Fun with Family

This week has been very fun - we have Grandma & Grandpa Nasca in town from California! They are staying with Aunt Marcella, Uncle Walter, and cousin Ben, so we've been able to spend lots of time with all of them this week.

Tuesday they came over to our house, and we played games and spent lots of time outside coloring the street with chalk and riding bikes. Grandma is an amazing artist, and she and the girls made some beautiful chalk creatures.




We've had a great time playing with Aunt Marcella's dogs, Daisy (a lab/retriever mix) and Little Louie (a miniture Italian greyhound). Jadyn has been a bit hesitant to play with the dogs - the first few times she did they were still very young puppies and wouldn't stop jumping up on her, which is a bigger deal when you are under four feet tall and dogs jumping up reach your face. But this week she spent some time in the yard with Grandpa and practiced giving the dogs commands to keep them from jumping up on her. Within a short time, she was playing fetch with Daisy worry-free. Thanks for the help grandpa!







Karina still isn't quite ready to play with the dogs alone, but she had a great time playing inside with her cousing Ben and everyone else, too. We played lots of old games - Operation, Shutes & Ladders, and Checkers. Grandpa and Mark cooked up a big meal last night, too - we had lots of pasta, sauce, chicken, and sausage. Thanks for a great time!

Today we head down to Boehm's in Issaquah for a tour. Boehm's is a really neat, really yummy chocolate store/factory that has been around for over 66 years. Our kids have never taken the tour, so it should be a very fun day. I'm sure we'll walk away with a little extra chocolate, too...

How could we resist?!

Shhhhh - I can't hear Daddy

I, Mark, came down with a case of laryngitis two days ago at work. My voice is gone, which is really convenient in a customer service oriented job where you interact with people all day long.

It's been interesting, though, to see how I can interact with the kids without being able to talk verbally to them. I can muster up a faint whisper, but other than that it's been all hand gestures and mock sign language. The funniest part for me, though, has been the power of suggestion we've observed. Ever since I got home yesterday morning from work, our kids spent the majority of yesterday and most of today whispering with me. I've tried to tell them they don't need to (unlike other times that we're trying to be quiet, etc.), but they keep forgetting and "doing what I do" by whispering anyways.

Julie has told me she used this method when she used to be a teacher. If the kids were getting too loud, she would only talk in whispers, and pretty soon the whole class would be quietly whispering, too. Pretty entertaining.

And to my kids, thanks for the company!

"Big Boy"

Our kids love playing in the car while we're on our way to different places. We have a small basket that their toys are kept in that stays between their car seats - making it both easy to access and also somewhat organized.

A little while back, we began hearing some unusual make-believe conversation. And it was consistent - we'd hear it over several days. Imagine the confusion and wonder when we started to hear the conversations:

"Hi, I'm Big Boy."
"Can I play with Big Boy?"
"It's my turn to play with Big Boy."
"Where's Big Boy?"
"Big Boy, do you want to play with me?"
"I think Big Boy wants to play the piano."

We finally turned around and had to ask, "Who is Big Boy?" We busted up laughing as our girls held up a little action figure - one in particular is from Mark's childhood - a little Hulk Hogan action figure with a hole in his back that you can put your thumb in for "Thumb Wrestling." Our girls, of course, have no idea who 'Hulk Hogan' is, so naturally they have made up their own completely original, logical name.

So meet "Big Boy."

So what did you do this weekend?

I, Mark, got finally got off work this morning and got to come home. What was supposed to be a 48-hour weekend of work ended up being a 66-hour weekend. Only 6 hours off in 72 is a little more work than I'm used to. I went on over 50 emergency calls between 8am Saturday morning and 8am Tuesday morning, was up all night for 2 of the 3 days, and needless to say came home sufficiently exhausted this morning. My wonderful wife was good and generous to me and allowed me to nap from 10 until 2.

Thankfully, Julie and the girls were able to stop by and visit me Sunday whie I was working. Here's a picture of me at the station - take from Jadyn's perspective.
Some of the types of calls that made the long weekend go by quickly: a few different CPR runs, several car accidents, a house fire that was quickly extinguished, a brush fire burning up a hill towards an elementary school (started by a cigarette thrown from a car window), a toddler stuck in a garage door that needed to be extricated, several patients who had OD'd on drugs or alcohol, one man found dead in his house, several patients with heart problems, several bar fights and street fights, a man locked out on his balcony 4 stories above ground, seizures, diabetic comas, and one lady we cured by inducing her to vomit.

I'm exhausted, but it's definitely good to be back at work. Thankfully, I work Thursday, but then get a week off on vacation, work one more shift the next Friday, and then get a week off on vacation again as I head to New Orleans with a friend for the week.

A big step for Karina... and a big fall

Yeah! Karina has finally graduated from riding a tricycle to riding a regular bike with training wheels! We've been trying to encourage her to move up to the big bike for some time now, but she's always been hesitant. But when Brandy, and more specifically - Toby (the same age as Karina), came to visit last month, Karina saw Toby riding the bike and decided she was ready.

She's been doing great, but we're still working on really understanding the whole "brakes" concept. Her tricycle had no brakes, just one set of pedals you could more forward or backwards. Dragging your feet on the ground was the way to stop that one. With some work, she seems to be finally getting it, though!
Unfortunately, there's more to braking than just stopping. There's "slowing" without stopping. Yesterday we took a new ride for Karina and all rode our bikes to the school down the street to ride around the track. Karina has never made this ride on her own bike - just on the back of Daddy's bike. So we headed off to the school, and all was going perfectly!
Perfectly, that is, until... the hill.

As we started down the slow hill on the way to the school, I (Mark) was riding my bike on the sidewalk next to Karina and kept reminding her to keep her feet on the pedals and also pushing back on the brakes. But it wasn't meant to be.

She started to pick up speed, and like a slow-motion movie clip I saw the now-unavoidable begin to unfold before me. With her eyes widening in fear, her feet came off the pedals and began to drag on the ground in a futile attempt to slow down. I yelled for her to push the brakes as I attempted to speed up and steer my bike in front of hers so she could run into me and stop, but it was too late.

There was a chain-link fence along the inside of the sidewalk, and as she began to lose control she reached for the fence to grab hold of as a last-ditch effort to stop, but she was going too fast. She missed, and with one hand and no feet on her bike, the front wheel turned shaply and she went flying head-first over the handlebars. Her poor little face and forearms caught her on the ground as she slid on the sidewalk like a ball player sliding into home plate, and her helmet took the brunt on the fall but then popped off.

I dropped my bike, still in motion, and jumped down and scooped her up. She was shaken and a scratched up and the tears flowed freely, but after a little love and cuddles from Daddy and Mommy, she made us proud by getting right back on the bike without any hesitation. At the bottom of the hill, of course.



Great job, Karina! Way to keep going!