Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

I recently came out of my teaching cocoon after 6 months within it. Now my life is much more flexible until September. It hard to teach a class and keep up with everything else in life. Other things obviously slip---my contribution to the blog being one of them! I do enjoy teaching and I get a lot of personal satisfaction from reading my evaluations, which generally show that the students think that I know what I'm doing! Or at least that I'm enthusiastic as we stumble along together.

The boys are growing up. Graham is 2 1/2 today! Graham has started to pee in his little potty from time to time, so we'll see where that goes. The swag (stickers, fruit snacks) are far more important to him than any sense that this is what one is "supposed to do." With Finn, it was a long process, and I don't expect anything different with Graham. Only my brother Justin's kids potty train themselves in a week. (Grumble, grumble.) Graham is now in his terrible twos, as he complains about what we're having for dinner and often will lay face first on the ground when he doesn't get his way. But he is still effortlessly cute and snuggly.

Finn is nearing 4 1/2, and about 2 moths ago he told us that he wanted to learn how to read. Katie has been doing nearly daily lessons on reading and writing with him, and he's getting really quite good. Here he is on a "sick day" (he got better fast!) on campus with me. He got to see the room and I teach in and he played with the chalk for about 45 minutes. And he wrote my name pretty well, I must say! Organized soccer practice (Soccersaurus!) just started, and swimming lessons, after a 2-year layoff, in May as well.

My mom came out for a few days earlier in the month, and everyone had a great time. I occasionally daydream just how nice it would be to have more of the family close-by, and then I think about how the life of an academic scientist rarely allows for you to work where you grew up, which is at least possible (if not the norm) for most other jobs that exist. So there is that. Santa Cruz of course has a number of other wonderful attributes!

The boys play together a lot these days. Finn told Katie yesterday that Graham is his favorite person to play with! Graham, being Graham, is usually up for anything that involves Finn, even when it is getting mauled a bit. They had several cute moments on the couch this morning. I promise that Graham was having a good time.

Parents were in town

So right now I'm sitting in Waterloo, IA, at Katie's Mom's place. Before that we were at my parents' place. But before that we were in Sonoma, CA, with my parents, who flew in for the wedding of Dave Rolnitzky and Brittany Glidden. It was a B. R. Cohn winery, and it went off without a hitch! Special thanks to Alex and Laura for babysitting.

When we were in Sonoma we visited Train Town, which is the "most developed scale model train in the Americas" or something. At any rate, it was a good ride--I'd recommend the place to anyone with little kids. The rest of the rides are skippable. Here are my parents on the train.

Here is Finn in the Sonoma jail after a late night of carousing.

The boys had a fun time at the party that Dave and Brittany threw the night before the wedding. Finn did a lot of running around with some other kids. This gives you kind of a flavor. There was also a pinata. And croquet. And much food- and drink-stuffs.

On the last day of the CA trip, we took my parents to the San Francisco Zoo, and this was just awesome:

King Hippo from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Return of the charts! G = 18 months, F = 3 years

Apparently it has been TEN MONTHS since I updated this sucker. Pathetic. Insert usual disclaimers here about them not necessarily having their appointments at the same week of age, etc.

Probably we also need a disclaimer about taking the measurements with a grain of salt because of the small numbers we're dealing with, the fact that we've switched doctors a couple times and they measure a little differently, and also that small boys are wiggly. I think the main takeaway is that our boys are large, and will continue to be large. What you can't see here is that Finn's added another couple inches to his height since last November. The kid is TALL, or at least he seems that way to us.

My mom visited last week. This was great fun, as always, but this time it was also extraordinarily fortunate because the boys' day care closed for a week for spring break. Spring break!! Don't get me started. One of the days she was here we actually remembered to take a few photos. This is probably the best one.

And here's one of the outtakes that should give you a flavor for how the session went.

Jonathan is out of town again for a chunk of this week. The boys and I aren't letting it get us down, though. For one thing, Finn is very excited to be moving up to a new room at school, the Busy Bees. He has been itching to get over there, and apparently his "visit" to that room to start settling in today lasted from an hour after he showed up at school until the time I came to pick him up. Both the teachers told me he was a lot of fun to have in class.
In case that wasn't enough, the weather has finally turned gorgeous. We ate outside tonight even though the logistics were a little daunting for a single parent evening. Well worth it, I think.

Daylight Savings?

Daylight savings always seemed really fun when I was a kid. It stays light later--what more could you ask for? Frankly they should have it year-round and for 2 extra hours in the summer! That's what I thought. But when you actually have little ones, you gotta keep them on the family's schedule, and that is tough to do when everything changes by an hour. But I think we've been doing pretty well by making manageable increments.

In other news, Graham likes bread. And he can say a few words. And he can dance a little bit. And he's REALLY cute.

Open the bread from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

My Mom, Grandma Mary, came to town to visit us for 5 days. We had a great time in every way except that our little winery tour was ruined by every place we tried to visit being closed on Tuesdays, even though their web sites said they were open. :( The boys love their Grandparents and love to see them whenever they can, either in-person or via skype. My mom managed to push both boys around in the stroller, including up steep hills, even though their combined weight is now 70 pounds!

The rainy season is not over. Not even close. And I had such high hopes.... Not a problem for these two, of course.

Our table is one Finn unit in length. Finn is strangely fascinated with how tall people are, and how tall he and Graham will be. He has decided he will be as tall as me, but that Graham will only be as tall as Katie. He does remind me often that I'm not as tall is my Dad, though. And that Mona is the fastest in the family even though she is the smallest. And that racecars are faster than people. And that airplanes have tires. Actually, there are far more questions than definitive statements, but those are for another day.

Finn is three!

That's right, we have a three year old now. Finn's birthday was on Saturday, and his party was on Sunday, and the whole weekend was chock full of birthday goodness. Here's the birthday boy studiously opening presents Saturday morning. It's serious business, y'all.

(That's a flashlight, his number one birthday wish.) Then Sunday we went to Roaring Camp Railroads, rode a train, had a blast with friends, and eventually demolished a chocolate cake. New friends and old joined us, including Finn's best friend from his preschool in Los Gatos. Unfortunately, many of our pictures went kablooey when I had phone problems earlier this week, so if you're reading this and you were there, please send me your photos for our Fortney archives! Here's the blowing out of the candles, where you can see all the kids eagerly waiting to pounce on the cake, and hear the railroad sounds in the background. If you are so inclined, you can also go watch us sing Finn "Happy Birthday."

Candles from Katie on Vimeo.
Mmmm, cake.
Last weekend was also exciting because my mom and Dave came to visit. We ran them pretty ragged, but we showed them a good time, too. Here we all are at the Brookdale Lodge for brunch. It's been around for over a hundred years, and in its day was visited by the likes of Herbert Hoover and Marilyn Monroe. A brook runs through the restaurant, aptly named the Brookroom. We highly recommend checking it out if you're in the area. Nothing beats an honest to goodness brook for distracting small children during a meal.

If you follow Jonathan on Facebook, you may have heard that Finn has been lording it over Graham with all of his 3+ toys. Here is one such present.

The picture fails to capture the intensity of the "No BABies, Graham!!" that we frequently hear now, while Finn points to this symbol I showed him the other day when he wanted to know "what you get to do when you're three." Sharp knives and driving cars were the request, but he had to settle for this.

Ah well, Graham. It's for your own safety.

Busy busy!

Looks like Jonathan beat me to the blog tonight, but I'm going to post anyway - there's been too much going on to wait! Graham got his first tooth on Sunday, the day after he turned six months old. He now eats rice cereal, applesauce, bananas, and broccoli, and loves it all.
Finn, of course, had to get in on the action when he saw us attempting to take the photo above. He has many teeth, and will show them to you if you ask. Or, you know, if you don't.
My mom went home yesterday. Having her here was so wonderful - I almost didn't miss Jonathan at all! (Just kidding. But she does wash more dishes. Hint, hint.) We watched New Moon, and it was just as awful as I was expecting, so that was fun. Last Thursday we went to the newly reopened Happy Hollow, where Finn was very excited, after hearing about all the animals they have there (jaguar! lemurs!), to hear that he would get to see a DONKEY. Here he is feeding his new friend Maybelline.

Feeding the donkey from Katie on Vimeo.
And here's my mom with the boys, the best shot we got with these wiggly boys the one time we thought to get the camera.
Fortunately, things haven't descended into complete chaos because my friend Angie has come down for a few days to help out and squeeze my cute children. Yay help! More goodies at Flickr.

Mom's Visit

Hello folks! My Mom was in town for almost 4 days last week, on her spring break from teaching ESL, and we had a great time. Finn was a little confused as to why Grandpa wasn't there too, but alas, he was "at work." My Mom did most of the boy-watching duties on Monday and Tuesday, and still had time to clean up the house. Yay! We'll be seeing my Mom and Dad again at cousin Elise's wedding in April. Here is the 4 of us, as taken by Katie, on Santana Row in San Jose.


Finn has really been getting good at riding his bike this past week. He can go really fast and can coast almost 20 feet with his feet up. I think he will have *no problem* moving over to a pedal bike by age 3. And to think that I was 6 when I learned to ride! I think both boys will never have need of training wheels. Might be time to start concentrating more on ball sports.

Coasting! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

I'm coming at you from the Tempe, AZ, tonight, as I'm visting ASU early this week. Thankfully for me and the family, this is my last school visit for awhile. Although there is a conference to be at later this month....

A quick post while she's away

Katie is asleep while I'm watching the boys this a.m., at Grandma Sheryl's. I decided to post 2 quick movies while breakfast is going on around me. The first is from last week in Minnesota, where we got a visit from the Nowatzkis: Paul, Courtney, Victor (age 4) and Henry (age 2). Finn and Henry really enjoyed my parents' pinball machine. Although Finn was quite good at shooting the ball out with the plunger, the finer points of using the flippers was of course lost on him. Note the unusual location of the ball at the very end. :)

Pinball Wizards from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

As we've discussed, Graham is a pretty happy baby. He is prone to fun little giggles and shrieks of amusement. Yesterday when Josh, Amy, and Greta (age 1) Raulerson came by, there was something about Josh that finally made Graham go into full-on laughing! It was sooo cute, and we got some on video. Also, he is 3 months old now.

Laughing Graham from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

I like when Greta (and especially Finn) came by to insert themselves into the action.

Its a bummer when your parents leave town

My parents came into town over the weekend for a quick few-day visit to see Mr. Teeny and Dr. Rambunctious. A good time was had by all! But now we're back to real life with only two of us to handle our two children. Watching Mad Men makes me jealous of the hired help. I guess I should be an advertising executive...but then I'd never get to see my boys. I'm still at home every day, but I'm going into work for the first time on Wednesday.
Here is a nice one of Grandma Mary and Graham, who is flashing a little smile of sorts.

Here is the whole family relaxing in our living room. Note Paula at the bottom right.

Graham is doing well these days, looking a bit older. He's working on neck strength as Katie's video shows. The focus is not great, but you get the idea.

Nexersises. from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Finn is still very interested in Graham, and likes to be his buddy. He also likes to try to get up on your lap when you're holding Graham. It gets crowded and a little dangerous for the little guy. Here they are being cozy together.

We have matching shoes.

Today Finn and I took our first decent walk since I sprained my ankle. We hit the bakery (fresh bread, yay!), the park, the library (three books, yay!) the hardware store (stepstool that allows Finn to use the kitchen sink - so far, a mixed blessing). We were hindered by the fact that my hips and back have fully caught on that I am REALLY REALLY pregnant, but helped by the fact that we now have matching shoes, which makes us super awesome.
Saturday night we went to Alan and Margaret's wedding celebration. Finn got a haircut and some new duds for the occasion, so he looked pretty snazzy, and he had an absolutely wonderful time. Haircuts always make him look so much older.
He loved having Grandpa Jon here for the weekend, too, but apparently we didn't get any pictures of them together. He says "Grandpa" something like "Banta," and was very confused to see Banta at our house at first, and was NOT happy a couple days later when Banta got out of the car to go get on the plane.

That's about all our news, except that Jonathan had a pretty horrible flu on Sunday, and we've pretty much settled on a name for Finn's little brother. Any guesses? More pictures at Flickr.

We're the best parents ever

Zoo, zoo, zoo
Lest you worry that Finn gets all his fun from chores and unsupervised swimming, we should also mention that we took him to the zoo last weekend. He loved it. I think it was at least 50% "running around! outside! and Caitlin and Liam are here!" but he also liked the animals. The monkeys and flamingos were particular favorites. Here he is acting like a monkey with Caitlin, though not near any actual monkeys. There are more on Flickr, including one with some giraffes, and more pool party shots from Saturday.Fun with Grandma
We also host special extra-entertaining guests, like my mom. She visited for four days last week, and it was wonderful. It's hard to say who had the most fun: us, her, or Finn. Grandma, he discovered, will read you as many stories as you want, and doesn't ignore you to do boring things like work on dinner or check her e-mail. Alas, she is no more likely to give you her laptop than Mama or Daddy. We got him a pony
Well, not really. It's an inflatable horse that he's been loving at our local toy store. We were going to wait until his birthday, but that's in NOVEMBER, and then I found a good deal on a secondhand one on Craigslist. When I brought it home he spent 10 or 20 minutes just patting it and screaming at it like a rabid monkey, and then carried it around until we had to take it away because he was just too worked up - couldn't stop crying. Then we brought it out a day or two later with a little less air in it so he could carry it around better, and he told us it was in fact a donkey ("gah-key. gah-key gah-key gah-key!") and played with it without melting down at all. It seems to be here to stay now, meltdown free.

Aquarium = Awesome. And occasionally scary

Hi all. I haven't posted for over THREE WEEKS. Sorry about that. Remember how we were out of town? Yeah, and then we had visitors, and had to run all around with them (had to. Uh huh.), and play board games and stuff. So... hi!

Visitors - Ben & Martha came to visit us for New Year's, and then stayed to help us do the first week of the year in style. We don't see them nearly enough, and having them puttering around the house and the kitchen long enough that we actually kinda got used to having them around was really nice. Mostly we cooked and ate and played board games (wow, do we ever need some new Cranium clay) and watched football, but we also took a few short trips.

Saturday we went to Santa Cruz, to Natural Bridges, checked out some tide pools, and saw a bonus gopher.

Sunday was the farmers market. And football. Monday we sent them off to the wilds of the East Bay alone while we went to work. I think Thursday we ran a few errands. But before all that there was Friday.

Friday we went to one of Finn's favorite places in the universe - the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If you've been there, you're familiar with their Outer Bay tank. It's huge - a million gallons, in fact. It's where they keep their big sharks, tunas, sea turtles, and the ocean sunfish. So Finn's standing with his face right up against the glass (a coveted position, let me tell you) and the ocean sunfish, which everyone is excited to see, starts to float up RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. It's bigger than him, pretty wonky looking, and has this Giant. Creepy. Eyeball.

Finn lets out with this scream of utter terror which I can only approximate as "ooaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!," clearly convinced that this monster was going to eat him, and whirls around to throw himself into Jonathan's arms. Man, I wish I had video. You'll have to settle for this version, and take my word for it that everyone around us thought it was hilarious. And if you call us, we can do the scream for you.

More on Flickr, as usual. And somewhere I have a video of Finn busily pushing the popcorn popper all around the kitchen... I'll try to unearth it this weekend.

Gulp, gulp. Air? Gulp?

Oh my. Well, things have been happening. I turned 32 today. Not a particularly interesting number. Finn turned 1. Yay! He's very good at using his pointer finger to show you what he wants you to do, but he won't hold it up to indicate his age. He won't copy me when I do it, either. He continues to be a maniac. I wonder how he'll do on the plane home for Christmas. Best not think about that yet. How about Halloween? Yes! Finn and I got all the guts out of our Half Moon Bay pumpkin.

Murray was at the vet for 3 DAYS after suffering a urinary blockage. He seems to be moving things well now, but he'll likely be on prescription food forever. Which means that Mona gets to be, too. So far they hate the food, so hopefully they'll lose a few pounds. Both of them have bulked up a bit since Finn was born--they just don't get played with as much.

It was great that my parents came to town over the weekend for Finn's birthday. We had a fun party! More details on that later. Here are the oldest Fortney men across 3 generations. Only one of us has a Mr. Silly t-shirt, but I'm still looking around. I can fit into a size 4T, right? Speaking of silly, in the past day Finn has started sticking his lips way out in some sort of Mick Jagger monkey face. And he can now "dance." Katie got a short video that she'll likely post.


Word to the wise: teaching a graduate course on a subject in which you are NOT an expert is quite difficult. I think by the 4th time I teach it, it'll be good. But it's not there yet and I doubt it will be next time. I can only learn the material so fast. And when the students decide to ask questions, then it's really hit and miss. Only a few more weeks til finals.... If only Mr. Finn could learn to sleep all through the night. I mean, it's been a year, kid!

Cousins and peaches are both awesome, says Finn.

My cousin Mariah came to visit us last week from Iowa. She braved her first plane trip, scary San Francisco hills, 100+ temps, and a heart-breaking lack of Mountain Dew with considerable fortitude. We took her to the city, the forest, the beach, the movies, the mall, the theatre, and the mystery spot, and took lots of pictures of our adventures. Finn was surprised and delighted to see her each and every morning, and stared at her more or less nonstop. Perhaps he meant it to be welcoming. Kid really needs to learn how to blink. Unfortunately, we spent a little too much time in the car for Finn's liking, so he's now doing the thing where he arches his back and goes stiff as a board when we try to put him in his car seat. But he's always happy about 2 seconds after we take him out. See?

This week we're back on our normal routine for a while, which is actually kind of nice. Yesterday we took a nice long walk to run some errands, and then stopped in the park downtown to watch kids play in the fountain and eat some peaches. The peaches were apparently both delicious and hilarious.

Finn likes peaches from Katie on Vimeo.

Tooth count is now more or less officially up to four.

Acceptable foods are up to about a dozen.

Wakings at night were reliably down to one, but have been back up to two or three the past couple nights - but he's been sleeping later, and has finally figured out where the button is on his crib aquarium. Yay!

In other news, I made spanakopita the other night, Jonathan and Finn went to an Oakland A's game on Sunday, and Mona's claws have reached an all-time length record.

Yay Grandma!

My mom came out for another visit to see Mr. Finn! It was well-planned, as Katie left for 5 days for her library conference. Finn was healthy and fun the first few days, but then by the last day he was sick and cranky. :( So let's only show pictures from the happy times. We went to Filoli Gardens, up on the peninsula. As you can see from the picture, Finn had a rockin' good time. The gardens were beautiful!


Finn liked hanging out with grandma Mary, who was on full-time baby duty when I went to work for a couple of days. They visited Starbuck's, the grocery store, and the two parks in downtown Los Gatos. The last day, when he was cranky except for when he was outside, grandma walked perhaps 10 miles all around Los Gatos! I'm also very thankful that several days my mom got up at 6 a.m. with Finn, so that I could sleep for another hour or two. It's hard going back to real life!

So, he's sick again, with a bad cough and congestion. AND, his two top teeth are coming in, and that is also bothering him. So happy times are a bit fewer and farther between the past several days. But he is sleeping great, and has only woken up once at night the past 5 days in a row! Keep it up Finn!!!

I'm going to Disneyland without Finn; he's complaining

This afternoon I'm going to Anaheim for an American Library Association conference, and I won't be back until TUESDAY NIGHT. It's the longest I've ever been away from Finn by far, and I'm a little nervous. I'm focusing on the chance to see Nina, Mom, and Teri, going to Disneyland, and some uninterrupted sleep (Finn went 10 hours between feedings last night, by the way - a new record). I'll definitely miss him a lot. Missing bedtime will be especially hard. My favorite part of every day is right before we put him down, right after reading stories, when I rock him and sing to him and he lays his little head on my shoulder. But I'll be back on Tuesday.

In the meantime, I was checking out some baggage guidelines online yesterday and happened across American's rules for checking racks of antlers. They must be "as free of residue as possible" and "the skull must be wrapped and tips protected." My cousin Mariah's coming to visit us after the 4th, and she's flying Northwest, so I thought I'd check their guidelines in case she wanted to bring some antlers. It turns out Northwest charges the same, but doesn't have as many rules about cleanliness and the like - something to keep in mind, I guess. And Northwest will accept pole vault poles as checked luggage, whereas American will not. This information has to be useful to somebody, right?

Grandma Mary got here on Tuesday (sans antlers) and will be here pretty much the whole time I'm gone, which makes things a lot easier. Finn's having a great time running around town with her, and I think he's keeping her pretty busy. He seems to think he's ready to crawl, but hasn't quite figured out the mechanics yet. He's always trying to get us to put him down so he can lurch off after something, but once he's there, he's stuck, and this seems to confuse him. Here's about a minute and a half of footage from last week of him down on the floor, thinking about getting mobile.



He also finally figured out he can combine consonants and vowels to make syllables ("da ya ji!") and is doing some honest to goodness babbling. I caught some at the park last week, and here's a clip. So far he'll mostly only do it if he's kind of annoyed and bored, so I had to sit off to the side and ignore him for a while to get him going. He's easily fixed, though, as you can see.

Is it vacation yet?

Look, he got bigger again!

He's slowing down, though - only 18 lbs 8.5 ounces when we took him to the doctor last week (us? at the doctor? really?).

My mom was here last week, which was great, especially with finals creeping up on me. I think if I can just make it to the end of the semester, I can breathe again, but it's been pretty intense lately. Homework, baby stuff, house stuff, work stuff, planning this Boston trip (a trip I'm looking forward to very much, by the way)... I've been going a little nuts lately, when I'm not just curled up in a ball humming loudly. The sleep deprivation doesn't help. It was nice to be able to hand Finn over to Grandma Sheryl in the mornings and grab a nap, and he seemed to have a blast. He was a real chatterbox while she was here, but seems to have quieted down a bit since she left.

The LASIK went great, and I'm seeing better than 20/20. The surgery itself wasn't painful at all, but it was WEIRD. I mean, I've walked into a candlelit restaurant in Vienna to hear tuxedo-clad musicians playing the Chicken Dance. I've moved to New York, sight unseen, from Iowa. I've been to a completely dry wedding reception. But this was the strangest experience of my life, easily. You're awake the whole time, and all you feel is pressure, just staring at these lights, and then the lights disappear, and ... I guess you just have to try it. The end result couldn't be better though, and it's nice to join the land of the seeing. Yay for no more glasses with baby fingerprints!

Finn's a great sitter these days - we got a video of him playing with Murray today that I hope to get up later in the week, but in the meantime, there are a boatload of new photos over at Flickr, and here's one with my mom:

Yay Grandma!

Grandma Mary (my mom) was in town for 5 days to soak up the love and affection from our little man! Finn enjoyed the nonstop kisses and attention. He also got to see much of town, as grandma took him on two walks a day. One thing that grandma does not lack is energy.

Katie and I took *2* opportunities to leave Finn with his loving grandma so that we could take some time for ourselves, like the real couple that we are. Night one we hit an upscale lounge and a downscale pub. Night two we have a nice meal at Nick's on Main, which just opened up. The place it so tiny, you'd think you were in Manhattan. Chef Nick was a nice guy. He even took over being our server after she imploded due to an embarrassing broken cork, which then led to two table water miscues, and then she disappeared for the rest of the night.

It's sad that Finn isn't going to see grandma and grandpa again til (likely) sometime this summer. The difficulty of being far from family increases quite a bit when little ones get born into the family. One positive is that we've been doing well at keeping up our Skype dates to see the family back in Minnesota, especially Finn's cousin Jamie. We miss you grandma!

He's a big boy

He looks like he should be able to stand up and walk around, right? No luck. He can't even crawl. His head is so big that he isn't even all that good at tummy time, either. He needs a stronger neck. But we're working on it. He *STILL* hasn't remembered how to roll over onto his back again yet, so we're lucky we got video of it a few weeks ago. Silly baby!

Easter at the Reeves-Fortney's down in Salinas was fun. Finn was enjoyed by all, especially by my uncle Gregory. Finn liked to be outside on his blanket in the grass. Although we have a little yard, it is entirely taken up by shrubs and such--no grass!

Grandma Mary comes tomorrow! Yay my mom! We're all excited.

Crib(!) and pics from the Fortney visit

Guess who slept in his crib last night? Finn! For the whole night, you ask? Yes! Well, of course he did it in 3 chunks, as you can see on Trixie Tracker. Yay crib! It was weird sleeping with him in his own room. Even with the baby monitor on, we couldn't hear all of his weird little noises, which had its good and bad points. It took us awhile to fall asleep. He liked it well enough that I think this will be the plan from now on.

Below are pictures of my Dad (Jon) and my mom, sister, and niece (Mary, Jeanna, Jamie), along with Mr. Finn, from the Fortney visit over Thanksgiving.