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.