Awww I miss it!

So I just went and read some old posts and looked at some pictures and realized that I miss blogging. Who'da thunk? :)
I don't know that I'll be able to catch up from September so I will just start with from now...
Christmas! WOW!!! I've ALWAYS loved Christmas. I love the decorations, the food, getting together with family & friends and of course presents. I love giving just as much (maybe more even) than receiving!
I knew that it would be hard to Christmas shop for the kids b/c I always have them so all year long as I found stuff and if I was able to get out on my own I'd buy things that I'd find on sale and 'whatnot' and tuck it away in a closet or attic. (As I'm typing this, I just realized that I forgot to get The Boys dump truck that I got him back in June on clearance for like $3 down from the attic) Well once I got (what I thought was ALL) the stuff together, we realized the kids were going to have one crazy huge Christmas. In fact, one of the things I got The Girl, we decided not to give to her right now, we are going to save it for her birthday. :) After it was all wrapped and set around the tree I asked C what he thought and he said "we look rich". LOL Yes it was too much STUFF but it was crazy fun though!
Sunday didn't turn out at all like I saw in my head. We had planned to go to church in the am and then come home and let the kids open their gifts. Weeeeeeellllll, the alarm clock didn't go off at 7:30 like we needed it to, C woke up at 9:11 & then woke me up. We decided that he and The Girl would go to church and that the Boy and I would stay home since there was no way that the 4 of us would be able to get ready and leave the house in 20 minutes. The Girl didn't even remember that it was Christmas and was out the door w/ her daddy w/out even seeing the presents. The Boy and I hung out in the house, he did catch sight of "melmo" slippers hanging from his stocking so I let him wear them.
When C and The Girl got home though, she knew what the deal was by then (I'm sure people at church asked her about her Christmas). In the past, she was slow about opening presents and wanted to play with whatever she opened right then so it became an all day process. That wasn't the case this year. She tore through that paper like it was a race to the finish. The Boy however adopted the girls old method of opening and playing right away, so he still had stuff to open all day long.

Side note:
We had a friend with us, we've spent every Christmas with her since 2007. Her dad passed away in Feb of 2007 and her mom remarried this summer and moved away but she wasn't able to go visit b/c of work the next day. So we enjoyed having that extra set of hands now that there are two kids needing things opened and supervision at the same time. lol We were invited to dinner at a friends house, who have 2 kids S and G's ages, so the kids were able to have a blast while the grownups got to actually hold conversations! YAY! This Christmas dinner had to be the first time I didn't have lasagna or turkey for Christmas dinner. We had gumbo. It was my first time. I actually liked it! (It wasn't my favorite food but I'd eat it again.) I'm a sucker for tradition though so I'm pretty sure when Christmas dinner is in my control it will be either lasagna or turkey for me! :)

The Girl ALMOST spent the night with her friend, but we are thinking that at the last minute she had a major cause of nerves and she pulled out in the most dramatic way possible! She feigned illness!!! HELLO!?!?! She's 4!!!!! She pulled out all the stops though; gagging, crying, saying her belly hurt, sitting on the potty.... it was quite the show. As soon as we were able to convince her to get out of the bathroom b/c we were leaving.... she was fine and running around and wanted to give her friend her present and totally acting like nothing was wrong. I had to chase her downstairs TWICE to get her to actually leave. CRAZINESS I tell ya!!!

Here they are opening some gifts from Grandpa and Nanna-Beth:





Christmas present time! :)
The final product:








The Boy would hand me a present to open if it was "too well" wrapped. (good thing I got lazy after wrapping for a while b/c I left little openings for him to grab.)












This is a FAVORITE of hers:


Can't you tell??? LOL
She also got a "kids nook" that we let her open before bed on Christmas eve. It is actually a Leap Frog leap pad. On it she can play games, read books (have them read to her) it is an inter active touch screen thing and it is AWESOME!

And one of his favorites:




I'd LOVE to show you more pictures but we don't have any! This year C decided he was going to be the photographer and well, that didn't work out very well. He got too caught up in all the excitement and the camera got forgotten about. (I kinda did too or I would have grabbed it and started snapping away.)

We had a blast with the kids and I wish I could do this with them everyday! :) (sorta!)

Today we are off to visit the family that I used to be a nanny for when we lived in St Louis. They have family about 45 minutes from us and they come down once or twice a year. It works out great, we get to visit them too! :)

~til next time!

Once upon a time....

I used to blog. When I didn't have kids and I thought I had something to say then. Then I had a kid and had a lot to say and many pictures to put up but not as much time to get it out there. Then I had a second kid and now I'm pretty much lucky to take a daily shower. Even now, I have a baby (I'm babysitting for someone and really I don't miss the baby stage AT ALL) sleeping on my couch, a 19 month old eating dry cereal in my recliner and a 4 yr old yelling at me from upstairs b/c she needs help with her panties. (She doesn't really, she just doesn't do mornings very well.) I am leaning on the kitchen counter typing and HOPING that my laptop doesn't decide to disconnect from the internet on me, otherwise I will have to reboot and then I will lose the 5 sentences that I've typed. I can't tell you how many blog posts that I've 'lost' b/c of this temperamental computer.
So let's see what you've missed out on since May....
Um, it has been HOT and DRY in TX but really that is just so old news now and I don't really want to relive it anymore.
We looked at schools for the girl to do a year of preschool before Kindergarten, fell IN LOVE with one but it is WAY out of our budget. We've decided while it would be nice to get her used to the idea of getting up and out of the house for school we really just can't afford to pay to send her anywhere. So she's going to continue to hang with us and we are all going to LOVE it. :)
I got to so on a 9 day vacation sans kids and hubby... I so needed the down time and it was AMAZINGLY AWESOME. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I missed everyone but really needed to do this for all of us. They did just fine without me. C has a few more gray hairs but they make him look distinguished. :)
The Girl was in a wedding over the summer and looked absolutely GORGEOUS! I'll have to see if I can get a picture of her on here (eventually). I was the photographer so I have a million pictures of that day. (I won't ever do that again, WAY to nerve wracking for me!) She will also be in another wedding in January.
The Girl had a birthday. We requested in lieu of gifts or gift cards to specific places that family donate to the swing set/play structure fund and YAY! they all came through, we made our purchase and it was delivered 2 weeks ago. Now we just need to get it set up. C has been working (at the office) for the past month and will continue to until the end of October. He has been getting home LATE and even working on Saturdays so getting it put together and installed is a challenge. HOWEVER, remember how I mentioned I was babysitting????? Well, the dad of the baby is pretty handy and I happened to mention yesterday to the mom that this swing set thing is becoming a challenge and asked her if her husband could do it and how much it would cost me; she said how about we swap it for babysitting this week. SO YAY!!!! Looks like next weekend the swing set will be installed (now watch it rain). I'm so excited that it will get done before November and it won't cost me any more money out of my pocket. WOOT! WOOT!
The Boy is trying so hard to talk to us and it is incredibly cute we just wish we knew what he was saying.
C entered his SENIOR year of college!!!!! YAY! He is doing so awesome and I am so incredibly proud of him.

That pretty much sums up the last few months in a nut shell...

I'm going to try and get on here more often. I have a friend who blogs a picture and a few sentences a day... I might try that out and see how it goes. :)

~Til next time! Be careful, and don't hurt yourself! ;)

I'll never catch up...

so since I spend my days making sure no one goes out the dog door (BOY) or falls off the tugboat in the sunroom (GIRL) and trying to make food fit for consumption, and having clean clothes for us to wear I don't blog and by the time I do get a few minutes to sit down I have forgotten what it was that I may have possibly wanted to blog about.

So instead you are getting pictures, since I still do manage to take those on occasion! :)

This is what we refer to as his "office":





Sometimes The Girl goes in there too... (keep in mind she NEVER did that before he showed he that it was possible!)


This is what my cuties looked like on Easter this year:



and "The Boys" at church on Easter:



and this is what happens when you ask a 3 yr old to take your picture:











Yeah, maybe that will be better next year. LOL

Then there is this kind, with the self timer on the camera... I always look like "COMEONALREADY!!!"



Get ready for some cuteness overload...









She likes to play "Mommy" (note the coffee cup LOL)





Ok, so that should hold you over for like a week or more, right? :)

The Boy and The Girl

are as different as night and day. I mean seriously, you hear people say it all the time and you (at least I do/did) think 'really? I mean it's is a baby/toddler/kid how different can they be???
OH. MY. WORD.
Where should I start? He eats more, he's louder, he makes bigger messes, he throws more, he gets dirtier... I'm sure there are more things I could list but he's only 14 months old!
The Boy is not a night owl like his sister, for that we are grateful; thankfully he is also not an extremely early bird. he generally will wake between 8-9:30am and he wakes up HAPPY!!!! He wakes up and plays w/ the stuff in his crib and talks and makes noises for quite a while, he hardly ever wakes up crying. The Girl on the other hand she used to wake up crying every. single. day. Now she wakes up and and whines and boo hoos and asks Where's Daddy? if he isn't home then there are tears, but if he is then at least there aren't any tears (yet).
He is ALL BOY! He LOVES balls and cars and trucks. He can already climb up onto the trampoline by himself (that was learned on accident). He LOVES the trampoline (so does his sister though...) At 14 months The Girl was totally into Sesame Street (and probably some other shows that I seemed to have blocked from my memory) but this kid couldn't care less about what shows up on the screen. He'll clap and smile for the theme song of Little Einsteins but that's about it. He will watch "the God" movie more than any other video but even that doesn't hold his interest anymore. Have I mentioned the climbing??? He is a stinking MONKEY!
He's super fun and has a great laugh and he's even signing... a little later than The Girl did, but in his defense we weren't really pushing/teaching it like we did with her.
He wants so badly to be a big kid and gets super upset when he can't do something that the others are doing.

So bottom line is that these guys are keeping me on my toes!!!

I scrapped....

and now I have the bug to do more scrapping... with pictures! This is the few pages I did for a new Circle Journal that I am in.

First of all, I haven't scrapped in way over a year AND I haven't bought anything new in that long either. I'm super "rusty" and most of my inks/markers/pens have dried up. :(

I have no idea why the pictures are sideways.... especially since I didn't take them that way and they do not show up that way on my computer other than when I look at the blog page. WEIRD!!!

1st Haircut!

Ok, so a before pic would be good, but you can see the "before" in his bday pics. :)
I was dreading this momentous occasion for a couple of reasons, 1) the 1st haircut seems to take away the look 'baby-ness' and I just wasn't ready for him to be a toddler yet and 2) b/c he is a squirmy-wormy and I was afraid he'd get his ear cut off or something. ;)
I was super worried about him being still b/c well, he's NEVER still; but he did SO GOOD! We went to this place that is geared for kids, instead of regular barber chairs they had a fighter jet, a jeep, a motorcycle and something pink but I can't remember what it was. The Boy was PERFECT. He sat still like a statue and the lady was real quick so it worked out beautifully.













and for the finished product... for now you'll have to just wait... unless you saw my pix on fb. :)

We had a party!

The Boy had is birthday bash on Saturday. It didn't wind up being quite as large as The Girl's 1st birthday party, but it was still very nice. Aunt D and Uncle R and their 2 doggers came up for the weekend too. So that was super nice, we haven't seen them in a couple of months. Aunt D made The Boy a quilt (his 1st official one, he's been using The Girl's) it is WAY COOL!!!
He wasn't all that interested in the cake, I finally had to poke my finger in it and put some in his mouth. He then tried to do it a little bit on his own, but really wasn't into it. He did manage to throw the whole thing on the floor though... no pic of that, I had to scoop it up before the dogs got to it.
The cakes were made by a friend of mine and she did and AMAZING job!!! She copied the graphic that was on the plates and stuff. So totally cool and yummy too! :)
The Girl didn't make it into many pictures b/c she was outside on the trampoline all day. It was the first day that she's been able to get out there in like 2 weeks, plus she had friends to play on it with her! :)

Just got The Boy's hair cut and had some pix taken too! So here comes a whole bunch of pictures! :)
























Gonna have to do the haircut pix later.... The Boy wants some (all) of my attention now.