The Cathcarts

Today was our first trip to the Science Center and boy did we have a good time.  Jaxson and I went with my friend/neighbor, Crystal, and her two kids, Morgan and Peyton, and also with Jack and Ben and their nanny.  The kids had a great time playing with all of the cool displays and running off all of their energy.  We also got to see Jeriann in action doing the noon news from the Science Center, which was very neat.  The kids got to be on TV and much to my surprise they all behaved while on TV.  They just stood there and waved the whole time.  I was so paranoid that Jaxson might start making his silly faces and slapping his butt like he does at home when he looks at himself in the mirror becuase he was watching himself the whole time on a TV screen, but he didn’t thank goodness.  Here’s some pics from our fun day.

Jack, Morgan, Jaxson, Jeriann holding Ben, and Peyton

Morgan and Jaxson not finding the weather forecast very interesting.

Playing at the bubble bay

Oh, I think I got some bubbles in my mouth.

Fishing derby

We had such a great weekend.  We had beautiful weather and good times with family and friends.  Saturday evening, Heath, Tanya, and Kade rode with us to New Sharon for my cousin Jacque’s wedding reception.  We had a great time.  We got to eat a lot of great food, dance, and see a lot of my mom’s side of the family.  Jaxson had a blast playing outside pretty much the whole time with Kade and also with a gaggle of girls that were there.  On Sunday, Miah spent most of the day at our house entertaining Jaxson.  The played on the slip-and-slide until they were both too tired to play anymore.  After naps, we headed to our church where they were having their annual Taste of Hope.  It’s a big summer celebration with free food (burgers, hot dogs, corn dogs, popcorn, funnel cakes, and cotton candy), a ton of bounce houses and other games.  They also had a talent show and many other things going on.  Jaxson had a great time going from one bounce house to the next.  The Barrons also met us out there and had a great time.  Once it got dark we enjoyed the fireworks, which much to my surprise, were some of the best fireworks that I have every seen.  After the fireworks we headed home and got Jaxson and Brad to bed and I headed off to work for the night.  Brad took this whole week off from work, so we have plans to have fun and stay busy with work around the house.  Today he already got the greenbelt behind our house all cleaned up and looking SOOOO much better.  It seems that the city just decided to quit taking care of the area when it got out of control with those two gigantic trees that they cut down a year ago.  We also have plans to go to the Omaha zoo and finish Jaxson’s bathroom.  I’m sure the week will go by way too fast. 

The new Mr. and Mrs. Aaron and Jacque Patterson

Uncle Randy and Aunt Brenda at the reception

Aunt Wendy and Grandma

Tanya and me with the bride

Silly kids

This is only half of Taste of Hope

Matt and Miah jousting

Waiting for the fireworks to start

OK, so the only thing new about my kitchen is the new paint and some new decor but I want to show it off anyways.  I’ve wanted to paint it for several months now because I was sick of the blue and white but never found the will or the energy to do so.  When I found out that Channel 13 was coming to our home in a couple weeks to do a story. . .  boy did that kick my butt into gear.  As most of you know, Jeriann joined our meal swap group last month and was telling her co-workers at Channel 13 about it.  They thought it was quite interesting and asked if they could do a story on it, so of course the meal swap group said "yes."  Since we rotate homes every month, it just happened to be my turn.  At first I was thinking "no way," but then I got to thinking that this would be great motivation for me to finally get my kitchen painted.  So Kris came down last week and we were able to get most of it done in one day.   I have to say that I am very pleased with how it turned out and am now ready for the camera crew. 

Here’s some before and after pictures:

Before

After - sorry this one is a little dark

before

after

before

after

before

after

Since my friend, Erika, and her family are here from Texas for a couple weeks, we decided to have a little get together.  The third of us three amigas is Jill, who now lives in Rochester.  As most of you know, Jill and I have been best friends since birth, pretty much inseparable growing up.  Erika was a friend growing up also, but we became very close in high school and have remained close even though moving all the way down south.  When she is back, all three of us try to get together at least once to hang out.  This time we hung out at my mom’s house.  We enjoyed some fabulous Casey’s pizza for lunch.  Yes, I think us Iowans take this for granted because they do not have Casey’s in Texas or taco pizza.  Crazy. . . I know.  After lunch the kids had a fabulous time on the slip-n-slide.  Jaxson and Barrett are only two months apart and they had a blast together.  It was so cute to watch them play.  And Little Evelyn (Evie), she is petite, but she sure can hang in there with the older boys.  What a tough little cookie she is.  It was a fabulous day getting to spend time with the girls.

Doing a happy dance.

Now that’s how you do the slip-n-slide

"Mommy, I need my towel."

Barrett is a lover of cameras and pictures

The sun goddesses sun bathing

Little Evelyn

I love this picture!  What a doll!

Barrett getting some cuddling time with Jill

Thirsty boys

The girls

Mindy tagged me in a Picture Game! They’re fun to do so I thought I would see what picture I ended up with. The Rules:
1. Go to your 4th Picture Folder
2. Upload the 4th picture in that folder
3. Explain the picture on your blog
4. Encourage others to do so on their blog!

Jaxson was 16 months old here and LOVING brushing his teeth. 

This was another fun and fabulous weekend for the Cathcarts.  It was Radcliffe Days and my high school class reunion.  On Saturday morning, we headed to Radcliffe for all of the festivities.  Before the parade started, we got to meet up with one of my best friends from high school, Erika (Leerberg) Holmes and her family.  They live in Austin, TX so we don’t get to see each other that often anymore.  She has a little boy, Barrett (3), and precious Evie, who will be one.  It was also great to see her stepson Walker.  It was fun watching Barrett and Jaxson at the parade because they were instant friends.  They got so excited about everything and it was hilarious to listen to Barrett yell "MORE CANDY OVER HERE!" at all of the floats.  Needless to say, the boys came home with plenty of candy.  After the parade, we headed down to the park to play and check out all of the stands.  After the park, we went to the kickball tournament, which Brandon was playing in.  His team did quite well and made it to the finals, but ended up getting 2nd place.  While Jaxson and I were at the kickball tournament, Brad and Mike went golfing with Dan (Stacie Guard’s husband), who we have gotten to know quite well since we only live about two miles apart.  They had a great time and got done just in time for us to get to the reunion.  Our reunion was held at the Radcliffe Golf Course.  We had a great turnout of 21 classmates out of 42.  There were 44 in our graduating class but we sadly lost two shortly after graduating.  So there were 21 classmates along with their spouses and several kids.  It was great meeting everyone’s spouses and all of their children.  We had a great supper and had a great time just mingling and catching up with everyone.  After the reunion, Brad and I went up to the street dance for a little while.  It wasn’t the best of times since it was quite cold and I couldn’t drink to stay warm.  They would have made a lot of money if there had been a stand selling hot chocolate instead of sno cones.  On Sunday, we went to church with my mom because our church was celebrating their 125th year.  After church, we headed to Eldora and picked up Grandma and Wendy and went to lunch at the Pizza Ranch.  After lunch, we came back to Hubbard to stop in and see my dad and Brenda for a little bit and to check out their new camper.  Boy is that nice.  They have a few camping trips scheduled with their biggest one being next year when they drive to Alaska.  They’ll have fun.  Then we headed back to DM to pick up Steve and Kris at the airport after their mini vacation to see friends Nels and Cindy in North Carolina.  Then it was on to home and to bed a little early.  We knew it was a long weekend when we came in from playing outside at 8:30 and I told Jaxson that he could play just a little bit and then it was bedtime.  His response, "Jaxson don’t want to play.  Jaxson want to go to bed."  And up the stairs he went.  Good night.

Mom and Jaxson waiting for the parade to start.

Erika and Evie

Barrett and Walker waiting for more candy.

John D and Erika Holmes

Hubbard-Radcliffe Class of 1999

When I was pregnant with Jaxson, I bought a "Before Baby Arrives" book that I could write everything down about my pregnancy.  I was looking through it the other night and I noticed that pretty much every page is filled in, every question is answered, and a picture is placed where there is a spot for one.  Yeah, for this child, not so much.  So, for now, I’m going to use the blog to record all of my information.  You are more than welcome to skip over this part if it doesn’t interest you.  Today I had my second OB appointment and got to meet Susan.  She is a midwife in the group that joined after I had Jaxson, so I just have not had the opportunity to meet her yet.  She was very kind and knowledgable.  We talked about something that has been on my mind a lot lately. . . C-section vs natural.  At my last appointment, Pam brought up the option of scheduling me for a c-section with the way that my delivery went last time.  Now, don’t get me wrong, my labor and delivery were a piece of cake and I wouldn’t have had it any other way; however, it was the post delivery that sucked!!  Having had to have surgery anyways and four units of blood was not an easy recovery.  So after my last appointment I came home and started to really thinking about it.  Would it be safer to do a c-section?  Easier recovery than last time?  Less damage than natural?  I didn’t know, so I’ve talked to my friends to get their opinions and I had Natasha, who works with OB’s, ask one of them what they recommend.  They said that they wouldn’t recommend a CS unless I really wanted one.  Today, Susan said that she would recommend starting the natural route and having the surgeon on standby if needed.  OK, I’m satisfied with that since that seems to be the consensus among the professionals (Belinda, you can also chime in here).  It was also reassuring that if I did change my mind anytime throughout the pregnancy, that I can still stick with the midwives the whole time and just meet up with an OB at 36 weeks for a later CS.  This sounds good to me.   On to more exciting things, the baby’s heartrate was in the high 150’s and I gained another two lbs for a total of five lbs so far.  Not to shabby considering that’s already better than what I had gained by this time with Jaxson.  We’ll see how long I continue to post my weight gain. 

In other news today, we took Steve and Kris to the airport this morning so that they could jet off to North Carolina to see their good friends Nels and Cindy Lindquist.  We hope that they have safe travels and we’ll see them on Sunday.   

Last week was a busy one for us because I watched the neighbor girls, Miah (6) and Amisha (10 months), all week.  Much to my surprise, it went very well.  Miah and Jaxson had a blast playing together of course; however, they are together so much and are becoming more like brother and sister, which means that they also fight like siblings do.  Amisha was a very good girl and was mostly entertained just by watching the older two.  I worked on Friday and Saturday nights, which was nice because it gets my weekend done early and Jaxson doesn’t have to go to daycare on Mondays.  On Saturday, Brad took Jaxson to Raccoon River Park, which is very close to our house and some of you may know it as the home of the triathlon.  Brad packed a picnic lunch for the two of them and they enjoyed playing in the lake and on the play equipment for three hours.  On Sunday evening, a bunch of us went to the Funnybone to see Michael Winslow.  He is the guy from "Police Academy" that can make all of those funny noises.  I got 10 free tickets to the show and we used them all.  Dad, Brenda, Tanya, Heath, Gene & Sue Dubberke, Brandon, Jamie, Brad and I all went and had a great time.  Our favorite part of the show was when he showed a fighting scene from Star Wars and he did all of the voices and made all of the noises from the things being blown up and the machines.  He also imitated a lot of musicians and did some beat boxing.  It was all amazing! 

Play-Doh extravaganza

How many kids can you fit in a toilet box?  Looks like 3

Playing at Raccoon River

WEEEEE!!!

Lunch time

First time playing in a lake.

A cute tired boy

Still trying to wake up from his nap. . . Jaxson that is.

Trying to beat up on Kade.

This is how I found Mr. Jaxson after coming down from doing a load of laundry.  On the counter eating Smarties.

Something funny to end on - This morning I was cutting Jaxson’s toenails and he looks at his little toe and says, "Jaxson don’t wike this wittle toe.  I fro it away."  What a nut!!!

We headed up to Gowrie on Thursday afternoon to get an early start to the festivities.  Boy I’m glad that we went on Thursday because the weather on Friday and Saturday didn’t leave much of a chance to celebrate.  Thursday evening we enjoyed the carnival at the city park.  Jaxson loved the giant slide and all of the other rides.  That evening we also go to have smores over Papa and Nana’s bonfire in the backyard.  YUMMY!  On Friday, we went up to Fort Dodge so that I could get a new memory card for my new camera.  I think Brad really just wanted to go to Fort Dodge so that he could have lunch at Taco Tico.  I wasn’t really in the mood for mexican, so Jaxson and I had Fazolli’s instead.  That afternoon, Andy and Brady came to Gowrie for the festivities.  That evening, Kris and I stayed home with the little boys while the big boys went up town to party.  They had a good time hanging out with friends.  On Saturday, we enjoyed the parade despite the intermittent misting.  Jaxson was thrilled about all of the candy he got and I’m sure we now have enough to get us through to the next holiday (that’s if Mommy doesn’t get into it).  After lunch we had to come home so that I could sleep before going into work.  The boys had fun at the WDM fireworks with our neighbors and I had a pretty good seat for the 80/35 music festival fireworks that were downtown.  I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! 

Going down the giant slide with Nana.

Riding the motorcycles.

Daddy and Jaxson also had fun with a squirt gun fight.

On a stakeout

Look who got a Big Wheels

Happy boy

Having fun at the parade.

WOW, two pictures with Mommy.  I think that’s a record.

Last Thursday I took Jaxson and Miah to the zoo.  It was such a perfect day and we had a lot of fun.  All of the animals were out and the train was up and running, unlike the last time that we went.  We also go to watch The Birdman.  The Birdman has lived in Las Vegas for years and trains and houses all types of birds.  He trains most all of the birds that are in movies and has worked with Sigfreid and Roy and also David Copperfield.  We got to see a lot of very neat and unusual birds and all of their tricks.  If you have a chance, I would highly recommend the show and it’s free.  I don’t have any pictures of the birds since my camera quit working while we were at the zoo.  On the bright side, I got to get a new camera.  It was a mad dash to find another camera because we were going out of town later that afternoon for the 4th of July weekend, so I found the one that I wanted and called around to all of the stores and finally found a Target that had one left.  I got another Canon since I had such good luck with my last one, which lasted me six years and I never had to get it fixed.  Let’s hope that I have as good of luck with this one as I did with the last one.

All aboard!!

My camera is starting to die.

Uh Oh, time for a new camera.