Moving ?

June 4th, 2010 / posted by Jake

Our original site, lindseyandjake.com, has been around since 2003 when Lindsey and I first started dating.  Because we were both living out of state, we felt using the website would be a quick and easy way to provide updates for friends and family who lived far,far away and wanted to know how we were doing.  After we were married, we continued to utilize the website for this same purpose – to provide friends and family updates about our family.  More recently, we’ve been providing updates in 3-4 month increments which really has no value.

With the anticipation of our 3rd child, we thought it would be prudent to use the website as an active online family journal and focus more on purposeful updates, and better organization.  It is therefore our goal to update the website 3-5 times a week, just like any daily journal.  So rather than trying to bring everyone reading up to speed on our latest endeavors, we’ll just be blogging about recent highlights of our day and upload any relevant photos as well.

I’ve gone through and “tagged” everyone in all of the photo’s we’ve added throughout the years on the website, and will continue to do so.  Hopefully, years from now, this will provide us a way of quickly accessing all photos ‘Tyler’ was in etc;  I’ve also created a better mechanism for categorizing and archiving each entry which will prove useful when searching for all ‘holiday’ entries and so on.

So to summarize this into 1 sentence – the purpose and focus of the new website is for us, not for you.  But feel free to follow along   We will no longer be posting to lindseyandjake.com as all new entries will be on the new site:

http://www.toolsonadventures.com

Most recently…

May 2nd, 2010 / posted by Jake

Since it’s been so long since our last update, we thought we’d share a quick list of things we’ve done in the past few months.

• Jake participated in a Duathalon (2 mile run, 7 mile bike, 2 mile run)
• Celebrated Tyler’s 4th Birthday
• Played outside
• Planted a vegetable garden
• Visited grandmas and grandpa in Southern California
• Found out our 3rd child, a girl, is due August 8th
• Went on lots of play dates with the kids
• The kids got sick way too much
• Celebrated our 6 year anniversary by installing hardware on our kitchen and bathroom cabinets
• Played outside some more
• Jake completed a 1/2 marathon with friends finishing it in 1 hour 57 minutes.

Enjoy the random videos and photos and we’ll be updating again on a regular basis.

2 Videos of the kids playing

December 31st, 2009 / posted by Jake

This first video is of Tyler and me playing catch followed by Kaitlyn showing off the house Santa brought her.  Apparently at about the 1:00 mark, some midget-fairy came into the room and started talking for a few seconds, in case you were wondering whose high-pitched voice that was.

As was mentioned earlier, I taught Tyler how to ride his bikes without training wheels Thanksgiving day 2009.  At the time, he had a small beginners bike and a bike that was slightly too big for him.  Even though he could ride both on his own, the small one was falling apart and the only way for him to dismount from the bigger bike was to fall off it completely.  So Santa rescued him by bringing him a medium sized bike.

Note: Sorry for the quality of the videos.  they were taken with my camera phone.  Luckily Santa brought me a real video camera.

Winter is finally here so bring on the fun!

December 22nd, 2009 / posted by Jake

While eating at our favorite food joint two weeks ago, Costa Vida, Tyler was monkeying around and face planted into the edge of a table there.  Lindsey took him to the ER because he was bleeding profusely from his mouth.  The doctor said his upper teeth ALMOST went through his lower lip and the hole made was pretty big and will take some time to heal.  He didn’t receive stitches but was given medicine to help with the healing process.

2 weeks after we finished unpacking and organizing everything in our new home we were pleased to have our friend Amanda and her son Brandon stay with us for a few weeks.  Unfortunately because of my work schedule, I wasn’t able to provide much entertainment for them during normal hours however Lindsey was able to and boy did they remain busy!  San Francisco, the Zoo, the Aquarium, shopping, Christmas decorating, the park & playgrounds, site seeing, to name just a few events they had planned.  During this same time an English friend of mine from my mission in Holland came and stayed with us for a few days which was also fun.  I enjoy hearing proper English and having an opportunity to make fun of us fat Americans with him.

This last Friday night after work, we drove down to Southern California to visit Lindsey’s family for 2 days which was a blast.  They received a ton of presents and were able to enjoy seeing Grandma’s and Grandpa for the weekend.  We made the drive back Sunday evening which was unfortunate because it would have been nice to stay for a week or so but we’ll have to plan it better next time we visit.  Even though the drive to and from was boring and seemed to take forever, I still prefer driving to flying because it’s much faster and efficient.

As of last week, Lindsey is officially a stay at home mom!  She quit  her job as a property manager of 5 years and now spends her days entertaining and teaching the kids.  I told her I expect 7 course meals to be hot and ready the moment 6:00 pm hits each and every day.  I’ve yet to have this happen and realized in order for this to work I would then be required to actually goto the grocery store and buy groceries.  This of course I’ve been procrastinating for almost 2 weeks now out of pure laziness so I guess I’ll have to do my part tonight to get this ‘habit’ started.

Update: Over the Thanksgiving break, I took the training wheels off Tyler’s bikes and taught him how to ride a bike! He was very cautious at first but once he gained confidence there was no stopping him.  Every chance he gets, he’s outside riding his bike up and down the court trying to keep up with the other kids on their bikes.  It was a lot of fun teaching him and then seeing him actually do it!

I recently went to a concert put on by my favorite band of all time – Metallica.  It was hands down the best concert ever. They played Fade to Black even.  I’m ready to bring Tyler next time.

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Moving, Halloween, and Birthday!

November 23rd, 2009 / posted by Jake

We are now home owners! We finally moved into our new home the first weekend of November.  We’ve tried our hardest to unpack everything so that we don’t fall into the moving trap where boxes remain unpacked for months, years even.  The kids have made friends with the other neighborhood kids which has made it all worth it! A day hasn’t gone by where Tyler and Kaitlyn aren’t playing outside with everyone or everyone’s over at our house playing with the kids.  This has  helped Lindsey and I focus on other things while the kids play and enjoy themselves.

I’m calling this last Halloween, my first Halloween with the kids.  Last year I was in a mandatory EMT class all-day and by the time it was over, the kids had already done their trick-or-treating and gone to bed which bummed me out.  The year prior, Tyler was 10 months old and Kaitlyn wasn’t even born so we didn’t consider that their first Halloween, or at least their first Halloween where they can actually move on around on their own.  So this Halloween was extra fun for me to watch them run around ringing door-bells and collecting candy.  Tyler was up to his usual antics as he was more concerned with being the one to ring the door bell than he was with receiving the candy.  In fact, when another kid rang the doorbell before Tyler could, Tyler began crying and refused to accept the  candy from the woman at the door.  Perhaps this is a sure sign that he’ll be an engineering genius?  It was cute watching Kaitlyn collect her candy because as the youngest, she was always playing catch up with everyone else in the group.  So while they were leaving a home, Kaitlyn was just running up (with me of course) saying “dad, wait. dad, wait”.  There were a few times where Kaitlyn fell behind due to the fact that she was trying to unwrap a piece of candy and stuff it in her mouth.  Tyler dressed up as an Alligator/Dinosaur (I can’t tell which one it is) and Kaitlyn went as a princess.

Kaitlyn and I both celebrated our birthdays this month.  Kaitlyn turned 2, and I turned 28.  As I age closer to 30, I try and think back to how quickly it seems time has gone and before I know it 60 will be here.  I have a lot of memories of my youth and I often draw on these to trick myself into thinking I’m still young.  It seems like yesterday that I was digging tunnels to China with Jeff in his backyard or playing hide-n-go-seek at night for my 10th birthday with everyone in our backyard.  Anyway, we celebrated at my parents house with home-made tacos, a cake the kids made for me, and of course gifts & cards from everyone.  It was a lot of fun and the kids were excited to show me the cake they had made which was the best part.

Overtime we’ve developed nicknames for Tyler and Kaitlyn – some have been typical nick names, while others have seemingly come out of nowhere but stuck.  One of Tyler’s nick names is ‘brother bear’ and Kaitlyn has taken heart to using this when referring to Tyler.  However instead of ‘brother bear’ she just calls him ‘bear’ which is pretty cute.  We’re not sure why she went for this particular name with him because she can say Tyler and brother.  Also when we ask Kaitlyn what her name is she promptly responds, “2″.

We’ve taken additional photos of our home for family who live out of town to see.  To view the pictures, follow this link.  When prompted for a password, simply type in our last name.