Mario Party

Can you believe Jake is turning 4 this week?  He had a pretty rad combined birthday party with one of his best friends, Spencer over the weekend.  The two of them are just five days apart, so Tawnya and I teamed up to throw a Super Mario Bros. birthday party for these two Mario maniacs.

Some of the decorations:

We had all the kids make their own Yoshi treat bags to fill with goodies to take home.  They each wrote their names on their bags, and Jake, of course, wrote, "Mario."  Nice.

Then we played Star Power Coin walk (i.e. a cake walk where they got chocolate coins to put in their bags).

Next we played "Rescue Princess from Bowser" by taking the kids on a treasure hunt to find Princess. Along the way they had to get their "fire power" (balloons) and shoot at the goombas.  It was pretty adorable:

Then we fed the kids lunch (of course, the dads apparently thought it was necessary that they should try it out before we gave any to the kids):

We ate goomba cupcakes:

 And blew out candles on the Mario cake (made by yours truly...I'm a little proud of myself):

Then we let the kids play together and called it a day!  They had an absolute blast!!  The best part about throwing combined birthday parties is that I only had to do half of the work!  A win-win in my book any day.

I can be obedient

Jake and I have been working on obedience lately.  I was getting so tired of saying, "Jake, don't do this," and, "Jake, don't do that."  I decided instead of telling him NOT to do things that I should take a more positive spin and reward him for doing things that he should.  Thus, our experiment with the Obedience Chart came to be.  Whenever Jake was obedient, he could put a star on his chart, and when he filled up his chart we were going to take him to the ice cream shop!  

The verdict: HUGE success!!  For both of us.  Jake loved putting the star stickers on his chart, and would often ask me to ask him to do something just so he could be obedient.  It was not uncommon for him to say things like, "Mommy, I wanna be more 'bedient, can I clean my room?" or, "Mommy, I wanna be more 'bedient, can I share my toys with Eli?"  Ummm...yes!

It took about two weeks until he finally completed his chart.  We were so proud of him and now we need to make a new chart up.  His next reward?  Ice skating (he chose it).  We'll see how it goes!   

Anticlimactic? Maybe...

I said a few weeks ago that we may have an announcement on where we’ll be moving after dental school pretty soon, and guess what?  That day is here!  The contract is officially signed and we can now shout from the rooftops where we're going.  I know you’ve been sitting on the edge of your seats just bursting with anticipation trying to guess where in the world we’ll be. 

DRUMROLL PLEASE….

We’re moving to…Ottumwa, IA!!!

No, I’m not kidding!  Ok…I realize it's a little anticlimactic, but we’re really moving to Ottumwa.  I know!  Where is it?  Umm…the middle of nowhere, Iowa.  What’s that?  You heard me say I would never live in Iowa?  Not in a million years?  Anywhere BUT Iowa?  Oh yeah, I guess I did say that…

Ottumwa, IA is literally the LAST place I thought we would be after dental school.  And yes, I really did say multiple times that I didn’t care where we ended up, just as long as it wasn’t in Iowa.  Don’t get me wrong; I’ve loved our time here.  But I’m also ready to move on to bigger and better (read: warmer) things.  So when this opportunity presented itself, my first impulse was, “Yeah, right!”  However, as we looked at the town and the opportunity a little more, my view started to change.

Joseph is going to be working in a public health clinic where they are desperate for a Spanish-speaking dentist.  They really love him there, and he loves the clinic.  It is a really nice set-up they’ve got going on, and, most importantly (for me at least), by working in this particular clinic he will qualify for federal loan repayment.  How can you turn that down??  Answer: You can't! 

Anyway, we're really excited!  We don't know how long we'll be there or what the future holds for us exactly, but we know that we've been blessed with this opportunity for now, and we're taking it and running with it.  Now, we're in the process of looking for homes (OUR FIRST HOME!!) and researching schools and all that fun stuff that you do when moving to a brand new place.  It is quite a relief to know where we'll be, and we're excited to start the next chapter.  Now, all Joseph has to do is graduate!!

The Name Game

For a few months now, Jake has been learning how to write his name.  He's always wanted me to guide his hand along his paper until just the past few days when he finally decided he could do it all by himself (he's a major perfectionist).  When he was done, he looked at the paper, then looked at me and exclaimed, "Wow, that's a BIG K!" He was so proud of himself that he wanted to take a picture and put it on the blog for all to see!

I'm a little bit proud, too.  :)

Snow much fun

What do you do when there's a fresh snow outside just calling your name?  Why, get some neighborhood kids together and go sledding, of course!  

 

Some of us played a little too hard...

A good time was had by all, and all it took was a little hot chocolate to thaw our frozen appendages. Not a bad way to spend a snowy afternoon!

Writer's block

I wouldn't label myself a "writer" but I seem to have a case of writer's block lately.  I have had about ten million thoughts jumbled up in my head, but have found no coherent way of putting them together to form any sort of blog post that is anything but terribly boring...or confusing.  But since I've been reminded (reprimanded) by multiple people to update my blog, what you will get instead of a beautifully written, poignant, and insightful post (alright, let's be honest, I don't know if any of my posts have been any of those things) what you will get instead is a snapshot of a few of my thoughts.  You can fill in the rest with something witty, clever, or at least somewhat interesting from your own mind.

1.  We had a pretty good snowstorm a little while ago.  I had to shovel the driveway in order to get out of the house, and did so while it was still snowing.  After all that work, I turned around when I was done and it all needed to be shoveled again.  It reminded me of a quote that hangs in my parent's laundry room that says, "Cleaning a house while children are growing is like shoveling a sidewalk while it's still snowing." To be honest, I never quite understood it when I was growing up.  I get it now.  And I hate it.

2.  Jake needed to be reprimanded the other day (ok, like every day, but this one stood out).  I said, "Jacob Dougherty!  Knock it off!" and he replied with, "Mom, I'm not 'ob I'm just Jake!  I'm Jake Dennis Dougherty!"  We have a little name confusion at our house.

3.  We're moving soon.  It makes me sad to think about.  In fact, I can't write any more about this because my thoughts are still a mess and things are still developing.  But, we may have a destination as to where we'll be spending at least the next few years pretty soon (insert excited/frantic scream).  

4.  Other than the occasional snowstorm, this winter has been fabulous!  I had always said I wanted to get out of Iowa when Joseph graduated, but after this winter I am starting to think maybe I could stay here after all.

There you have at least a few of my thoughts.  Non-coherent, jumbled, messy thoughts.  But, hey, you (or at least some of you) asked for it!

And for those of you who only check out my blog for pictures, I just found these pictures of  Jake having fun with Photo Booth on the computer.  I didn't know he had taken any of these:

I don't know what's going on with the open mouth...cracks me up though!

Home again

I'm back!  And what a vacation!  I hope that you all had as wonderful a Christmas break as I had.  We went to Michigan this year and had Christmas with my side of the family.  It has been about 4 years since we've been in Michigan for Christmas so you can imagine how excited I was (answer: very!) In fact, I really have too much to blog about, so I'm just going to give a quick snapshot of what our Christmas looked like.

There was lots of trains being played with cousins:

Lots of chillin' with aunts, uncles, and grandparents:

In fact, there was lots of just chillin' in general:

We ate LOTS of food:

We read stories:

We opened gifts:

Had LOTS to clean up from opening gifts:

 We went to the Midland Santa House:

We tried unsuccessfully to take one decent family picture:

 Grandma and Jake built a snowman:

We built a gingerbread train:

Eli enjoyed watching the action, as well as getting the occasional taste of frosting:

We celebrated Eli's Birthday (can you tell he was fascinated with that candle?):

Finally, we rang in the New Year with each other (minus Joseph who had to spend his break pulling teeth at the dental school.)

It was great being able to spend time with my family.  We miss them already!  No wonder we all love Christmas.  It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.