Brothers

I was talking to my sister the other day, and expressing how I just didn’t know what Miles was going to do next year when Monet is in school all day. She pointed out that Miles will have Simone, and Simone will be old enough to play with. I don't know why that never occurred to me before, but thinking about that makes me very happy! This two years apart deal really kicked my butt since we had such a busy year last year, and Miles was a potent mix of curious and persistent. But things have really calmed down, and now I am so happy to have these two closer in age, and see some of the benefits.

Miles races to tell me when Simone wakes up from her naps. Then he is always guessing what she might need or want. Many times, he tries to feed her himself. This is the delicious spaghetti with cinnamon he fixed for her. She looks like she is enjoying it (although, she does eat dog food on a regular basis, so heaven knows she isn’t that picky.)

He’ll grab her so hard and give her a too hard hug, and say in a funny voice, “I love you Samoney Baloney!”

My family is the same gender and order of my family of origin: girl, girl, boy, girl. Simone and I fall in the same place. My older brother Michael was just the same in age as Miles is to Simone.

I thought Michael hung the moon when I was little. Sure we fought a ton, but he could build the best forts you’ve ever seen. Once he even built a little bridge across the canal in our backyard and dug out a cave out of the bank. It was amazing! He built tree houses, and just always had fun, creative things he was doing. We built an amusement park in our basement one time. We saved up $8 to buy the rope for our dunking machine. We started a club under the stairs, and even tried our hand at building a go kart. I wanted to do whatever he did. If he managed a triple flip on the trampoline, well I wasn’t going to be shown up. We’d go trick or treating together. One year we were both punks for Halloween. We looked so much alike—people always asked if we were twins. We got so much candy; I think we filled up the whole pillowcase. He always seemed to edge me out on everything, but when I beat him in a couple of arm wrestles, I definitely basked in the victory.

I remember in Junior High, Michael read Crime and Punishment. So I did too. Hello, boring! But I had to prove I was just as smart as he was. He was pretty hard to beat though in that department. The kid never went to class and still managed to get good grades on his AP Chemistry tests.

He influenced my confidence so much during those Junior High years. I felt so awkward for a lot of reasons. He would always tell me if someone said something good about me. I held onto those little compliments, and still remember them today.

I was thinking today about why we had Simone when we did. I was sitting in my statistics class and a girl had brought in her newborn (this was BYU after all!) and I was thinking how glad I was that it wasn’t me. I wasn’t baby hungry. But then something just hit me that we were going to have a baby soon. It was like lightening. I didn’t think TOO much of it though, because soon could mean being pregnant in a few months, right? Well, a few weeks later, I was holding a positive pregnancy test.

After Simone was born and things were so busy, I held onto that feeling. I knew that somehow this was the way it was supposed to be. It was a hard year. I just remember sitting in the hospital room when she had RSV and feeling guilty for being glad to be away from the chaos at home. I felt feelings of inadequacy as I’ve never had those first few months postpartum. I lost my patience more times than I’d like to admit. Tears were just an everyday thing. Miles did not transition well, and I worried daily that he was scarred for life because of the lack of attention and his babyhood cut short. But knowing she was supposed to be here, and it wasn’t just some random choice made a difference. There was purpose in the chaos!

I am excited that Simone and Miles have a closer sibling. I am glad Simone is spunky enough to hold her own with Miles. She has this little “don’t mess with me” attitude that is hilarious in such a small package. And Miles backs off and treats her kindly most of the time. He is often saving her from what he thinks is danger. He’ll drag her across the yard by one arm if she strays too far. He helps her onto the trampoline, and gives her food and drinks in the car. I am excited to watch their friendship develop, and hope that they appreciate each other, and don't hurt each other too much.

If you haven't tried Google Reader yet, you need it!

A friend of mine informed me that my blog didn't have RSS feed. I had no idea what that was. And I am pretty Internet savvy. I asked Jared what it was, he didn't know either. We keep seeing this RSS orange box on everything from eBay to KSL. What is this? Well, it is something that keeps track of new information that has been loaded onto a website. That is the simple version of course, and all I really care to know about it.

My friend mentioned that she keeps up with people's blogs through bloglines. Jared got Google reader set up on his. It is great and super easy! You put all your links in a "subscription" area on the left of a page that looks almost like an e-mail inbox. When someone posts something new on their blog, it goes to an inbox like thing. So you can read all the new posts from your inbox. I have an iGoogle custom homepage with the weather, quotes from C.S. Lewis, some Healthy food recipes from www.whfoods.com, and scriptures on it. I really like iGoogle too. With Google reader, I just added a tab at the top of the page, and in two seconds I can see everyone who has posted anything new.

I love it! I don't have to click down my link list anymore, and I can keep better tabs on everyone. Very fun!

Growing Up Adair

I passed a yard today with a rectangular trampoline and it brought back all these memories of playing around the world with my siblings and neighbor kids for hours. I always laugh when I think about our childhood. We are proud of our crazy parents, and all the "different" things we did. We always felt loved, and had all the best things in life: a trampoline, swings hanging from the ceiling, a huge playhouse--life was good.

I don't know what my kids will remember from our family. I am sure Jared and I have some quirks we don't even notice--and our kids will probably tease us about them when we are old. These are the things that being an "Adair girl" signify to me:

• Making your own Dr. appointments after the age of 8


• Watching The Thing for Family Home Evening (then all of us cramming in Angela's bed)


• Curing all ailments with vitamin C and the heating pad


• Walking everywhere--including 3 miles home from school daily


• Having a Paper Route


• Buying your own clothes starting at 11


• Stealing each other's hard earned clothing (then duking it out :) )


• Eating copious amounts of cheese


• Sharing underwear (we were little)


• Random guests at holiday dinners--they always turned out to be great friends


• A lot of reading--and consequently winning all the school reading contests!


• French braiding each others wisps


• Coppertone


• Houseful of kids


• Sleepovers


• "the little girls"


• Playing around the world or "three man bounce" on the trampoline


• "I trust you"


• Camping at the RV park for spring break


• Having 3 moms--mom, grandma and Marge


• Riding your bike everywhere--if you were lucky enough to have a bike that worked--thanks Marge and Carrie


• Crazy long road trips


• Splitting a plate at restaurants


• Ponderosa


• Cruising in the White Whale and the Green Pea and other embarassing but sassy old cars


• Long answering machine messages--I'll never forget those brave enough to actually call out our names as instructed


• Lots of smiles, hugs and "I Love Yous"


• 20 lb birthday cakes


• Aussie Sprunch Spray


• Having a mom who thought the indoor water fight sounded like so much fun, she was sorry she missed it


• Nightgames


• Whole Wheat Bread


• Snowbird and starving


• Bart Simpson spray painted on the back of our garage--and then left there


• Toilet paper bombs stuck to the brick and hardened for years


• Cabbage Patch parts and Barbies


• Laundry baskets full of library books--most past due I am sure


• Burned oatmeal


• "Who took the comb!"

The best thing about being an Adair is the sibling bonds. I love my brothers and sisters! (Mom and Dad too of course!) I am so proud of my siblings. I want everyone to know them and see how nice and funny they are. We all attribute that friendship we have to our parents ability to love us all as individuals--they definitely did something right.

The Difference a Year Makes

Miles is at this funny age. I just love to hear him talk and the things he comes up with. He just makes me laugh all the time. Last week, I had a bad day and I was pretty emotional. Jared left me alone in our room to watch a movie and fold laundry while he kept the kids away from me for the evening. But then I hear little footsteps ascending the stairs, and Miles storms into my room. He reaches up for me and says "I'm going to make you feel better, I wanna give you a kiss." So he pats my cheeks and gives me a hug and a kiss. He is so sweet that way. He is a very affectionate kid. He loves to climb into our bed in the middle of the night and cuddle with us. He is always hugging Simone--fortunately Simone is pretty good at getting away. He'll say, "I love you Samoney Baloney!" and give her a hard squeeze. He is getting pretty patient with her as well. If she hits him, he just tells her, "No hitting Simone."

He is actually starting to feel remorse for destroying things--it has been a really nice development! He has been very careful with his new DVD's and even asks me to load them in for him so he won't scratch them. A year ago, he had just discovered the joys of television and figured out how to load in the DVD's. He wouldn't leave them alone. I think we went through a couple of DVD players. I put the DVD's on a shelf WAY up high near the ceiling in the laundry room. But Miles got to them of course. When he wanted something, he had a one track mind and seemed to just tune everything else out.

A few weeks I overheard him in his room. It was a funny little conversation. "Oh no! I broke me! I'm bleeding!" He pinched a finger in something. It was pretty cute though.

So he is growing up, and it is so fun. When I found out Simone was a girl, I was so excited to have another girl, but sad too for Miles to not get a brother. But after thinking about it a bit, I realized that I probably couldn't handle another boy anyway. Miles with all of his sweetness, was incredibly curious and persistent. Nothing I did seemed to influence him. He didn't really care about consequences, or he just didn't grasp them. It wasn't mischeif that drove him. He just knew what he wanted. That 15 months to 30 months was tough! But wow, the last few months have been a breeze!

I've noticed that lately Jared doesn't comment when I talk about how happy I am never to be pregnant again. He just stays quiet. I think he is biding his time until I forget about the nausea, the weight gain, the screaming baby in the car and all of those sleepless nights. I do love babies, but I also love the idea of having the freedom that comes with older school-age kids. I love four, and I think that is a good sized family. I look forward to being included in all our family activities, instead of staying home with the baby while everyone is off playing, sledding, at the movies, etc. And I can't wait to have a quiet house once in awhile. It is so rare that I get time alone.

So at this point, I just feel relief that four feels good to me. And someday maybe we'll both change our minds and we'll have a little caboose. But for now, I am enjoying the ones we've got.

My Mexican Adventures

Nothing really compares to the adventures I had on my family vacations. Both my parents were teachers, which allowed us about 3 months in the summer to cram in every scenic route or state monument we could find. Our trips were always cheap, because of not having any money living on teachers salaries, and having six kids. So, I managed to visit 38 states without ever having been on an airplane. Not only that, but we DROVE to Cancun, the Florida Keys, and Vermont. If you’re not familiar with Mexico, Cancun is approximately 3000 miles away. Actually, we drove our minivan to the border, then took buses and trains around the country for over a month.

We went to Mexico twice, once when I was 8, and again when I was 16. The first time we drove to Nogales then took unairconditioned trains mostly. We traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Guadalajara, and Creel. Each of us six kids carried our backpacks with all our clothes and a little towel in it. We spent a lot of our time on the trains reading and exploring what we could. I think I read every Judy Blume book ever written that summer. Here I am curled up on my backpack as a pillow reading Blubber while waiting for the train.

Highlights from that trip were:

Little Rebekah and her famous diahrrea on the bus experience
Drinking lots of Coke products (for the lack of water, this was truly a novelty!)
Playing in the ocean in Puerto Vallarta
Riding the lazy mango eating horses on Yelapa
Visiting Guadalajara during a big soccer game (It seemed every little shop in the city had a tv in it all tuned to the game)
Beautiful cobblestone streets in Puerto Vallarta
The fancy restaurant that didn’t have any walls
Jellyfish clinging to mom, Bekah and Rachel in Mazatlan’s warm ocean
The trainride to Creel where I was so hungry V8 tasted like the best food I’d ever eaten
The Tarajamara Indians that still live in caves griding their corn, and making jewelry
Looking down on Copper Canyon, which is four times bigger than the Grand Canyon

Four years later, we went on a trip around the perimeter of the Southern and Eastern U.S. in a motor home. Four years after that, when I was in High School, we headed to Mexico again for a month long tour of Eastern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula. We again drove to the border at Nuevo Laredo, then down through Tampico, Villahermosa, Merida, Cancun, then ended our trip in Mexico City. One hotel in Villahermosa was a little shady, which made it all the more adventurous. I was almost 16, so Bekah, Rachel and I all had our own room. My parents armed us with combs that had removable heads with plastic daggers hidden inside, just in case. They looked like this:

(Perfect terrorist weapon, ours was pink and so innocent looking)

In the middle of the night, Bekah, Rachel and I awoke to the sound of crashing glass. It was a little frameless mirror that had been propped up against the wall and was leaning on the faucet. Someone had been in our room! We discovered that our bathroom window was open, and there was a little space in the middle of the building that made it so the people in the room below us could climb into the window if open. That was pretty scary! We met the guys that were beneath us the next day. Turns out they were transvestites and entertainers of some type? Oh well, at least we left that day and didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

During this trip, we saw all the major ruins in the Yucatan, and hundreds of little mounds of unexcavated old ruins. Chichen Itza, Palenque, etc. It was really neat to learn all about the Mayan and Aztecs.

We spent two weeks of our trip in Cancun eating all kinds of exotic fruit. We’d buy fruit from the market for breakfast, then starve until about 4 pm. Then we’d eat beans, rice, tortillas, guacamole, and pico de gallo. Nothing tastes as good as fresh tortillas made by the little old ladies. I also loved mangos with lime and chile and roasted corn on the cob.

I spent my 16th birthday on a bandit train. Yes, this little old rickety SLOW train that took 36 hours to take us from Merida to Mexico City. We jumped on the train because the next one didn’t come through for another day, and my dad wanted to get going. It was a snap decision, and as we read the guide book on the train after we had already left, it instructed not to take this particular train because there were frequently bandits. Well, too late. We were on it and in the middle of the jungle. We slept sitting upright. And we were lucky to just have a seat. I had boys sitting on my armrests and sitting all around me. People were PACKED in, and as Americans, we were a novelty. I heard that the bathroom had sludge sloshing around on the floor, so I held it for 36 hours. But I also got to read my all time favorite novel: To Kill a Mockingbird on that train, and I finished it on the steps of Teotihuacán. So, it was pretty cool in hindsight. And you can’t beat the $4 it cost per person to travel through the jungles. We saw all kinds of neat little villages, beautiful lakes, and interesting homes.

My favorite part of the trip was Mexico City. It was incredible to look out at the city and see these hills covered with dwellings just really tightly packed in. Chapultepec Park was so fun with the artists, good food, zoo, and boatrides. My dad wanted to spend lots of time at the Museum of Anthropology, so my little sisters and I spent the afternoon at the park then took the bus back to Zocalo—we felt so cool speaking Spanish and managing to find our way around. We ate lots of Chinese food in Mexico city. It was pretty funny to see Chinese people there. You just don’t expect it. But we were dying for some different flavors and this was really good Chinese food. We officially celebrated my 16th birthday at the floating gardens of Xochimilco. We bought this most delicious strawberry cake from the pastry shop. Here is the Aztec ruins of Teohtihuacan. I believe the pyramid of the sun here is four times as large at the base as the Egyptian pyramids. It is difficult to grasp the enormity of it in a picture:

At the end of these marathon trips, each of us was dying for some personal space. It was hard to be with your family for that long, but it was also really binding to have all those shared experiences. We all laugh about all the adventures we had. Sometimes we wonder what our parents were thinking! (comb daggers! Bandit trains!) Having four kids myself, I cannot imagine hauling them around on trips like that. But it was adventurous, that is for sure.

Just a funny picture I came across today

I was organizing my pictures today and came across this one I snapped with my phone last year. I am guessing Simone was crying and Miles was trying to suffocate, I mean "comfort" her.

Simones New Pictures

Simone just got her one year old pictures done, and I think they turned out so cute! She was totally scared of the lights last time, and wasn't cooperative at all. We still got some good ones, but I think these ones show her cute smile.

She wouldn't let go of the Elise's lil Webkinz Pug. So we just let her hold it so she'd be happy. She loves that little dog (his name is Noble, isn't that cute?). So she got her very own Webkinz Pug for Valentine's Day since she was monopolizing Noble. She carries it around everywhere, and if you touch it, she'll come after you.

The white dress in the third picture is a dress that Simone's Great-Great Grandma made. We were very excited to get it for Christmas from Grandma. Thank you! We knew it would be hard to see on the white background, but I love how it turned out.

Thanks Steph for doing the pictures for us! We love them.

Mater Saves the Day!

I was driving the other day when a very surprising snowstorm hit fast and hard. It was so windy, I could barely see the tail lights of the car ahead of me at times. I followed the cars ahead of me and ended up going off the opposite side of the road than I thought I was. I didn't want to try to get out because I didn't know exactly where I was and there was a ditch fairly close.

Anyway, I ended up being stuck in the blizzard for 7.5 hours! Miles kept worrying about the car tipping over. But overall the kids thought it was a bit of an adventure. Thank goodness I'd just gone shopping and bought some water and granola bars. I also have a bad habit of waiting until the last ounce of gas to refill my tank. Fortunately we had a quarter tank when we got stranded. We watched a DVD, and the kids went to sleep at around 8 pm. The boy that carpools with us was so cute. He kept reassuring Miles and telling him that Tuh Mater from the Cars movie was coming to rescue us. All the roads were closed, so it was hard for anyone else to get through to us.

It was so nice to have my little Blackberry Pearl. Jared sent me some links, and I called my sister and at least got to have something to occupy the time. Phone, internet, DVD's, heat, water, food. That's about all I need anyway!

Someone had informed me that highway patrol was coming to help tow all of us out, but that turned out to be incorrect. I called dispatch and the dispatch lady screamed that highway patrol doesn't care if you are trapped in a blizzard. They have more important things to worry about. So anyway I called AAA and they sent a tow truck out. 4 hours later, it arrived! I've never been so happy to see those flashing lights. The driver was so persistant in getting to us. We were the first ones able to make it out. I was so relieved to get home! On the drive home the roads weren't even very bad. It was just a couple of stretches with lots of wind that really had problems. But the closures stranded lots of people. And there were tons that slept in their cars.

Miles keeps talking about how "Tow" Mater saved us. He was asleep when the tow truck finally made it, but he's been playing with his little Mater truck and pulling around the doll minivan with it. It is pretty funny. Everytime we go in the car now, he gets a little nervous though. Funny kid.

Miles is Three

He was very excited for his birthday. He got a new train set from Nana and Papa, lots of cool stops for his trainset, and a Buzz Lightyear that he is a little disappointed about. He told me he wanted "Zurg." I had no idea what that was, but I understood something about Buzz Lightyear, so I got his a super cool Buzz. He was a little disappointed and keeps trying to give it away so he can get Zurg. I should have asked a kid what Zurg was, Monet knew exactly what he was talking about.

It's Jesus!

So my baby is ONE! We celebrated her birthday by going sledding with our friends Ashlee and Trevor. Their baby Renee's birthday is just the day after Simone's, so we had a little party. Simone absolutely loves snow, so sledding was just perfect. She loves to stick her face in the snow and eat it. We are not quite sure why she likes that, it looks really cold! But she's always liked the snow, regardless of how freezing everyone else is.

Jared's family has a fun tradition of giving all the kids their very own chocolate birthday cake on their first birthday and having all the family gather around and watch the babies eat it, fling it, and make a big mess. So even though we already had cake, we had to have another!

Simone loved the cake. Her chocolate frosting covered face earned her the nickname "Jesus" by her older sisters. So here she is in all her chocolate covered glory.