Road Trip Day One

We left Friday around 2:00pm headed towards Paulden, AZ - my second home growing up. I used to spend the summers here with my grandparents and it always feels like coming home when I'm here. They live in the middle of nowhere and it's so quiet here it let's your soul relax from the chaos of the world.

We made it to the Walmart parking lot in Kingman Arizona on Friday around 10:00pm and decided to sleep there for the night (we are traveling in my dad's 5th wheel). Jacob and Emma were in the same bed and they kept bugging each other - the old "he's touching me" or "she's breathing on me!" routine. I finally got up and threatened them with life and limb if they didn't settle down and go to sleep. As I crawled back in bed they both started crying because I "hurt their feelings". My first thought was "be quiet or I will give you something to cry about!" but then I chuckled under my breath because we were all just so tired it was comical. I got a few hours of sleep between sweating to death and the yellow flashing lights of the Walmart security guard truck until Ben woke up at 4:00 am and decided he was ready for the day. He and I hung out in the cab of my dad's truck so he didn't wake up everyone else and then at 6:00 am we headed over to Walmart for something to do and so I didn't have to keep hiding my dad's pack of Tums from Ben. I felt like a piece of work walking around Walmart at 6:00am in my pj's with a baby in his shirt and a diaper only. Nice.

We headed off in the morning to my grandparents and have spent the last few days here relaxing, eating homemade ice cream, and crushing rocks. Yes the poor rocks here dread when they hear us approaching for a visit. Jacob's favorite thing to do here is crush rocks on a vice my grandpa has mounted outside.

Last night was the first night I got a full nights sleep as Ben decided to have more midnight escapades on Saturday night. I was looking forward to a bleak vacation with no sleep but I think we've turned a corner. ((fingers crossed))

Today we are headed off to Tucson to visit great friends of ours who moved out there this year, and then on to New Mexico to explore Carlsbad Caverns. The kids are being pretty good so far, let's hope it lasts. I'm trying to teach them to be patient and in the car I said to them "hold your horses!" as they were all barraging me at the same time for something. Jacob started looking around and said "what horses?" Such a funny kid.

The End of an Era, The Beginning of a Journey

Saturday night we threw a little shin-dig to celebrate Ben & Dave's June birthdays. Come nap time, Ben saw that festivities were about to happen and decided he was way too grown up for nap time anymore. He decided instead it would be a good time to learn how to climb out of his crib. As I was standing in my room blowing up balloons and he came waltzing in binky & blankie in hand like it was perfectly normal for him to get out of bed, my heart sank at the bad news. I'm not ready for my third to give up naps quite yet! My other two didn't learn to get out much later than this and they really liked being in their cribs. He's never really been a fan in the first place so I could see we were going to have a struggle on our hands! I quickly put him back in bed and assured him the party wouldn't be starting until after he took a nap but he was having none of it! He proceeded to climb out three or four more times until he finally conked out and hour or so later - hooray!

Luckily the last few days he has still been going to bed and naps fine and just getting himself up when he's done sleeping - until yesterday. Two hours! Two hours I tried to get him to take a nap. I'd put him in bed and a few minutes later I'd find him in my closet sneaking into something or playing underneath Jacob's bed. I tried the super nanny method of not saying anything to him - just lifting him up and placing him back in bed. After two hours I gave up. I let him go watch t.v. with Emma while I worked on packing for our trip. I walked out into the family room and Ben was asleep on the floor in front of the t.v.

He slept for 2.5 hours in the middle of the family room like this with us making noise around him and everything. What a little stinker. Hopefully the nap time battles don't continue because we are leaving on Friday for a big trip!

We are taking a 2 week road trip through Arizona, New Mexico, and final destination is Texas to visit my brother and his family in Round Rock. I usually don't announce when I'm leaving on the Internet but don't worry robbers - I have an alarm that works great (see here) and will be on. And my husband will still be her so don't get any ideas about breaking in while I"m gone. Plus I have these new attack chickens that will peck you to death if you try anything funny.

Anyway, we are visting friends and family in various locations on the way and staying at a few campgrounds in the middle of Timbuktu (because that's all there is between here and Texas - a bunch of nothing!) We are going in my dad's 5th wheel (my dad being the chauffeur of course) and I'm hoping it's lot of fun. (hope, hope, hope!) I think the kids are going to like it.

As always, I've packed 100 things to do into a very short time frame for getting ready to leave for our trip. I always do that! So although I'd like to blog I still need to pack my suitcase, plant a flowerbed, and finish my irrigation system on the garden so Happy Summer all and I'll be back!

Busy Builder

I haven't blogged for a couple of days because I've been busy building a Chicken Tractor. If you're wondering what that is you can see one here. Mine's a 5x8 A frame and it's taken me 3 days to build it. As soon as I"m completely finished (which will be in the next hour because I'm picking up Sally and Betty, our new hens, at 11:30) I will post some pics.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Okay - so I know it's June... not March. But we had a fun St. Patrick's Day this year that I never blogged about and since I haven't scrapbooked in uh...over 2 years (cringe cringe) I wanted to record it for posterity sake.

Emma learned in Kindergarten about little green guys named Leprechauns...heard of them? Well, apparently they come during the night and cause all kinds of mischief. Emma was so excited about them coming she made a trap to catch them:



In case you can't read her writing it says Welcome Leprechauns and there are little gold coins glued inside to lure them in. She spent quite a bit of time on this so of course the little green guys had to show up.

I ran to Walmart that night after the kiddos were sleeping and grabbed lucky charms, gold coins (which I think I actually ended up getting at CVS and were NOT easy to find), and green shirts. I wrote a few letters from the "leprechauns". The first one was left in Emma's bedroom by the trap and said something along the lines of 'Ha ha ha, you can't catch us but follow the shamrocks to a special surprise". When Emma woke up she not only found the note but found her room to be turned upside down and she was wearing a green shirt that I slipped on her during the night. She ran into my bedroom to show me the note and was so excited. Jacob soon followed - in his green shirt as well and they both followed the shamrocks down the hallway and into the kitchen:

On the table was another note with this:

Chocolate gold coins, crayons & scissors to make more crafty things like leprechaun traps, lucky charms and a note that said the milk in the fridge was green.

The kids were so ecstatic and it was fun to see their excitement. They were especially in awe of how those sneaky leprechauns got them in green shirts while they were sleeping. Emma has vowed to make a souped up trap next year that will catch the leprechauns for sure.

She got to have green hair at school that day so I found this wig on clearance at Target which was much easier than trying to paint her hair green. She was a little shy to wear it at first and wanted to take it off until kids in the first grade class next to hers said "awesome!" as she walked by. Then she thought she was cool stuff.


Oh, and Ben wore his St. Patty's day shirt all of 5 minutes as he decided to help himself to some peanut butter for breakfast:


Overall it was a pretty fun day!

Happy Birthday Baby!

(This pic was taken in March 09)

I can't believe my baby is turning 2! Two years have flown by and I can hardly remember them. This is going to be one of those indulgent posts where I go on and on celebrating his first two years so if you care to listen, read on. If not, that's okay...this is for my Benji to read in the future anyway.

Poor Benji is sick today so the celebration wasn't that grand. It started early at 4:00 am while he and I laid on the couch together bemoaning our sickly state. First I got it, now he has it only worse. It's so sad when the little guys get sick and there is nothing you can do to fix it. We snuggled for about an hour and his coughs subsided so I placed him back in bed and tried to sleep before the sun started peeking through my window which unfortunately was not long.

We did frost some cupcakes together and I do have pictures. (yeah for mom, remembered the camera) I don't have a card reader at the moment so those will have to wait. Even in all his snot and sickness he gave me some cute smiles. We would wish him happy birthday and he would wish it back. I don't know that he quite got it but he did enjoy singing the happy birthday song and we taught him to say "I'm two".

So who is Benjamin, Benji, Benji wa-wa, Baby Ben? He is my baby. He's cute, smiley, a real jokster, and loves to be the center of attention since he has 2 older siblings that laugh at everything he does. He's cuddly, snugly, and likes to stick his hand up my sleeve (or sometimes down the front of my shirt) when I'm carrying him. He reminds me of a little monkey. He's so smart and picks up on EVERYTHING! We went to a nursery the other morning and the guy there gave him a sucker. We had to go back later that evening and the first thing he said when he saw the guy again was "sucker?" He has a real bad sweet tooth! He loves to be tickled, play song games like Patti Cakes and Itsy Bitsy Spider. He is a true boy - he loves balls, dirt, cars and destruction in it's finest form. He will sit outside and dig in any dirt he can find. We call him the troublemaker which is funny because that's what I've been called quite a few times over the years (although it's not true...I never cause trouble). He gets into everything which my other 2 never did. If my house is too quiet I know he's somewhere squeezing lotion all over the floor or he's found the hidden candy stash in my closet. I probably treat him the most babyish of all three at his age,knowing that he may be my last. But he's probably the sharpest and smartest of all three at his age and definitely has a wider vocabulary like poo-poo head and Stop It.

Sometimes I feel bad because being the third child he hasn't gotten the benefit of having as much mommy time as the other two. Then I watch the three of them together (when they are actually playing nicely on rare occasion) and I realized he hasn't missed out at all. He has not just mommy & daddy but an older brother and sister that would bend over backwards for him. Even if at times they treat him like a plush toy and drag him around everywhere.

He's been a good sport thus far in life. From being dragged around as a newborn back and forth from preschool (it was always during feeding time and he was always screaming) to being picked up and carried down the hallway or around the grass by big brother and sister. He's one tough kid and we love him. Happy Birthday Baby Ben.