Summer, Summer - oh, there you are!

We had our annual Memorial Day crab feast at The Jordan's and it was as fun as ever. Emerson loves the water, and was the spitting image of Madison playing on the pool stairs hours on end and Wyatt just loved to chill in a float until it was time for a nap or the next meal. The crabs were delicious,

and the drinks were pretty darn delicious, too. The best part of the trip was nap time for the children, where chilly snacks were consumed while flotation devices became our naptime location. Brett, Charles and Avery joined us for her first pool experience. Jen, Lemon and Hannah also joined in on the fun. Everyone had a great time playing, even the adults.

P.S. I just love this photo of the 3 of them in the float, if you look really closely - you can see Emerson and Wyatt cracking up at each other.

Our very own swingset

We recently got our very own swingset. We have been playing on the neighbors for the last couple of months, and we figured they've had enough of us. Emerson was sooo excited, and boy has it made our life 10x easier. Wyatt loves his shady swing, you can leave him in there forever and he just hangs out and watches the kids play. I know this is short-lived, because soon they'll be fighting over the slide!

Emerson is a Donkers too

So you never want to get the call that I got recently while I was out and about. Although I will say that we are lucky it took this long, and we all know what happens to monkeys jumping on the bed. Kayti, frantically (for her, which basically means she was talking slightly faster than usual) saying that Emerson had hit her head and was bleeding pretty badly. Of course at that point my reception starts getting fuzzy (thanks AT&T, but look at all the cool other stuff my Iphone can do - oh wait, that's good for a whole other blog post) and I can't hear much of anything else she says other than she was washing her hands, jumped off the stool and fell backwards onto the sink banister, so I just blurt out, "Meet me at the hospital in Apex stat!" Well, I'm there in 2.6 minutes (I was close) but I forget that stat means sometime within the next half hour for Kayti (you know I'm right, K) so while I am wondering where she is I remember she is extremely freaked out at the sight of blood (reportedly pass-out freaked out) so now I am wondering if they are both lying in a pool of blood at the house while I sit here and play with my cool Iphone at the hospital. At this point I decide I should go ahead in and start the check-in process. I am told that I even though I am standing at the check-in desk, since the patient is not yet present I have to call a number. So yielding my wonderful Iphone I dial a number and go through some voice recognition process to tell them what her name is and date of birth. Shortly thereafter the woman comes out and tells me to let her know when Kirk Emerson gets there. I think they fixed her name on her bracelet but still had her down as a boy. When Kayti gets there I get Emerson out of the car and she heads back home with Wyatt. Expecting the worst, Emerson seems fine and is smiling and reading a book in the car although her shirt looks like she just went four rounds in a UFC Championship cage fight. Once we get inside and get our fancy boy bracelet I am able to confirm there is no big damage done here. The cut was a couple of centimeters wide but pretty deep. Further evidence of no lasting damage could be found in my explanation to the other people in the waiting room that I left my monkey cage in the car and that was why she was jumping off the couches and climbing all over the chairs with reckless abandon. Then we had to go potty and after a successful trip she ran out and screamed to everyone in the East Wing that she broke her head and went potty like a big girl!!!! I'll save the details of the actual emergency room visit other than to say we confirmed she weighs little more than Wyatt and is really good in these situations involving doctors. A few brief tears during evaluation were punctuated with another loud "Mommy, I broke my head and went pee-pee next door!!!" when Mommy arrived. The doctor didn't see the need for an MRI once we confirmed she was always this crazy and after getting two quick staples (yuck!), a popsicle and a little stuffed ducky for being a good girl we were on our way out the door (not before she showered thank-yous to everyone in the ER and again reminded them that she went potty like a big girl). A week later I took her back to get her staples out and before we even got near the entrance she declared she was getting a popsicle (she did). Well it was really a week and a day, I got tied up that next Friday and didn't get a chance to take her back, and trying to take them out myself with tweezers was enormously unsuccessful. Oops, I didn't tell the wifey about that part. Is she gonna read this?

I did it!

So this is my VERY first post! I've always really wanted to scrapbook to keep track of all the important moments in my children's lives, but who has the time? This is my attempt, and I hope I don't suck at it. Erick asked me, "Do you really think anyone cares what we're doing?" I said absolutely not, but this is the quickest way for me capture those precious moments, because we all know you think you will remember it all, but you simply don't. So for the sake of posting for the first time, I'm going to back up a bit, and fill in from the fantastic Easter we had this year. Easter is a favorite holiday in the Jordan/Kirks/Farias family. And well, it's not for the obvious religous reasons that it should be celebrated, but maybe because it's a glimpse into what the summer and warm weather may hold. And that is something the Kirks' are so looking forward to after the all consuming arrival of Wyatt last summer.

Everyone came to our house for Easter and we colored eggs, had an Easter egg hunt (this was the first year Emerson really got it), and our annual Easter morning brunch at a fancy establishment. Why we do this to ourselves and our poor parents, I have no idea. I guess so we can laugh about it later (it's NEVER funny at the time). The weekend ended with some trauma to the head on poor baby (are we ever going to stop calling him that?) J, which ended with an Emergency Room visit and 2 stitches to that beautiful little face. It'll give him that tough guy look that women love, right?