california dreamin'

we headed down to california at the end of the month to go to disneyland!!! for a few days (which gets its own post...duh) and stayed for a whole week to spend time with my oma and other family. pretty much my whole family is in southern california, so it's a lot of people to see. and i wanted to see each and every person and for everybody to see beckett and meet heath! per the usual, while on vacay i was not a stellar photo taker. i regret it every single time. when will i finally change my ways? when?! probs never.

my oma meeting heath. i love this first picture. it has to be cool to meet your baby's baby's baby, right?! i spent a ton of time with my oma as a babe (i first walked in the same apartment she lives in now!) and i wish my kids could be with her more. she is the very best oma around. 

my tante lorle... my oma's sister. heath liked my tante lorle of course (everybody does), but it wasn't like when baby beckett met her. he could not get enough of her face. he just scream, laughed every time he saw her. 

my uncle jack making angry bird collages with beckett. beckett thinks my uncle jack is the coolest and i am not a bit surprised about this. he is really just down to do whatever. one time when i was like 11 and visiting for the summer, i just wandered into jack's room and asked if we could go to disneyland and he was like, "um... okay." and then he just took me! like right then! what?! that's a pretty cool uncle.

taking a walk with papa... my dad. beckett for some reason always has a lot to say to my dad and just jabbers on and on and i think my dad maybe gets like 30 percent of the conversation. he is used to just nodding and agreeing though because he talks to saige a lot. 

we went to the beach one day (in january...whatever) and did all the typical santa monica pier beachie type things... hot dog on a stick, carousel, beach playing, and we met up with matt's step brother, marc. he lives in la because he is a stuntman and is fancy.  

oh... my biggest non-photo taking regret day. we went to the valley to see my dad's family and i was such a bad picture taker! why?! i have not one photo of the boys with their cousin mason and i am SO sad about it. i did think i was going to see them again and then it didn't work out, but i should have been better!

i do have some pictures of heath with my cousin (who i call aunt) heather. i have never met anyone who loves babies like she loves babies. i pretty much didn't see heath the whole day. i also realized that heath is kind of like her namesake... what?

here's an obligatory sister picture because we are shameful about being all together at one time. it happens like every five years. i hate that. oh! you'll notice that saige came to california too! so did marcello, but he isn't in the picture. you'll just have to trust me... he was there. 

after disneyland we popped down south for a day to visit my good friend from college stephanie. she has a sweet baby girl, liana, and another sweet baby girl in her belly. (she is actually here now as i type this, BUT when we visited she was still in belly.) liana is so tiny and precious and we enjoyed getting to spend a little time with them.

that's the end! on to disneyland!!! 

"i heart mom" tattoos

back in november was the five year anniversary of my mom's passing. anniversary? is that the right word? it doesn't feel very right. either way, it's been five years. saige and i had been discussing the idea of getting commemorative tattoos for a while, but when we first talked about it i was pregnant with heath and then... time makes fool of us all. then the anniversary of her death came and she often sits at the front of my mind during the holidays anyways. so with renewed motivation, we went and got tattoos! 

my mom was crazy creative. artistically, there is not much she couldn't do. she made jewelry, and clothes, and did stage makeup, and acted, and painted, and photographed and was honestly one of the slowest moving individuals i had ever met because she was just always taking every single thing in. and then stopping to take a picture of it. i remember one time my mom was like 7 months pregnant with saige and we were at this craft fair that had a petting zoo with llamas. and one of the llamas was standing up, but had it's head reasting on the ground (it was kind of weird) and my mom laid down on the gross straw covered floor to take a picture of the llama's face. with her giant prego belly! and a bunch of people having to step over and maneuver around her. BUT later she entered that llama face photo in a photography contest and won... so she said it was totally worth it. 

my mom always signed the bottom of her artwork "iko". the i was from isabel and the ko was from kolpack. she added the o because she said that without it her initials were "ik" and that wasn't very flattering. she would also date her work with just the year. i found a photo she had signed and traced the initials onto paper and also traced the numbers of saige and my birth years off of some paperwork she had filled out. we got the tattoos on our heel... since that is the equivalent to the "bottom" of a piece of art. 

i know my mom would love the tattoos. i wish she could see them. i wish we had thought to do them while she was still here. and i wish every day that she could meet beckett and heath. and that she could watch saige walk down the aisle one day. and be here in a few weeks to celebrate mother's day. but she can't. when i look at my tattoo though it makes me feel like she is here... a little bit. so, that's nice. 

a shower for baby mears

lonnie, whitney, and i had the joy of hosting a baby shower for natasha and her tiny little babe. per the usual, i am so late in blogging about this that that certain tiny little babe is here on the planet and not in natasha's belly anymore. at the time of the shower though, we did not know the gender because my friends like to personally torture me by not finding out. i assume that is why they don't find out, anyways. we threw natasha a woodland themed shower at an adorable log cabin at a park in redmond. we served delicious desserts and hopefully it was all natasha had hoped for. she has been "patiently" waiting for her turn to be showered, after helping to host baby showers for all of us. we are so very happy for natasha and jon and i am too excited for heath to have another little bestie in this second generation of sweet babies. 

i was going to really be a great picture taker, but then lonnie was taking a thousand pictures because she is just really only comfortable behind the camera, so i stopped taking pictures with my camera. cause let's not be crazy. of course i regret that now because i do not have lonnie's pictures. sad story. here are a few that i do have though...

beckett kol at 4 years

you read right... i bit the bullet and decided it was time to stop referring to my child's age in months during these reviews. okay. i'm not totally, completely done. he's 48 months! 48! bah. i will probably have to cut back to yearly or bi-yearly reviews too. with two kids, these quarterly reviews are killing me. better to not take the time to do them and live in the moment. and try really, really hard to be present because if i'm not documenting it anymore, i'm probably not going to remember it. at least i'll be able to relate better and stop wanting to punch old women in the face who randomly feel the need to tell me to treasure these times because they're gone in a flash. oh geez. i wouldn't really punch an old person. so. beckett. i have such a precious, special place in my heart for the boy who made me a mom. and i'll tell you what. watching him be a big brother sure ain't making me love him less. this kid has me wrapped around his finger, but i think he is just really sweet so he doesn't even take advantage of it much. or maybe i am just so delusional, i don't see what's going on. ha! either way, we're all happy, so it's all good.

nicknames: b, b kol, brother

watching you interact with your little brother is pure joy. it is so silly hearing you talk with him because you are almost always just mimicking what you hear us say. "oh hey buddy! look at you! look at your cute face! i can't stand it. i need to give you a hundred kisses right now!" you are so patient and kind with him. even when he is not listening to your words (basically all the time because he is a baby) and making you totally frustrated, you never take it out on him. you have never been the kind of kid who lashes out physically when you're angry and i'm so thankful for that. you make a great big brother and heath is lucky to have you. 

you have some real crazy texture issues. i blame this almost entirely on your dad who also has some weird texture issues. when we carved pumpkins you cried real, legitimate tears of sadness because you were forced to put your hand in the pumpkin and touch the pumpkin guts. you also like to feel the hem on your shirt and other people's shirts. you call it "checking the threads." all the time you will ask me, "do you like your shirt mom? is it cozy? can i feel your threads?" and then you will touch my shirt hem and confirm that it indeed does seem cozy. you will also often say your sock is bothering you and take it off. it's always only one sock though, and you will go around the house for hours with just one barefoot. 

beckett quote

discussing what to do together one evening

11.5.14

"so, you wanna play a game mom?"

"sure."

"okay! candyland or marbles?"

"how about go fish?"

"ohhhhh. unfortunately you only get two choices. and they're candyland or marbles."

 you've started reading chapter books at night with your dad. it started with abridged versions of classics like treasure island, but now you are reading the full versions of books together. you just finished alice in wonderland and through the looking glass. the writing is actually quite advanced and we aren't really sure how much you are grasping, but you listen quietly and will sometimes start to laugh during certain parts that you think are funny, like the poem about mock turtle soup. you will also randomly just start talking like characters in the book during normal conversation during the day. the other day i asked you where the remote control was and you answered, "look this way and that way. look up and down. look all around the entire house. and when you find the remote... stop looking. you're done. and i'll give you a gumdrop." 

 beckett quote

telling jokes with your dad

12.28.14

"beckett, i have a good one. why did the train get kicked out of the library?"

"umm... because everybody hated him? ...ha!"

oh beckett kol, we love you so. you are really just such a good kid and we feel fortunate that you are ours. you are so funny... you started making up your own knock knock jokes and some of them are actually pretty good. you are so generous... if you are having a treat you will always offer to share it, no matter how small it is (and you are a full on sugar addict). you are so tender hearted... you call everything your friend, even the bugs you find at the park, that you carefully move to safer spots. you are so handsome... your little boy face is basically killing me with it's cuteness (even if your picture smile could use a little work). you are so smart... you can count really high, and you know what letter most words start with and you have a crazy, good memory. you are not perfect all the time of course, but you are perfect for our family and we just could not be more excited to watch you continue to grow and see what your future holds. it's gonna be good. 

a day of celebrating four

for beckett's birthday this year we decided to go big and take a trip to disneyland! disneyland will be a 4th birthday tradition for all our children, hopefully. we decided to go in late january, so on beckett's actual birthday we just had a little get together. 

b's birthday fell on a school day again this year, so we had an early (to us) morning. beckett has been coming into our room in the middle of the night and sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, but we decided that the air mattress would be retiring on beckett's birthday... so you know he wasn't going to be missing his last opportunity to sleep on it. 

we started our morning with the traditional birthday doughnut and candle in bed. b was real confused, but still excited. 

oldies, but goodies...

beckett decided to eat most of his doughnut downstairs after he opened a few small presents from us and heath. then it was off to school!

when we got home, beckett helped me with party prep (like cupcake baking... this boy loves to help in the kitchen) and we got things all set up for dinner. beckett's dinner was mickey mouse clubhouse themed of course, in honor of the upcoming trip. also, we added beckett's 4 year mark to the growth chart! he is 3 feet and 6 inches. wowza.

we just had a few of beckett's closest friends over to celebrate and we let the kids eat at the table, while the adults sat on the ground like barbarians. we had pizza for dinner and beckett, like some sort of maniac, prefers pizza with NO cheese... just tomato sauce and pepperoni. insanity. we sang happy birthday, ate cupcakes, opened some gifts, applied mickey tattoos, played hard, and sent our friends on their way with some candy and a handy helper. we just really love our sweet four year old boy and his sweet four year old friends. let's go year four! it's probs going to be his best year yet!