We are leaving tomorrow to drive to Ohio (the title of this post is how Maggie refers to that state). I have a large mountain of tasks to accomplish before we leave, but since I probably won’t be posting while we are gone, I thought I’d take a few breaks today and try to get some pictures up.

Maggie also wanted me to show EVERYONE where we will be staying on the way to Grandma’s house. It’s actually just a Ramada Inn in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but check out Buccaneer Bay, located inside the hotel. Maggie has been yelling excitedly to everyone we talk to that we are going to the “slide pool!!!!!!”.

If you think of us, pray that Calvin decides to be kind to us during the drive. He’s a little unpredictable, so we don’t know if we’ll have happy baby or one that is really mad and screaming. If he gets too mad, maybe Maggie can intimidate him into stopping by giving this look…

posted by SKH

Yesterday I came home to find Maggie “playing winter.” She was wearing bright yellow mittens, a bright yellow beanie, a golden “fa’ncee” dress, and sunglasses to protect her eyes from glare. I did take a picture and maybe Mo will post it later.

But today’s getup required a short video. Wearing her new flip-flops, her sunglasses, her wedding dress, and her “puke hat” (that is, the hat she wears when she’s not feeling well), she told me about her upcoming horse race.

posted by SKH

Our house is one large construction site. If you come for a visit you are likely to hear hammers hammering, drills drilling, and saws sawing. Tonight we noticed that Calvin was particularly fascinated by the chop saw as Boppa cut trim for one of the closets.

posted by SKH

I realize that for some of you this might be extremely boring, but here is the first (of hopefully many more) video for hobbsandbean.

posted by SKH

Hello from the Void!

I promised my wife (and various long distance family members) that I would contribute a brief post on how to get all these great pictures from hobbsandbean onto their own computers. Those of you who already know how to do this can feel free to skip the rest of this article.

Place your cursor/arrow over the picture you want. In almost every case the arrow will turn into a hand. This indicates that you are not yet currently viewing the biggest version of that particular picture.


Click once on the picture you want and it will open a window with the biggest version available. Now that you are viewing the biggest version you should “right-click” (*use the right button instead of the left button on your mouse) and select the option: “Save Picture As…”


This will open a box that allows you to choose the folder on your computer where you would like to save the picture (most of you will simply choose “My Pictures”). You may also rename the picture if you desire so that you can easily find it at a later time.


Some of the earliest pictures (from January 2006) do not have a bigger version. In other words, what you see on the hobbsandbean page is the biggest it gets. Your cursor will remain an arrow (and not turn into a hand) when you place it over pictures that do not have a bigger version available. You can still save these pictures to your computer with the right-click method mentioned above, just without the additional step of opening the bigger version first.

I just got an e-mail from my sister-in-law regarding her newest published knitting pattern. While some of you may not care about knitting, you’ll probably like the featured model.

These are from my check-up with our obstetrician, Dr. Vold (Calvin was 7 weeks old). Dr. Vold and Anne (his assistant) were very kind to a very cranky me through nine months of vomiting, discomfort, and a lot of hormones. They were probably almost as glad as I was that Calvin is now an outside baby.

And Calvin was very glad to spit up on Dr. Vold.

Maggie is on my lap, helping me write this post…

Maggie’s very best friends are the Green children. Connor (pronounced “Con-NERT” by Maggie), Noah, Esther and Lydia. Before Christmas Jen (the Green mama) was taking the three older kids to some sort of Christmas activity at Warm Beach (actually not-so-warm) and kindly invited Maggie to go along with them.

Here they are, having a fun and blurry time. Maggie says, “Mrs. Green took pictures of us, and she said ‘say cheese’ and we did!”, and “That’s Con-NERT in the blue jacket”.



Mags rarely gets candy, so she thought the candy cane was one of the best parts.



Con-NERT is going to marry Maggie someday…Maggie is sure of it. She tells us all the time.



I’m not sure what that is behind the kids…why does a Christmas tree need freaky lips? Maggie says it’s just a talking tree.



Maggie thought the pony was really neat but did not want any part in riding it. She says the pony was too big for her.


Looks like everyone had a great time.

Here are some older pictures I couldn’t pass up. Deidre Shannon came to visit us back in October and we took her to The Farm. (This is where I got to work during our first fall here in Washington. One of my duties was wrangling any pigs that got loose…a little different than my previous jobs.)



Maggie loves The Farm, and this was the first time she wanted to hold some of the animals. She told me that she loved this kitten “so very much”.



She kept this pumpkin in her room for months and was quite upset when we had to throw it out.

Sean and Calvin are cooing at each other here. Calvin loves it.



Here is another picture from Sean’s phone. Maggie thought we needed a picture of her with Dada and the shrieking monkey that Uncle Herbert gave her.



Each of the babies covets one location in particular. First we have Maggie…



Then Calvin…



And don’t forget Newman…

“Do you miss your husband?”
- to me, while Sean was at the Shepherd’s Conference

“Where are the cheese ones?”
- digging through a bag of fruit snacks…fortunately, we weren’t able to find any

“If I give away all my stuff…”
- reciting 1 Corinthians 13:3

Part of a conversation between Maggie and GG…
GG - “What color are Mama’s eyes?”
Mags - “Blue”
GG - “What color are Newman’s eyes?”
Mags - “Green”
GG - “What color are GG’s eyes?”
Mags - “Hazelnut”

This is clearly a house that drinks too much coffee.

I am not a very good sister-in-law. I’m actually not a very good in-law or out-law or any kind of relative to anyone when it comes to this kind of stuff. I have very good intentions, but then I get distracted by one or a hundred other things.

It is especially apparent that I’m not a good sister-in-law when my sister-in-law is the kind that sends my daughter (and now my son) a special gift every Valentine’s Day…Valentine’s Day? Who gives gifts to people on Valentine’s Day? Brooke does. And on time, I might add. Hmmm, I still have Brooke’s birthday gift sitting on my desk…her birthday is in October.

So, Annie Grook, here you go. Everyone can now look at your beautiful socks on your cute neice and nephew. Maggie asks to wear her “stripey” socks all the time. Even with her party shoes. Calvin hasn’t told me what he thinks about them, but he does seem to leave them on slightly longer than any of his other socks. At least 30 seconds.

Calvin had his 4-month check-up on Wednesday with Dr. Haugen. He is now 26 inches long, weighs 15 pounds, 15 ounces and his head is 44 centimeters around. At two months he was in the 90th percentile in each category, but now he’s in the 95th in length and head size and has dropped to the 75th in weight.

So we have a tall, skinny, big-headed boy. Here he is, a little irritated about something. Oh, and yes, that is a cloth diaper. And yes, it is ridiculously overstuffed - he was about to go to bed.



Here are two of his hard-earned circus band-aids from his four shots. He took the first shot like a man but had a hard time after that.


Maggie was very concerned about her brother throughout the process, but was excited to receive her own band-aid to put in her purse. Here she is pointing to the band-aids.



Since he is so big, he thought that last night was a great time to start sitting at the dinner table with the family. He even talked his dad into sharing a little tomato sauce with him.




UPDATE…

Grins commented about some pictures of Maggie with her band-aids, so I dug them up to share. These are actually from her 2-month shots, so it’s even more pitiful. I don’t think we took any pictures of Calvin’s 2-month shots…it looks like Maggie was wishing we weren’t taking any of hers.



Maggie had fancy-pants name-brand band-aids instead of generic circus ones…looks like Garfield and Bugs Bunny. But instead of Fuzzi Bunz she’s stuck with some saggy diaper. It wouldn’t be fair to have the nicer band-aids AND diapers.

Today we took my brother to the airport so he could go home after visiting for the week. We had a great time with him, and I’ll be posting more pictures later on to prove it. For now here are two that Sean took with his new fancy phone…

Here is Calvin displaying some very fat cheeks, a little bit of a grin and a pronounced man chin…



The trip was apparently exhausting, so Calvin decided to take a little nap holding his new “Pat the Bunny” from Uncle D.

Maggie was a very compliant patient.



She is probably the only person ever to think the worst part of going to the dentist is the light shining in your eyes. Even the cool sunglasses didn’t cut it…

Are you afraid of this man?


One afternoon Maggie and I went to hang out in the main lodge with a few people, including Ben + Katie Hanson. By the time Maggie wanted to sit down, there was only one seat left at the table, and it was next to Ben. He was telling a story very excitedly in a loud voice, and Maggie kept a close eye on him as she was pulling her chair out. As he got louder, she started moving the chair away from him, never taking her eyes off of him. Ben noticed that she was scooting her chair away, and asked her, “Maggie, are you scared of me?”. Without taking her eyes off of him, and continuing to move the chair away, she matter-of-factly said, “Yes I am”.

As you can see from the next picture, she later decided that Ben is actually not so scary.

Maggie with her dad before megabox (for those of you interested in megabox, and who isn’t, as far as we know this was the first time it was played in the snow)



Here is the-almost-first-picture-of-Calvin-smiling. I was a tiny bit too late, so he looks…mmm…I don’t really know. Intoxicated?



This is Mag’s good friend, “missah tuh-wee-sah”…aka Teresa Weinberg.



Here is another really good friend, “missah fwisk”.


At Double-K, where we have the Snow Retreat, they were short on workers, so they recruited Calvin to supervise the mixing.



Although he was having fun here, during the last part of the ride home, Calvin was not a happy camper. The only thing that kept him quiet was Micah’s pinky-finger-pacifier.

I know they’re supposed to be pictures of our kids, but I wanted to post these too…

Here he is “singing” his duet of “Flower In the Rain”with Jaci Velasquez. This year’s rendition was made particularly special because of David Zimmer’s (autographed) silver ladies’ silk shirt.



Here is another picture from Tony Kevin. Notice the hat - made by Annie Grook.



Here is Sean with part of his posse of guys. That would be Tony on the left, Jesse Martin’s head in the background, Micah-the-intern-Lugg videotaping and Chuck Weinberg in the blue hood. Sean is of course enjoying the power of wielding the megaphone.



Here he is, apparently thrilled to be getting ready to go home in our sweet ride. That’s the intern there in the back. We like him.

Here is the small group I get to be a part of - we’re only missing Keri in the picture. I love our group! Poor Calvin is the only man.


Here are two weird pictures that I couldn’t pass up. Kimmy claims this is a normal kissy-face. You can decide for yourself. I think it’s freaky.


This disgusting picture of Felicia is more related to our kids…Calvin left that lovely deposit on her shoulder. He claims that he did not have anything to do with the giant wound on her chin. Actually, she got that tubing down a hill and had an even nastier scrape on her side.

(Well, at least it’s less than a month since I last posted - maybe I can get back into doing this more regularly. By the way - thanks for all the comments! I know I haven’t been very good about responding, but thanks for looking and commenting!)

Our one28 Snow Retreat was the first week of February, and I have a significant amount of pictures to post from it. However, if this does not satisfy your snow-retreat-picture-longings, check out this page on the one28 site for a ridiculous amount more.

Here are Maggie and Calvin ready to go out in the snow.



Calvin resembled a large, red, fleecy star fish.



Here are Ben + Katie Hanson (who are expecting their own little man baby in July) and LaShani escorting Maggie to the field. By the way, Maggie thinks the bus that’s in the background is really cool and can’t wait to ride in it.



Here is how to make a snow angel…



Maggie’s super-cute friend Ellie Sarr brought her sled to the snow retreat…



Ellie loved riding in her sled until she fell, face first, into a snow bank. Then she decided that Maggie could ride for awhile.



Maggie convinced Patti Frisk to drag her around for a long time.



Then it was on to throwing snowballs. Thanks to Tony Kevin for these pics…

Okay, okay! I know it’s been FOREVER since I put up a post. Things were a little crazy with our Snow Retreat (pictures coming shortly). Anyway, I am finally ready to go - and I have quite a few pitures. I’ll get as many up today as I can.

Here’s one I really like of my mom and Calvin - this was before Christmas, so it’s kind of old. I’m not sure why Calvin looks so concerned here…

As I have been sorting out our mess of pictures, I’ve come across some that are too good not to share, so SKH suggested that I use them in a weekly “blast from the past” post. Even though this will make two posts in a row of things that are not our children, you will certainly recognize why this picture needs to be posted for the world to see.

In the summer of 2000, Sean and I took a team of high school students from Grace Community Church to Northern Ireland on a missions trip. (Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I took them and Sean joined us two days later…once he had sorted out his passport issues with our U.S. House Representative and spent many hours alone in different airports trying to get to us.) Overall, this trip was full of difficulties and while I know we grew spiritually and did even have some fun, basically it just made us thankful that after 26 days, it ended.

One afternoon we were driving all around Northern Ireland (and actually, a significant portion of the south as well) to pick up team members from their various ministry locations. We only had one student, Shannon Roehr, with us at this point. As we were driving (in the infamous minibus) through endless miles of green, I saw a cow…and then I had one. Sean and Shannon had not seen the cow, and by the time I could coherently speak to tell Sean to turn around, we were far enough down the road that he was not really excited to go back, but he decided to humor me. We ended up having to go quite a ways down the road to the next round-a-bout (super fun intersection replacement) to turn around and then go all the way back, but I think we all thought it was well worth it.

Here is the cow that caused all the fuss…


Sick.

In the cow’s defense, she had very new twin calves, but still - that’s gross. After we took this picture, the calves got freaked out and started running away, which caused the cow to do her best to run to keep up. It did not look very comfortable at all, and I’m surprised she didn’t trip.

Newman and Strawberry are looking to plan a spring wedding…we’ll keep you updated.



For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of having your own Strawberry Shortcake, please note that he’s not kissing her in this picture…he is smelling her lovely strawberry-scented hair.

I recently got an e-mail from Annie Grook asking for foot measurements for Mags and Calvin. I thought this was an appropriate prompt to post this picture of Maggie…


So Maggie is a men’s size 13, Brooke.

When I actually measured their feet, I did find something kind of weird. Brooke wanted the length of their feet and around the widest part. So the weird part is that for both of them, the measurements around and for length were the same - Maggie was 6” and Calvin was 4”. Being a curious person, I decided to see if this was true for myself. It wasn’t. I was overly disappointed by this, probably because I’ve been watching a show on the Mandelbrot set and so I am obsessed with finding patterns and equations in everything.

I did try to make cute little tracings of their feet, but they weren’t so cute, so I’m not going to post them. Calvin’s doesn’t even look like a foot - he is a little too wiggly to have a good foot tracing done.