What a glorious day! Okay, so I will recap the rest of this lovely Independance Day weekend shortly, but first things first....Lilah went potty in the potty chair today! There was no fight involved....I asked if she wanted to sit on the big girl potty chair, she nodded yes and proceeded to the facilities (aka Marks throne). We took her diaper off, I sat her on the toilet, she sang herself a encouraging tune and presto peepee!
Harps began playing, angels sang the whole shebang.

So....what else happened this weekend?

Friday the NellNells stuck around the house and painted the storage shed. It went pretty quickly and I am happy to announce that this weekend our storage shed now looks like a million bucks. I hope our neighbors enjoy the colors sauteed mushroom and warm mahogany. Saturday we hung out with family to celebrate the 4th of July holiday. Jeni and Poppy Rich came over for lunch and afterwards we went on to Shawn and Karens house in Marysville for a delicious dinner. Then, home again, where we put the girls to bed entirely too late.

One last thing before I forget, about an hour after Lilah peed in the toilet she again let it flow...right after bathtime, but this time instead of using the facilities she peed on Marks lap.....am I a great potty trainer or what!?

All in all, a really nice weekend .

J

What a lovely weekend we had! On Saturday the girls, Aunt Jeni & I had a blast, walking around the mall and window shopping. We visted the girls favorite shops and McKenna even managed to charm her Aunt into buying her a princess goblet. (Aunt Jeni = a Sucker for a pretty toddler face).
Sunday (today)we had a ton of fun spending Fathers Day with Lilah & McKenna & of course Mark! We went down to Picnic Point in Edmonds and enjoyed a overcast day at the beach. The girls had a ton of fun playing in the sand, Lilah seemed to enjoy the beach the most...sand was in every crevase by the time we left. Shortly after the Beadnell clan returned home we all took a nap. Oh what a glorious moment in history, the girls were sleeping at the same time. And REALLY sleeping. Not trashing their rooms in the dark and pretending to sleep.
After the fabulous mid day nap, my dad aka "Poppy Rich" and Aunt Jeni came over to finish the Fathers Day celebration with a dinner. The girls ran around basking in the attention of the extra people within our house and were so excited to give Poppy the gift they hand picked for him. They bought him a white betta fish and lovingly named him "Leotard Bobby" (McKenna chose the name Leotard, Lilah chose the name Bobby). All in all, we had a nice day. Hopefully, Mark enjoyed himself. He is, after all the best dad the girls could ever ask for and the best husband ever.
I hope everyone else had as great of a weekend that we had. Happy Fathers Day to all you Fathers out there reading this blog...
Goodnight. Jaime

The past month has been very busy in our home. We have begun a few new home projects that have made things a bit hectic, and in our usual fashion...we have started them all at the same time. Our current projects include: painting our old shed and building a new shed. 4 weekends ago we began the re-painting of the shed with a coat of white primer after a thorough pressure washing. We of course, have done nothing to the shed since priming it, but I hope to get at least one coat of paint on it this weekend....the reason we haven't painted it yet you ask? Well, we had to start a new project of course! Why finish a project all the way through when you can compound the stress caused by said projects by beginning more? So the weekend after we primed, Mark had his sidekick, Jeffrey over and they began the daunting task of building the basement foundation for a second shed. It's going to be pretty cool when it's finished, but Mark and Jeff were definetly feeling the pain after the Memorial Day weekend was over. Hauling the cinder blocks and pouring cement was tough on their old/frail man bodies (it's funny and not funny all at the same time). Now, seeing as how we have two large projects in the works you would think that last weekend was emersed in completing them right?
In any other family yes, but here...not quite. Last weekend we had a multi family garage sale instead of fulfilling those tasks. Mark & I sold sooo much stuff it was crazy! Though it doesn't seem like it made much more room in our tiny rambler I am sure it did, and it feels good to remove some clutter. This weekend we are attending a birthday party for my cousins daughter Leah who turns one and hopefully after that comes painting.
So looking beyond the home repair, things are going great in our house. The girls are as precocious and wonderful as ever. Lilah is a little ham and says "cheese" now when you ask her to smile (seems she's always expecting us to take her picture, I wonder why?) And McKenna is quickly becoming a sneekier and smarter version of her parents...always getting her way by using her superior mind control techniques against us. I am doing......okay. I am getting quite use to having a sinus infection now and am on my 4th round of antibiotics which still doesn't seem to be working ugh! Hopefully that soon will be resolved when I meet with a specialist. That's all I have for now. It's 10 o'clock and officially 1/2 hr after bedtime. Love you all and hope this summer is treating you well, and always remember...if you need something to do...we have a couple of projects with your name on it. ~Jaime

So I have been thinking a bit lately about the Australian wildfires and the Koala Bear that was saved by a firefighter http://newsok.com/koala-saved-from-wildfire/article/3344993 (if you haven't read the article or youtube'd the video, you HAVE to it's so sweet). Well, as with all news I hear or see, it got me to thinking about my children, McKenna specifically.

It struck me at how much that adorable little koala bear reminder me of my McKenna. Big, beautiful eyes, round adorable little face, and this cuddly little body that you just want to wrap in hugs all day long. When I got to thinking about the similarities between McKenna and the koala bear, I realized that they also had quite a bit in common personality wise as well. A koala may look cute and fuzzy, but like McKenna, it could potentially bite your head off if you get up in it's business...it enjoys it's fierce independence and wants to eat the same thing day after day after day....



Well, the Koala/McKenna comparison was so much fun to think about, that (of course) it got me to thinking about Lilah and which animal she emulated. Oh how I wrestled with the many possibilities. She coos like a pigeon, and she will poop anywhere and everywhere..but she is sweet and never annoying...hmmmm.
I tossed around plenty of critters in my mind that almost fit the bill, and then KAPOW! My completely ridiculous epiphany hit...she is like a puppy! A puppy makes funny adorable faces, makes strange noises from each direction of their bodies regardless of awake or asleep, will eat anything on their plate or yours, and is lovey and faithful no matter how their day is going...that IS Lilah!!!

To sum up, I have way too much empty space in my brain to fill with thoughts such as written above.

At least my children are not PC's.

~Jaime

Our littlest bean is 1 year old! Thank you to all who celebrated and spoiled my little Lilah with your warm wishes and extravagant gifts on her birthday, January 25Th! We had a lot of fun seeing everyone and packing the home with everyone who loves Lilah. I was amazed at how many people actually attended (around 40) since the night before we saw some snow in and around Bothell.
We celebrated the special day with Winnie the Pooh decorations, I think Lilah loved the Pooh Bear balloons best of all, and although we had a few snafus before the party began (IE: Mark picking up someone else's balloons at the party store, "I thought it was weird you ordered little slugger balloons!" and the stinkin' cat sitting on the box of cupcakes), I don't think we could have asked for things to go more smoothly. :)
Now we are anticipating spring so we can put together the awesome teeter totter Lilah got. It says 7 kids can fit on it, which means if I evenly distribute my weight, I can go on by myself right?

Other good news is that Lilah's vocab has expanded a little more. She says Papa for Grandpa Rich, and bye bye now (in addition to mama and dada). McKenna is getting really good at counting and is beginning to understand the concept of addition. She can count items in sequence up to 13 with no trouble at all. Also, McKenna got to participate in her first day at nursery school last week at Jack & Jill's Nursery School. She really seemed to enjoy herself and is excited to start going there in fall. We plan on enrolling her for September classes every Tues & Thurs.

That's it for now. Thank you again everybody for being so great to our girls. We are so thankful for our family and friends and hope that you continue to fare well in these tough economic times.

Love Jaime

So today for the first time ever I really felt like the hands of time were giving me the finger.

I went into a Walgreen's to pick up some prescriptions, waited in line, everything seemed to be business as usual....
When it was my turn, I walked up to the counter and said in my most straight forward tone, "Prescription pick up for Beadnell." The Pharmacy Tech smiled and nodded in acknowledgment, she turned to the cubby holes that so neatly organize the medications alphabetically for all the sickies and druggies in the general Bothell vicinity. "Beadnell...Beadnell...Beadnell," she chanted under her breath, "Beadnelllll..." her voice trailed off and you could clearly see the light bulb flash above her head "Ah yes, Beadnell," she said. She turned away from the small, well aligned prescription cubes and reached under the sterile counter. Grunting, she bent down and strained herself backwards to pull a brown paper bag out from the shelf beneath her. "Jaime Beadnell right?"
"Uh, yeah," came my reply.
"Here's YOUR prescription, I assume you have taken ALL of these prescriptions before?"
That's about the time when I felt those hands of time slap me across the face, and I am pretty sure Father Time was laughing from somewhere down one of the other aisles. My prescription was so huge they had to store it in a special area beyond the cubbies? When did I become THAT person?
I don't even know what else to say about this.....or maybe I do, but I forgot already because I am suffering from age related memory loss. In any case I am feeling really old today and that makes me feel sick so I need to go take some pills...
.....now if I could only remember where I left them......?
Jaime

This has been a LONG month so far for the Nellnell house. It started off with my sister, Jeni getting a tonsillectomy. You would think it would have been a relatively easy surgical procedure, but it was harder on her than expected and it landed her back in the hospital a few days after it was done from additional complications. The day she had to go back to the hospital, (Dec 4Th) for an overnight stay was also the day of my moms double mastectomy and unexpectedly also the day my Grandma Marie passed away. AHHH! I wasn't quite sure how to react to it all...and to be honest I really don't know how I reacted. The whole day was such a blur and so sad.
I am happy to report that since the worse day ever, things have gotten better for both my mom & sister. Both are recovering well from their ordeals and learning to do their everyday tasks again with their missing bits and pieces. Mom is set to start chemo again, likely within a week or two and we are certain that she will pull through it all with flying colors.
My family on my dads side is taking things one step at a time. The passing of my Grandmother Marie has been very difficult for my dad, well really for all of us, but especially on her children.
My Grandma passed peacefully in her sleep with her daughter, Kristi by her side after a long battle with cancer. She was the toughest lady you would ever meet and it was a absolute blessing to be a part of her life. Her funeral/wake was beautiful and was made extra special by a tribute DVD that Mark put together commemorating the highlights of her life. What a lucky lady I am to have such a talented hubby! In true Grandma Marie form she managed to get all of her family together again and helped us all bury any hatchets there may have been between family members. It was her last gift to all of us.
Now that the craziest day is behind us I must say, it was wonderful having an uneventful Sunday this weekend, hopefully our boring and uneventful days will continue through the rest of this year. Thank you all for your well wishes and support! I don't know how we would have made it through all of this without you all! Love Jaime

McKenna turned 3 on Nov 3rd and we had a wonderful and busy week celebrating it with her. Since everyone had to work on Mon the 3rd, we had a small celebration at hom with some cupcakes and ice cream after dinner and a couple of presents to open. McKenna & Lilah's daycare had a party for her on Friday the 7th, with cupcakes & lots of presents. Needless to say she made out like a bandit.

What a lovely summer it has been so far! Being able to stay at home during the day with my girls has been such an adventure, and it has kept me busier than I ever have been. Lilah has been crawling now since mid July and she is getting stronger and more capable of getting into trouble with each day that flies by. She makes a b-line for the cat food dishes now and is utterly fascinated with the toilet so I have been more wary about baby proofing. It's strange that in the short time since McKenna was a little baby until now how much I seem to have forgotten about what it's like to have an infant around. Being a mom of a newborn is like reading your favorite book over and over again and finding a wonderful secret hidden amongst the paragraphs that changes the whole story with each turn of the page....I can't seem to get enough.
McKenna is really starting to get the hang of using the potty chair now (T/G!) She has been a real trooper and fights us a lot less when we ask her to use it. We still have a long way to go before we can put her in big girl underpants, but at least we are on the right track now....seemed like we would never get to this point. <--We have learned a valuable lesson from potty training that I think will carry through to the time our girls are adults....when all else fails, use bribery! She has had enough gummy worm rewards to stretch the globe.
The front yard grass is growing in now, along with a wide variety of exotic weeds...most of which never grew on our previous layer of sod. What exactly is wrong with that picture? I am pretty sure our neighbors are sprinkling weed seed down while we sleep...that is the ONLY logical explanation. Other than the weeds the yard looks great and it finally looks as though there may be an end to the grueling front yard work in sight. Just in time for another one of our house projects. :)
Well, I suppose I should go for now. Hope all is well for all those who are reading this. Have a lovely rest of the summer!

Love,
Jaime

Lilah is just over 6 months old now, she is sitting upright by herself (and only falling over occasionally) and she is also crawling forward. She started crawling backward around 5 months. She has also started on some jar food and enjoys bananas, pears & carrots so far. We’ve tried Cheerios, but Lilah really doesn’t know what to think about them yet and pushes them back out of her mouth with her tongue every time, all the while glaring at you.

McKenna has been doing much better with her potty training. She now goes #1 almost every time in the toilet, she’s got a little more to work on with the #2 however. Thank goodness we haven’t transitioned into actual panties yet! We’re trying to bribe her with trips to the Pacific Science Center if she goes poop in the potty chair, so far it hasn’t worked. She has been playing almost every other day with her friend Andrea (5) from across the street. It usually go goes something like this…McKenna whines to play with Andrea, we ask Andrea to come over, she comes over, after about 2.2 minute of playing together they go off in different sections of the yard and play by themselves, after about an hour I tell them we to walk Andrea home because we have to eat, we walk Andrea home, we go inside to fix dinner, McKenna whines to play with Andrea some more. It seems like they have a lot of fun, and considering the age difference at their age (over 2 years), they seem to enjoy each other’s company. It certainly is nice to have a friend so near that McKenna likes, and vice versa. Andrea’s dad, Mike, sometimes comes over as well and it’s nice to hear some other views from somebody who has been through a lot of when we are going through,(He’s got 5 girls ages 5-17).

On other fronts we’ve finally got some grass growing in the front yard that we re-landscaped. It’s looking pretty good, certainly better than before, and when all of the grass comes in it should be stupendous. J It seems through the front yard project, we’ve met nearly everyone in the neighborhood on once occasion or another as they’ve stopped by to say hello and comment on the yard.

Work is going ok. Jaime was going in for a full day on Monday as well as the nights 5-9, but she had to stop the Mondays because of childcare issues. The lumber/house building market in general has really slowed down in this area, it doesn’t look good for bonuses this year. We are finally catching up to the rest of the nation in that regard I guess. Things always seem to slow down during an election year, but it’s been especially slow with all of the things happening in the mortgage & oil crisis(s), and the job market. Hopefully the housing market will get kick started again soon, and we’ll be back to full swing.

Well, until next time, we hope this finds you happy and healthy.

It has been a busy weekend for the nellnell clan. For the 4th of July we went down to Ocean Shores and stayed at the Quinalt Beach Resort & Casino. We got there about 2pm on Friday and checked into the room, which was actually quite nice. It had an ocean view and a nice view of the sandy beach. The weather was overcast, very windy, and drizzely but it was still pretty packed around town and the beach, which is usual for the 4th. After checking into the room we all walked down to the beach to play in the sand and water. It was pretty windy so that didn't last very long, and we decided to go back to the "tel" and go to "swimmin lessons" at the pool. All 4 of us went swimming and at the end of it we were pretty pruned. After swimming we got something to eat at a local "resraunt" and then back to the tel room to watch the fireworks from our room. It was still a little light outside so McKenna and I walked down to the beach again while Jaime and Lilah stayed in the room so Lilah could eat. McKenna and I watched some of the fireworks from the beach and collected fireworks sticks and rocks for about a 1/2 hour or so. On our way back up to the room we saw a mommy deer and her fawn running across the grass trying to get away from all of the noise. Some nice guy also gave McKenna 3 sanddollars to take home. We watched the fireworks for a little while and then went to bed. I snuck down to the casino, or rather, Jaime let me go down to the casino for a 1/2 hour or so and managed to come back about $73 richer :)

For the rest of the weekend we did a bunch of yardwork and played in the backyard. It seems lately that yardwork is all we've been doing. In case you're behind on what's been going on we've completely redone the front yard and still have quite a bit to do.

In other fronts Lilah might have a tooth popping through and she has found her tongue and can't stop sticking it out at anyone and then smiling profusely until you do it back at her. It's so precious.

Well, we will try to keep you updated on everything else thats going on soon and will be posting some new pictures of the yard and such soon. June's pictures are already posted on nellnell.com, so check them out if you haven't already. I've also uploaded our wedding pics and pics from our Paris vacation if you haven't seen those yet, you should check them out.

Until then, take care...

So things couldn't get better in our house. Lilah is growing like a little weed and seems to get happier and more vocal everyday. McKenna is throwing SOOOOO much less temper tantrums (T/G!) and I am getting more sleep. Time really does seem to become more fleeting when you have children. I honestly don't know how I have enough time in the day to get anything done, but somehow things have been working themselves out.
We had a really great Mothers Day weekend. We took the girls to Tacoma and stayed in a hotel over night so we could go to the Point Defiance Zoo, Tacoma Childrens Musuem and take the girls swimming. I had my doubts about how things would play out since we were all sleeping in the same room but everyone behaved quite well. It was Lilahs first time in a swimming pool and she sure soaked it up. I have never seen a baby that little enjoy herself so much, she was cooing and smiling the whole time. McKenna enjoyed swimming too (as usual) and didn't want to leave the "Tel" room, as she calls it, when Sunday hit.
The fun didn't end on Sunday though because Mark took today (Monday) off and we got to spend time with his sister Sue who came to visit from Utah for the week. We were so happy to get to spend time with her and McKenna was especially taken with her Aunt Sue showing her all over the house and outside, it's wonderful to get to see Sue and we hope that she gets to come visit more often.
The last news I have for now is a congrats to friends Casey & Todd Schoepflin. Their foster-to-adopt baby arrived in their home Thursday of last week, I have yet to meet the little angel, but saw pictures and she is a beautiful little baby. We wish you guys the best and love you mucho.
Jaime

“Time, Time, Time, see what’s become of me.”

Busy is how I would sum up our life recently. It seems even more now that there aren’t enough hours in the day to complete all of the tasks we have to do. But we’re getting along, and enjoying life as it happens.


For all intents and purposes, we finally got the back deck finished and it looks great! (I still have to go back and screw all of the boards down the rest of the way). We used Trex Contours and inlaid some porcelain tile for a fire pit area. A heartfelt thanks to Shawn, Jeff, Connor and Gary for all of the help throughout the process.

Jaime has gone back to working nights now. Jaime comes in to work at 5pm with the kids (most of the time they are napping during the car ride). I come out of work and she goes in. I take the kids home, sometimes stopping at the park to play if they are awake and it’s nice outside, change diapers, feed them, play with them, change them again, get their pajamas on, and put them to bed. All in 3-4 hours! I can’t imagine being a single parent. I really enjoy spending the alone time with my girls and getting to see Lilah develop a little personality of her own. She smiles at everything now and is starting to giggle, although her giggles usually turn into a coughing fit (she hasn’t quite got that whole breathing and swallowing together thing down yet.) McKenna has really taken to Lilah and always asks to help out by feeding her or changing her diapers. McKenna is very protective of Lilah and is a really great big sister. We are very fortunate to have 2 wonderful, beautiful kids.

Since Lilah’s birth about 3-1/2 months ago we purchased a new camera (Nikon D40x) which rocks! Jaime and I have been going nuts taking so many pictures that it’s now a chore to go through them and weed out the not so good ones. We take on average about 1,100 pictures per month. Good thing it’s digital and we don’t have to pay to process!

Among other reasons, and since I’ve not had much time to work on the website at home, we also purchased a new laptop computer. I figured that I would be able to update the website and go through all of the pictures, and edit our family videos during my lunch hour at work. I might even be able to drum up some more website development work for some extra $$$ (That’s a good excuse, right?) This computer rocks! It’s so much faster than the 5 year old desktop we have. And although I thought I was going to have a lot of problems with Microsoft’s Vista, it has worked flawlessly for me so far. I think I might prefer it over XP now, although I’ve read and heard that you have to have a fast computer to reliably run it. I recently finished uninstalling all of the needless programs that come with the computer, and installing the ones I need. I’m well on my way to a complete website overhaul so look for that in the coming weeks.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope all is well with you and yours. Stay tuned for more information.