Wow, a whole month has gone by! I've been avoiding the blog...I do it with every journal I've ever tried to keep too. The pressure just gets to be too much. If I miss a week I start to feel guilty and I try to blot it out of my mind. Story of my life. But see how mature I am...facing the past! Summaries are in order, since so much time has passed. Where to start? We'll go youngest to oldest. Then animals. Animal. Aidan is doing what he does best, and lots of it! Growing! Eating is a close second. We went out to lunch with some friends and they pointed out something that we hadn't really noticed about him because he's always been this way. He started eating as soon as we got there and did not stop until we left. I think that's why when we go out Jay and I take turns wolfing our food down while the other feeds the Stomach. Poor Jayson pretty much gets overlooked (I think he prefers that to being force-fed. Now he can get away with picking and making "creative" messes with his food and silverware). Aidan is an excellent mover and he's obsessed with Murphy. I like to imagine Aidan through Murph's eyes: all hands and drool (tasty) coming closer with nowhere to hide! When he gets tired, Aidan crawls into Murphy's bed by the bookshelf and rolls around in it, just like a little puppy. As a matter of fact, Aidan is very doggy-like. He puts his little paws up onto the couch and chairs begging to be let up. He eats any scrap of anything he finds on the floor. He loves chewing on shoes, especially flip-flops. He loves walks and chew toys. What a sweet puppy though! The sweetest. He still loves me best which is nice. Jayson is getting ready for school! He saw a leaf fall off of a tree a few weeks ago and said, "Oh, it's Fall! Time for school to start!" His teachers came over to meet him on Monday and he was so excited we could barely contain him in the living room. He kept zipping in just long enough for Mrs. Hamel to ask him something then he would zip out before he could answer. Every time he left the room there was sort of an awkward silence while we waited for him to come back in. He did some great break-dancing moves and when she asked to take his picture he said "Oh..yes!" and immediately did the splits with a very serious face. I've included some Jaysonisms at the end of this post. He's been so funny lately and I regret that if I don't write his sayings down right away they are lost forever, because I don't have the brain power to remember anything lately. Jay has been home and now that he has his security clearance he has been working at the Pentagon for the past couple of weeks. It's nice because we're settling into a routine, but Jay isn't thrilled about a lot of the drama that he's dealing with right now. It's hard for him to just go in and get his work done but I cannot go into details, especially online. He doesn't really tell me a lot about it anyway. I have been running and eating and sleeping and somewhere in between those activities, I take care of the kids, clean, cook, etc. I've been reading a lot lately too- the public library system here is the best, so I can burn through books as fast as I want without having to worry about running out of "good" ones. I put that word in quotation marks because obviously the things that qualify a book as good are very different to everyone. I love it out here, in the green and the constant bustling. That's what makes this area so unique: when I get up to go running at 5:00 there are already so many people out and about and it goes on all day long. But we are still surrounded by beautiful trails and parks. It's a wilderness here, and I feel a little bit like in a heartbeat the natural habitat could take over and cover up that we were ever here. My sister Kelsey very successfully delivered her first baby, Briley! That was really exciting for me. We gave talks in church and Jay told everyone that I proposed to him. They all think I'm very brazen now. We've been to Mt. Vernon three times. Jayson opens his eyes underwater now and back floats very well. I could very easily have won the Gold Medal for "the Housewife who Watched the Most Olympic Events". The one member of our family not fairing well is Murphy. He's allergic to the climate I think. He looks very mangy right now because he broke out in nasty skin pustules and when they crust over all of his hair falls out. I bathe him twice a week and we have him on antihistamines and antibiotics. Poor doggie. The Vet said that it's very common for Pugs to have this problem here though. So.


JAYSONISMS
a song: "I love you so much my child that is so wild" When he sang this song, Jayson said "I love that song so much that I cry a little bit when I sing it!"

When we were watching Michael Phelps win yet another gold medal, Jayson got caught up in the moment and blurted, "I'm so happy that Michael John won the golden medal!"

While watching Olympic wrestling, Jayson could not contain his amusement,he laughed so hard. But he suddenly became very serious and turned to me and said "Oh, Mom, I never had a wrestling class before!" (meaning that he'd like to take one)

I've been waiting for this phase to begin and it finally has. I told him not to tell me no and he said "I'm running away!" He then ran to the next room and waited for me to follow. When he got tired of waiting he came in and said "hey, I was running away and you didn't chase me!"

One night as I made a grocery list, he got a pad of paper and a pen and "wrote" all over it. When he was done he held it up, admired it, and said, "there! Nice and tricky!"

Picking up on my Valley-girl slang (obnoxious, I know!): One day when Aidan picked up a toy that Jayson was playing with, he came and said to me "that toy was totally being a lawnmower! I need it!"

Burps have been the theme for the month of August: "Mom, I just burped and it sounded like a white-tailed deer!" and "Oh, I just burped and I spiced a little bit in my mouth." Gross!

Attention Puzzle Lovers!

There are some funny things about Virginia. I'm sorry, I meant NORTHERN Virginia, because it's very different from southern Virginia, and the people that live in NoVA want you to know it. To be really "in" here, one must have vanity plates. It really doesn't matter what they say. I thought at first that maybe it was free here to personalize, then I thought maybe it's because there is so much wealth, but I've finally decided that it's actually because the DC area is filled with very type A personalities and a lot of them work for the government. The government LOVES acronyms. I tried to follow a conversation that Jay had with a friend who works for Homeland Security. They were talking about salaries. Apparently the government doesn't like to just say, "we'll pay you this much." They like to say, "you'll start as a G7 and move up to a G8 once you've got your PGB with the QRST." Obviously I'm not using the actual acronyms, which is why I couldn't really follow the conversation. Here is a sampling of plates (appropriately categorized)that I saw and remembered to write down:

Unnecessary but harmless:
TU-KUT
SMACKRL
SWMMOM
(heart)SNOBUN
2TYBEE
WLDPLUM
MAR1NE
RDGRD

Type A Giveaways:
AMASU
ULOV
URDREAM
KARDIVA
BST1WNS
HIZAGN
YRUSOL8

My all-time favorite:
GODBLUS (I'm pretty sure that this person was just visiting from down south, as in Southern Virginia.)

We saw a lot more, many that we could not decipher. I think they were all government employees.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

So Jay is in [ ] for..some indefinite amount of time. I'm not really supposed to give any details about it. [ ] is the smallest town in Virginia. Probably the smallest town in the WORLD! He doesn't get cell coverage there. I didn't know places like that still existed! So we can't talk unless I catch him before he goes to bed at night, at his hotel. I know I shouldn't be complaining. There are a lot of military wives around here who have it much worse. He comes home on the weekends and I don't think he's in any real danger. Unless we're talking about moral danger-he's the only one who doesn't go over to one of the hotel rooms every night to play Beer Pong (I'm not sure if that should be capitalised, it's a rather undignified phrase) and watch bad movies. By bad I don't mean movies like "29 Dresses". I mean movies like...well, I don't know any titles, but I don't think I need to for my point to be made. Jay said that there really is nothing to do there, but he's been busy working to get things done as fast as he can, and eventually the whole system in [ ] will be run remotely. It could take a few more weeks though, so it's a good thing our ward is full of my twins or something! All of the women that take their kids to Play Group are really fun and we don't just do one thing together during the week...we have play dates and go to all sorts of fun activities. They all run and all of our kids are very close in age. They all have babies that were born within a couple of months of Aidan's birthday so that's fun too. Of course, it's not the same as having Jay here. Jayson misses his dad. I've been trying to show him more affection to help him cope, and it's amazing what a hugg and a kiss will do if we're getting frustrated with eachother. We've had some tender moments. The other day I kissed him on the cheek and he giggled and said "thanks, Mom." This is not normal behavior for him-he usually tolerates a kiss from me then wipes it off when Im done. Lastnight (this is off the subject a bit) he was drinking from a sippy cup and he said it made a kissing sound when he drank from it. He said, "that's the kissiest cup! (giggle) I like to say kissiest. It's a beautiful word." So cute! Be sure and check out poor Murphy barking at the soda pop cans. I think they must've shifted in the box and he heard them and got scared.