Temple Groundbreaking

On Saturday, August 17, our church "broke the ground" for the new Hartford Temple! When we found out we'd be moving here, we knew a temple had been announced to be built here, but sometimes things can take years. Lucky for us they started right after we moved! While it will be a long drive to either Boston or NYC to visit the temples there in the meantime, we are excited for all the excitement that comes with a new temple being built. Hopefully this can lead to discussions about our faith and missionary opportunities with our neighbors and friends. The plan is to have the temple built in 2 years so the open house will be fall 2015. I'm excited to bring 5 year old Jackson and 3 year old Abbie inside to tour the temple before it's dedicated! Both kids love the temple and Jackson gets so excited when he sees this picture hanging in our home or in the foyer of our ward building.

It's going to be so beautiful and they've tried to pattern it to look like the several other new england style churches of the area. We watched them demolish several old buildings that used to stand on the lot. Then they removed the debris and they smoothed out much of the dirt. We drove by several times and I would always point out to Jackson that there is going to be a new temple there! He was so excited and even started building a lego temple.

So when the day finally arrived for the official ground-breaking we were really excited. But since it was a small area with not a lot of parking, they only invited bishops, stake presidencies and a few tickets to members of the wards of the temple area. So sadly we weren't invited to the actual event, but were able to watch it broadcasted live at our church building.

Tyler was determined to go to the actual site though. It was so close to our house and according to him the worst thing that could happen is we'd get turned away and then drive to our building to watch it. He especially wanted to go because we thought President Monson might come. His granddaughter is in our ward and he has visited her often, so people figured he'd come to this one himself. I asked her on Sunday and she really didn't know because his schedule is always up in the air, but he was hoping to come. So we planned on showing up to the site to be seat fillers :) But it turned out we had other things to deal with that day... 

The week leading up to the ground-breaking Tyler was out of town. This was the first long trip he'd been on since we moved here. He had to go to San Fran on Sunday night and got back late Friday afternoon. The kids had been really good all week but starting on Friday Abbie got a cough and I was starting to think it was croup. She had a low fever and a raspy voice and while she had never had croup before, Jackson had it twice as a baby and I knew what it sounded like. Later on Friday night I was pretty sure that was what it was. I was glad Tyler got home just in time to help me! We were still planning to go to the groundbreaking at this point.

She slept ok during the night but then woke up around 6 am just couging and miserable so since it was a Saturday I had Tyler take her to urgent care to get checked out and get her on the magic steroid medicine. We had to wait til it opened at 8 though... So I showered and got ready for the event while Tyler took her there. At this point our plans of showing up at the actual site were gone and we'd just go to the church. But while at the urgent care the doctors there were concerned that Abbie maybe had another problem with her lungs. She was also drooling a lot which I figured was teething but could have also meant something else was going on. They sent him to the hospital with her to get a chest x-ray. So now we decided I would take Jackson to the church for the broadcast and he and Abbie would go the hospital together. I probably should have been really nervous but I still felt pretty sure it was just croup, mother's intuition I guess... Meanwhile Jackson and I had a great time at the broadcast and he sat still with me the entire hour and a half. It was a great meeting and I felt so blessed to be living here at this time!

He brought his shovel to help dig!

from www.lds.org - President Monson addressing the crowd

from www.lds.org - all the stake presidents of the temple district digging with the prophet

You're allowed to take pictures in the chapel on Saturdays ;)

Turns out President Monson was there and turned out Abbie just had croup. They gave her a high strength steroid at the hospital and that helped her completely stop coughing within hours. The illness never affected her behavior, she had been acting fine the whole day, well except when they made her get the chest x-ray I guess. Glad I missed that one, I had enough drama with getting Jackson's blood drawn and poked for IVs this year.

These 2 did a lot of waiting in the hospital

Tyler and Abbie got home a little after Jackson and I did and at that point both Daddy and baby were pretty tired so they took naps together upstairs. Jackson really wanted to help dig to build the real temple so we headed down to the site and found the plot of dirt still there.

His first dig

Standing where the prophet stood

We are so lucky to have a temple being built within our ward boundaries! It will be less than 15 minutes away and about the same distance it was from us in Orlando. It will be such a neat experience to watch it be built, we are so excited.

Jackson at 3 1/4

Is 3 1/4 kind of a ridiculous age to talk about? He actually just turned 3 1/2 this week but I want this post to be about Jackson this summer. He had so many things change in his life at 3! Potty trained the day after his birthday, gave up the binky right before he turned 3, left his crib for a big boy bed a couple months after he turned 3 which also means no more naps. And of course this all happened while he moved across the country and got Kawasaki Disease oh and gained a toddler sister as Abbie is no longer a passive baby but a playmate who will play and fight with him.

I was very vocally not a fan of the age of two (aka terrible two) and had been looking forward to the day he turned 3! But honestly I don't know why I was so stuck on that concept in my mind. Every age has it's challenges and positives. I have another child who will be 2 soon enough, and already acting it, so I need to have a better relationship with the age of 2. But all that said I should admit that he has grown up in a lot of ways since turning 3. We've got different challenges now but a whole lot of fun along with it.

He is such a good big brother and will protect Abbie with his life. He shares with her so well and he is always so concerned about her. For example he always tries to be quiet when she is sleeping and reminds me often, even tells me I shouldn't vacuum downstairs since it might wake her up.

He is so imaginative in his play. He loves firefighters, police officers, dinosaurs, super-heroes, pirates and animals and throughout the day he is each of those characters at least once.  For example he'll stand on his bed posed with mouth open and arms up like a T-Rex, with his other dinosaur toys lined up and have me pay a ticket to come to his dinosaur museum.

He undertands why we have to tell him no and doesn't throw tantrums like he used to. He does ask the quetion "why not" all the time but for the most part he understands why things have to happen the way they do around the house. Another favorite phrase "I wanna do it all by myself!"


Which leads me to, he loves routine. For example he has a special clock in his room that turns green when it's time to wake up in the morning and during his quiet time. If he wakes up before 7:20, he'll stay in his room until the clock turns green at that time. We also set it for 90 minutes during quiet time and he understands he needs to play in his room until it turns green. He'll knock on his door if he wants me to come in with him but he won't come out, he even asks if he can go to the bathroom.

He understands concepts and structure and might be a little like his mom on that one. His mind blows my mind in a lot of ways in the things he remembers about places we've been and details he'll notice. There's an office down the street that we dropped Tyler off at a few months ago. With no landmarks or anything unique about this building, whenever we drive past it he remembers that's where daddy went. He is starting to memorize the library books we read to him. He even corrects me which I'm sure I have a lot of years ahead of.

He loves playing outside, more in the front yard than back because then he can watch everyone passing by. Whenever a kid rides by on his bike he'll say "HI!" and then "What's your name?" He might be annoying to the older boys but I think it's cute. There are several 8-12 year old girls in our neighborhood and Jackson calls those girls his friends. They love playing with him at the park and it's fun to see him old enough to play with the elementary school aged crowd now.

Some of Jackson's favorite things:

Playing in the rain in his new rain gear

Making his silly face with my siblings

Fruit is still his favorite food, a summer of berries and watermelon makes him happy

He has started to love helping in the kitchen, he always makes us wear aprons.

He still plays with trains quite a bit, but is fading out of it a little.

He goes with the flow with Abbie, notice the sippy cup switch. He doesn't care usually, but Abbie always wants his.

One of the rare times he fell asleep for a nap, he ends up in all sort of crazy positions at night. I even found him under his bed once!

He will always eat carrots willingly, it's hit and miss with other veggies.

During his quiet time he always asks me to come play with him and tells me he'll be sad if I can't play... how can I refuse?

Loves playing with duplo legos and just like dad and grandpa, prefers to lay down to play

I guess he felt left out in the hair accessory world, caught ya buddy!

He's got the best smile out there and loves to run, play chase and just do all things little boy!

We love him so much and are so proud of the great little boy he is!

Abbie at 15 months

The thing about being behind in blogging is that I'm also behind in recording milestones for my children! I've caught up our summer trips and events but haven't done a post just about the kids' development since birthdays in the spring. SO here is a peek at Abbie at (or around) 15 months.

She says Hi, Bye, Daddy, Mama, Please, Uh Oh, This, That, and makes about 15 animal sounds but other than that she does most of her communicating through pointing and shaking her head yes or no. She mumbles all the time, sings, speaks jibberish, screams, cries and yells so she is anything but silent! She comprehends most everything we say. "Go get your shoes" "get Jackson's jammies" "where is your nose, eyes, etc?" Jackson has some Jake and the Neverland Pirate matching cards and if I lay out four on a table, she can identify them all correctly (ex. ship, mermaid, princess, pirate, sword).

She still loves animals and gets so excited when we see a dog outside, a squirrel in a tree, a duck in a pond or even a picture of a fish on a box of goldfish. She'll immediately identify the animal by making its sound. Her favorite animals are dogs, fish, elephants, giraffes and dinosaurs.

The girl who used to out-eat Jackson and hardly refuse any food has now become more selective. She is more of a dairy girl loving cheese and yogurts and is more picky about fruits. She'll normally eat all meats ok and I try to sneak in veggies when I can. She loves pasta, any and all desserts, yogurt melts and pirate booty - she loves drinking milk and orange juice best but always loves stealing sips of whatever Jackson has in his sippy cups.

She started climbing down the stairs around 15 months after a lot of times of refusing to try. I knew she could do it for months now and finally did so. She is really a cautious girl and hardly ever falls down and only has only gotten a few bruises or cuts ever.

She's got teeth! At age 1 she just had her two bottom teeth and then all of a sudden they all came in! At 15 months she had 8 teeth, 6 on top (2 molars) and 2 on bottom. We love our little gap toothed baby grins!

She is starting to become a sassy little toddler instead of our sweet little baby. She wants what she wants and has got a scream like you've never heard if she doesn't get it. I guess we did hear that scream in the middle of the night when she was still nursing... But now she wants whatever Jackson has. She has a few of her own toys that she clings to with her life, but also loves playing with Jackson's trains, dinosaurs and pirate toys. Jackson has gotten very patient with her but we are definitly still working on sharing. I have started buying or giving the kids 2 of everything to make things easier.

She still loves books and spends more time playing with books than toys at this point.

She still loves Jackson and loves to hold his hand and give him hugs and kisses. She wants to be big like him, doing all the things that he can do.

She still is such a sweet little girl who wants me to hold her, lays her head on my shoulder and pats or rubs my back. She's got the cutest little wave and blows kisses to everything she says bye to. She gives the best kisses and completly melts her daddy.

She is normally taking one nap a day, right after lunch. And goes to sleep around 8 pm and wakes up around 7:30 am. She sleeps through the night and only occasionally wakes up just needing a little pat on the back or snuggle before going right back to sleep.

She is different from Jackson is so many ways at this stage. She still prefers to be held most of the time (when we're not at home) while he was always exploring and getting into things. She is much more particular about things he didn't care about. She is just more.... girly :)

One of my favorite sleeping pictures of her

Sometimes you just give in and give her the bowl of cheese on taco night

Or let her sit in her stroller naked eating fruit loops because that's the only way she'd stop crying...

After leaving her up there several times...

She finally learned how to do this

This pic was taken on her 15 month birthday, she loves this spot on our porch.

She insisted on feeding herself, and does for most things pretty well actually!

The girl loves books!

Even though she doesn't watch much tv, she sits next to Jackson bc she loves being with him.

She moved to a big girl car seat at 15 months (actually Jackson's old one) and luckily can still fall asleep easily.

 

One of her favorites, holding hands and walking around the house

  

She puts on lanyards or stacking rings as necklaces and bracelets, probably time to get some play jewelry.

 

Prefers the big swing because that's what Jackson uses...

She can go from this...

to this, in an instant!

Abbie the Pirate!

The girl loves swinging at the park!

We love this little girl so much and are so excited to see her personality develop as she grows up!

Our trip to Yale

If Jackson was writing this post, he'd have titled it "my trip to the dinosaur museum!!!!" as that was the highlight for him. In fact he still talks about it weeks later.

We decided to take a day trip to New Haven, CT on a free Saturday we had at the end of July. It was a beautiful day and our first real CT day trip of the summer. It was less than an hour to New Haven which is on the southern part of CT, right on the coast. We wanted to see Yale and since Jackson has been super dinosaur boy lately we thought he'd have fun at the Yale Peabody Museum. While the museum is small and a bit dated, Jackson was in heaven! We were there for over 2 hours which is pretty long for our family and especially since it really wasn't too big. But he loved going through the rooms again and again and especially loved the kids discovery room (with live snakes, frogs and bugs) and the dinosaur fossils, obviously.

We were greeted by this large Triceratops and a roar from Jackson

He loved the mammal exhibits too, cheetahs are a favorite of his.

Nearly impossible for him to look at me in a picture since that involves looking away from the exhibits.

Brachiosaurus has a loooooong neck!

I love how he walked around with his hands in pockets or clasped behind his back.

Loved these colorful tree frogs

We always point out Florida, Connecticut, Arizona and Utah on globes and maps.

After the museum we grabbed some lunch from a cute little market and sat outside as Jackson played at their Foosball table.

There were a few other things we wanted to do in the city (go to Ikea being one of them) but Abbie taking a nap was more important at that point! So after lunch we did a driving tour around the city and Abbie fell asleep almost instantly. We drove all around Yale Campus and it was beautiful! 

All of my pictures are taken on my phone from a moving car, so hence the quality.

If you look closely you can see what building this is.

In case you didn't get that ;)

Once Abbie was sleeping soundly we stopped the car and let Tyler and Jackson run around by the ocean. While there are no actual beaches in town, there are fun harbors and piers Jackson got to enjoy.

#alwaysrunning

We drove home from there and could have called it a day but we decided to just make it ultra fun day for Jackson and let him go mini golfing too. Later that afternoon while Abbie took another little nap, I got to take Jackson on a little date. We hit up the Farmington Mini Golf Course and had a great time!

 

They have a cute ice cream parlor next door and so we topped it off with a special treat! It was a fun day and we love having great destinations so close to us here!