Our Christmas Newsletter

What an eventful year. We have a new addition to the Barlow team, Collin, who, like his brother, has been a wonder and delight to raise so far. Christian has been riding the bus to preschool and potty training (finally), Collin and Christian are learning to swim, a new van carries us around everywhere, Brooke has finally been attacking the scrapbooking projects with style, and Jesh has been busy with work. That sums it up. Have a wonderful New Year!

Okay, okay, maybe you want more details? (maybe you don’t)

Collin is our little one. He was born as the spitting image of Christian, but since then has grown into his own look and personality. There are still a lot of similarities between our two boys—for example, they both know how to throw first class tantrums. Collin has huge blue eyes. That’s the first thing anyone comments on when they see him (first time or not). It’s been easy parenting such a cute little guy, but he’s a bit of a pain during the night! At 10 months old, he’s still not sleeping well. We’ve tried a few techniques, including the “cry it out” method, but it’s hours of screaming before he suddenly falls asleep—too much for us to bare. On the bright side he’s doing all the cute little 10-month-old things. He claps his hands and bobs his head to the beat of music. He grunts when he’s trying to roar like a dinosaur and “vrooms” tiny toy cars around. If we don’t vacuum, Collin will. He picks up seemingly microscopic crumbs and puts it right in his mouth. It’s some kind of instinct. Oh, he’s starting to stand without resting against anything. We’ll have a walker soon!

Christian, now three, has been going to preschool at a local elementary school. He’s a part of a program that helps kids who have learning disabilities. Christian originally qualified for his lack of vocabulary about a year ago, but he’s talking like crazy now. We’re not sure if he’ll qualify again next year, but it’s certainly helpful for him. He rides the bus (a big yellow one!) to and from school on the other side of town four days a week. Let me tell you, it was hard to watch him leave all by himself the first couple times. Christian comes home with all sorts of fun, learning worksheets and creative artsy stuff (making his daddy proud). He learns songs we don’t even know and asks us to sing with him. Yes, he loves to sing… and dance. Christian’s also starting to say more grown up things. Brooke once walked into his room and he protested, “Mom, it’s private!” Christian knows just about all his standard crayon colors, including pink and purple, his favorites. He’s also got down shapes and counting objects to 15 pretty well. Unlike Collin, Christian sleeps like a baby (so the phrase goes). We’ve been potty training pretty successfully the last month as Christian suddenly decided he likes the toilet. Needing to “go potty” is his #1 excuse for staying up past his bedtime. It’s already starting, people! These are a few of Christian’s favorite things: trains, silly (children) movies, singing songs we don’t know, grandpa’s diesel truck, anything chocolate, flying through the air which usually involves couches and high-places, and smothering his baby-brother with love, literally. We’ll add that he throws a ball pretty well too.

Brooke’s biggest news of the year is giving birth to Collin. That was an adventure—if you can imagine an event more thrilling than Brooke’s cesarean with Christian. We were at a steak house on Valentines Day, celebrating our 5th anniversary as Brooke’s contractions started getting pretty strong. We planned to deliver Collin in a Spokane hospital geographically opposite of where we were eating that night and after a few bites Brooke couldn’t handle it anymore. We left our delicious steaks to have a baby! Turns out, he didn’t come that night, but two days later instead. Good times. By the way, babies are expensive. What’s the deal? Brooke has recently taken on the task of organizing and submitting her father’s, client’s, medical-insurance claims. It’s not a problem, as you’ll see that her father has been helping a lot around our house when you read Jesh’s news. We had some pretty fancy pictures taken—our first professional photographs ever. This was something Brooke insisted on and it really paid off. We love them. Brooke’s been pretty busy with our kids, blogging (www.breshblog.com), scrapbooking, and babysitting as part of a community co-op. Occasionally she even get’s out to play Bunko and other suburban-pop games with a group of local ladies. On the suburban note, we purchased a new Toyota Sienna to get us from point A to point B with more stuff (kids). It’s much roomier and convenient than we’re used to. Yes, we’ve joined the van-owning cult of soccer moms and family men. It’s not as bad as we thought.

As usual, Jesh has been pretty busy with work between TouchPoint Media, the boutique marketing-agency out of New York, and a local college as an adjunct instructor of Graphic Design. He’s been working a few long evenings with the other instructors on improving and updating the decades-old design program. During the day, Jesh is busy improving New York’s business’s customer communications. He mostly manages marketing campaigns from a technical point of view, but get’s to design and code web and email stuff, his passion, every once in a while. Jesh feels there are no words to describe how superb it is to work from the convenience of home. He’s learned a lot this year about the woes of home ownership, though. For example, when one neighbor owns a cat (or several), the whole neighborhood does too. We finally put up a good solid fence, but felines still find ways to defecate wherever they like. He’s also learned that a couple bags of cheap fertilizer is much better at feeding a healthy lawn than professional services like Tru Green. Oh yeah, and drywall really, really stinks to put up. Luckily, Brooke’s father and brother Aaron have been saviors of basement-finishing labor. We seriously don’t know what motivates them to come over for a several hours a week and work on our basement for free. It’s a service we hope to repay someday. Aside from occasionally rocking on the fake guitars of Rock-Band/Guitar-Hero, Jesh has had trouble escaping the inevitability of responsibility, which, admittedly, is gratifying in it’s own way too. Lastly, Jesh has found time to visit new friends with the local LDS missionaries, helping to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. This has been especially rewarding this time of year as we celebrate Christ’s birth. May we all remember the reason for the season. Have an incredible, loving, and noteworthy New Year!

December/January Update

http://www.kxly.com/Global/category.asp?C=156596

The weather here has been nuts. Above is a link to a local news station. They have quite a few stories about the craziness around here. First we had tons of snow which caused roofs to collapse and school to be cancelled for several days. Monday was nearly impossible to get around. Needless to say we spent most of "Christmas Break" shoveling. Jesh one day spent about 4 hours shoveling our tiny driveway—after which we ordered a snow thrower right away. Now that we finally have it (took a couple weeks to ship) the snow is melting fast and flooding everything. We should have invested in a water pump. Oh well!







Pretty much every year we go on a Santa Claus Cruise. We take the resort's dinky cruise boat across the lake to the "North Pole" (it's dark, no one can tell) and peer into Santa's workshop from about 200 feet away to the shoreline. He reads anyone's name that signs up over the loud speaker—which usually ends up being a list of nice boys and girls. Sometimes, however, little jokes, a la Seymore Butts, sneak past. On the way there and back we see thousands of lights shaped into Christmas sillyness. Christian's beginning to understand Christmas a little better than in years past, so it was a little more enjoyable than usual.





We got some awesome toys from Santa this year. Christian's way into taking pictures, so we decided to get him his very own, cheap-o camera. He loves it. As soon as we loaded it with batteries he straightway took pictures of Collin. He'll say, "Say cheese, Collin." and Collin actually says cheese back. Christian also got a little cheap-o MP3 player. He'll sit and listen to it and sometimes sings along. Very cute. Grandma Johnson got Christian a couple airplane track sets—which he loves, loves, loves. He plays with them all day long with his train tracks too.

Collin got some fun ball toys, but I think he'd rather chase Christian around, stealing his toys. Nana Barlow gave us money for the kids, so we get to go shopping again.







Lucky for us we had lots of family and friend visitors over the holidays. We played lots of games and some Guitar Hero. I got to hang out with the girls for a full-blown baking day and a little spa time. It was so much fun!



These pictures display what we do all day long. Christian and I build a very metropolitan layout of train tracks and Collin comes right behind us and destroys it like a baby Godzilla.