Crazy Jong Yeon Dance

This video for Uncle Dave and Aunt Jen - Jonah has been practicing and seems to think he's ready to be a student in your class! (For the rest of you - just an entertaining video of Jonah hopping!)

Jen and Dave (Mark's sister and brother-in-law) are teaching kindergarten students in Korea this year. Although they are many miles away, sometimes it feels like they are sitting at our dining room table (or on the computer on the dining room table anyway!).

For more about their adventures and the original Crazy Jong Yeon Dance, check out their website:

http://www.jjanddave.com/node/201

Meatball Dinner Season

The end of summer...the beginning of fall...Norwegian Lutherans have another season that they celebrate - Meatball Dinner Season! The entire Udstuen family looks forward to Wednesday evenings and takeouts dinners. Benjamin's favorite - LEFSE! We know Grandma Henzler is smiling!

The first day of school...sort of!

Jonah's first day of Preschool was Monday, September 17at 1 p.m.. We packed the backpack the night before, printed off a new picture for his attendance chart, and put out his "fast shoes". He was ready! I dropped him off at Amy's daycare on Monday morning and all seemed to be going well.

I arrived at 12:45 to bring him to preschool...and all was not going well. Jonah was so exhausted that he decided to take a nap on his own (!) at 11:30 a.m. He woke up, looked at me, and started wailing, "I want to go to school! I'm not sick.". But the runny nose, fever, and cough indicated otherwise. By the time I had loaded him in the car, even he agreed that school might not be such a good idea today. We dropped off his picture and forms, said hi to his teacher, and this sick boy headed for home. :-(

A Big Boy Bike!

Rite of passage #47...Check. Jonah has put about 15 miles on his "Magna" since we cracked the box open three days ago. Hopefully winter will be late this year - we need to put on a few hundred more before snow hits.

Benjamin - A Year in Review

Since there were no updates to our website after Benjamin was born, it seems only fair that we devote an entire blog to him. So here it is...A Year (actually 14 months) in Review:

Welcome Ben! Born MAY 3, 2006 at 10:22 p.m.

Slept through the month of JUNE!

Starting smiling in JULY.

Baptized AUGUST 27.

Observant in SEPTEMBER.

Solids receive a favorable response in OCTOBER.

Found his voice in NOVEMBER. (The video is a 1 min of Ben talking; so feel free to stop at anytime. For someone who has just learned how to blog, editing vidoes is obviously way out of my expertise!)

Ben's first Christmas in DECEMBER.

Sitting in JANUARY.

Crawling in FEBRUARY.

Classical studies (piano and vocal) begin in MARCH.

Loads of teeth by APRIL.

Ben's turns 1 on MAY 3!

Biking in JUNE.

Walking in July!

The Udstuens

After failing to keep up with www.udstuen.com, Rachel decided that it was time for a more user friendly approach to updating friends and families. The adventures of Jonah and Benjamin will be chronicled in a blog format now; an easy to use, ready-made template! Maybe we'll even be able to keep up with the updates!