It has been a while since I’ve written. Long enough that those little things I’ve been storing away in my mind to write about are evaporating. I’ll try my best to catch up.

First, the kids. Jude is still fat and tall. I am ever amazed when we encounter other babies of the same age that they are so little still. Our boy started out shorter than the baby frontpack we have. He would ride in it with his head below the top, unable to see out. Not we is tall enough that his head sticks out and he can see the world. He is now interested in books, though gets tired of all the stimulation easily. Bradley spends about an hour every day reading with him. Jude is definitely a lot more sensitive than Gigi was. She was a very easy baby who loved her swing and cried little. Jude likes his mobile and arms. The rest of the equipment is not interesting to him. As I write this, he is laying in his crib smiling and cooing at his mobile. He just loves the silly thing! He seems to rapidly go from being content and happy to full on crying rages quickly. Sometimes it is the usual: diaper, tired, burp, or hungry, but other times he is just crying for who knows what reason. The boy is a bit of a puzzle sometimes. That said, he is also quite an easy smiler. Once the burp is out, diaper changed or tummy is full, he immediately begins to flirt with you. He is very sweet, and I have to say quite cute. We are biased though…

Gigi is good. She is flying through paper lately with her drawings upon drawings of girls in dresses. She and Bradley will sit at the drafting table together and work on their projects. Bradley on his graphic journal and Gigi on her books of dresses. Her tenacity amazes me. She sits for times well over an hour just drawing. She is ready for summer, like the rest of us. She is really ready for vacations. Last year we went to a reunion in Idaho at my Grandpa Tassie’s place and she had the best time. Last week she received a package in the mail from her cousins in Utah and with that reminder of Kylie & Credence she is now incredibly excited for another adventure to an Idaho reunion. We are also going to Disneyland again on the 22nd of June so she is really excited about that too. Preschool will be over th week after next. Now the weather just needs to take the hint so she can splash in her pool. Last night she said two funny things (at least). One, she walked in on Bradley cutting his hair and asked, “What on earth are those?” They were the attachments for the clippers, but it was her usage of an old lady expression of ‘what on earth.’ It came at a moment when I needed a laugh and it got me. The other thing she did was to run in her room and holler out, “I paid for it!!” She was talking about the dress that she purchased from the boutique that she apparently has in her room. She came out in her dress after using her cash register to ring it up and handed Bradley a wad of imaginary cash. Oh to be four… Oh! And guess who gets to be a flower girl this summer? Upon hearing that my friend Hannah is getting married this summer, Guinevere asked if she had a flower girl yet (motive?). I told Hannah the story and they didn’t have one so guess who gets to be in a wedding!?? She is quite excited.

Yep, the forecast this summer is for business. We’ve got trips to Disneyland, Seaside, Portland, Chelan and Idaho all in the works. We decided to save some time by flying into Spokane and renting a car to get to the reunion. Flights were only $58 a seat so it turns out that we are only spending a little more than we would have spent on gas and will save a whole day each way. My parents are going to haul our camping stuff for us, so we are pretty excited about that trip.

Bradley and I are as well as can be expected. One of us is up every morning at about 5:30, which is tiring. And we are still up and down all night with Jude. We are both tired from the lack of good sleep combined with living our lives during the day. It’s not like we’re super duper exhausted. It is mostly that we don’t ever get that good stretch of sleep so we just never feel totally recharged or well rested. It will come again, I know. But it seems a long way off yet.

I am busy wrapping up the remainder of the year. I have two and a half weeks left with my students. We are busy with our end of the year projects, assessments, and I am trying to get my report cards all finished. I am also trying to do an end of the year poetry show and get my room ready for summer. Timing is everything and doing something too soon, like packing up the library, can be a mistake. So I feel like I am waiting until the last minute to do things, but I think I’m okay. This is the first year I don’t have to move to a new classroom so I think my timing feels like it should be different even though I am fine. Yeah! Here’s to staying in the same room! That is going to save me a lot of time this summer, not having to go in early to unpack and settle in!

Our anniversary is this Thursday. We will be nine this year, which seems amazing. When we first got married, ten years seemed so far away, and yet here we are, almost a decade later, and it went by in a flash. We are going to the Doubletree in Seattle for the night. We are taking the kids to swim, order pizza, and watch pay-per-view in our room on Saturday Night. Love it.

I think that is it. Jude is back asleep and I am going to try to catch a few more winks this morning.
Tamara