Thomas Deane Cochran
7 lbs. 6oz. and 19.9 inches longBirth Story:
I woke up at 3:17 AM with a painful contraction.  I’ve had a similar experience several times in the last week so I wasn’t immediately sure if I was actually going into labor.  So I got up and ate a small bowl of cereal and unloaded [...]

Posted on February 6th, 2012 by Kathleen
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I haven’t blogged in awhile, so here’s a picture of Charlotte on Mix n’ Match day.She’s wearing two different colors of ribbons, un-matching socks and as you can see her shirt, shorts, and pants don’t match.  Isaac was convinced that his class was doing backwards day since they missed that day during the snow storm [...]

Posted on January 29th, 2012 by Kathleen
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I have to start off by saying how blessed we were to only lose power for 20 hours.  I talked to someone the day before our power went out and she told me that last year people were out of power for 5 days.  When our lights went off, my biggest fear is that we [...]

Posted on January 23rd, 2012 by Kathleen
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We’re still snowed in, but we’ve got power and food so we’re not complaining.  The kids have enjoyed having a sledding hill right outside the door—that is until they come in wet and cold and demanding hot cocoa!Also, they’ve had the entire week off of school.

Posted on January 19th, 2012 by Kathleen
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We’ve been having interesting weather up here this week.  Part of what makes the storms unique is that one day it will be cold and snow will fall, then the snow will melt into slush by the end of the day and then snow will fall again the next day and then it will rain [...]

Posted on January 19th, 2012 by Kathleen
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Isaac has been drooling over his Lego catalogs lately so I decided that it was time to use his intense desire for Legos as motivation for doing chores by rewarding him with money for chores.  So I made up a chart of chores that I felt he could do.  I made sure to list what [...]

Posted on January 15th, 2012 by Kathleen
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This is Nicole’s current favorite book.  She picked it out from the stack the day we came back from the library and she has talked about it or read it just about every day since.  Some nights we read it to her multiple times:She has several names for it.  At first she called it a [...]

Posted on January 13th, 2012 by Kathleen
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We thought it would be fun to start a new tradition this year and celebrate our wedding anniversary as the birthday of our family and have a piñata.  We got a silly looking green dinosaur/monster and filled it with treats.The kids enjoyed whacking it, but in the end it proved too tough and Zach had [...]

Posted on January 8th, 2012 by Kathleen
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I took Isaac, Charlotte, and Ila to their second cousin’s birthday party which featured a reptile show.  They absolutely loved it and very excitedly told Zach all about it when they got home.  Here are some pictures:I love the range of emotions I was able to capture as they watched:Ila was more interested in her [...]

Posted on January 7th, 2012 by Kathleen
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I walked into the bathroom recently and found the following scene:(the black above her eyebrows is mascara)

Posted on January 3rd, 2012 by Kathleen
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Last night I found Nicole sitting on the changing table completely naked and pouring powder all over herself.Everything was covered in a layer of powder and the air was so thick with it that I could taste it as I cleaned up the mess.

Posted on January 3rd, 2012 by Kathleen
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I have to say that I’m incredibly grateful to be married to such an awesome (and handsome) man who is now half way to 70! 
We had a nice birthday celebration with just the 6 of us.  We started the day off with a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and Orange Julius.  We spent most [...]

Posted on January 2nd, 2012 by Kathleen
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Here’s a little video share of our Christmas Eve Nativity.  It is by no means a well prepared and well executed Nativity, however, I thought it was worth sharing for those family members who weren’t able to be with us on Christmas Eve.Here’s last year for comparison.  I think we improved a little—no one was [...]

Posted on December 27th, 2011 by Kathleen
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Before:During:After:

Posted on December 26th, 2011 by Kathleen
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I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile.  As many of you know, we’ve taken Nicole in for some testing through the school district.
Nicole is an energetic, friendly, creative little girl.  She speaks clearly with good articulation and good sentence structure.  She likes things that most little girls her age seem to [...]

Posted on December 23rd, 2011 by Kathleen
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I told Charlotte that she could invite 6 friends to a birthday party.  She helped make the invitations by decorating them with crayon and cat stickers. When her guests arrived, we put homemade cat headbands on and painted their faces.  We had cat themed coloring pages/worksheets for everyone to do while we waited for all [...]

Posted on December 23rd, 2011 by Kathleen
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Here’s another catch-up post.  We went sledding on the Saturday between the girl’s birthdays (December 10th) with some friends. 
It rarely snows here in Seattle, and when it does, it doesn’t snow much–or at least that’s what I’ve heard.  I haven’t been here through a full winter yet, but it hasn’t snowed yet this winter.  [...]

Posted on December 21st, 2011 by Kathleen
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One of the most beautiful things is being outdoors in a heavy snowstorm where there’s no wind. It’s a frightening thing if there’s no home close to warm up in, but standing alone, it’s a beautiful and quiet thing. Voices and footsteps are muffled, and there’s a near perfect stillness in the air. I have [...]

Posted on December 21st, 2011 by Zach
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Charlotte’s birthday was on a school day this year which was just fine with her since she loves Kindergarten.  We made cat shaped cookies for her class and decorated them to look like her cat (Jill).  Charlotte helped me frost them.  She started off her day with a special breakfast of sparkling apple-grape juice and [...]

Posted on December 21st, 2011 by Kathleen
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Some more Christmas thoughts in the same sort of stream-of-consciousness mode.
It’s been said often that Christmas is much more special with children around. I remember as a child that there was nothing in a year that caused me more excitement and anticipation than Christmas. I loved Christmas Eve most of all. That last anticipation, and [...]

Posted on December 19th, 2011 by Zach
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