Thanks to LC for the matching pajamas. We didn't have any pictures of all the kids together in any organized way, so we finally snapped some shots before putting them in bed last Saturday. Of all the pictures we took this one is my favorite. There are a couple dozen more, though. If you want to view the whole batch then send me an email and I'll add you to my Flickr contacts.

Emilie requested that I find pictures of all the kids from when they were Bryce's age. He's about 5 and a half months old now. These pictures were chosen for quality of comparison purposes, but they're all within a week or so of five and a half months.

Some catchup on significant events over the past little while.

Bryce was finally blessed earlier this month on the 3rd. We always seem to have sick kids, which makes going to church not really that good of an idea. We finally went for the gold and he is now a blessed baby.

It was storming a few nights ago, so I grabbed Chase out of bed and we watched the lightning. He had never seen lightning before, so it was pretty exciting. Plus, he was rescued from going to bed since he was supposed to be asleep. I think he liked that part, too.

We watched the launch of the Atlantis shuttle on the 11th. That was the first live launch Chase watched and all the kids seemed to enjoy watching. Chase was a little bit excited and a little bit scared. It's fun to watch how the kids react to things.

And in mystery news, I donated blood last Wednesday. They wouldn't let me do a 2RBC donation because they said they had a severe need for whole blood donations of my blood type. I'm trying to figure out exactly how many times I've donated. According to the UBS web page, this last donation would have been number 40, which would put me at the magic 5 gallon mark. But according to the UBS office, this last donation was number 34, which means that I have 3 more visits before hitting 5 gallons. The next time I'm at UBS I'm going to demand answers! And as a side note, after 4 months of exercising 6 days a week and severely cutting back on eating out my cholesterol actually went up a little since the last time I donated. I better go get some Panda Express or Taco Bell before I have a heart attack.

Tonight we had a raging party. Emilie invited her family over and we had her parents and all siblings with associated families in our house. Kids were everywhere, we were enjoying the savory smell of animal carcass charring in the backyard and we ended the evening with some crazy Rock Band. There was so much excitement that Chase actually fell asleep on someone's lap right in the middle of the party. He is usually pretty wild until the last person leaves. Since he went to bed early tonight we're hoping he gets up extra early tomorrow. That would be great!

I've got quite the reservoir of drafts drafted. My goal is to have them finished and posted tomorrow.

As a preview of what exciting posts you can look forward to, we have comparison photos of all the kids at Bryce's current age, family photos of all the kids together, plus some exciting life marker events. I know you can't wait, but you'll have to.

Now that American Idol is over I should have plenty of time to catch up on my blogging.

So, I guess I'll start with last Sunday and work through the week. We dropped in on Emilie's family last Sunday for a quick Mother's Day visit. Chase and I took some allergy medicine before heading out there so we enjoyed our stay much more than we have on some occasions in the past. We then headed back to my parent's house for a ham and funeral potato dinner. We have Wendy's family to thank for the delicious ham. Boy, was that ham delicious. The kids behaved perfectly, so all was well.

Jaxon and Mason both added interesting words to their vocabulary. I'm not sure why, but Mason started saying "yes" and at the same time Jaxon started saying "no". A typical discussion may go something like this:

Me: "Jaxon, Mason, do you want a granola bar?"
Mason: "Yes."
Jaxon: "No."

It's pretty much the same conversation when talking about baths, food, bedtime, etc.

Jaxon has been expanding his vocabulary fairly well. He'll say things like "nose", "balloon", "where" and "door". He's been able to identify things for months, but he finally starting to be able to say their names.

Jaxon has been pretty grumpy the past couple of weeks. I'm not sure if it's a phase he's going through or if he's just really full of toddler angst. Mason on the other hand is almost always very happy and playful, which is a full 180 degrees from his life as a baby. One trait that he still exhibits occasionally is that when he snaps he snaps hard. He can go from a state of bliss to full-fledged tantrum in a split second. He also doesn't tolerate being hungry - another carryover from his baby days. Hunger sneaks up on him and when it hits the situation becomes critical fast.

Mason is by far our best eater. He'll eat pretty much anything we give him and he'll eat lots of it. Jaxon eats modestly, although he's starting to become pickier. Chase hardly eats at all. He loves cereal - especially disgusting kinds like Life and Rice Chex. He even likes Shredded Wheat. If we have Marshmallow Mateys (or "Marshmallow Ladies", as Chase calls them), Fruit Loops and Shredded Wheat, he'll usually go for the Shredded Wheat over the others. He really, really likes Life, though. He'll peck at lunch if it's something he likes, but he won't eat more than a bite of dinner. That's probably why he's so excited to get cereal in the morning.

Bryce is developing quite nicely. He enjoys being on his stomach much of the time, which is good because he still can't roll onto his back. He's starting to eat rice cereal and he's sleeping through most of the night the majority of the time. He usually gets up around 5a and is really noisy between about 6a and 7a. He loves to play with his toys and is generally very happy and easygoing. It's a good thing, too, because otherwise our house would be out of control. I mean, even more so.

I don't know what to think about tonight. I had a horrible, uneasy feeling last night and today. I was getting the creeps that Danny might go home. I started feeling calmer this afternoon, so maybe it's going to work out. Now that I'm thinking about it again I'm feeling a little bit nauseated.

So, Emilie thought that Kris was but the bee's knees. I thought he may have been flatulating into the microphone. It may have been because I didn't like the songs, but I genuinely thought he sounded really awful.

Adam, on the other hand, always sounds awful and last night was no exception. It's funny that when people talk about Adam they never talk about his ability to sing. It's always about his charisma (cockiness), fearlessness (arrogance) and, to use Simon's word, swagger (I'm not going to venture into what he meant by that).

I think Adam and Kris have clearly defined themselves in the past couple weeks. Adam, by embarrassing himself when he assumed he would never be in the bottom 3. Kris, when he showed genuine shock at being pronounced safe.

I'm just glad it's almost over.

First, Firefox has been my browser of choice for as long as it's been available. Starting a few releases ago it started freezing my system occasionally. It's not really a true freeze - it just slows the computer to an unusable crawl. I've been unable to find a solution, so I'm using Chrome almost exclusively. A lot of pages don't work on Chrome, though. For example, you can't log into some web pages if you're using Chrome. Lame.

Anyway, last week was awesome. I loved watching Adam's smug expression when Ryan told him he was in the bottom 3. He thinks he's so much better than everyone else. He was originally creepy and not a very good singer. From there he has clearly moved into the category of grotesque. I feel like I need to disinfect my TV after he's been on. I'm guessing that they are not going to do a "bottom three" this week since there are only four left. I don't see any possible way that Allison survives this week.

I have family stuff to blog about, but I won't mix my AI rantings with kid stuff. That just wouldn't be nice.