Birthdays, birthdays, and more birthdays

Spring is a busy time for aging around this house. We usually stop celebrating Alixa’s birthday (February 2) sometime in late March, which is also about the time she starts talking about her half-birthday that is coming up. And since her next birthday is a big one (3-0) she is already dropping hints about the blowout extravaganza surprise gala that she expects Jarom to put together. She is going to be very disappointed. But there are also some real birthdays to celebrate.

 Jenna likes to pose these days

On April 5^th our sweet, fat, little Emily finally made it through her first 365 days. It really doesn’t seem that long ago that Alixa had to miss Disney on Ice because she had started labor. To commemorate the event Alixa actually attended Disney on Ice with Jenna and Bo and had a blast. The kids liked it too. For Emmy’s actual birthday Jarom and Alixa left the kids with Mimi and went to play a round of golf with Opa. That evening Jenna had a night soccer game and scored her first goal, which Alixa missed. She has since scored a few more and is very pleased with herself. Emily’s party took place the day after her birthday, because she is 1 and has no concept of birthdays and doesn’t even care a little bit. We had a few of her favorite people come over for cupcakes and ice cream and to watch the older kids open her presents for her. It was a great time.

Emily is currently our happiest child, and almost always has a giant smile on her face. Unless she is hungry. Don’t mess with her when she is hungry. She crawls around everywhere these days, and is quite speedy. She goes up the stairs easily and is figuring out how to go down them. Her first thought was to just fall down them, but she realized that hurts, so now she is trying a foot-first technique that is admittedly slower, but doesn’t have the same bad aftertaste. She is starting to stand by herself and take a step here and there, so we think she will probably be walking pretty soon. She gives great kisses and is always excited to see you, which just makes you feel great every time. We sure are glad she is part of our little family.

This past month we also had a visit from our friends Heather and Denver and their little girl. They came in for a few days and it was great to see them. The highlight of their visit was probably the trip to Fort Worth to see the stockyards. The kids got to watch a “real” cattle drive down the street and see a great petting zoo and generally experience the Texas you might imagine as a caricature. Lots of y’alls and boots and animals and jokes about Obamacare.

Lix is going full swing into her calling in our new ward as the party planner, and threw a great Easter Egg Hunt/Pancake breakfast recently. She is still working on the logistics of these events. She purchased 6 giant syrup containers from Costco for it, and we left for home with about ½ of one bottle used. But everyone had a great time and the Easter egg hunt was a blast for all the little kids.

On the sports front Alixa wrapped up her regular season in the volleyball league she is playing in, and her team was the champion. So she gets a t-shirt. She has had a lot of fun playing and will probably do it again in the future. Both Alixa and Jarom are playing softball, and while that team is not in any danger of winning any championships, it can still be fun. Jarom even recently hit an over-the-fence homerun, something that rarely happens. Alixa was probably more impressed with that than she has been with any other athletic feat Jarom has ever done. Jarom is also teaching some private lacrosse lessons in exchange for some electrical work in the kitchen, so most Tuesday evenings the whole family goes to a nearby park where Jarom yells at Zach Ogden and Bo and Jenna play soccer and run around while Alixa and Emmy lounge on a blanket. The weather this month has been wonderful, so nobody is complaining. Except maybe Zach.

 Jarom got some childhood toys from his mom and built some things for the kids

 At Disney on Ice after a one year wait

It pains me to talk about this, but the story should probably be told. A short while ago the Ogdens were over for dinner and someone asked to hold me. At some point I got handed to Rob, who I am really not fond of. I thought about biting him, but really wanted to avoid touching him as much as possible, so instead I went to the bathroom on him. This was not my most well thought out plan, as it also sort of ruined the area rug in the family room. I do feel bad about that. Alixa tried to clean it, but was unable to get the smell out, so we sold it on craigslist. And now we have a new, yellow area rug in there. The best side effect of all this is that we needed to purchase a new yellow bird to go on the mantle to match the new rug. Jarom just loves decorative birds. They are his favorite.

And on April 21, our little Blake Owen finally finished with the terrible twos. The transformation out of being a whiny, overly emotional, troublesome toddler hasn’t exactly been instantaneous. But as difficult as he can be sometimes he is just as cute and fun at other times. He loves to run around and play with his sisters, both big and little. He loves his cars more than just about anything. He is very particular about how he gets put to bed. He has two blankets, one of which must be on him and the other has to be nearby. He lays on Tank (a pillowpet) while Stitch (another pillowpet) lays on top of him. Jarom usually has to lay by him, and there is a nightly negotiation about how many minutes he should stay there. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, and he will come in to Mom and Dad’s room and stand next to one of them and lightly rub their pillow until they wake up, never saying anything until they speak to him first. We are also very glad that he is part of our little family. Even though sometimes we want to kill him. Bo got to choose what he wanted to do for his birthday and he chose Gatti Town, a Chuck-E-Cheese style place. A few friends came, some pizza was had, and some games were played. It was pretty awesome. And he got some cool new trucks and a Lightning McQueen bike as presents, so it doesn’t get much better than that.

Magical Kingdoms, Magical phones

I know it seems as though it has been forever since the last post here at the corner. It has. The reason for that delay is that everyone here at the house has gotten new phones, and now everyone is too preoccupied to get anything done. Alixa managed to keep her iPhone 4s for 2 years without breaking it, and rewarded herself with a new 5s. She chose the gold color, and just keeps rambling about how amazing it is to have an extra row of apps on her screen. Jarom on the other hand threw in the towel on his fight against progress. As many of you know, Jarom hasn’t ever had a smartphone. In fact, he didn’t even have text messaging enabled on his dumb phone. He claims that this was in order to save money, but deep down it was really because he was afraid that nobody would text him and he would have to face the reality of what a big loser he is. But a great guy at work offered to give him an old iPhone 4 for no charge, and he hooked himself up with a prepaid plan that only costs $25 a month, so his inner cheapskate left his behind in the past and has leapt into the world of emojis and pinterest and Instagram. Ironically, he now has unlimited texts and limited voice minutes, so he has become a prolific texter. He is like the Saul of Tarsus of text messaging.

When I last wrote to you all the crew was headed off to Orlando for a memorable week at Disneyworld. It already seems like ages ago, but it was an amazing trip. All of Jarom’s family was there, which is a lot of people. They were able to spend a day at Epcot, a day at the Magic Kingdom, another at Hollywood Studios and the last one at Animal Kingdom. Epcot and Magic Kingdom were the favorites, although the best single ride may have been the car stunt show at Hollywood Studios that came complete with a visit from Lightning McQueen. Bo was sobbing at the end because he didn’t want to leave. As anyone who has been to Disney knows, the rides are okay but the real treat is the general experience and the details. Every facet of that place is meticulously planned and designed to create a memorable experience. From the shows to the rides to the lines and the characters, it was one cool thing after another. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

 

After a wonderful week at Disney Jarom had to come back to Dallas for work. Alixa decided to take full advantage of still having no job and no kids in school and headed up to Delaware for another 10 days. She and the kids were rewarded with snowfall after snowfall, which they turned into fun days sledding and making all manner of snow creatures. She got to see her east coast friends that we don’t get to see nearly as often as we would like, and a few new houses that some people have recently purchased. All that new house seeing only served to ramp up her normal level of house hunting and she has been in overdrive lately trying to get Jarom to approve the purchase of a new home. As she said at dinner last night, “I just can’t see how we are going to be able to fit in our house. It just won’t work.” Oh boy.

Upon her return to Texas Alixa was greeted with the news that we would once again be heading to a new ward. This time the stake redrew the boundaries of 3 units to make 4, and we are in the entirely new ward. The first week the only callings were the bishopric. The next week there were all the presidents, followed by the complete presidencies, and now we even have teachers and piano players and the like. It has been interesting. Alixa has handled this transition much better than the last one, which was famously terrible. When the announcement came down everyone immediately came to her to see how she was holding up. Alixa is apparently known across several wards as “the girl who cries when ward boundaries get changed.” She was asked to put together a meet and greet style activity the first week and it was a big success, and has now been called to run activity days for the 9-year old girls. We will miss the folks that we left, and we will be sad that we won’t be seeing them as much as we did, but we’ll be okay. The new ward is much smaller, which has been nice. Jarom and the kids showed up about 2 minutes late last Sunday and were still able to get a seat on a pew. That never happened before.

Jenna is playing soccer, and it is going as well as you could hope for a 4-year old playing soccer. She hops and dances and skips around the field. Sometimes she kicks the ball, and sometimes she even kicks it in the right direction. Her games are pretty fun to watch, not because any of the girls can play but because they are all about 60% clueless about what they are supposed to be doing. Bo goes to all her practices and plays with Jarom, and I think he is actually better at soccer than his sister. Emmy is crawling everywhere and seems to be very interested in walking, which she’ll probably be doing soon. She can go up the stairs, but hasn’t quite mastered going down, which is dangerous, especially because she is quick and can vanish instantly. She is as smiley and happy as ever, even though she spent a good part of February with the flu and an ear infection. Alixa is playing in a rec volleyball league, which she loves. Jarom hasn’t had a chance to go watch her yet, but you better believe there will be some video as soon as he does. Way to go, new old iPhone.

Kids eating limes. Always funny.