dead beat parents

marcus has deadbeat parents...sorry for the lack of postings recently!

marcus is becoming much more independent. he's discovered that he doesn't really have to do what we tell him to do. he's also become well versed in the words "no" and "mine". despite this streak of independence though, he is still a really easy kid. he's sensitive so usually feeling like he's made us upset or sad is all it takes to get him to change his tune, though sometimes a tantrum is thrown first for the added drama.

marcus is obsessed with buses lately. every time he hears one go past the house he shouts "BUS!!!", and this is quite often. he likes to sit at the dining room table and look out the window watching for them while dinner's being fixed. kevin said the bus action is fast and furious on the route to daycare, i'm surprised he's not horse by the time he gets there with all the shouting. he also likes to leave the book he has with a bus open to the bus page.

below are a couple links to photos from the past month.

trip to reedley (photos courtesy of lauren and laurie since our camera died-if anyone else has photos from our weekend, please send them to us!)

monkeying around

sexy back video (the lighting's poor, but you can still see the moves)

legos

marcus has discovered he loves legos, just like his daddy. it's been amazing to watch him figure out how to build towers. over the past week he's successfully mastered a couple techniques, and he's quite proud of himself. though he enjoys building, his favorite thing to do with legos is dump them out of the box on his head...that must be a coddington gene.

in preparation for the start of college football, we've been working with marcus on making the touchdown signal. we think he's got it down now, but it'll be a sign of loyalty to see who he listens to more during the ucla/uw game this fall.

click here for more lego photos

monkey boy

marcus has turned into a monkey. he's learned to climb on the couch, slid off our bed, and create an obstacle course with a chair and coffee table. he's constantly trying to climb over the baby-gates or into the bathtub too. we've been going to a playground a couple times a week in the evening and he loves it. there's a slide that he's becoming comfortable with and he loves bouncing on the suspension bridge. he also enjoys the sand, he spends about half the time there picking up and moving sand with his hands.

at day care, marcus has been getting bit on a regular basis, lately it's been once a week. about half of the kids in his room are biters, either out of frustration or excitement. fortunately he's not one of the biters, none have broken the skin, and he doesn't get too upset when he's biten. he usually goes back to playing right away. last week was a double bite week, the second time was because he was hugging another kid and the other kid got a little too excited/freaked out. at least we haven't had a scabbies breakout this year at day care, bites are a little easier to deal with and don't involve pesticides :) marcus is going to be moving to an older toddler room at the beginning of september. he'll have new caregivers but will stay with most of the same kids. he's pretty shy at first, but hopefully he'll warm up to the new women quickly when they start transitioning.

here's a link to some new photos...

(we're going to be in reedley over labor day weekend. if any of you valley folks are planning to be in the area, let us know if you have time for a visit!)

fun with the cousins

we went to richland over the weekend. marcus had a great time playing with his cousins. (can you tell which boy lives in seattle???) marcus and landon are already beginning to compete for grandma's attention, and i think she's loving it :)





most of the day saturday was spent splashing in the water and making sure all of grandma and grandpa's flowers, and rocks, were well watered. the boys were exhausted from playing so hard...logan slept in until after 8 on sunday, landon crashed on the couch this afternoon, and marcus slept through the night for the first time in 2 weeks! enjoy the photos!

basement project

kevin's been working on our basement tirelessly for about 7 months, and now there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel! soon marcus will have a carpeted area to run around in. see below for some photos showing the transformation...

the old furnace/beast

basement framing

new furnace and painted drywall

silly boy

marcus has been entertaining us with his silliness. enjoy!

tri-cities weekend

we went to the tri-cities this past weekend. marcus enjoyed paling around with his cousins. he'll be keeping up with their pace in no time!

marcus got to spend some quality time cuddling with grandma saturday morning before she headed off to potholes for a week of camping. we had a mini-birthday celebration for grandpa jeff and landon saturday afternoon. marcus spent his time at the celebration cracking himself up and trying to make his aunt johnna laugh, conning his aunt jenna into walking around with him at the park, and getting grandpa to put him on the slide.

we saw the tri-city dust devils play the spokane indians in the evening. fireworks were scheduled for the end of the game, but we decided to leave at 11pm after the 12th inning...the boys were troopers sticking it out that long! for those who haven't been there, the photo above of field shows about what there is to see in the tri-cities...lots of flat desert land with a few hills. we seattlelites were having a hard time with all the bright sun, but we completely enjoyed the warm weather!
sunday we went to the "playground of dreams" in kennewick. the playground is quite amazing. marcus had fun playing in the water after he realized it wasn't too scary.

on the way home sunday afternoon, our tire blew out just east of seattle. kevin put on our spare tire only to find out it had gone flat. fortunately we were able to renew our AAA membership over the phone and a tow truck was out to help us about 5 minutes after we called. even more fortunately, marcus was fine just hanging out in the car the whole time despite only sleeping for about an hour on the ride home.
needless to say, marcus was exhausted after his full weekend...he took a 4 1/2 hour nap monday afternoon!
click here to see more photos of the weekend

windsor photos by aaron and laurie

as promised, here are some photos from windsor taken by more artistically inclined family members...
link to aaron's: http://www.ucla99.com/sonoma.html
link to laurie's

windsor vacation

i'll start out with a link to the photos...click here (i'm planning to steal aaron and lauren's photos too and add them to picasa, their pictures are far better than mine)

we had a wonderful vacation in windsor, lots of relaxing and some site seeing. windsor is in sonoma county, about 70 miles north of san francisco and 30 miles east of the ocean.

here are the highlights of our time there:

amanda met us at the condo and helped us get set up for the week. rather than doing anything real fun, she went with us to costco, target, and trader joe's. unfortunately she could only stay for the night since she had to be responsible and go back to work. but she got the marcus-fix she came for, he couldn't take his eyes off her!

laurie, lauren, and camille came to visit for a few days. we drove around the outskirts of windsor and healdsburg and admired the vineyards everywhere. we went to the hop kiln and korbel wineries. marcus had a great time playing with the girls and occasionally cuddling with his gg.
we met up with jeff, judy, their friend georgia, and their dogs (rooster and bonnie) for a day at wright's beach. camille drove with us to the beach and made it 3 whole minutes without talking-we were impressed! it was beautiful day, but really cold at the beach. laurie and the girls headed home after lunch. we went to old town santa rosa with the coddington gang after deciding it was too cold to attempt sticking it out at the beach. it was about a 40 degree temperature change between the beach and santa rosa!

marcus had his first swimming experience. he enjoyed himself completely...he thought it was a big bathtub where everyone splashed all the time. he carried around the bag of swim diapers as much as possible.

we went to see the "world's largest petrified trees" outside of calistoga. it was interesting to see the petrified wood in a natural setting, but probably not anything we'd go to see twice. it was based out of a family member's home, which had been turned into a gift shop/museum. we tried to see another natural wonder, the "old faithful geyser of california", but it was completely surrounded by a huge fence and very large trees. clearly the "owners" were out for profit, not preservation. the admission fee was $8, to see the geyser spout every 20 minutes. oh, and there were supposedly fainting goats too, that must justify the charge... we opted to not go in and wait to see a geyser at yellowstone. kevin thought the neighbors needed to tap way down in the earth and create a man-made geyser and take away some business...if we ever move to calistoga, you'll know why!

aaron and susan vacationed with us at the end of the week. susan and i taught the boys how to play scrabble (at least that's how i remember it). we spent plenty of time lounging. we also hit the wineries. aaron is a bad influence, i haven't drank that much wine since brooke and i were in germany. we went to the francis ford coppola and ferrari-carano wineries. the grounds were amazing at both, and the wine pourers were too. both wine pourers gave us more than was on the list, and susan and i didn't know to pour out some of each tasting. we went to downtown healdsburg to visit a bakery and a couple small wine tasting rooms (i learned to pour out some wine and did much better there). we also did a food and wine pairing at the kendall-jackson winery (where i promptly forgot to not drink all the wine poured). we all felt a bit more educated about wine after the pairing and appropriately used the term "legs" many times.

marcus warmed up to susan after a day, he even sat in her lap for a story one night. he wasn't as sure about aaron holding him, though he fell asleep once in aaron's arms. i'm waiting for marcus to learn to say "uncle aaron, i want you to get me", just like logan did to kevin a few years ago. kevin spent hours chasing logan, it's only a matter of time until marcus decides to wear out aaron. get your rest while you can aaron!

valley racism

amanda sent me to a blog regarding an act of racism in the central valley. i am sad that a church would be this unaware and insensitive to the continual effects skits like this might have on the people in their church and the community. intentional or not, acts like this foster racism. the religious community as a whole should be fostering reconciliation, not creating further divisions between people of different races, ethnic groups, economic backgrounds, etc. i could go on and on, but this is supposed to be a website about marcus, not my frustrations, so i will leave it at that.
i am planning to voice my concern to the church and ask that you do the same if you feel compelled. i have their contact information, as well as the other blog, below.

here's link to the blog: http://urbanknowledge.blogspot.com/
here's the contact information for the church:
Riverdale Assembly of God
Postal address: PO Box 547 Riverdale CA, 93656
Email: rag@rivdal.org

lake kachess camping and pirates

lake kachess camping

the annual freeze out wasn't as cold as last year and it only rained a little. the big boys were fairly well behaved, though christopher did manage to stink up the campfire area multiple times and craig was nowhere to be found during his designated meal cooking time. logan kept the boys busy playing baseball or going fishing.

marcus was trying to make sure that either a) he doesn't go camping again until he's 10 or b) he never has a sibling. we stayed in kenny and ramona's trailer rather than pitching a tent. we figured it would be warmer at night and marcus, and we, would sleep better. well, he had other things planned for us. the second night he decided that it would be great fun to be wide awake between 11pm and 3am. he couldn't decide if he wanted to play or fuss, so he alternated between the two. kenny and ramona said it wasn't a problem and that they slept okay, but i'm guessing they're liars and don't want us to feel bad! we'll see if our next reservation at the nakashima trailer gets mysteriously lost...

click here to see more photos (thanks for the extra photos chris!)

results of the pirates of the caribbean survey
only one person completed the pirates survey and she happens to be an expert in the field of all things piratey (seriously, she is. she taught a course on pirate literature this spring.) and she's a fan of johnny depp. so if you want to get someone's opinion on the movie, you couldn't ask for a better one. according to the survey, here's what she has to say about the movie:

-the cast and costumes are excellent

-it's totally believable and true to life

-it's clever, funny, suspenseful, and unique

-she felt "amused and happy" after seeing it

-it's not for people under 12

i'm still not sure if we'll see it in the theater, but it'll definitely be on our netflix list as soon as it's out!

on another note, it looks like marcus may have inherited a bit of his mom's ocd tendencies. he's taken to rearranging things and pushing the swiffer around.

survey says...

so i found a website today that generates surveys (yeah, i'm a geek). please take this survey if you've seen "pirates of the caribbean-at world's end". i will post the results in a later blog.

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB226JFQ3WPNS

take me out to the ball game

we went to see the mariners play this weekend. marcus happily made it through through the whole game, probably because auntie deanna and kara were there! he ate most of deanna's edamame and was after her coffee too. marcus stayed awake for most of the game, taking the occasional catnap to restore some energy since the game was during nap time. he's still a bit confused by the cheering and booing. however, he did manage to clap along a couple times. we didn't get up on the big screen. i'm thinking that's a good thing since they started adding captions...one man and his daughter were on the screen a bit too long and the caption "bad dancer and offspring" showed up under their image...

patti and craig jacobson (aunt patti/grandma patti and uncle craig/grandpa craig to marcus...i don't think they've figured out what they want to be called yet!) stopped by for a brief visit yesterday on their way home from their niece's wedding in vancouver, b.c. marcus fell asleep on patti's lap and she looked like she was in heaven! unfortunately i didn't think about taking a picture until after they left.

kevin's project in the basement is starting to come to an end, though there's still a ways to go. this weekend he finished up the drywall. now comes the "fun" with mud and tape, even craig admitted that this was nothing to look forward to. someday soon though we'll have a little family room down there where marcus can run around on carpet and fall without hitting the hardwood. we're very excited about this!

that's about it for our latest excitements. we're planning to go camping this weekend with the nakashima clan so keep your eyes open for some more photos and at least one story about the boys (meaning kevin, brian, craig, and christopher) causing trouble.

also, i added a new link to the right...amanda forwarded it to me and i thought it was very interesting.

click here to see more photos and videos of the little man

sing us a song...

marcus is quite the pianist! he "played" for about 30 minutes the other day...sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently.

click here to listen to his music

confessions of a blaker girl

for all you who love blake lewis but are ashamed to admit it (who doesn't love someone who can beatbox to bon jovi and sound good?!?), here are some photos i took today from work.

he performed at the park across the street from westlake center for the american idol "hometown show". being part of the management department, i was able to get on our balcony and take photos.

unfortunately he was facing the other direction most of the time, but at least i didn't have to get in with the rest of the crowd!

sir mix-a-lot and pat monahan from train were also there. apparently they did "baby got back" after i left (i had to be responsible and meet kevin and marcus at the doctor's office for marcus' check up...), though it was probably a good thing i left before i had a chance to embarrass myself in public with my dance moves...

my boss braved the crowd and took this photo-that's me in the background on the balcony. (admit it lauren, you think i'm cool!)

pirate party

the dread pirate logan is 6 years old!
we went to liberty lake this past weekend to celebrate at his pirate party.
marcus' favorite part was the balloons.

landon and marcus spent most of the weekend competing for grandma's attention.

we also got to see logan in action at his soccer game. he scored one goal, and made an assist (though we won't mention which team the assist was for).

logan warming up

logan in action

coach brian

marcus and aunt jenna