Happy New Year!!!!

Yay! Our first New Year's Eve celebration in our new home! We celebrated with a fondue party. We love living near a Trader Joe's. They have fantastic prices on all sorts of delicious cheeses. We started off with a cheese course featuring the tradition Emmenthaler and Gruyere. The kids weren't such big fans of it and mostly just wanted to eat the dippers by themselves. That was fine with me and Chris because it meant more for us. The kids did enjoy the bubble juice though, and the chocolate dessert fondue went over pretty well, but Eve mostly wanted the fruit and marshmallows plain. The dessert course did end in tears after chocolate was repeatedly dribbled all over the place and we decided the kids had had enough. Laine insisted she wasn't finished and yelled a lot, but they're in bed now (after only two fights tonight). We're pushing their bed time back by an hour starting tomorrow in an effort to stop them from invading our bed at 4 in the morning every day.

Little James is standing tall pretty regularly these days. He's taken some stuttery little steps already while trying to chase after Momma's legs when he stands up holding them and she walks away. We figure he's due to start running marathons any day now.

My (Christine) New Year's resolution is to be greener. I'm a pretty terrible polluter but this year I'm going to try to recycle, reduce, and reuse. For example, I'm only going to allow the kids one bath a day instead of three (barring extreme soiling, of course). We're going to try to reduce meat consumption (Chris hates this idea even though he's the only one in the family that's ever been a strict vegetarian), turn off lights when we're not using them, etc. If your resolution is along these same lines, see treehugger.com for ideas. We wish you a wonderful new year!

And now it's time for Silly Songs with Lainey

Some times, Laine likes to invent completely absurd songs. For example...

It's Christmas, It's Christmas!!!!

We had a fun Christmas this year. The greatest present we got this year was being able to be together next year in our new home while I finish school in Virginia. We spent Christmas Eve singing songs, acting out the nativity, and drinking cocoa around a fire that Chris built in our awesome wood burning fireplace. Chris definitely has the Bradley pyromaniac genes. We sat by the fire for hours thinking about what an upgrade this was from our orange cellophane wrapped light bulb that we had in the "fireplace" at Carriage Lane.

Here's where the kids were acting out the nativity. Eve was Mary, James was Jesus, and Laine played various other roles including angels, shepherds, and Joseph.

Here are two lovely renditions of Jingle Bells

Eve had James giggling like crazy with this pillow fight. Sorry it's sideways. I thought I could just rotate the image after I downloaded it to my computer like I can with still images, but it couldn't.

The kids had a ball opening presents on Christmas morning. Thank you everyone for the wonderful gifts!

Laine the Runny-Nosed Reindeer and a Man-Bath!

This weekend, Chris helped James overcome his deathly fear of baths. Our girls always LOVED baths and still ask to take more than one bath a day some times swimming around for an hour or more singing and playing Mermaids. James, however, has always screamed at the top of his lungs the minute he enters water (he also screams like a banshee when I perform booger extractions or dab his face with a Kleenex). Yesterday, Chris got all the kids in the bath with him and had Laine and Eve show James how fun a bath could be. Slowly, he got James into the water without screaming and by the end of it, James was even having fun.

We keep hoping Laine will finally get over Christopher from her old pre-school. She's been telling us every day how much she loves Christopher and how she wants to take his last name when they get married and have his babies. She even said "It's so easy to think about Christopher that I don't even have to use my thinking cap!" I tried to explain to her that she's marrying James VanDam, darn it! But to no avail. Then Chris had to go burst her little love bubble by telling her that Christopher might meet someone else and ask her to marry him first, and Laine was really distraught about it, but we'll keep distracting her so that maybe she'll forget him soon. Laine held hands with one of the sunbeam boys on the first day we went to our new ward, so maybe she'll find a new boy here to want to marry.

The girls seem to like the new ward pretty well. Laine has her hand-holding buddy and Eve is enjoying her last couple of weeks of nursery before moving up to big-girl primary at the start of the new year. James is as popular as always, getting "Oh how cute!" and "What a beautiful baby!" everywhere he goes. We think he's cute too, especially in his little man clothes.

Chris and Laine went exploring the woods in the backyard yesterday and found an antler! Laine was so excited. We're going to have lots of fun tromping through the forest exploring and having adventures here.

The adventure never ends

Here's one last picture of our new home before the mountain of boxes and furniture arrived. What a day! So I woke up this morning and let the painter in so that he could hurry and finish the kids bedrooms before our furniture arrived. He was totally amazing. He didn't use so much as an inch of tape and he painted 2 bedrooms quickly and perfectly in about 8 hours between yesterday and this morning and finished just as the moving van drove in. Meanwhile, fate decided that this would be a perfect day for Eve to have a massive ear infection and pink eye. My poor baby girl spent the morning crying her pink and green sticky eyes out while writhing on the floor with a finger in her ear while Chris tried as hard as he could to get her in to see a ped. Everyone had taken an early holiday break, so he ended up taking her to the urgent care facility where he waited 2 and a half hours for the only doc available to write him a prescription for amoxicillin and eye drops. Of course, our insurance cards aren't here yet, so all this is paid for out of pocket for right now including $70 eye drops. SEVENTY bucks for like 4 mls!! That means every time Eve wiggles and I miss, I've wasted like $12. Ironically though, yesterday I got a check in the mail from Jordan Valley Hospital partially refunding me for this ER visit that I had over a year and a half ago when the jerk doc on call wouldn't just phone in a Macrobid prescription for me when I woke up in the middle of a Sunday night with a bloody (I mean that literally, not as a British curse word) UTI and the hospital overcharged me. The amount for the check almost covered the cost of Eve's visit. Kind of funny how some times things all work out in their weird way. Maybe in 2 years from now when we get reimbursed from our insurance for this visit, it'll be enough to cover the current crisis at that time.

Anyway, our house is filled with boxes. I tell ya, professional movers are like the most underpaid people ever. I know they make like $50/hr but for the work they do, that's nothing. This one guy today just hoisted our massive toy chest that Chris made down a flight of stairs like it was a backpack. Amazing! We're trying to figure out how to arrange furniture that used to be in a wide house into a skinny house with limited storage space. Oh, and in the middle of all this, we discovered our dishwasher won't start. It's brand new. We know it works, but we just can't get to turn on. Luckily, our new next door neighbors brought us over dinner which was soooooo nice of them. After dinner, Laine, Eve, and James had a ton of fun playing with all the stuff in their toy box. I don't know why I bothered getting them anything for Christmas. When you haven't seen your old toys for 2 months, they're practically brand new.

Tomorrow: Let the unpacking begin!!!

Happy Holidays! Please forgive us!

Hello everyone! Wow, we have a lot to update you on. First of all, please forgive me for not having any cute new pictures of the kids to post. I've been really busy and haven't taken any pictures. To compensate for lack of kid pictures, I have posted a picture that Eve took of my *beyond fab* holiday shoes because she's too short and stubby to take a picture of a standing grown-up's face. Laine took the other picture of us before we left for our one and only date that we've been on (to Chris's company party) since we moved to DC. A daughter of one of Bradley's Babes (one of Grandpa's missionaries on temple square) babysat for us.

Anyway, life's been hectic. As you know, earlier this past week we sold our house in Sandy which was a fiasco! Which reminds me, Wayne and Lisa, I'm putting you guys in charge of rounding up the neighbors to throw your next door neighbors a party. A great big egg and toilet paper party!!! Gee whiz, they made our lives miserable bending over backwards to fix a million stupid things, shelling out a ton of money to make their dumb financing situation work, and they're still complaining about the electrical work that we had repaired. Oh well. It sold. So then, we bought our townhouse and have been busy doing all the things we needed to do for that. For example today was spent getting rooms painted before furniture arrives, getting a king size bed up a very narrow stairway, and ordering blinds so that in 3 and a half weeks, we can finally walk around the house naked again. Well, the kids do that anyway privacy or no privacy. Then this afternoon, we get a call saying that our moving van is arriving tomorrow instead of the end of next week like planned, which is great, but it meant I had to scrounge up muscle power at the last minute and make treats for my neighbors so they don't hate us when we take up all their parking spaces with the moving van tomorrow.

What this means for you: You may not get a card or gift from us this year. I was going to spend today and tomorrow writing Christmas cards and getting/making gifts for all our friends and family that have been so good and wonderful for us this year, but instead it has to be spent unpacking and moving. So please forgive us for not doing Christmas this year! I know what you're thinking. "All year I've been so nice to those Bradleys. I spent so much time (insert kind deed here, e.g. babysitting, giving them free moving boxes, offering moral support, shoveling their snow, raking their leaves, etc.) for them and they haven't so much as sent us a card!" I promise I'll make it up to you on Valentine's. We love you dearly and are thinking about you this Christmas, but I've just been a terrible slacker and I apologize. If you want, you can blame Chris because I started doing this in November, knowing I'd be busy, but he ridiculed me for doing Christmasy stuff before December 1st.

The kids are doing great. Laine and Eve are busy playing lots of new pretend games and exploring nooks and crannies in their new home. James decided that moving week would be a great time to enter Erik Erikson's phase of weineriness vs. toothiness or whatever it's called where babies become insecure and cry loudly when their mothers set them down amongst a pile of toys in order to do something productive. We only have limited internet access for the next two weeks, so I apologize for the sporadic blogging and poor e-mail response. Please be patient with us! We love you. Merry Christmas!

New Home!

Kitchen

The view from our back windows. Won't this be beautiful in the fall? At the bottom of the hill, there's a stream.

This is our new house! We don't have internet access right now, so I'll write a more detailed blog entry later when I'm not stealing a few minutes at our apartment. Basically, closing went well and we're waiting for our furniture to arrive, and we're stressed and relieved at the same time. More info to come...

Missing Mama

This has been a very busy few weeks. We got the old house under contract, picked out a new one, filled out a billion forms, went to inspections, performed repairs, packed boxes, flew across the country, lost our voices, started pre-school, made friends, attended our new ward, worked, read, played, went to the library, saw old friends, made phone calls, booked a moving truck, moved furniture, and prayed that everything would work out.

No wonder we're tired.

Christine has been in Salt Lake all week finalizing the packing and coordinating the move, all with baby James in tow. Good thing he's such a little sweety. The girls and I are staying in Virginia where Laine and Eve are quite enjoying their week of preschool while I go to work. Every day I get there to pick them up and find them dancing or playing or making art from pasta and they yell "Daddy!" and jump up for a super-sized twirling hug. Then we go on outings or eat dinner, then play a little and have a story before bedtime.

For the story, they each get to pick one thing for the story to be about. Invariably, one of them picks a "Princess named.... (insert randomly chosen Disney princess here)" and the other chooses something completely random. Thus we have had the story of "Snow White and the Mean Crocodile", "Sleeping Beauty and the Wicked Stepmother", "Princess Jasmine and the Dragon", and "Cinderella and the Wicked Witch" (I liked that one, Cinderella ended up going to the ball with feet so inflated by a magic spell that she had to wear rowboats for shoes). I think I liked the old days better when they chose to have princesses named "Princess Laine" and "Princess Eve", but I shouldn't complain, at least they are still young enough to think my stories are fun.

In other news, the campaign for literacy is going quite well for both of the girls, but Eve's potty train appears to have been derailed indefinitely. "I'll be a potty train when I am four years old." Bleh, we've got to find a better bribe or something to get that train back on track.

Anyway, we sure miss that beautiful Mama, it will be wonderful to have her back tomorrow.

-Christian

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

Here are the girls asleep on the beanbag together.

And of course the angel boy James who is every bit as good and sweet awake as he is asleep. Unfortunately, my camera isn't equipped with halo-capturing technology yet, but trust me, it's there.

Little Video Clip of the Kids

I had a way funnier video clip of the kids, but try as I might, I couldn't get it to post on the blog. I think it might have been too long. If you can't get this one to play, don't worry, you're not missing anything huge. Just a little glimpse at the day to day lives of the Bradley children.

WANTED: MARSHMALLOW BANDITS!!!

Suspect one is approximately 40 inches tall with auburn hair and brown eyes. Second subject is approxinately 34 inches tall with short auburn hair, brown eyes, and a button nose. She is easily identifiable by her vehement dislike of clothing. Found at the scene of the crime was the following:

The bag of marshmallows was previously known to be at least half full. Suspects were last seen fleeing the scene of the crime in a hyperactive (no doubt high fructose corn syrup induced) frenzy. If found, please return to the Bradley residence where the outlaws will be severely punished with a heaping plate of brussel sprouts.

Gearing up for the holidays!!!

It's getting Christmasy around here! The weather here is still very pleasant and doesn't show any signs of snowing any time soon, but we're still excited. The other day, we went and picked out our tree. It's very small this year, but the girls had a great time deorating it with colorful lights. They each got to pick out an ornament too.

So have you ever wondered what would happen if a kid's hand got stuck in an elevator door? Well, wonder no more. We have the answer for you. The other day, we needed to stop by Chris's office to fax something and on the way out of the elevator, Eve was "helping the door to open" and her had slid right into the space between the elevator door and door frame. Chris yanked at her wrist, and much to my relief the fingers followed (intact). Other than some swollen knuckles, she was okay.

More pictures Laine took

Laine really likes taking pictures. Eve does too, but she always covers up the lens with her hand and gets lots of fuzzy reddish pictures. Laine is on a self-portrait kick lately. She likes setting the camera on something a foot or so away from her and posing for pictures of herself. Today, we were playing the word figuring out game again, and Laine wrote "James" only she had the "J" and the "S" written backwards, so we worked on writing our letters the right way. When she finally got the letters correct, she asked, "Okay, can you guess what it says?" When I immediately guessed James, she got furious and said, "RRRRGGGHH We're playing the game now. That one was supposed to be tricky for you!" Next time, I tried to act like I was sounding the word out and that made her happier. I guess she doesn't like being the only one that has to sound out her words. Eve gets better at the game every day. Today she was able to read the words "smash", "fish", and "trash" in less than 2 seconds.

"Pho"n DInner Outing

We finally found a food that James likes. He tried pho for the first time today and LOVED it. He kept opening his mouth begging for noodles and slurping them into his mouth. I guess he just doesn't like nasty Gerber food. Everyone at the restaurant thought this was so cute and they kept coming over to watch him eat.

Hangman Part II: Baby steps toward literacy

Hangman is still one of the girl's favorite games. They play it daily and are even starting to incorporate words that aren't names of family members. Today while they were playing, Laine asks me "Mom, how many dashes do I need to put for 'turkey'? Oh, ok thanks _ _ _ _ _ _. Eve, can you guess my word?" Eve: "Ummm what about R?" Laine: "Ummm Mom, does 'turkey' have an 'R' in it?" So, they still don't quite get how to play the game, but they're really trying hard. Chris taught them a great game today. He would write a word, and whoever could figure out what the word said first got a point. They were getting really good. Eve was guessing quite a few of the three letter words before Laine did. I think Laine might be on the brink of reading. She can really sound out a lot of words if you prompt her ("Remember, Laine, the p and the h make a ffff sound when they're next to each other"). Eve always amazes me with her memorization skills. If you read a simple book to her a few times, she can read it back to you verbatim. I think learning sight words as opposed to sounding out letters might be the best method for getting her to read. With English, it makes more sense anyway since most English words aren't really phonetic. You really forget what an absurd language this is until you try teaching it to someone else. The other day Chris and I were talking about how ridiculous it is that in school, kids are taught that each vowel has 2 sounds, the long sound and the short sound. But what about the upside-down "e" sound? The uuhhh sound. Every vowel makes that sound. How come nobody teaches it? Does anyone have any suggestions for teaching preschoolers to read and teaching them English rules that really make sense? Laine has a video that teaches "When there are two vowels in a word, the first one makes the long sound and the other one goes to sleep." This is true for words like: cove, gave, and raid. But today, Chris wrote monkey, and Laine said "So we say "o" and the e goes to sleep, right?" and I wondered why anyone made a rule like that that so often does not apply.

Three cheers for portable DVD players!!!

We just got back from an exciting Thanksgiving weekend in Rochester, New York with Mel, Michael, Sam and Simon. What a party we had! It was about a 7 hour drive each way, and we had a surprisingly great time! John and Nikki let us borrow their DVD player (Thank you SO much!) so the girls watched shows for the majority of the trip, while James slept and cooed happily, while Chris and I got to talk and read to each other. When we got there, the cousins played. Michael built the most amazing carboard box castle that you have ever seen in your whole life in their basement, so they had lots of fun in that. We have a fabulous meal with turkey, salad, asparagus, rolls, sweet potato souffle, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. For dessert, we feasted on pumkpin pie and blueberry pie. Yum! The next day, we helped Mel and Michael pick out their Christmas tree. Santa even parachuted down during the tree cutting event. Other highlights from the trip included sleeping in a bed (thanks Mel and Michael for letting us swipe your bed!), an accordion dance party, movie night, and grown up board games after the kids finally went to sleep. You guys should visit M&M. They are superbs hosts. Happy Thanksgiving!

Making Cookies

After a simple meal of chicken quesadillas - that's pronounced "kay-sa-DILL-ee-ohs" for those who don't have toddlers mangling Spanish - we decided to make some cookies. Since all our cooking gear is still in our house in Sandy we opted for the pre-made dough variety augmented by our own M&M toppers. The girls were in charge of adding those. Eve was really confused for a bit trying to find where we kept the chocolate chips (she's the official chipper when she makes cookies with her Haboji - that's Grandpa for those who don't have toddlers mangling Korean), but she perked right up when she realized that there was candy involved.

We're planning to take a little road trip to upstate New York this week to share Thanksgiving with Uncle Michael, Aunt Mel, Sam, and Simon. The girls are pretty excited to see their cousins and I'm looking forward to the turkey and mashed potatoes.

In other news, James is growing his vocabulary, he's gone from just "mamamamama" to "babababa", "dadadadada", and "oooeaaeeoooeeaa". We'll have complete sentences any day now.

Chris

Monumental Fussing

We had fun on our outing today. Really, we did. But Laine and Eve are 4 and 3 so between the Natural History Museum and the Art museum, there was a big session of "We're so tired. We never want to do anything fun again. This is too hard. We just want to go home to Virginia. I'm bored. I want to yell!" They cheered up when they saw the ice skaters. They could have stood on the edge of the rink watching people ice skate forever. They also appreciated the Smithsonian castle. We're gonna have to do many Saturday trips down here before we come even close to seeing everything there is to see. A lot of the museum stuff isn't any fun unless you're literate, so the museum of Natural History is really the best attraction for kids. Dinosaurs, gems, prehistoric mammals, what more could a kid want?

Waaaaaaa, Kawaiiiiiiii, Ne?

Today, we went downtown to see all the monuments and museums and stuff together as a family. James was probably the biggest tourist attraction of all. Everywhere we went, people oohed and ahhed over him as much as anything else. There's something so cute about a sweet little boy's face peering out of a sling. As is usually the case on such outings, James was a perfect saint the whole time, never making a peep. He just smiled contentedly and enjoyed the sights from his perch against my chest. He's so cozy to snuggle with.

Two really cute pictures

I know, Awwwwww right? Like you think, how could such angelic children ever cause any trouble? Haha, right. The sleeping faces of children are so deceiving.

This is a more accurate portrayal. Un-potty-trained child in underpants trying to open a bottle of who-knows-what to spill who-knows-where, costing her parents who-knows-how-much.

Laine Took These Pictures

Today, Laine was playing with my camera for a really long time and I didn't realize how many pictures she took. She took almost 100 shots! Most of them were of James. She was really cute with him, trying to get his attention and telling him funny things so he would laugh and smile for her pictures. I'm just barely looking through them and I deleted most of them because after all, I don't need 14 pictures of Buntle's-little-brother (Eve's stuffed rabbit) in various poses. She also took about 9 self-portraits of her feet in the air while wearing footed pajamas. However, some of the pictures were quite good.

Funniest Game of Hangman Ever! Also in this edition: a movie review.

One of the greatest things about our apartment is the fact that it is 5 minutes away from Chris's office. Pretty much every day since the girls and I moved here, Chris has been coming home for lunch which has been fun. Today during lunch, Chris taught the girls how to play hangman, and later they wanted me to play it with them. It was hilarious! Okay, so first of all the girls know how to spell like 5 words: Laine, Eve, James, Mom and Dad. And in order to write out the correct number of dashes, they need to spell the word aloud, so while they're writing out _ _ _ _ _, they say outloud: "L-A-I-N-E... OK Mom, I'm ready for you to guess my word!" Laine is a merciful executioner, who will keep adding features to her man to keep it from hanging, adding eyelashes, belly buttons, and fingernails until you've exhausted all the letters of the alphabet. Eve kills her guy off after like 3 guesses, adding 2 arms and a leg if you guess a letter wrong. She'll also change her mind on what the word is halfway through the game, which is kind of ridiculous when you're recycling the same 5 words over and over again.

I just got back from seeing a movie tonight. I decided to see Love in the Time of Cholera. It's one of my favorite books, so I went with the full expectation that the movie would do nothing to capture the literary genius of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. As long as you go in with that expectation, it's an okay movie. It has beautiful cinematography and stays pretty true to the plot. I had expected teenage Florentino to look a little less goobery and a little more like a younger version of Marquz himself, and I was a little surprised at Benjamin Bratt being cast as Juvenal Urbino, but he rose to the challenge very well. The actress that played Fermina was lovely, but her acting left much to be desired. You kind of wonder, OK Florentino, remind me why you spent half a century pining over this girl. Most of what I loved about the book was lost, but I mean really, that was to be expected. There's no way to capture it on film. Read the book and you'll see what I mean. At least it wasn't as a butchered nightmare like the film version of House of the Spirits. Ugh! Quite possibly the WORST Latin American novel-to-film adaptation ever!!! If you want to see a great Latin American novel-to-film, see Like Water for Chocolate. Overall, Love in the Time of Cholera was pretty good. Maybe even quite good to someone that hasn't read the book.

Here's what we're reading

Chris: Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

Me: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stuart

Laine: Hansel and Gretel by Rika Lesser and Paul O. Zelinsky

Eve: Ballet Kitty by Bernette Ford and Sam Williams

James: Listens attentively to anything

Family read-aloud: The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

Parents read-aloud: Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret by Obert Skye

Nikki recommended The Mysterious Benedict Society to me. It's sooooo good. Gifted and talented orphans go on secret missions and save the world. Need I say more? Tell us what you're reading and loving.

Potty training woes

The main thing we've been working on since we moved here is getting Eve potty trained. She promised us: "I will be a potty train after we move to Furginia" but she still shows only mininal interest even after we bought her a "royal potty" that plays a majestical tune when deposits are made into the throne and when tempted with M&Ms and adorable underpants. Laine has been really helpful in showing Eve the ropes. Earlier today there was a conversation that went like this:

"Eve, do you want me to show you how to be a potty train?"

"Umm Okay!"

"Alright, when you get a feeling in your body like you're gonna make a pee-pee or a poo-poo, you run to the potty. Then you sit for a while until it comes out. Afterwards, you use toilet paper like this. See how I'm using the toilet paper?"

"Ummm yup!"

"Okay, then you flush the toilet, and you can't forget to wash your hands, okay?"

But despite the attempts, Eve just doesn't care. The prizes aren't tempting enough. The threats aren't scary enough. She just wants to wear diapers for the rest of her life. She told me she will be a potty train when she turns 9. What's wrong with her?! Laine didn't do this. She was so excited. Remember that time during Sunday dinner when she was so excited to show off her new skills that she brought her potty out into the living room, pulled her pants down, peed in front of the whole family, and grinned ear-to-ear during the applause? Any thoughts for what to do?

Our adventures in Virginia

Hello!

In order to make it easier to keep friends and family informed on what we've been doing since we've moved, I decided to start a blog. I'm pretty busy, so I probably won't be adding new posts very often, but at least this will give you a general idea of what we're up to. We look forward to keeping in touch with all of you. We miss you and love you.

The Bradleys