The next American Idol. :)

If this works, it is video I took on my phone of The Girl singing at home in her new microphone the song that the 3 and 4 yr olds sang at church in the kids Christmas program.

CHRISTMAS!

I'm seriously excited for this Christmas; not because I'm getting anything special but because it is going to be so much fun with the kids. I was smart and bought things on clearance or at a really good sale and hid them so I wasn't scrambling for money and shopping time in December. I had a friend who needed to get rid of a lot of very gently used baby/toddler toys so I was able to snatch those up for cheap for The Boy. I figure he really doesn't know the difference and I'd much rather not going into debt to buy him stuff he isn't going to remember anyway. Plus I couldn't not get him stuff b/c then The Girl would think it is all about her and well, she already thinks that so I didn't want to encourage her! lol She is going to have a blast opening everything anyway and The Boy is going to love playing in all the paper! :)
C got his present(s) last week; 2 new suits, 2 belts, and a new pair of shoes. I'm still trying to decide if I want a kindle or a nook. I'm going to wait until the stores clear and go play with both and then make my decision.
I was able to score a new Keurig machine and I AM SO EXCITED about it. I didn't realize how not well my old one was until I was in NY at Thanksgiving time and used a friends; theirs is QUIET and my old one was so NOT quiet, also I had to hold onto the cup while it was brewing or it would dance all over the place. The new one is WONDERFUL, it is QUIET, it has a bigger water reservoir, it is QUIET, and it has more cup sizes to brew. Have I mentioned that it is QUIET? :)
I always get a little bummed when we are alone on Christmas Eve and Christmas; I really miss my family. I would love to see my kiddos playing with their cousins amidst a huge pile of new toys and wrapping paper everywhere. Right now my house is so quiet b/c it is just us doing what we do every day, lounging, watching movies, and playing with toys. (of course, I'm not doing those things, I'm cleaning the house, cooking and doing laundry).

Oh well, I promise to take pictures of tomorrow's paper frenzy.
Merry Christmas everyone!

HA!

So that "update" on The Girl never happened. OY! We are having computer issues in our home right now and it is best that I do not sit at the desktop computer b/c if takes one more blessed second to upload something I will throw it out a window; the same goes for the laptop just disconnecting itself from the wireless internet and then not reconnecting unless you restart the thing!
Shortly after the last blog post, the kids had colds, we went to NY for Thanksgiving and now the holidays are upon us, so yeah, I'm a little overwhelmed and busy. Right now, The Boy is having 'issues', we've been changing a whole lot of smelly diapers since Friday, but he is still eating normally and he isn't running a fever so I don't know what his deal is. Friday night we found out the hard way that our high chair is broken, The Boy fell out of it FLAT ON HIS FACE while I was a mere 2 feet away. This resulted in massive amounts of crying, a split lip, a fat lip, and a scratch down his cheek. Saturday morning he woke up w/ a messy diaper AND a new cough! WHOO HOOO!! :( Poor guy is really being put through the wringer!
The Girl is still awesome although sometimes she has quite the sassy mouth and we are not huge fans of this development. We were the happy recipients of a hand me down trampoline a few weeks ago and boy does The Girl LOVE it! She would jump for hours if you let her. I really should have taken a picture of her a few weeks ago after we had play date here. She was COVERED in black from the trampoline, black feet, black leggings and black all over her dress that I had taken the tags off of just that morning. Thank God for Shout, rinse cycles, and multiple runs through the washing machine, (oh and bath tubs) b/c now everything is back to its original color. :)

We've been doing a bit of extra driving at night, taking side roads and such to spend a few extra minutes looking at "PRISMAS" LIGHTS! If people could hear The Girls excitement about "PRISMAS" LIGHTS! they would leave them up all year long. She loves ANYTHING, even if it is just one strand of lights across someones eaves, to her it is SO! COOL!!! Makes me wish I did more than I did.

We have C home with us until January, evidently even corporate travel is more expensive during the holidays, so yay for us! :) It is wonderful having him home all this time, but we are getting mighty spoiled and I'm trying not to think about what it will be like when he is back to traveling. :(

Ok, it is my turn to hold The Boy now so C can head off to church.

~til next time!

Not organized at all!

In a desperate attempt at playing catch up for some of you guys this post will be super jumbled as I just upload and post stuff that pops into my head!

Sooooooooo, right now the boy is a week shy of 9 months, he still only has the 2 bottom teeth, he is eating us out of house and home, and he is crawling "commando" style on his belly EVERYWHERE! I went into his room on Sunday morning and he was sitting up in the crib, and today I caught him pulling himself up on the toy box; he fell over immediately but he did pull himself up. Here are a few shots of him that I took over the last few days.

This is him one day into month 8:
This jumper thing was his FAVORITE activity before he learned the commando crawl, not he only tolerates it as something else to do, (probably only b/c his arms are tired!)




Here he is with the little girl that I watch, she is 3 months older than him. Outside the window is The Girl and the little boy that I watch who is 6 months younger than her. Evidently, I have GIANTS for children.



Checking out all the toys.






He's even cute with spit up on his face! :)






This one is from this morning, look at how proud he is standing there! :)




Ok, so maybe tomorrow or Friday I will be able to post an update on The Girl. I lose a lot of time going thru pictures b/c I get so caught up in all of them. :)

~Til next time!

I'll take what I can get.

Officially, C should be on a flight to NJ right now, but instead he is lying on the couch under a quilt suffering from a temp of 101 and feeling pretty miserable. He sent a text to his supervisor and told him the scoop he said for C to call the travel dept and ask them what to do but once he figured that out he needed to call back and tell him b/c the supervisor wasn't flying in this week either b/c his wife was sick. Becuz of the way the tickets are purchased they can't just reschedule to another day (like Monday or something), so they just cancel the trip all together, and we get to keep him here for another week! :) Once he is feeling better it will be nice, but right now he is pretty pathetic. On a side note, I made some super yummy chicken and dumplings today, but sadly, I burned my tongue b/c I couldn't wait for it to cool off before I dove into a big ole bowl of them. :( I did a major dusting in the family room and got my fall decor put out, even tho its in the mid 80's here. Totally doesn't feel like fall to me!
The Boy is rolling all over the place. He also stops on his belly and flails his arms and legs and totally looks like a seal. LOL He EATS and EATS and EATS!!! He's still a fab sleeper which is sooooooo good for me especially when I am a on my own here.
The Girl is pretty much the same, smart and sassy. I could handle a lot less sass though. I need to find some kind of program to enroll her in to give her something to do. I think she is going stir crazy here... at least I know I am!

Ok, so I skipped a month....

We've been busy.
My life is a whirlwind when C is out of town, I'm sooooo busy and tired from being busy that I just crash every moment that I can.
We went on vacation (which really isn't a vacation for me but I won't whine about that right now)in a small east TX town that had a resort that is affiliated with our timeshare place. We didn't go to our regular timeshare place b/c I didn't feel like swimming with oil or the toxin that they put in the water to clear up the oil and this was the only thing available within driving range. It was actually really nice. We didn't have cell service and you had to really go out of your way to get internet access, so we really got to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and just be with 'us' for a week. You would think that maybe a (former) scrapbooker would have taken some pictures, and I did, about 5 of them as a matter of fact! :) They are boring though so I probably won't share them here. :)
We have made it to the part where C only goes out of town every other week, so YAY! on that. He's home this week. I'm cooking. A LOT. Which means the 8# I've lost in the weeks that he has not been home will find me again. :( But really, I've missed real food, it is so good. I'm tired of english muffins and/or chicken nuggets.
I had other things I was going to write about here but I've totally forgotten them. IF they come back to me, I'll try to either get them on the blog or at least on paper to add later.

~Til next time!

misc pix from the almost recent past

Introducing "KIKI", (I don't know where she got that name from, but to a few friends it actually means someone. ;) ) our build a bear birthday bear. I had a coupon and she got money from Aunt P for her birthday, she could have picked ANY animal in the joint... she picked the cheapest one they had! If only she would do that when I am really on a budget! lol



And now for a VERY RARE find... a photo of Me and C! This was from his (surprise) sunset birthday cruise that I set up with some friends. It was sooooooooooo super nice and relaxing. We totally need to do it again. :)




This is where C set The Boy down for his nap, over the weekend. I'm surprised Duke stuck around for as long as he did.



We thought about hitting Meremac Caverns on our way back from St Louis in July, but the tour was 90 minutes and they don't allow strollers; instead we killed some time in the gift shop.



Okie dokie, so I think that is all for now; we have a trip coming up so there might be more pix in the future! :)

~Til next time!

We had a party and she turned 3!!!!!

I really can't believe that The Girl is three years old now. It doesn't seem like that long ago that I found out I was pregnant and now I'm supposed to say that she is a preschooler! She's soooo big and yet still a little baby at the same time. We had a party at a gymnastics center, it was going to be something different, it would be inside (out of the triple digit heat) and they were offering 1/2 off for August bday party's so for me it seemed like a win-win scenario.
At first, she played shy, fingers in her mouth and everything, she eventually warmed up if Daddy was with her to do all the motions and then she was having a blast and didn't want to go home. So pretty much, she behaved just like a three year old! :)

Saturday morning she came downstairs to this:

"Her Princess doors" as they are now called,(and yes, it is still up. Daddy's not in town, so I'm not doing anything to upset her!)



Her smile couldn't be any more fake! Punk!



At her 1st bday party we discovered her sensitivity to food coloring, so we have a 'party cake' and a 'birthday girl cake'. (little note: we will do this FOREVER now for all bday parties... I LOVE that the birthday person only blows their germs on their own food! Everyone should take up this tradition! :) )

Party cake:



Birthday girl cake: (free from food coloring!)



Shy 3yr old with fingers in her mouth: (it could have been worse, she could have cried and not participated at all) I'm counting my blessings.



Feeling more ok now that Daddy is holding her hand:



She's doing it all by herself!!! :)




Totally having fun and enjoying herself! :) YAY!





They did a whole obstacle course thing too, but I didn't get pix b/c I was playing too. :) A friend did though, so if I ever get those I just might share them with you. :)

She hit the princess mother-lode in the gift department. Makes me want to have a birthday party for myself. :)

Then we did gifts at home, these are from Aunt V and mommy and daddy. :) We got a bike from Aunt D and Uncle R a few weeks ago, I need to get better pictures of that. We also went to build a bear with money from Aunt P, but pix of that are on another camera (if the kids stay asleep I'll get to post that too). Aunt Stacy and Uncle Bryan sent stuff too but we opened that early. LOL








and that reaction was to this:







Guess what we played with first???




and yes, we had to take a bath too!



and The Boy? how did he fare?.... well he got a princess wand (I did ROCK the party favors if I do say so myself!) and he LOVES it and C R I E S if you take it away, so don't do that ok????

Here we go again...

C's company :insert LOOOOOOOOOOOONG story: needs to move him to a different team for budget reasons, the only one that they can find for him right now is in New Jersey. Sooooooooo, the schedule will be that he leaves on Sundays and comes back on Thursdays.
I already have a migraine. :(

The Girlisms

I usually just post these golden nuggets to facebook, but I've realized they will get lost there so I'm bringing them here for 'posterity'. :)

A few weeks ago, The Girl asked C for something and he asked her if there was a magic word that could make that happen. Her response? "Bippity, boppity, boo!"

The other night she was asking for a nuk (pacifier), I told her she already had one in her mouth, she said she wanted 2. I said, but you only have one mouth! She replied, "but I have 2 lips!". Yes, I gave her another nuk. (She's fully aware that when she turns 3, we are bringing the nuk's to the dr to give to the babies. We'll see how that actually goes down! LOL)

Yesterday in the car on the way to church, she blurts out "Schobert will be mad at us." I asked her why she said that and she said, because we aren't at church yet. I told her we were on our way and she yells out "don't be mad Schobert, we are on our way!"

She turns 3 in two weeks, it's only going to get more amazing from here!

just checking.

and you guys passed. ;)
So I was kidding about the not blogging anymore thing. :)
I am going to try to do this once a week. Daily is just too much for me and monthly is simply not enough for me either, I think I can hit the weekly goal though so that should be good enough for everyone! :) Feel free to bug me via email if I fall off the blogging wagon again. :)

We are heading out of town in the am for a quick weekend jaunt to my aunt's place in South TX; so the high temps AND humidity should make me erupt in spontaneous combustion!

We spent the 4th of July in St Louis. We had a really good time, it was great to see friends that we haven't seen in forever. I'm hoping to post a few fun pix from that excursion.

Here are some random pix that I will try to narrate for you:
The Girl and the boy that I watch, praying before they ate lunch. I was cutting J's sandwich when I heard The Girl say, "Let's pray" and thankfully my camera was right there on the counter and I was able to catch this gem. :)



When I showed his mom this picture she said "where is J's food?" lol

The Boy fell asleep while we were setting up the kiddie pool; no crying, no fussing, just put his head down and fell asleep. lol



This is The Boy and his 'girlfriend'. She is the daughter of some friends of ours in St Louis and was born 2 weeks after him.






ok, I think that's all I have for now....

~Til next time!

WHAT????

No comments on the pictures!??!!? That's it! I'm not blogging anymore!



































I wonder who will miss me???

Photoshoot!

Got some good ones! :)
This is for those of you who haven't already seen these on facebook.