Lu's birthday bath

For pictures from "The Haircut"

Ben's sister Amber came over and trimmed it up and did a fantastic job, I might add. She has all the pictures. You will be able to see them at amberlovesryan.blogspot.com

Gibson Hair Salon ala Max

So.. I know it's been forever since I posted anything, but i just couldn't resist on this one. We had a fantastic Thanksgiving in the west valley with my family. On Thanksgiving day, my sister, Nicole gave 9 haircuts to various family members (Ben, Max and I included). So, she started with my nephews and had them take their shirts off and at the end swept up all the hair. That is the set-up for what happened at our house today while i was being an over-achiever and making dinner at 11:00 a.m. Earlier, Max had gotten the scissors out of Ben's office and Bryn had gotten some pens and a stapler and some post-its. I told Max to put the scissors back, because he was done using them. In the crunch-time of my dinner preparations, i turn around and can't process what i'm seeing: blonde locks of hair all over my living room. Bryn, with her shirt off, with the most fantastic haircut i've ever seen a 4-year old boy give and of course, the broom and dust pan to clean up, because they're on the carpet and it makes sense to sweep up the hair off the carpet, right? i couldn't believe it, her hair was so cute and had curly ends, etc. so...if she was the lead singer in a punk band, her hair would be perfect, unfortunately, she's just a cute 3-year old with a hack-job hairdo. Now, i'm not sure she's going to let anyone trim it up. It does take me back, all the way to being a 4 or 5-year-old. I was supposed to be napping and somehow got ahold of my mom's scissors and proceeded to cut my bangs to the scalp and anything else i could reach. so, my grandma was in town at the time and did her best to clean things up with my hairdo. The next day at church, she was furious to hear that when people asked me who had cut my hair, my response of course, was "Glamma". As Nicole said, it's a childhood rite of passage, so Bryn, when you're old enough to appreciate this, like when your 4-year-old cuts your 3-year-old's hair, you will want to laugh and throttle them at the same time. Just laugh.

4th of July- Welcome to Eagar

We had a great time with everyone that was there. We stayed in tents outside the cabin and got to watch our kids run around like we used to.

Good times with Bree, Kennedy, Ellie and Max

He was pretty excited about the whole thing.

Bryn kept saying we were at the Hooray (instead of parade), it was hilarious.

Here's the whole gang (except Rachelle, the incredibly talented photographer).

Fruit Kabobs

This summer while we were staying in our interim post-trailer, pre-house condo this summer, we had a lot of fun. We went to the Ranch Market and loaded up on fruit and skewers and had a great time.


As you can see, Bryn liked to sample the goods as we go.

What a cutie, and yes, he is where something.

The winning kabob of the day, I think we saved it for Daddy.

Not sure what Max is watching

Today, it was fun and humid and rainy and we went to the park in the middle of August and had a picnic with our new neighbors (not Mr. Fish)...actually, the little girl's name is Izzy, so of course my kids call her Sophie. Anyway, Max comes up to us and says, "When we get home, we're going to get a knife and cut up Bryn and then we'll cook her and eat her and she'll taste just like chicken." Not sure where to go with that one.

Last week, we were driving and Max looks at me and says, "Mom, we don't have any African-Americans in my Primary". Hmm.

To kiss a Fish

I mentioned in my last post our nice neighbors. I thought you all might really like to hear about one of them, Mr. Fish. The day we're moving in, we get a knock on the door and standing there is a very nice, older gentleman who introduces himself as Mr. Fish. Sometime into the conversation, I asked him how old he is and he said, "I don't know, I was born in 1919". So, he lives right across the street and we see him every few days and chat for a minute. On Monday morning, I get up really early and see him walking his poodle. I head out to the Y to go swimming and he walks up to my car to chat. After a little conversation, I'm just wrapping things up and he says, "I need a kiss". Now, anyone that knows my grandpa knows that he was a sloppy lip-kisser, so i have experience with this sort of thing. So he leans into my car and kisses me on the lips. Then...he says, "I need another one"... now, i do have standards, of course, so I graciously decline and he say, "Just one?" Yep, just one, but i'm here anxiously awaiting the next one.

FInally settled...

So, let me take everyone back to the beginning of June. Still thoroughly enjoying trailer park life and just hoping to stay there forever, we make an offer on a house in Mesa and shocker...the bank accepts our offer. It's a fixer off of Alma School and the 202 and we are totally excited to be heading back to the Eastside. We make the offer on Monday and the bank accepts that same day. I also find out that Max gets into a preschool that I'm really excited about that is in Mesa. So, Tuesday, I'm outside in the driveway letting the kids ride their bikes in the street and a lady walks by with her daughter. We start talking about life in the trailer park and how much we love it and I mention that we'd gotten a house in Mesa and we'd need to sell the trailer. (We hadn't told anyone we were selling yet). I say that we could carry the note and she mentions that her sister might be interested. I think, great...and an hour later her sister and sister's husband show up, love it (who wouldn't, did I mention it's a trailer?) and SOLD. They're about to have their first baby, so we say we'll be out beginning of July. Our house is closing July 17th and has about a month's worth of fix-up, so I go on VRBO and find a great little condo right by my old apartment on Mesa Drive and Brown. Things are going great, all the furniture is in a POD waiting to be unloaded and July 10th, our lender calls...you don't qualify for the house. WOW. Well, apparently, when they looked at Ben's corporate taxes, they didn't like that he lost money last year (i bet they didn't make any money, but it's not my place to say, right?)...So, we start scrambling, I ask some friends to carry the note and that doesn't work out, so I say, what can you do? We figure the house isn't the right thing for us. So, we start looking for rentals and find this cool old house off of university and stapley that looks and feels just like grandma's house (down to the drapes, countertops and appliances). It has a mother-in-law type set-up, so Ben has an office and we have a toyroom totally separate from the house. It takes the property management a week to tell us if we have the place and finally we move in. That was July 28th and we are happy and settled and have a big backyard and nice neighbors and are just glad to be alive!!

The Trailer Chronicles

There is nothing like the spin cycle in a home that can be transported to another location. It's like 4.7 on the Richter scale and it's the whole house. I was in my bathroom the other day and had some laundry going and heard the sound of running water a little more than normal. I bolted all the way across the trailer (sense my sarcasm?) into the kitchen to find water POURING out from under my washer. Much to my chagrin, it was running very rapidly straight into my air conditioning vents. If you've never been in a trailer, the heating and cooling comes from little vents in the floor that you have to make sure not to cover up with furniture, or children's clothing tossed to the side. I grabbed all of the towels I could find just to stop the waterfall and waited for my knight-in-shining-armor-otherwise-known-as-a-contractor-with-tools to come home and fix the problem. no big deal. except that i then noticed that there was now standing water, not just in the kitchen vent, but in all of the vents in the whole, big, huge house. i thought we would all be electrocuted, ben's solution, run the A/C, it'll dry it out. who knew?
So, the other problem is that trailer exterior walls are made with 1x1's or something, cuz they're really thin, so it doesn't do a great job holding in the cool air and keeping the hot air out (it's been over a hundred every day for a week). Ben's solution: in true trailer trash fashion, yep, you guessed it, foil taped on the windows. wow, how low can you go?

Max's 4th Birthday "on April at Chuck e. cheeses"

Max got a new little computer to play games on. I kind of underestimated his ability to catch on to all things electronic and he's kind of already out-grown it. I guess a Dora game and it's a great gift for Bryn!

More than anything for his birthday, Max wanted to go to Chuck-e Cheese's. We had a fantastic day and a very fun party. He had lots of friends and cousins and everyone (especially Mom) had a great time playing games and messing around.

That's my boy!!

Our special little princess, Bryn

So, I decided to share some our favorite Bryn moments, pictures and habits with everyone. She loves her baby sister.

Possibly, even more than loving Lu, she loves to wear Lu's clothes. There's nothing like a full 3T wearer squeezing into 3-6 month clothing. The jacket and the pants are Lu's in these. That is what she likes to do most during naptime. I have had to take off at least 3 layers of Lu clothes that she had put on. The best part is that Lu's dresses actually look like shirts that Bryn could wear (albeit, a little tight in the sleeves).

This is record of the other thing she likes to do during naptime, before she actually falls asleep. I had heard a noise, but didn't think much of it when no major outburst followed. Imagine my surprise when I decided to check and see if she was sleeping. Yep, her whole dresser tipped over, with her pleasantly snoozing in Max's bed, twirling her hair, of course.

Grandma Gibson brought Bryn a little something at Max's birthday party, and she decided to get herself all dressed up.

I'm not sure what my favorite part is, but the shoes are definitely up there.

Somehow, she contracted a cellulitis in her big toe that was rapidly eating her skin and her toenail. We are happy to report that after 10 days, 4 times a day (what moron would ask a mom with ADD to remember 4 doses a day?) we got the thing licked and she's all better.

Does this one even need any commentary, other than i know my girl well enough to know that she must be stripped before eating spaghetti.

Easter 2009

The day before Easter, we were headed to Grandma and Bucka Gibsons and stopped at the 99-cent store to get stuff. The kids helped us put all the candy in our plastic eggs and we went and hid eggs all over the back yard. The kids had a blast finding them and did a great job sharing (Max gave all of the "girl-colored"eggs to Bryn).

Life and TImes

So, I guess it's been a couple months since i updated, so i'll just ramble for a while and try to catch up. Later i might be able to throw a few pictures in. We celebrated Ben's 35th birthday at The Old Spaghetti Factory with Grandma and Bucka Gibson, Bucka Bucka (Bucka is Max's word for grandpa and Bucka Bucka is his great-grandpa) and MJ (Bucka Bucka's wife), Amber and Ryan, Josh, and Uncle Gary. It was tons of fun and Ben is pretty much the same with maybe a little tiny bit more gray hair. Just after that, in the middle of February, our already precarious financial situation took a turn for the worse, so we decided to do everything we could to make it through this downturn. Ben's company had bought a trailer in Buckeye about a year ago with the idea that they would move it to some land they have in Mesa and sell it. That plan was put on hold a while back, so we decided to find a renter for our house and move into the trailer. So...we found a guy to rent it and thought everything would be great, he is the president of his church and a really nice guy, etc... then we had Chet run his credit for us and it turned out that he had had two evictions and a couple of car repossessions in the last 5 years. Needless to say, he didn't get to rent our house, but the day i went to put the "For Rent" sign back up, a lady came up and said she was interested. It turns out that she has an assisted-living facility a couple doors down from us and wants to open another one. So, we have a renter and she's great and we'll have a ramp up to our front door and bars in the showers when it's all said and done. What more could you ask for. So, we moved into our little trailer in our gated Buena Vista trailer park on Feb 28th. For anywone not familiar with this neck of the woods, we moved 20 miles further west than we already were. We now are truly half-way to California (all the more reason to visit everyone that lives there). I still work one day a week in east Mesa and it's 55 miles away. The kids love our little house and are always trying to get back there whenever we go anywhere. They did have to go through all of their toys and decide which ones they would keep and which they would give to other kids cuz we don't have as much space. They did awesome, they're very generous. It's great, there was just enough room on the side of the house to wedge in the trampoline. The management has came over to inform us that someone had called to complain about our little boy was throwing rocks into the street (I'm thinking, well he didn't hit anyone did he?, but I didn't say it, just thought it). I wouldn't call it a super friendly neighborhood, but it's clean and quiet. The day we moved in, I was driving Ben's dually and parked across the street and the neighbor came home and said, "you almost hit my tree with your truck". I apologized and said, "I'm sorry, i don't usually drive this. Hi, my name is Rachelle, i'm moving in across the street." that threw her off for a second or two. she might be the one that called in on max and the rocks. so, I was telling our movers what she said and our friend Eddie, that helped us move, said, " well, i almost brought you cookies." so, we got all settled and I found out that a gym not too far away has reformers (Pilates equipment), so i applied for a job and got hired as a Pilates instructor and then made the director of their Pilates/yoga department. i've since gathered that it's the job no one wants, but that's okay, I do great at jobs that no one else wants. the one really nice thing is that i get two hours of child care per day for free and can work in that time. the only problem with that is that max bit a kid's hand has second day in there and got written up (three write-ups means suspension). When i asked him why he bit him, he said, "He wouldn't say that I was the boss". Scary, i know. so, he had a couple of great weeks and this last week bit a kid on the cheek. i'm hoping we don't get that third strike. so...we're learning to enjoy the simple things in life and go without. A little run-down of the things we've decided in the last year that we can do without:
Swim lessons, cable, downgraded internet and phone service, cell phone (i now have a pay-as-you-go phone and get 10 min/day), my Cadillac (I now drive a '94 gutless Cutlass supreme), Ben's truck (he drives an older company truck), the associated insurance, going out to eat (we do much less), medical insurance (the company dropped what we had and we picked up a private policy with a much smaller premium, higher deductible), our house, cut grocery budget by almost 1/2, preschool for Max, gym membership (although my new job provides me with a free membership), babysitters (using Amanda less). I think that's about it. It's been interesting, because not only are we surviving the changes, i think we're enjoying each other more and have learned an awful lot about wants/needs adn what those words really mean. we hope that we are learning all of the lessons we're supposed to and that we will never forget them and that our philosophy will never again be outearning our spending, but actually limiting our spending regardless of our income.

My sister Nicole sang the National Anthem at a Spring Training game on March 10th, I went with the kids and we hung out on the lawn until Bryn had tapped out all of the food possibilities that the spectators around us had to offer.
In the end of March, we went to Tucson for the Cystic Fibrosis Walk to support Dayson, our nephew and spent a couple of days with Erika and Chet. It was fantastic, we miss them and love them.
Being Easter Eve, I'll share a couple of the attempts I've made at helping Max understand religious events. we were in church one day and bryn and ben were home sick, so i could give max a little more attention while they were passing the sacrament around. we talked about how Jesus had died and that he had then come back to life. Without hesitation, Max said, "the animals come back to life every night". for anyone that hasn't seen Night at the Museum, that's the plot and so, that was the extent of Max's understanding of the Resurrection. It was really hard not to laugh. So, this week i decided to take a stab at teaching him about Easter and why we celebrate. He's convinced that Easter is a person, and so he said "Easter can kill the guys that killed Jesus". I'm not sure where the violent streak comes from, but i guess I'll just keep on trying:-).

Funny things they say

Relating to breastfeeding:
-Max one day said, "Nipples are kind of like straws".
-Bryn was holding Lu on her lap and kind of shifting her to try to feed her, while she attempted to pull her dress up and she looked at Lu and said, "Eat me! Eat me! You no wanna eat me?"
-Max also tried to feed Lu without his shirt on and i told him his nipples are too small, and he replied, "I don't have milk, I only have juice."

Nicole was cutting Max's hair and said, "Maximillion. Does anyone ever call you that?"
"No, that's not my name."
"What is your name?"
"Max Gibson Noble."
"What's Bryn's name?"
"Bryn Gibson Noble"
"What's your mom's name?"
"Mommy Gibson Noble"
"What's your dad's name?"
"Daddy Gibson"

One day Max came in distressed, holding his pull-up and said, "Look, I had a poop-toot" (we call it a shart).

On the way home from preschool, Max said, "I have the bleshews and the tireds " (sneezes and yawns).

Celery is okay to eat, because the Wonder Pets eat it. So, one day while we were eating salad, Max picked up a piece of lettuce and said, "Look, it's leaf celery".

Lu's Blessing

Ahh, look at the proud parents and the unhappy child.  Is this some indication of how her life will always be?  

That is a cute dad if I've ever seen one.

And a hot Momma.

In the back row, we have Bucka Gibson, Ryan and Amber Howard, Jana Noble,  Ben, Max, Ried, Chloe and Nicole Horton, Bucka Noble, Erika, Bree and Chet Judd, Courtney and Ryan Noble.  In the front we have Grandma Gibson, Anton Noble, Bryn, Kennedy Noble, Sophie Horton, Ellie Noble, Izzy Horton, Rachelle with Lu, Dayson Judd and Griffin Noble.

What a beautiful family! This is all the same people except Grandma Noble is in this one and Ryan Noble is taking it, so he's not.

Christmas 2008

This picture epitomizes Christmas 2008 for Baby Lu.

Max and his new remote-controlled truck (compliments of Savers)

Lip gloss for a 2-year old? Why not?

I think she ended up eating half and smearing the other half on the bathroom mirror.

Max seems like a tough guy, but underneath that hard, outer shell is a sucker for Barbie castles.

Really, we could have just gotten him the Ringpop and he might have thought it was the best Christmas ever.

So, in post-Christmas hindsight, Max isn't really ready for anything from which a battery can be removed.

They got some books and Bryn got a personal favorite, Peter Pan.

At the ripe old age of 2, it's really all about how small the pieces of wrapping paper are when you finish.

The threat of Santa not coming because of Max's behavior was probably emotional abuse for the month of December, but very effective, nonetheless.

Santa decided to bring Bryn a bike.  It might be a while before she knows how to ride it, but that's okay, it looks pretty and she looks good sitting on it.

Max's friend Wyatt came over and his mom, Jodie Stepp, had made ginger bread parts for houses.  They had so much fun decorating them.  Of course, Max didn't have enough suger from the candy for the houses, so a little sucker seemed like a totally reasonable request.

That's a cute kid.  Need I say more?

I think he's got a future either as an architect, a designer or someone that sticks candy to the outside of houses (I don't know what that's called).

Wyatt, hard at work.

He got his inspiration from the Red Door Spa, doesn't it look just like that?

Max took this picture and was not very concerned about the flash erupting right in Lu's eyes, so Bucka Noble had the presence of mind to protect her eyesight.

Here's the one that convinced us about the lack of concern for her eyes.

And Lu ended the holiday season just as she had started it.