That is some yummy pasta!

Tonight we had a heating/ a/c guy out to give a quote for a new system. He has done some work on our old system and has been here a couple of times. He is very friendly with our kids - he has a boy William's age who also has a head full of blond curls. It rained most of the day and we were cleaning today so by this evening the boys were being insane, they were hungry and getting tired. They kept running through the livingroom, knocking this poor guy's paperwork down and yelling. They didn't want to leave the room so they got a special treat of a picnic dinner. I had already made penne with broccoli and chicken in a tomato cream sauce (no sauce for William). They were sitting pretty nicely on their big picnic towel, eating dinner when Zachary paused, peering at a piece of penne and announces "PENIS PASTA!". The A/C guy was cracking up. Carl and I were mortified but giggling and he just kept at it "penis pasta! Penis Pasta! PENIS PASTA!" Soon after Zachary bid farewell to the technician by calling him "Fan Man". Oh boy, the stories he has to tell tonight!

I like lime-y green

Is that obvious yet?

On a Whim by Julie Mead
Font - DB DIXI by Darcy Baldwin available at Blue Flombingo
“pee pee, pee pee” you yelled at me. you often do not have the words to explain what it is you want the world to hear but you still let your will be known. today you were proud. Some great accomplishment that involved pee pee. I was afraid. I followed you to the bathroom where you giggled and giggled as you showed me your baby on the potty, going “pee pee”.

The Barf-fest Continues

Now Zachary has joined the festivities. It is 5am and I am up with Zachary who started barfing in his bed shortly after William barfed in our bed. Yesterday in a 30 minute period I cleaned up William barfing on the play tiles, peeing on the floor, pooping on the floor ("pee pee" no, honey that is a big POOP on the floor *gag*) and then Zachary overflowing the toilet when he "wiped myself with one square of toilet paper" uh, yeah. Right.

I am supposed to have a 7:30am optometrist appointment this morning but I am not sure how that will work with two potential pukers and DH having a HVAC guy coming this morning to check our AC that doesn't seem to want to make cool air. I think I will try to get the kids in to the pediatrician too since this is now day 6 of William having high temps, runny nose, coughing and barfing.

In laptop news the screen mess up has expanded - it now goes out to the right of the screen too - so I have a giant "V" of blacked out screen. I should try to take a picture of it later. Really quite annoying.

I did get my Bunco invites made and sent out -

credits on DST

A hot, hot night

And not the fun kind of hot. William had a temp of 104 last night. Poor peanut. Stripping him down and giving him our last dose of children's Motrin got him down to 101 this morning. Carl went out this morning and bought more Motrin and Tylenol, hopefully I can keep his temp down today. He seems pretty unaffected by it, happy and playing like normal. His cough is a bit grosser though. Yuck.

Unfortunately we will likely have to miss homeschool co-op tomorrow. Zachary announced this morning that he wanted to do homeschool today. I asked him what he wanted to learn and his answer: "dancin'"! Ohmy! Mommy is way unqualified to teach that. We did some silly dances and then he decided that was enough and wanted to do math. We have been doing finger math and he is really getting it. He keeps announcing that 2+2=4! Love it!

Today's task is to digi scrap Bunco invites and email them out and then work on the princess purse and mug inserts for prizes. And thank you for all of the condolences for my hurt laptop. I doubt it will get fixed - it is at least $400 for a new screen and that is without any labor involved. DH has a 3 year rule for computers so according to him this one won't be replaced until early 2009. Ugh. So I am stuck with this for the long term. Bummer.

(I feel naked posting this without a graphic/picture - I need to work on my invites and come back quick to post them!)

I broke it...

I broke my laptop. It still works but I now have a giant gash through the screen that serves as a constant reminder of what a complete klutz I am. I was sitting with William on the couch, my laptop on the arm of the couch. William fell off the couch and in the process of trying to keep him from falling on his head I knocked my laptop down and it did something bad inside. I am glad it still works but now I have to type blindly when I hit the left side of the screen. Digiscrapping is ok because I can shrink the screen but sending emails is a pain. Blah. That stinks.

William spent the weekend throwing up and now has a cough and runny nose. I was so impressed with how well we all made it through cold and flu season but it looks like we may be suffering at the back end.

My first broken laptop LO:


All the goodies are by Corina Nielsen and available at www.funkyplaygrounddesigns.com. The font is by Darcy Baldwin and available at www.blueflombingo.com - full credits at DST.
The paper is from Corina's The Big Day Collection - look at these crazy colors!

William's Speech Evaluation

We knew William was behind in his expressive speech but we had little idea he was so behind. The preliminary guess of the Speech Language Pathologist we saw on Friday was that he will test at an 11 month level. He will be 26 months this month. His receptive language is fine but he is just not hitting that big language explosion that is expected at his age. Tomorrow I will start the phone calls looking for more info and services for him.

LO with Penny Springmann's Shoot for the Stars kit and 2 pager template - also a Darcy Baldwin font!

An Update!?

Wow, I have a blog! LOL!

We have been keeping busy. The weather has been nice and we have spent a lot of time outside or at the park.

Our preschool homeschool group has evolved a bit. Our Monday mornings are now an open park/playdate for all age homeschool families and on Thursday mornings 3 of us are getting together with our 6 kids to do more directed "preschool time". Each mom will take a turn of a month or so of teaching a group of lessons. H started a group of lessons about the 5 senses yesterday. She made "touching bags" with different textures inside and the kids felt the items inside and then described them. They made textured collages and then we played outside. A's house is perfect for our preschool time and my boys love being over there. In fact Zachary loves it so much that there is much wailing and drama involved when it is time to leave.

This morning we did salt painting and smooth painting and talked about the bumpy and smooth feeling when we touched it. Zachary painted a "T", "H" and an "A"! We had 3 big letters and talked about what word we could make from them - now we have "HAT" spelled out on our kitchen wall in big bumpy letters! I am so proud!

William is really, really 2. Now when you ask him how old he is he says "FIVE" and holds up all 5 fingers. Stinker. He thinks he is sooooo funny. Well he is pretty funny but we like hearing "two" also! He has no fear. We have had to move the loveseat in front of the fireplace to keep him from pulling the glass insert out again. When we are outside he will chase the cat anywhere - including off the side of the high deck. Yikes. William wants to keep up with everything his brother does. It isn't even that he wants to be like his big brother - he just doesn't want to be left out. As a result my 25.5 month old peed on the potty this week! He also pees on the floor many times a day since he won't leave any clothes and earlier in the week he peed in a toy bin and then brought it to me! At least he is getting the idea, I guess.

Zachary's new skill that he is so proud of (besides painting letters) is peeing in the bushes. He has been successfully using the potty for some time now but is terrified of the toilet and peeing standing up - so this week I have encouraged (yikes) him to pee in the bushes outside which after some hesitation he now finds wickedly cool. And success! We have had toilet peeing now too!

I have been in a bit of a scrapping funk but I did complete this page of Emme at her 2nd birthday party: (ACOT Spring Fling collab kit and a new handwriting font by Darcy Baldwin):


Last week I did a page about a quick clean with Traci Reed's new boy kit


Full credits for both on DST

We are family!

A small part of my big family at Thanksgiving 06. The credits list is HUGE and can be found at DST.


We have started taking afternoon walks with William actually walking! He loves his bear backpack harness thing - which is awesome because if we didn't have that he would be in the street in moments! Thursday afternoon we took a puddle walk during a break in the rain. I took my dSLR with us and the battery died! The boys LOVED splashing in the puddles and I loved watching them love it.

This weekend we have plans to visit our city's big brand new library! It looks gorgeous from the outside, I cannot wait to see inside! I am very anxious to go to Costco tomorrow to pick up my first big set of printed LOs. I am printing at 8x8 size... I hope it works well! A $20 experiment!

Scallop recipe - it was from the cookbook "How to Cook Everything" - I will try to get the recipe tomorrow and post it!

Happy Friday!

The week sure flew by! The boys and I had a tough Valentine's day - they were just super crazy and a trip to the park was disastrous when William kept trying to run away down big hills (straight towards the road) or in to muddy ravines. I gave the boys a bath after the park (about 50% of the bathwater ended up on the floor) and then an early picnic dinner on the livingroom floor. When Carl got home we put them to bed and then had some nice time together - interrupted by both boys waking up, screaming a number of times.

Carl made us scallops in a lemon glaze, fillet mignon and crusty hot bread. Our fresh asparagus was left out because of the multiple wakings. We had dinner and watched American Idol in between tending to the boys. We had a rare treat of mid-week wine, it was good stuff - 7 deadly Zins.


My valentine and I with Traci Reed's New Black Lace collection available at ACOT:

Corina's Papa Collection

This beautiful and very special collection is 20% off today at www.funkyplaygrounddesigns.com.






Kid = Kimberly Geswein
Kit = Corina Nielsen

Spring Chicken LO

full credits
William was so little! These pictures are not excellent and I have had them sitting for a long time waiting for the right kit to work with them. This fun kit compliments the vivid colors in the photos - and my cute kids!

Glitter, Glitter Everywhere

What was I thinking? Zachary helped me make a list of 11 people that we need to give Valentines to. And then I set a 2 year old and 4 year old free with red paint, red glitter glue, silver glitter, stickers, glue and paper. Ohmy. My kitchen table looks like a giant Valentine! We finally just had to walk away - we have Valentines in various stage of drying and we will write in them after lunch.

William has been exceptionally crabby and we are all sneezing this morning. The rain came back in town and so has a cold. I am hoping to get a LO done with Corina's new Spring Chicken



I have a LO that will be revealed with a new Corina collection tomorrow. I got to borrow Kimberly Geswein's beautiful daughter, Katie for my LO. I am itching to share - that kid is SO cute!

New Car! New Car! New Car!

After a few delays on Saturday, Carl was home with our new van! It was pouring rain and the birthday party we had planned to go to was canceled (not because of the rain but because the birthday girl was sick). The rain kept Carl from getting the carseats in but I did take the van for a solo spin around the neighborhood. We have a bunch of fun little extras - power sliding doors and liftgate, power rear quarter windows (the 3rd row windows), power adjustable driver and passenger seats (which I didn't think was that big of a deal but now that I can brace William's car seat against the passenger seat and still be comfy - I think it is an excellent deal!), fake wood paneling (LOL), upgraded fabric... but those are all just extras - the important part is that it is SAFE!



Sunday we got the seats installed and went for a drive. We met my parents, brother, his GF and Emme for lunch. We had really good Chinese food with a bunch of fiascoes - Carl dumped his soup in to his lap and William dumped his soup on to my foot. After lunch we went to an indoor play place. William spent the first hour like this...

He eventually woke up and had a great time with Emme and Zachary.



There was a group people there with some really rowdy dads. They were throwing balls at each other (the dads) and their kids - hard. It was pretty chaotic for awhile. There was one very friendly dad that was making us a bit uncomfortable with just how friendly he was to these kids he didn't know. He kept following Emme in to a dark, secluded spot underneath the play structure - creepy.

Zachary had told the OFD (over friendly dad) his name at some point, because Zachary is a friendly guy like that. At some point Zachary and another child crashed in to each other - Carl saw it and said that Zachary was being too rough. So Zachary and I sat down and talked about playing gently and he was reminded that if he could not play gently we would have to leave (I was having a hard time with this since the group of DADS were not playing gently - I should have given them the same talk, although I wouldn't have had them sit on my lap for the talk!). So a few minutes after Zachary and I talk I hear OFD yelling across the entire play area "Zachary, Zachary" and I think - wow, they must have had a friend named Zachary arrive because he certainly cannot be yelling for MY Zachary like that. OFD gets off his butt and walks across the play area, past me, glancing over his shoulder and says "you don't mind, I need to talk to Zachary" - I quickly informed him that I DID in fact mind, and asked what the problem was. WTF. You don't get to call my child across the room and talk to him. NO NO NO. So he tells me that Zachary pushed this girl and he needs to talk to him about it. UH, NO! Dude, that is MY job, which I have already done. I did talk to Zachary about it, again - and that wasn't even the girl he crashed with - this guy had NO idea what he was talking about. It was so odd. Thankfully he left soon after and we had some quieter playtime before we headed home for a dinner of PB&J and cereal.

To buy and to sell

The Odyssey is sold and there is a "sold" sign on the demo Sedona that Carl test drove tonight - he will go back to finish the purchase tomorrow. Hopefully we will be going to a gymnastics birthday party in our new van tomorrow!

In other news... ACOT's birthday bash is tomorrow! Join me 1-2am EST (or 10-11pm my time) at ACOT! There will loads of games, contests, crops and prizes all day and I will be closing up the festivities late at night!

Can you hear me now?

YES! HE CAN! The hearing test was passed with flying colors! William was so cooperative and so stinking adorable during the battery of tests the audiologist performed. She was so impressed with how great he did and asked if he was always this well behaved - uh, NO, never! LOL!

We have the Odyssey in our driveway! Finally. 75 days, $17,700 in repairs and $3500 in rental fees later. Goodness.

Today we will work on selling/trading in the van and hopefully we will have a Kia Sedona by 5pm tomorrow when we have a gymnastics birthday party. Sunday we might have breakfast or lunch with my family (to celebrate my birthday, 2 weeks later). My mom and I just scheduled one of my birthday babysitting days for Feb. 17th. Wahoooooooooo! Date night, well date afternoon since we try to get back by 7-8pm and get the kids changed and in the car and on the way home. We need it.

I hope to be back later with a new LO.

Thursday already?

How is that possible? This morning we have William's hearing test and we are hoping to pick up the Odyssey this afternoon. Hoping. The Kia dealership has really low balled the trade in offer so we are going to try a couple of other avenues first. At the least we need to get back what we owe on it- although it would have been nice to make $$ on it like we had the potential to do before the accident.

Last night I finished my first LO for Penny with her gorgeous Chirp set (see yesterday's post for the full kit and link). Full credits in my gallery on DST

Maybe tomorrow...

How many times can the body shop say "maybe tomorrow"? We have been hearing "maybe tomorrow" since last Wednesday. A solid week of "maybe tomorrow"s is getting very old. I am getting really stressed out by all of this. I just want it to be DONE and for us to have a safe vehicle for our family that doesn't require us losing $$ on. Ugh. What a PITA.


In fun digi news... I have been invited to be a part of the CT for Penny's Miscellany! This is the first kit I am playing with -

A big thanks to GERI!

Geri called me and talked me through fixing what ailed my blog. THANK YOU, GERI!

If you are just joining me for the day I have a big weekend/Monday update a couple of posts down - with photos included. Our day has been hectic and we haven't even left the house. The Odyssey is still not finished. The alignment is now correct but now the systems all have to be set because the airbag sensors will not go off. Once again, a glaring reminder that we are doing the right thing in not putting the kids back in this vehicle. $18k+ in repairs, 2 months and one fiasco after another. They are thinking we might get it back tomorrow. Goodness.

On the home front. William has been in rare 2-year-old form today. Stripping and leaving a trail of tinkle behind him, full blown tantrums at every turn (especially when I insisted that the dog's dish was full - he kept wanting to pile the kibble on top of the dog food mountain and was FURIOUS with me when I made him stop) and the most charming when I have been dealing with the body shop, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, auto glass services, a doctor's office - you get the idea - every time I picked up the phone he was in my face, SCREAMING. ACK! I do think this is spectacularly deviant behavior because he isn't feeling well. He sneezed throughout the morning, fell asleep during Sesame Street at 10am, didn't eat his lunch and is now sacked out against my side on the couch while I type. We have been so blessed this winter - one pre-Christmas cold and Zachary's short bout with the stomach flu last week, I guess it is our time to have another batch of sickies.

Note to self...

Don't try to customize your blog. All you have succeeded in doing is screwing it up. WTG!

"It is Spankish for Naughty"

Full credits on DST

journaling....
“Liljack” was all you would say when I asked what you were doing in the bathroom. You had been in there a long time and I peeked in to see if you needed help. Over and over you stated “liljack” as you continued to pump foam soap all over the sink, counter and floor. Finally, as I grew more frustrated you told me “Liljack, it is Spanish for naughty”. Spanish or not, naughty you were.