And We're Back................

were we gone? Maybe not physically, but I for one was definitely not with it. What have I learned from this mental hiatus? That denying that you are sick when you are just too busy to be, does not actually deminish the sickness. It either a) gives you the strength to just push through it or B) makes you even sicker. This particular time the latter applied to me. Doing some last minute Easter outfit shopping yesterday, I realized that walking through the mall was just about killing me. John turned around and said "here, let me help you keep up" and he gently "nudged" me forward (thanks for that honey). We came home, I admitted defeat and took it easy. Low and behold, this morning I am healed!!

So what were we so busy with? Well, the kids haven't been feeling well..... mostly Nathan. The poor little guys tubes became plugged and infected. Our awesome specialist got him right into surgery Thursday morning and fixed them. And now except for a couple scratchy throats, everyone is back on their feet. John also joined the National Guard Reserves. He was very pleased with himself for keeping up with the twenty year olds and he should be! So the next time you see him know that he is back to being a man in uniform :)

burning down the house

I'm sure everyone has began pre-heating their oven to find that there was something in it. This happened to me recently. Normally, after detecting some odd smell, I would open the oven to find a pizza box but this day was special. I opened it up to find a project that Ava had made at church .......... a beautiful creation of construction paper and images of Jesus. The edges were curled, turning black and very close to bursting into flames. We almost burned down our house with Jesus!!!!! Ahhhh!


Another quick tid-bit for those who don't appreciate our wonderful feline friend ....... the cat. As I am writing this I am watching Ava play tea party with Pippin. He has a full bowl of food and water yet he is happily slurping up the water Ava has put in a tea cup and nibbling at the cat food on the saucer. CATS ROCK!!!!

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.

Family Shopping.......

Let me set the scene for this story............

We have a 21 month old, a 3 year old and a John and we need to do our personal grocery shopping as well as our Thanksgiving dinner shopping.

Step 1: Organization - Being as ridiculous as I am, I had created a written plan on how to accomplish this task including lists for each store which included the corresponding coupons. I was determined to save $$ and get great deals. This required hours of planning, snipping, comparing and compiling.

Step 2: Implementation - John takes Nathan and our personal grocery list while I take Ava and the Thanksgiving list. A plan which I think is AWESOME!!

Step 3: FInalization - So we met back at the front, our full grocery carts and cranky children in tow. "Did you get everything?" I ask, "yup, and more!" John replies. The woman rings John's cart first (of course I had them rung seperately for organizational purposes), its going well. List complete - check! Loews card discounts - check!, coupons - uh oh! The woman hands back the aluminum foil coupon. I say "John, did you get the aluminum foil?" John replies "no, it wasn't on the list. Let me see the list!" (like I POSSIBLY could have made a mistake). And then another coupon is handed back. "John, Did you get the Snuggle???" "No", he says. "Probably because I was shopping off the Food Lion list and we are at Loews". SIGH..............................

(And in case anyone was wondering, I did go back in and get the original stuff on the Loews list by the way. Couldn't let those coupons go to waste!!)