Jocelyn's 1st Talk

Last Sunday Jocelyn gave her first talk. She had been assigned it the week before and I had good intentions of practicing it with her all week long but by the time Thursday rolled around there was still no talk. Jocelyn kept asking me about it so we finally hunkered down and put one together. We had a busy weekend so we didn't get to spend as much time on it as we would have like. I feared that it was going to be a disaster come Sunday. I imagined we would have a giggling Jocelyn who didn't know her talk. Sunday came and her talk was supposed to be at the beginning of Primary. Dad was gathering some things for me at the library so I had Kelsey. Right before it was her turn Jocelyn announces, "I have to go the potty." I tried to convince her to wait but she started yelling, "I need to go potty." I knew the talk would be a real disaster if we didn't go so we bolted. We returned shortly and Sister Urling was kind enough to have the kids sing a song while they waited for her return. Jocelyn marched herself up to the podium, now with her father in tow. She did a really good job and she spoke really loud and didn't giggle at all. I was really impressed with how much she knew of it on her own. Here is the recap of the talk, given in her pajamas in the living room.

Look who is walking!!!

At 14 1/2 months Kelsey is finally walking. Although she still prefers to crawl, she has the ability to walk. I know this opens a whole new door of trouble but it will be so nice not to have her crawling on every dirty floor in America. So here is a little video of our gal.

Bloggect

Bloggect- the neglect of updating a blog for long periods of time to the point that people don't check your blog anymore or forget that you have a blog.

I am guilty as charged. However in my defense, I have spent a better part of the last two months on the road and have plenty of pictures to prove it. To summarize my last month, starting from Christmas, it went a little something like this:
Christmas morning was spent at my parents, followed by a lovely breakfast at my sister, Lisa's. We had dinner at my mom's that night. The next day we went sledding with Lisa's family but not before we took a little spin on the snow mobile with grandpa. On the 27th we celebrated Jocelyn's 3rd birthday with her cousins by painting nails and doing hair. Jackson wasn't too keen on this so dad just cut his nails. Later that night, we went to a Black family party and a get-together with John-David's friends. On the 29th I got to go out to lunch with just my high school friends, but we all brought our families together that night for a party. It was so much fun!
We left the next day to start our trek back across the nation, stopping the first night in Sidney, NE. Adding excitement to the Wyoming and Nebraska landscape was our lovely daughter's illness- Kelsey was having a hard time keeping things down... and when she finally did keep them down we had a hard time confining them to just her diaper! Nothing like crossing the plains of Wyoming while your daughter is throwing up in a bowl and having blow-outs. Oh the memories. Despite the illness we pushed on to Iowa City, IA where we stayed for two nights. Because we were there on the New Year's Day a lot of the things we were interested in seeing were closed. It was a little disappointing but not a whole lot we could do. After our stay there we headed down to Nauvoo, where we took a wagon ride through the city (which we decided is definitely the best way to see it when you have kids). We didn't have a lot of time so we checked out a few more things before we hit the road for Springfield, IL. John-David had an interview there so the kids and I spent the day exploring the city....well, actually it turned out to be exploring the shopping scene there. My kids aren't so much into american history sites quite yet. They really didn't care about seeing the Lincoln library after they found out there wasn't a play area. After the interview we headed home arriving at 2:00 A.M. That ended the long trek west.

After a few days rest John-David was back on the interview trail hitting a local program here in town and then one in Kansas followed by one in Pennsylvania. John-David's brother Richard and his family had just moved there and he was able to spend a few days with them. After a few more days of rest, the family packed the minivan again and headed to Morgantown, WV for another interview. Kelsey grew her teeth in just such a perfect way so she could really fit in with the natives. Check the pictures out to see what I am talking about. This trip was a short one and we returned the next day. We hit the Ikea in Pittsburgh on the way home- which is always a highlight. Unfortunately we had to skip Cabela's this trip.

In our downtime, we have started up classes at the rec center which include "movin and groovin," "sporties for shorties," and gymnastics. Jackson is delighted to play some sports again and Jocelyn seems to be a natural for gymnastics. She giggles the entire time it's her turn to tumble and her galloping run just seems to fit in there. Jackson started preschool again, and he is getting better at writing. He can sort of write his name now. We had a princess party for Jocelyn and her friends, which was so cute. We had 4 Cinderellas, 1 Sleeping Beauty, Buzz Lightyear, a fireman and Spencer. It was a riot to watch them do the activities. Jocelyn loved it and I had a fun time reliving my youth by making her a doll cake like the ones I grew up with. After the party I asked Jocelyn what her favorite part was and she replied, "Playing with my friends." I am sad that we will be apart from her friends all too soon.

Since it had been a whole 5 days since we had last gone on a road trip we were just itching to get on the road again. We left for a second look at programs/interview/visit family trip. That one lasted about 9 days. We went to Erie, PA first, then across the state to Bethlehem. From there we went down to Philadelphia to visit Richard's family and my cousin, Marsh's family. After a few days of bonding time we went to Hershey to take our kids to the chocolate factory. I think the picture of Kelsey says it all. Those of you who remember Goonies might recognize the similarity between Kelsey and Sloth (it made us think of the line, "Sloth love chunk!"). Watch the movie if you don't. From the happiest place for chocolate lovers we headed to Paw Paw, WV to see where our ancient roll top desk John-David's parent gave us came from. It was actually somewhat on our way back to West Virginia, where we were headed for the last interview. We spent the night in Cumberland, MD before we headed to Huntington, WV. I am grateful for every interview John-David got but was I ever GRATEFUL they were done. If I had to spend one more day in a city I didn't know with three small kids, while my husband was off galavanting without us I was going to scream. We really did have a fun time traveling the U.S. these past two months but I was so done and so were the kids. Jocelyn kept asking if this was the day we were going to go home. The only problem was we had to hear that for about 5 days before we could.

That about sums it up for the past month. Stay tuned because I will be posting more stuff more frequently here in the near future. Until then you have this post to read again and again.

Kids and Chores

So I know I promised the other part of my trip but I had to post this. We have been trying to teach our kids responsibility and helping out. Each day they have an assigned chore and at night the have an after dinner job. Sometimes getting them to do these jobs is really hard and sometimes the quality of the work is not great and you just have to redo it but I keep reminding myself it's the process that is important. Well tonight I was flying solo but I really wanted them to get back in the habit of doing jobs. They were actually eager to them which was helpful. Jocelyn was assigned to rinse the dinner dishes. Jocelyn loves to play in water but the second she gets her clothes wet she freaks out. I wondered how long it would take tonight before that happened. Not long. First time she got water on her shirt, off came the shirt.Well it didn't take long for the pants to get wet. Next went the pants. So there my happy little dish rinser stood in the kitchen, rinsing the dishes in her underwear. The underwear picture didn't turn out for some reason so I won't be sharing the that one. In the meantime, Jackson my table clearer had dutifully been full filling his job until he came across the oven mitts. Suddenly I had football plays being run through the family room. Apparently the oven mitts inspired our budding football player.
Kelsey was just enjoying good food and great entertainment.

As I watched this circus go on I just had to laugh to think it's amazing what can transpire as we try to urge our children to do chores. The dishes sort of got rinsed, the table got cleared for the most part and I got some interesting entertainment out of all of it. I guess it was a success for all.

Interview Trail- Part #2 and Christmas

One might wonder, what happen to the Blacks? It has been almost a full month since our last posting. Well, to sum it up, we have been on a road trip across the US. Yes this does sound nuts and, yes, it was. But we did it! It all started with an interview in Iowa City the weekend before Christmas. Iowa City is a lovely town and we rather enjoyed it. We had joked weeks leading up to the interview that we should turn left and head West after the interview rather than the East back to Ohio. I had flashbacks about the drive out a week before we left to Iowa and decided I didn't want to go. The weather was a big factor as to what we would decide. We literally were deciding as we were getting on the freeway if we should do it. I said no and John-David said yes-I guess the driver won. We left in a snowy whirlwind that was only supposed to last for two hours. With every car I saw on the side of the road I announced that we should turn around but we didn't. To save you the boring details of our travels I will sum it up to this: there was a lot of wind, a lot of road, a lot of throwing up and we drove all night. We arrived at my parent's house at 9:00 in the morning. John-David and Kelsey went to sleep and I took the kids to church with my mom because they were awake and ready to go. The kids actually slept really well in the car.

That evening my parent's hosted the annual Meier Family Christmas party. 19 out of the 24 cousins were there, all 10 aunts and uncles and even Grandma and Grandpa were in attendance. It was so fun to see everyone. My cousin Jay even did a little presentation on his medical trip to Zimbabwe fixing cleft pallets. It was pretty cool. It was so fun seeing all my cousins and their families. I think it is so awesome that my family is still doing this party after all these years.

The next two days were spent preparing for all the festivities on Christmas eve and Christmas, recuperating from our travels and a trip down to Temple Square for the lights. Two of my sister's joined us with their girls. We decided to take Trax, which the kids just loved. It was fun to see the kids get excited about the lights. It was pretty cold so we didn't stay too long but traveling by Trax allowed us to see all the changes that are taking place in Salt Lake City.
As many of you know, Jackson's birthday is on Christmas Eve. We had originally planned to have a fireman birthday party for him when we returned but we thought that since we were there, we would celebrate it with family. I called the local Murray department to set up a station tour. They were more than accommodating to do this on two days notice and Christmas Eve nonetheless. To put it mildly, it was amazing!! I was promised a 15 minute tour which ended up being an hour long one. I'll let the pictures in the slide show tell the story. It was a birthday to remember!!!!

Later that evening we had Christmas Eve with John-David's family where we celebrated with food from Great Brittan. We even had beef wellington which I never had before. After dinner we had the Black tradition reenactment of the 1st Christmas. That always makes for an interesting production. This year there was no short supply of animals which seemed to be the popular part to play. After all the Black festivities we herded our animals home to get ready for Santa Claus. Our kids have yet to get up earlier than usual for Christmas morning. I think this may be that last year. I'll let the pictures again tell that story.

THe rest of the story is to be continued. Stay tuned for the other half.

Interview Trail-Trip #1

If you don't already know, John-David is in his 4th year of medical school. This is the year that they choose, apply, interview and hopefully match in their chosen medical field. John-David has chosen Orthopedic Surgery so the past few months we have been applying to various programs around the country and then have been waiting patiently for interviews. We have been lining up interviews and now has become the time to hit the interview trail. I say "we" because yes we have made it a family affair. This past week we loaded up the family van and headed north to Flint, MI. Now going into the interview we had heard a few things about Flint that made us a little cautious. Let's just say after spending about 18 hours there, we just didn't get the feel that Flint is where we belonged. However, while we were there, we put our children's museum pass to work and went and visited the Flint Children's museum. It was pretty good and helped us pass the time while dad interviewed. Here are a few of the highlights.







We went from Flint, MI to Cleveland, OH. This was just a break in our trip on our way to Erie, Pa. We didn't want to keep our kids in the car too long. We stopped to visit my mom's long time friend Mrs. Offintz. She was so excited to have visitors. She loves when the kids stop by to see. She always has special treats for them so they really like stopping by.

After our little visit, we continued on our way to Erie, PA. It's located right next to Lake Erie and looked like a pretty fun town and it had pretty every store I could think of which is important. Unfortunately there was a major snow storm so I didn't take many pictures because there was a whole lot we could see. We did capture this gem though. Jackson and Jocelyn are both noisy and wild sleepers. Probably not the best combination to be sharing a bed but that's the way is was. Anyhow, Jocelyn is suppose to be where her bunny is in this picture but you can see she is not but laying on Jackson. When I went to move her, I discovered her arms were wrapped around Jackson's leg and started moving him as well. We got a pretty good laugh out of it.


All in all it was a pretty good trip and the kids did fairly well. It was our trial run for our big trip to Iowa next week. Stayed tuned as our adventures on the Interview Trail continue.

The Lady in Sweats

I had a very sad realization last night: I have become that mom in the sweats. Growing up, as I was out in public,I saw mothers who had on sweats and a t-shirt, sometimes even pajama bottoms, usually adorned with some sort of food remnant, snot or spit up. Their hair was pulled back in a ponytail and more often than not, it was a little on the greasy side. They looked bedraggled and haggled as the sported their raccoon eyes from the lack of sleep motherhood brought on. In my little mind I thought, "Never would I be this woman. Never would I go out in public or receive guests in such a state. Never would I have mysterious things smeared on my clothes." Oh how we eat our words. So we have been preparing our kitchen and family room for painting this past week. Not a small task especially when children are present. I was helping John-David sand and wash walls yesterday so I was sporting pajama pants, a BYU t-shirt that is too big so it really looked classy and a sweatshirt that is 15 plus years old. My hair was slicked back in a pony tail and needed to be washed but I didn't want to because of the work I was doing. Despite the fact that our house is in disarray, John-David a few weeks ago prior had made arrangements to have dessert and a meeting at our house with some people. I was fully aware of this, yet when 7:00 P.M. rolled around, who was still in their fashionable attire? Me. Quite frankly I was way too tired to fix myself up and I wasn't really hanging out with these people any how. Sure I had to be seen a few times to chase a child who had escaped from upstairs or to get something else but it wasn't my deal. Well, the night went on, the gathering was over and I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and had noticed that I had some how gotten paint on my sweatshirt. I thought that was odd because I hadn't really been around the paint and it didn't quite match the color of our paint. However it did match the lovely dirty diaper I had changed right before I put Kelsey in the tub just about 10 minutes prior to our guests coming over. And here is the proof I have become that mom in the sweats.


So moral of the story: Be careful what you say because it may come back to haunt you!
P.S. That was no small streak. We are talking about 6 inches plus the two smaller streaks. Just precious!!!