Christmas Card Outtakes...

I decided to go with "simple" for our Christmas Cards this year. By simple I mean, buy a card where you just slide a photo in. Actually, I decided that two Christmases ago (2007) and ended up not sending out cards, so I still had the cards to use. Regardless, I thought it would be a cinch to take a cute photo of my kids! Ha, who was I kidding? I knew that I was setting myself up because it was before nap time and my little Mr. was a grump, but I still thought I could pull it off!

It actually started off that he was in a good mood and Sissy was grumpy.

Then it switched to Sissy being happy and him being grumpy. Somewhere along the line I may have threatened them that they wouldn't get to go to Grandma's house unless they both smiled for the camera! It may or may not have worked.
I may or may not have called Grandma and left a voicemail in front of them stating that Zander couldn't go to her house because he wasn't listening.

I may have gotten a few good shots.
I will reveal my top three picks at the end of the week.

Somebody Loves Steel Cut Oats

So much so that he has to try to get every last drop out of the bowl.

Not snotty nose above, just the milk that was in the bowl, also doesn't it look like he is holding an imaginary spoon? I know the photos are overexposed, way to bright, but I wanted to get him holding the bowl up so I didn't have time to think about lighting.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We decided that we should make some sugar cookies in honor of St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, by the time we decided it (today at noon) there were no cookie cutters or cut-out cookies with a St. Patrick's Day theme. So, we had to improvise...

Green cookies ready for the oven: Green frosting:

Now I just need some little leprechauns to decorate the cookies for me. Oh wait, I just happen to have two at my disposal!


This little leprechaun was VERY hard working!

The other one at the other hand seemed to eat more than he decorated!

Overall they did a great job:) Here are the finished products.

How did you all celebrate?

Tater goes to the dentist...

Last Friday Hannah, Alex and I all had dentist appointments. I was a little nervous going into this since both the kids and I had appointments. Whoever I talked to on the phone assured me that it would be fine. The kids could watch while I got my teeth cleaned and then it would be their turn. We went ahead and scheduled them all together.

Of course we got there and had to wait at least 45 minutes before going back to the chair. Then for some reason they decided to take Hannah next door to start with her. Which of course made Alex mad because he wanted to go to a chair too. Upon seeing his meltdown another assistant took him to his room. All this time I am sitting in my chair fuming, hello these are my kids ages 2 and 4, I don't think they are quite old enough to be in their own room! Thankfully, they were just distracting Alex and taking Hannah's x-rays.

Alex is so young (the offices youngest patient!) that the dentist wanted it to be a positive experience for him. So, I held him in my lap and the dentist counted his teeth. Alex thought he was such a big boy! Hannah on the other hand got the works.
She was so excited! She just loved going to the dentist. As you can see, she thought her experience was worth two thumbs up.

Football Game

How can Zander go from being so sweet and angelic:

to throwing a huge tantrum?

Easy take away his football game.


Since we watch a lot of football in this house, it as no surprise when Alex started calling everything to do with football "football game." A helmet is a football game, a football is a football game. Everything is a football game. Since we moved he has become really attached to a particular blanket. More specifically the tag on the blanket. He drags this thing around everywhere. When he is holding onto it and looking for his tag he sings "mytag, mytag, mytag!" He calls it his football game well, because it has a football on it. Obviously since he drags it around it gets pretty dirty so I have to wash it a lot. Hence the problem. Last week when I washed he he threw the biggest fit. Crying and screaming "I. WANT. MY. FOOTBALL GAME!" I tried giving him a different blanket, but he just threw it down and said "NO! I DON'T LIKE IT!" Fun times!

The next time I tried a different approach. I told him that I needed a big helper to help me with the laundry. Could he please help me? He was so excited that he didn't even realize we were washing his beloved football game. Crisis averted this week.

On a different but somewhat related subject I need help! Since before Christmas Zander has been waking up at night. Sometimes it is just once a night and other times it is multiple times! Usually, he wakes up and walks into our room. He (usually) doesn't cry, just comes to our room. I pick him up and lay him back down and that is that. However, sometimes he cries and screams and won't lay back down. It is a constant I lay him down, he gets up and repeat 20 times. I try not to talk to him, or give in when he asks for chocolate milk. Although, sometimes I am soooo tired that I feel like it is easier to just give him the milk rather then fighting it.

I do not know where this is coming from or how to stop it. Please give me your best advice. We are pretty tired over here because even though he is waking up multiple times that doesn't mean he is sleeping in. Nope, not my boy. He is usually up about the time Daddy gets up.

For Katie

You inspired me to take a few pictures of our ice.
The ice came first.

Then came the snow! It is so much fun living up north. The snow is still coming down (lightly) today and we are supposed to get more by the end of the weekend. My poor husband, I feel like all he does lately is shovel the driveway! Notice our street. We don't rate the snow-plow unless we get over three inches....at a time.

Mean is My Middle Name

A few weeks ago we had a light dusting of snow. Hannah begged me to let her go out and play. Being new to the city life, I was a little nervous about letting her go out by herself and I really did not want to go out. However, I agreed and watched her from the doors. Alex soon figured out what was going on and REALLY wanted to go out with Sissy. That is where I drew the line. There was no way that I could trust him to be out there without an adult. He however found this unreasonable. He soon found his hat and an old pair of gloves and put them on.

He stood at the door, alternating between watching Sissy and crying. Soon, he had enough and went upstairs to play. At least I thought that was what he was doing.

Not long after he went up, he came down with his pants. I'm sure he was thinking seriously Mommy! I got my hat, gloves and now my pants just let me go outside already!! (Side note, I am amazed that he managed to go upstairs, open his drawer, get out some pants and come back downstairs all the while leaving his mittens ON.)

PLEASE oh PLEASE can I go outside? See here are my pants!

Really, enough of this picture taking. Please just let me go outside and play with Sissy. Finally Daddy felt bad and took him out to play, in a t-shirt because he is cool like that.

All the while, I stayed nice and toasty warm in the house.

TAG

Here are the rules:

1. Choose the 4th folder where you store your pictures on your computer. No cheating {cropping, editing, etc.}!
2. Select the 4th picture in the folder.
3. Explain the picture.

4. Tag 4 people to do the same.

Since I can't follow the rules here are my pictures!

Ok, so it wasn't exactly the fourth folder, but the fourth folder was boring. So I went to the fourth Hannah folder. It was Tony's birthday in 2005. He had just returned from Iraq a few weeks prior. We went to the beach in the evening and took a ton of pictures of Hannah using different settings on the camera. This one is "Holding the Sun."

Here is the fourth picture from Alex's beach folder. Again, Tony had just returned from Iraq and we went to the beach for a day of fun while it was still warm.

Finally, here is the real fourth folder, fourth picture:
Marine Corps Ball 2005. Tony posing with our friend Matt.

I'm not sure who has/hasn't been tagged! So, if you have already been tagged, sorry. I tag Destini, Lisa, Mike, and Emily.

Are You Sick of This Yet?

If not, then I'm sure you will be after this post! I am a bit excited about this room because it is Zander's first REAL room. So, I took a lot of pictures. Mainly all of the pictures are for the grandparents so that they can see all of the details of Zander's room.

First, I want to give you the back story. When Zander was born we were living in NC in a smaller house. At the time I wanted itty-bitty Zander to be in our room, so he slept in a cradle in our room. Then Tony left for Iraq and we moved up to OH where the kids and I shared a room at my Mom's house (crazy I know). When Tony got home and we moved back to NC Zander got into his "own room." However his room was also the office and by this time we knew we would be moving soon so we did not decorate his room at all. However, for Christmas, his grandparents bought him a bunch of jungle decor for his room. Then we moved to OH and again we knew where we were staying was not a permanent place so we did not decorate. Finally, we moved and my two year old "baby" gets his first room! So, even though I kind of wanted to do something a little more grown-up, we already had all of the stuff for a jungle room. It doesn't matter because he really loves his animals.

Without further ado, here is his room:
The brown is not showing up as the actual color. It is more of a chocolate brown and not so much orange. Here is a close-up shot of his giraffe:

Close-up of elephant:

Close-up of zebra and dresser with the vine that hubs hung. (I'm not sure how I feel about it yet):

Monkey and window:

His toy box:

View from other side of the room:

From the other corner:

Hey, wait a minute! Who snuck into the shot. We better take a closer look:

What a ham!

Fall Fun and Other Ramblings

Yesterday we enjoyed some awesome warm weather, so we decided to take advantage of it and play outside. All. Day. Long. (Except nap time because I'm not crazy!) We had such a wonderful time; raking the leaves, jumping in the leaves, throwing the leaves at each other, burying each other in the leaves, basically doing all things involved with leaves.
I managed to get some good shots of Hannah. I could post quite of few of her in the leaves because she is such a good subject. She will comply when I ask her to sit still for a few minutes.

Alex on the other hand is a different story. Being his two year old self it was hard to get a good picture of him. He was a ball of constant motion. So, I finally gave up, put the camera away and just enjoyed my kids.

We had such a fun time together! The downside was that the house got a little neglected. Never mind the fact that we spent all the daylight hours outside, there still managed to be a big mess! Oh well. It was worth it and I will gladly choose spending time with my children over housekeeping any day.

Also, I somehow forgot that since I was the one responsible for making beer bread for a Tastefully Simple party tonight, that I would you know need beer. Of course I did not remember that small little fact until well after the kids were in bed. So first thing today we ran out and bought some beer so I could make the stinking bread. After only 30 minutes in the oven (it is supposed to bake for almost an hour) I started to smell burning bread. Uh-oh, sure enough it was a little burnt. Again, oh well. We'll just scrape that part off!!

Lastly, some house news. It is finally official, I think. We have a closing date!! We will finally be closing the week of Thanksgiving, which will make for a busy Thanksgiving around these parts. Of course it will be worth it to finally be living together again.

We Rocked the Vote

I VOTED....with a two year old on my hip. It doesn't get much harder than that, so really there is not excuse as to not voting.
(Apparently it is harder to take a self portrait in the mirror than I thought. This was the best out of a million shots, and even then I had to crop it.) Also, in case you were wondering if I left Tater at home by herself while the boy and I walked downtown to vote, I didn't. She was with her Grandma Cath and got to vote with her. Although, she wasn't sure what a vote was and got quite anxious in line since they had to wait 40 minutes. We on the other hand walked right in and voted.

Finished Product

Here is the finished product at night. This is Hannah's clown:
Alex's pirate:

Sorry for the blur, that is what I get with no flash and night photography....apparently I cannot hold very still.

60 YEARS!!!

Today is my Grandparent's anniversary, they have been married for sixty years. Can you believe that? Sixty years and they make it look so easy. This past weekend we had a surprise party for them. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I did not get any pictures of the grand event. I will have to steal my Mom's memory card so I can put up some pictures of them....they are so cute! Anyway, we had a great meal, went on a hayride and had a bunch of crafts for the kids to do. One of the crafts was to color and decorate pumpkins.
Here's Zander, cheesily showing off his pumpkin creation:
And Missy with hers. She spent a long time just coloring her pumpkin, the other side is also colored.

We decided that we also wanted to carve the pumpkins with the kids. So Sunday evening before Bologna left we carved them. Alex jumped right into the goo.

Hannah on the other hand was a little more timid. Tony finally put some in her hand and let her feel it so she would be brave enough to stick her hand inside.

I caught her face mid-yuck. She actually got better after a few times of sticking her hands in.

I will have to post the finished product later because I do not have a good picture of them yet. Tony is so creative, he made Tater a clown face and Zander a pirate. I think that he actually enjoys carving the pumpkins more than the kids do and in a few years we will have to get an extra pumpkin so that he still gets to carve one;)

WE MET LIZZIE!!!

Very photo heavy post...however there are about a thousand pictures I could post so really you are getting off easy!

Tonya had a party on Saturday and I was soooo excited not only to see everybody, but because the Hedger's were going to be there. That meant that not only was there going to be somebody Hannah's age, but there was going to be a GIRL that was Hannah's age! However, what I did not expect was how much I would enjoy talking with Lisa. Not that I don't enjoy talking with Tonya, Sarah, Sue and Cat, but this was different. This was a mommy of a girl my girl's age. (Are you following me here?) That meant that we got to talk about things that applied to our girls. Things that the other parents are not facing either a. because they have male children, or b. because they are younger than Hannah. Anyway, what I am trying to convey here is just how nice it was to be able to talk to somebody at the same point that I am. Does that make any sense?

Anyway, moving on. The kids had such a great time. As always, Tonya was such a great hostess and had so much for the kids to do. They were buys most of the time which gave all of us mommas a chance to chit-chat. There was a cardboard box house, that had a bunch of shredded paper in the middle that hid the candy. Hannah and Liz actually sat in there forever picking out that candy. It was quite funny.

I think it is so cute how Alex is just peaking in!
There was bobbing for apples, and really what more can a bunch of almost two year olds want than a big bucket full of water and apples?

Hannah and Liz really enjoyed the bobbing.

They each got to make their own bag to collect the candy in. Tonya, so crafty had foam stickers, stamps and puffy paint for them to use.

There was even a bouncy house for them to jump in and boy did they love that.

When they weren't occupied with all of that, Will gave them a box of rocks to throw into the little fish pond. I think that was on of the highlights of the night. However, it was not until much later that Hannah discovered the fish.

Hannah and Liz were just so cute together! They played so well and at one point were upstairs playing by themselves. Every now and then somebody would go check on them to find that they were playing "Princess of the year!" Not sure what that is but okay. The one bummer is that they live so far away:( I did google it and if I have the right city then currently we are only roughly two hours away. Once I move though we will be almost four hours away!

Hannah and Liz saying goodbye:

I will leave you with some of the other cuties at the party. Unfortunately I am so bad about getting pictures of the older kids, mainly because they are so busy running around!

Dude, is this party over yet? 'Cause I am wicked tired!