It's December 15th

and time for another update.

Thanksgiving

We'll start at Thanksgiving.  We spent Thanksgiving with Rob's family up in Toledo, and it was fantastic.  Rare for a family get-together:  there was almost no fighting amongst kids!  All the kids were old enough to just go off and play, so we didn't see them all day.  I suppose I should be lamenting that my kids aren't constantly attached to my hip any more, and I should be singing a sad song about days gone by.  ...  Whatever.  It's GREAT!  Hurray to have the baby stage behind us!

Rob also was able to spend some one-on-one time with his sister, Chiara, and I don't think that's happened in a long time.  Good times.

While we were up there, Rob's mom asked Teancom if he was her baby.  He said, "No.  I'm my mommy's baby."  It just made me smile, cause I'm always asking him if he's my baby.  Sometimes he'll say that he's big instead, but usually he's happy to be my baby and sit on my lap and suck his fingers.  He's still a cuddle bug.  He's also possessive about the term "baby cakes," which is one of the pet names I use for all my children.  The other day I called Elijah my baby cakes and Teancom said, "I'M your baby cakes!"   He's actually really possessive about just about everything that involves me.  We were watching old home videos of Teancom as a baby, and I realized that he's been possessive of me from the very beginning!  What a stinker.

Nativities and a Migraine, a story

The weekend after Thanksgiving Rob went back up to Toledo to sing in his mom's stake's Nativity with his sisters.  Miciah went with him, so it was just me and the boys at home from Friday night to Sunday morning.  They had a great time and it went well.  Plus, me and the boys sounded like a treat.  Having only 2 kids around is not a problem, right?

All except on Friday night my vision started dimming.  It was really bizarre and sort of scary, since it's never happened to me before.  I was having trouble reading because spots of light kept getting in the way of the text, and the whole left side of my peripheral vision was black, like static.  It's not like I was up late, either; I was in bed, lights off, by 10 p.m.

I didn't have time to wonder about what was going on, though, because when I woke up at 9 the next morning I had a MASSIVE migraine.  The worst of my life.  So I called Corene and she took the boys for a few hours.  Then I called the Browns and they took the boys for a few more hours.  I was finally able to get out of bed at 1 p.m., the boys were back home at 3, and we survived the rest of the day.  We didn't go to a party that evening, which was a bummer, but what do you do.  Rob came home before church to get the kids because I still wasn't feeling good, but we did go as a family to our stake's Nativity display later in the day, and it was fun, even though it completely drained me.

No more migraines like that.  It was NO GOOD at all.  And it just figures that it happened on the day when Rob was out of town, right?  I guess that's the way it goes.  How else can we be deeply grateful and in debt to our friends? 

A Working Furnace is NOT a Luxury!

Yesterday morning our furnace wouldn't start.  Luckily, it wasn't very cold outside, so the house stayed at 65°.  Rob came home to take care of stuff, and he went downstairs and randomly started tapping things with a hammer until the furnace started again.  So we have heat now, but who knows how permanent that situation really is.  So we decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and purchase a new furnace.  We've had problems with the furnace nearly every year we've lived here, and some of the problems have been large problems.

Thankfully, this year we have more money in the bank to cover this, the tax incentives are better this year than they were last year, and we'd already been through the hassle of interviewing companies.  So we just called up the 2 companies that we liked best from last year and asked for an updated quote (we still have all the paperwork.  We saved it because we figured we'd be using it this year).  The prices didn't change, and so we easily picked a company.  Zimmer Heating and Cooling will be calling us on Friday to set up a date to install our new 95% efficiency furnace (our old furnace is a nearly 30-year-old 70% efficiency model).  So either next week or the week after we won't have to wonder any more if our furnace will turn on after a cold night.  Merry Christmas to us!

Rob's News

A lot of people have asked me about the news surrounding Rob and possible jobs for the Fall.  Well, there isn't any news to share, and that's why I haven't shared it.  Rob didn't get the Xavier job he wanted, but that wasn't unanticipated.  He has applied for several more, a few of those in Cincinnati.  He's still making connections with people and institutions and generally doing a good job of putting his name out there.

Some of the job-related things he'll be up to in 2010:
- In the Spring he'll be teaching a 10-week introductory genetics course for the University of Cincinnati.
- He's made contacts with Raymond Walters (a 2-year open enrollment college), and they asked him if he wanted to teach an on-line course at some point.  They tried to make it work for January, but it's not going to happen. 
- Raymond Walters has a position opening for the Fall, and he'll be applying for it.  His contact told him they expect about 30 applicants, and she gave him pointers on how to prepare for an interview.
- He's teaching the same NKU Bio 120 lecture and lab that he's teaching right now, from January - May.  He'll probably have 2 lab sections instead of the 1 he has now, which will mean a few more hours for him, but also a little more pay.
- In July he committed to teaching a 5-week Bio 120 course for NKU.  It'll possibly be as much as a lecture and 3 labs (but probably not less than 2 lab sections).  This means he will be ending his post-doc at the end of June so that he can teach this class.  He's happy that they'll pay him enough that he can spend a month doing teaching exclusively.
- Most likely he will be unemployed for the month of August.  Nearly every job starts in Sept. 2010.  So it's a good thing there's still money in that savings account after the furnace purchase, since we'll be living off savings for a month or two.

And there you go.  That's Rob's crazy life, and therefore our family's crazy life.  Rob gives his final tonight, and I'm looking forward to our family's 2 weeks of together time.  We're in need of it.  Some days it's super easy to do everything I need to do, and some days it's just not so easy.  With the Holiday season upon us, I've had more days of Not Easy, and poor Rob is taking it personally.

June will be our "off" month, even though he'll probably be scrambling to finish up with his post-doc stuff.  I'm thinking about trying to do an extended weekend camping trip to a local-ish National Park or something.  No 6-week cross-country venture for us this year.

Christmas

On Saturday we finally did our Christmas shopping, which has made me much less tense.  2 weeks before Christmas is cutting it too close for me, but we just hadn't had the time.    I HATE that phrase now:  "Don't have the time."  Grrr.  Anyways, it's mostly done, and our Christmas time is pretty much planned, so I've got my calm again.  

Next week, Tuesday, this gift from my parents will arrive:

Hurray for a new stove!!!  Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mom and Dad.

Our Anniversary

Next Monday is our 9 year mark for marriage.  To celebrate, we're going to hang out at the museum on Saturday.  Super lame, right?  But I love it.  Next year, for #10, Rob's been informed that the date can NOT be lame (even though I really do like lame dates).  He's already thinking about it, and it may or may not require reservations for a cabin.  I'm excited in anticipation.

A Miciah Story

To end this super-long update, I'll tell a really good Miciah story.  This is from Sunday.

I walked by Miciah's teacher in the church hallway and he said that he yelled at Miciah.  I was shocked because usually Miciah is very well behaved for teachers.  He looked at me and said, "I yell at her every week, but today was an exception."  I should mention that this is the teacher who does fun things like tease Miciah by calling her Queen of Yellow when she's wearing a yellow dress.  Stuff like that.  Perfect for Miciah.

Anyways, I asked what happened and he said that he asked her to stop touching his paper.  She touched it again.  He told her to stop or she would have to leave class.  She touched it again.  (At this point in the story I rolled my eyes.  That's just SO Miciah.)  He said, forcefully, "That's it!  Get out of class!"  Miciah looked like she was about to cry so he backed down and told her she didn't have to leave so long as she didn't cry.  Then he felt bad (this is the difference between me and him.  Miciah has taught me that I can't feel bad about it.  I would have kicked her out of class and not had even an ounce of guilt) and so he said, "Am I the meanest person in the world?"

Miciah looked right at him and matter-of-factly said, "No.  My Mom says that she's the meanest, most awful person in the world, so it can't be you."

Rock.  On.

Finally an Update

It's been a month since my last update. That seems like a long time to me, especially since we had Christmas and New Years in there! So here's our family update.

It seems like December was a long month in some ways, and just not long enough in other ways (like prep time for Christmas--can you ever have enough prep time?). At the start of December we decided on 2 things. The first was that we were going to go up early to Rob's parents' house and surprise them and B and G who were going to be there by themselves for a few days. We thought it'd be a lot of fun. The second thing we decided was to make a board game for C. Between fastforwarding our Christmas prep time and spending 50 hours making that board game, the week before Christmas was STRESSFUL!!!!!! We got little sleep and spent every available minute getting things done so we could leave Sunday to go to P.

Long story short, the board game turned out pretty cool. We're proud of it, anyways. We have yet to make a second game board (for us, of course), but we'll get to it. We won't try to pull it off the week before Christmas, though.

And going up to P on Sunday actually ended up working really really well. We had told V over Thanksgiving that we would be coming up early, but had let it be a surprise to everyone else. I actually was telling at least 1 lie to everyone involved with the Thacker Christmas. For an entire month. Anyways, when we arrived on Sunday, V was just as surprised as everyone else to see us. He'd forgotten. :) So it was fun to pull off a complete surprise.

Our surprise showing prompted Rob's sisters and their families to join us earlier than they had planned, too. They came up Christmas Eve late in the night and surprised Rob's parents. That was fun, too. We got both surprises on video.

Christmas morning was HUGE. None of us had huge Christmases, but when you combine them all, there were a TON of presents under this huge tree. The tree was cut out of their backyard and was something like 15 feet tall. We took pictures of it with the presents underneath. But I'll have to download the pics off Rob's laptop, so the pictures will have to come a little later. I'm behind, what can I say.

My favorite gift was the one we got from B. Everyone should e-mail him and ask him what it was. My second favorite gift was a freezer from my Mom. I really like having a freezer downstairs. Yea for freezer space! After that it was probably the Transformers special edition movie (the special features of how they did the special effects. Simply awesome), and two coloring books from J. Not for my kids, for Rob and me (he gave the kids their own). One is Color Your Own Abstract Art Masterpieces. The other is Color Your Own Van Gogh Paintings. They give you the outlines and let you color it yourself. How cool is that?!!

Santa and Rapunzel

So that was Christmas. A cute story about Christmas. Miciah only asked Santa for 2 things: The Barbie as the Island Princess movie, and the cereal, too. That's it. Easy enough. She asked us for the REST of the Barbie movies. :) We got her some, including the Rapunzel movie that she'd lost (we have the cover, but not the disc inside) months ago. When we were wrapping the gifts, Rob decided to wrap the Rapunzel movie as a Santa gift and he wrote a little note on it from Santa saying, "This is to replace the one you lost." We left the rest of the Barbie movies we bought at home to open when we got back. So on Christmas Eve in Toledo, at bedtime, Miciah said to Rob, "Daddy, I thought of something else I wanted to ask Santa for." Rob explained that it was pretty late to ask Santa for anything, but what was it. She said, "I want to ask him for a new Rapunzel movie to replace the one I lost." Rob repeated that it would be pretty hard to do at this point. She said, "Maybe Santa could put a chimney in a store and go buy one!" So you could imagine how magical it was when Miciah got the Rapunzel movie from Santa on Christmas morning. And I don't care if you like/believe in Santa or not, that IS pretty magical.

A funny end note to the story: When Miciah told her cousin, A, about getting the Rapunzel movie, and she showed it to her, A said, "We have that at our house." :) Turns out that the missing movie has been safely recovered at the S house. We told them that they could keep it. We'd even give them the cover for it. Merry Christmas to all.

7th Anniversary

Our anniversary was on the 21st. Rob and I celebrated 7 years together. It's been an interesting 7 years, with so many changes for both of us (3 kids, college, grad school, etc.). This last year has been one of the hardest of our marriage, but all I can say is that if that's the hardest it gets, we're safe. Let us pray the fates will not start a competition to see which year can be worse. :) I was exhausted for our anniversary date, so we cancelled other plans and Rob made me a cute dinner at home. Our 3 kids were being watched overnight by 2 families (it pays to have friends). You'd think we'd use the time to stay up late together doing something romantic. What did we do? First, after dinner I took a nap (no joke). Then we watched a chick flick while we finished wrapping Christmas gifts on the living room floor. Before all that, Rob had cleaned the house for me. And that's what the culmination of 7 years of marriage looks like--skip the romance, give me something practical: a nap, a clean house, and finishing the presents.

Rob did give me something really really cute. Before the dinner he sent me on a treasure hunt. I was tired and hungry and half annoyed that he wouldn't let me eat yet, but it was cute. At a few steps I discovered something he had set out for the night: my wedding dress (he wore his tux and I wore my dress for our dinner), our traditional sparkling cider and cheesecake. Then, the last clue lead to the big flower pot that was sitting out in our garage for the winter. I was pretty annoyed at this point, actually, that he'd made me go outside (insanely tired and hungry Tamra is not a docile creature). And then he buried the treasure. Except I'd missed that it was "treasure" I was digging for. I thought I was digging for another clue. He'd printed out the clues on a strip of paper about 1/2 inch in height and folded in fourths. I thought I was outside, digging in the flower pot with a shovel, in the middle of winter, to find another clue!! I was mad (I mean, seriously, can you visualize what I thought was happening?). Rob told me to read the clue again, it said I was digging for treasure!

The treasure turned out to be a blue topaz necklace (December's birthstone) with matching earrings. I actually really really like the color. It's a color that I wear all the time as an accent color. I have shirts that are that color. And the birthstone for December (when our marriage was born)--that's just cute. So it was a lovely night.

New Years Eve

New Years Eve was crazy. We have hosted the world's smallest New Years Eve party for a few years running. I think this was our last year for a while. I think I'm a little burned out. Though we may transition it to a New Years Day party. We spent New Years Day with the T's at our house playing the Wii. Convinced us that someday we would like to own one. We put it on our wish list. Miciah asked if we could get one next Christmas. I told her maybe. Then she said, "I'll sell some of my toys to get one." :) Even if she was willing to do that, I have doubts that she owns a saleable $300 in toys.

This last Friday the youth group at church did their non-NYE party. In the past they've done a New Years Eve party, but it got to be a hassle, and the new bishop thinks NYE is a family holiday (go figure), so they switched it to the Friday after NYE. Genius! It was a lot of fun. We played ping-pong, volleyball, and pin guard (a game the Scouts play a lot--kind of a dodgeball type of game), and ate pizza and chips and other goodies. It was fabulous fun. Again, another date night with the kids being watched overnight by friends. Yea for friends!! We watched their kids later on Saturday night, so it worked out well.

Our Furnace, A Saga

Saturday we got a furnace technician to come look at our furnace that we'd been thinking was going to burn down our house. For the last few months it was been exploding. That's the best way to describe it. Like it had an overabundance of gas and then it would do a very loud, chest-rumbling bang, and then the fire alarm would go off for a few seconds. Miciah was downstairs to see it once (she's the only one that's seen it at the time it does it) and she described to Rob that the flame came out about a foot and a half. Scary. Anyways, the guy came and checked it out. He cleaned the starters (is that what they're called?) off. Said usually the problem is from one of them being dirty and them not lighting evenly, so the gas keeps turning on. Then he turned down our gas pressure which he said was way too high (who knows these things?). Before he came, every time the furnace came on, whether it exploded or not, it would do this click, click, click sound. Many times. And since Saturday, I haven't even noticed my heater coming on. Yea for non-burned down houses!!

This is a long update. Clearly I haven't written for a while.

Avatar

Our family has been enjoying watching Season 2 of Avatar. C loaned us all the movies (in exchange for a Transformers borrow), and we've been watching those for the last week. It's a fun show. Miciah now talks to her friends about bending, and Elijah likes to pretend he's Aang, the Avatar. He'll come up to me and say, "Mom, I'm the Avatar. 'WHERE'S APA?'" That's a direct quote from chapter 11.

The Kids

Miciah and Elijah are cute as siblings. They alternate between loving each other dearly and bugging each other deeply. :) A fun story from a few days ago. Miciah was sitting on the couch and Elijah was standing in front of the couch. Miciah did something that Elijah didn't like. Suddenly, and with distress in her voice, Miciah said, "Elijah's trying to break down the house by breaking the couch!!" Rob and I stared at her in disbelief, without expression. She said matter-of-factly, "Really. He IS." SO funny. Then Elijah continued hitting the couch arm. Hard. Rob said, "Doesn't that hurt you?" Elijah said, "Not hurt my hand. Hurt the couch." :) Okay. He did explain to us that while he was trying to break the couch to hurt Miciah, Rob and I were not the object of his frustration and he wasn't trying to hurt us.

Elijah is a funny kid. While he can get really mad and somewhat aggressive, he rarely hurts others. He'll get mad and hit something else. He'll get mad and web you with his Spider-Man powers. But he usually doesn't hurt people.

Which reminds me of Christmas week's funniest story. Rob and I were playing racquetball, so the other adults were watching our kids. Elijah was standing in front of the TV so no one else could see. C asked him to move and for a little while he ignored her. She asked again and he turned around, like in slow-motion, glaring at her. He then, in the same slow-motion, brought out his web and webbed her. After they got done laughing, C picked Elijah up (because he still wouldn't move) and put him on the couch. He kept watching the show, but the whole time he kept his arm out towards C, webbing her, and he'd turn periodically to glare at her. :) That's just funny.

Teancom

Teancom is doing great. He is now walking near-exclusively, though he's still not incredibly stable on his feet. He has JUMPED in his verbal skills. Where before I couldn't think of 3 words he could say, he now says, "ma ma", "da da", "uh huh", "uh uh", "no", "here you go" (not that clear, of course), "please" (we can get him to say it occasionally), "thank you" (he says it often), "bye bye", "night night", "Cleo" (ee-oh), "Elijah", and "Leah" (his friend). So far Miciah doesn't have a name, that I can gather. He knows who Miciah is, but I've never heard him say her name. It's fun to have him so verbal, and it's very helpful! Yea for talking.

We took Teancom to nursery on Sunday for some transition time. He goes in officially the last Sunday of this month. He did great. I told Rob this and he said, "You're surprised?" No. He's just a good kid. He did get pushed over by one kid (there's a little boy who appears to have something out for Teancom. He's been picking on him for half a year or so), but no big deal. It got to clean up time. I thought he might be upset about putting his toys away. Nope. I asked him to put his car in a bin. He did it right away. He had a book. I asked him to give it to the leader. And he STOOD IN LINE behind 4 other kids with the book held up to give her. That blows me away. He's such a weird kid. He's quiet. He likes books. We can read him a full book. Not like a one-word-a-page book. A full easy reader book (like a Dr. Suess). Just so mellow. It occured to me while I was at nursery, that parents who only have kids like Teancom probably think that kids like Miciah and Elijah are monsters/broken and that parents of kids like Miciah and Elijah are awful parents!! It makes me grateful to have Teancom after the first two. It's not only a nice breather, but it's good perspective.

If you've read to this point, thank you for devoting the last hour of your life to reading my update. Your special reward is being mailed to you and you'll receive it in 1 - 6 weeks.

I'll try to get on top of sending out some of our cute pictures from the last few weeks!

We love you all and hope you all had memorable, lovely holidays!

Tamra, Rob, Miciah, Elijah, and Teancom