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We flew up to Spokane last weekend to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with the Hornors. This was the first time that we flew anywhere with the boys. Wow. Those of you that have traveled with children know what I mean by that. The Alaska Airline people were really great and the boys were as good as can be expected, but it was still really hard. We had to carry around with us three carry-ons (one a diaper bag) a car seat to put in the seat we bought for the boys, two strollers, and two babies. They needed to be fed and changed and entertained. And we get to do that all again on Tuesday when we head home.

Once we got here everything was great. We are having a wonderful time staying with Susan and Rick, and we got to spend time with Rachel’s siblings Gwen and her fiance David, Sara, Alex, and Neil and his wife Tiffany and their 3 month old daughter Nadia. We also saw many of the Hornor family friends including, but not limited to, the ever popular Judy Potter, the Kendalls (happy 70th birthday to Jay!) and Bob and Claire. From the previous generation, Rick’s twin brother Randy (yes it’s Rick’s and Randy’s fault that we have twins) and Randy’s wife Sherry visited and I think that today we’re going to see Rick’s brother Greig and his wife Annie. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious thanks to Susan, Rachel and Tiffany who are all amazing cooks, although I will never understand green bean casserole. Also, I think Rick’s OCD deserves a special thanks for keeping everything so clean and tidy.

The unfortunate part of the visit is that Noah got a bad cold and subsequently gave it to Rachel and me. This is the first time either one of them got sick and as you can imagine, we had no idea what we were doing. Poor Noah was so miserable. He’s used to sleeping with a pacifier, but he couldn’t breathe with one, so he had a really hard time sleeping. We took turns sleeping with him upright on the sofa during the first night. On the second night he did better and Susan held him all night and the two of them slept pretty well all cuddled up. Last night Noah slept in his pack-n-play and amazingly slept through the night. He’s still not feeling well, but he’s much much better.

Rachel and I are exhausted and not feeling well ourselves. Still, we went on Friday to see The Lion King at the Spokane Opera House and it was undoubtedly the most amazing show I’ve ever seen. We both loved it and we’re so grateful to Susan and Rick for taking care of Jesse and ill Noah while we were living it up. They have been so generous, loving and caring that we feel overwhelmed by it.

So it’s been a great visit so far. And as a reward for your reading this long ramble, Jesse, who miraculously has not caught this cold from all of us, is going to make you laugh.

My little brother Neil is a father!  On August 19 at 5:49 am, Neil’s girlfriend Tiffany gave birth to precious baby Nadia Rosalyn Hornor.  Two days later, Neil and Tiffany went to the courthouse and got hitched!  A very exciting week, huh?  We don’t have any pictures of the wedding day, and we only have a few pictures of Nadia – but here’s what we have, and we’ll share more as we can…

Someday, Jesse, Noah and Nadia can all attend cousins camp.

Congrats, Neil and Tiffany!  We wish you all the very best in your marriage, and we can’t wait to meet sweet Nadia.

We’ve managed to keep Noah and Jesse alive for 8 weeks, as of today.   Yay!   And (so far), David and I are surviving, too.  We’ve been without consistent help for 8 days now…only 4 to go before Grandma Susan and Grandpa Rick return to help for the rest of the summer, and it honestly couldn’t come soon enough.  We’re exhausted.  Thankfully, the boys have been pretty well-behaved, and are sleeping better and crying less.  I can only imagine how exhausted we’d be if Jesse were being as fussy as usual…

A big shout-out to Natalie Schiller, Esther Northrup, and Uncle Timmy who helped us so much this last weekend, and allowed David and me to get some sleep (and a shower).  THANK YOU!  It really does take a village.

I can’t believe how much these little boys have grown and changed in 8 weeks.  They’ve gained weight (Jesse no longer has any semblance of a neck…just folds and folds of skin and fat), they’ve started focusing their eyes, they’re smiling and cooing.  They’re already showing these sweet little personalities, and I can’t wait to see how they continue to develop.  They are really entertaining, and I know they’re only going to get more fun.  Once I get some sleep…

We’ve been trying to get their dimply smiles on camera, and here’s what we got.  We didn’t capture them completely, but you get the idea.  Pretty adorable, in my biased opinion.

Guess what's in my diaper!

He's not ALWAYS crying...

I know I'm cute. You're welcome.

Everyone but Timmy...where's Tim?

Oh, there he is!

Hiya – Rachel here.  I’ve been meaning to write a quick post for some time to formally and publicly thank my siblings and tell them how much I love them.  For those of you who don’t know, I happen to have the greatest family of all time.  Rockin’ parents, and six bros and sissies who are all great friends of mine.  Plus, now that we’ve started adding in-laws (Steve and David, so far…), it’s only getting better.  Even as kids, we always got along remarkably well…now that we’ve grown up, we’re even better friends, and we love spending time together.  Sounds nerdy, right?  But it’s soooooo cool.

The latest and greatest is that my crazy sibs all got together, pooled their money, and bought David and me a sweet video camera.  Now, I know this gift was a little bit for them…they want us to be thorough in our documenting of the growth of our baby boys so that, even when far away, they can keep tabs.  But how cool is that?!?  Six adult brothers and sisters who have both the wherewithal to organize themselves into a gift-giving unit, as well as the desire to bestow lovely gifts on their other sibs.

Am I crazy, or is that just a hugely cool blessing??

So – a shout-out to the Hornor kids.  I feel so immensely blessed, grateful, overjoyed, and undeserving to call you my bros and hos, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you’re all going to be aunties and uncles very soon.  Thank you for loving David and me, thank you for your kindness, to me and to each other, thank you for being your very weird and lovely selves.  And thank you for the kick-ass video camera.  We promise to send you videos of every little thing our sons do until you get bored to tears.  And we promise to try to raise our kids to follow in your footsteps, being good to one another, good friends, all their lives.  They should be so lucky.

Gma and Gpa Hornor at our wedding in 2006

This past Friday night, around 10pm Pacific time, our beloved Grandpa Carl Edwin ‘Bud’ Hornor passed peacefully away, and joined his precious wife of 64 years, Katye, who passed away two years ago, on the other side.

It’s hard for me to know where to start in talking about what Gpa meant to me, to us.  More than just being the beloved patriarch of a grand family, he was an amazing man.  He married his teenage sweetheart, fought in two wars, helped raise 6 kids…  He was a lover of literature and music, of culture and history, of sports, and of his family.  As he and Gma got a little older and retired, they traveled the world, bird-watched in the mountains around Santa Cruz, and celebrated as their family grew to include more and more grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

But beyond their list of accomplishments, more important than the things Gma and Gpa did, is the long and beautiful list of things they represented, believed in, and passed on to all of us.  When my brother Tim and I went backpacking for a few days with Gpa in the Sierra Nevadas, we learned from him how to appreciate nature & wildlife, roughing it, cold baths in mountain lakes, and Spam.  When we listened to old Smothers Brothers albums with Gma and Gpa in the amazing home they built together in Bonny Doon, we learned about humor, both subtle and not so…  When Gma cooked, and how she cooked!, we ate and ate, and learned how to commune around the dinner table, how to cook for mobs, and how to throw together feasts from whatever was left over in the fridge.  When Gpa made each of us “inspiration” tapes full of amazing music from the classical greats, we were reminded to continue practicing our instruments and pursuing passionate performances of our own.  When Gpa popped fried octopus down his gullet with ease (usually chased with his beloved buttermilk), we were taught to eat with abandon, to try anything once. As Gma and Gpa aged so gracefully, loving each other and their enormous family, we learned to appreciate every opportunity we had to get together with them, with everyone, to laugh, play, sleep all together in often very close quarters, to never play boys v. girls in Trivial Pursuit, to tease each other mercilessly (what was up with those crazy singing boxer shorts, Steve?) and always with love – to be friends with our family, above all.  Every new addition to the family was always family – from the start, no questions asked, unconditionally.

Gma and Gpa taught us to live well, to work hard, to be our best, to accept and love everyone around us, to embrace every opportunity, and everyone, with passion and peace.  They taught us not by telling us – but by exemplifying that behavior in every day life.  They lived it, and now, it’s our turn.

We miss the heck out of both of them.  But the baton has been passed.  In honor of Gma and Gpa, we must choose to live fully and passionately, and pass these values on to our children.  I wish our yet-to-be-born twins could have known their great-grandparents personally.  But I have confidence that, even without meeting them, our kids will know them by the way we now choose to live and love.  That legacy will go on for many generations.