Sunbear

Several years ago, Granny Zo'An gave Jed and Zoe each a little CareBear.  Since none of us have ever watched CareBears we don't know what the bears names are supposed to be, so we named the one with a sun on his belly "Sunbear" and the one with a flower "Flowerbear."  Since that time, Jed and Sunbear have bonded as the best of friends.  Along with Jed's little Spanish dog, "Roofie", Sunbear tags along with us all over town.

  

At one point during our vacation, we were headed out for four or five days to a different home.  When I told Jed to grab Sunbear, he ignored me, so Sunbear got left behind.  Well several days later, I walked into Jed's room late in the evening and he was sobbing into his pillow, tears streaming down his little cheeks.  He missed Sunbear so much and he was sure we had lost him forever when we left him behind.  A few days later, the two were reunited and since then Sunbear and Jed have been nearly inseparable, as you can see.

Snaggletooth

Zane has only one tooth and it is on top and it is super cute.

My Kids are so Awesome

Homeschool Days

I started homeschooling Jed earlier this year, since he is old enough to start kindergarten.  We've done about 32 days now and so far it has been totally fun for all of us. Since the kids haven't been able to do their daily dinner update for Dad (since he is out of town during the week), Jed asked me to take some photos. Here's a sampling of our activities of late:

Afternoon Lego Time

Cooking Lessons!

Lightning McQueen + Math = AWESOME

Zane Ephraim, 1 year old

We celebrated Zane's birthday while on the road a few weeks ago.

Isn't he darling?

From about 6-12 months, Zane sat on his chubby little bottom and looked cheerfully around at the world, content to smile and laugh at everything going on around him.

Then...

In the two weeks before his birthday, he cut his first tooth, learned to crawl, said his first word, and learned to stand up.

In the two weeks since his birthday, he has learned to walk along the furniture, climb the stairs and started freestanding (all this past Sunday!)

Michael and I discussed the other day how he is our jolliest, busiest, smiliest, naughtiest baby yet.  He marches to the beat of his own drum, this one, and does things at his own pace. We couldn't possibly love him more. Since the day he joined our family, he has been an absolute joy. When Zane is with us, it feels like the sun shines every day.

Happy Birthday, Zane!

Best Friends

Michael has been traveling a lot this month, and I miss him.  Still best friends, even at 7 years married this past week! Love you, Michael Jed!

Grandpa Steve's Little Pianist

Zoe's Fat Lip

Zoe got a fat lip falling face first on the floor, and she is NOT happy about it.

This is how it looked 12 hours later.

Even several days later it was quite swollen, she took a big chunk out her inner lip, poor little girly.

First Day of No School

In honor of the first day of school, we spent the whole morning outside working in the garden.

While we were in Montana, our garden got a little wild!  Here's what we saw when we came home:

So last week, Jed and I got to work cleaning it out (it actually wasn't that bad, it only took an hour or so to clean everything out except the tomatoes.)

Then today we dug, hoed, planted, watered, and generally had a marvelous time until it looked more like this:

This is our first attempt at a "fall" garden.  Today we planted lettuce, spinach, peas and beets.  Tomorrow we will plant our soaked bean seeds.

After we finished in the garden, we got out our new Nature Journals. Jed and Zoe loved narrating what they did that day in nature and then they drew photos to illustrate. Zoe's first page was grass around a house that she was watering.  Jed drew a yellow tomato on a vine.

On this page Jed drew himself hammering in a stake for our pea trellis.

 Happy "Not-Back-to-School" day!

Kid Stats 2012

Went in for our annual checkups today.

JED
Weight: 47 lbs (73rd percentile)
Height: 47 in (95th percentile)

ZOE
Weight: 32 lbs (64th percentile)
Height: 38 in (87th percentile)

ZANE
Weight: 25 lbs (92nd percentile)
Height: 32 in (99 percentile)
Head: 19 in (93 percentile)

Every time he read off another 90-somethingth percentile, our doctor laughed and said "That's how the Stanfills do it!"

Headed Home

After 34 days of travel and vacation, today we finally begin the long trek home. What a fantastic month full of memories with the people we love best -- our family. Here are a few shots Michael's sister Emily caught of our kids the last two days while we made a quick stop here in Utah.

Jed and Zoe and their cousin, Jude.  Jude and Zoe are only a few days apart in age and they are already best (naughty) buddies.  I call them Double Trouble when they are running around hand in hand, giggling, shamelessly encouraging each other into all sorts of hijinks.

Our silly girl.

Zane finally gets to meet his namesake, Great-Grandpa Zane Taylor. Here he is cuddled up with Grandpa Zane and the wonderful Grandma Beth.