The most wonderful time of the year

It had been a little while since that storm blew down our fence in the back yard and Bo and Jenna would frequently remind Jarom that it was still broken while sitting at the kitchen table. So a few weeks ago Jarom enlisted the help of his brother Nate to put in some new fence posts and reattach the segments that had come down. Putting stuff up was actually the easy part of the task. The difficult part was digging up the old posts that were set in about 2 feet of concrete. It took several hours of digging to finally get them out. There are still a couple of slats that need to go back up, but at least it is repaired enough to keep the HOA off our backs.

Emmy isn't as excited about this as Bo is 

Sometimes Bo wants an applesauce and nobody is around to help him get it

Our friend and occasional babysitter Kelsie Ogden has started to take up photography so we decided to be her subjects for a school project and get some low cost family pictures at the same time. You may have noticed some of them on the sidebar. At one point during the photoshoot it became apparent that Jarom was really bringing the picture quality down, so he was asked to simply turn around. That way he was still technically in the photo without having the chance to ruin it. Apparently that is his good side.

To complement the new fence and family photos, Jarom decided to get a new job. Well, he didn’t so much decide to get a new job as much as he was forced out of his old one by his jerkface brother. A few months ago Jarom and Nate were working happily side by side as coworkers on the same team. But then their manager left for another position. Nate applied for it and was offered the job. Good for him, but unfortunately Parkland has a corporate policy that prohibits anyone from directly reporting to a family member, which means that Nate’s first act as team manager was to fire Jarom. Bad for Jarom, but it should keep all the other employees in line. They did actually try to figure out a way to keep him around through some convoluted reporting scenario, but HR wouldn’t have any of it. So in the end Jarom got moved to the Health Information Management team, where he will continue working on some of the projects that he is in the middle of and will start to learn some new things as well. Jarom is handling the transition pretty well. Alixa is currently holding a little bit of resentment towards Nate, but that should dissipate over time.

 All set for a long car ride

The trip was worth it for this alone 

And she didn’t have much time to feel bad for herself, because while all this was happening there was a very tragic passing of an old family friend in Atlanta, the man who was Alixa’s bishop while she was growing up. Alixa and her mom decided to make the 12-hour drive to Atlanta for the weekend to attend the funeral. While nobody was happy about the circumstances surrounding the visit, it was nonetheless good to get back and see so many of her friends from the past. They took Bo and Jenna with them, leaving Emily and Jarom. They split the drive into two days because Jarom wasn’t with them and the ladies are sissies when it comes to driving. While in Georgia they got to stay at the Brooks’ house, which is a nice house built in front of an amazing back yard. There is a putting green, sand trap, a big hill, and lots of grass and trees to run around. Jenna and Bo could have stayed there for the rest of the year and still not get tired of it. They were great hosts and we are all very grateful for their kindness and generosity. While in town Lix took the kids to the house she grew up in, and the current owners were even nice enough to let them come in and take a tour. It is no longer pink and there were some other changes, like the removal of the beer that was hidden in the basement ceiling where Alixa’s older brother had his room. She also drove by her high school on the way to the funeral, where she ran into a concrete barrier on the side of the road and blew out a tire. A nice man who was jogging by helped her get the spare on, but she still missed the majority of the service. She got to attend her old ward on Sunday and see lots of familiar faces. On Monday before they packed up the van to head home Alixa dipped her toes into the CrossFit waters at a friend’s gym and loved it. The workout didn’t last very long, but she was sore for a few days after, and has since taken to doing the occasional Workout Of the Day here in Frisco.

 This is where Alixa grew up

 Donna Robbins, one of Alixa's favorite people

 Doing Crossfit with Lindsey

The best part of travelling? Continental breakfasts where you can have as many things as you want

When the plan to go to Atlanta was first hatched, the biggest problem was what to do with Emmy. Jarom would have to work on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, so some babysitting was needed. And in stepped Christie Halverson, who has been bugging Alixa for months to watch Emmy. The Halversons have some teenage kids, and they seemed to all fall in love with Emmy immediately. She took her baths in the hot tub, enjoyed hanging out in a house nicer than her own, and was only put down when it was time for her to sleep. The original plan was for Jarom to pick her up for the weekend, but when he called to make arrangements they asked if they could just hold on to her. Since Jarom isn’t great with the babysitting anyway, he was happy to oblige, although he did at least head over for some supervised visitation. He ended up picking Emmy up on Monday evening and working from home on Tuesday while he watched her. In his family’s absence he was able to get a few things done around the house. At the top of that list was Alixa’s request that he unclog the drain in her bathroom sink. It has been clogged since we moved in, but Alixa has never been able to muster the courage to deal with it, because it is clogged with other people’s hair and junk. She was wise to ask Jarom to do it while she was away, because it may have been the most disgusting thing he has ever done. He took apart the pipes under the sink, and had to pull/scrape out a whole lot of deteriorating, stinky clumps of hair and unidentifiable goop. But he didn’t throw up, and now the sink drains as it should.

October ended as it always does, with one of our favorite holidays and a bonfire with some friends. As usual here in Dallas on October 31, the weather was very warm during the day and cooled down to just about perfect by trick-or-treating time. This year Jenna went as Merida from Brave, complete with a functional bow and arrows and fire-red super curly hair. She looked perfect. Bo went as one of her little brothers that was transformed into a bear. It was a simple brown sweatsuit and a cute hat with ears. Lix tried to paint his nose, but he had a violent reaction to that. Emmy was a ballerina, although for trick-or-treating purposes she was just a passenger in a stroller. Alixa cut up and sewed a few shirts together and went as a rainbow. Before going out we had hotdogs and chips and roasted marshmallows in the firepit out back to make smores. This is the first year that Bo has really seemed to understand Halloween, and it is a lot of fun to watch. He couldn’t get over how awesome it was that everyone would just give him candy. And as is the case with any cute two-year old, they don’t just give you one candy but tell you to get as much as you want. In about half a block his bag was already too heavy for him to carry. So Jarom helped him out. All night he kept saying to Jarom “It’s such a nice night outside!” and he couldn’t have been more right. After getting more candy than they could ever eat Jenna and Jarom  went through the haunted house that our neighbors set up in their garage each year and then went back home to regift some of their haul to the trick-or-treaters who rang our door.

 Ballerina

 Rainbow

 Merida

 The whole crew

 A little brown bear

The kids got to bed late that night, although that didn’t change the time that Bo woke up and came into Mom and Dad’s room in the morning. He asked for breakfast and was told by Lix that he would have to wait until Jenna got up. He walked away, and Lix assumed he was going into the toy room to play as he usually does. A minute later she started to hear yelling from the kids’ room. “Jenna, wake up!! Jenna, time to wake up!! Wake up, Jenna!!!” She hustled in there and found Bo at the top of the ladder, driving a car on Jenna’s back and yelling at her. Jenna was still asleep. I guess that’s what happens when you tell a little boy that breakfast will be served as soon as his sister is awake. Those two have the most hilarious interactions these days. They are the best of friends, but fight often. They love each other, but try hard to annoy each other as much as they can. Today after church they were playing in the other room while Jarom and Alixa sat at the kitchen table. Both parents’ heads perked up when they heard this exchange, and they just looked at each other and laughed.

Bo: Jenna Marie, you put this headband on right now!

Jenna: You’re not my dad, you can’t tell me what to do!

It went on for a few minutes, but was just more of the same. Mostly it was funny that Bo middle-named Jenna. It sure isn’t dull having these three hoodlums around here and watching them grow up. 

 Carving pumpkins (unsuccessfully) and eating apples (even less successfully)

Running

We’ve had some fun things going on around here lately. Mostly they involve being outside in the amazing fall weather here in Dallas, which is always a sweet treat after the summer heat finally goes away. First up was a family golf outing. Alixa and Jarom made PJ watch the kids while Mario took them on a 90 minute drive that ended at a beautiful and mostly empty golf course situated on a tree farm outside of Dallas. They had a great time with the course basically to themselves, and finished up while the sun was setting over some beautiful East Texas scenery. Neither Jarom nor Alixa played particularly well, but it didn’t seem to matter much.

 From the annual trip to the pumpkin patch

  

Alixa subbed on a rec league softball team a few weeks ago and was so amazing that they asked her to be a regular member of the team. So she is doing that every Friday night. Last week they planned a date night where Jarom would watch her softball game and then they would go to a high school football game. Things did not go as planned. When they arrived they found out that there were not enough men to play, so Jarom was recruited. But he did not bring a glove and was dressed up for his date. Fortunately, when Jarom is dressed up he is still wearing sneakers and shorts, so it wasn’t too big a deal to just trade in his polo for a t-shirt. There was also a big to do about everyone on the team having the right color shirt. As a result of that Alixa had to trade shirts with a 7-year old. Alixa has been doing a really amazing job of dropping weight, but no amount of Insanity or Turbo Kick Boxing was going to get her comfortably into a shirt that said “Excited about 2^nd grade”. But she got it on, and just had to run around the bases while holding it so it didn’t creep up too high. The game was a blowout, highlighted by Jarom getting all the way around the bases twice and Alixa getting pegged in the back going from 2^nd to 3^rd base. Then it was off the stadium to root for Wakeland. It had been about a decade since Jarom had been to a high school game, and it was fun to watch. He also got to share some of extremely nerdy marching band knowledge with his wife and friends. They promptly made fun of him. After getting some ice cream he dropped Alixa off at home and headed to the airport to pick up his cousin Kyle. It’s always nice to see Kyle, but it was especially nice this time because he had flown in some Café Rio from the SLC airport for Alixa. She was already asleep when he got home, but it was the perfect post race lunch to reward her for her great performance the next day.

 Alixa has resurrected her recipe club, and learned how to take panoramic pics with her phone

 Every morning Bo now goes downstairs to get his breakfast

Which brings us to the best thing that has happened recently, the Friends of Frisco 5k. This race is organized by one of Alixa’s favorite people and the proceeds went to support a local charity that the Winns are glad to support. Jarom and Alixa signed up for the 5k, and Jenna was super excited for her big race, a 1 mile fun run. Jarom has gone on a few training runs with her, and while she had never done a full mile without at least a few walk breaks she had done very well. However, the moment she found herself in a competitive environment a switch flipped. All of a sudden she had a mean look in her eyes and was ready to go. She took off as soon as the starter said go and never let up. Jarom was shocked at the pace she was setting, and thought about telling her to slow down a bit but decided to just see what happened. Not only did she not slow down, she would get mad when other people would pass her and speed up to try and pass them back. As we rounded the final turn and saw the finish line she said “Daddy, I’ve got to win” and turned on the jets for the last few hundred feet. The fun run began at 8:03 and she crossed the finish line at 8:11. We didn’t time it exactly because nobody was expecting her to do as well as she did. An 8-minute mile seemed a little fast, so Jarom mapped out the course and found that it is actually only .93 miles, so her pace was probably closer to 9 min/mile, but everyone was amazed. And she wasn’t even tired. When Jarom and Alixa took off on their run Jenna occupied herself by running up and down the small hills near the finish line.

Alixa was just as impressive. She also gets pretty intense and competitive and doesn’t like it when people pass her. Jarom’s plan was to run with her or just behind her until the last tenth of a mile and then pass her at the finish line. The plan was working really well until about the 2 mile mark. That’s when all of the not running that Jarom has been doing over the past few months started to kick in, and Lix began to pull away. She ended up finishing at 25:36, with Jarom floundering in 47 seconds later. We stuck around for a few minutes afterwards to enjoy the DJ, get Jenna’s face painted, and check the results. And boy were we glad we did, because standing atop the podium for the Female 25 to 29 age group is your 2013 champion, Alixa Winn. She got a cool little medal and was rightfully very proud. It was a great time and we will probably turn this into an annual event, especially for the kids. And while those three were running Bo got to spend a fun morning with Opa and Emily got to watch hunting shows with her good buddy Adam, so everyone had a pretty good day.

It's a good thing she can run fast, because gymnastics is not going to be her thing

End of summer

We are going through some important stages right now at the house. Emily is learning to sleep through the night without having a bottle, which means that she spends a lot of time crying, which means that Alixa spends a lot of time not sleeping. Bo is getting ready to begin potty training and also recently lost his binky privileges, which means that he spends a lot of time crying/getting out of bed to cause trouble. Jenna has recently begun her final year of non-school school, which consists of a twice weekly co-op of about 10 kids. She is gone for about 4 hours, including eating lunch. Next year she will begin kindergarten, which will be accompanied by lots of Lixi tears. In preparation for that, Lix has spent a lot of time crying and generally bemoaning the fact that her baby is getting all growed up. Between the combination of two kids that are sleeping less and crying more and the fact that she is sleeping less and crying more, please don’t take it personally if you do or say something near Alixa and she threatens to punch you in the face. As of this writing she has yet to follow through with any of her threats, but there is a palpable sense of fear that hovers around Jarom these days, ironically mostly when he has good things to say, such as “Emmy took a four-hour nap for me today” or “Bo has been so nice while you were gone.”

 These aren't functional yet, but soon

The end of the summer was celebrated by Jarom turning 32. Alixa arranged for a party on the water with some friends who have a boat. There was some wakeboarding, some tubing, and general merriment. Jarom continues to try wakeboarding, but still isn’t very good at it, and did take one particularly rough fall that smacked his face up pretty good. I guess that is why they don’t recommend teaching old dogs new tricks. But at least he was able to get out of the water, which is more than Nate or Alixa were able to do (insert face punching threat here.) There were also some highly amusing and very fun tubing battles. After boating for a few hours the group got some dinner and Jarom got some Chipotle gift cards so that he could go out for lunch a few times. It was a great way to celebrate getting old.

I haven't put a picture of myself in here for a while, so here I am

Jarom’s other birthday present is a new bed, which Alixa was kind enough to pick out for him. It is a king sized, which was the major requirement that Alixa had. She has already adjusted to the expanded space and already wants a bigger bed, because she too often comes in contact with Jarom. The new purchase has also caused some furniture rearrangement as the old bed moved into the guest room and the futon got sold to a nice home on a farm outside the city. Kyle stopped by on his way down to Austin to test it out, and the initial review is that it is an improvement in terms of comfort. The new bed makes for fewer monkeys falling off the bed and bonking their head. It also means that we can get other new things like bed skirts, and bed spreads, and everyone’s favorite useless decoration, pillow shams.

These rats don't get a new bed, because this sleepover only lasted about 20 minutes

Emmy is as fat as ever, and recently moved up to rice cereal to augment her enormous calorie intake. She is currently outgrowing her 6-9 month clothes as she approaches the 6-month mark. She is very smiley and loves being around other people. She is rolling over and scooting a little bit, and has recently begun practicing balancing on Jarom’s hand. She still isn’t a very good napper, but the complaints we have against her are pretty limited.

 This is usually what Emily looks like

But not always

Alixa stays busy being a mom and is currently in training for her cruise with Jarom, scheduled for January. She has adopted #nofatties as her slogan and throws it around all the time. To help her on her quest she recently participated in a mud run with some friends, has another 5k race scheduled in October, and usually won’t leave the gym until she has burned 1000 calories. It is all working because she keeps losing weight and looks great. Jarom has been pretty good about going to gym since all of his summer sports wrapped up, and gets there 3 times most weeks. His weight loss isn’t as good as Alixa’s because he is not as interested in dietary change, so we’ll see if he is allowed on the cruise or not.

Done for the day #nofatties 

Bo has somehow turned into a boy over the past month. All he ever wants to do now is fight or play with a ball. He can constantly be heard making fighting noises to accompany his array of karate chops and kicks and leaping tackles. Jenna is his primary foe. Sometimes she is willing, sometimes she is not. We’ve had a lot of discussions about when it is acceptable to wrestle with someone and when it is not. I’m not sure it is sinking in because Bo thinks that any time is a good time to start a fight. His favorite seems to be pillow fighting on the new giant bed. He isn’t very good, but in a pillow fight it is equally fun whether you are winning or losing. He has a new stuffed animal, Binky Bear, and after a rough first week has settled in without his longtime sleep aids nicely.

 It was a big day: tower building and saying goodbye to his binkies

 He loves his "littlecrosse" shirt

Jenna is having a great time with her new school year. She loves learning and doing crafts and all the things that she gets to do there. Her biggest challenge is finishing her lunch in the allotted time. She is also doing some other activities. She has been doing a gymnastics class each Monday for the past month and is having a great time. I don’t think there is an Olympic medal in her future, but it’s a good time. She is also signed up for an art class that will be starting soon. She will be running in her first official race in a few weeks, a 1-mile color run. She has done a little bit of training with Jarom. She doesn’t run the whole thing without walking, but she does pretty well.

  

OBX

The very funny comedian Jim Gaffigan says that if you want to know what it is like to have a fourth child, imagine you are drowning…and then someone hands you a baby. Since there are currently only three children here in this house, that means that we are in the drowning stage. Sounds about right. Having this third kid has been an incredible challenge. And not because any of the three of them have been particularly troublesome. Taken individually, Jenna, Bo, and Emily are all really good kids. Sure they have their challenging quirks, whether it is Emmy’s refusal to take a nap, Bo’s schizophrenia, or Jenna’s inability to eat even the smallest of snacks in less than 90 minutes. But by themselves none of those things are such a big deal. However, putting them together is like assembling some sort of Voltronic superchallenge that can’t be defeated. Alixa is a trooper and seems to be handling the challenge much better than Jarom, to the point that she is still convinced that she would like to have someone hand her that baby while she is drowning. Jarom feels irritable and exhausted and at his wits end 24 hours a day now and can’t imagine a scenario where he would willingly add one more kiddo to the mix. In fact he has such a short fuse these days that he nearly killed his little sister in front of the rest of his family (more on that later.)

So when things are crazy and hectic at home with 3 kids under 5, what should you do? If you said put everybody into a car and drive for 26 hours to stay a week in a house that contains 2 dozen other small children, you are insane. That is what the Winns did, and they are insane. So on the afternoon of August 9^th Jarom and Alixa packed up the minivan, which had been purchased at least partly in preparation for this very trip, and headed east. The trip was split into three legs. Jarom and Alixa alternated driving. Jarom went first. The kids were pretty good and the van was a great set up. It had plenty of space and allowed Lix to sit in one of the captain’s chairs in the back with the little ones. They watched movies and played games on the iPad and took naps and asked if we were there yet. Jarom’s shift didn’t end until about 7:30 am on Saturday morning when they had just passed Knoxville. It was a long, lonely night trying not to fall asleep, and he did have to make a couple of pit stops just to get out and do a few wind sprints, but he stayed on the road and nobody died. They grabbed a quick breakfast at Cracker Barrel and then Lix took her turn while Jarom tended the kids, but mostly took a nap. At about 10 am Alixa informed Jarom that she was getting a little bit sleepy and asked if he could take over the driver seat once again. So the third leg began and went for another 9 hours or so, finally ending up in a torrential downpour while sitting on the highway 12 parking lot that led to their beach house.

The week was spent doing things that you might imagine: swimming in the pool, swimming in the ocean, building sand castles, burying people in the sand, playing football in the sand, chasing crabs in the sand, taking pictures in the sand, trying to stand up paddleboard on the stormiest day when the ocean was particularly choppy, playing a round of golf, chasing sand pipers into the surf, getting knocked over by the surf, crying because you got sand in your mouth, flying kites on the windy days, watching movies with cousins, trying to do a live draft with a dozen people for our fantasy football league, sitting in more traffic on highway 12, and trying to get all that sand out of everyone’s clothes. It was good fun. Arguably the best fun happened one evening as the family was preparing to play a board game. Depending on whom you ask you will get different versions of this story. You may check this version for accuracy with pretty much any Winn family member, as they were basically all there. It began with Nate throwing a wet paper towel at Alixa’s face (Nate usually omits that part when he tells this). A few minutes later Jarom tossed that same wet paper towel at Jamie to indicate to her that she can be done playing the cups now. From there it escalated rapidly. First Jamie retaliated with plastic cups that she had been using as musical instruments, but that wasn’t enough so she then threw a plastic water bottle that still had most of the water in it. Upon hitting Jarom’s face the top came off, soaking Alixa and Loni, who were sitting next to him. This upset Jarom and he got up and went around to the other side of the table to pour water on Jamie. I’ve heard this story a few times and while the adjectives change, most of them focus on Jarom’s “crazy eyes”, which must have scared Jamie because she tried to scamper away over the top of the table and ended up getting stuck in the chandelier. Jarom poured some water on Jamie, Nancy screamed at Jarom to stop it, Jamie commented that Jarom was going to end her life, and a general awkward silence ensued. The water was cleaned up, apologies were made, and at least as far as I am aware, everyone is okay now. It was the kind of incident that should probably have been saved for Thanksgiving, but the Winns aren’t usually together for that holiday.

At the end of the week the crew reluctantly crammed back into the van and took off for Richmond. They spent a day there visiting old friends and enjoying a leisurely drive down John Rolfe Parkway and by their old house, where they could still see the trash can that they left behind. It was at this point that Emmy started to really get sick and have great trouble breathing, which led to great trouble sleeping, which meant no sleep for Alixa and bad sleep for Jarom. Not ideal when you’ve got two long days on the road ahead of you. The one positive about the sleepless nights was that Emily did a great job of sleeping in the car while driving. They stopped for the night in Memphis on the way back and could not have been happier to pull into the driveway late Sunday afternoon. Jarom took the kids on a long walk to stretch their legs and tire them out a little bit and everyone was excited to be sleeping in their own beds again. Sadly, the illnesses that Emmy and then Alixa caught on the trip didn’t end when we got back to Texas. Lix has been a wandering zombie all week long as she tries to deal with the three kids while Jarom goes to work and even had a few days watching Kenna and Cali. She still isn’t over it.

And now everyone is getting ready to go back to school. We still have a year before Jenna leaves for official school, but Lix is already turning into a hot mess anytime she thinks about it. She’ll be doing a co-op preschool again this year which should be fun. Emily is rolling over every time you leave her alone, and is starting to look like she has interest in crawling, which doesn’t thrill Jarom. Bo is hilarious all the time, even when he is driving you crazy. Jarom finished up playing summer league lacrosse and had a great time. He and Alixa also finished up their rec league softball season, which was fun even though the team wasn’t a rousing success. Lix continues to drop pounds at an astounding rate, while Jarom holds steady at about 207. The real amazing story in the weight department goes to Emmy, who has moved from the 4^th percentile at birth up to the 90^th at 4 months. Take that, growth chart! Hopefully she’ll start to level off soon, although she is pretty cute for a fat kid.