Thursday, April 30, 2009

DWTS Fort

One of my favorite traditions lately has been watching Monday night's DWTS with my older boys while Shawn is teaching on Tuesdays. Nick is mostly just excited to stay up past bedtime, but Ryan is just the biggest fan, commenting on all of the costumes, cheering for "Jueyanne", and giggling and asking for translations during Bruno's commentary. I didn't have a chance to watch the results show, so yesterday afternoon we built a TV fort, popped some popcorn, and snuggled together for oh, twenty minutes? or so until the moment was ruined by a destroyed fort, unwilling popcorn sharers, and a few kicks to someone's face. But for a few minutes, I had a kid in each arm and one on my lap and felt like the happiest mom in the world!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Rookie Mistake #2

Remember when I almost cut my fingertip off with the hedge trimmer last fall? Well, I made rookie mistake #2, as my dad called it, and sliced my extension cord today after I dragged out the trimmer for spring clean-up. So once again I have only half the landscaping done and the trimmer and I are not on speaking terms right now. At least the part I got done looks nice! And I already had a trip planned to Home Depot tomorrow, so I'll go ahead and add "new extension cord" to my list...

As I was bagging up the trimmings, a neighbor walked by, and watching me attempt to clean up with one child hanging on my back and two others squabbling, says (nicely) "You know you can hire someone to do that for you!" (the yard or the kids, right?) "Yes," I reply, "But then I have to pay them". For whatever reason, we are one of the few people I have noticed doing our own yard work in the neighborhood, but 1) lawn service is not in the budget and 2) I am grooming three future yard boys. I have yet to make my kids work around the inside of the house nearly as much as I should, but you better believe they have begun to learn to work outside (minus Gavin, whose work involves throwing mulch everwhere). Our yard might not look perfect, but we have the satisfaction of knowing we worked hard on something together as a family. And you can't "buy" that, lady!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Back from the dead...literally

My Internet died last week and just got up and running today. The Internet is one of those things you don't realize how much you use it until you don't have it around. I couldn't look up phone numbers, park hours for Disneyland this week, and what the weather was going to be (record heat here people! 103 degrees in the middle of April) It was frustrating but at the same time I actually went 5 days without knowing a thing on Facebook and it didn't even bother me. Imagine that.

We had a great Easter up in Sacramento- photo blog soon to come. I felt better buying underwear in Target for the Easter baskets when the lady in front of me in line said "oh good, I'm glad I'm not the only one that buys underwear for my kids Easter baskets". She had Dora, I had Transformers. I figure why not turn needs into presents. We're a little spoiled these days always getting our wants and forgetting how blessed we are to always have our needs met. I think the kids were as excited to get their new underwear as they were to eat their chocolate bunnies - almost...

We've been having a great week with my-best-friend- Jenni-from-Utah (inside joke) visiting with her family. We did Disney with them yesterday (they are doing 3 days) and tomorrow we're doing the beach. Also residing at Hotel Erard this week is my resident handyman/yard man - dad. He's a wealth of information when it comes to most things outdoors so he's helped me plant my garden this week - showing me how to make proper rows and mounds, what vegetables to plant next to what etc. Photos of garden to come soon as well. Of course I'm giving him a day off tomorrow to play golf with my husband. Oh yeah - I forgot to mention the biggest news of April:

TAX SEASON IS OVER! HOORAY!

We finally have a husband/daddy around again and it's already wonderful. Although he says he didn't miss the bossing around (me? bossy? I don't know what he's talking about?) he's glad to be home too.

Going to bed now. Got nothing done today because I was too buys checking up on 5 days of email and blogs. Lots to do tomorrow.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

T-Ball Photos

What did I tell you about the amazing Blueclaw moms? Sure enough I received an album of photos from the first game shortly after deleting all of my own photos on accident! Thank you Lea!

The unoffical 11th member of the team/team mascot in a baseball shirt and football pants

Reciting the Little League pledge before the game - once again, notice the mascot in the middle

So serious!

Throwing to first

Team photo at the end of the first game

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Play Ball, Delete Photos

Well, thank goodness we have two moms with great cameras and photography skills on the t-ball roster, because I just made myself a T-ball photo folder and then promptly deleted the T-ball photos from the memory card before copying and pasting them into my newly-created folder. Clearly I should not do anything that really matters late at night. But MAN I had some cute pics of Nick's Opening Ceremonies and first T-ball game today and "Assistant Coach Ryan" in his catcher's outfit. Poor Ryan thinks he is on the team since "Coach Shawn" lets him practice with the big kids, and he is counting down until he is 5 and can play!

We have a great neighborhood team made up of all kindergarten boys with great parents who have been a HUGE support already. See, I was going to skip sports this spring since I will being doing this times 3 for the next 20 years, but I totally sucummbed to peer pressure when the all of the other kindergarten boys signed up. And well, guess who ended up coaching the team - yep, Shawn! And we are not talking about one practice and one Saturday game a week people! The league schedule is insane! I think I once said this is my first and last season of t-ball, but we're all really enjoying it so far, so I think I'll retract that statement. Go Blueclaws!

Easter Parade

Whew! Congrats if you actually read the entire previous post. Let's keep this one short and sweet. I already admitted to being a big fat Easter bunny loser. Did I mention that Nick threw up twice at our annual Easter brunch/egg coloring/hunt with friends? He had to dye eggs alone after he was whisked home from the party. And I recycled my babyGap bargain seersucker pants for the younger two - as if anyone in this house cares about a new Easter outfit anyway... we hosted both sides of the family for Easter dinner, and the boys provided a lot of entertainment using their new skateboards from grandma in the kitchen - don't think for a second that Gavin was going to be left out!

Finally, my random quote of the week from 5 year old Nicholas in the back seat of the car: "Hey mom, you really should check this out, I've got a bunch of hair growing on my legs!" WAH! I frequently ask if I can please freeze him so he'll stay five forever.





Thursday, April 16, 2009

Spring Break Recovery

I didn't mean to become a blog loser, it just kind of happened. In an attempt to get back into it, I feel like I have to give a brief overview of the last few months, you know, just because. Maybe it will make me feel like I really have been doing something other than checking FB since my husband is trying to find an addiction program for me.

February: Adults-only ski trip to Snowbird and Snowbasin, UT. Good snow, great food, best friends. We loved spending lots of time with my college roommate BFF Natalie and VA BFFs the Morgans, where we got to spend Rob's birthday with his personal tour of gorgeous Snowbasin and its long, long runs, with Julie joining us for a delicious lunch at the swanky lodge at the top.


March: 2nd Annual Great Wolf Lodge trip with the Morgans. How can you go wrong with the Morgans? Whether it's deep frying a turkey in the backyard or cooking tacos in the microwave of your hotel room since the only restaurant buffet is gross AND pricey, these guys are guaranteed to be fun and don't care how white or flabby we look mid-winter in our swimsuits. At least they've never insulted us to our faces. Now that I've raved about you guys, send me some GWL photos because I forgot my camera!

The rest of March we spent at home, slaving away in the garage (painting, building shelves, Craigslisting junk), yard work (compost/reseeding the front yard, planting trees, and still have landscape trimming and re-mulching to go, along with composting/reseeding the back yard), and Shawn demo-ed the U-G-L-Y tile in our basement bathroom so he can retile before our new carpet comes in. The only photos I have don't give you the full-scope of how junky the garage was, but hey, you don't really care anyway, do ya! Now that I think about it, Shawn did leave town to enjoy some spring training ball in FL after speaking at a conference, but since I was only invited if I came without my kids and can you believe it, I don't have a live-in nanny, I didn't go and therefore have no photos to prove that he went either.

Garage Before

Garage After



Moving on to SPRING BREAK! I quickly dismissed my insane idea of driving to Nashville to visit our cousins for the week when I found out how long the drive would take, so we stayed local. My husband teases me and my obsession with avoiding crowds, but listen, if you were chasing three small people in three different directions by yourself, you'd understand. Speaking of crowds, we did enjoy a lovely morning walking the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms with a million other people. No photos. Nothing like our mid-week walks we've done in the past. Never doing it again. But we did manage to have a really fun spring break and avoided the spring break/tourist crowds, the one exception being the McDonald's line at the Air/Space Museum by Dulles.

Monday: Air/Space Museum with friends. What's more fun? Running through the massive hangars with your buddies or checking out the planes? Standing in line for 30 minutes, not able to identify if it is your own child screaming or your friend's two lines over, only to get to the front and find out the credit card function is not working or finding seating for 16? Watching the planes take off and land from the control tower or toting a massively tantruming preschooler out of the museum? You decide. Leigh, I need copies of your pics. See, not only am I a blog loser, I am a camera/memory-capturing loser too. At least we have the stores that go with preserved.
Tuesday: My first venture to the previously "avoided-like-the-plague" Chuckee Cheese. The weather was not cooperating so much with my outdoor plans, so we took a gamble and I'm not sure which one of my three boys enjoyed it the most. Could have done without another massive tantrum (who's kid is he anyway?) and the 30 minute wait to exchage our tickets for a huge bag of cotton candy, but my kids felt like a trip to CC was equivalent to the Magical World of Disney. I'll go ahead and bug Leigh for photos again here since the timing is appropriate.

Wednesday: Great idea credit goes to Julie for suggesting Luray Caverns. The drive was gorgeous (complete with my begging a warning off the cop who pulled me over for speeding), and after a chilly picnic, we spent more than an hour "exploring" the caves, which the kids just loved. Hey, guess what! I actually took my camera along on this trip.





As if they needed something else to do, we capped Wednesday off with the most delicious homemade pizza on earth and a movie night at Leigh's mom's home theatre.

Okay people, this is getting tiresome, don't you think? I am definitely saving Easter for another day. But pushing onward...

Thursday: We finally lucked out with some picture-perfect weather for Ft. Washington MD, one of my favorite spots. NO ONE is ever there, the fort provides hours of exploring for the boys, tons of grassy space to fly kites and picnic, and hey, if you're tired of the beautiful views of Mt. Vernon and DC, you can walk down to the Potomac River and throw rocks into the water.

So what do you do with three exhausted boys and their exhausted mother at the end of an exhausting week? You pick up their father and drive to Baltimore, for a walk around the Inner Harbor, a delicious dinner in Little Italy, a horrible night's sleep at a free hotel, and a morning at the children's museum. They collapse in the car as you speed home to pick up another truckload of compost and do your Easter-dinner shopping at Costco. I am still recovering friends. Had a wee breakdown Sunday morning but all is well. Minus a few cases of the pukes and a case of strep throat, life is back to "normal". Just in time for t-ball and vacation season to begin!!


THE END. I promise.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Who's a Fool?

So...here's my April Fools for the day. Guess which one is true:

I'm pregnant.

Our house is in foreclosure.

Dave is being investigated for tax fraud.

Emma is flunking out of kindergarten.