wheelers 2013

summer, emily (plus one), bryan, caleb, and afton

looking forward to our growing family and all its wild and craziness in 2014!

chess in chinatown

this.

this is our 1,001st blog post.

thanks for sharing the ride.

on christmas day in the morning

season of light

"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

John 8:12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aup9M5HZawI

merry christmas!

#stranded

but wait! there's more!

as a general rule, bryan and i avoid winter travel like the plague. like the plague, i tell you!

but given the short window of availability into which we were able to fit our little romantic rendezvous, we took the risk anyway.

never. again.

so we were supposed to fly back to washington from utah on thursday morning. a storm was coming in wednesday night. we left the hotel in park city a night early, came down the canyon, and stayed with my grandma to avoid delays (and potential accidents) on I-80.

my uncle john drove us through the snow and sleet and rain and ice, and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time.

and by "plenty of time" i do mean plenty of time. like three days worth.

don't let that sign fool you or give you false hope: every. single. flight. was cancelled. 

and what happens when an airline tries to fit hundreds and hundreds of displaced people on flights that are already full of hundreds and hundreds of people during the busiest travel weekend of the year?

well, for the wheelers, it meant not getting booked out of utah until sunday afternoon.

now, you guys haven't forgotten about those three little people bryan and i left at home, right? 

well, my mom had already left washington early thursday morning. the plan was to cross paths in the seattle airport but a few hours from one another. and matto had been left in charge of the chillens.

now really, at this point, matto could probably take care of the children blindfolded, but he had no car and no food and no emotional preparation for an extra seventy-two hours of full-time *times three* (three-and-a-half if you fairly account for caleb) childcare.

i broke into hysterics. (yes, if you were there at the airport thursday afternoon, that was me). i had "rationally" decided that we needed to rent a car and drive (through two snow storms and several mountain passes) home. 

but as we were leaving the airport to go forward with this hare-brained scheme, bryan noticed that while no southwest flights were getting out, some other airlines had flights that were leaving. as a last-ditch effort, he called around to see the soonest something else might be available.

delta. friday night. first class. one seat left.

i took it.

and bryan came home on sunday.

#selfie

last week, bryan and i took a much-needed and last minute vacation alone. we headed to park city, utah for some skiing (him) and some spa-ing (her) and lots of eating, relaxing, movie watching, and good old fashioned hanging out for the both of them.

our many thanks and much gratitude to mere and matt for taking such good care of the littles whilst we were away.

...sleeping in, stuffing ourselves, and snapping selfies:

psst: remember our last solo vaycay, here?

tik tok

holly jolly

yep, that pretty much sums it up.

merry christmas!

a wheeler family pic

back in august, the extended wheelers were all able to get together in utah to celebrate grandma janna's birthday. towards the end of our stay, the lovely heidi henderson came up to take family pics:

(can you believe that there are seven children five and under in the above photo and they are *all* looking in the general direction of the camera?!)

august 31, 2013 in eden, UT

photos by heidi henderson

out of the mouths of babes

so if you know caleb, then you know he is not a man of many words.

i mean, he chatters all the time: constantly going on and on about this or that or the other, making various demands, and questioning the world around him.

but with the words? not so much.

i'm fairly certain he views our "language" as unnecessarily overwrought and time consuming. (no doubt reading him his first dickens novel is going to blow his little baby mind).

so instead of using a different word for every-single-little-tiny-thing, he prefers to shorten various -- and even simple -- words to single syllables and then to use each single syllable "word" multifunctionally.

his favorite syllable so far is "ba," which he uses to indicate any one of the following: book, bus, buckle, bowl, diaper (don't hate me, but i call it a "biaper"), bye, ball, balloon, belly, block and bear. (he's got a thing for "b" words, obviously).

unfortunately, his lack of specificity will only work for so long with so many people (and believe me, it's already starting to wear on his parents a little). so it's likely caleb will ultimately have to swallow his pride and concede to speaking like the rest of us.

we'll keep you updated on how long he holds out.

summer writes

summer's first "official" piece of writing as shared with her class and turned in to her kindergarten teacher today:

"We did Christmas. Caleb is crying. I am with my family. He can't get down because he will ruin the Christmas tree."

a future investigative journalist on our hands, perhaps?

also, who else is totally loving how much bigger i am than bryan in her family pic?