Yikes! You better give my sister-in-law what she wants…from instant messaging her yesterday, I’ve come to realize that my life is in danger if I do not post some birthday pictures RIGHT NOW. So, to keep my children from being motherless, we will begin now with a crazy amount of presents.

Aunt Nancy came for Maggie’s birthday this year and gave her this doll. While Maggie loves the doll, she seems to love it’s shoes the most and walks around with them on her hands…she even sings a song to “her kids” about how they should wear shoes on their hands.



Uncle Herbert and Aunt Stuffy sent two dvd’s for Mags which she is dying to watch - The Velveteen Rabbit and Veggie Tales. I used to say that our kids would never watch Veggie Tales…I also used to say that we’d never have Elmo stuff, and we probably have around 15 Elmo things - some of which I actually purchased. I am, however, holding fast to the ban on Barney.


Grandma sent lots of fun stuff - a cute sweater, an elephant card, animal books, a set of magnetic princess paper dolls and the most recent publication in her series of Maggie books, “Maggie Remembers Grandpa Higgins”. Maggie was sure to show everyone all the pictures of her and Grandpa, telling us how she remembered each one - even when she was three months old.



Bop and Geet (this is what Maggie is calling Boppa and GG right now) not only gave accessories for Maggie’s bike, but her very own real set of golf clubs (pink, of course). The picture cracks me up. Maggie has a tendency to close her eyes when she thinks your photography involves a flash (“it too bwight!”), so I’m always telling her to open her eyes and look at me, and recently that has produced the face pictured here. It is also impossible to get my dad to look at the camera, so the two of them together always end up looking funny.



Without any further delay, here is Maggie showing off her gifts from Annie Grook. Not only did she get a birthday sweater, but birthday t-shirts and jeans to match!


Here is a better picture of the sweater…

Just a couple pictures that Sean took yesterday…

Here Maggie is rejoicing in her “hew-meht” on her new bike!


Calvin is watching Maggie with some jealousy. He has already been struggling with a burning desire to run like Maggie, and now she has her own set of wheels and can move really fast! But Annie Grook saved the day by sending a cool knitted ball (the ultimate combination of siblings - baseball-Sean and Knitting-Brooke?).

posted by SKH

It is always nice to have a little help around the house.

Sean just sent me this ad that Jesse Martin, our super-photographer friend, recently made for his design business. I obviously had to share it with everyone.

The reason for Calvin’s happiness in the picture? Testosterone, apparently. He had just escaped all the girls that had been playing with him at Ichthus to hang with the men (Jonathan Sarr, one of his favorite men, is holding him). For those of you that haven’t seen Calvin do this in person, he makes loud grunting noises when he sees men that he knows - it’s like he’s calling to them, “Hey! I am one of you! Come get me! These girls are boring!”.

Jesse, we’ll be looking for the check in the mail - Calvin’s college fund thanks you.

Sean and The Intern were at Paper Zone the other day (which I find kind of funny in and of itself), and while they were shopping they came across these two die-cut alphabet sets, apparently named after our kids. Kind of weird. I think Calvin’s is a little girly for the manly baby-reformer that he is.

Well, I’ve decided this can’t wait any longer. I have about a million other things that I should be doing instead of posting this, but who cares. It’s not even a post regarding our kids, which is the actual (often unfulfilled) purpose of this blog, but I’m too excited to keep it to myself. It’s a post on my blog about my blog. Pretty exciting.

Things here at hobbsandbean are generally pretty low key. When I first started the blog, I expected visits from Sean, grandparents, aunts, uncles and various other relatives. I’m pretty sure that is what would have happened if Sean hadn’t posted about hobbsandbean, but since he did, I have gotten a surprising amount of visitors. Sean also set me up with Sitemeter so I could see where my visitors were and how they got to me. I hardly ever check it, but I recently did, and here are a couple things I learned…

• Most hobbsandbean visitors come from tohuvabohu. Clyde, Leila and Ben + Melissa also pass along a lot of visitors from their blogs.
  
• hobbsandbean has been visited through a few Google searches, including…
  
• “Morgan Higgins” - shocking, I know
  
• “Valentine’s Socks” - go Annie Grook!
  
• “Breakfast Prayer” - I’m pretty sure that is not what they were looking for.
  

“Ready on your market, go!”

(overheard before she thundered down the deck in her yellow fleece horsey-hat, floral jammie bottoms and leopard-print tank top)

For my stinkin’ awesome husband, all alone at Camp Gilead (as alone as you can be with almost two hundred students and summer staff). We miss you!


And as tk would say, “Preach it, Preacha!”

I am aware that I haven’t posted in a really long time - sorry! I have a big stack of pictures here and I’ll try to get going again, but these two were already on my computer, so I thought I’d post them so you won’t stop checking the blog.

Here is the picture that Sean referred to a few posts ago.


You may notice that the outfit doesn’t exactly match the description he gave. That is probably due to the fact that Maggie generally changes dress-up outfits every few minutes, and no one can really keep up with that. As you can see, we have a daughter with a very active imagination and a flair for the dramatic. I think here she had moved on from “playing winter” to riding her horse to her “fah-ncee” party. The hat is a “heh-met” (in case she falls off) and she insists on wearing the sunglasses upside-down. Note the lovely plastic bracelet - she enjoys accessorizing. And while you can’t see it in this picture, I’m pretty sure she’s wearing her “princess shoes” - plastic heels with lavender feathery stuff all over them.

As Maggie was praying before breakfast yesterday, Calvin started making some pretty serious grunting sounds. Here is the resulting prayer…

Dear God,

Help this day to be…(insert grunting noises)…

CAAAAL-VIN! Don’t poop while we’re praying!

Help this day to be good.

Help my aah-tude to be good.

Help Calvin not to poo so much so we don’t have to have ANOTHER diaper change.

Thank you for this food.

Amen.

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.