Christmas Time Recap

This year the whole Knoll crew was together! My brother Josh was home from his military assignment in Maryland. My sister Megan and brother in law Jason (who is often deployed) were also with us from Tacoma. The kids were so happy to be at Papa and Oma's home. Jack loves it there. Christmas involved lots of fun new memories together and also the noticeable fact that we are growing on our own now, a little farther apart. Soon everyone will be scattered further around the US but for this Christmas we were together.

The kids on Christmas Eve.

Looking at the Christmas lights on the eve of Christmas Eve at Peacock Lane.

Christmas Eve at our house with all the family. Jack opened just a couple of gifts and really enjoyed it. Amelie got a soft squeaker duck and she is getting her first tooth in so she loves to chew on the duck.

Amelie in her Christmas outfit.Christmas morning, Megan played Santa and handed out the gifts. She also gave Jack the coolest gift.

Opening presents on Christmas morning. Jack received the most special gift from Aunt Megs, a learning workbench complete with lots of power tools (just what he needs to keep up with dad).Christmas night we had flambé cherries jubilee. What a special treat. Hope your Christmas was full of sweet time with family and celebration of our Lord's birth on earth. Cheers! 

Merry Christmas!

I wish you a sweet and happy holidays bloggers and readers. Tis the season to celebrate God's precious love and all that is dear to us. Mike and I have been saying often "let's just spend time as a family". Those are such sweet words. No need for entertainment, no need for outings or stuff, just good old fashion time by the fire with those we love. Jack and Amelie are providing plenty of wonderful free entertainment and we are soaking it in. These moments spent with wonderful family friend photographer, Trissa were a little taxing but proved worth it. We got some good shots of us just "doing our thing" walking, talking about fish and birds with Jack and a couple tries as some "smiling at the camera" shots. Enjoy and happiest wishes for your holidays!

Love - The Jacobs little family.

My Life in Mom Motion

Back to work?
On Monday I go back to work part time. I can't even explain what mixed feelings I have about it. I hired a nanny who is amazing. Retired, use to run a day-care, nurturing and a teacher. I am so blessed to have found her because it will make it so much easier. I love staying home with my kids but it also feels like a good time to revisit the gifts I can bring to the professional world again. I've been out for 5 months (the max they will let me take off). Many days with Jack I feel like we get to a point were we are at odds with each other because I am with him 24/7. I am the one to discipline him, teach him new things, entertain him, fight past the wining and get him to say words and dare I say it, we can get tired of each other. Don't get me wrong, Jack and Amelie are AMAZING kids but since I have the option to work part time I'm going to try it. Some days, I get so tired and feel very unmotivated inside. I am normally a motivated person so this feels very OFF for me. The other day I left for the day so the nanny could run through the kids routine. When I came home Jack was ecstatic to see me and we still got to do all the great things we do everyday (snuggle, read, bath time...) So for now, I am trying the working mom thing out again.

We've been celebrating the Fall. Feels like it has come and gone so fast (just like everything these days). These fall leaf were there just a few days ago and now with the rain it is like the leaves are almost gone. We had such fun raking them up and filling the barrel.

Jackson was a big helper and managed to get lots of handfuls of leaves into the barrel before deciding he needed to get in the barrel.

Fun and productive all at the same time. This is a good day.

We sometimes have bath time in the morning to warm up after a long walk in the rain. Jack has gotten a hair cut since the bath Mohawk but for awhile there we could spike it up good. 

Jack's favorite place is in the kitchen. No wonder since Mike spends a good deal of his time cooking. Jack has been cooking with mom though. Baking bread or cookies is a great rainy day medicine.

More than anything, Jack loves to PLAY! With anything but Foosball came very naturally for him and he actually made some goals too.

This is the BEST toddler toy of all time (THANKS MOM). This slide sits in our living room right now because Jack does not get tired of playing with it. For weeks he loved just sliding down but now he's learned to put any toy with wheels down it too for added fun.

Just took some 4 month pictures of Amelie. 




This season of Life in Mom Motion has been a complete joy and I am confident that although our routine will change a bit starting Monday we will still have lots of fun to report.

Pirates on Halloween!

Our pirate family on Halloween.

We had such fun getting dressed up and trying to get Jack to answer the question "what does a pirate say?". He never did say "rrrrr". But he was hysterical in his costume and got to entertain us and the neighbors.

Unbelievably adorable!

Jack's little friend Addison stopped by to say hi.

Halloween is so much fun with little kiddos at your door to show off their costumes and take handfuls of candy from your bowl. But this year we just gave out a little candy before taking off to go collect some of our own. Our neighborhood was FULL of treaters.

Jack of course did not fully understand the concept of asking for candy because he had never had candy before.

Jack had his FIRST piece of candy this halloween. A carmel apple sucker and man did he LOVE it. He would not let go of it if his life depended on it. By the end of the night we had to hose him down. He was soaked in apple drool.

I made Amelie this little black and white tutu so she could match Jack since I could not find a baby pirate outfit. So she was a princess pirate. Complete with her spider leg warmers and ballet socks.

Hope you all had a very happy not to scary Halloween.

Aloha from Maui

Aloha from Maui! We are just ending our week in Paradise to celebrate our 6th anniversary. I can't begin to capture in words what an amazing trip this has been. Of course it was been good for us to have some time away from our kids (thanks Mom and Dad for taking the kiddos). We have had restful chill time, exhilarating adventures that remind us that we are young and made some new memories together basking in God's glorious beauty. I believe this is a taste of heaven! 

I wouldn't begin to try to share all of our photos in one post. But here are some of my favorites that help share of our time on Maui. First off, the Island is beautiful. However I can say that all the Hawaiian Islands are. But our place of residence in Maui was a slice of heaven (that is actually what the owner calls in on VBRO). I picked it because it was right on the water (about 20ft from our Lani). But it was also really affordable too. We loved our little kitchen and the grills that overlooked the ocean. It was the most awesome time of day to grill while the sun was setting and eat uninterrupted at Sunset. 

Like I said, favorite part of the day. Amazing moments of reflection and peace.

Our good friends and neighbors Chris and Sheen planned their trip to Maui at the same time as us so we could share some of the time together. It was a blast going to dinner and laying by the pool!

Some photos that captured our little tranquil place and the gorgeous grounds.

Since we had no kids with us :( we took advantage of the adult time and did TONS of diving. Well, for us a dive a day is a lot. Molikini Island was our favorite although we were up at 5am to catch our boat. The visibility was over 100ft and the fish were plentiful. In between the 2 dives we had fresh pineapple that our captain cut up too.

4 of 7 days we dove. 3 days were shore dives and this was one quite the adventure. Honoma Bay (above) was a crazy dive. We hiked about 1/4 mile carrying our tanks which weigh about 40lb and then dove out into the bay at about 7 in the morning when no one was there. Sounds a little rough but it was worth it! By 9:30 when we left it was swarming with tourist and so we felt lucky that we had it all to ourselves. I am not much of an underwater photographer (using a little digital camera in a cheap camera bag) but I did get a couple of shots including this one of a tunnel in the reef. Pretty cool.

In the top left photo you can see the Island of Molikini and the other other photos are from the Ahihi Bay which was my favorite shore dive. Very calm, great fish, amazing protected reefs with 8 different kinds/colors of coral. Outstanding!

Of course, since it was our anniversary we had a week of special "US" time. I love this man SO much. We share so much and in turn get to experience life accelerated on trips like this. So glad we went. It was paradise.

Amelie | 3 months

At 3 months our Amee is over 11lb but I don't know how much more since our food scale only goes to 11. She is a doll and definitely a girlie girl. Love that about her. She is so talkative and laughs all the time. Jack NEVER was like this at this age. She has such a giggle that you can almost see in some of these photos. She loves to be tickled and it makes her giggle like crazy.

These are a few of Amelie's many faces caught in just a few minutes.
Enjoy!