Playing Catchup

Mitch asked if I could write a short summary of Jenna’s and my two weeks away and while a two week summary isn’t very short, here it goes!

Jenna and I up and left Jarom on July 15 to go to Utah to see some old friends, grand parents, my new niece, and my parents. It was a fun filled, very busy trip. Thankfully, Jenna is such a seasoned flier that she was well behaved on all of the flights. She even managed to sleep a little bit which was great for her. Not so great for me. Anyone who has ever flown with a child on their lap knows that it is impossible to do anything other than hold the child. Even when they are asleep. You can’t move or read or anything because they are crushing your arms and making them fall asleep. So the first flight, Jenna had her own seat and we were in a bulk head seat so she had plenty of room to sit and walk around so it wasn’t so bad. Unfortunately, that flight was only an hour long. The second flight was three and a half hours long. Jenna had to sit on my lap and I tried to keep her occupied. She slept for about an hour and I stared at the seat in front of me. Most boring thing ever. We sat next to some really nice Japanese people who didn’t speak a lick of English, but Jenna and them managed to become best friends and they played the last hour of that flight. It was really nice of them.

Jenna learned how to avoid saying prayers at Nate's house

We finally arrived in SLC and were greeted by Gramma Nancy. It was fantastic to see her and Jenna even remembered who she was and sat with her while I got my luggage. Once we got everything loaded in the car, we drove all around Salt Lake looking for a Mr. Mac store where Grandpa Bruce had dropped some pants off at to get altered. We went to the wrong one and then ended up having to drive 30 minutes to the right one. It was awesome. Then we made a very important stop at Café Rio where I was able to indulge a craving I have had since I left Utah. Nothing is better than their pork salad. So good. After a few more stops, we finally made it home where Jenna and I crashed pretty early. The next day we were able to go on a walk with one of my old roommates who lives like half a mile from my in laws new house. It was so fun to see her. The rest of that week was spent seeing friends and family, going out to eat, and shopping. Three of my favorite things! I was able to go to roommate dinner with four of my six old college roommates. We are all married with kids now so it was completely different and so much fun to see everyone. After that we went over to my Aunt’s house who lives in Cedar Hills and hung out with her and her family for a few hours.

The roommates

Fun in a diaper at Mandy's house

Sunday we went to my in-law’s new ward. My father-in-law is the new mission president of the Salt Lake City mission, which is why they are now in Utah, instead of Delaware. Anyway, President Monson is in their home ward and was apparently in attendance the week before. I was so bummed I missed him! But they have a nice ward and Jenna enjoyed playing with Gramma. That night we went to the Soulier’s house for dinner. They are old friends of Jarom’s family who used to live in Delaware. The food was delicious and Jenna was so good. She kept her self occupied by pulling all of their books off the shelf and leafing through all of their novels. She is so advanced. Another special treat, President Hinckley’s son was in attendance at that dinner and I got to sit by him. It was awesome. He is super nice and funny and sounds just like our late prophet. A little eerie, but still super cool.

Yay for shoes!

Boo for bonnets!

Monday was really low key because Jenna and I needed to catch up on some sleep and laundry and I don’t really remember what we did on Tuesday, but I am sure it was super fun. Oh, Tuesday night, I did go to a couponing class at my friend Amanda’s house. I am hooked! I haven’t actually started couponing yet because I just subscribed to the magazine, but I am so excited to save so much money! So, send all unwanted coupons my way, please. I will keep you posted on my success (or lack there of!).

Jenna went from uninterested in baby Eva to very upset with baby Eva

Wednesday morning Jenna and I packed everything up to drive up to Rexburg, Idaho. The Winns were nice enough to let me borrow a car for the week so we could drive up and see my new niece, Eva Rose, and also my brother graduated from BYU Idaho. My parents had flown in for the special occasion also, so it was one big party. My sister in law was nice enough to have her baby the day before we arrived so we drove to the hospital first to see them. Baby Eva is super cute and we made Jenna and her matching cousin bracelets. Jenna loves hers and brings it to me to put on every day. That night we stayed with my parents in their hotel room. It was absolutely terrible. My parents snore like you wouldn’t believe. Jenna couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep and we both cried a lot that night. I considered throwing in the towel and driving home the next day because neither of us could sleep, but I found better sleeping arrangements at my brother’s house. We were able to stay in his extra bedroom and with a box fan going, we couldn’t hear the new baby cry and night and they couldn’t hear Jenna moving around and it worked out perfectly. We were able to spend the rest of the week golfing and shopping and eating and hanging out. I love spending time with my family and always have so much fun.

Celebrating Lixi-style after making a putt

Jenna thought her second cousin Olivia was hirarious

Sadly the week had to end and on Sunday night we packed up yet again and drove back to Salt Lake. Jenna slept for about half of it and then I gave her a pen and a coloring book for the last part. When we arrived in SLC, she had pen all over herself. Hardly a mark on the paper. I guess that is what I get for letting her color unsupervised. It kept her busy though! Our last couple days were spent hanging out with Gramma and Grandpa, eating more Café Rio, and seeing some extended family down in Provo. I love Provo. It must be all the good memories I have of living there, but every time I drive into Provo, I feel like I am home. We also made a trip to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point with my Aunt and her five kids. It was great because her kids love Jenna and they pretty much followed her around the whole morning so I actually go to relax and read about dinosaurs. It was a very fun and educational experience. Wednesday night I left Jenna with Gramma again and I drove to the airport to pick up my friend who was in my program with me at BYU. We seem to have the same travel schedule and she was in New Hampshire the entire time I was in Utah. She came home the night before I left so I borrowed a car again and drove her to her house in Heber. It was fun drive and we got to chat and catch up. We got to Heber and went out to eat with her husband and had a fun night talking. I made it home by 11 p.m. to find Jenna had woken up. So we hung out together and packed up all our stuff. I mentioned we went shopping and we had quite a few extra things with us. Jenna has a whole new shoe wardrobe and we got about ten pounds worth of baby bows between the two grandmas so we were stuffed to the brim. All in all, it was a most fantastic trip and the only thing that could have made it better was if Jarom was able to join us. But I guess someone has to work to support all of my traveling and playing! It’s a rough life I live, but someone’s gotta do it! Thanks to all grandparents and friends who made the trip super fun!

Six of one, a half-dozen of the other

Yesterday was Jarom and Alixa’s sixth anniversary. Jarom celebrated by eating dinner with Nate and Kenz and then watching TV on their couch so they could leave Kenna and go see a movie together. Lix went golfing with her dad and brother in the morning and then went to Jackson Hole for the day. Somehow it just doesn’t seem fair.




It has been a little over a week since Lix and Jenna left, and Jarom is very excited to get them back. One advantage of the free time he has is that he has been able to go to the gym almost every day. He very much enjoys working out, but it has been a little depressing to realize how much of a sissy he has become since he stopped lifting weights, which was about two years ago when they left Utah.




Speaking of Utah, Alixa loves it and wants to move back there. She had a wonderful few days visiting President and Sister Winn. She had a wonderful dinner with them and the Souliers, some nice folks who used to live in Delaware. Their son is now married to a Hinckley, and the late prophet’s son was in attendance. Lix said that it was kind of neat but a little disconcerting because the son looks so much like the father, and I imagine it would be a little bit odd to eat a meal with the president of the church.




Lix also got to see all of her old college friends, many of whom now have their own little ones, and she loved it. She took a couponing class and is now trained to save us hundreds of dollars each month, which is very exciting to Jarom. On Tuesday she borrowed a car from Grandma and headed up to Rexburg to meet her parents and see Zak and Sam and their new baby girl. After some initial problems sleeping in the same room with Mimi and Opa, who might snore a little, things have settled down and the girls are having a wonderful time. Apparently Jenna has taken quite a liking to PJ and they have been spending a lot of time together, which is great. It is really nice that Jenna has been able to see so much of her grandparents and cousins, a trend that hopefully will be able to continue as she grows up.

A Man Apart

This week’s post comes from a lonely house with no Alixa and no Jenna. They packed up their bags and left town after a particularly hurtful argument on Wednesday night. Fortunately, plane tickets had already been purchased and plans made to visit both sets of grandparents in the great states of Utah and Idaho for a period of 14 days, during which time Alixa will hopefully think about the things that she said and return to Richmond ready to apologize and repair what is left of her relationship with Jarom.



Word on the street is that the girls are having a wonderful time, enjoying the lack of humidity and the abundance of Café Rio. There are old friends to visit, grandparents to take advantage of, and plenty of other stuff to keep them busy.

Jenna was lucky and got her own seat on one leg of the flight

Last week Jenna got some shots, and perhaps they made her a little bit sick, or perhaps she just got a little bit sick and it is unrelated to the shots she got. But one way or another, she was not feeling well and simply refused to go to bed. Lix and Jarom had both taken a shot at rocking her to sleep, and she would get quiet and rest until they left the room, at which point she would start crying again. It was Jarom’s turn to go console her, only this time she wouldn’t settle down even when he was holding her. After a few minutes Lix came up to see why Jarom couldn’t fix her. It was about this time that Jenna began coughing pretty hard, and it became clear that something bad was about to go down. Or come up. After a few coughs Jenna puked rancid, chunky, vomit all over her dad. And while that is certainly gross, it wasn’t the vomit on his shirt and shorts that hit him the hardest. It was the pungent, nose-burning odor that accompanied it. Fortunately it was Jarom who was holding her at the time and not Alixa. His response to vomit is to contain it in as small an area as possible, while hers is to spread it around everywhere. As soon as Jenna was finished they moved to the bathroom where they climbed into the tub and took a shower while Lix removed the offending articles of clothing and washed them or burned them or something. As a side note, at what point does father-daughter nudity become inappropriate? Anyway, they got cleaned up and Jenna seemed to feel better, because she went right to sleep and didn’t wake up for about 12 hours.

At Build-A-Bear with Mom and Grandma

And that isn’t the only trouble she’s been causing lately. It seems that Jenna is as smart as she is portly, and she has figured out how to use temper tantrums to express her displeasure. While sometimes cute, they can also be a little embarrassing. One of Jenna’s favorite things to do while shopping with Mom is to push the carts around the stores. It is pretty funny to watch, because she works very hard and refuses to stop pushing, even when she has hit an obstacle or you are holding onto the cart. So when the shopping trip is over and Lix is in the checkout line, she has to make Jenna stop pushing, which triggers ear-piercing shrieks from Jenna and prompts all kinds of disapproving, judgmental stares from nearby shoppers who seem to be wondering why this lady can’t control her little rat.

But for now the little rat and her mom are enjoying the West and Jarom is seeing what his life would be like if her were still single. He keeps trying to pick up women, but has yet to have any success. Maybe he should start wearing his wedding ring, I hear that sometimes helps. Enjoy the amusing series of video clips of Jenna trying to ride her car.

Happy Birthday, Sam!

This week the Winns celebrated cuatro de Julio in style, by inviting themselves to a party being thrown by a family in the ward who was far too nice to tell them they couldn’t come. Said party took place at a house, not a van, down by the river. There was a pool where Jenna could splash about with the many other children who came, more food than you could shake a stick at, and most importantly, a boat and two jet skis. Jarom is always enthusiastic when it comes to water sports, Alixa not so much. But he was able to convince her to join him for a run on the tube, something she can usually not be convinced to do as a result of her fear of skipping across bodies of water. She handled herself superbly, thanks to some fine coaching from Jarom on how to lean into the turns. They stayed on for a minute or two until Lix decided that her arms had had enough and simply let go. They boated and jetskied and swam and chatted the afternoon away, staying until Jenna was exhausted and letting her sleep on the drive back home.


This dog had asthma, which is why it sounds like a pig. Jenna thought it was a hoot and followed it around all day long.

Trying to get a drink from mom

Photographic evidence of child abuse

This week also had two photo shoots, as Lix tried her best to get some cute shots of Jenna near her first birthday. The first round was with her cousin Kenna, and they did not go well. Kenna did fine, but Jenna was a grumpopotamus and almost all of the pictures show her biting her lower lip and giving the photographer a stern, almost angry look. So we gave it another shot a few days later, and the results were far superior. http://searsphotos.com/SessionLink.ashx?n=S41445R1112171&p=KNHCM. Here is the link. You can check them out, if you want.



We continue to love Richmond and are feeling more and more at home as time passes. We are even becoming better friends with some of the neighbors. The Waterses live next door and have been pleasant and helpful as we’ve moved in, so we’ve selected them to become friends with. They are a young couple with no kids, he’s a fireman and she’s a nurse, so we figure that covers a few bases should any kind of emergency occur.



Jenna continues to entertain us on a daily basis. She has learned to identify a variety of animals in the books that she reads 50 times a day, and Alixa is working on her animal sounds. She makes a distinct duck sound and cow sound and will do them on command pretty much any time, unless of course mom or dad are trying to get her to show someone else. Then she just looks at them like they are crazy and won’t open her mouth. Mostly she just won’t stop walking around, whether it is through the mall or at the children’s museum or simply taking laps around the rooms in the house. She is pretty good, but still wobbly enough that it is fun to watch.

On our shopping trip to JCPenney she went straight for the jewelry. Just like her mom.

Trying on some accessories

Reading a magazine in her new "big girl" forward facing car seat

Little Drummer Girl

I know this is starting to sound like a broken record, but Jenna has once again smashed up her face. This time she hit her right eye, so she now has one black eye on the way out and one on the way in. My theory is that she very much enjoys doing her animal impersonations, and is trying to look like a panda.

Poor little girl

Other than the child abuse, Jenna’s first week as a one-year-old has been a great one. She got lots of wonderful toys for her birthday, from cousins and grandmas and parents and friends, and she says thank you to all of you who thought of her. Her biggest present is a Fisher-Price barn thing with a whole bunch of buttons to push and games to play. Several of the buttons play music, which is sung by the official Fisher-Price song lady, who Jenna has heard about a gazillion times. But for some reason the first time Jarom set her down to play with the toy she heard that voice and began to sob uncontrollably. It was kinda sad, but also hilarious. For a few hours she wavered between loving her new toy and being deathly afraid of it, but she seems to have gotten over it and is currently working on mastering all of the tricks on the barn. She also got some musical instruments, much to her parent’s delight. She particularly enjoys banging on the drum and shaking the maracas.

She's learning what sound a cow makes

Lix made a cake for Jenna to enjoy, with the hope that she would dig into it and we could get some cute pictures of the kid with food all over her face. I’m not entirely sure why Lix thought that was going to happen, since Jenna has always been the least messy child we’ve ever met, but she did. She was sorely disappointed as Jenna simply looked at the cake in front of her and patiently waited for Jarom to give her some spoonfuls. Nate and Kenz and Kenna came over to help us celebrate, and it was pretty fun in spite of the cleanliness.

That cake might as well be radioactive as far as she is concerned

On Sunday Jenna got to wear her tutu to church, much to the delight of the older ladies in Relief Society. I feel a little bad for the teachers in the classes she attends, because people (including her parents) seem to have a hard time paying attention to the lessons whenever Jenna and Kenna are playing nearby. Also at church, Lix got pulled aside and assigned to speak in a few weeks, so we are all very excited for that.

With her new baby doll. Don't worry, she is giving it kisses, not trying to eat its head.

The birthdays continued all week long, with Kenz turning 26 (I think) and Bruce turning 75 (I think) on Monday, and Kenna reaching the one year mark on Wednesday. So most of the week was spent making desserts and attending parties. Both kidlets are very excited about each other’s presents, and it is a great situation because they both essentially get twice as many presents since they share everything anyway. Mixed in with all the celebrations was a trip to the doctor, where Jenna got some shots and a finger pricked. It made her sad and tired and grumpy for a day or two, but I suppose that is better than dying from M, M, or R. Yea for modern medicine!

Bath time is still one of her favorite times of the day

The heat finally broke this week and the weather has been gorgeous. Since it isn’t sweltering, there were no pool visits, but we did get a membership to the Children’s Museum of Richmond and Lix took Jenna there a couple of times. It is basically a giant play area, which is awesome. Some of the games are aimed at kids a little older than Jenna, but she enjoys watching the other kids and there are plenty of things that she can do. Between the museum and pools, Lix should be set to beat the heat of July and August.

Working out at home

Yesterday the Winns took a field trip to the park to enjoy the wonderful weather outside. There were lots of dogs for Jenna to pet, lots of ducks for Jenna to feed (although they didn’t eat because they are woefully overfed), and a big grass field for her to walk around. She is becoming very health conscious and found some weights that a local exercise group had left out while they did some running. She couldn’t quite lift them by herself, but her dad was happy to give her a spot and she had a great time working out.

Working out at the park

I hope you all have a great time celebrating America’s birthday, just be careful to not blow your hands off with fireworks!