Jimanie's Crickets: January 2015

BONKERS. That's how our life feels to me this days! I probably say that on this blog a lot, and I certainly use the word bonkers at least once a day if not thousands of times. We are counting down the days to the end of Jim's MBA... he's in the middle of his VERY LAST (only 5-week-long!) CLASS!!! Thinking back, while we were in the hospital having Mason, he was studying for his GMAT - so this has been going for a good 3 years... ALL OF MASON'S LIFE! Of course it's been tough with Jim working and needing evenings and weekends to study/work (not to mention before we moved to Anacortes he was working AND doing military reserve work + school), but the other challenge has literally just been his class times. They have all been evening classes, and the office in our house is an open nook, so I have always felt the need to keep the boys in hiding, stay out of the house, etc.

Not to mention I was a student (and now a new teacher) for most of this time as well. And things are pretty crazy for me this quarter/semester. I am teaching new (to me) classes at Western, and the prep work (even with getting many lectures, assignments, etc. from past professors) is proving to be very, very time intensive. For TAMU, I found out last minute that they are going to let me teach 3 classes again (this is how many I taught last semester, but they found out I wasn't supposed to teach that much because it puts me over 50% effort. But I guess they were able to let it slide since I don't claim any other benefits and they are literally just paying me for the instructional hours.). This is great news for our bank account! And truthfully the TAMU classes are not terribly time intensive - until an assignment is due - then it requires lots of evening and weekend grading on my part. Because my schedule is so full, I spent the other evening putting all of the due dates for assignments (for both universities) in my calendar, and blocking off time slots for grading. Sadly, I have reserved WAY TOO MANY evenings from 8-10 pm, and Tues/Thurs and weekend nap times from 1-3 pm... all of my free time has filled up with grading :(. I am definitely learning that no job is really part time (especially when you care about the students and want to do your best) and adjunct life is a pretty rough life - they'll work you to the bone!

Speaking of the rough adjunct life - not sure if I've mentioned, but I found out a few months ago that the Kinesiology department at Western was not going to have money in the 2015-16 budget to hire non-tenure track faculty (that's me). Adjunct life is very semester-to-semester - they might need you to work a full load one quarter, and then only be able to offer you one (or NO) classes the next. There's no real commitment on the university's end, but I guess the plus for me at this stage in our lives is there is no long term commitment on my end either. Anyway, I truly love teaching and have really been enjoying working at Western. And have very, very much been appreciating only having to do the drive a few days a week (even though as mentioned above this job feels much more full time at times!). Well, I decided to be proactive and seek out the Community Health department to see if they were in need of NTT instructors next school year (all of the classes I am teaching at TAMU are health classes, and I have experience in health promotion, etc., so this is also a great fit). I had a really great interview with the program coordinator (she is very awesome, I would LOVE to work with her - unfortunately she's moving this summer) - and I got a job offer this week! The offer is to teach 10 credits in the fall, 9 credits in the winter, and 5 credits in the spring (I could always supplement the spring with PE classes and there's still a chance that a Kinesiology need could come up). The bummer is that this means all new classes that I will have to prep AGAIN - so it will be a very busy fall (fortunately I've already had other professors write me, welcoming me and offering to share their materials). But in staying positive, it also means that I am adding even more class experience to my CV, and will have even more classes "prepped" and ready to teach for wherever we move next. And I'm very excited about these classes - Personal Health, Nutrition, Health Promotion, and a "how to incorporate health lessons into K-8 teachers general curriculum" type class.

Our bank account is pretty happy with the promise of future employment as well... because we've got some TRIPS planned for this year! With Jim being next up for Command in the squadron, he needs to attend a few trainings. One is two weeks in Newport, RI, and I actually join for a spouses training the second week! I will be taking the boys and heading there the first week in March (and grandparents will come and take care of the boys). Then we have our "J-Lo is Awesome Tour" in April, where we will get to go to NC for his MBA graduation, followed by moving on to Key West for the change of command (where he will become the XO). And THEN Jim has a month-long training in Pensacola this summer, so the boys and I are taking the summer off from work/school and will be joining him for June/July! All very exciting, but busy, overwhelming, expensive, and BONKERS!!

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Enough about that. How about those sweet babies??

Mason:
- We've settled on a construction/tractor theme for his birthday party, and have reserved his gymnastics studio for the celebration.
- He is doing better with drop offs at school, and has a few friends he looks forward to. Cooper is his best friend, but unfortunately they don't go to school on all the same days, so every school day he asks, "Is it a Cooper day?"

Jackson:
- Instead of a birthday party this year, he gets a cake smash photo shoot! (We'll also have a family party for both boys with the grandparents in RI.)
- He got moved up to the toddler room at day care! At first it was just for nap time, and that was working well for him to stay with our "one long afternoon nap a day" schedule we've been doing at home - since it's so much quieter and darker in there, he slept better! But as they could see he was holding his own with the toddlers, and were also dealing with ratio issues in the baby room, they decided to permanently move him up!
- He is growing up more and more. He is very interested in repeating sounds that we say, and has mimicked and sometimes on his own said:
-- MumMums (side note: he repeats this every time you ask him if he wants a MumMum, but still doesn't say Momma!)
-- Flag (he loves making the "F" sound)
-- More ("Mo" We need this word badly - It drives me bonkers (ha ha, there I said it) when he grunts and fusses when he wants more of something (unfortunately for him I'm used to his overly verbal brother as a baby!)
- He has his own iPad in the car now. Yep, parent of the year, here. He only gets to watch it (Baby Genius shows) when we drive to Bellingham (~1 hour). But every time I put him in his carseat, he points at the iPad and excitedly exclaims, "DAT??!!"

This sweetness was from last week, but I didn't want to leave it out!
I love Jackson's enthusiasm, he really is a happy little guy!!

Toddler Jackster getting a double duty cleaning after his first painting project

First time in the sand - not sure what to think!

Jackson and I went to pick Mason up from school, and I sat Jack down on the ground. Mason came and sat right next to him, and Jack's face LIT UP! The picture doesn't do it justice, but this lil bro sure loves his big bro (and vice versa!). So thankful for that <3

We're back in that stage - had to move the cable boxes inside the cabinets and are constantly pulling Jackson away from the tv!

Sneak preview of some of the fun ahead for next month's birthday celebrations!

Jim took this picture of Jackson - apparently he was wearing his pants and when Jim looked back up - he wasn't! He looks pretty proud of himself.

Sassy saw the picture above and immediately recognized the resemblance to one of Pop's baby pictures... so here they are in comparison: baby Pops and baby Jack Jack. Wow!!

First time up on the learning tower. Pretty exciting!!

At "a very special place" (Home Depot)

Mason is not sharing his steering wheel with Jackson

I was asking about getting Mason one of those orange aprons at Home Depot, and they mentioned there was a craft going on. So we walked right over and built and painted our own tool box!

Jim loaded up on supplies at "a very special place" for a very special project...
It required a bit of fist pumping and dancing to get pumped up...

And hours of planning, measuring, taping, and painting

But over the weekend, Jim built a Piston Peak airfield that fits right into the Nilo table!

Mason seeing it for the first time after nap

I love all of the details! The gritty paint, the oil spots, the patches on the roofs (I had to look this up, apparently rooves is incorrect!).

A hangar for the planes/helecopters, a work station for Maru, and a hangar (and some ramps) for the smoke jumpers.

Awesome, awesome, awesome!!

Maru's station has the cardboard work station in it from Mason's advent calendar!

THE BOYS APPROVE!!

Fifty people! 5-0! Only 2 more weeks of "weekawee pictuwes" (as Mason pronounces)

Pretty excited, this one.

Only one funny comment I remember from this week:
- Mason was apparently pretending to be Elsa, but "she got sweaty while running around so she took her dress off. " He was still wearing his clothes, this was apparently all pretend. I asked him, "Elsa is dinky??!" Then he wanted to know "what Elsa's dinkies look like."

"Mommy, can you show me on your phone what Elsa's dinkies look like?"

(Disclaimer: we often research what things look like - bats, weasels, the making of applesauce in a factory, etc - on my phone). But still a pretty awkward moment! ha ha.

How did this smiling baby get in my bed?!

This is what I got when I asked both kids to sit in their car seats.

This is Jackson's new move - as soon as you sit him down he flips himself over and tries to crawl out.

The boys were enjoying my dinnertime "momedy" show :)

On Sunday we picked Jim up from the Seattle airport, and decided to spend the day at the Museum of Flight!

Checking out the F-18 cockpit, like Daddy's plane!

Happy Jack

whop-whop-whop helecopter!

Jack Jack getting in on the action

Up up and away in a hot air ballon

(the ballon part would lift all the way up to the ceiling as you squeezed the handle)

My favorite picture from our trip.

Love my aviator men!

I got to try out some hang gliding

We tried to watch a 3-D movie about fighter training, but neither of the boys were too into it. It was pretty interesting to me, it's a drill that Jim will be doing later this year.

What it feels like to wear astronaut gloves and try to pick things up

Maybe he's looking at the planes outside... or maybe he's just checking out his reflection ;)

#Jim'sSon

We stopped at the party store on the way home to start thinking about a theme for this guys big 3.0 birthday party. Arrrrhhh

Special Spidey shout out for Uncle Chad

Princess. Always up for consideration ;)

Cowboy pirate? Not sure.

Regardless, the choices of themes and the aisles of toys and hats and such were pretty overwhelming and no decisions have been made yet.

Since one of Jim's past trips is referred to as Mason as "the trip where you didn't bring me back a present," it was apparent that Jim was supposed to bring back a present from this trip ;). In actuality, he ran out to Target and Walmart while we shopped at the party store. Mason was very excited to get another smoke jumper, Pinecone. In the pic on the left he's saying, "Avalanche, do you remember Pinecone? You haven't seen her in a while." <3