We had a snow day last Thursday so the daycare was closed that day. Before Treven went to work, we got all out snow clothes on and went out to a field behind our neighborhood. We had snowball fights, built a snowman, and made snow angels. The girls loved it! Melia was running all over the field then stopped and said, "Mom this is really tiring!" :) Then McKenzie got too cold so she wanted to go back inside so Treven let the girls kick down and stomp on the snowman we built. At least I got a picture before they did it. The majority of the snow melted by the afternoon. But we had so much fun in it in the morning.

I handed in my two weeks notice for the daycare. My last day in February 28th. I have loved this job and the kids that Ihave been able to teach. It just has come to the point where McKenzie is in my class and I have to pay to watch my own child. The childcare cost is like half of my paycheck as well. The work environment was getting worse and I would come home angry about things everyday. I decided to not wait until the end of March to quit. Treven said it is not worth the extra month of childcare and the headache of the month of work. Also the state licenser in coming in March for the daycare and I don't care to be there for all that stress. I feel so great about this decision. I will have more time at home with the girls and for myself.

Therefore, I am starting a new adventure in the job field. My friend Amy and I are opening a preschool on March 1st. It is called Tiny Peas Preschool. We are so excited! We have two classes, one is Monday/Wednesday and one is Tuesday/Thursday, that go from 9 am to 1 pm. We want no more than 10 kids per class so 20 kids total. We have 7 spots filled already, but some of those aren't starting until the end of March. We are starting it at an odd time for a preschool but we figure it helps us to get all the kinks and everything worked out before the next school year begins. We are a year round preschool though so we will have summer programs and that seems to be an advantage to our business.

Treven is preparing to start the interview process for manager at Dick's Sporting Goods. This would be a great blessing for our family. Please keep him in your prayers as he is going for this. He is working full time and going to school full time and is pretty much exhausted at the end of the day. He has half of spring semester left and then hopes that summer semester will be his last! We have a meeting with his counselor/adviser to make sure everything is going the way it should. (fingers crossed).

This week has been a very fun one with Avery. Of course she is ALWAYS happy, but she has been hitting major milestones all at once it seems. I realize that if not written down, it will be quickly forgotten. Since the day I last blogged, she has become MUCH more mobile with her rudimentary crawl and ease of rolling. Just days before she was perfectly content to stay put.
We have just recently begun to sign to her when in the highchair with simple ones such as "more" and "finished". Though I remember Noah just staring at us for a few months, Avery has started to reciprocate and sign "more" back to us this week as well. She does it with a big smile as if to say, "yah I'm so cool!". Also, she is suddenly very good at feeding herself those baby snacks like puffs or yogurt bites as she just started getting them within the last 2 weeks. At first glance it would seem a baby has a carefree easy life, but in reality, they are incredibly busy with beginning to learn what will take them their entire childhood to learn!
Other than that, our family has been hit with yet another virus or bug... it's not been our year for good health. Mostly right now it's Noah and me with sore throats (like blow torches for me), coughs, and general fatigue/congestion. Fun times at our house!
For my birthday weekend, Brent has work off and our plan was to fit in running (I wish I felt good enough to), painting/decorating Avery's bedroom (we officially gave up on trying to do the shared bedroom thing with Noah as bad a sleeper as he is), and do a birthday date. Can this all get done? We can try right? Then Sunday is the Oscar party which I am supper excited to see what it's all about and you can't go wrong when it involves our fun bunch!
Well, Avery finally went to sleep so I better go put some sample paints up on her walls.
Love you guys.

I thought I had posted this last week, but really, I was actually on drugs and I guess I didn't. Anyway... I was reading through the blogs (Anne, Buffy, Adina, Tracey, Marnie, etc...) and I was thinking what an awesome family we have and how much I love all of you and how blessed I was to have each of you in my life and the lives of my hubby and kids. You just can't beat the Stinchfield clan (you can tie with the Bennetts;-) That about sums it up. I love you all and I can't wait for a month and a half or so of playing this summer.

I got an apartment in Portland!

Well, I was approved for the apartment. I don't move in until March 31st, which is actually perfect timing since I'm flying to San Diego that weekend to get the stuff I left there in storage and drive it up here.

The apartment is a 1 bed/1 bath with a bonus room so basically a two bedroom for the price of a one bedroom. It's in the Alphabet/Nob Hill/Northwest district. For those of you that know the area, it is literally around the corner from Voicebox. Very close to the trendy NW 23rd Ave area.

I am very excited! I can't wait to get the room measurements so I can start planning how I'm going to decorate.

Oh and it's snowing outside. It's a good day.

Here are the promised pictures...

My new front door - no apartment number for me!

Bedroom - not too big and an interesting carpet but I'll write that off as giving it character

Kitchen - good size with lots of cabinets and counter space

Entryway/Living Room - the front door is just out of frame on the right, hallway to kitchen and bedrooms on left

Looking straight in from the front door

Living Room - front door is out of frame on the left - notice the visible pipes, love that! :)

I am glad that we have had so many people sign up for this daily mile thing. It is just nice to know that we are all active and it makes a nice way to motivate each other. I think everybody has done an awesome job so far. So this is going to be pretty short, I just wanted to post something. Last Saturday Tracey and I started to do the physical training for our scuba certification. It has taken us so long to get it done it is just really sad. But, we had a great time. It was just in a pool in the back room of a Japanese hotel but it was so cool just to be able to breathe under water. This Saturday we are going to do the ocean dive #1, then the following week another ocean dive and we will be done. There are a few places that we are planning on vacationing to in the remaining time we have here so it will be fun to be able to go on some dives there. I have a handful of leave so it should make the rest of our time really fun. The other day we went to this sunflower farm with some friends. It had been raining the day before so it was pretty wet and muddy, but, it was as pretty as sunflowers can be. I am not a huge fan. I had a hard time getting the flowers to look at me.



I had some fun taking some pictures of the bees.

Tom just got me to sign up for this.
You should too. It's a social network for running.

Click here to sign up.

That is all.

To make you feel so good one day...

We get the Athleta catalog in the mail and on the cover of the most recent one is a blond woman running (it is the front page on the website). The night we got it I told Peter I wanted to eventually look like that woman. The next day Beck saw it and said to me "MOMMY THAT'S YOU! Where are you?" I just gave him a hug and kiss and said "I love you Beck". :)

and kinda gross another day.

I had just got done running 4 miles on the treadmill at the gym and I went to pick up the kids from the child care room. While I was putting Beck's jacket back on, he turns to me and says (rather loudly) "Mommy, YOU STINK!"

Beck is such a crack up and you never know what kid you are going to get. Just look at the description of Parker in Adina's last blog and Beck is a pretty much that in a mini version. We love him!

-Anne

I figure since I am in bed before my new bedtime, I will spend some time updating the family blog in addition to my own. Mom and Dad are in Olympia this week as Mom mentioned so I have the house to myself. Had a scare this morning though. I was getting ready for work and it is still dark here at that time of day so I like to prolong really waking up as long as possible so I turn on the least amount of light necessary to get ready. So the only light that was on was the light in the shower/toilet portion of the upstairs hallway bathroom. After I was done getting ready and it was time to go, I loaded my four different bags onto my arms in my room and walked into the bathroom to turn off the light. As I was only partially awake at this point, I thought I had turned off the light and then I walked downstairs. Once at the bottom of the stairs, I looked right and out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw the bathroom light flip on. (I am scaring myself writing this because I remember the feeling this morning) I was scared. Like pushing doors open while standing as far away as possible before I walked in the room scared. I cautiously climbed the stairs and quickly ran into the bathroom, flipped off the light and booked it back down the stairs, picked up my bags and out the door. I have watched Poltergeist way too many times.

So other than getting scared to death during my morning routine, all is well in my world. I've pretty fully adjusted to my new work schedule and I am really enjoying work as I start my fourth week there tomorrow. I have really thrown myself into the work there as there is quite a lot to get done. The company is undergoing a lot of changes right now so it is exciting to be a part of implementing all of that. I have quite a long list of projects to do right now and seem to add three or four new ones every day. Being so busy is really making the days fly by though, which is really nice. There is nothing worse than counting down the minutes until work is over.

Now that my schedule is more of a routine for me and my body, I've been able to get back into my training schedule pretty much full on. It is hard to convince myself the take the earlier exit to the gym after driving an hour in traffic home from a nine-hour day of work but I have been pretty successful in winning that argument with myself and am hoping it'll turn into more of a habit as weeks go on. I am doing the mudslinger trail run with Anne, Peter, Dave and Adina a week from Saturday so I am pretty excited about that. Is it wrong that a lot of the reason I'm doing it is for the pictures of all our muddy selves?

As I mentioned, my commute is pretty rough. It's about 40 miles each way (Brent knows all about it as he has the same one) and can be a killer at rush hour in the evening. It's about 40 minutes to work in the morning but can be up to 2 hours to get home at night. I have started to take "the back way" home (thanks, Brent!), which usually significantly shortens the ride - it is basically going up and over the mountain instead of around it. While I was driving down the mountain today, the Twilight soundtrack came on my iPod and a fog rolled in around a curve at the exact same time - could've sworn I was about to see Edward stalk around a corner.

So I'm pretty excited for moving into my own place closer to work in April. I'm just starting to look around for available places. Most that is posted now is immediately available or they want someone in March so I am not jumping on anything too much now. I went to Nordstrom tonight and the salesgirl who was helping me actually lives right in the area that I want to move and she gave me some excellent insider advice on what areas to avoid - like stay north of Everett - and where to try to be - like as close to 21st and 23rd as possible. If I do get a place in that area, I'll me about 15 miles to work instead of 40 so that should give me a good 30 minutes more time to sleep-in in the morning, which will be nice, and a faster ride home.

Ok, clock is striking 11pm so I need to start preparing for sleep. One last tidbit - we got all of the pictures up on the grandkids picture wall so I wanted to post a picture of the final product! Pictures will be updated and added as time goes on, I am sure, but for now this is what we have.

...blogger says I am out of space for pictures...so here is a link to see it. Stupid blogger...

Happy Birthday, Ellyn - we love you.

Well, some pigs just flew outside our window so I guess it's time to blog. Really though, the not having a laptop since early fall really cramped our internet style and it was downright impossible to find time in our crazy hectic lives to go to the upstairs bedroom to use the desktop that was in there. Thanks to our fabulous new Mac book (hand-me-down from K&B) we can now do internet things that our iPhones don't do well with.
In reflecting on the past several months, we have had a LOT go on... starting with Avery's arrival. This little girl is almost 8 months old on the 18th and she is a complete sweetheart. She is seriously so easy and happy that I'm kind of scared to have a third baby (not to mention how my body would not be to happy with me). Avery is a sturdy sitter now and is starting to get up on her hands and knees a bit and rock. In the back of my mind I try to remind myself to enjoy this non-mobile stage while it lasts. She and Noah are starting to interact with each other usually in the form of growling back and forth and laughing. But when Noah gets a little too friendly with her she will train her eyes on me intently as if to say "are you gonna protect me from this kid?" And when it comes to going to sleep, Avery is a champ and has since day one. Though she sometimes thinks that 10 or 11pm is a perfectly acceptable time to go to bed, when she is ready to sleep, it is almost instantaneous... no shaking or rocking needed (as was the case with Noah). She even sleeps through the night better than her brother. :)
Noah is officially a little boy and is always making us laugh. He has an incredibly sweet spirit and will quickly give hugs, give kisses to booboos and say "are you ok?" after a cough or sneeze or at will. Beware... he will not stop asking "are you ok?" until you say "I'm ok". Melia learned this the hard way last we hung out with them to her annoyance. He is also saying new words and learning new things daily. Of course he knows how to navigate our iPhones as any Stinchfield kiddo would. He also totally loves both of his grandmas calling them "mama" and asking to call them several times a day. Unfortunately his conversational skills are limited and he pretty much asks them "where are you?" at least 5 times per call. When he is not REALLY calling someone, he has a hand up to his ear and pretends to talk to mama. I would be omitting a huge part of his life if I did not mention his obsession with trains, ALL trains. The run we usually go on goes right alongside a railroad track that is well traveled and then we often swing by the train station to check out the locomotives there. And anything in the media with trains he is sold on... Thomas the Train, Polar Express, a reality show about trains, Youtube trains.
Since the fall, Brent and I have had our share of challenges with large medical bills, 2 car accidents, around 5 rounds of sick kiddos including many doctor trips and asthma treatments for Noah. Of course 2 days after his 2nd tube came out, he got a double ear infection. May be following in dad's footsteps?
Brent and I are plugging away at our jobs and trying to always balance work and home lives. Often housework suffers so we can run or enjoy our kiddos. The phrase that says "there is a season for everything" is one I often think of.
Well, I think I have spewed enough for now, however disjointed, I'm glad to have written something and hope to get back to more regular blogging.
Love to all!
Buffy

I loved the video of Ellyn on the beach at Carmel that Mike put on Facebook. Her attraction to water and wind is one of my chief young memories of her. When Brooke was in Germany with Mike, I took the girls down to the beach and she just reveled in the wind and watching the waves. I wasn't as brave as Mike, however, in letting her actually get in the waves...of course, she was younger then too! Happy Birthday, Ellyn. You are getting so big!! And have made so much progress in the last year!

I am up in a motel room in Olympia while Dad works here training the general dentists. This is a smaller room but okay. I bring my sewing machine and quilting stuff so I can get a few things done. I also have a lot of RS stuff to get organized but I'm not motivated to attack that today. I have figured out how to sync my TODO application between my Iphone, Ipad and computer. I have done 1/2 hour on the treadmill since it is raining today...I hate treadmills...only followed by my hate of stationary bikes. Hotel fitness rooms are the pits! I am hoping the weather is good enough to run outside tomorrow. I am going to look on Map My Run to see any good routes around us. Lately, running and exercising has seemed harder but I am plugging through, hoping that it will get more enjoyable again. I don't know whether it is because it is getting to be not such a new thing but I know I need to persist because otherwise I will really lose control of my weight.

I have been mainly busy at home with Relief Society stuff. It is sort of like seminary in that you can spend infinite amount of times on it...not all of which really improve anything. My latest other project is the study but Marnie has insisted that I have to thin out the paper in my study before we can proceed to remodel it...which may take forever. Not really, I just have to discipline myself to spend an hour each day shredding and tossing paperwork. I am a real hoarder...and so is Dad..."Maybe someday I'll want to look at this" mentality. Marnie is right in that it is not worth it to put new things in and then fill it up with all of the old junk. I'm planning on getting a wood floor put in, painting it and replacing the large desks with two floor to ceiling bookcases on each side and then a low desk in the middle with a reading chair next to it and only one file cabinet. If anyone wants the old desks or file cabinets, give me a holler. I also will have two rolling plastic 2 drawer file cabinets when we get done to get rid of. It will probably be April before I'll be doing all this stuff as I'll be out of town for a lot of March! We are going to Las Vegas the last weekend of February for an anesthesia course for Dad. We'll be coming home just in time for church on Sunday and then the Oscar Party. That Friday (3/4) we will be taking off for our Western Caribbean cruise with the Krouts. Then Dad is up to Seattle and I'll be company for Marnie again!! At least for the next week.

I wanted all of you to know how much I love you...children, in-laws and grandchildren. I feel so blessed to have you all in my life. You are each so unique and special in your own way. Marnie and Kim keep teasing me to get me to compare and then interpret any comment as some kind of rating system. As you have children, you realize that the capacity for love is infinite to many people...and to many times in your life. Whenever Valentine's Day rolls around, I also think of Mother and Daddy who had such a lasting love and joy for one another. What a great example they have been to both Dad and me...and to those of you who knew and loved them! They would be so overjoyed to see all of you and the growth that has occurred...all the new members of the family. Well, actually, I imagine they may be able to look in from time to time.

Love you all....have a great day today!

Mom

I keep telling myself I will blog when I have time, but there is never time. So - I'll put off something else and blog.

The trip to Japan was sublime. Tracey did a superb job of summarizing our adventure. It was 10 days of adventure and laughter and stimulating conversation. There isn't much more to say. We are really grateful to the family that took such great care of our kids while we were away - we feel really fortunate. Thank you.

While we were away, Discovery Dental underwent the first of a few planned renovations. There are now 5 operatories along the southern wall of the building, bringing the total to 6, and the bathroom was completely redone. They did an amazing job and we are really grateful to be working with a very professional construction company. Dave will have to get pictures on here soon - I can't do the improvement justice. The office will be the title sponsor of the Stride again this year - so mark your calendars (May 21st) and be ready to run. They are going to provide a tent next to our booth for family and friends to hang out. Feel special? Well, you are.

Isaac is getting ready to start track season. His coach is calling every other day checking on his running and his heart rate - he's pretty intense, but Isaac has a lot of respect for him. He and Dave will be going to a Coheed & Cambria concert with Mike & Brooke in May - we'll be down there for an implant course and for my sister's baby shower.

Taylor is simply adorable. He is such an individual. He was asked to the Valentine Dance at his school. He mentioned it to me in passing, as though he were simply telling me what he'd had for lunch that day. When I pressed for details, he simply shrugged and said he told her he wasn't going. So - some girl probably spent days working up the nerve to ask him and went home disappointed, and Taylor can hardly recall the event. Oh - I wish I had known then (as a 7th grader), what I know now about boys - and how little they care about girls at that age.

Parker. This kid cracks me up. He is sweet, but volatile. He's laughing and joking one minute, then slamming doors and crying the next. He remembers nothing he is told, but is willing to do most anything you ask him. And the only time he stops moving is when he's fast asleep. I adore him and his big blue eyes.

Morgan isn't feeling well - I think she has caught the cough that Dave came home with. It doesn't keep her from dancing, though. She frequently requests 'Soulja Boy' and then proceeds to get down (thanks, Aunt Marnie). She's actually quite good. She and Dave play pretty hard - he actually split his work pants the other day while they were rough-housing, much to her delight.

Life is full. We're looking forward to all the races we are doing with family: Mudslinger, Trout Lake, Ragnar, Hood to Coast, Newport, Oyster- to name a few. What an adventurous group. We're excited for the upcoming moves and changes for so many of you.

Adina

Here are the inside the house pictures...if you want the address to look at the outside, text me!

-Anne