In a few hours, John will officially be 30. Which means I’ve known him approximately half his lifetime. Our lives have changed so much in the last fifteen years, and I feel blessed to have known him and walked next to him through all that time. So, to the man who…

…I look forward to growing old with.

…is an amazing father to our challenging, spirited children.

…puts the needs of his family ahead of his own.

…holds me when I need to cry.

…makes me laugh when I don’t think I can.

…puts a smile on my face every morning when I wake up beside him.

Thank you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for growing up and growing together. Thank you for beating the odds and working with me every day to create a loving, lasting relationship. Thank you for working as hard as you can, and then some, in order to provide for our family. Thank you for holding my hand and walking beside me as we navigate the terrifying world of cancer and thank you for picking me up and carrying me when I don’t think I can walk anymore.

I’ve truly been blessed to have spent the last 10 years as your wife, and to have seen all the 20s had to offer you. I cannot wait to see how the next 10 years turn out; what adventures we will have, and what new challenges it will bring. So here’s to 30 Sweetheat (yes, Sweetheat!). Happy Birthday.

Christmas photo fun at the Ewart house!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! This year has been quite a roller coaster for us, and we are glad to be moving on from it. Despite all our challenges, we’ve come through the year stronger, happier with our lives, and thankful for all of our blessings. We have each other, and an amazing family, and that is what is truly important. And now, our yearly update, starting with…

Colin as... Spiderman!

Colin: He is now 2 1/2 and full of crazy energy, all the time. He is also sweet, loving, creative, musical, and bright. He has been going to Safari Learning for preschool since July and LOVES it. He tells everyone he knows that he has great friends there, then he names, “Teacher Sylvia, Teacher Brittney, Teacher Sue…” Eventually he gets around to the names of the kids who are also in his class. He loves to sing and dance, and most of the time makes it through the whole song, although we heard, “you better watch out, you better watch out, you better watch out…” sung to the tune of Santa Clause Is Coming To Town quite a bit this year. He is a typical boy and loves all things that have wheels or can bounce…trains are one of his favorite things right now. He enjoyed taking gymnastics class earlier this year, but had to stop when he started preschool, so I have promised him he can go back this summer. He is truly delightful.

Natalie as a flower girl at her aunt Amy's wedding

Natalie: She will be 6 in February and has grown up so much in the last 6 months. She graduated Kindergarten in May, and said goodbye to Safari Learning (where she has been since she was 18 months old) and hello to Jamestown Elementary (where Mary teaches) as a first grader! She has a fantastic teacher, and has really excelled in all areas of academics. She is in the highest reading group and consistently does her math with very few errors. She has a lot of friends, and loves to go to school and to learn. She also loves that Mary is on the same campus, and she loves to come see me when she can figure out how. Plus, all the 8th graders love her and take extra good care of her because she is Mrs. Ewart’s daughter (the perks of going to a small K-8). She finished up another year of dance in June, and has had to take a break from that because the schedule doesn’t work with her being in school every day. Her favorite things to do right now are read (she’s reading Magic Treehouse chapter books at the moment), and do any kind of craft project. She is also a fabulous big sister, and recently offered to share her bedroom with her brother during a bit of a rearrangement in the house.

John and Colin waiting in line at Disneyland in November.

John: Is busy. He is still working for Cramer Development (cramerdev.com) out of Iowa, and has really taken on a lot of responsibility within the company. He is directing projects, helping with hiring screening/interviews and, of course, coding a good deal of each day. He loves his co-workers and only wishes they were all in one place so they could hang out more (the majority of the company telecommutes from all over the US). He is also working hard to finish his master’s degree from UC Merced. He did enjoy snowboarding last winter/spring as we had a great season at the local resort. Nothing yet this year though…he is hoping!

Enjoying a beautiful day at Disneyland.

Mary: Certainly has had better years than this last one. I was diagnosed with stage 3a melanoma in March. On a Monday. Then I was laid off that Thursday (due to budget cuts). Went through 2 surgeries and a million different tests, and started a year long treatment to reduce the chances of the melanoma reoccurring. Ugh. The potentially permanent loss of my job meant the loss of our family’s health insurance as well, and, well, let’s just say that we had a really rough few months. The good news is that I am responding really well to the treatment (a year of Interferon infusions — 4 weeks of PICC line daily infusions in June, and self-administered injections 3 days a week for a year), and currently have no evidence of any other melanoma in my body. I will be undergoing skin checks and regular PET scans probably for the rest of my life, and still have ~20 weeks of injections to go. But I’m doing well! And for that, I am thankful. I also earned my science credential this year, and was hired back at Jamestown to teach 8th grade math and science again. I truly love teaching and think that it has been huge in giving me a reason to keep going when I don’t feel well from the meds. I’ve also managed to keep crafting and have finishing several knitting/crocheting projects for my various friends (especially the ones who had new babies this year!).

With all the craziness this year, we also had to make some hard decisions about where we were going to live. We have moved into a nice rental home, still in Sonora, that we love. We hate contributing to the housing market crisis, but we decided that some things really needed to change, and the stress involved in owning a home that needed two incomes just was not worth it.

We’ve also done some fun things this year — we were able to get together with Mary’s extended family in July for a day at the lake, and also visited with more of them on our way to Santa Cruz with the kids. Great to see all of them, for some it has been longer than 10 years! We also went to Disneyland in November and had a wonderful (crowded and rainy, but wonderful) trip. We also enjoyed many day trips to various zoos and museums, etc. around the area. We welcomed John’s sister’s new husband into our family, and were able to enjoy the normal things like swimming lessons and dance recitals. We focused on making our family the priority and look forward to a new year of the same. Love to you all!

What a great time! We spent this last weekend with our friends the Ferreiras. Natalie and Jocelyn went to the same in-home daycare when we first moved to Sonora, and have since both changed to the same preschool…they will tell you that they are best friends! Since the girls are friends, Mark and Colleen and John and I have become good friends as well, and we really enjoy hanging out and spending time together. Colleen’s family owns a cabin up in Calaveras County, outside of Big Trees State Park, and they invited us up for a weekend several months ago. Mark is a firefighter, and it took us until this weekend to come up with a weekend where we were all free, so we put it on the calendar, and off we went on Saturday.

We met them at Big Trees State Park with a picnic lunch on Saturday. We “hiked” the Big Trees walk first…where the girls felt “tired” the entire time and seemed to think they needed to carried a lot of the trip. Either that or throw dirt around and draw with sticks. But they loved it.

The other thing the Daddies did...acted crazy!

Oh, and did I mention that Colleen is going to be delivering their second daughter, Jillian, in 6 weeks, yep, she is, and she walked the whole way. A better woman than I, I would’ve been waiting in the shade with a book at 32.5 weeks pregnant!

After our walk we headed down to Beaver Creek, by the South Grove, for our picnic lunch and some water play. Beaver Creek is an awesome place to go with little ones because the creek is very shallow, the kids can both walk across it without any issues, and there is hardly any current. The kids can play and splash without being afraid of getting hurt (not that we’d need to worry about that anyway with paramedic/firefighter Mark around!). The girls enjoyed being able to make “soup”, play

Looking beautiful, making soup, playing in the creek.

babies, float boats, and float themselves down the “slide”. The daddies enjoyed stumbling around on the rocks trying to keep up with the kids, and the mommies, well, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…

Mary, Colleen (and Jillian) and Colin hanging out in the shade enjoying the nature.

We spent a couple hours at the creek just loving the fact that the kids could play and enjoy life and we could all relax.

After our creek play, it was time to head back to the cabin to “nap” (which didn’t happen, both girls fell asleep in the car on the way there, and promptly woke up as soon as we reached the cabin…oh well). We played and relaxed and had a fun bath time together, and then Mark made us a camp fire and we made S’Mores. SO FUN! What a great idea. Neither girl had ever done it, and you should’ve seen them as they helped their daddies roast the marshmallows and put them on the graham crackers. Of course, they were in their jammies and clean, and we were worried we’d have to re-bathe them, but nope! Our girls are dainty eaters, and they both went right to bed after their sugary treat. (Colin slept through S’Mores…in fact, he slept from 6:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. – he was tired too!)

Sunday morning we cleaned up the cabin (it’s amazing how much stuff spreads in less than 24 hours with 2 3-year-olds and the assorted parents and siblings), and headed down to Arnold to tour the fire station where Mark works. What a GREAT time. Jocelyn is used to being there, but Natalie had never been, and they had a great time. The kids were able to go into the water truck, see the ambulance, and ride in an engine!

Junior Fire Fighers...they wore their hats on the ride too!

I’m not sure what the best part of being in the fire truck was: being in a fire truck, being in a car of any sort without a car seat, being super high up, or getting to honk the air horn! Jocelyn hadn’t ever been able to ride in a fire truck either, so both girls had a great time.

Here are the kids in the engine with Mark, ready to go on their ride!

After the station, we headed into Murphys to eat at one of Colleen’s favorite restaurants, then checked out a store that our friend Megan just opened (MaisieBlue in Murphys…great shop for yarn, stationary, kid’s toys and books, adult books, etc., if you’re ever up there, check it ou!), and headed home. Neither girl napped on the way home, and both were out by 8 that night.

What a fun weekend we had. And what great friends we have. We really enjoyed being able to get away for the night, enjoy the Big Trees, and spend time with friends. And this is just the start of our fun month…we have parties to attend with family and friends, a zoo trip with friends, a trip to Monterey, visits from grandparents, etc. I’m excited about all the fun things we’ll be doing as a family.

Hello all, sorry this has taken so long to get to, it seems that just when I think things are settling down and we are developing a rhythm something changes.  Surprise, surprise, I know…what did I expect becoming a stay-at-home parent of two!?!

Anywho…let’s start with the youngest…when does that happen unless the youngest happens to be a baby? He is growing growing growing. I have NO idea how big he is now, but he has maxed out most of his 3- 6 months clothes and is mostly in 6-9 months at this point. The funny thing about his build is that he is solid, and obviously heavy. At 3 months, his weight put him roughly in the 90th percentile. And his rough height puts him about the 95th percentile. But he isn’t chubby really. His 6-9 month clothes, while long enough (and in some cases, approaching too short) are all too big

Here he is playing in his exersaucer...one of his new favorite activities!

around the middle. I don’t know what I am going to do as he moves into 12 month clothes…thankfully G Diapers are big so they help hold up his pants. He still loves to eat, although most nights he remains at only one feeding sometime between 1 and 4 a.m. He is 15 weeks now, and will be starting solid foods probably sometime in the next 4-8 weeks. He’s starting to really watch when we eat, and goodness knows he thinks food, or at least milk, is great now. He has also hit a couple fun milestones in the last two weeks: he found his feet and he can roll from this back to his tummy.He has been chewing on his hands for a long time now, but he has also started to play with his fingers, and

Smiling in his "Crabby" shirt...oxymoron anyone?

really play with toys that interest him. He is also starting to reach out for them if they aren’t right in front of him and he wants one. However, once he figured out that those things attached to the end of his legs were his and that he could kick things with them, he hasn’t really wanted to do anything else. He will kick his activity mat, his toys on his bouncer seat, toys attached to his car seat, etc. Soccer player maybe? John would be thrilled. Along with the kicking has come some funny movement. He obviously can’t crawl, but he does get around, often in circles pivoting around his head, but kicking his feet and pushing against the ground has given him quite a bit of freedom. It also mean that I think what is waking him up at night is the fact that he pushes himself into the corner of his crib and is stuck and uncomfortable. And this morning, he managed to get from his side to his tummy (and then seriously pissed off that he was on his tummy — why would anyone want to be there, you can’t see anything!) He has been able to roll from side-to-side since two days old. Seriously. But he never made it from his side to his tummy before. And based on his reaction to it this morning, he might never do it again! The exersaucer has also become a toy that he enjoys, along with his doorway jumper. He can hold his weight up for quite a while now, and will spend at least 30 minutes in the exersaucer if he’s not tired or hungry. And he talks. All the time. He can’t make more than just coo-ing noises at the moment, but he does mimic syllables, so if you say “I love you”, he will coo back with 3 syllables.

Natalie is a typical 3 1/2 year old, going on 13 year old. She’s becoming quite adapt at coloring, and often doesn’t ever leave the lines. That’s my genes in her! I bet John could color in the lines, but never did just to be John. We had a scare last week…she had a virus that was causing a fever and she said it hurt to pee, so we took her in for a urinalysis. Well, twice they found elevated levels of

Natalie Vs. Hair Brush - I think the brush won. This is what happens when your three-year-old wants to be independent!

sugar in her urine, and the doctor was concerned that she was diabetic and we hadn’t ever realized it. We had to do a fasting finger poke, but everything turned out fine, and the doctor is confident that the sugar was a result of the stress her body was under due to the virus. So all is well, although that is an experience I’d never like to have again. She is starting to sound out words and spell them, for instance, the word “bag” is one that she can say, identify each sound in, and match the sound to the letter name. She did it all on her own on the way home from the grocery store one day and freaked me out! She just keeps getting older and older. We have our fair share of clashes based

Here she is swimming around pushing her alligator floatie toy.

on her attitude (which I do realize is a little “Mary” type of attitude), but she is also sweet and loving and helpful. And she thinks that 6 is old enough to be able to have a motorcycle like Daddy. I told her 18, and she said, “no, Mommy, 6 is definitely big enough”. Great. She has also become quite good at swimming while wearing floaties. Now I do know this isn’t “real swimming”, but she’s not afraid of the water on her face, she’s worked on back floats, and kicking around, so I feel like she’d have a fighting chance if she ever fell into a pool. She has ever jumped off our ladder a few times, which is quite a big accomplishment for her, she started the summer quite scared to do this.

On to John. He’s good. He only has one class to teach at UC, which was a fiasco…they asked him to teach two during the day, it was an issue with his “day job”, they worked it out, and then UC assigned those two classes to someone else. Lovely. The good news is that John really needs a bit of a break, he’s been busting his tush, so it’s nice that he’s only teaching the one class and he should be able to get a bit of time to relax. Unfortunately, he still has to drive two nights a week, but the class is from 6-7:15, so he’ll be home before 11, he won’t be so stressed out getting there, etc. He is enjoying his motorcycle and just bought a new helmet that was quite expensive, but one of the best. Now he wants a new bike to go with it! Ha! He also has quite a bit of contract work in the works, which is nice because he’s trying to build that business up so he can eventually move over to that full time. Not that I am sure what we would all do with each other if we were all home during the day, even if he was technically working. But I guess we can figure that out when we get there. For now, the extra, different work, is nice for John’s brain and our bank accounts.

Lastly, me. I’ve been doing some looking for part-time work I can do at home. Nothing that would require me to not be able to be there for my family first and foremost, but something to help with the day-to-day costs, and provide us with a little bit of extra cash…particularly in time for Christmas. In my looking I stumbled across a “Math Content Developer/Revision Team Member” posting with Sylvan Learning. Although I wasn’t sure they would like my qualifications, I sent in my resume, and eventually had to complete a sample piece of curriculum, and was offered the job after a 10 minute phone interview on Monday! Yippee! The pays is great, the hours are “make your own” and there is a lot to do in a short amount of time, which means the potential for quite a bit of money.

For those of you who've wondered about the "rest of the family", here is Zeminy enjoying her deck!

And I can work on it in my jammies, nursing Colin or in the middle of the night if I need to. I’m pretty excited about it. I also found a part-time, online teaching position with Kaplan. They apparently run online schools for 6-12th grade, and need math teachers. It would work much like a charter school, or home school, type of position, so I put in my application for that as well. Hopefully I will hear something back about that. I sure love being home, and I really don’t want to go back to the classroom full time until Colin is in school, but I did like the ability to use my brain in different ways than I do when trying to formulate an argument with a 3-year-old! So teaching from home would really be the best of both worlds I think. Plus I’ve been tutoring some, and might start tutoring for Natalie’s preschool in the afternoons. Busy me! In between all that, I am still crafting, card-making, knitting/crocheting, etc. I might start an etsy.com store to sell some of my stuff, but at the moment most have been gifts, so I don’t have any extra yet.

The last exciting thing we have planned is a two day trip to Monterey in September. We had rewards cash from a credit card, and Natalie has been showing quite a bit of interest in things like sting rays, so we thought the Monterey Bay Aquarium would be a great trip to make. We’re heading out Wednesday, Sep 16th after John finishes teaching, going to the aquarium on Thursday, and spending Friday playing on the beach and being tourists before we make our way back home Friday night. I’m super excited about it. We found a great deal on a hotel on hotwire.com, and we have a friend with passes to the aquarium that we can use, so I think it’s going to turn out to be a lot of fun. I promise I’ll take lots of pictures, and maybe we’ll even find

And yes! Zeus exists too! He's so stumpy!

someone to take a family picture! In between then and now, we have a trip to Big Trees State Park with friends, a visit from my mom and dad, a family luncheon at Nana’s house, another Bunco night (where Colin will get to hang out with the ladies!), and who knows how many other photo opportunities. We’ve changed internet providers, and now have unlimited internet, so we are making some changes to where we host our photos. I’m not going to upload any more pictures until it gets switched over, which should happen tonight. So check back in the next couple of days for new pictures!

Things are moving right along here at the Ewart house. John is on a much needed break from teaching for a few weeks, but the rest of us continue to go along with the daily “stuff” we do. So Colin was due for his next vaccination today. Polio this time. When given separately, it can be given subcutaniously, rather than into the muscle, so it was quick and easy and he didn’t even cry! I did have the nurse weigh him while we were there, and he is 15 pounds, 5 ounces! 4 weeks ago he was 13 pounds 14 ounces, so he has gained a pound and a half in four weeks!  Wow! Huge! His daddy calls him “the Hulk” and has mandated that his first birthday party have a Hulk theme. laughs I switched him to the Britax carseat, rear facing of course, because at this point, he was just too uncomfortable in his infant carseat. He just keeps growing!!! And now, he is screaming, so here I go! Until later!