Slide Show!

Parenting at its finest

I'm sure every parent has days when they feel they have no right having a the well-being of a child in their hands. Yesterday was one of mine. Yes, there have been others.

An important tid-bit to know is that here in NC for some reason unbeknown to me, the rule of moving over to the right hand lane when you are going slower than most of the traffic does not exist.

Trying to maneuver down Capitol Blvd at the apparently unreasonable speed of 55 (aka: the gosh darn posted speed limit) was proving unsuccessful. Here is how the conversation in our car went"

Me to the car in front of me: "Just get out of the way!!!"
Ava: "Are you yelling at that white car?" (I think yelling was a little bit of an overstatement, lol)
Me: "yes honey"
Ava: "Why?"
Me: "Because they are a bad driver"

Not my proudest moment but we continue on our travels. A short while later my attentive daughter boasts

"Mom! Mom! There he is!! There he is!!There is that bad driver!!!"

And sure enough he was in the lane next to us. Well isn't this one for the baby book......

First road rage: Tuesday, February 19th 2008. Age 3.

Second incident of the day:

We are back at home, kids are playing, I'm cleaning up. No biggie. Nathan asks me for a drink and I tell him just one minute. Well I forgot. It had to have been about a half hour later and I turn around to see that he has gotten himself a cup from the dishwasher and was pouring himself a glass of whatever he could reach that resembled a beverage........... red-wine vinegar. He looked up and said in his proudest voice "I thirsty. I get a drink!". I felt so much shame and guilt that I immediately whipped up a full sugar batch of kool-aide.

An exciting week!

This past week was hectic for us but full of fun and milestones.


Ava attended her first birthday party for her friend Savannah from school. Ava, Savannah and Marathon seem to becoming quite close. They not only go to school together, but also took ballet together. So this was the trio at the Chuck E Cheese party. Ava had a great time at the party while Nathan thought it was great going to work with Daddy.





Our next big day was Nathan's 2nd birthday! We went with the Elmo theme and me being the daring mother that I am, decided to make the classic Elmo face cake.......... what a mistake and a huge pain in the butt. The cake looked amazing but by the time I got the icing to be the right shade of red, it tasted horrid (and yes , I did use the right kind of food coloring....... I think). Being that I of course left it to the cake thing to the last minute, that is what we went with. As I got up to clean up the mess from frosting a red, orange and black cake............ our power went out. We ordered pizza. For those of you who don't live in the area (or do but happen to live under a rock) Sunday was a VERY windy day and as well as power outages many large forest fires were sparked. So after pizza we went to check out the fire in our area, grab some candles and batteries and came home to have our Elmo party in the dark.... lol.

We made it up to him though...... Monday we went to the circus! The kids were amazed! Ava watched intensely without missing a beat and Nathan couldn't believe the Elephants were sitting on stools. We had a great time and the expression on their faces were priceless. No laughing ............ just intensity and bewilderment.














And last but not least, the cats got a new bed!


Thanks for reading!

Our New Additions.....

PetSmart is a very dangerous place for us. A simple trip for cat and dog food sent us on an adoption spree that spiraled out of control. For the very first time ever, Ava was begging for something in a store and being that this was our first experience with that, we caved. Meet Clifford, the fattest hamster on the planet.

Now, what I didn't mention was that the day we got Clifford, PetSmart was out of Gerbils....... John loves Gerbil (news to me too). So low and behold on our next trip to PetSmart,to pick up a new house and wheel for Clifford of course, they had Gerbils!!!! John got one. We load up our Gerbil and head to Home Depot. As we are leaving what Nathan calls "The Depot", John starts heading in the wrong direction. I say "honey..............." to which he responds, "I am so sorry to do this, but I feel bad leaving that other Gerbil behind". So meet Smokey and Tiger (who won't sit still long enough for me to get a picture, they are too busy trying to chew their way out of the cage.


One last image to leave you with.......... three rodents each running around the house in their separate balls being stalked by the dog and 2 cats. Amazing. Thanks PetSmart.