The Pearson Posse

The Mother of All Catch-Ups

2011-04-16T12:40:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I know it has been forever since we last posted. Please bare with me as we catch ourselves up. I'd like to promise that this won't happen again, but I'd probably be lying, so instead I promise to try really hard not to let so much time go by in between posts. For now enjoy all the pictures and try to endure to the end.

Cody's First Day of School in September.

Jade got a "big girl" bed.

Jade went to her first Princess Birthday Party in October.

Halloween

Scott built this amazing dog house for Dash.

Jade turned 3 at the end of November!

Which means Jade started Pre-School!

Jade's Birthday Party.

Christmas in Utah.

Jade's new hair cut.

Cody lost his first tooth in February.

Cody turned 6 at the end of February!

Jade's first "food coma" after eating too much.

Cody started soccer the beginning of April.

I am quite proud of these cup cakes I made for Cody's class party.

Cody's Easter Hat Parade!

The Governor of New Jersey had an Easter Egg Hunt at his mansion in Princeton for all the special needs kids ages 3-6 that we went to today!
Easter Bunny!

Governor Chris Christie.

So that's us in a nut shell since last September. I hope to have pics of the kids' Easter outfits and some much needed family photos soon!

Last Chance

2010-10-23T16:33:00.001-07:00

Fall is in full swing here in Jersey and we love the clean, crisp air and bright colors of the leaves. The only down side is that the weather becomes too cold to do many of our favorite outdoor activities. But we were lucky enough to have a beautiful Saturday today and get one last family hike in. We went to Clayton Park in Monmouth County, which is a great place to "hike" with kids. Both of our kids did really well and Dash had a good time too.

Now bring on the snow so we can go skiing and snow boarding!

Pay Back!

2010-09-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

So for Cody's last birthday my sister volunteered to make his birthday cake. It was a soccer ball and I think she did a fantastic job. Plus I was extremely excited not to have to make it myself. Now today we are celebrating her daughter's birthday. Somehow I found myself volunteering to make her birthday cake. You know what they say about pay backs. Anyway, she is having a barbie party and so a barbie cake it was. The first attempt at just physically baking the cake was a miserable failure, but I got it right the second time.

Cody's Cake

Lucy's Cake

So who do you think had the harder cake to make?

First Day of School!!!

2010-09-07T06:50:00.000-07:00

Today was Cody's first day of Kindergarten. I am proud to say that our family made it through it without shedding a single tear. He has been looking forward to this all summer and was super excited this morning.

Getting the supplies together

All set to go

He is a walker.

Checking out what everyone brought

In he goes!!

To Infinity and Beyond!!!

2010-06-11T05:33:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. We just went to Newport Beach, California and Disneyland! We couldn't have asked for better weather. It was int he high 60's all week and sunny. The only thing was the water was pretty cold, but as you can see from the pics below that really didn't stop my boys. It was wonderfully relaxing sitting on the sand and listening to the crashing waves. Scott's sister and her husband were able to join us. Cody and Jade couldn't get enough of Uncle Tyler and Aunt Summer. Scott's parents couldn't resist having us so close, well closer than usual, and not seeing us so we also got to see them and his little brother and sister on the weekend. All in all it was a great trip.

Such a cute family.

Our first few days were just spent lazily on the beach.

DISNEYLAND!!!!

First ride of the day.

Cody's favorite, the Buzz Lightyear ride!

Jade's favorite, the Carousel!

Classic Mickey!

Maybe next time

2010-05-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

Had a fun night planned for her and I but....

She didn't even make it past a 1/2 hour after the boys left for the father and son's campout tonight. Oh well, I guess I will have to eat the treats by myself.

A picture speaks a thousand words!

2010-05-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Exposed dog!

2010-03-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

This is how a normal dog should be found sleeping...

...however, 90% of the time this is how we find Dash sleeping.

Party and more......

2010-03-09T09:03:00.001-08:00

This past weekend Cody had his first official kid birthday party at a place called jerZjump. It basically has all sorts of large scale blow up things to jump, slide and climb on. There were 12 kids plus Cody and from what I could tell they had a great time.

Here is Cody with his friend boxing with the oversized gloves.

The birthday boy gets the big chair!

Here is the best video I got of some of the kids having fun.

The day after the party we decided to take Dash on his first family hike. We went to a place called Sourland Park in Hillsborough. We had been there before and liked it, plus we knew it was dog friendly. Unfortunately we didn't account for muddy path from all the snow melting and had to cut the hike a bit short. But even so, I think it was a success and it was nice to be outside for some fresh air.

A couple pics of the family.

Dash pretty much followed Cody anywhere he went.

Gotta love snack time!

5 already!

2010-02-24T04:36:00.001-08:00

Today Cody turns 5! I can't believe how fast time has gone.

Ready to go home from the hospital.

Here he is this morning.

Happy Birthday Cody!

Dash

2010-02-24T04:32:00.000-08:00

Meet Dash. He's 3/4 yellow lab and 1/4 golden retriever. We got him about a week ago and love this new addition to our family.

Here comes Santa Claus!

2009-12-13T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here is the traditional picture with Santa. Jade is a very smiley kid, but we have a hard time getting her to smile for the camera.

Can I just say, though, this was one of the best Santa's we have seen. His beard was real and so was his tummy.

2 already!

2009-12-10T05:03:00.000-08:00

So even though I am a little late I just wanted to post about Jade's 2nd birthday. I can't believe she turned 2 already. Time flies when you're having fun. We celebrated with family several times and she is loving all her new stuff. We are so glad Jade is in our lives and feel very blessed because of it.

Jade around 3 weeks old.

Jade now at 2!

Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

Cody's school had a Thanksgiving celebration today and he got to dress up like a Native American. They some songs to sing for the parents so I put a video of that on here too!

We can't have a post without mentioning Jade too. She has started to take some steps on her own. Unfortunately we never seem to be able to time it right to get a video, so this is the best we have gotten so far.

Halloween (a little late)

2009-11-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

As always we are late with our blog entry, but hopefully our cute kids make up for it. Anyway, we had a great Halloween celebration. It included a party at Jade's therapist's office, a party at Cody's school, carving our pumpkin, Trunk or Treat at church, and Trick or Treating around our neighborhood.

Davey Crockett

Our little Penguino

Scott made us this great breakfast on Halloween morning including: blood juice, "finger" sausage links, brains (green eggs), and pumpkin pancakes.

Trick or Treating at Grandma and Poppy's!

Trunk or Treat

Trick or Treating in our own neighborhood for the first time!

The LOOT

Mmmm...

Now on to Thanksgiving!

Finished Product

2009-10-26T13:19:00.001-07:00

So it was supposed to be a simple project. I went to Home Depot to order new counter tops for our kitchen. I was informed that because of the age of our stove top that if I didn't replace it now and it broke later the new stove top would not fit in the same spot with the new counter tops. So I decided to buy a new stove top. However, the cost of a new stove top was the same as the cost of buying a new range and oven unit. So, why not? We went with the new complete oven. Also with the new counter tops it was a must to have all appliances in place that we wanted. When we bought the house there was no dishwasher and that is definitely on our "must have" list. So the dishwasher was also purchased. In order to make room for the new stove and dishwasher we would need a new sink too. Now the question was what to do with the space where the old oven was. We originally thought that we would just use some of the old cabinet doors that we were losing to make that space into cabinets, but in the end we thought it would be a better use of space to have more counter top space. In comes my Dad (Jack) to the rescue. He saved us a bundle by doing our remodel for us. And after two weeks of hard labor we have a finished product with only minor cosmetic things left to do. Thank you so much DAD!

BEFORE

AFTER

We really feel it turned out beautiful and are so happy with our "new kitchen".

Milestones

2009-09-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know I'm really late posting this, but better late than never. Cody started preschool about 2 weeks ago. So far he loves it and is making lots of new friends.

Jade had her own milestone too! We got this pediatric treadmill for her about a month ago. She was scared of it at first, but now loves it. So this is Jade walking, yay!

On the Move!

2009-08-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Look out world here she comes! Jade has gotten really good at crawling now and she can even go up the stairs. Our next home improvement project is safety proofing our house.

Typical Girl Room

2009-08-11T07:08:00.001-07:00

So after months of hard work Jade's room is nearly completed. We moved her in over the weekend and she seems to love it ;). We painted it white on top and pink on bottom with a butterfly and flower border. We also had wall to wall carpet installed that is a very light pink color. Nothing like pink and butterflies for the "girl" room.

The border

This was one of my favorite parts of the house. The previous owner built a cedar closet in this room.

The Wait is OVER!!

2009-07-30T07:26:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I know I promised pictures of the house a long time ago and haven't delivered. When we moved I somehow lost our memory card for our camera and have been procrastinating buying a new one in the hopes that I would find the old one. But finally last night I broke down and bought one (mostly because I found this fantastic deal and couldn't pass it up). So here are some of the rooms in our new house:

Living Room

Living Room again. Sorry it's so dark, I couldn't get the flash to work.

The office that is currently Jade's room until we finish hers.

Office again.

Master bedroom

Cody's Room

He picked out the border and the colors. Of course they are his favorites, green and animals.

Here is a close-up of what Cody's border looks like.

I will post some more pictures when those rooms are presentable ;).

Yellowstone Part 2

2009-07-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

When we were on one of our walks we decided to take a girls picture. I think it turned out cute.

After just a girls picture Cody really wanted to take just a boys picture.

Jade is so cute in this pic that I couldn't leave it out.

After we camped in Yellowstone for a few days we were ready for hot showers and comfortable beds. Some family friends of mine (Becca) let us stay in there cabin that is just outside of West Yellowstone. Isn't it beautiful?

This is the best game ever, Ticket to Ride!

The cabin was on a lake so we were able to go canoeing too!

After the cabin we had a very pleasant and uneventful ride home. It was such a wonderful vacation and we are so happy that Scott's family could spend it with us.

Stay tuned for pictures of our new house. I promise they are coming it just took us some time to find our camera and our batteries.

Yellowstone

2009-07-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

So after Scott's brother's wedding we headed out to Yellowstone for 4 days. About 2.5 hours into the drive up we got a flat tire (on my in-laws mini-van). Sounds simple enough, but the last time there was a flat tire a professional changed it and did something to the lug-nuts so we couldn't get them off. Anyway, 3 hours later, AAA, and a new tire we were back on the road again. We first stopped at Grand Teton National Park and hiked around Jenny Lake. It had been raining all morning, cleared up just in time for our hike and then started hailing when we were yards away from finishing our hike. Talk about luck.

Grand Teton
Jenny Lake

We left the Teton's during the storm and continued to Yellowstone. We camped right in the park at Grant Village. When we were setting up our tent we discovered that most of the sleeping bags had gotten wet in the trailer we were pulling. But after that one wet and cold night the weather cleared up, our sleeping bags dried out and everything was wonderful.

The first day we saw Old Faithful...

...and saw lots of these.

Mmm...s'mores.

Cody was so excited to see some wildlife.

We took a beautiful walk to see this...

"The Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone

More pictures to come of our Yellowstone trip!

The Wedding

2009-07-02T07:04:00.000-07:00

So we just got back from our trip to Utah for Scott's brother's wedding. Thought I would post some pics that came out cute!

Cousins walking to the Temple.

All the cousins together.

What a cute family!

Stay tuned for pictures of our trip to Yellowstone National Park.

Work, Work, Work!

2009-06-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

We are officially all moved into our new home and happy to report almost unpacked. Unfortunately the work has just begun. We got a glimpse of this the day after we moved in. Scott got home from a long day at the office to having to do this:

A Homeowner's work is never done!

The First of Many

2009-06-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

So we closed on our house yesturday. Yay!!! So our first Saturday of being home owners was spent doing some home repairs and painting. I am sure it is the first of many Saturdays we will be working on the house in one form or another. But we needed some supplies and paint, so where do you go but .... HOME DEPOT. I think it is our new home away from home. Today was our first official visit to home depot with the intent to purchase many things. At least from now on we already know where all our money is going.

Family Pics

2009-06-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

About a month ago we had some family pictures taken and we finally got our copy of the CD with them on. I thought they came out pretty good. I don't think Scott and I have taken a picture like that with just the two of us since our wedding.

Little Trooper

2009-05-07T08:13:00.001-07:00

We got the results of the sleep test Jade had that I posted about a while ago. Basically she has bad sleep apnea and it was determined that the best course of action would be to have her tonsils and adenoids out. So this past Tuesday at 5:30am we drove up to St. Peter's University Hospital for Jade to have her surgery. The procedure was real quick. She was in and out in about 45 minutes. They usually don't take out your tonsils at such a young age so as a precaution they had her stay over night in the Pediatric ICU. After two long days we came home last night. Jade is healing well and back to her old self.

Here she is before surgery, very happy and has no idea what is about to happen.

When she first came back to us.

She needed a little bit of oxygen just when she first came out.

24 hours later and back to her old self.

Bound Feet

2009-04-23T06:04:00.000-07:00

Cody has been responding beautifully to his growth hormone resulting in him growing leaps and bounds over the last six months. For some reason we failed to buy him bigger shoes along with the larger sized clothing he needed. Anyway, on our way to a church meeting last night we stopped by the mall and got him some new shoes. When we measured his foot, to our shock he had not gone from a 7 to a 7 1/2 or even an 8. He went from size 7 to size 9. Poor kid. But in some cultures tiny feet are attractive right?

Easter!

2009-04-14T18:09:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures to document our hunt on Easter Morning.

Water Fun

2009-03-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

Scott had some "comp" days he took on Thursday and Friday and we were able to go out of town to Six Flags' The Escape Lodge and Indoor Waterpark. We found it online while looking for something fun and active to do during colder days. So off we went to upstate New York. Cody was just the perfect size for everything. There were only two slides he couldn't go on, but too many other things to do for it to make a difference. Since Jade was obviously too small for everything she stayed with Grandma and Poppy for a funfilled couple days of her own. We had a great time and I would definitely recommend this place to anyone who needs a little "get-a-way" during the cold season.

Cody loved the slides.

He was excited to meet Daffy Duck, but sad he didn't get to see Bugs Bunny.

This is the "tree house". You can just tell it's Scott and Cody on the stairs.

Gotta love a surfing bear.

Believe it or not Cody's favorite thing was the lazy river.

They also had this area for boogie boarding and surfing. Of course Scott got in on the action.

This is where I spent most of my free time. It was a 18 and older spa area. I guess without my kids in tow I look younger than I am because I was questioned by the life guard as to my age to make sure I was old enough to be there.

All this fun can really wipe out a kid.

Party, Party!!!

2009-02-28T17:32:00.000-08:00

So here are a few pictures of our actual celebration of Cody's birthday:

We got him this shirt and I think it is quite appropriate.

Here is Jade enjoying her treat.

We took Cody and some family and friends bowling today for his party.

He's not too bad at it!

Uncle Ed and Aunt DeeDee gave Cody "Don't Break the Ice".

Happy Birthday Cody!

2009-02-24T05:35:00.000-08:00

Today my little man turns 4 years old! I know it's a little cliche, but seriously time really does fly by. I can't beleive just a little bit ago he looked like this...

And now he's quite litterally a little man!

We are so glad he is part of our family. He truly is a great friend, brother and son.

My daughter's an ALIEN!

2009-01-30T05:03:00.000-08:00

Jade had a sleep test done last night. That means she and I spent the night in New Brunswick so she could be hooked up to all kinds of wires. For the most part she was a real trooper, except she kept pulling off the moniter under her nose that kept track of her breathing. I suppose if I was hooked up to all those wires, I would try and get them off too. Anyway, I took a pic to document it, but even with all those things on her she still managed to stay looking cute!

Welcome James!

2009-01-29T04:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new nephew James Noah Kinghorn. He made a surprise entrance on Tuesday morning weighing in at 7lbs. 6oz. and 21 in. long. We are so glad you are here and can't wait to meet you.

Where do I get highlights like that?

Christmas in Utah!

2009-01-18T07:34:00.000-08:00

I know this is very late, but my poor husband has been working late every night and weekends for the last 2 weeks and I just haven't been on the computer to post. Anyway, we went to Utah for Christmas this year to be with Scott's family. It was great because for the first time in a long time all 6 siblings were in town together. Needless to say it meant a lot of people and some caos, but mostly just tons of fun. Here comes the endless amount of pictures to document our visit.

First things first. Of course we had to take advantage of the snow. The boys went out sledding and Cody got to try out snowboarding for the first time.

What's Christmas without a "ginger bread" house.

Seeing the lights on Temple Square.

Scott and his dad went hiking and then snowboarded down the mountain.

Jade having fun.

We went to an indoor amusement park. Luckily Cody was just tall enough to ride on the rides. So he had his first experience on bumper cars and a small roller coaster.

They even had roller skating.

Christmas eve in matching pajamas.

Is anyone else crazy enough to start opening the gifts at 5AM?

Had to build the snow man.

Parting Shot:

Scott's brother-in-law was nice enough to take some family pictures for us while we were there. He has all the great professional equipment.

Happy Birthday Jade!!!

2008-11-30T17:56:00.001-08:00

So today is Jade's 1st Birthday! Happy Birthday to my sweet little girl. After all the commotion of this past year we are so grateful and happy to have you as a part of our family. We can't imagine life without you. It's hard to believe you are one already. Anyway, we just had a little party for her and my parents came over too. Here are some pics we snapped to document the event.

Yummy Paper

Jade loves hair so we got her a My Little Pony with lots of hair she can run her fingers through.

Oooh, Fire!

Jade's mini cake was a cheese cake.

I think she likes it.

Okay she really liked it!

Thanksgiving Weekend or more importantly Christmas Begins

2008-11-29T17:28:00.000-08:00

So Thanksgiving Weekend is drawing to a close, so I thought I'd write about it a bit and put up a few pics.

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to get off from work a few hours early so we decided to take Jade and Cody into the City (New York City) to see them blow up the balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was both Cody and Jade's first time in the city. We normally take the train in, but decided to drive in this time so that we could bring our stroller and stuff. Unfortunately we didn't think about the fact that we'd be driving into the City on the biggest travel day of the whole entire year. Needless to say we hit a lot of traffic. Once we did make it to New York we had a lot of fun though. Cody's favorite part was getting a pretzel and a hot dog from a street vendor. He thought that was the funniest thing that they sold pretzels right there on the street. Anybody who asks him about New York, that's the first thing he's going to tell you about. We also saw a lot of the balloons. We took pictures of a few of them. There were a ton of people though so it was hard to get great pictures. Cody was on my shoulders to see better. Maybe I should have had Cody take the pictures. They couldn't have turned out much worse than pictures I take. Anyway, here are a few of the pictures. See if you can figure out what all of the balloons I put up here are.

In order of appearance: Pikachu, Energizer Bunny, Ronald McDonald, Dora

On Thanksgiving Day we went to a great Chinese place for dinner called Elements of Asia and had Kung Pao Chicken and Mu Shu Pork.

Just Kidding. On Thanksgiving Day we ate the same thing as the majority of Americans, Turkey and Mashed Potatoes. We went over to Jack and Joans for Thanksgiving and ate all of the traditional foods. We all had a great time.

The day after Tanksgiving brings one of the most important days of the year: Black Friday, the official start of the Christmas Season. Now for those of you who don't know, I Love Christmas. No, that didn't come out quite right. I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!! It is definitely my favorite holiday. It makes you remember everything that's good in the world. I of course must start off the Christmas Season with the American Tradition of getting up at an insane hour in the morning to participate in the Black Friday shopping deals. The funny thing is, I didn't even have anything to buy. I just like being there to see everyone getting so worked up about the sales. Oh yeah, and I like the free stuff. Becs decided to be bold and go with me this year. She said she enjoyed it, although she did tell me that right as she was guzzling down a bottle of Nyquil to knock herself out after a morning of shopping. We woke up at 3:30 am and had been to 6 stores before 7 am. Did I mention I like the free stuff. We got free MP3 players from Old Navy, free gift cards from Sports Authority, and free snow globes from JC Penney. Oh yeah, and we also bought a few things. It was a very successful morning.

Later on that day brings another important part of Black Friday. The traditional decorating of the house for Christmas. It went fairly normal this year. I'll let the pictures do the talking for me. Although one funny thing you migh notice is that since we let Cody put up the majority of the ornaments on the tree, the bottom half of our tree is very decorated and the top half is rather sparse. I think it looks better that way. Another thing you might notice is our tree is leaning a bit. We ended up having to prop it up in the back with a broom so it didn't fall over. You can't really tell though. I guess it's time for a new tree. Anyway, here are some of the pics:

My parting shot is of Jade wearing her hotpants. Ok, they're not really hot pants, and no we don't think it's the latest fashion trend either. These are Jade's new pants she has to wear all day everyday. She even gets to wear them to church on Sundays. They are sewn together at the legs and we were told to get them by her physical therapist.

Tagged Again!

2008-11-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

The Man in my Life

What's your husband's name? Scott Gregory Pearson
How long have you been married? 6 years, 2 months, 1 week
How long did you date? Our first date was to see the Two-Man Bobsled teams race in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and we were married almost 7 months later.
How old is he? 28
Who eats more sweets? Neither of us. I don't like chocolate and Scott gets migraine headaches from it.
Who said "I Love You" first? I did.
Who is taller? Scott is by 3-4 inches.
Who is smarter? Definitely Scott. Our resident genius.
Who does the laundry? I do, but not very well.
Who pays the bills? We do it together because honestly with our family health issues there have been a lot lately.
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? We don't have sides. We switch quite often depending on who needs to be closest to the alarm.
Does he snore? Only if he is sleeping on his back.
What does he do in his spare time? Loves the outdoors. Hiking, camping, kayaking, snowboarding.
Who mows the lawn? What lawn?
What is his favorite candy bar? 3 Musketeers (not that he ever gets to eat them)
Who cooks dinner? Scott is the chef in our family. Honestly I am not a big fan of cooking so if Scott gets home at a normal time he always makes dinner.
Who drives? Scott drives usually.
Who is the first to say they are wrong? Scott does. I am way too stubborn
Who kissed who first? I'm not sure, but it was really good because we were engaged 3 days later.
Who asked who out first? I had the tickets to the Olympics, so I guess me.
Who wears the pants? Depends on the situation, but I think Scott would say that I do.
Does he say he loves you every day? Always

I tag Summer, Shauna, Kristen D., Maddy, and all of the ladies from P2!

Halloween Goodies

2008-11-10T18:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I never really did a Halloween Post. I got caught up with my month-end close at work and kind of forgot about it. So although it is a little late, here are some pics we took the night of Halloween.

We started off trick-or-treating by going to Jack and Joan's House.

I know you've already seen them in their costumes, but I think they look really cute. We even had a cute little Witches broom for Jade. (She was probably high by the end of the night because it was actually a scented broom, and smelled like cinammon)

Here is Cody trick-or treating at someone's house.

By the end of the night Cody was too tired to walk, so he got to ride in the stroller with Jade.

And of course here's the candy stash.

My Parting Shot:

A New Trick!

2008-10-28T16:58:00.001-07:00

LOOK WHO CAN SIT-UP NOW!

Trunk-or-Treat and Boo at the Zoo

2008-10-27T17:57:00.001-07:00

We had a really busy weekend. It was full of Halloween Festivities. On Thursday night we carved our pumpkins. Here is how they turned out:

In case you can't tell, it's a spider, not a tree.

This one was Cody's pumpkin. I let him carve it himself (with a little bit of help from me).

On Friday night we had a ward activity. It was a Chili cook off followed by a Trunk or Treat. Of course I entered my Chili. It didn't win, but I thought it tasted delicious. Jade is a witch for Halloween and Cody is a Dinosaur. Below are some of the pictures from the Trunk or Treat activity.

On Saturday we went to Boo at the Zoo. It was really fabulous. We had a lot of fun. It was kind of a rainy day, but that was good because it meant it wasn't crowded at the zoo. Cody had a lot of fun getting candy and doing some of the activities. There were also some photographers there from the newspaper and TV station. They took a bunch of pictures of Jade and Cody. We even had to fill out some release forms so they could use the pictures they took. Unfortunately I'm not as good a photographer as they are. But, nonetheless here are a few pictures I took:

My Parting shot is Cody hatching out of an egg.

Tagged

2008-10-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

OK, so we got tagged so I'll do it for me. Becca can do it for herself later if she wants. It's later and I (Becca) will just add my answers after Scott's. Anyway, here it goes:

4 JOBS I'VE HAD--
1. River Guide on the Snake River (Best Job ever)
2. BYU Custodial Services
3. Auditor for PriceWaterhouseCoopers
4. Accountant for Integra LifeSciences

1. Camp Counselor for YMCA
2. Cook for BYU
3. Office Manager for Body Shop
4. Clerk/Appraiser for Insurance Company

4 MOVIES I'VE WATCHED MORE THAN ONCE--
1. The Man from Snowy River
2. Pure Country
3. Lord of the Rings
4. Goal!

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. To be honest I love movies and have seen a ton, all of which I have watched more than once.

4 TV SHOWS I WATCH--
1. Criminal Minds
2. CSI New York
3. Man vs. Wild
4. Mythbusters

1. Criminal Minds
2. CSI New York
3. Greek
4. Greys Anatomy

4 PEOPLE WHO EMAIL ME REGULARLY--
1. Becca
2. My Boss - Tom
3. Controllers of subsidiary companies I reconcile
4. GEICO – (I already have Geico, you don’t have to keep e-mailing me telling me that you have low rates. I already know. That’s why I have Geico. And No, I don’t need RV insurance. Although, I do love the gecko.)

1. Scott
2. Ladies from church about activities
3. my Aunts
4. I get more spam than anything else

4 OF MY FAVORITE FOODS--
1. Pizza
2. Tacos
3. Burritos
4. Berry Smoothies

1. Potatoes (made any way)
2. Enchiladas Poblanos (specifically from this place in the Outer Banks)
3. cheese cake
4. sesame chicken

4 PLACES I'D LIKE TO VISIT--
1. Alaska
2. New Zealand
3. Argentina
4. Colorado (Great snowboarding baby, Oh Yeah!)

1. Venice, Italy
2. Australia
3. Buenos Aires, Argentina
4. cruise to Alaska

4 PEOPLE I TAG--
This is the worst part. I don’t know who to tag. How about I tag all of my family members. I know that there are more than four of you, but oh well.
1. Greg and Jan Pearson
2. Tyler and Summer Izatt
3. Mark and Kristie Pearson
4. Brianne Pearson
5. Seth Pearson
6. Dennis and Shauna Brown

Fall Festival Aholics

2008-10-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

OK, I admit it...We have a problem. That's right. We are Fall Festival Aholics. We apparently can't get enough of them. We went to another one out in Pennsylvania this weekend with Becca's sister. This one was a little bit more out in the country than the New Jersey ones though. It was a lot of fun. Of course we almost didn't make it there. We almost decided to hang out with some people who are always known for there fall colors, as they are always wearing orange jumpsuits. We took a detour to the State Penitentiary. Becca and I were following Thom and Sarah because we didn't know where it was. We followed them right into the parking lot at the State Penitentiary. Becca and I were wondering what kind of Festival they were taking us to. They had just made a wrong turn though, and we eventually made it to the festival. We got some good pics because we all had cute matching outfits on. Isn't my family adorable?

Here are all the kids playing in some hay.

And here is Cody trying to make some Apple Cider.

The kids also got to pick pumpkins and paint faces on them.

And of Course there was also a hay ride.

My Parting shot: Ok, I know I already put up this pic. But what can I say, I'm having a great hair day!!

Oh Please Becs...

2008-10-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

What, Jane Austen? Come on, Becs! If you are going to put one of those quizzes on our blog, you could've at least put one up that would appeal to more people. Actually, let me rephrase that. You could have put up one that I like better. Let me think... how about "Which Lord of the Rings character are you?" I bet they have one of those. Just a minute let me go check......

What LoTR Character Are You?

See, I told you. But seriously, who cares if I like bows, or swords, or axes better? Anyway, my point is: Actually I have no idea what my point is. Have a good day!

Which are you?

2008-10-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

I am a huge Jane Austen fan and thought this was cute!

Take the Quiz here!

Lenni-Lenape Summer

2008-10-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

Confused by the title? Ok, here goes my thought process. I was going to title it Indian Summer, because that is what we are having this weekend. It was beautiful and warm all weekend in the 70's. (All you people in Utah can be jealous, because I know you got snow this weekend) Anyway, I was going to title it Indian Summer, but then I got to thinking that really isn't politically correct. So I was about to call it Native American Summer. But, then I remembered a conversation I had with someone a while back. The Native Americans don't really like to be called that either. They prefer to be called by their tribe names, since that is what they really are. So I did some research and the tribe that lived in New Jersey were known as the Lenni-Lenape. In any case, the weather this weekend rocked!!!

I could have also titled it Fall Festival weekend. That is because it felt like everywhere we turned there was a Fall Festival going on. We went to three of them ourselves. We went to Allentown, Hightstown, and Von Thun Farm Fall Festival. The last was our favorite. Take a look at some of the highlights of our weekend below:

We started off cruising the streets of Allentown.

Cody started off by taking a ride on a pony. Becca had to stand there with him because, well, you know Cody. He probably would have had the horse galloping all over the farm if left to himself.

Cody Also tried to wrangle in some sheep. Good thing we didn't give him a rope.

Not to be shown up, Jade takes her turn with some riding. Yee-haw! Ride that hay bale Jade.

All that fun stuff there, and Cody's favorite part was probably getting to see Elmo. Go figure. Hey, doesn't Elmo look taller in person then on TV.

This is us going for a Hay Ride to go pick pumpkins. Nice Smile Cody.

Wait, that's not a pumpkin.

There you go. That's a pumpkin

So, we get to the pumpkin patch and Becca and I spent probably half an hour walking around looking at all kinds of different pumpkins. We kept arguing about which one to get. I had chosen out a pumpkin and was waiting in the long line to get back on the hay ride to go back to the farm while Becca looked to see if she could find a better pumpkin. All of sudden I look over and here is Cody rolling this pumpkin. He rolled the pumpkin for probably 25 yards to get it to where I was standing. He had decided that was the pumpkin we were getting. So that is the one we got.

Parting Shot:

Backwards Day

2008-10-10T12:43:00.001-07:00

So here’s something funny that happened to me today. It was about 11 am, so I had already been at work for several hours. One of my coworkers came up to me and said, “Isn’t your shirt on backwards?” I looked. Sure enough, I had been wearing it backwards all day. Ooops! Becca should never let me leave the house without inspecting me first. I guess I know now why Cody has such a tough time putting his clothes on the right direction. He must get it from me. At least I didn’t show up to work without a shirt, that would’ve been even more embarrassing.

Fun and not so fun

2008-10-06T17:40:00.000-07:00

So this is Scott writing. I just thought I'd start out with that because I actually haven't posted in months. I got bored of the whole blogging thing. So Becca has been posting all Summer. But I decided to add in my two cents to what's been going on in our lives. Let's see, where to start, where to start? We'll start off with the best part of the summer: Vacation of course.

So we went down to the Outer Banks in N.C. For all of you who don't know that is where Kittyhawk is. (Where the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane.) We were just a few minutes away from there. As you probably saw from the pictures Becca posted we spent most of our time at the beach. The place we rented was right on the beach. Literally!! It was pretty awesome. Take a look at a picture I took from the balcony:

Jade and Becs mostly just chilled on the beach. Cody and I enjoy a little more active pursuits. The waves were really big some of the days we were there because of the storms to the south of us. This made it perfect for surfing on the waves in the kayak and doing some boogie boarding. Even Cody took his turn.

Surfing the waves in a kayak is tons of fun. It's really easy to catch the wave because the kayak is so bouyant, the trick is not flipping over. I only flipped the first time. After that, I kind of got the hang of it. Luckily Becs didn't get a picture of me flipping though. We also got to chase crabs around the beach and go to the Aquarium.

We've also done a lot of other fun things this summer. We have a season pass to the zoo, so we've gone there several times. Cody loves animals. They have a trick-or-treat thing at the zoo in a few weekends, and we're thinking of going. Of course, we've also been camping quite a few times. We've tried out a couple of new places this summer. It's always nice to get a way for a few days. We even went to the Deleware Water Gap with the Barlows. Luckily they brought a camera so we could get a few pictures. Here we are at Dingman's Falls. There are alot of waterfalls around there that we went hiking to.

Cody giving a nice pose. He's going to be model when he grows up.

Jade looking cute!

A couple of bears hiding in a cave we found while hiking.

I also got to go river rafting down the Lehigh river a few weekends ago with some family. It was a lot of fun. I was elected to be the captain and steer the boat. I turn into a little bit of a different person when I'm on the river. I was really bossy. That's a warning for anyone who goes on the river with me in the future. Be prepared to sit down, shut up, and paddle hard. J/K. Here's a picture of us when we got done. See, everyone looks happy.

The rest of our time this summer was spent at the hospital or doctor's appointments. Seriously. I'm not even kidding. I created this spreadsheet to keep track of our doctors and medical expenses because it is too hard to remember them all. We see doctors or go to the hospital probably 2-3 times per week. And let's not get started on the medications my family is taking. Crazy. Of course, I can't take credit for it. Becca is the one who does it all. I just go to work every day. But seriously, I'm the only healthy one in the family. Becca is going to a doctor to figure out her high blood pressure problem, and has to take daily pills. Cody sees the doctor about his low growth hormone levels, and we have to give him shots nightly. Because of Jade's Prader Willi Syndrome, she sees the most doctor's. She sees a physical therapist weekly, pediatrician every three weeks, her feeding therapist monthly, a physiatrist every three to four months, endocrinoligist every six months, neonatoligist and geneticist and neurologist yearly. Plus anything else that comes up along the way, such as when Becca and Cody and Jade all got Hand, Mouth, Foot disease.

Wow that sounded depressing. If you want you can go back and read the above paragraph using Eeyore's voice.

We've actually been very blessed though. We've been able to live by family and we live in a really great ward so we always have had a babysitter when we need one. Plus we have been able to do a lot of fun things as a family.

Well, I've got to do a parting shot. Let's see. How about this one:

Better late than Never

2008-09-27T04:57:00.000-07:00

I'm finally posting the pics from our week in Nags Head, North Carolina. We had a great time.

Here is Jade at the beginning of the week.

By the end of the week she was just exhausted from all the excitement.

Scott was able to go kayaking right behind our place.

Of course Cody wanted to join in.

Cody got a new boogie board!

Both kids had a blast surfin' the waves.

Ouch!!

2008-09-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

We got through it. Cody officially started on growth hormone tonight and we successfully administered it to him. Only approximately 4015 days still to give. We had a registered nurse come to the house tonight to teach us how to give the medicine. Don't worry, it's nothing like the above needle. The length is probably only a centimeter long or so. He woke up from the cold of the alcohol swab and cried a little when I stuck him, but fell back asleep almost immediately after. We figure if by chance he does remember it in the morning we will just tell him that he got a bug bite ; ). So we have become a "clean house". Not really, but we do have our very own sharp container with a bio-hazard sticker and everything. So if you find yourself needing injections you know who to call now.

(On a side note, stay tuned for pics of our week at the Outer Banks!)

Rollie Pollie!

2008-08-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

Our little Jade has learned to rollover. This is such a great milestone for her. The video is a little bit dark but you can still see what she is doing. Go JADE!!

Cute Kids

2008-08-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

Here are some random pics I took today of my cute kids.

It is almost impossible to get both kids to smile at the same time so I added one extra of Jade to show what a happy baby she is.

Below is Jade's new toy. She absolutely loves it. What a good work-out for her.

Medical Update

2008-07-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

I thought I would give a quick medical update on Cody and Jade. Jade first because honestly she is just cruising along. She now weighs 17 lbs. 4 oz. at 7 1/2 months old. Not bad considering her brother was 17 lbs. even when he was 1 year old. The good news about her weight is that they let me slightly decrease her milk intake and increase her baby food. Hopefully that is a good step in the direction of having her feeding tube out. By the end of the month she will start having physical therapy once a week. With this increase hopefully her motor skills will start to show even more improvement. But overall, she is doing wonderfully. It is fun to see her start to come into her own personality and really just be a happy baby.
Cody also had some medical stuff this month. He had some blood work done that showed he was insufficiantly producing his growth hormone, hence his short stature. Anyway, before he can be treated they had to give him a MRI to rule out a brain tumor. So yesturday we headed to The Children's Specialty Hospital in New Brunswick for the MRI. I think the staff thought we were weird for taking pictures, but I did it anyway.

Here is Cody waiting to be taken in.

To administer the anesthesia they were going to use this mask, so they let Cody play with it for a minute so he wouldn't be scared of it. Cody loved it because it smelt like bubble gum.

I held him while he "fell asleep". He was such a good kid. All the technicians kept telling me he was their best patient of the day.

Into the big machine.

This is what he looked like when we got him back.

Overall, he did really well. When he first came out of the anesthesia he was very out of it. He was thrashing and kicking all over and screaming and crying. He almost fell of the bed a few times too. But he was not really awake and quickly fell back asleep again. Then when he woke up the second time he was more like my sweet little guy and didn't remember anything that happened. Hopefully this is our last experience with anesthesia

Tag, you're it!

2008-07-10T15:59:00.001-07:00

This is my first tag. I wasn't officially tagged, but I found this on a friends blog and thought it was a cute idea.

Here are the directions:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses...

Let's here it for our Country!

2008-07-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

So on the whole Scott usually posts and updates, but my poor husband is crazy busy with his quarter end at work. So you get to hear from me, the wife and mom, instead. So not much happend between our last post and the holiday weekend, so let's jump to there.

We started our celebrating a little bit early by going to the fireworks they had at Veteren's Park on Thursday night. They had a live band playing mostly motown with lots of different venders and such. At dark the fireworks started. We had prime seating that made it seem like you could just reach up in the sky and grab them. Cody loved the lights and colors, but wasn't a big fan of the loud bangs. Jade on the other hand didn't seem to be bothered by the sounds and just sat there amazed by the lights.

Then on the 4th we were invited over to a friend's house with some other family's to have a breakfast celebration. The food was great and so was the company. Cody especially enjoyed the large amount of kids he had to play with. They don't have any good parades around here so my friend Marla came up with a great idea for the kids to do instead. They all brought their bikes to the party and decorated them. Then they "paraded" around the culdesac.

Here is everyone at the start. There was even great music for them to ride with.

Cody on his way!

Cody didn't quite make it around and wanted some assistance.

Jade is having a good time!

Cody chowin' down on some watermelon. YUM!

The Forth of July is one of Scott's favorite holidays so of course this was not the end of the day. After the great parade we stopped at home for a quick nap to re-energize and then it was off to my parents house for an evening BBQ. More great food and great company. Scott is the BBQ king so he was in his eliment cooking up the hot dogs and hamburgers. It wouldn't be the forth without those. Luckily we got all of our outside stuff done before the rain.

My sister stayed over at my parents house so we spent some of our Saturday with them. It was a bit cloudy, but hot outside so Scott and Cody went out to play in the water. Here is the result.
What you don't see is that Scott gave Cody the hose to fill the pool first. Cody thought it would be funny to get mom wet, so I am soaked to the bone thanks to my son. I usually think to bring a change of clothes for Cody and Jade, but didn't think that Scott and I would need one too.

We ended our fun-filled weekend by going to the Freedom Fest at Mercer County Park that night. They had lots of food, music and fun things for Cody. Of course my favorite thing was the funnel cake. I am a sucker for carnival food. Cody's favorite was bouncing on the tiger belly.

In true Scott fashion, my parting shot is a video of my kids from today. They are having a cute laugh together.

Summer Swimmin

2008-06-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

Well, Everything has been going really great lately. My new job is fantastic! I am an accountant at Integra LifeSciences which has it's Corporate headquarters in Plainsboro, New Jersey. I work on Intercompany reconciliations. Other than my new job, it has been a pretty quiet summer so far. It has been nice and relaxing just like summer is meant to be. We have actually speant quite a bit of time swimming in the pool at our apartment complex. We are definitely going to miss that if we ever move out of Ravens Crest. The crazy thing is that there is hardly ever anyone there. We go there about 3 - 4 times a week at least. It has been a lot of fun. Cody has taken to it like a fish. I'm sure he'll be swimming in no time. We put those floaty things on his arms and he just swims around the whole pool by himself. He is kind of hyperactive in the pool, kicking his feet like a maniac to get around.

Jade is more of a chiller. She just lays in her little yellow floaty tube and chills. (She must take after Becs, because Cody and I are never that calm.) I hope you enjoy some of the pictures. I intentionally didn't put any swimming pictures of me up because I didn't want you all to go blind from Awesomeness and Attractiveness! (Actually I didn't want you to go blind from the glare off of my white body. I guess that's what I get for having a desk job where I am inside all day.)

Let's see what else has gone on since I last posted. Rebecca had her birthday on June 6. She turned 6. Well, at least that is how many candles I put on her cake. I am sure putting the right number of candles on the cake would have violated some sort of fire safety code. Besides it probably would have melted the cake. (It was a Chocolate Resses Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake). We actually had a great time on Becca's birthday and hopefully she enjoyed it too.

How about a little Cody and Jade update:

Lets start with Cody. For those of you who didn't know Cody is very short and skinny. (Not that Becs and I are Shaquille O'Neal or anything.) Anyway, we have been taking him to specialists for a while now. We finally found out this last week why he is so small. His body doesn't produce enough growth hormone. The next step is to rule out any abnormal causes of this such as tumors. They are going to do an MRI on him in July. If everything turns out ok, then they will start giving him growth hormone to help his growth.

Jade continues to progress. Ironically, the doctors don't think she needs growth hormone yet because her growth is doing well. She is eating some solid foods now, so we are pleased with that. She is also starting to roll over a little bit. Her main problem is that she doesn't have enough support of her neck. So when she rolls over it is just the rest of her body, while her head stays still. Her physical therapists and other doctors are pleased with her progression though. In October she goes to a Physiatrist. There are only four of these in the state of New Jersey. They are going to hook her up to some special equipment to help start teaching her how to stand and how to walk. In other news we were finally able to get all of her blood drawn after only going to four different hospitals to get it drawn. She did well though, a lot better then I would've. (I nearly passed out when I gave blood as a freshman in college, but that is a story for another time)

Let me see, what else have we done since I last posted? I've been kayaking a few times. Yesterday I headed over to the Delaware River. I kayaked up the canal starting from the Scudder's Falls Bridge up to Washington's crossing, and then kayaked back down the Deleware river. At the Scudder's Falls Bridge area there is a great play wave that I was able to playboat in for a while also. It was awesome. I didn't get any pictures of me doing it, but my parting shot below is someone else doing some playboating on the same wave at Scudder's Falls that I play at.

Catch up

2008-06-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

So, now that we have a nice new computer I figured I would do a little bit of catch up on stuff that has happened. Becs has already talked about most the stuff, so I'll just touch on a few things. Becs already mentioned that we went camping. I just wanted to say how much fun we had there. We went to a nice little lake in the mountains in Pennsylvania. We brought my kayak and did some kayaking and hiking and stuff. Below is a picture of Cody looking for Salamanders. We actually were able to find quite a few. We also found a stick poking out of the water that Cody thought resembled a shark. So if you ask him about the camping trip he might tell you we found salamander's and sharks.
We also did some hiking while we were there. Cody loved it. We were following a river the whole time and he kept telling me he wanted to find where it started. Below is a video of Cody running ahead of us because he thought we were going to slow. That's kind of a miracle for Cody, because normally he is the slowest walker on earth. I guess he like's hiking.

One thing Becca didn't mention was about us going to the zoo. We decided to get a membership to the Philadelphia zoo, and we took Cody and Jade down there on the Saturday before Memorial day. Cody did really good. He even got to ride a camel.

Here are pictures of my two little monkeys. That reminds me of a funny story. When I was younger my Mom took us all to the zoo. I remeber when we went by the monkey cage one of the monkey's was making a ton of noise hollering and shaking the cage and such. My mom didn't see the monkey and instead turned to my brother Mark and yelled at him to be quiet and stop making so much noise. Of course, it was actually the monkey making all of the noise and my brother actually hadn't said a word. I guess monkey must run in my family's blood.

Here is my cute Hoodie Family. If you didn't know already, I like Hoodies. OK, I guest that is a little bit of an understatement. I love hoodies. I probably own over 50 Hoodies. I always get mad at Becs if she tries to throw one away. So, since I like Hoodies, my family puts up with it and wears them also. We even got Jade this cute little pink Nike hoodie.

My parting shot today is Becs and my dream house. It has a really nice porch and sits on a beautiful piece of land surrounded by forest. It was awesome. Although I think the lady that lived there and saw us taking a picture of her house was kind of freaked out. She probably thought we were stalkers or something. Oh well.

"Cody-isms" and a funny laugh

2008-05-29T21:38:00.000-07:00

Our conversation today after Cody and Scott got back from the park.

Becs - I'm sure glad you guys are back from the park and didn't get caught in the rain.

Cody - Mommy, are there nets in the rain?

Becs - What?

Cody - Nets. To catch the children.

That boy cracks me up.

So Jade really laughs and smiles a lot more, but she has this kind of funky laugh. It almost sounds like she is crying, only she's definitely laughing. Check it out for yourself.

Four Events and a Funeral

2008-05-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

Event #1:
Scott gave notice and quit his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. After two years of a long commute and long hours it was time for a change. He has taken a new job with Integra Lifesciences Corporation as a staff accountant. Among many positive new changes the best is that his new office is literally 1.2 miles down the road from our apartment. He can walk to work if he would like. Which brings us to…

Event #2:
Scott has been commuting to his office in Florham Park for the last several months, which is about 1.5 hours each way. He has been using our 1990 Toyota Camry, Cameron, that my parents helped me buy when I was 16. It has approximately 200,000 miles on it and quite honestly has been living on borrowed time for months now. On Scott’s last day of commuting Cameron died about 15 miles from home in the pouring rain. After much effort from my parents and a soaking wet Scott we miraculously got the car back to my parents house to wait out its last days. It looks like Scott really will have to walk to work.

Event #3:
When Scott left PWC we some how were lucky enough to have him home one whole week before he started his new job. Thinking that it might be the only vacation we get this summer we of course went to the great outdoors. We went camping at one of Pennsylvania’s beautiful State Parks, Locust Lake State Park. We took the kayak for some boating in the lake and found a great little hike suitable for the family. The weather was perfect for us and we had a great time.

We also went down to the beach. Of course it was too cold to go in the water, but we had a nice walk on the sand and enjoyed the salty air.

Event #4:
It was also Scott’s birthday on May 12th. Scott has been a huge soccer fan all his life. We have been hoping to go to a MLS game since we got to NJ and finally got our chance. To celebrate his birthday we went to see the NY Red Bulls game versus the Kansas City Wizards. First we had a chance to eat at one of our favorite places, Fuji Hibachi and Sushi Grill. The game was so much fun to watch and the atmosphere was exciting. They tied 1-1, but a tie is better than a loss.

The Funeral:
On Monday, the 19th, we said good-bye to my first car, Cameron. We donated him to Outreach for use of the parts that are still good. Cameron, you served us well and I will always have fond memories of you. Rest In Peace. ; )

Stay Tuned...

2008-05-21T18:41:00.001-07:00

So we are without a computer right now, but hope to get a new one in the near future. In the mean time hang in there because we have definitely had some big changes happen recently that we will post about soon! Till then hope you all are enjoying the Spring weather.

Party Mania

2008-05-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

So Cody was invited to his first birthday parties that just happen to both be on this past Saturday. First we had a Blue's Clues breakfast party for Spencer who turned 3. The kids had fun playing Blue's Clues and "pin the flag on mailbox". Scott and I were invited to stay and enjoy some of the breakfast treats, including Finnish pancakes and fried-up spam, yum! We left that party in time to drive to the next party for my "cousin's" daughter's 4th birthday party. This one was at a taekwondo studio. The instructors taught the kids several moves and played some games with them. They were very nice and patient with the kids and Cody had a blast. We forgot to pull out the camera for Spencer's party, but got some good shots at Sofia's party.

Here is Cody learning how to block a hit.

Cody getting ready to hit.

Here is Cody doing the obstacle course they had set up for the kids.

PS - I put cousin in quotations because technically she isn't my cousin, but my parents have known her parents for decades, so we are practically family.

Family, Friends, Fun, Festivals, and Frogs

2008-04-27T17:25:00.000-07:00

All right, so I haven't really posted in a while, so I have a lot of catching up to do. This post might be a little long. Lets start by going back to last Saturday, April 19. Becca had a girl's lunch with her four cousin's and sister and all of the kids. Cody had lots of fun playing with the other kids, but his favorite part was playing with the yellow lab. I guess we need to get him a dog. Here is a picture of all the kids that were there. Can you tell which kids are ours?

Since it was just for the girls and kids, I decided to spend the day kayaking. I went up sea kayaking to the Thimble Islands off of the coast of Conneticut. It is about a 2.5 hour drive from our house. It was a fabulous day for kayaking, clear skies and 70 degrees. The Thimble Islands are made up of hundreds of little islands all within a mile or two of the coast. Some of them are just little rocks above the ocean, some are big enough for one house, and some hold several houses. Here are a few of the pictures I took while kayaking.

The picture below was a little bridge that went between two of the islands.

That night after I got back from kayaking, we all went over to the Dueker's house for Mellisa's birthday. Here is a picture of the kids there.

The rest of the week went pretty well. Here are a few of the highlights below. First off is Cody slaughtering me at a game of chess. I haven't quite figured it out, but somehow everytime we play, he kills all of my guys before I can even make a move. If you ever play him watch out, he's good.
Let's see...Next I guess we'll talk about Jade's feeding test. So Jade went to New Brunswick to St. Peter's Hospital. They put Barium in her milk and used different flow nipples to feed her while they X-Rayed to see where the liquid ended up. Well, it turns out that when they used the fast flow nipple all of the milk went directly into her lungs. Basically, her epiglottis (a lid-like flap of elastic cartildge tissue covered with a mucous membrane, attached to the root of the tongue), wasn't protecting her airway when she swallows. The dangerous thing about it is that when it happens, she doesn't cough or choke. With the slow flow nipples, none of it went into her lungs, but they could tell she was still having difficulty. What we have ended up doing now is putting rice cereal in her milk to thicken it up, that way she is better able to swallow it, without it going into her lungs. She has also started to eat rice cereal a little bit, and seems to be doing well with that.

That was pretty much all we did for the week. Let's move on to the weekend. Yesterday we went to the New Jersey Folk Festival and the Rutgers Agricultural day, which was being held at Rutger's University. It was a ton of fun. They had all kinds of stuff going on there. Cody got to see some cockroach races and pet some cows and pigs. The Folk festival had a lot of good music, food and free kid's activities. Here are some of the picture's below. First up is him getting his face painted.

If you can't tell, it's a snake.

Here Cody is sharing his balloon animal with Jade, while she gets a tube feeding.

Here is Cody bouncing at one of the games they had set up for the kids.

Here is Jade, chilling in the sun at the Festival.
And finally, here are Becs and Cody chillin on a tree.

Well, that's about all for now. My parting shot below is me holding a frog that Cody and I caught this week. Cody told me he wanted to keep it and feed it flies, but Becca would have none of that in our house. I told Cody the frog would miss his family, so he let me go release him. Have a great week!

Open Wide

2008-04-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

So Cody had his first ever dentist appointment this week. The dentist said that his teeth look really good. No cavities. The only problem is his mouth is really small, and so he will need braces when he's older. (If you haven't noticed, all of his teeth are pretty crooked). That got me to thinking. If I had gone into dentistry I could just check his teeth myself. I'll bet most of you didn't know I was a pre-dental major in college for one semester. Then again, I tried pretty much everything in college. Wait, that came out totally wrong. I meant to say that I took a lot of different kinds of classes. I even took underwater basket weaving. I'm serious. Ask me about it some time if you want. Anyway, you know why I decided not to continue on with dentistry?

Can you imagine sticking your hands in that guys mouth? Disgusting.

Jade did really well this week also. We just found out that she has passed the 12 lbs mark! Yeah!! You know what that means, only one time waking up at night. We now feed her at 11pm, 3am, and 7am. We get to trade off who gets to sleep through the night every day. That is pretty exciting. She also did really well with the Physical Therapist. The PT said she was impressed by how much Jade was moving and held up her head and stuff. Go Jade!

I've been bored of my background lately so I keep switching it up. In case you wanted to know the last background picture I had up I took from the top of Squaw Peak looking out towards Mt. Timpanogas in Utah. (Can't remember what my last background pic looked like. Click Here) I took the picture from the real top, not the parking lot you can just drive to. It's a good hike if you ever want to do it. Start by hiking up Rock Canyon for about a mile and a half or so. You'll come across a trail that goes off to the left that should have a sign that says Squaw Peak. It looks like this:
Anyway, you can follow that right up to the top of squaw peak. It is about four miles or so to get to the top I think. You'll get a fantastic view.

The background I have up now is another picture I took while hiking. I'll let you see if you can figure out where, then I'll tell you where it is the next time I decide to switch backgrounds.

Jade's Milestones

2008-04-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sure all of you know that since Jade was a few days old she has had a feeding tube. However, since mid-January we have been bottle feeding her also, in the hopes that eventially she would be able to eat solely from that. As you can imagine it has been an uphill battle. She has steadily increased the amount she has taken from her bottle, but as she has done that the amount she is given has also steadily increased. Anyway, on the advise of her speech therapist, who is working with her for her feedings, I got some new bottles with faster flowing nipples. We started using them mid-day yesturday. At her 7am feeding this morning she drank 80 of her 90 ml. I am happy to report that at her 10 am and 1 pm feeding she finished her first entire bottle! Go JADE!!!! I am so excited that she has hit this milestone. We hope that in the weeks to come she will be able to do all her feedings from a bottle and be able to remove her feeding tube. But, until then we are so happy that she is atleast showing wonderful progress.

She is becoming very aware of the tube being down her nose and pulls it out a million times a week. Not really but sometimes it feels that way. It's hard to believe we ever were nervous to have to put it back in. Now it just seems like second nature. Anyway she took her tube out today and I thought it would be fun to take some pics of her without it in. She is really starting to smile more, accept when I want to take a picture of her. But, I managed to get one off today, so hear it is.

She is also starting to really move around and she really enjoys playing with her toys. Since all of Scott's family, except his parents, have never seen Jade we decided to take a video of her playing today. Luckily she was willing to show off a little at the right time.

Spring Barbecue

2008-04-07T14:05:00.001-07:00

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!" ~Robin Williams

I couldn't agree more. Isn't it great that spring has finally arrived? I love it!!! I even took Friday off from work to try and enjoy the nice spring weather. Unfortunately it rained on Friday, so that kept us indoors. However, we were able to find this great indoor playground place. I think it was called Funtime Junction or something. It was kind of like a Chuck-E-Cheese's, however, it had a lot more tunnels and slides and even had some sand art and stuff. Plus, it was way less crowded and noisy than Chuck-E-Cheese's. It was pretty cool. Well, it was good for Cody anyways because he got a chance to exercise and run around even though it was rainy outside. We could barely pull him off of the toys. Sorry, I forgot to bring my camera again, so there are no pictures.

Saturday, however, was a perfect spring day. We went rollerblading over to the park and played for a couple of hours. Ok, actually I rollerbladed and carried Cody while Becs pulled Jade in the wagon. We switched on the way home. I know what you're thinking. How could you switch rollerblades? Simply put: I have tiny feet. In fact I think my feet are shrinking. My feet used to be a size 7 1/2, now I think they are more like a size 7 or even a 6 1/2. That can't be good. I can wear Becca's rollerblades no problem because we have the same size feet. I can fit in Becca's other shoes also, but let's not go there.

Saturday we also had our first Barbecue of the season!!! I am what you might call a Barbecueaholic. I love it. There isn't much better than throwing some charcoal in the grill and throwing on some meat and veggies. And yes, it has to be a charcoal grill. None of that propane or gas stuff. That makes it way to easy, and not near as fun. Besides, who doesn't like to play with lighter fluid, or as Cody calls it "Magic Juice". We went out on our little patio and grilled up some chicken and corn on the cob. It turned out delicious. In fact, I'm drooling just looking at the pictures.
We prefer to grill the corn with the husk still on it. The juices from the corn steam the corn, and it turns out perfect. In fact Cody even ate two pieces and literally told me "This is the best corn in the whole world." Although, come to think of it, what would he know? He's probably only tasted my corn on the cob before. Oh well, I was flattered none the less. Even the chicken turned out well. The outside got a little bit crispy, but the barbecue sauce didn't burn too much. It was a great barbecue. Next time I think I want to try grilling a loin of pork. Anybody know of any good recipes? I was thinking of using a spice rub or maybe wrap it in bacon. Or maybe both. I don't know, we'll have to see.

Saturday and Sunday was General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. For those of you who were able to watch, I'm sure you'll agree it was a great conference. I especially enjoyed watching President Monson wiggle his ears in Priesthood Session. That was pretty cool. I'm going to have to learn how to do that.

Parting Shot - Becs and I at Zion's National Park in Utah in 2003. Man I love those pants. What did I ever do with those?

Mr. Mom

2008-04-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

Our friends the Bradshaw Family had this posted on their blog and we thought it was hilarious. Enjoy!!

The Next Survivor Series

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks. Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.

There is no fast food. Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of 'pretend' bills with not enough money.

In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week. Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time. Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment, a dentist appointment, and a haircut appointment.

He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care. He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function. Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flower s outside and keeping it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done. The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed. During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting. They will need to read a book and then pray with the children each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child's birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name. They will also need to know each child's weight and length at birth, time of birth, and length of labor, along with each child's favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last man wins only if . . . he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18 to 25 years, eventually earning the right to be called ‘Mother.’

Happy Easter!!

2008-03-29T17:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter Everybody!! Ok, I know I'm a week late. But late is better than never. We had an awesome Easter weekend. We had a bunch of dying of easter eggs, easter egg hunts, and believe it or not the Easter Bunny even decided to show up on Easter Morning and dropped off some stuff. Take look at some of the pictures. The first ones are of Cody and I dying the Easter eggs on Saturday Morning. Cody was pretty excited about it. We also had an Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday. Luckily it warmed up enough so that we could have it outside. We went over to Jack and Joans house and found the eggs around the yard.

Ok, so the next picture has nothing to do with Easter, but it is totally true.

My parting shot is me playing some Wii boxing. Ok, so maybe I don't look that good. At least I beat the computer though.

Three of a Kind

2008-03-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

So I was relaxing on the couch tonight and Scott had the kids in the back room. I should have known something was up when it got very quiet for a while. Anyway, when my family reemerged they were looking adorable in matching outfits and I had to take a picture. The Gap hoodie that Jade is wearing we originally bought when Cody was a baby. We lucked out that even though Cody does not have an exact Gap hoodie now, he does have a red hoodie that for all intents and purposes looks identical. I sadly do not have a red hoodie of my own. However, since our children seem to take after me in their looks I suppose it's only fitting that Scott have them look like him in some way too. I happen to come across this next picture from the Summer of 2005 and thought it would be fun to add.

Here comes the Sun

2008-03-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry, it's been a while since my last post. I've been kind of busy. Ok, maybe I've just been kind of lazy. We had a great weekend. My inlaws were nice enough to watch Cody and Jade last Friday night and Saturday. Becs and I took advantage of the opportunity and went out on Friday night. We didn't stay out too late though because Friday night was our one chance to sleep through the night since Jack and Joan had Jade. Unfortunately our eyes both popped open at 4am. Oh well, habit I guess. Then on Saturday morning we went in to New York to the LDS temple. It was really great. Afterwards, we went to a restaurant named Ollie's. Can you guess what kind of restaurant it is? I'll tell you at the end of the post. On Sunday we had some friends over for dinner. It was fun, plus they brought over a really, really good dessert. It was some kind of Finnish blueberry dessert. It's making me hungry just thinking about it.

Monday as you all know was St. Patrick's Day. You know what that means right? Spring snowboarding baby!! I hope none of you went up to meet me at Mountain Creek. I went up to Camelback instead. It was only $10 bucks to ski from 3 - 7. Pretty sweet. It was a ton of fun. I don't have any pictures though because I went up by myself. Let's all take a moment of silence for the end of the snowboarding season. Since Spring is starting tomorrow, that means the beginning of the kayaking season!! Yeah Spring!!! I just found a great new kayaking spot also. You'll have to wait for another post for that though.

Ok, now for the Jade update. I'm sorry I made you all wait untill the end. Jade is doing great. We found out over the weekend that she passed her sleep exam, so that was good. Then on Monday she went to the endocrinologist to find out about the growth hormone. They said that she is growing and improving really well. In fact, she is doing so well, that they don't feel she needs to start the growth hormone yet. She'll go back in six months to see how she is doing.

That's all for now. Ollie's is a Chinese restaurant. Bet you didn't guess that.

Parting Shot - Kayaking on the Green River

Doctor Cody

2008-03-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

So last night Cody woke up once in the middle of the night to tell Scott that his ear was hurting. Scott gave him some tylenol and tucked him back in to bed and he slept peacefully the rest of the night. When he woke up this morning he complained about it some more and added that he could hear something. I just figured it was a ringing in his ear. Anyway, I called the pediatrician and took Cody in to see the available doctor. The doctor told Cody that he made a very good diagnosis of himself, spot on. Apparantly the inside of Cody's ear is oozing and gross looking. So he's on medication and drugged up on Tylenol for the pain and doing well. I am so grateful for a child old enough where he can tell me what is hurting him.

Meanwhile, I already had an appointment in the afternoon for Jade with her pediatrician for a weight check (she goes every 3 weeks). We had high hopes for her to reach 10 lbs. because we thought at that point our doctor would allow us to go longer in between feedings at night. We currently feed her every 3 hours day and night. She made it to 9 lbs. 13 oz. I know, I know so close. It turns out it doesn't matter because the doctor changed the goal weight to 12 lbs. so we still have a while to go. But my saving grace is that Jade is a bottle/tube feeder so my wonderful husband takes the 1 am feeding and I take the 4 am feeding. This atleast allows us both a chunk of sleep for part of the night. Oh well, maybe next weigh-in.

Snowboard Cross Baby!!

2008-03-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

Woah baby!!! Did you guys watch the Visa US snowboard cross world cup finals? It was awesome!! Americans took the gold in both men's and women's SBX. For the women it was Lindsey Jacobellis, and Nick Baumgartner for the men. If you missed the exciting action, not to worry I have some pics of it below.Here are Lindsey and Nick celebrating their victories at Whiteface.

Here is Lindsey in white with a commanding lead over the competition. Good thing she didn't try to pull a backside method grab. That could've been disastrous.
Here are the men fighting it out on the slopes. Nick managed to pull ahead at the end to win it.

Becs is sitting next to me while I am writing this, and she has informed me that not everybody likes snowboarding as much as I do. So I thought to myself, Scott (because that is what I call myself, Scott). I said Scott, why wouldn't people like snowboarding as much as me. It must be because they haven't tried it. Well, to solve that problem I'm inviting you all to go snowboarding on St. Patrick's Day. Mountain Creek Resort in New Jersey is having night skiing for only $17 on St. Patrick's Day if you wear green. So put on your green and come up snowboarding with me. Of course, you'll have to pay for yourself. What do you think, I'm made of money? I'll be up there by 5pm. What, you're still not interested? Fine then. I've got the next best thing. Below is a video of someone snowboarding on the snowboard cross course in Whiteface where the Visa US snowboard cup was. If you watch it you can almost feel like you are really snowboarding. If you still don't like snowboarding, I'm afraid you're a lost cause.

Easter Pic

2008-03-08T17:53:00.000-08:00

Cody and Jade's easter picture we took at the Freehold mall today. It turned out pretty good, other than Cody having a little bit of a cheesy smile. Jade is looking at the camera though, so that was good. We also went to our ward game night tonight. I brought a peanut butter chip brownies. I got the recipe from http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipes/detail.asp?id=5078&page=4&per=25 . It was pretty good. Becca played this game that she really liked and wants me to buy for her. It was called blokus I think. Anyway, that's all for now.

Jade and Cody update

2008-03-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

I decided I haven't posted a Jade update for a while, so this will be my Jade update for those of you who don't get to hear what's going on with her. Last night she had her sleep study. Becca went down to CHOP and stayed there overnight. They hooked Jade up to a whole bunch of wires and monitors and stuff to monitor her breathing. She slept well, however we won't have the results back from the tests for a week or so. It was nice for me because I got to sleep through the night for the first time in a long time. Unfortunately for Becca, she had to do both feedings. (Normally Becca and I take turns getting up to feed Jade in the middle of the night. I do the 1am feeding and Becs does the 4am.) We'll keep you all updated on what the results of the tests show. Other than that Jade is doing really well. She is really doing well with her bottle feedings. She has started to be more consistent and more awake during her feedings. It is really encouraging for us, because we hope someday she'll be able to take it all from a bottle and get off of the tube feedings completely. Her physical therapist came over the other day also, and gave us some stuff to do with Jade to help her to grow and develop. Jade really is wonderful, and we love having her. Even Cody loves having her around and is constantly giving her hugs and kisses.

Now for the Cody update. Cody is doing really well also. He is finally potty trained. Becs and I decided to just go for it. He has been wearing underwear for a week, and hasn't had an accident. He decided he really likes going on the potty. He even climbs up onto the sink by himself afterwards to wash his hands. Cody also just finished up his class at the community center he has been taking. It was an art/gym class which he went to with Becs every week. We are going to start him in another class shortly. He really likes art. In fact, we got him a bunch of art supplies for his birthday. On Saturday he and I had a boy's day because Becca and Jade were gone all day. I was going to drive up to Lake Placid, NY to watch the SnowboardCross finals. However, I decided 10 hours in a car with Cody wasn't worth watching snowboarding for 2 hours. Don't worry though, if you weren't able to make it to Lake Placid either, it will be on this Saturday at 2pm on NBC, or on Sunday at 3pm on Versus. Instead of going up to Lake Placid, we went to see Thimbletack, Hogsqueal, and Mulgarath. That's right, we went to see the Spiderwick Chronicles. Cody enjoyed the movie, but I think what he was most exited about was that I bought him a blue Icee to drink during the movie.

Well, that's all for now. My parting shot is Cody standing in front of my Chinese Fan Palm (That's a type of tree.) Mark and Kristie, I don't know if you can tell, but he's even wearing a Texas shirt.

It Happened

2008-02-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it finally happened. I have heard the stories a million times from a million people. Every parent probably has a story about it. I just never thought it would happen to my family. Cody is too smart for that, I thought. Oh, but I was wrong. What am I talking about? Sticking things up the nose. What is it with kids liking to stick things up their nose? I guess the holes are just too irresistable. Last night at dinner Cody stuck a piece of corn way up his nose. We tried to suck it out with a rubber-bulb syringe, but to no avail. Then I plugged Cody's other nostril and made him blow really hard. The piece of corn finally shot out like a BB. At least it wasn't a micro machine or something. I heard of some kid who stuck a micro machine toy car up his nose and had to get it removed at the hospital. Now on our list of things to tell Cody not to do is stick things up the nose.

Snowmen, Sledding and Trains

2008-02-25T07:32:00.000-08:00

We finally got some snow here in New Jersey. Friday we woke up to snow covering the ground and a winter storm warning in effect. Lucky for me that meant the roads were pretty crazy on Friday so I got to leave work early to ensure I got home safely. So what did I do with my Friday afternoon? Build a snoman with Cody of course.
Here is Cody rolling up the snowball for the body. The snow was absolutely perfect for building snowmen because it was so wet. Cody made that ball all by himself by just rolling the snow down the hill. I got a little bit carried away and built a really big snowman. Here Cody is giving him a hug. It was actually pretty hard to make because the wet snow was so heavy, it was hard to lift the snoballs on top of each other.

Don't go anywhere yet. I'm just getting started with our weekend. That was just Friday. On Saturday morning we all went over to an old closed ski resort right off of Rt. 29 by the Howell Living Farm. It was closed back in the 90's, however there is still a really nice hill there for sledding. It was pretty awesome. We even brought Jade out so she could watch us. The only problem was I didn't get any pictures because Cody threw a snowball at the camera on Friday, and so all of my pictures came out fuzzy because my camera lens got wet. I did snap off a picture right before he threw the snowball at me though. Check it out-

Next came his birthday party on Saturday. He had a Thomas the Train birthday party at Aunt DeeDee's house. It turned out really great. We took a lot of pictures. I'll just try and put up a few of the highlights.Isn't it an awesome cake. Andrea made it for Cody. It turned out really awesome.

I know, Cody is so spoiled isn't he. He got to blow out candles on two sets of cake. Then on Sunday we put the candles on the cake again and he got to blow them out again. What can I say? The kid likes fire.

Here he is opening presents. He got a lot of nice clothes, games, books, and toys. He had a ton of fun and is probably still hyped up on sugar. Oh well, Asi es la vida.

That's all for now. You can stop reading now. Really. I don't have anything else to say. Go read somebody else's blog.

No more homework, no more books...

2008-02-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!

In case you didn't know I have spent June through December studying and taking all 4 parts of the CPA exam. Today we found out that I passed the forth part of the CPA. YEAH!!!!

Sorry, I think I got that out of my system. I'm better now. Wait.....no......I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!! Ok, now it really is out of my system.

Anyway, not much else has happened. Cody's birthday is coming up in a few days, so we're having a "Thomas the Train" party for him on Saturday with family. He's really excited. I think that we should get him a snowboard for his birthday, but Becca thinks he's too young. Maybe she'll let him have a kayak. He already has a little tent that he takes camping with us. In fact, he just slept in his tent last night in his room. Yeah!!! That's my son. He already takes after his dad and loves camping. We're thinking about going down to Great Smoky Mountain National Park this summer to do some camping and hiking. I've never been there before, and I think it would be a lot of fun. We'll have to see.

I added a new song to my playlist on my blog tonight. It is a Boyz II Men song. I'm putting it on there because I just watched 'Don't forget the Lyrics' and they won $500,000 for their charity. It was pretty cool. So I'm putting one of their songs on in honor of them.

Anyways, that's all for now. Sorry, no pictures this time. Maybe next time.

I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!I PASSED!!!

My Mullet Entry

2008-02-19T06:44:00.000-08:00

Matt and Kristin Lyman are holding a contest to find the best mullet and post it on your blog. So this is my entry below (The video takes a while before it starts). I decided to go with a classic - Billy Ray Cyrus's mullet while singing Achy Breaky Heart in 1993. Gotta love the mullet. If you look hard at the video you can see some people in the audience with some good mullets as well.

Jade's Baby Blessing

2008-02-17T17:39:00.000-08:00

We had a really good weekend. My parents came into town from Utah for Jade's blessing. Cody has really enjoyed having them around. On Saturday Cody went out for a walk with Grandpa and played outside for a little bit. Then we all went over to Chucky Cheese's because it was pretty cold outside. It was so loud when we got there, it was hard to even hear ourselves think. By the time we left, however, we had gotten used to the noise, and we hardly even noticed it. Funny, huh. Cody had a lot of fun though. He played a ton of games and we even got some good pizza. (Well, it wasn't as good as Papa Johns, but it was better than that New Jersey style pizza anyway.)

Today was Jades baby blessing in church. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not too good at the whole speaking in public thing, or talking to people in general. Needless to say, I was really nervous. I didn't throw up though, so that was good (Read January 19 post). Seriously though, I think it went pretty well. Take a look at some of the pictures below.
Well, here's the dress. It only took us looking at about 50 dresses before Becca decided on this one. I really like the dress a lot. But then again, I also liked the first 49 we looked at. At the end of the day Becca decided to go with 'Dressed in White' in Provo to buy the dress from. My Mom bought it and brought it with her.

The cute little bracelet she is wearing was made by Karen, a friend of my Moms in Utah.
Well, at least Becs and I are looking at the camera.

Ahhh, finally out of that dress and into a hoodie. This is how life should be!!

Wii and Fingerpaint

2008-02-13T18:16:00.000-08:00

So, not much has happened in the last couple weeks. I've just been working a lot. I am currently auditing Princeton Hospital. I would tell you more, but then I'd have to kill you. Actually, you would probably die of boredom if I told you more, so I'll go on to more exciting things.

Becca has become quite the wii-er. And no, that's not what it means you sickos. It means someone who likes to play Nintendo Wii. Jack and Joan have one, and we just set it up a couple of weekends ago. Becca kicked my butt at bowling and baseball, but I beat her at Tennis and Golf. Well, she has been practicing since then. She even got a score of 241 at bowling today. Too bad she can't bowl that well in real life.

Last weekend was pretty good also. I spent a lot of time working. However, I did manage to spend a few minutes with Cody fingerpainting. Most of it landed on the paper. Ok, some of it landed on the paper. We definitely had a lot of fun though.

Snowboarding at Last

2008-02-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

So, I finally collected enough money through my "Scott Pearson Snowboarding Fund" to go snowboarding. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa B! So we went up snowboarding last night. It was awesome! I love snowboarding. We went up night skiing to Shawnee Mountain, which is located in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. I tried to get some pictures and I took a few movies of us. Some of them are hard to see because it is night, but you get the idea. I'll post the pictures and the movie below.

Not much else has really happened. Except that I did my taxes. Not that exciting, but at least Jade helped us so we get a good refund. Here's a cute picture of her. And yes, I do rule.

River Dance

2008-01-31T17:30:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to give everybody a quick update on "The Pearson Posse". Jade has been doing very well. She continues to eat about 15 ml out of a bottle, and the rest through the tube. Jade went down to CHOP for her preliminary sleep study this week. She has to have a sleep study because when she starts taking growth hormones at 6 months old, it could affect the way she sleeps. So they have to do the sleep study to make sure that she sleeps well. This time it was just a preliminary study. She has her actual study on March 4. Becs and Jade will go down to CHOP and stay the night there, with Jade hooked up to all of the monitors. That should be interesting. At least she will get a night away from crazy Cody. If you don't think Cody is crazy just play the video below. (Pause the music first)

Now you know exactly what I mean.

Blue is the new pink

2008-01-27T19:36:00.000-08:00

Yeah, we finally got to bring Jade to church today. We got to get her all dressed up in her cute blue dress. (I finally got a picture up where she isn't wearing pink) It was really a great day. Well, all except for the part where Jade had a major explosion in her diaper. It went all up her back and all over all of her clothes. It was incredibly disgusting. It took Becca scrubbing the onesie with the bleach pen to get it out. Jade had to go straight into the bathtub to get cleaned up. Some better news, Sean White just won gold in the Superpipe in the Winter X Games. Gotta love it baby!

I wish every day were a Saturday...

2008-01-26T18:49:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a great day today was!!! It started off early with a kayaking trip. I got up and threw my kayak on the car and went over kayaking. I was going to drive down to the Delaware river near the Scudders Falls area, because they have a good standing wave over there that is fun to playboat in. However, I didn't have much time so I went over to a lake that was close by to see if I could go there. Unfortunately it was frozen solid. So instead I found a little creek that still had moving water and went kayaking down that instead. It was pretty fun. I even got to practice my skill at doing the limbo when I came to a part of the creek where there was a log all the way accross. Of course the day was not yet over. That all happened before 8 am. We then took off to Pennsylvania to try and do some hiking. Cody and I went with Thom and Lucy to Valley Forge and went hiking up Mount Joy. (It wasn't so much a mountain as a hill. But you know people on the east coast, they are always making mountains out of mole hills. J/K) Anyway, so we got to get some good hiking in. Here are some of the pictures.

Don't worry Dad. We didn't go to Valley Forge without looking at some of the historical stuff. Taking a picture of my son as George Washington counts as historical stuff, right?
Just kidding, we also went to see George Washington's Headquarters and some of the army barraks.

Jade even got dressed up to come with us, unfortunately unforseen circumstances kept Jade in the house all day. Oh well, maybe next time.
The day didn't even end there though. Then we watched the Winter X Games. Snowboard Cross, yeah baby. It doesn't get much better than watching Lindsey Jacobellis come through with the gold in the Women's event. Especially after her dissapointing fall in Torino when she ended up with silver. And for the men, it was Idaho native Nate Holland who pulled through for the win after a crash left Torino gold medal winner Seth Wescott out of contention. It wasn't quite as good as actually snowboarding myself. But not too shabby for an afternoon in Pennsylvania.

My First Post

2008-01-19T15:49:00.000-08:00

So we are at the end of another week. For the past 5 days we have been feeding Jade from a bottle. She gets 1/2 an hour to drink as much as she can and then the rest gets put through her feeding tube. So far the impression from all is that she is doing really well for just starting out. She averages between 15-20 ml per feeding (30 ml is an ounce and Jade is supposed to eat 50 ml per feeding). I am excited with the prospect that some day Jade may be able to take all her milk through a bottle.

Cody had a wonderful week with his Grandma Pearson. She got him his birthday present early so she could do it in person. She got him a three wheeled scooter. Cody likes it but is having a hard time figuring out how to use it properly. So for now he has decided to just straddle it and push it forward. He also started his class again at the Community Center. I'm hoping that getting out at least once a week will do him some good.
As for me I am staying mostly sane. All our out of town guests have now come and gone. But I'm never really on my own because my family lives so close. Still for now other than a few extra doctors appointments Jade is like any other newborn. She eats, sleeps and poops.

This is Scott typing now. This was Becca's first post, so everyone has to comment and tell her what a good job she did. I have really started to like this whole blog thing. I wasn't sure if I would like it or not when I first started. But now I can't wait to get on and post more stuff and change up my blog. Of course a lot of that is because I have more free time in the evenings now that I have finished taking my CPA exam. Can you believe I studied for seven months straight for those tests? Crazy! Well, at least they're over now. Hopefully I'll never have to take another test again, ever. I suppose these tests weren't as bad as some of the tests I took at BYU though. I remember one final I took at BYU. It was one of those finals that you could take any time during finals week, you just have to go to the testing center. Actually, in this case they had the test in the JSB. For those of you not familiar with the JSB, that is the Joseph Smith Building. Sometimes during finals week they have certain tests in there because the testing center gets too crowded. Anyway, so I was taking this test in room 140 JSB. For anyone who has been to BYU, you all know the room I'm talking about. It is the big auditorium where you have all your general ed classes, American Heritage, Biology, Economics. I'm sure most of you have probably fallen asleep in that room at some time or another. Probably some of you even had sacrament meeting in there. Maybe both at the same time.

Anyway, what was I talking about. Oh yeah, the test I was taking in there. So I was in there for this final I was taking. I don't even remeber what the test was for. I have to take a quick detour here to mention something about myself. I have a very weak stomach. That's right, I admit it. Sometimes all I have to do is look at food and I'll throw up. When my wife and I were dating, I threw up out of the back of a pick up truck in the middle of one of our dates. But that is another story. I'm sure you can see where this is going by now. I was in there taking the test and my stomach started to grumble. I knew what that meant and immediately stood up and went for the door. Unfortunately, I didn't make it much past the door. I opened the door and threw up right on the lady handing out all the tests and right in front of everyone waiting in line to take their final. Needless to say, it wasn't one of my finest moments. Unfortunately, I hadn't even finished taking my test yet. So I had to go clean up, and then go back by everyone to go back in the room and finish my test. Oh well, asi es la vida.

Have a great week!!!

More Christmas Pictures

2008-01-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

Wow, it feels like this week has gone by so fast. I haven't been at home all week. My sister sent some more Christmas pictures with my Mom, so I'll put those up at the end of this blog. But that means you'll have to read my thoughts first before you get there.

Becca took Jade to the speech therapist today. They are letting us start to feed Jade out of a bottle. She drinks a few ounces from the bottle, and then the rest through the tube. We are really excited that she is doing so well.

Not much else has happened. I guess I'll let you see the pictures now.

Here Cody is learning to do head stands. Pretty soon he'll be walking around the house upside down.

This one is from Christmas eve when we went Caroling at Princeton University in Palmer Square

Looks like my son is going to be a Pyro just like me

Here Cody is riding Giant. (That is what he named his rocking horse, I have no idea why)

Random thoughts

2008-01-09T15:36:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to take a moment to update my blog and tell everyone what has been happening with me. Absolutely nothing!! I have been working 14 hour days, plus the commute is an hour and a half each way. That barely leaves me 7 hours at home, five and a half is sleeping, and one and a half is taking care of Cody and Jade. Not that I'm complaining or anything, it's just the way busy season goes. Next week I'll start on a client in Princeton, so the commute won't be so bad. Unfortunately I'll probably work all day Saturday as well.

Cody and Jade are doing well. Becca has been taking Jade to a lot of doctor's appointments and such. The doctor's all say Jade is looking pretty good. She continues to be healthy and grow. They are keeping her feeding dosage the same because she continues to do well. One thing they did tell us is that she will start the growth hormones when she is about six months old. This will help with various aspects of Prader Willi's syndrome. My mom is coming in to town on Friday night. That will be really fun to have her around.

Can you believe the weather we're having out here in Jersey? It reached into the 60's today. I wish it were closer to 20 degrees with 12 inches of snow on the ground. That would be better for snowboarding. Maybe I'll have to drive up to Vermont one of these weekends. I'm sure Cody would love to learn to Snowboard. Maybe I can take up a snowboarding collection. If you would like to donate to the "Scott Pearson wants to snowboard fund" please make a check payable to Scott Pearson and mail it to me. I take cash as well. I'll even take a credit card if you want to pay me through paypal. Now all I need to do is convince my boss. Nah, on second thought, my boss would never give me a weekend off. Oh well, it was a good thought.

Have a great winter season, and go out snowboarding or skiing if you get the chance.

A Few Pictures

2008-01-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

Well, as promised here here are a few pictures from Christmas. Enjoy!!

The results are in

2008-01-03T18:09:00.000-08:00

We got back the results today from Jade's bloodwork. She has Prader Willi's Syndrome. I'm not going to write anything about what that is, because you could all find out a lot more information by Google-ing it than I could possibly write here in my blog. We are glad to finally know exactly what's going on. Becca is going to see the geneticists on Monday at CHOP to find out more about it and stuff.

In other news we had a great Christmas. My sister Summer and her husband Tyler came up from Utah to visit us and spend a week with us. We really liked having them with us.

Ok, I have to take a quick detour to tell about what I just saw on TV. I was watching Grey's Anatomy while typing this and some guy stole a chainsaw to cut off his own foot. Becca and I both busted out laughing. Now that I write it, it doesn't sound that funny. But it really was funny when we saw it on tv.

Anyway, what was I talking about. Oh yeah, Summer and Tyler coming. I think Cody was the one who enjoyed them being here the most though. He loved that he could make Tyler do whatever he wanted for him. (Tyler hasn't quite learned that you can say no to a two-year old.)

I'll put some pictures up as soon as either Summer or Joan send me some. I was too lazy to take any with my camera.

In other news, I am going to take the last part of my CPA exam on Saturday. Wish me luck.

Cody with Santa

2007-12-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

Here is Cody sitting on Santa's lap at the ward Christmas Party. He asked him for a soccer ball. We'll see what Santa brings.

DNA test results

2007-12-20T16:27:00.000-08:00

The DNA test results came back today. It turns out that Jade has a genetic disorder. She has a deletion of the 15th Chromosone. What it means is that she has one of two possible syndromes either Prader Willi Syndrome or Angelman's Syndrome. She went to get her blood drawn again today so they will be able to be sure which one she actually has. When we get the test results back from that I will write again and update everybody on the results and what it means for us.

In other news Cody and I had a great day sledding and playing in the snow in the morning. I forgot to take my camera though, so I don't have any pictures. I know a lot of you are thinking, how did you go sledding if there is no snow in Plainsboro. We drove north about an hour and fifteen minutes or so and went to Hopatacong State Park. They have several inches of snow up there and a great sled run for Cody right off of the parking lot. We had a lot of fun. We even through some snow balls at each other and built a snowman. The snow was pretty packed down and icy, but it was great. I'll try and remember to bring a camera next time. The picture below is actually from last year, but I guess you get the idea.

I also just wanted to thank everybody again for all of your help and support. We wouldn't be able to get through all of this without good family and friends to help us out. It has meant a lot to us.

Doctor's Appointment

2007-12-18T15:37:00.000-08:00

Well, today we took Jade to her Pediatrician for the first time. She weighed in at 5 lbs 11 oz. That means she gained 7 ounces since she left HUP on Friday. I know it doesn't sound like that much, but for a newborn it is leaps in bounds. In fact our Pediatrician said they only expect her to gain between 0.5 oz - 1 oz a day, and Jade has gained almost 2 oz a day. So they are pleased with that. Jade still has low muscle tone and not a strong suck, so she still is feeding through a tube, but we are encouraged by her progress. In other news Cody is watching Chicken Little for the 15th time today. Not really, but he really loves the movie, and I can probably quote the entire thing by now.(He probably could as well.) Actually, Cody is doing really well also. He has just decided he wants to be potty trained. He has started to wear "big boy underwear" during the day and has been doing pretty good.
Here Jade is to the left looking pretty in pink. Actually, she looks a lot cuter than Molly Ringwald.

Our Apartment Christmas Decorations

2007-12-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I just wanted to put up a few pictures of our apartment. We have done a pretty good job of decorating it for Christmas this year.

Our aparment complex is having a balcony decorating contest. This is how I've decorated it so far. The snowflakes flash white lights. There are colored lights under the garland with white icycles. Plus, the tree has white lights on it as well.

Christmas Pictures

2007-12-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

Jade is Home

2007-12-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

Jade came home today!! It has been two weeks since she was born. We were so excited that the doctors let her come home today. She feeds through a tube that runs down her nose into her stomach. Becs and I had to be trained on how to put in the tube correctly and everything. It is a little strange to be feeding her with a tube into her stomach, but it is great to have her home. She has a lot of follow up doctor's appointments. She has a million doctors appointments over the next couple of months. Of course she has her regular Pediatrician to go to. In addition to that she has to go see her team of Neurologists at CHOP still, plus she also has to go to a Neuro-muscular clinic in Phili. She also has to go back to the team of Genetecists she has been seeing at CHOP. Then she has to go to a Physical Therapist to help with her muscle tone and an optomologists to re-check her eyes. Finally she has to go to Speach Therapist to help with her sucking. (I know, it sounded wierd to me too.) Thank goodness for insurance.

Anyway, Becs is waiting to get on the computer. I'll just upload a couple of pictures from today, and I'll write again later.

Jade Danielle Pearson

2007-12-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

Well, this is my first post. I am new to this whole blog thing, so you will all have to bare with me as I learn how to do this. I just wanted to post a quick message to update everyone about Jade. Jade was born on November 30, 2007 at 8:31 am. She was 19 inches long and weighed in at 5 lbs 7 oz. Rebecca had to have a C-section because Jade was under a lot of distress with the contractions, even though they were still very light and far apart. We later learned this was partly because she had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

The night after she was born, she was transferred to the Special Care Unit in Princeton Hospital because they were worried about her eating and muscle tone. They performed many tests on her there including a CAT scan and a spinal tap. They eventually decided they didn't have the resources or appropriate personnell to diagnose what was wrong with Jade. On Wednesday, December 5, 2007 at about 1:30 AM she was transferred to the NICU at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Actually, she was transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania(HUP), which is right next door to CHOP. However all the doctors she sees are from CHOP, and she is transported next door to CHOP whenever tests are performed on her.

She has a whole bunch of doctor's looking after her. She has a team of Neurologists trying to figure out if it is a Neuroligical problem. They performed an MRI, however it was inconclusive. They are currently doing a number of different blood tests to look for various neuro-muscular diseases and such. She also has a team of Genetecists trying to figure out if it is a genetic problem. They are doing various DNA tests and growing chromosones and stuff. Unfortunately all of these tests will still take several weeks to get results.

In the mean time her Neonatologists continue to work with her to get her to suck. Her low muscle tone makes it so she doesn't suck and so it is very dangerous to try and feed her with a bottle because she could breathe in the milk. As a result she is fed through a tube. The doctors say they will give us a class on how to insert the tube ourselves and we will need to take some infant CPR classes so that we can eventually bring her home and feed her through a tube ourselves untill she learns to eat for herself.

We drive down to Philadelphia nearly every day to see her. She seems to be doing well. We are very grateful for the wonderful care she is receiving from the hospital, as well as the service and prayers we have received from friends and family.