet! Any ideas?
Other things of very great importance and impact on our family have happened this month too. As of November 23rd, Bryan is the command of W company in the 266th Battalion of the 23rd Quartermaster Brigade... or something like that! All I know for sure is that it means very long, tiring hours for poor Bryan. 18 hour work days, 6 days a week, plus work on Sunday no matter how hard he tries to avoid it! He is going to be a great commander though and I am hoping that things will settle down really soon and bring things back to a sustainable work load for him.