Life's Little Journeys

New Family Blog Link

2011-06-02T23:11:00.000-05:00

Here is the link for the new family blog, http://aedashplus2.blogspot.com/

Make sure to follow it and keep up on the new posts :)

New Family Blog

2011-06-01T13:27:00.000-05:00

It would appear that I will have to start a new Family Blog. I have been informed by Blogger that I have exceeded my photo limit and obviously I don't want to pay for more storage space. I can just see that getting expensive very soon. When I have the new blog site set up, I will post a new link for it. Hope to have it up soon!! Until then, enjoy the last of the photos I've shared on this blog :)

Memorial Day Weekend

2011-05-31T20:57:00.001-05:00

We had a very busy and FUN Memorial Day Weekend!! First we were able to be lazy Friday and Saturday, which was VERY nice and much needed. Then on Sunday, we met up with Grandma C out at Old Cowtown Museum to celebrate her Birthday. I believe Grandma and the kiddos had fun!

A bonus, we were able to see the new baby calf that was born on the farm in Cowtown.

Mommy Cow wasn't a fan of anyone coming close, she was good to just nudge with her nose. We had to tell Catie that she wasn't playing a game.

Chars understood and kept a nice and respectable distance :)

We attempted some photos of us with the kids, but you know Catie, she refuses to ever cooperate with photos.

We had to do some old fashioned bowling before we decided to leave for the day. It was incredibly HOT out on Sunday!

Chars got his FIRST STRIKE!!

After we left Old Cowtown, we headed over to a friend's house for a BBQ(as well as many other BBQs we attended this weekend). I must say that attending BBQs is more fun than having one ;). The kids had a blast playing in the backyard with a kiddie pool, slide and a water hose that was setup to go down the slide. Soon they became chilly and we wrapped them up!

It was quite a weekend! We all enjoyed too, having an extra day with Daddy. The kids always love spending time with him. Hope all had a fabulous Memorial Day and also enjoyed some great outdoors cooking. By the way the temperatures were this weekend and continue to be, I do believe Summer is upon us!

It's My Party, er, uh, Catie's Party

2011-05-24T00:02:00.001-05:00

I promised and finally here there are! The pictures from Catie's party :) I think she had a blast, but I'll let the photos show you just how much of one she had. The smile on her face that lasted the entire day, priceless.

We followed the tradition that we set with Char's second birthday, Cheri's Bakery did another great job on the cake!! It was absolutely wonderful!!

I hope the pictures were worth the wait!

MIA

2011-05-22T21:41:00.000-05:00

I know I've been MIA in the last few days. It has just been CRAZY around here!! Hoping to finish an order of 21 pins by Wednesday, until then I am taking a break for tonight and resuming my work tomorrow :) I also hope to post pictures of Catie's third birthday party tomorrow. I promise, I have not forgotten! Until then, please bear with me as I attempt to catch up with ALL of my responsibilities.

The Power of Positive Thought

2011-05-17T11:48:00.000-05:00

I want to take a minute to speak about the power of positive thought. It pains me so to hear people talk down on themselves and I too am guilty of this. For years all I could do was focus on my negatives instead of focusing on my positives. When it came to weight loss, it didn't happen until I started changing my focus to my positives. Yoga has taught me two things;

1)Learn to Work Within Your Limitations
2)Try to Find Peace in Chaotic Situations

For now, I want to focus on the first of the two. Mostly because I'm still working on the second, heheh. When I started working within my "limitations" and accepting them, the pounds started coming off. I started forcing myself to look in the mirror, after a couple of years of avoiding it. Then I started taking a good look and finding the things that I did like about myself. For example; I like that I have curves and that, even though I'm an average white girl, I have junk in my trunk. LOL! I also feel very blessed in the fact that people in my family don't age. We have baby faces. I will be turning ahem, 29 this Summer and yet I feel so lucky that I don't have a wrinkle to show for it(Partly too I think because my skin is so oily. Oily skin is a pain to deal with, but it keeps skin young, hahah). Getting deeper than skin, I think I have a good heart. I can meet a person only once and still care about them, no matter the circumstances. I am a very forgiving person, I don't like to hold a grudge.

Once I started focusing on my positives, more would come to me each time I would do this. I share this because I want everyone to take a few minutes each day to focus on their positives and forget about the negatives. We are all special in our own ways and that is awesome! Just to reiterate, Learn to Work Within Your Limitations. For the record I don't mean to sound preachy or anything like that, I just want the people I care about to love themselves too :)

Quick Update

2011-05-16T13:37:00.000-05:00

This last weekend was yet another crazy weekend! We had Catie's Birthday Party! Her party was at a local park and we rented a moon walk for entertainment. I do have to say the weather couldn't have been any worse, except for maybe rain. Other wise, it was COLD!! Unfortunately in Kansas that is just a risk you have to take in the Month of May when planning a party. I don't have the time right now to share all the pictures, nor have I had to time as of yet to go through them, but I will blog soon with those. Until then, I will share a photo of my little cutie pie.

Looks like fun, doesn't it?

Mother's Day Fun

2011-05-13T13:52:00.000-05:00

In the last post, I mentioned we spent Mother's Day at Tanganyika Wildlife Park. I would have liked to make these all into a fancy collage, but the time today doesn't allow as I have family coming into town tomorrow and house that needs to be put in order :) I'm sure many know what thats like! Here are ~~just a few~~ a lot of the photos from the time we spent with my In-laws and cousins A, G and Little G.

These little babies were 1 week old! Aren't they adorable!!

Heading over to feed the giraffes.

This guy appears to actually be posing for photos!

Looks like the Easter Bunny left a GIANT Easter Egg behind!

BUNNIES!!!!

After we arrived home, Chars insisted on taking a photo. He did a GREAT job!

And here is a rarely photographed wild animal of our own, heheh!!

Believe it or not, this still doesn't catch up the blog! So until next time!!

Captured in Photos

2011-05-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

Well somewhere in the passing days of the last few weeks, I've fallen behind on posts. Which if you follow this blog, shouldn't be much of a surprise ;) Nonetheless, I have so MANY photos that I have meant to share, but hadn't found the time to share. Here they are, in no particular order and I may or may not write something about them. Sometimes pictures can speak for themselves, hahah!

Catie asked me to make her some pretty flip flops. Not really knowing how to go about this I would say they turned out ok. She <3s them and that's all that matters!!

After Chars saw Catie's fabulous flip flops, he wanted something on his too!

Caught someone sneaking an extra yogurt out of the fridge, hahah!

We had a garage sale a couple weeks ago! Sold all of the things we didn't need anymore! I also decided to sell my hair clips and they all sold! That was the deciding factor that it was time to start my business.

Catie didn't want us selling the double stroller, so much so, that she sat in it for the entire DAY! She got her way :)

For Mother's Day, we did a little photo shoot of the kiddos and I. Here are our best shots! You will notice that one photo I chose to use for the new blog.

Well, I think I typed more than I had thought I would. Hopefully soon I can follow up with the photos from our visit to Tangnyika Wildlife Park on Mother's Day!

New Blog

2011-05-07T22:18:00.000-05:00

My new blog is finally setup. It will serve as the platform for starting my new business venture, please head over there to check it out and leave comments! I welcome any feedback, so please feel free to share :) The blog is, keelymaedesigns.blogspot.com

A New (Ad)Venture

2011-05-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

Well I have dabbled, tried my hand, played at and toyed with making hair clippies and I think I have FINALLY found my niche. Now the time has come to decide if I am going to continue with my clip making and if I am going to, then its time for me to start making it pay. Which now begs the question, where do I go from here? I've investigated Etsy, but they are quite pricey between charging for each post, paying an percentage of each sale, shipping and handling costs and then there is the amount I have to pay for use of Paypal. With all of those costs, it really doesn't even begin to payoff expenses(which now I know why things can be so expensive on that site). I've debated starting a page on Facebook, but not really sure how to get this venture off the ground. Here is where I could quite possibly be one lucky gal in that there are a couple of Moms in our SAHM's group, who's brains I can pick! If they allow me to ;)

Here is my first question, if you are one that has started your own business, how did you start and what has worked best for getting customers/new customers?

In the mean time, here are a few of my clippies for your viewing pleasure. If there are any you like, please feel free to PM me or contact me through Facebook. Currently, I've just opened a Paypal account. Which unfortunately means it will be a couple days before it will be up and running while they verify my account(but cash for those whom reside locally, is preferable and I will do my best to meet up with you. Hahah) Thank you in advance for answering my questions and/or buying!

Cupcakes 1 $2.00 Each

Cupcakes 2 $2.00 Each

Button Flower $3.00

Owls $2.00 Each

Flip Flops $2.00 Each

Birds $2.00 Each

Song Birds $2.00 Each

Just to show how cute these are, here is my little model showing one of the Song Birds. So cute!!

If you contact me, I can customize the color of ribbon, if you do not like the examples showing. Of course everything is limited upon availability and they are handmade, so product may vary a little from clip to clip.

Thank you for looking and I assure you these clips will not take over my blog ;)

Special Birthday Dinner Celebration

2011-05-04T21:03:00.000-05:00

Monday, we celebrated Catie's birthday with a Special Birthday Dinner of.............

Pasta and Strawberries, per the Birthday Girl's request! Interesting combination, you say? It was, but to her defense, it was good.

Once we finished our dinner, we had CAKE!! And not just any kind, it was CHOCOLATE cake!! Mmmmm, this cake was sinful! Catie was a little disappointed because she wanted Strawberry Cake, but chocolate was an acceptable substitute. We also promised her that when she has her party, that we would order her a Strawberry Cake. Thankfully she is still in a stage where negotiating is easy(sometimes).

This is Catie getting excited about Daddy lighting her candle on her cake. You can also see her Birthday shirt that she is donning from Dulu Designs. Catie insisted on wearing her shirt the whole day! I'd say she LOVES her Birthday shirt!

Once the candle was lit......well, I'll let the video show you the rest :)

Happy Birthday Baby

2011-05-02T10:46:00.001-05:00

I can't believe that today my baby is THREE!! I don't know where the last couple of years have gone, but they sure did float on by! It sounds so strange to be a Mom to two full fledged toddlers aged 4.5 and 3. When they were babies, these ages felt so far away and now it seems they were babies just yesterday! This last weekend we had a Garage Sale and it was so bittersweet selling off the kid's old clothing and baby toys. On one hand it was nice to finally clear out all the stuff from storage, but on the other, it solidified that we will not be having another baby. Kind of saddening, the very thought of it. It does make me happy though that other's will be able to enjoy our old things. Life has a way of thrusting us forward and this is just another Milestone on the Journey of Life.

Catie, you are one strong headed, stubborn and passionate little girl. You know how to manipulate Daddy just by uttering, "But why, Daddy?" You've learned to be tough and to fight for yourself from your Brother's constant picking on you, since we brought you home from the Hospital(to which he is still adjusting to, hahah). You fear nothing(which scares me a bit from time to time)! The thing that amazes me most is your ability to talk and speak as though someone who is years older than you and also your ability to recite songs that you've heard in passing. I especially LOVE how you sing, "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman", by Carole King. Hilarious!! I know that you will grow up to be one strong young woman someday and you won't let anything get in the way of what you want! Daddy, Chars and I love you and all the pizzazz you bring to our lives! Happy Birthday Baby Catie!!

Easter Egg-travaganza and More!

2011-04-25T23:59:00.001-05:00

Let me just start by saying, this was probably one of the MOST crazy weekends we've had in a long time! Every minute was spent meeting up with family and taking the kids for some Easter Weekend fun! We did three separate Easter Egg Hunts, that right, THREE!! We must be crazy!! They were all fun though and the kids are still chattering about their found eggs and candy. This year, we unintentionally spent Easter with my Parent's. I say unintentionally because we planned the trip not realizing that it was going to be the weekend of Easter. I'm glad we did it though, because the kids just had smiles on their faces and enjoyed their time with Grandma and Grandpa so much, that they protested leaving! Especially BLL, she just kept saying, "NO, I want to go to Grandma and Grandpa's House!!" She is definitely one strong headed little girl!

Now to share what all we did this past weekend, in pictures of course! You know how much I LOVE my pictures and I couldn't imagine sharing in any other way(heheheheh)!! Also, I just want to make it known that we had SO MANY pictures that I had to put them in a collage form and all the pictures still did not make it, but I have spent enough hours putting them together. So without further ado..............................................

Honestly, I don't think we could have crammed more into one weekend if we tried! It's all worth it in the end though, because these little cuties will only be little for so long. Hope everyone had a wonderful and fun filled Easter Weekend!!

P.S. The Easter Bunny told me that BLL's gift also counts for her Birthday Gift ;) Sometimes that is just how the Easter Bunny rolls. I'm still in disbelief that her third birthday is just six days away. No matter how old she is, she will always be my baby.

Dethroning, Debacles and Repairs

2011-04-18T13:48:00.001-05:00

Last week was one of the roughest we've had in a while and I hope to be one of the last for a long time to come, please?? It all started with facing the fact that it had finally come down to either finding our cat Pumpkin a new home or getting him declawed. Despite his destructive ways, he is a very good cat. Especially when it comes to the kids. We've had our ups and downs with him and he has tore up many a rug and curtains around the house. We thought his scratching ways had come to an end because he hadn't appeared to be doing so anymore. We had also started putting claw caps on him, which he had become quite proficient in getting them off about a quick as we would put them on. When you consider one package of claw caps runs about $30/package and buying one/month and at times more often, it just becomes too expensive! Finally, the last straw had been pulled. I came out one morning because my Son told me he heard two pops come from the living room. In my mind I could not imagine what would make such a sound, until it hit me, suddenly! Sure enough I came into the room to find that our cat Pumpkin had done this.........................

To our chair and this............

To the arm of the sofa..............

Just think, he did all that damage with only one claw cap off. Imagine if he had, had more. And thus it was decided that it was time for declawing.

Here he is, looking miserable. Perhaps feeling a bit dethroned from his rule of the house.

Honestly though, he doesn't seem to be hurting so bad and he also has been on pain management medications. The decision though, weighed heavily on my heart. I stressed and have had feelings of guilt since. On a more positive note though, we have been actually enjoying one another's company most recently because there is no more worrying about what he will destroy next.

Thankfully, Ashley Furniture is working with us to do repairs. They ordered the materials and are doing repairs, for FREE!! All we have to do is pay for the materials. How awesome are they?! A HUGE thank you to Ashley Furniture!!

The night before Pumpkin was brought home from the Vet, our Water Heater went out! I had asked Daddy to take a look at it because I had taken one very hot shower earlier in the day. No matter how much I turned up the cold, it would not cool down. Needless to say it was a very short shower. I knew something was wrong because hot showers were something that just didn't happen with our lousy old Water Heater. We knew it eventually would need replacing, but we had hoped we could make do for months, possibly years, to come. Unfortunately, it had other plans. Daddy went to check only to find 6" of water throughout the entire basement. Our Sump Pump had also quit working, so Daddy had to kick it on(on a side note, it too will have to be replaced sooner than we would like). Once it started working, all the water had drained out of the basement, but it is still currently working on drying out. Ever hear of a "Money Pit"? Yea, we are living in it! After purchasing a new Water Heater(and deferring a couple payments), we finally have hot water again. Now it's time to figure out how we can start to pay off some debt, which we were working on before the fall out, hahah! So much for that. We are back at square one.

On to more happy things, here are a few photos of the new hair clippies I made! I know everyone LOVES seeing these. I also added a bonus, BLL modeling her pretties and just a cute random photo of LBF(just because you can never take enough photos of a couple of cuties).

We were in Michaels the other day, when I came across a couple of pretty flowers and BLL being the little diva she is, says to me, "Make hair pretty for me Mommy?" Absolutely!

She of course couldn't wait to put them in her hair, once I put them on a couple of clippies. I may too have to wear these. Maybe we could match! LOL!

Look at that precious face :)

She Made Me Eat It

2011-04-13T11:35:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I was watching "Cake Boss". The problem with this show is that I then crave cake and cupcakes after watching it. Most of the time, it's not a big problem because the stuff needed to make such goodies is not in my house and I'm too lazy to get it, hahah. Well last night we were watching and they kept talking about red velvet cake, I had to have red velvet cake. I made Daddy take a run to the store to get a mix, because again, I'm too lazy to make from scratch. Much less I wouldn't even know what all that entails. Back to the story, I baked the cake in a bundt cake pan and it turned out beautiful! It was a proud moment for me. We let it cool overnight with the intention that I would ice it this morning and we would have it for dessert tonight.

Little did I know, the kids had other plans. They were so quiet and sneaky this morning, I didn't even hear them get up! Finally LBF came into the my room to whine about something BLL did, have I mentioned he is a little tattle tell. That was when I noticed that he had crumbs on his face, little RED crumbs. I asked him what was on his face and he replied, "She made me eat it." Yea, I'm sure that is exactly what happened. Curious are you to the extent of the damage they did to my most beautiful cake? Well here are a few photos of what I found when I made my way to the kitchen.

Needless to say, they will not be having dessert tonight!

Consumed Creativity

2011-04-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

When I have one of my creative brainstorms, it can be all consuming. Every thought of my waking moments are spent putting it all together in my mind before I do any actual putting together. This last week/weekend was spent thinking about and visualizing some fresh ideas that I had stumbled upon from seeing all the little girl's hair do's of our SAHM's group. Thanks to Hobby Lobby and Michael's, there has been an endless amount of creativity storming my brain! Despite my bout of Spring Cleaning that also consumed my weekend, during such time, I was still in my mind thinking about all the things I could do. Here are a few results of my creative brainstorm.............

These are my absolute favorite so far!! They can be worn by themselves or.............

On a headband!! These headbands can be found at Hobby Lobby in a variety of colors and the best part, they are two for .99 cents! I love that you can attach any clippie to them, so you are not limited, as you will see in the following photos.

Also, with Easter soon approaching, I had to make something fabulous for BLL to match her dress, of course. These turned out so adorable, if I do say so myself.

And now, for us ladies who also like to have pretty things in our hair, a couple of pretties! These also look nice alone or on a headband. I absolutely LOVE these and will find any reason to wear them!

My daughter has also expressed interest in wearing these, but then again left up to her, she would wear all of them at the same time! Let me tell, that is quite a funny site!!

Short Story

2011-04-11T11:59:00.000-05:00

We are alive, we survived the weekend and unsure if we are ready for the week. So far it's had a rough start. Unfortunately we haven't taken any photos of some of the fun we've had, but I assure you that we have been enjoying the beautiful weather. Until next time!

Waking Fire Alarm

2011-04-02T10:59:00.001-05:00

Very early this morning, so early it was still dark out, we were awoken by a fire alarm! I threw the blankets back and sprung up to see Daddy looking at his phone. I said to him "(His name here), it's the fire alarm! Not your phone!" He says, "No, it's my phone." "No (his name here), we need to get the kids and get out!" "No, it's my phone. I set the alarm so we would get LBF's medicine on time." "What?!" "It's my alarm." "OMG, you almost gave me a heart attack!! Never use that _______ alarm sound again!"

To my defense, it really did sound just like our fire alarms and it was LOUD! Lesson learned, if you want to get me out of bed quickly, make me think there is a fire.

Side note, parts of this post may be censored because this is a family blog and some words may not have been appropriate for young viewers. ;)

For A Good Laugh

2011-03-30T14:44:00.000-05:00

There are so many things I would like to blog about, but my head is throbbing from the pressures that being sick has put on it. My thoughts are unable to flow at this time. While I work on gathering my thoughts, here are some little funny quotes that I've decided are a Must Have for our walls.

Hope that was good for a few chuckles! Here is hoping I feel better soon!!

Rough Monday

2011-03-28T20:05:00.000-05:00

This is how our Monday has been. Three of the four of us are sick, but does that mean I get to take a rest. Nope! There is yucky laundry to be washed, immediately and someone had to make dinner! Here is hoping for a better rest of the week.

A Penny Saved Can Bring A Smile To Your Face

2011-03-28T19:50:00.000-05:00

Remember this?? LBF and I(well mostly I), counted up his saved change.

The total? Came to the amount of $78.60!!

Amazing isn't it?! I can't believe he has saved so much just from collecting the equal opportunity pocket change from around the house.

Friday, we decided to take LBF to pick his toy and pay for it himself(and yes that means he took his change to the store). LBF was so proud counting out his change with Daddy's help of course. The cashier seemed entertained by it too! The people behind us in line, well......not so much.

Here is LBF after making his selection in the store, his Buzz Lightyear Arm, if you recall.

He was so proud of his purchase!! Look at that smile, priceless!!

Now when LBF starts talking about toys(or everything)that he wants, we tell him to keep saving his money! I am so impressed with how well he takes care of his new toy, it would seem buying something with his own money, makes a boy take better care of his toys! He has slept with it every night and plays with it all day! It would seem he is very happy with his big boy self.

I'm Going To Buy A Buzz Lightyear Arm

2011-03-24T10:44:00.000-05:00

For the last two days now, LBF has stated that he is going take his "moneys" out of his piggy bank and go buy a Buzz Lightyear Arm. Considering his piggy bank is full of pocket change from the last four and half years, he just might be able to afford said Buzz Lightyear Arm! He is referring to this.......

Of which he will have to remove all his change from this........

To pay for it. After all, a penny saved is a penny well spent! Isn't that the way it works??

A Couple Small Additions

2011-03-22T16:07:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Hobby Lobby and a gift from my Mother-in-Law, my pantry and dining room have had a little face lift!! I hope to eventually have my kitchen and dining room all decked out in cafe' latte style!

And finally, our new spice rack! This was given to us some time ago, but I finally decided that I could hang it myself. It adds a little something to the Pantry and looks nice, if I do say so myself. It is so nice to finally have a spice rack! Now I have to get through all our old spices so I can use the new fancy ones, heheheh!

It always amazes me how much small things can improve a room! This makes for a great start to transforming our spaces!!

Hot Off The Presses!

2011-03-21T14:31:00.002-05:00

It took a while to pick out which photos to use and many layouts before I finally settled on our design for our e-vites! I'm so excited!! Here is the final design!

I also want to say a big THANK YOU to Dulu Designs for BLL's fabulous Birthday shirt!! It turned out even better than I could have imagined!

What We Did For the Weekend, In Pictures!

2011-03-20T19:58:00.000-05:00

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day with cupcakes! By the time we were able to get to the store on Thursday, all the St. Pat's Day goodies were sold out, but these worked out pretty well for us.

Saturday, we had two Birthday Parties for LBF and BLL's cousins, A and Little G. I don't currently have any pictures from the party, if I happen upon some, I will share them later.

Today, we went to Botanica Gardens to get some Birthday photos of BLL in her special Birthday outfit. We are planning to make our own invitations with the pictures, so we are doing them early this time around. I will share those in the next post. Until then, here are some photos from our time that we spent just having fun and feeding the fish and ducks. Granddad agreed to do the photos for BLL, so he enjoyed spending some time with our two little ones.

While we were feeding the fish and ducks, we heard quite a commotion come from behind us. When we turned to see what was going on, we saw this guy!!

Beautiful, isn't he?! Magnificent creature. This is the closest I've been to a fox. Can you imagine, he was chasing a cat! The cat climbed up the tree and sat there waiting for a bit. He finally decided to move on, but we feel incredibly blessed to have been able to see him.

We then continued to feed the fish some more. The poor fish seemed they were starving. LBF and BLL would laugh hysterically every time one of the bass would jump up to get the food.

This was the start of our little photo shoot. More to come, I promise!

Saturday had proved to a bit of a cool day, but today was such a difference. We reached a high of 84! It was absolutely a gorgeous day for outdoor pictures! It really proved to be a nice day for the First Day of Spring!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

2011-03-17T14:41:00.001-05:00

I Did It!! Finally!

2011-03-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

I finally reached my goal of a size 8! Nearly three years ago, I started at a size 16. The picture on the left is about three months after I had my second child, BLL. This was right about the time my weight started spiraling out of control. I weighed less after my daughter was born than in that photo. I nearly gained 20lbs afterwards because so many things went off track at that particular moment in time.

It all started when my daughter had to stay nearly a month in the NICU at Wesley. They had these pudding parfaits in the cafeteria that I absolutely became addicted to. If you haven't tried one of those, don't! I truly believe food can become an addiction, especially when you are going through some rough patches. Food is so easy to turn to and until you acknowledge it and decide to become proactive about it, it can be a very difficult addiction to break. After all, anything in life worth having takes a lot of work and doesn't come easy. Losing weight didn't come easy either. Food is everywhere, all the time! You can't hide from it. So when I stepped on that scale and it read(I can't believe I'm going to share this, I've tried so hard to never admit it.)187lbs., I nearly dropped to the floor. Granted to some this number may be nothing, but everything in life is relative to where we've come from. I came from many of years never having to worry about my weight and eating as I pleased, until I turned 20. Everything caught up to me! Gradually I started gaining 10lbs here and 10lbs there and didn't think twice about it. I figured it was natural to gain weight as I developed into Adulthood and to some degree, I'm sure it was. Finally, before I had kids, I was around 140 and a size 8. Thus after the extreme weight gain after having kids, size 8 became my goal. Would I like to be a size 6, yes I would, but size 8 is perfectly acceptable to me.

Losing 30lbs has taken me 3 years of hard work! Most people could lose this amount of weight in a years time or less, but I have one thing that is constantly working against me..........a Metabolic Disorder, known as PCOS aka Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Simply put, for every one pound a normal healthy person would gain, I would gain 5lbs. To lose weight, I actually have to fight my own body. This is no easy task. It means planning my snacks for every 2 hours of the day. A typical day for me consists of this;

Breakfast: Greek Yogurt and Fruit(usually banana or strawberries), Green Tea and/or Coffee

Snack: Fruit(such as an apple or orange)and Snack Cheese, Water 16oz and/or Coffee

Lunch: Generally consists of the leftovers from dinner the night before such as a slice or two of homemade pizza or a bean salad, such as pinto bean salad with toasted pita.

Snack: (This is when the day gets tough)We've done celery with peanut butter and raisins, Fruit Smoothie with tofu, whole wheat toast with apple butter(make sure it doesn't contain HFCS, which you can find in the natural foods section, we get ours from my Mom, she makes her own),Water 16oz.

Dinner: Is almost always a vegetarian dish. We've made a stir-fry veggie pizza, ravioli with spinach topped with 1tsp. olive oil and parmesan cheese, sweet potato chili, just to list a few. Water 16oz

Last Snack: Green Tea, I have my little cheat treat for example one scoop of ice cream(make sure it doesn't contain trans fats or HFCS). Hope to replace with fruit when I manage diet a bit better, heheh.

The biggest rule I follow and the most important is never to eat after 9pm. I also am a stickler on low or no sodium aka salt. When you have PCOS, it is very important to reduce the amount of salt intake to help maintain a healthy blood pressure, not to mention, it does help with weight loss. That is true for everyone, not just us PCOS cysters. :) I also hope to start adding in some steel cut oats with my breakfast, all in due time. When it comes to weight loss, it's all about baby steps. With everything said, I will add the disclaimer, I am not an expert and I do not consider myself one. This is only a means of sharing what has worked for me. I also will add that if you are looking to lose weight, Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen's book, "YOU: On a Diet" is a great place to start. That book is an awesome read and it explains how the body functions in a very easy to understand way. The illustrations are quite comical too! This book is where I started and is still the foundation in which I choose how and what to eat on a daily basis. Though I take a step farther, in that I insist that all our foods be of a natural origin. I refuse to use any sweeteners, sugar only when necessary and real butter. I don't like the idea of eating any chemicals that I can't pronounce or don't know what they are or their origin. If foods contain more ingredients than I can count on my hand, I put it back.

Today, the scale reads 158lbs. I find it funny that I am my pre-pregnancy size, but not the pre-pregnancy weight. Though working out has built muscles that I didn't know were there and we all know that muscle weighs more than fat, so I keep reminding myself of this. If I do happen to continue to lose any weight, I would consider it the cherry on top, but for now I am very happy! This has been a goal that has been three years in the making.

Most of all, I hope that my struggles and success will be helpful to someone and I wish those who are struggling now, much success!!

New Haircut and Other Fun

2011-03-14T13:30:00.000-05:00

The Best Years of My Life??

2011-03-12T13:51:00.000-06:00

A wise woman(my Mother)once told me that these years of raising children will be the best years of my life. I had my doubts, you know given the countless sleepless nights due to colic, acid reflux, teething and dealing with the heart issues of our daughter. Then there was surviving two toddlers going through the terrible twos and one going through the tumultuous threes(and a daughter just entering the tumultuous threes, of which I'm reminded of everyday). How can these be the best years of my life?! Then I started remembering my teens years, those certainly weren't the best years of my life. They were awkward and I didn't like myself, ever. When I entered adulthood, I thought they were the best years of my life, but in hind sight, they were not. With adulthood, it's a struggle to find yourself and you fight with everyone around you because you are trying to find yourself and you feel like the adults in your life are trying to hold you back. Its a confusing time, much like being a teenager. Everything you know has changed and the future is staring you in the face. It's scary! You find that its a struggle to pay the bills on minimum wage and still maintain College or in my case, Beauty School. It's a rough transitional time.

Onto my point, these are the best years of my life. Even though my kids can drive me absolutely bonkers on any given day and run me until I'm ragged, they fill me with fulfillment. There is no joy like the joy you get from seeing a look of pure happiness on your child's face. At times I think it would be easier to work than stay home with them, but then I start thinking of all the things that I would miss if I did go back to work and it far out weighs the stresses of being home. Just when you think you can't take anymore, they have these moments that just make you feel all warm inside and make you feel like you can keep going. I find it strange after all the years that I wasn't close with my Grandma B, but how we can now talk and I now have a love for her that I didn't find before. In these days that she is losing her memories, we have great conversations and it kind of breaks my heart a little to know that she won't remember them, so I have to remember for the both of us. This last weekend we had a brief visit and she enjoyed seeing the kids, as she always does. We were talking and she says to me, "These will be the best years of your life." It resonated with me! I tell myself this everyday, to remind myself that despite the stresses, I will look back on the days of raising my kids and know that these were, the best years of my life. Words of wisdom to remember. Enjoy each day we spend with our little ones because it will all be over in a flash even though now it feels like forever. These are the BEST years of my life and I look forward to many more while my children grow!

Hey, What's the Big Idea?!

2011-03-11T10:59:00.000-06:00

No we didn't fall of the Earth, we are still here. I promise! Our little family has been sick for the last couple of weeks, Mommy and Daddy included. I never realized that strep throat could knock a person out! Two weeks ago, it started with symptoms of a head cold and we thought nothing of it. Then last week, my throat started hurting and I thought I was just getting a sinus infection. Finally I decided to go to the Doctor and we discovered that I had strep. I was surprised, to say the least. Amazingly, the kids never once complained of a soar throat or really had a fever that I noticed, but I asked the Doctor to check them just in case and sure enough both LBF and BLL had it. A day later, Daddy had it. After a good round of antibiotics, we were finally back!

Of course with all the sickie poos in our house, you could imagine the crankiness. The kids were too. Unfortunately that meant staying home a lot and not much of doing, anything. The blog was put on the back burner and we were in survival mode. Thankfully though, we were on the mend enough last weekend to make a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house! Though I wasn't sure we were going to make the trip because the whole drive there, all we heard from the back seat was, "He touched me", "She's putting her foot on me", "Her hand is on my arm", "He took my toy", "She is throwing her food on me". You can imagine! And of course it all has to be screamed at the loudest, most ear numbing of voices. We were never more happy to arrive at Grandma and Grandpa's house and leave them for all of Saturday. Though, honestly, as much as I love them, I think I could have used another day. Sunday rolled around and it was time to head home, you probably guessed, but yes it was two and half hours of the same thing all the way home. I miss the days when they used to sleep in the car. Those were the good 'ole days!

I know we drive a Mini-Van(or as I like to call it, the Mommy Wagon)and I could just put one car seat in the back to separate them, but that brings on a whole 'nother set of problems. Such as, LBF kicking the back of BLL's seat. Also, I know horror, when we eat in the car on our trips, it makes it very difficult to distribute the food. We could just park, I know, but sometimes you just want to get to your destination and don't want to waste a second! It doesn't put a stop to the fighting either, they may not be able to hit per se, but they will still yell. As young as they are, this is only the beginning of how much they will fight and annoy each other. I had no idea it started so early! Despite everything, we did enjoy our visit to Grandma and Grandpa's!

Onto this week and better things! I have really started to take notice of BLL's extensive vocabulary. She amazes me everyday with the things she says. After our visit, we were just relaxing at home one morning and she comes into the bathroom while I was getting ready and says, "Hey what's the big idea?!" I had no idea what she was referring too, but I speculate it had something to do with my removing her potty seat. She has also said, "Is (brother's name inserted here) not cooperating?", "I'm hungry. I want waffle with applebutter.", "Mom, I want yogurt. Can you open?" As you can see, she speaks in(almost always)complete sentence form. Which compared to her brother at this age, is just amazing to me! I know she is coming up on three in about a month and a half, but I'm still amazed.

Talking about LBF, he is coming along swimmingly in Speech. Yesterday, I was given a paper with words to work on with him at home and he was able to repeat the whole list! He is working on pronouncing V's right now. He has come so far, that his teacher, Miss Molly, is working on annunciating sounds that most 4 year olds have difficulties with. Miss Molly is so good with LBF and patient that I think she has as much to do with the progress of LBF as his abilities. LBF talks all the time, he really does! You would never know it though, because he is so shy. Something I hope he will eventually outgrow.

Yesterday, we had to do some Birthday shopping for LBF and BLL's cousin. She is having a party later today. Of course Birthday shopping means we have to go to BABW! While we were there picking a gift, we decided to let the kids pick out outfits for their Bears. Here are a few pics of their buddies.

They picked a Rainbow Fairy outfit and an Iron Man shirt(of course). Their buddies have been rediscovered ;)

The Week/Weekend Catch Up!

2011-02-21T12:17:00.001-06:00

Somewhere in all the beautiful weather, playing outside and just plain enjoying being lazy in the sun, I managed to let the blog go. So here is a quick wrap up of our fun in the unseasonable sun!

You already know that I spent Valentine's Day with my two little sillies!

Then on Wednesday, we were able to spend some time outdoors in some very nice, unseasonable weather!

We played

Did some pretend Lawn Mowing, or rather deck mowing ;)

A small remaining patch of snow

We shot some hoops, just like KU Basketball as LBF would say.

BAM, no net!

The cat enjoyed chasing LBF around, he really liked the yoyo!

Even Pumpkin enjoyed some sun!

Look at that beautiful clear blue sky

Then on Friday, we had a Valentine's Party with our SAHM's group. It was held at a local Church basement where they have an awesome play room for the kiddos!

Again, we played.

Then we also made(or rather I made)bags with their names on them. After we finished, it was time to pass out the Valentine's!

I had a couple of little helpers

Soon it was time for us to get home, so that meant of course, to go play some more ;)

On Saturday, despite the forecast, it turned into a real nice day! We met up with some friends at Riverside Park!

They ran and played all around!

The boys like running off on their own. It became a game to find them!

After only a couple of hours running and playing around the park, we had two tired out little munchkins!

That was our last week/weekend of fun in the SUN! Hopefully soon this weather will be here to stay!

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T17:44:00.001-06:00

May your day be filled with love from all those you care about and lots of decadently delicious goodies!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

From Our Family to Yours

Snow, Snow, Go Away!

2011-02-10T15:04:00.000-06:00

What I've learned in the last two weeks with snow......

1) I'm not cut out for super cold temps
2) I love snow, but not all the frustrations that it brings
3) I would not make it in the Northern parts of the US, Chicago or New York.
4) I need to live somewhere where there are no extreme temps. Mild all the way!
5) It feels like twice the work to leave the house with 3 coats and 3 pairs of snow boots.
6) Car seats suck when it comes to Winter Coats.
7) Can't wait for Spring!!

Thankfully we didn't end up with as much snow as some of the surrounding towns, but it still hasn't been easy to get out and around. My poor little dog, Pookie, is beside herself when she has to go out to potty in the snow and has resorted to pottying on the little rug in the Kitchen, ugh! Also thankful that the rug conveniently washes in the Washer ;) The kids seems to be getting through all of the Winter weather, but not without crankiness and whining. I find it amazing how cold weather can make one feel so lethargic! All we want to do is SLEEP! Just have to survive 6 more weeks of Winter and then Spring will be on the way, so the Groundhog says. Let's hope he is right, because I am tired of the snow.

Honestly, in all the years of living in KS, I can't remember a time that we have had so many snow days. Overall, it isn't much with each snow storm, but collectively, it's a lot! The cold temperatures have been the worst! The cold temps have been making my poor car act all crazy. I start it up and all the dash lights will come on, the car just doesn't know what is wrong or not wrong. Tuesday, I questioned our needing to be out because I drove half way across town and the car never warmed up. The water was freezing to my window on contact and the defrost could not keep up. It was miserable! Never was I more happy to arrive home, safely. Here are some pics from Wednesday, after the snow had finally finished.

Even the dogs couldn't wait to come inside! LOL! Despite how nice the sun makes it look out, trust me, it was FREEZING!

Toys, Toys, Everywhere I Look, There Are Toys!

2011-02-08T09:45:00.003-06:00

It's no secret, like many Parents with toddlers, our house has been taken over by the TOYS! Everywhere I walk, I step, trip or stub a toe on one. I've bought more bins and shelves than I can count on one hand. Honestly it is truly absurd the amount of toys, but despite my thinning them out, there still remains to be an enormous amount of toys. They are taking over I tell you!! Any who, onto my point. Thank you to Uncle Sam and a certain Sister, we finally bought some shelves for the kid's rooms with fancy bins and stuff. Here are a few photos of LBF and BLL room makeovers!

The new shelves....

And now the difference it has made in their rooms!

AMAZING, you can actually see the floors of their rooms now!! What a difference! In BLL 's room, she has so many big toys that take up a lot of space. Its because of these that I've requested in the next house to have a playroom. Someday, I can dream.

Here are the rest of the toys that I have to sort through still. Like most things in my house, this all is still a work in progress. Wonder if there will ever be a day that I can finish a task, I suppose not as long as I have two toddlers to clean up after!

Icky Sickies and Blizzard Conditions

2011-02-01T12:25:00.002-06:00

Last week our home had been struck by the worst of the icky sickies, which I like to refer to as "The Death"! Referenced by a friend, thank you Brandon! LBF and BLL had the nasty stomach bug that has been making the rounds this Winter. Honestly I can't think of anything worse! I can put up with a lot of icky sickies, but stomach bugs are very difficult. I've never had a stomach that could handle that kind of thing. Give me anything else and I have strategies down pat! Thankfully their stomach bug only lasted about 6 hours and they were back to normal.

Then Saturday, very early morning, BLL woke up sounding like a barking seal, so we hooked up the humidifier, rubbed on the vapor rub and built up her pillows so she could lay in a half sitting position(to help prevent fluid from draining into the ears, don't want any ear infections to follow). Later that morning, when she spoke, she sounded like Donald Duck! Luckily by Sunday, whatever it was, it had cleared up. Now I'm left with two sleepy children for the last couple of days. I think they must be hitting another growth spurt, which worries me a bit. They are already starting to outgrow their Winter clothes and the only option is to buy for Spring, which with snow on the ground, may not work so well.

Speaking of snow, we are currently under a Blizzard Warning. The news makes it sound so scary and stuff ;) I am personally more worried about the record low temperatures that we will be experiencing today and tomorrow. The Hubby and I decided today it would be best to cancel LBF Speech Therapy and just play it safe by staying home. The snow is powdery, but coming down so quickly that it is difficult to see through it. I decided to take a picture to share, though I'm sure most who read this blog already know what it looks like from personal experience.

The wind is blowing so hard that the snow is getting blown all around.

Thanks to that wind blowing, the snow is building up on the back patio door.

I will sum this up by saying, stay warm and be safe! Here is looking forward to warmer days ahead!

Living Room Makeover(Takeover?)

2011-01-24T12:26:00.002-06:00

For a long time, I have thought that our Living Room needed something. No matter how I positioned our furniture, I was never happy. It just seemed the room was lacking in some way. Finally, we decided that the furniture was just no longer "us". With the New Year, it was time for a new space! Out with the old and in with the NEW!!

This time when it came to furniture, we decided that we would only buy pieces that we loved. Lesson learned, when it comes to such a big purchase, don't settle. When we first purchased furniture, almost 6 years ago, I settled on our red sofas because I knew that was the color I wanted. Unfortunately, there wasn't much in red to be offered, so we settled on the pieces we had bought. I liked them for the first year and then had come to the conclusion that they just never fit in our space. A mistake we would not make again.

When we decided what furniture we liked, it was time to make a small scale of our living room and small scale cutouts of the furniture we intended to buy. After much debate on which sofas to buy, we decided. I will say though, that the layout looked better on paper, but we still LOVE our new space! And the kids are still adjusting to no longer being allowed to eat or drink in the living room, poor kids. I will say that I loved my red, but I still have a few small touches of it, for example, in the new rug. For our space, the new furniture is much more functional and really makes the space! Just for the blog readers, I will share our(still in the process of)makeover photos. Here is my attempt at giving a 360 view of the room.

Looking in from the Front Hallway

As you can see, Daddy is still working on his desk area. Please excuse the mess.

Looking in from the Dining Room

Funny tidbit, we picked the Ottoman before we had picked the furniture. We wanted it because it serves several functions. Both sides can hold magazines, DVDs, Books and anything else! Also each square serves as a foot rest or flip over and have a tray(you know if we actually allowed eating in the Living Room). It is also great for when you are like us and don't like Coffee Tables. Certainly more functional than our old Ottoman.

Don't the two of them look comfy! They are always telling me anyway. I think they are very pleased with the new furniture despite the new rules(it was actually the rule with the old furniture too, but poorly implemented then).

Ah, the very chair that made our decision! Once we saw this chair, we knew we had to buy it! Its so big, you can curl up in it with a laptop and you will never want to get up. Which when you are supposed to be working out, can be a bit of a problem :) Oh and the best part, it swivels!!

Once all the furniture was moved in, it then became known that the TV was going to have to be mounted. Daddy also had to order some new cords(which we are still waiting for)so they can be better hidden. Thankfully Daddy found a great deal! We also received some great suggestions on where to look for mounts.

Another thing that we never had in our Living Room, was lamps. Much needed and so thankful that Lowe's sells Lamp Sets for super cheap(I knew there was a reason I loved that store)! Who knew?! I highly recommend!!

Thank you for letting me share my passion with you! I keep saying that someday I should go back to school to study Interior Design. Who knows, there are still plenty of years left to decide.

Gone, Never Forgotten

2011-01-23T17:07:00.001-06:00

I can't believe that Jack has been missing for nearly a year(officially on Feb. 2). I still miss him as much as I did when he first disappeared. To be Honest, this is a post that has been difficult for me to do. I meant to post about Jack sooner, but was just unable to do so. Its still difficult. To make this easier to get through this, we decided it best to make a video of all the photos that we have of Jack.

For the time being, I don't know if we will ever be able to feel any closure from losing Jack, but we sure hope to. I know some will think I make too much of a big deal over my Jack, but he was truly one of my bestest friends. He helped to me to get through so many things in my life and I just can't imagine dealing with hard times without the sweet way that he would place his head in my lap when he sensed that I was sad and/or stressed. I will always miss my Jackie Bear! As I type this out, all the memories flood back from the 7 years that we spent together and it's hard to hold back the tears. It may have only been 7 years, but it felt like a lifetime! He was after all, my first baby. Please enjoy this little video and see some of the wonderful memories that we shared.

Winter Fun and Beary Good Friends!

2011-01-18T21:24:00.002-06:00

Surprise, surprise, I'm behind on the blogging again :) Once again, I will catch all up on what we have been up to in the last couple of weeks. Starting with our week full of Snow Days!

Last week, like many in the Great United States, we were buried under several inches of snow. Playing it safe, we canceled many of our meetups and activities and just hung out around the house. As you can guess with a couple of toddlers, that can lead to a lot of pent up energy! Finally, after the snow had finished, we bundled up the kids to go out and play. Of course I sent Daddy out with them, I wasn't going to ruin my new Uggs in the snow and not to mention my strong disliking of freezing cold weather!! Here are a few pics of the fun that LBF and BLL had.......

LBF had to make a Snow Angel(or as he calls it, snow cloud).

Getting up to check out his "snow cloud".

He is getting so good at these!

And the result of laying in the snow is.........

Ta daa!!

After the kids were soaked from head to toe courtesy of the snow, they came back in to the warm house and removed all the soaking wet clothes. Then Daddy decided to make some brownies to which LBF and BLL broke the rules and licked the beaters from the mixer. Curious what the result is of that? No need to remain so, I'll share a photo of that right about now!

See how BLL tries to look cute and innocent?! Yea, she looks sweet!

Also last week, we finally replaced our old furniture. Our new furniture arrived on Thursday! I will post more on that soon when I can share our full makeover of our Living Room! For those that know me well, they know I have a passion for interior design and I absolutely love sharing our projects and makeovers! To be continued.......

Onto this week, this evening we had a Meetup with our SAHM's group at Build-A-Bear! I was as excited(maybe even more)as the kids were. I LOVE BAB!! Honestly, one of the best meetups we've had, though there have been many fun events. Leave it to my kids to have a choice of any "buddy" in the store and they go for the matching bears, in pink and blue of course! They also decided that they wanted their bears to be named after their name sakes. As much as they can drive me crazy, they can also make me laugh. Here are a couple of pics of the two of them enjoying their new "buddies"!

By the way, how awesome is it that BAB offers free bows for their bears! I'm thankful they do because BLL LOVES those bows!

All is caught up for now, as you can see, we didn't do much in the last two weeks. We sure did enjoy relaxing around the house though! Sometimes, when you have the opportunity, it nice to stay home and have do nothing days. Enjoy them while you can because it doesn't take life long to get you up and running again!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T15:49:00.001-06:00

As the first day of 2011 is upon us, the time has come to change the calendar over to a new year. Our calendar also serves as a memory keeper because every year I make our Family Calendars and send them to all the family as our annual family Christmas gift(btw note to family, if you are interested in having one too and we have not sent one, please let us know and we will make sure to send one your way). With the changing of the calendar today, I've become nostalgic. Please bear with me as I go down this road of nostalgia. I just find it so amazing how much our little family has changed in just the last three years of making the calendars, I wish I would've started making these just after Little Big Foot was born! Unfortunately I didn't know about the website, shutterfly.com, until after Baby Long Legs was born. I'll treasure what we do have though!

Front Cover, Our Annual Family Christmas photo.

January of 2009, 2010 and 2011

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Hope you enjoyed our little trip down nostalgia road and thank you for bearing with my Proud Mom Syndrome!

Also in honor of New Year's Day, I made a couple of pretty hair bows for BLL and her friend Ai. We all went to a New Year's Eve Party and of course BLL and her friend had to have fabulous hair bows to wear!

We all enjoyed our time at the Party and after midnight, it was time to head home and get two little tired babies to bed. It didn't take long for them to zonk out in the back of the car either once they were loaded. Record time I believe, it was really seconds after being buckled into their seats, they were asleep. Thankfully we had their blankies in the car for them to snuggle up to on the way home. When we arrived, LBF and BLL did not wake up when we took them out of the car. BLL slept in her clothes, but finally after placing LBF in bed, he woke and asked for PJs. He is so sweet!

Truly I was amazed how well they both handled being out so late, but we knew when it was time for BLL to go because she just started fussing and didn't stop until she passed out in the car. Poor kid. Definitely one of the best New Year's Eve time that we have had as a family of four! Happy New Year!!

Other Holiday Fun, Catching up

2010-12-29T22:45:00.001-06:00

Somewhere between Daddy's surgery, my Mom's surgery(she is doing well, by the way), and all the craziness of the Holidays approaching us, I have forgotten to do a post or two. I am going to take a moment to blog about all the fun things I had forgotten to share.

Our Niece, K, had her Fourth birthday party earlier this month. We all went to Funtastics to celebrate with her! Many of our family members have had birthday parties here, so Little Big Foot and Baby Long Legs are well acquainted with all the fun things there are to do, to somewhat of my dismay. I'm glad that they have become adventurous and confident, but I do worry about this place and some of the things there are to play on. I make sure that Daddy, myself or an Aunt is close to make sure they don't severely hurt themselves. Despite all of my nervousness, we all do have fun! Another benefit is that my kids are always exhausted after we play there!

Everyone playing in the foam pit. Daddy got himself stuck in here and I would be lying if I said that I didn't think it was somewhat hilarious! ;)

Time for cake!!

Also, a week before Christmas, we had a Christmas Party with our SAHM's group. Unfortunately this was the only photo from that night, as I was at Daddy's beck and call because he had only been discharged from the Hospital a few days before and on crutches. I was a busy Mommy that night! We still had fun and this Santa was the best I've seen, ever! We also were able to enjoy a great dinner provided by the group, which after a couple weeks of fast-food, this meal was what our family needed. A HUGE thank you to all the Families that helped to make the food, set up for the party, plan and clean up. You all did a fabulous job!

Also a bit of fun this month was the Lunar Eclipse on Winter Solstice. Yes, we stayed up just so we could see it! And of course, I had to take a picture :)

Last week we had the opportunity to attend a PAT event that a Mom in our group volunteers to put on for our group. With the help of our Organizers, there were fun crafts for the kids to do. I unfortunately didn't get a picture of my kids with theirs before they were destroyed, but I did get a quick snapshot of their gingerbread(aka graham cracker)houses. LBF decorated his all by himself this year! He did an awesome job! BLL had quite a lot of help, as she was more interested in eating the candy rather than decorating with it. Thank you to Heather for volunteering to do these events! My kids certainly enjoyed themselves and they were so excited to show Daddy their hard work.

Also while we were at this event, BLL managed to hurt her toe. I had to put her in a time-out because she was being a bully(I know, certainly not sweet little BLL!). I took her out into a hallway where we were by ourselves and placed her on a bench. Then I decided to go back into the main room to check on LBF. When I turned around I say her little fingers between the doors, I went to keep the doors from shutting on her fingers only to open the door on her poor little toe, of which she was barefoot because in a fit of rage she had decided to tear off her boots and socks. So there you have it, I'm a mean Mommy. Its looking like BLL toe nail will be falling off any day now, let us hope for a speedy recovery! Poor kid.

This wraps up all the fun we had before the fun of Christmas was upon us! I just love the excitement of the Holidays and I look forward to next year! Hope everyone has a fun and SAFE New Year's Eve and a Happy New Year!!

Christmas Morning Part 2

2010-12-26T21:27:00.000-06:00

Christmas Morning Part 1

2010-12-26T21:26:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-26T16:46:00.024-06:00

I know it's a day late, but YouTube isn't cooperating on the uploading of our video of Christmas Morning. I had attempted to blog yesterday, then decided to wait until I could get the video. I still am not able to upload the video at this time because we now need to reformat it. So much trouble just for a 10 minute video, but I promise I will get it up on here as soon as possible! I know there is lots of family out there just biding time to enjoy it ;) Until then, I will share the few photos that we snapped of our big day.

Christmas morning started like most do! We heard the pitter patter of four little feet going through the hallway. Once Little Big Foot had a good look at the tree he declared, "Santa came!" Then he pointed at the plate of cookies we left out and said "Look Mommy, Santa ate cookies and egg nog all gone!" He was super excited!! The look on his face was of pure surprise and happiness. LBF also said "Santa left stuff in our socks! Look Mommy, look!!" This Christmas, I finally get it. That magical feeling that you get from the look of excitement on your child's face. It's one of those moments that makes all the hard work of being a Parent, worth it. It can only be described as, magical!

Check out the stuff Santa left in their socks :D

After we finished opening the presents(all of which is on the video of course), it was time to open all that wonderful packaging. And by wonderful, I mean miserable. Why can't Santa pre-assemble? It would help all the Mommies and Daddies if he could just fit that in to wrapping gifts ;)

Baby Long Legs wanted to open her first Cabbage Patch Kid from Aunt A and Uncle H first! This was a surprise Cabbage Patch Kid, you had to open it to find out if it was a boy or girl. This one was a..........

A GIRL!

BLL couldn't wait to get her outfit on too!

Even BLL was starting to grasp the idea of Santa and presents this year. She had even asked a couple days ago, "Mommy, who is Santa? What he do?" BLL is definitely a thinker! Always full of questions!

LBF could not put the book about Planes down after he opened it! He and Daddy talked and looked at this book for about an hour(no exaggerating)! I would say that their Second Cousin H was right on the money when she picked this book. Thank you H!! I also learned that Daddy has a lot of knowledge on aircraft. I suppose it makes sense that he works in the Aircraft Industry ;)

Later that morning, Grama and Cousin A came by to bring a couple of gifts for LBF and BLL. LBF got his very first bike! He was so excited, he couldn't wait to take a ride! Too bad it was freezing outside with a slight dusting of snow, so we let him test it out in the hallway. BLL couldn't wait to get the baby doll out of hers. I think for the time being, that was her only concern when it came to her gift. BLL loves her babies! I have no doubt that she will be a little Mommy herself one very distant far off day.

After all of the fabulous gift opening and receiving of the morning, it came time to pick up toys and debris and get ready for our special Family Christmas Dinner. I just had to share a little snapshot of our table after is was set, as I thought it was just exceptional for us this year! This Christmas was good to us despite Daddy's surgery and all. Our dinner was made even more special by Grama making all the dinner and bringing it over to us. We had one very full table of food and family.

Once we were all full from dinner, Grama convinced Cousin A to take LBF out for his first ride of his bike. She had to help him at first, but............

He did get the hang of it and was proud to ride by himself!

Now BLL can ride her trike :)

Soon it became dark and too cold for the kids to be out, so all came in and we enjoyed some Pumpkin Pie topped with Cool Whip! Then Grama and Cousin A departed and it was time for two very tuckered out children to go off to bed.

Hope all had a wonderful Christmas full of magic and memories!! Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas Eve 2010

2010-12-25T00:45:00.002-06:00

What did we do on Christmas Eve to prepare for the big day? Well I'll show you with pictures! We started with watching a few movies and not all were the typical Christmas movies. We watched Toy Story 3, A Bug's Life and..........

How to Train Your Dragon. The kiddos also did their fair share of lazing about, as you can see.

Little Big Foot and Baby Long Legs had some fun playing with Daddy. They had the advantage being that Daddy was confined to the sofa this morning ;)

Then we had some fun picking on poor Jill here. She didn't seem to mind. She generally doesn't as long as she is getting some attention. Cute huh? LOL!

While the kiddos were occupied with their movies, I setup the table for our special family Christmas Dinner.

I also cleaned up our special Dinnerware for Christmas and have it setup for tomorrow! We are all so excited for Dinner tomorrow! Grama is preparing all the food and then joining us for our special dinner.

Then we setup for the Rice Crispy Houses while LBF and BLL took a brief nap. When they awoke, we all got ready to go see the lights at Heartsprings! They were beautiful!! I unfortunately don't have pictures of those, I was driving.

After our lights viewing, we came home and we started frosting LBF's and BLL's rice crispy houses.

Once Mommy finished frosting, LBF and BLLs started sticking their little candies onto their houses(or in BLLs case, eating their candy)

Once the candy was placed, we decided to take a moment to let the frosting dry and have LBF and BLL open their special Christmas Eve gifts from Mommy and Daddy. Sorry the video cuts off at the end, our camera ran out of space. Something I will remedy before tomorrow!

After LBF and BLL enjoyed opening their special gifts, we headed outside to put down the Reindeer Food!

Santa's Reindeer will be well fed this year!

Once Santa's Reindeer were taken care of, we came back inside to finish our Rice Crispy Treat Houses. It is now time to paint their houses, with their new buddies of course!

Finally they finished! Here are the end results. They both did a GREAT job, all by themselves this year! They are growing up too fast(I know I say that a lot, but seriously it just amazes me how much changes from year to year!)

Then we changed into our PJs and relaxed. LBF and BLL enjoyed watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

While the kiddos were watching Rudolph, Daddy whipped up some more cookies for Santa. After the show was over, LBF and BLL were more than happy to help set out the cookies and egg nog for Santa.

A quick snapshot of their matching Christmas PJs.

And now that brings us to the end of our evening, time to read our special Christmas books. LBF and BLL were so excited to read their books and then they were off to bed with Rudolph and Clarice in tow. They are still chattering back in forth and it's now midnight! Lets hope they settle down soon so that Santa can come for a visit and enjoy these tasty cookies and egg nog ;)

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas Eve and a very Merry Christmas! Hope the morning brings many happy memories for all!!

Going Wild!!

2010-12-23T00:35:00.001-06:00

My new hobby has consumed me! No really, I am constantly thinking about which hair bow to do next and some of my designs are going a bit on the WILD side, but in a good way! I also may have created a monster because Baby Long Legs likes to ask for the hair bows before I've even completed them! None the less, I have found it to be a somewhat relaxing hobby and has helped with my growing stress. I suppose you could call it, stress relief.

Also in my bow making venture, I have decided to make a couple of hair bows for a friend's daughters. The friend I speak of inspired the bow that I call, Rainbow Brite Hair Bow. I do hope that she and her daughters love it!!

Another hair bow that I hope they enjoy is this fabulous zebra print! I love it because it has such a different mix of colors. It's so girly without a bit of pink! Definitely my favorite so far!

Now this hair bow I made with BLL in mind! BLL LOVES anything pink! And this hair bow is pinkalicious!! BLL couldn't wait to put these in her hair, she was grabbing them off of the table before I could even put the alligator clip on. I won't lie, it made me smile. I'm just so happy to see her love the bows as much as I like seeing her wear them. I tell you too, it's funny to see Daddy suddenly taking pride in seeing his little girl wear them too! I was only going to make one and attach it to a stretchy headband, but Daddy insisted on making two. He said that he thought her pigtail look was cuter. I'm starting to think that Daughters have a way of bringing out the softer side of their Daddies, hmm.....Never in a million years did I ever think I would hear those words come from Daddy's mouth!

Here is BLL wearing her hair bows proudly, though she did all she could to make it very difficult to snap a photo. Most of the time these days, BLL refuses to take pictures and I have chosen not to force the issue for now. I'll just take the few shots that I can catch! She sure does look adorable though! No?

I sure hope you all enjoy my new hobby, but I'll try not to let it consume the blog ;) Please, if you enjoy the hair bows or have suggestions on them(or anything else for that matter), leave a comment. I do like hearing from everyone! Thank you!

Oink, Oink

2010-12-18T14:26:00.001-06:00

Boutique Hair Bows, Back at it Again!

2010-12-18T11:35:00.000-06:00

Yes that's right, I've gone back to making hair bows! I said I wouldn't, I also said they were too much work, that they were much easier to buy! Then I took a trip to McPherson and was re-inspired!! The final kicker was when we lost our second adorable hair pretty at Grandma and Grandpa's house over Thanksgiving. I really didn't want to drive to McPherson AGAIN. Don't get me wrong, I do want to go back again sometime, but not right now.

Tonight we have a Christmas Party to go to and I wanted something adorable for my very girly girl to wear ;) So I was stuck. I had to decide, am I going to make something or drive around town like a mad woman trying to find something. The answer, make something. Ok, I thought I was crazy for even considering making hair bows, especially at the last minute, but what choice did I have? I can't drive around town right now! Daddy is recovering from surgery and I have kids to take care of.

Finally I decided to do some research and not on a search site this time. I went to a real source of information, YouTube. They have videos of How To Make Boutique Hair Bows in abundance! After almost an hour an a half of watching How To videos, I decided that I finally had the know how. Here is the result of my research, studying, determined hard work and creativity. What do you think? I can't wait to see them in Baby Long Leg's hair!!

Breaking News!

2010-12-15T22:02:00.000-06:00

I know most are probably wanting to hear about Daddy and his hip replacement surgery, but I am going to talk more about that later.

The breaking news is, I've decided to change the nicknames of Bubbie and Boo. For some time now, I have thought that the nicknames of Bubbie and Boo are no longer fitting for my two hyper-active munchkins. To me, it just doesn't quite explain them or their personalities. Then I thought, how could I come up with a nickname that described their personality without being insulting or that would not offend them some time in the somewhat near future. So instead I decided to go with one of each of their most prominent features. As Bubbie has inherited Daddy's good understanding, Boo inherited Daddy's long legs. Though, I would have to say both of them have long legs! I will one day be the shortest in our family, I have no doubt. With that said, from this day forward Bubbie will now be referred to as Little Big Foot(aka LBF)and Boo will be Baby Long Legs(aka BLL). Hope you all enjoy the new names and also that it won't make things too confusing ;)

P.S. I will update tomorrow on Daddy after he has his PT visit. I will report that Daddy is doing well and happy to be home!

Christmas Card 2010

2010-12-06T14:04:00.003-06:00

Retro Plaid Christmas 5x7 folded card

Make a statement with custom Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Here is a little preview! Will arrive in mailboxes soon!

Gearing Up for the Holidays

2010-12-03T14:09:00.000-06:00

That time of year is upon us, it's time to send the Christmas cards, time for Christmas shopping and the crazy traffic that comes along with all the stress. It's amazing at how rude people become this time of year and all in the name of Christmas. It begs the question, is this really what is meant for the season? Are we forgetting the real meaning of Christmas? It used to be the season that brought out the best in people, but it would seem that has been lost.

Ok, now that I've got that out, onto the things that we are really here for. Also a time that is upon us, is Daddy's hip replacement surgery. I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about this or stressing about it. I've notice even I have become a little short tempered and cranky in this last week. Honestly I don't know how we are going to work everything out! I do know that I will need help with Bubbie and Boo. Thankfully for the day of the surgery, I have my Husband's family to watch them. It is already known, that Daddy will have to spend at least 3 days in the Hospital. I'm not sure if I will be able to visit him there, but a lot will count on kids and how tired they are. I may have to ask for some help on those days too, only time will tell. In the mean time, I running myself thin trying to get some things in order before Daddy's surgery so that we are geared up for the Holidays.

This evening, Daddy and I have arranged for the kids to spend an evening with their cousins so we can wrap up our Christmas shopping for the kids and make sure any loose ends are tied. My Mom will also be having surgery this month. Admittedly I had hope she would have been able to help with kids during this time, but she too will need time to heal and recover. Hopefully she will recover quickly and get back to all the things she enjoys soon! In the mean time, I will be taking everything one.day.at.a.time. It's all I can do! Please this Holiday season, keep our family in your thoughts and hope that we can all get back to regularly scheduled programming soon! I also will say, please be patient with me, as when I'm stressed I lash out at times and become very cranky. I ask that you please forgive me ahead of time? Also thank you to everyone that has offered to help and those who have wished us the best, we are thankful for all of you!

Happy Holidays! May your Holiday keep you stress free and bring out the best in others around you!

Christmas Eve 2009-The Video I Forgot to Share

2010-12-01T10:04:00.001-06:00

I had said I was going to share this video when I had the chance. Well almost a year later, here it is finally! Better late than never ;)

Enjoying Yet Another Unusually Nice Day

2010-11-21T23:32:00.001-06:00

Today was a lazy Sunday for our little family. We were also able to enjoy another unusually nice day! We had a high of 72! Even with the sun down, it is in the low 60's. Can't ask for a better day to play outside in the backyard, which is Bubbie and Boo's favorite pass time!

Trying to hitch a ride on the back of her own trike. I think Bubbie thinks it is for him ;) Maybe Santa will have to bring him one of his own, hehehe.

Bubbie was being ornery! That face cracks me up!!

He LOVES that trike, mostly at the cost of Boo never getting to ride.

Boo says, "Mom, not another picture!!"

The nice thing about this weather, is that it allowed me to get some work done outside! I was able to organize all the lawn furniture and kid's outdoor furniture. Once it was all in order, I put a tarp over it all to protect it until it's BBQ season again. It was a little saddening putting everything up, but at least we had a nice day to do so! They say we have a 'mild' Winter in store for us this year. With the way this weather has been most recently, I'm inclined to believe it!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas, Once Again

2010-11-17T14:55:00.000-06:00

Well it is getting closer to that time of the year again. In one week it will be Thanksgiving and then it becomes crunch time for finding and sending gifts. In an attempt to reduce some of the stress, we have already began to put up our Christmas decorations! Generally I wait until after Thanksgiving, but Daddy will be having his hip replacement surgery on Dec. 9. I thought we would give ourselves some to time to actually enjoy the decorations before things become stressful around here.

Also in an attempt to reduce stress this season, I've already started and completed our annual Family Photos Calendar gifts. I've also completed our Christmas Card and will be placing our order soon! In the spirit of the season of giving and family, here is a little teaser of what to expect in our Calendars and Christmas Cards this year. I hope you enjoy!

Morning Calls

2010-11-11T09:43:00.001-06:00

WARNING, this may be adorable overload ;)

Every morning, I am woken up by a certain little girl that likes to have conversations by herself and on occasion, sings :D This morning wasn't any different and I was finally able to capture it on video! It may be hard to see on the video, but as she sings, her brother is peacefully sleeping in his room just across the hallway(by the way, it's a tiny hallway). Hope you enjoy as much as I do!

Halloween 2010, Part II

2010-11-01T12:23:00.000-05:00

Sunday, Oct. 31, we went to our friend's house J&C's house in College Hill for a Halloween Party and Trick-or-Treating! We started out at J&C's house for some appetizers and let the kids run and play. Finally once it started getting dark out, we all went for some trick-or-treating. We only ended up going to a few houses, but Bubbie and Boo ended up with some pretty full buckets! Really on average with trick-or-treating, I think we've only made it to about 10 houses, at most, before Bubbie and Boo tired of walking. At least they always sleep well after! Once again I apologize for the pictures, we weren't sure if we were going trick-or-treating, so we forgot our camera, of course.

After we finished our trick-or-treating, we went back to J&C's house for some pumpkin, peanut soup. It was really tasty and super good after a cool night of walking! Only thing missing for me, was my Mom's hot apple cider! Mmmm hmm, how I miss those days! One of these days, I'll have to get the recipe and a percolator. As you may have guessed, all Bubbie and Boo want is candy. I will let them keep a few pieces and then the rest will have to magically disappear ;) After all, Christmas isn't too far away and that always brings all kinds of goodies!

The first house at the beginning of our evening of trick-or-treating!

Daddy was dressed as Napolian Dynomite! We have a close up photo that I will add later :D

No shortage of walking, good cardio!

As you can see, Bubbie and Boo were so excited, they moved at lightening speed!

Finally a photo with her Witch hat on! Too bad we didn't have the camera.

After we had dinner and the trick-or-treating, it was time to come home and hand out candy to our trick-or-treater! We decorated a little just for the occasion. Somewhere in this house I also have some spiderweb stuff, but we didn't get it out in time. I still thought it looked very festive though!

I hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween!!

Halloween 2010, Part I

2010-10-31T23:35:00.001-05:00

(Side note, please excuse some photos as with some, our phones were the only camera we had.)

This Satuday, October 30, we had one amazingly busy day! We started out with meeting Grama, Aunt M, Aunt M&M and cousins at The Old Cowtown Museum for a special Halloween Event they had featuring the Headless Horseman(of which we unfortunately never took a picture of despite seeing him several times). We also enjoyed taking a walk through one of their "Haunted Houses", but we didn't experience anything ;) Though is was only sometime around 2pm.

The kids also enjoyed taking several trips on the Wagon. They've taken so many trips on that Wagon, that our nephew Big G has the horses names memorized! I think that is all of the kids favorite at Cowtown. We also talked to a Scottish Couple, in character(convincingly might I add)about Haggis. Mmmm, sounds yummy, doesn't it! *add sarcasm here* It was a fun time!

Getting in line for the "kids in costume" parade.

Time for the Costume Contest! Neither of our kids won, but they both received lots of applause!

All the kids thought that it was pretty cool that this horse was painted like a skeleton!

Taking a walk through the barn. They also took a good look at the chickens, Bubbie and Boo liked that the chickens had feathery feet.

Our Nephew, Little G, LOVES brooms! It took some convincing that he couldn't take this one ;)

Bubbie flying like Buzz Lightyear

Bubbie still trying to fly with Boo following his lead!

Later, Saturday evening, we had a Halloween Party to attend at J&G's house. Bubbie and Boo always enjoy playing with their little one, K. K was Spiderman! A very cute one, might I add. We had two superheroes that night! We all also enjoyed lots of yummy food and goodies. Once we arrived home, it was around 11pm. Both Bubbie and Boo went to bed more than willingly and slept until almost 10am on Sunday! Which was nice for Mommy and Daddy! Not too many opportunities for sleeping in in this household. I would say that Bubbie and Boo enjoyed all the kids they were able to play with that night!

Boo dancing with the other kids and a few adults.

Also for this party, I made some Halloween Surprise Rice Crispy Treats! They were delicious, if I do say so myself :D What that wonderful treat includes is of course, marshmallows, rice crispies, Reese's peanut butter chips, milk chocolate chips and special Halloween marshmallows. I really outdid myself with those, yum, yum!

Saturday was a crazy, fun filled day for our little family and I had two tuckered out kids that were probably also on a good sugar buzz! No shortage of candy this week. We will have to eat very healthy the rest of the week to make up for this weekend. Wish us luck!

Don't worry, more to come! In the next post I will share a few Halloween Party photos and trick-or-treating!

Night of the Living Zoo 2010

2010-10-25T17:50:00.001-05:00

This last Saturday, we went to Night of the Living Zoo with Grama and Uncle J. We didn't get very many photos from the event, but the few we did take were adorable!

Bubbie aka Buzz Lightyear, attempted Pumpkin Bowling with Grama. He seemed to enjoy giving that a shot or two, though a bit timid. Boo aka Witchy poo on the other hand had her mind on one thing, getting candy! Bubbie and Boo had fun! This year too, they started to get the hang of putting out their buckets to receive candy. The rest of the night, they kept asking for candy so we were nice and let each pick out two pieces. Thankfully, with all the walking they did, they were exhausted and fell asleep on the drive home. More fun activities to come next weekend!

Halloween Surprise!

2010-10-19T21:19:00.001-05:00

Surprise, our blog has a new Halloween theme! I just love this time of year! All the wonderful scents of fall, hot apple cider, pumpkin spice, caramel apple and the fresh crisp scent in the air. Mmmmm!! I also love the the smell of Halloween candy, you know when you walk past the bowl full of candy. It's the best time of the year!

October always proves to be a busy month for our little family. Bubbie's birthday, pumpkin patches and Halloween parties. All the more reasons to love Fall! Speaking of Halloween parties, we had one this last Sunday with our SAHM's group. This last weekend was a busy one and we enjoyed every minute of it! Boo Bash 2010 proved to be a fun party. Here are a few photos from our fun night.

We owe a big thank you to our SAHM's group for organizing the party and their hard work. We also owe a big thank you to Grandma for buying Bubbie's costume and making Boo's. They were both adorable! Hopefully next year my kids will be more into doing crafts, but they very much enjoyed the trick or treating and running around playing with the other kids. I will leave you with what Bubbie kept saying the entire night. "I dress like Buzz Lightyear and everyone like me!" I think he was right about that ;)

Bubbie's Fourth Birthday Party

2010-10-17T23:09:00.001-05:00

This Saturday, October 16, we had a Birthday Party for Bubbie at the Great Plains Transportation Museum. Officially, Bubbie will be 4 on the 19th. Honestly I don't know where this last year went and I can't believe my baby is turning 4!

Bubbie you have gone from my little tiny bundle of joy to a handsome little boy! Most recently you have begun to speak in complete sentences and share some deep thoughts. You impress me everyday with how clever you are. We can't fool you any longer! You also have a great sense of humor and you make your Dad and I laugh all the time with the things you come up with. I love watching your imagination and creativity bloom everyday and I look forward to watching you grow in the coming years that will likely go by too quickly. Most of all we love to celebrate you, you are truly a blessing from God. I am thankful that I was chosen to be your Mom. We love you Bubbie!! Happy Birthday Bubbie!

Love,

Daddy, Mommy and Boo

Bubbie decided that he wanted to do Thomas the Train theme and what better a place to have it at than a Train Museum! Here he is putting on his Conductor hat. Grandma had to help of course because Bubbie's head wasn't quite big enough to fill it out.

When Bubbie first heard the Train Whistle, he was scared. After he heard it a couple of time, he was ok with it and even excited about the train going by.

Here I am, setting up for the Party. This silly centerpiece didn't have very good instructions. Finally my Niece came over to give me a hand.

Playing on the train that looks over W. Douglas. They enjoyed watching the cars go under the bridge.

View looking down over W. Douglas

Bubbie and Daddy talking across to each other(or rather yelling :))

Boo climbing on the seat. Surprisingly she really enjoyed going through the trains and playing.

Bubbie and one of his friends. These two were like two peas in a pod.

Mommy being silly and giving Bubbie some bunny ears. Bubbie thought it was hilarious!

The most important part of a party, the cake! It's tradition to buy cakes from Cheri's Bakery here in town and we always get banana flavor with vanilla creme filling, yum yum! Bubbie's and Boo's favorite flavor.

Bubbie is thinking, "Can we eat the cake yet?" Time to blow out the candles!

Now time to cut the cake and eat it too!

Can you tell he is enjoying his cake? He couldn't wait to dig into it!

Bubbie and his friends and family enjoyed climbing around the caboose that we had the party on. As well as many other trains. I also think Bubbie liked checking out the equipment on the trains. Overall I would say that the party turned out very well and the staff was very easy and nice to work with. After a party, the best part is hearing everyone say that they had a great time. I definitely think we will be making more trips to this Museum!

Also this year we decided to do things a little differently. After some talking, we decided it would be best to let Bubbie open his gifts at home. I would say that the only issue with this, is that once Bubbie dug into his gifts, we didn't know what came from who! :0 We were able to figure out a couple of the gifts, but some we weren't sure. Please if you attended the party, leave a comment or you can message me through FB and let us know which gift you gave. I want to make sure I get the right Thank You notes out to the right giver.

Enjoying one of his Matchbox Planes that he received. Funny enough the plane that this is a model of has a family connection!

Trying on the robe that Grandma gave him. He looks like a little man! How cute!!

Thank you to all our friends and family that came out to help us celebrate, we enjoyed your company!

A Small Breath of Relief

2010-10-16T20:22:00.000-05:00

Thankfully for now, I can say that we don't have to worry about losing our house or health insurance. Now the wait begins to hear the results of the layoffs. We are happy for now! Thank you to all of you that prayed and thank you to God for listening. Until further news.......

Big Changes Are Coming to Our Little Family

2010-10-14T20:15:00.001-05:00

I'm sure, many have heard news about HBC, there is so much that many don't know. Most I can't share on a public blog. I will share though that HBC is negotiating a new contract even though there is still a year left on the old contract. It will be up for a vote to the Union this Saturday. I'm more upset by them because they are trying to pass this off as saving jobs, but in reality, no matter if the Union accepts the contract, there will be around 1,000 people laid off from HBC. This news will be announced after the information of the vote comes out. This is not common knowledge. With such a high number, we don't know if Daddy's job will be safe at this time.

On top of this news, if the new contract is approved. Well I will just sum it up as reality will hit us SMACK in the face. Simply put, we will lose everything that we have worked so hard for in the last 5 years. Our home included. We are angry and we are scared of what the future brings.

With this news comes the reality that we have to move. Where? We don't know at this time. When? It will likely be after the first of the year. Something else I haven't spoken about, is that Daddy is having a full hip replacement surgery in December. No action can be taken until after Daddy heals from his surgery. Hopefully we will get good news after this weekend, until then we just have to pray that God will help us to get through these tough times. Big changes come our way........

Applejack Pumpkin Patch 2010 and Other Random Fun

2010-10-11T14:50:00.000-05:00

Bubbie and Boo with their cousins, A, Little G and Big G

Now back to the bread and butter of this blog, the kids! Yesterday we went to Applejack Pumpkin Patch with Granddad, Grandmom, Aunt M, Aunt MM and cousins. For the most part the kids had fun! Unfortunately we never were able to make it out to the Pumpkin Patch because we were rained out. Bubbie was disappointed because all he talked about was going and picking out a pumpkin, but Granddad made it up to him and bought him a nice pumpkin. That made Bubbie's day! All Boo cared about on the other hand, was bouncing on the big bounce puddle thing(official name, don't you know)and eating kettle corn. That girl only thinks about her appetite. I think she must take after her Mother ;)

Bubbie and Boo feeding the adorable goats with Aunt MM

Another view of Bubbie, Boo and cousins(well at least one cousin)feeding the goats. Along with Daddy, Aunt M and myself.

Boo with her cousin, Little G

Bubbie bouncing, this was all of the kid's favorite!

Waiting under the shelter, during the first round of rain

Enjoying a ride on the Train

Mmmm, funnel cake! My weakness!! Bubbie enjoyed it too!

Boo enjoying her Aunt MM's attention.

Despite the chilly, wet weather. We enjoyed our day at the Pumpkin Patch and hopefully next year the weather will be more agreeable!

Now for the random fun!

Saturday, late morning, the kid's asked for chocolate milk. I decided to make it a little more fun by topping it off with some whipped cream. After they finished, they thought they were hilarious! Poor Daddy also ended up in the photo napping, hehe.

Showing off their whipped cream mustaches!

Sunday, after we came home from the Pumpkin Patch, Bubbie decided to do some drawing. He was inspired by the double rainbow we saw after the rain cleared. Bubbie was so proud of his drawings that he asked me to take pictures of each and every one! I'm sure you can start to see where this is heading.

His first rainbow

His interpretation of a double rainbow

When asked what this was a drawing of, he replied, "A sailboat!"

Then when asked about this one, he replied, "A baby."

And this one, well what do you think he answered?

"Lots of toys!" Hmmm, I wonder what he has on his mind. Do you think he may be just a little bit excited about his Birthday Party next weekend? Maybe just a little.

Just Want to Share Some of My Progress!

2010-10-10T00:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry to blog only about 'ME', but I feel I've earned a little time to talk about the small little progress that I've made by kicking diet and exercise into high gear! It's comparison time!

Here is a picture of me in late August, at the beginning of starting my new workout routine and diet plan.

And here is a very recent photo! Amazingly, I've only lost 3lbs., but I've dropped one jean size! I can definitely see the difference in my face. I hope to start losing more weight soon! Keep your fingers crossed!! When struggling with PCOS(polycystic ovarian syndrome) and Hypoglycemia, weight loss doesn't come as easy as it does to the average Joe. As many with PCOS know! I like to say that I haven't lost much in the weight department because I'm building so much muscle, hehehe! Hopefully that is true!

I recently met a new friend and she works out a lot! I regret that I can't make it over to work out with her, mainly because of Daddy being on Second Shift. Hopefully though, with Daddy being back on First things will change. Anyway, now that I went off of my point. Honestly, this friend had reinspired me to get back onto the wagon of diet and exercise. As most who know me, I've struggled for 2 years to lose any weight. It has led to being on again and off again. To eventually just plain giving up! Well finally I've come to a point where I'm tired of being tired and not having the energy to keep up with my kids. I'm tired of looking in the mirror and putting myself down because of not liking what I see. I'm done with that. The time has come to stop placing blame on PCOS/circumstances and really knowing that the reason I didn't like what I saw was no one's fault, but my own. I now realize that I'm stronger than I ever thought I could be. I've pushed through my boundaries and haven't let pain stop me. I can only hope that this new strength I've found, perseveres!

On the other hand, when it comes to the scale. Well lets just say, I would LOVE to drop kick it out of the nearest window!! Because of this, I've decided not to let the scale dictate how I feel. Honestly, I feel wonderful!! I still need coffee, but I do have more energy than I've had in years! I've decided that instead of setting a goal on the scale, that I would rather set a goal of a jean size. And what size, you may ask, do I want to be? My reply, I would love to be a size 8! I'm only one size away :) So here is to reaching my goal!

10 Year Reunion

2010-10-07T19:14:00.001-05:00

This last weekend(if you can believe it)was my 10 year High School Reunion! Now officially I didn't graduate from the particular HS that this was for because I ended up switching HS my Junior year, but I went to school with the people from NHS for several years, from 3rd grade to Sophomore year. For me, it felt like I was a part of the class. Especially since my friend JC(pictured with me above)and I still hang out and talk like old times! I also have several other friends from NHS that I'm also still in contact with.

Honestly, back in the days when I was at CMS and NHS, I was teased, picked on and had several untrue rumors spread about me. Mainly because of a certain girl in a grade below me, was jealous and she made sure to make my life difficult. Thankfully she is also someone that I'll never see again or ever care to see again. To put it plainly, I did not enjoy my childhood/teenage years. Without getting into specifics, I was thankful for the friends I did have and still do have! You know "true" friends when they stick with you over 15 plus years! They know me better than just about anyone, except my Husband perhaps ;)

Given my past experiences, you probably guessed how nervous I was to go back. Or even ask why I would want to! I think part of me just wanted to see how everyone had turned out. I know I've changed a lot, of course given what has happened in the last 10 years(seriously could last me a lifetime), how could I not change?! After all, if I've changed, surely they have to. Right? Well honestly I don't know. For the few I spoke to, I enjoyed. Honestly when my friend JC and I arrived at the Reunion dinner, sans kids(best part!), all my nervousness had passed. I realized that they are all just people! We were all awkward and some were nervous. Amazing! For me it has finally put the hurts and pains of the past behind me and now I feel like I can finally figure out who I am. I've also decided that all that pain I put up with growing up really has made me stronger! It also has given me the ability to read people!

It's funny to get all of this from a Reunion. Basically put, I'm glad I faced my past head on and truly enjoyed the experience. This experience also brought back a lot of good memories that I had forgotten. It brings back the old saying that you always hear, it's easier to remember the negative than it is to remember the positive. So true! I can't wait until the next Reunion, if they'll have me! Also a huge thank you to my bestie JC for going with me! I enjoyed spending all day Saturday with you sans kids, it was like old times. Some things never change and I'm thankful for that!

More Catching Up

2010-09-29T00:32:00.000-05:00

Here is our catching up, part II! I know you're excited ;)

Having a relaxing moment before the craziness of the day started. Look how cute they are all snuggled up with each other! How sweet!!

This last Saturday was Free Museum Day and we chose Museum of World Treasures, which I will add was a rip off! Lesson learned not to attend this museum on Free Museum Day, reason is they are not free. Yes, that's right, they are not free. It was free for Daddy and I, but we had to pay $14 for the kids admission. They charge the same price for ALL kids regardless of age. Seriously ridiculous!! Especially considering the kids didn't care to see most of the Museum. They did enjoy the Dinosaurs and the kid's play area as you will see in photos to follow.

This is probably the best part of the Museum, a piece of the Berlin Wall. Seriously awesome! I suppose in some ways, it did make paying $14 worth it(maybe). I just kept staring at this in awe of it's mere presence. How often do you get to be this close to something so significant and huge in World History?! Sorry, I'm kind of a nerd in that way. I do love World History :)

In the following photos below, you will see where we spent the rest of our time in the Museum. Obviously this was Bubbie and Boo's favorite part.

Overall, despite feeling a sense of being ripped off and being asked to leave the third floor(where the play area was)because they were at capacity and were closing down the third floor, I'd say the kids had fun and that is really what's important.

Sunday we attended the McConnell AFB Open House, aka Air Show. It would seem that Saturday brought Fall with it and by Sunday, well I think you can tell by the photos how chilly it was! Let me just say, BRRR!! I wished I had one of those nice fleece lined hoodies that day! Thankfully though by that afternoon it had warmed up enough to be comfortable. We arrived at the Air Show around 10am and stayed until almost 5pm. That's right, we spent the whole day! Sadly with that, I had sunblock in my purse, but not once did it occur to me to put any on and I had my hair pulled back. I'm sure you can see where this is going. I received one of the worse sunburns I've had since I was a kid! Did you know that your ears could swell up from a sunburn? I didn't, but I know now! My ears literally swelled to twice their size, thankfully a friend told me about Apple Cider Vinegar and it took care of the swelling. Thankfully the kids only had a very minor sunburn on their cheeks because they were lucky enough to have the canopy on their stroller that blocked the sun for most of their day.

Daddy was impressed by this plane, so much so it was the first picture of the day!

The kids donning their ear plugs, everything was too loud for them. A lot of it scared them, especially Boo so we made sure not to hang around the flight line too much.

You can barely see, but they had a jet powered port-o-potty! Hilarious!! It could get up to 72mph!

An attempted shot of the B1 I think. All the planes moved too fast to really get any good shots.

Boo kept getting scared every time the B1 flew over, so I told her if she stayed under the canopy she would be safe. As you can see she took me literally. Every time she heard a plane go over she would pull the canopy down over her! Honestly though by the end she started pointing at the planes and would get excited. Until the Thunderbirds, that is another story that I will get to soon!

Bubbie had managed to snag a Thunderbirds mag. that he carried throughout the show. He just kept looking through it and wouldn't let anyone else hold it. It was so cute to see how he enjoyed carrying that around! Like he was so proud of himself.

Bubbie really enjoyed touring some of the planes with Daddy! Boo not so much, but she still had a smile on her face.

Daddy replacing Bubbie's ear plug in preparation for some noisy planes.

We had stayed to watch the Thunderbirds, but after 5 seconds the kids were done. They were both scared when the Thunderbirds started to perform, they didn't like the sound and vibration of them flying over. Bubbie will tell you, "The Thunderbirds are awesome, but they are too loud!" Since seeing the Thunderbirds, every time Bubbie sees a contrail in the sky he tells us that the Thunderbirds did that. They are all he has talked about for the last three days! Surprising considering how much he didn't enjoy the show, but at least it would seem he did find some enjoyment from the Air Show.

Below was our Monday after such a busy weekend. The kids crashed even after a long nights sleep. Monday was a down day for us, much needed if I do say so myself. I did need to go out and stock up on groceries, but it came to putting it off until today. Sometimes you just have to, that and when you just aren't feeling well. Thankfully we are all feeling better today and ready for the week.

Hope this all didn't overwhelm anyone and hopefully I will keep up on the blog more often! If not, just keep on me and please don't give up on me, LOL! Until the next post, adios!

A Lot of Catching Up To Do

2010-09-28T23:11:00.000-05:00

Honestly I have so many pictures from the activities from the last three weeks to upload! I've been meaning to share and talk about them earlier, but as you know my excuse, there just isn't enough "ME" time these days! On that subject, I do have some GOOD NEWS to share!! Daddy will be starting back on First Shift on October 11!! We are so EXCITED!!

Ok, onto the pictures! I think I will start by uploading the photos and trying to talk a little about each on what we did. Please bear with me and we shall get through this swimmingly and you will get to enjoy some adorable photos :)

The two photos above go back to our Fort Building Video, which I did share at an earlier time. These photos were so cute though, that I had to share!

The following photos are from a trip to the Zoo. We went to the Zoo to celebrate Granddad's Birthday on the weekend of the 12th. We had fun and weather wasn't too bad either!

On this trip, Bubbie and Boo were able to feed the giraffes for the FIRST time! I didn't get any photos of it myself, but Granddad did and I will upload those as soon I get them downloaded. Bubbie still talks about it three weeks later, that is how much he enjoyed it! He says, " That was cool!"

Aunt MM was being silly after Bubbie didn't want to sit on the Tiger statue. Bubbie thought she was hilarious! It was too cute!!

On this particular trip, Bubbie kept asking to see the Tigers. We kept telling him that we would get to the Tigers soon and once we did, he was excited! Above is a photo I liked because almost all of the cousins are in it with Bubbie and Boo.

Aunt MM posing and Granddad.

Above is a photo of Bubbie, who is suppose to be working on his workbook for Home School, and Boo. While Bubbie and I do our Home School, I give Boo a coloring book to work on. Though this time particular he was working on coloring shapes with the designated color, but he wasn't liking having to share the crayons.

This is just the beginning of the photos I have to share, more to come......

Slacking Off

2010-09-22T11:04:00.000-05:00

I know I've been slacking on the blog. You know the usual excuse is, not enough TIME! Honestly it does feel like I am burning the candle at both ends these days. Between Speech Therapy four times a week, driving Daddy to work 4-6 times a week and working out 5 days/week. I'm exhausted!! As I may have mentioned, Daddy has been working the second shift(SS). His 60 days are up, but they are still forcing him to stay on SS. Which is completely wrong being the Man that took his spot on First has less seniority than Daddy and also in need of training. Though as Aaron's boss has mentioned, they are trying to get rid of the "walking wounded", so I am growing suspicious of them attempting to make him quit his job. Which all really doesn't matter at this point, because once they cut their pay and benefits, they are moving all the work to Mexico and Daddy will be out of a job by the end of next year. More on that later....

Anywho, a typical evening for me goes like this. Drop Daddy off at work, clean and pick up the house, make dinner, get kids ready for bed, which includes brushing teeth, taking vitamin, putting on PJs and reading a book. Then it's off to bed and I put in two hours of workout time. My workout consists of a 30-40 min. video and 60 min. of the stationery bike. Sometimes I will push myself to do an extra 10 min. on top of my hour. Once all that is completed, it is generally around 10pm. Sometimes later if I had been interrupted during my workout, i.e. dogs need out, cat wants in, kid wakes up. Generally after my workout I have to wash off the sweat and then I like to catch up on my TV shows on DVR. On a general night I'm getting to bed somewhere between 12am-1am. What can I say, I enjoy a moment of quiet "ME" time, but it comes at the cost of losing sleep. All of this gives me great respect for a "single Mom". I don't know how they do it! Though admittedly I feel like a single Mom these days because in reality, we only get a couple of hours to spend with Daddy on any given work day. If he works overtime(OT), then it's even less. I think the only reason I haven't lost my sanity is because of my working out, LOL! Good friends help too!

Now on to the kids. They are growing and talking, talking back even! My favorite!!(Can you detect the sarcasm in that one?) The kids constantly ask, "Where's Daddy?", to which I reply that he is at work. This almost always get the response of "Oh" in a sad tone. They miss Daddy. Though on a positive note, Daddy has been able to attend Speech Therapy and that does make Bubbie happy. Which brings me onto Bubbies speech. His speech has grown by leaps and bounds. Bubbie has even begun to speak in full sentence form now. Oh! And did I mention he knows all his colors?! We have started doing some Homeschooling and are we are beginning to learn ABC's and identifying shapes. Bubbie knows his shapes too! His counting has also come a long ways. Before long he will be ready for Kindergarten!

Boo is also speaking in full sentence form, to which I find myself saying "Is this really possible?" Boo likes to repeat everything she hears and I mean everything! Just last week we were in the car and drove by a Fire Station, Boo says, "There's a Fire Truck Daddy, did you see it?" We were blown away with that and began laughing hysterically! Reason is, we drive by this Fire Station at least twice a week and every time I say, "Look, Fire Truck, did you see it?" The one time I didn't, Boo does! Then today Bubbie was on the potty and Boo thought that he did a "Great job!" She repeated it several times! Also yesterday, we had just came home and Boo had one of her baby dolls, which she plays with constantly, in her room. I came into the hallway just as she was coming out of her room and she turned to me as she was closing the door and said, "Shhh, the baby is sleeping." It was all I could do not to crack up laughing!! It was so cute too!! I didn't know imaginative play would start so soon. I was thinking that this generally started around 3.5yrs and Boo is not even three yet! She amazes me everyday! Honestly, both of my kids do! You just never know from one day to the next what they will come out with. It does keep life exciting though!

Fort Building

2010-09-10T23:13:00.000-05:00

Party Time

2010-08-23T11:19:00.000-05:00

This last Saturday, we celebrated my Nephew's Fourth Birthday at Old Cowtown! G had his own Cowboy to take him and his friends around for the day and sing Happy Birthday. I had no idea that they did birthdays, but it made for a fun Birthday Party!! Of course I would take any opportunity to go to Cowtown, I don't know why, but its one of my favorite places to visit.

We had spent a good majority of the day touring Cowtown with our tour guide Cowboy. The kids got to look at and touch some exhibits. There are also cats around Cowtown, so the kids, that weren't allergic, were able to pet one famous cat named Bandit. Then we finished off with Sarsaparilla and cake. OH, how I LOVE thee Sarsaparilla!! I don't think I could ever get enough! It's right up there with fresh licorice, for me anyway. Yum, yum!!

Now for a few photos of G's birthday party....

Roping one very skinny Bull :)

Time for school!

Grandma E getting a little cuddle time

Time for a Wagon Ride

Little Men walking with the Little Ladies

Boo was starting to get hungry, can you tell? Poor tired out little girl.

G had his own seat on stage for everyone to sing Happy Birthday! He is a little Cowboy!

Cowtown always makes for a fun day, but this day was especially so! Celebrating G's birthday and having the whole place to the Birthday Party AND our very own tour guide for the day, what more could you ask for? Hope you had a great Birthday G!

Update: Potty Training and Other Fun

2010-08-11T21:36:00.002-05:00

This last week we did many things! We worked on Potty Training Boo, took a trip to Riverside Park and gave Boo her first hairstyle. First I'll talk a tiny bit on Boo's new haircut. I've waited a while for the sides of her hair to grow out and catch up to the back of her hair. Finally the time came and we trimmed it up into a little bob style. I will miss putting her hair up in pigtails for a little while, but she doesn't like me to do that these days anyway and she rips them out about as quick as I put them in, so I'm sure SHE will be happier. Hopefully this will help to get her hair to thicken up too!

Second, we went to the park last week since Bubbie and Boo have so much pent up energy these days. I feel so bad, because I'm trying to find a balance between making sure they spend time with Daddy and still getting out for some social fun. So far, I wouldn't say I've found that balance. We only get a couple of hours to spend with Daddy in the late morning and afternoon time, so it's been difficult to make it to any of the fun activities of the SAHM's group. I have missed attending meetups so BADLY! I also really miss my Mommy time that I would get in the evening to go out with friends. I MISS you all! Hopefully soon Daddy will be back on first shift, so that we all get more time to do the things we want. Daddy also has been required to work a ton of overtime on the weekends, which also adds to the stress level around here and doesn't make much time for getting together with friends. As you can see, it has been a time of many transitions and not the good kind. Can't wait to get back to the old routine!

In the picture with the slide, Bubbie was so sweet! He waited for Boo to get on the slide and I counted to three and said GO! Great picture! Bubbie is such a great big brother!

Boo's new do!

Third is Potty Training. I'm happy to report that PT has come along rather swimmingly and we are officially DIAPER FREE in this house!! To say that I'm excited doesn't fully express my feelings. It is such a sense of freedom to know I never have to change another diaper! I am quite shocked really at how easy this has gone. For a couple of weeks, Boo had her share of accidents, but she has gone 4 days now without one accident! Let up hope I didn't just jinx it by saying this, hehehe. Personally I'm so happy that Boo made this process so much easier than Bubbie did, but overall when it comes to PT we have been very lucky! I will say though, that I don't expect Boo to stay dry through the entire night yet, so she does sleep with a Pull-up on, but she does nap in underwear and stays dry! I am so PROUD of my little girl, she has done a GREAT job!! Congrat Boo on becoming a full fledged big girl!

Well there you have it, everything you need to know about what has been going on around here for the last week. Hope you enjoyed it! Until the next post....

Splashing Good Time!

2010-08-04T23:40:00.002-05:00

I think the photos here pretty well explain the fun we had with Daddy this afternoon! Especially Bubbie. He has been trying to convince his Daddy to play in the pool with him for a week now. Every time Daddy would say that he would sit next to the pool and Bubbie would just get the saddest look on his face. I told Daddy to stop making me have to look at that poor miserable expression and just get in the pool already, hehehe! He did and the kids had a blast!!

Daddy thought it would be funny to put water down Bubbie shorts, then......

Bubbie decided he would do it himself!

Of course I had to get in on the fun! Bubbie likes it when you swing his legs back and forth in the water. As you can see we ALL had a SPLASHING GOOD Time!!

Potty Training: Second Time Around

2010-07-26T22:37:00.002-05:00

WARNING:

This Post contains talk about poop. You've been warned!

Boo LOVES Tinkerbell! Anything Tinkerbell. She is also a fan of the Disney Princesses, but Tinkerbell definitely ranks first. Boo decided that she was ready for Potty Training(PT), for two days she refused to poop in her diaper. The poor kid was hurting so badly from holding her poo, that I felt so sorry for her. I had wished that I could do anything to help her! Finally I decided to buy a little potty for her. After about an hour of coaxing, she had her first poop on the little potty!! As a reward, I took her to Target and bought her a Tinkerbell nightgown. She thinks the nightgown is the best EVER!! Funny enough though for the last 3 days now, she had insisted on using the big potty instead of the little one. I encourage her to do what she pleases, so long as she continues to PT.

Its amazing really at how well Boo has taken to PT. Certainly more willing than her Brother ever was! Though I was also pretty lucky with Bubbie, he also PT fairly easily overall. Honestly though I thought this would be easier the second time around, but I was WRONG! It's still just as frustrating as it was the first time around, but I am loving the fact that we are DONE with DIAPERS!! Is there anything better than that?! Given Boo does have to wear a Pull-Up during the night, but still cheaper than buying diapers every week!

Boo started PT last Thursday evening, since we started she has had only a couple of accidents. Once in the car when she fell asleep in the car(to be expected), the other two were during naptime(also to be expected). Overall though she is doing exceptionally well!! Today though was not one of her best, so hopefully tomorrow she will find her motivation again. I love though how she feels the need to go potty every couple of minutes, even without us even being in the bathroom! Boo seems like such a natural and let us hope that this continues.

Another Year and Another Birthday

2010-07-21T00:08:00.004-05:00

Today(Tuesday, sorry didn't notice the time)marks another year passed and another year older. It's the day I celebrate my 28th birthday. It's amazing how quickly it seems that these birthdays just keep sneaking up on me. It reminds me of how much I've been told to treasure and enjoy life because it goes by quickly. I would laugh it off as a naive young(err younger)woman, but only now I am starting to understand. I find a lot of things I used to laugh at in the past, have proven to be true. Guess that is how life works, after all we have to live to become wise and those are wise words indeed. So here is to another year passed and to another year wiser!

For my birthday, we decided to go to my favorite bakery after Bubbie's Speech Therapy. Cake from Cheri's Bakery is worth driving across town for! Truth be told, I chose the cake because it was pretty. Wouldn't have mattered what flavor it was. This one was a vanilla cake with vanilla creme filling! Normally I am a chocolate person all the way, but this cake was delicious!! While I picked out my cake, we let Bubbie and Boo each pick a cookie. They were very delighted and devoured their cookies in seconds!

Bubbie admiring Mommy's cake. Though according to him, it would taste better with Pirates on it.;)

Once we enjoyed cake, it was time for Daddy to go to work. I believe I owe an explanation on this. Daddy's job has temporarily moved him to Second Shift while they are training some new guy(actually a bump in)on First Shift, on the job that Daddy does. We are not a happy family at the current time. With this shift, it has thrown off everything. The kids have started having more tantrums and just plain wanting more attention. They miss Daddy at bed time. It has been rough on all of us. We do the best we can and try to make the most of the time we get to spend with Daddy, but he is definitely missed by Bubbie and Boo. We just have to make it, at most, a couple of months and then we will have to adjust to Daddy being back on First Shift. I can't wait until then! As I like to say most recently, a day LIVED is a day SURVIVED!!

What We Won't Do for Our Kids

2010-07-11T23:35:00.002-05:00

It's official! We have become like many Parent's in that we now have a child obsessed with TOY STORY. Bubbie wants to wear nothing but his Toy Story t-shirts, so of course we had to buy him a couple tees because he can't wear the same shirt EVERYDAY. Bubbie's Grandma bought him his first TS3 tee and ever since he has been hooked! Well yesterday Daddy and I made the mistake of promising him a stuffed Buzz Lightyear if he behaved during dinner and ate. Bubbie was so excited that he cleaned his plate!! And we didn't have one tantrum during dinner. Honestly I can't remember how long it's been since we had a nice enjoyable dinner without Bubbie being upset about having to eat! Well as you know we had to keep our promise, though admittedly I didn't think Bubbie would pull it off. We arrived at one Target to get a stuffed Buzz, only to find that they were sold out. Being that it was close to closing time, we rushed to another Target. Again sold out. At this point I asked if Bubbie would like the stuffed Woody, his answer, "NO, I want Buzz Lightyear!" So I took him to the toy aisle, but he didn't want a Buzz Lightyear toy either. So the search continued.

Finally we found ourselves at a Wal-Mart. Yea, that's right. The dreaded Wally World. When one is desperate, what choice do you have? After all, the last thing I wanted was to tell my Son that everyone was sold out and see his sad, disappointed face. Especially when I knew, thanks to Wal-Mart commercials taking over my TV, that they had a large stock of stuffed Buzz Lightyears. Sure enough, they had stuffed Buzz Lightyears, but Bubbie decided that he wanted a different Buzz instead, shown below in the picture. By the way, Buzz slept in Bubbie's bed last night. Problem was that Buzz kept flying in the air, so it was difficult for Bubbie to sleep. Finally they both became very worn out.

After almost two hours of driving around town and ending up on the West Side of town, it begs the question, "What we won't do for our kids?"

Also this last week, we were getting some groceries at, you probably guessed it, Target. I decided to walk by the kid's clothing section where I spotted the new stock of Genuine Kids clothing. I really had no intentions of buying clothes for the kids, but when I saw an outfit for Boo, it was just too cute to pass up! After I was doing so good about not buying so many clothes for the kids too! I love leggings, so it's really hard to pass up the opportunity to buy them for Boo as well. Sadly I liked her new leggings so MUCH, that I went back and bought a second pair in a different color/pattern. The addiction is starting again!

Wearing her new top that I bought. With cute hairbows too!!

Adorable!!

Showing off his Toy Story t-shirt from Grandma

Now to share some cute animal pictures.

SMILE Pumpkin!!

Look at me, I'm the keeper of the animals!

Also today, Sunday, Daddy and I celebrate seven years of marriage! It's amazing that it's been seven years already! We've accomplished a lot in seven years and had our up's and more than our share of down's. Somehow we seem to come through everything stronger! So here is to another year and hopefully it will be full of more up's!!

Playing Around

2010-07-09T11:25:00.001-05:00

Min-pin versus Cat, who wins? Cat, dog or is it the kid?

Fourth of July 2010, Poppers

2010-07-06T12:38:00.000-05:00