Lunch...a little too late.

By showing you this picture I am thereby forfeiting my running for Mother of the Year Award. However, it's highly unlikely that I won't do so sometime in the next day again so here's the picture for your viewing pleasure.

One day I put Elise in her chair for lunch. I walked away to put away the laundry and came back to this...apparently she was a little bit tired.

Standing

Elise is now 15 months-old. No, she is not walking. However she is finally standing. She will now pull herself up on the ottoman and stand there for an hour just playing with the clickers, pour out her cheerios, whatever. Hopefully she will be walking soon because we now will have no pants to pass down to the next child. She doesn't crawl in the traditional sense of crawling, she scoots herself along on her butt, and I have to say she's pretty darn quick--but it's pretty hard on pants!

The Valentine's Day that Keeps on Giving

If you have a dog, you know "the sound". It's the sound that happens directly before the dog barfs on your carpet. The other morning I was happily snoozing away when, abrupty I was awaken by..."the sound". Right then and there I had to make a choice: 1-Do I get up immediately and clean up the mess before it saturates the carpet? OR 2-Do I go back to sleep and try to pretend I didn't just hear that and deal with it later? I decided to go with option 2. I mean, barf will always be there when you wake up.

So later on in the morning when I actually had succeeded in forgetting about the barf incident I noticed a purple blob on the floor in my room. Upon further inspection I realized what it was. Tom (our dog) had apparently gotten into Robbie's candy stash and swallowed whole a foil-wrapped chocolate heart. I guess it didn't go down so smoothly because up it came almost fully intact, purple foil and all. Oh the joys. Guess we'll have to have Mike the carpet guy come out again soon.

Monster Craze

Up until two weeks ago, I never knew what "Monster Jam" was. Maybe a Monsters dress-up group? Some kind of party sponsored by Monster drink? No, Monster Jam is a monster truck show/competition. And now "we" are obsessed with it as a family.

Our friend Craig found a deal on tickets and a few guys took their boys. So far it has been the most memorable thing Robbie has done in his life. He was so infatuated with it, they stayed there until 10:30 at night, and on the 45 minute drive home all three boys in the car stayed awake talking about Grave Digger, their favorite monster truck. Apparently Robbie even made up a song about Grave Digger on the way home. Their tickets included "pitt passes" so they got to go down and look at all of the monster trucks up close. Monster Jam will now be an annual tradition in our family and I think next year we may all go and take Elise. (I think it's a toss-up as to who had more fun: the little boys, or the dads.)


The next day Robbie could not stop talking about the show so Rob pulled up a video on the internet and all three of them sat around the messy armoire watching the video for quite a while.

It's so much fun to see your kids just enjoy something so much. No one can explain that to you until you have your own.

Robbie Turned Four!

It's really hard to believe that my first born has turned four!! Rob was out of town on Robbie's actual birth day so we celebrated on Sunday night before with pizza and presents. And then we played his birthday games for two hours and I have to say that Shoots and Ladders is the most stupid game in the world. Seriously. Don't buy it, it's lame.

We've decided not to have "big" parties for the kids every year. So this was Robbie's off year so we invited a few friends over for lunch on his birthday day. The kids had so much fun playing. Robbie had requested a dragon cake....not just once. He had asked for a dragon cake for months and months. So what do you do? Say--no? Sorry that's your one request but you're getting white cupcakes with plain frosting? NO No. Not here, no way. Because I'm a cheapie I googled a cake and made my own which was somewhat of a time trap and nightmarish, but it turned out in the end and he thought it was cool which made it all worthwhile.

He was SOOO thrilled to get a card with money from Mona Boo AND a box from Grammy IN THE MAIL, JUST for him on his birthday. I took him to Toys R Us and let him pick a new Transformer with the check from Grammy and then I bought him several new t-shirts for summer, which he didn't realize was with his birthday money from Grammy but--hey, his math isn't that advanced yet. With Mona and Papa Boo's money we got him a new bike. If you actually follow my blog you'll know that he got a bike for Christmas too. But with my frugal-planning ahead personality I think I planned a little too far ahead and the poor guy couldn't even ride the thing without crying. SO Thanks to the Boo's we took Robbie to Wal-Mart last night and let him pick a bike that is his size. He has ridden it all day and going to bed tonight he was asking if he could ride it in the morning. So, thanks for the generous birthday money!!! He loves it. We're keeping the bigger bike for later so he should be set in the bike department for quite a while.

Christmas Morning at Home

Here are a few pics of our Christmas here--Christmas morning at home with the kiddos. They had fun!

New Years Reso--what?

I refuse to make a list of my New Year's Resolutions this year. It's insulting. I just can't get it right. Thankfully I know a God who meets me where I am and gives me a gazillion second chances. So I am not going to write down my ideas to work out, eat healthy, and read my Bible every day. I'm more of a Monday Resolutions kind of gal. Almost every Monday actually. I do really well Monday-Wednesday....then I start to slide into the weekend (AKA slide face-first into the Culver's drive-through). Then I repent of my calorie sins on Sunday and vow to do better Monday. Repeat. So instead of making a list on paper, I will continue with my mental lists of Monday Resolutions. It seems to not be working for me but whatever. My pants are kind-of fitting after Christmas.