No costume vote for Blythe

There will be no costume vote for Blythe this year. She was uncooperative last week when we tried to take pics in different costumes and this week I have not had time to retry. Oh well. She really only has one costume to wear anyway. She is going to be Cinderella. I'll be sure to take lots of pics on Saturday and post them.

And I made it to 10 weeks along before I had to break out the maternity clothes. Seriously? I thought only people having multiples had to wear maternity clothes at 10 weeks. I'm probably going to be huge this time around. I guess I could keep wearing my regular clothes and just unbutton (and unzip) them. I should invest in some Bella bands so maybe I actually can do that. Problem is that the other times I was pregnant, at this stage it was summer so I could wear stretchy skirts or athletic shorts. For winter, I swear all I own are jeans and those are quite unforgiving. Alas, I will be wearing maternity clothes for the next 7 months.

Saturday with Nana

Well, looks like Tiger was the winner on the costume vote for Ethan. Good thing, since that's what I was planning he be anyway. He's not old enough yet to really pick his costume (like Blythe did last year). Maybe we'll break out the face paint and paint a nose and whiskers on him. Anyway, I need to take another costume pic of Blythe and then I'll post her vote.

So, for today I'll talk about last weekend. We were supposed to go to Gommy and Poppa's house for a weekend visit because my Nana was in town visiting from Texas. She's 90, sharp as a tack, and clearly able to fly from Texas to North Carolina on her own. It had been 3 years I think since we'd seen her. She had met Blythe was Blythe was young, but not Ethan or Ada. Unfortunately my mom got sick (could have been H1N1) and we don't want my pregnant self or any of the young kids to get that, so we instead went to Doug and Lynette's house and my dad, Nana, and Laura met us there. We had a nice visit on Saturday hanging out at the house while the cousins played. We said goodbye on Saturday night and they drove home and we stayed the night. I didn't get any pics from Saturday as I relied on my dad and brother and sister-in-law (aka everyone else) to take pics.

Sunday we spent the morning carving our pumpkins we got at the pumpkin patch earlier this month. We brought them so we could get it done. Here were are all at work as a family affair.

Here's what we carved (and I'm not good at taking jack-o-lantern pics):

Pretty scary, huh?

Afterwards, we tried to get some good pics of Ethan to replace the not-so-good ones from daycare, but he was a tough cookie to crack. He's not smiling, but this one still turned out pretty cute.

After some Mexican food for lunch (mmmm....mexican food....craving cheese enchiladas), we hit the road and drove home. We had a great weekend! Thanks for hosting last minute Doug and Lynette!

Vote on Ethan's costume

Here are the options on Ethan's Halloween costume this year. Blythe's poll will be next week. Please vote! See right hand side of blog page. It's completely anonymous, so even if you're afraid I might find out you're reading my blog, I won't. But I want lots of votes!!

Option #1: Skeleton

Option #2: Monkey

Option #3: Tiger

Crazy morning

Whew! This morning was a doozy. As is a typical morning, I went into Ethan's room and found him sitting in his chair looking at books. He's so cute doing that because he brings his blanket "bubba" with him and makes a stack of books next to him and goes through each one. So I sat with him a while and looked at books with him. Then I picked out his clothes and attempted to change him. But he had other ideas! He wanted SO bad to stay in his spiderman jammies. "Pidey...pidey" he kept yelling. I finally got him changed and then he kept going and getting the spiderman shirt and trying to put it back on himself. Finally I lured him away over to Blythe's room. Upon entering her room, I found her in her princess jammies, with Barbie princess dress over it, pink princess shoes, a sparkly headband, and a wand. Oh, and a necklace. She hadn't gone potty yet, so I made her go and she managed to get all of that off, go potty, put it all back on, and come back all within about 1.5 minutes. I picked out her clothes and then we were finally able to go downstairs to eat. Good thing...I was starving! Pregnant girl needs to eat! (though apparently not as much as I have been...gaining weight way to quickly).

Anyway, 4 or 5 threats to change the channel off of cartoons since Blythe wasn't eating her breakfast and I finally did have to change the channel. Ethan was finished and busy playing with the dishwasher while I was then trying to get Blythe to change into her school clothes. And of course, these days Blythe cries about EVERYTHING. So she's crying. Ethan then starts crying because he's trying to close the dishwasher (liked I asked him to do), but he got it off track so it won't close. Finally I had to scream. And I know you're not supposed to because then you just raise kids who scream, but I think it's already too late for that. So then they both were REALLY crying. We got shoes on, coats on, and finally got in the car. Where it was dead silent for most of the way to school. Ahhh....

Long weekend

This past weekend was one LONG weekend. Seeing as how I'm at the peak of my yuckiness feeling right now and the weather was cold and gross and Braden was out of town on Saturday, I knew Saturday would be a difficult day. We didn't have anything planned and so actually Blythe stayed in her jammies most of the day. You'd think that would be a pretty easy day but nowadays my patience is like zero and the 2 of them fight all the time. The #1 thing to fight over - me. And I'm with them all.day.long. So there's a lot of fighting. We did manage to make it over to Chick-fil-a for dinner (just so the kids would have some play time on some form of play equipment). Ethan can now climb up there. Takes him a long time, unless he's assisted by his sister. When Blythe was around his age and able to climb up there by herself, she wouldn't come down and I'd have to either go get her or ask another kid to. So I was a little afraid. But he did good and followed his sister down the slide.

Braden got home Saturday night so finally I was relieved to have some help! Unfortunately, it was short lived as he came down with something on Saturday night. I thought it was swine flu since many of his athletes have gotten it, but it doesn't appear to be as he never developed most of the flu symptoms. But he was still quarantined to the basement for all of yesterday. Today he is feeling better.

So other than church, we again had no plans for yesterday. Another long day and so I was relieved to have it be Monday and I could take my kids to school today.

Picture Day

Ethan and Blythe had picture day at school this week. It's been quite a while since they had pictures made, so I was hoping they'd turn out good. Blythe said, "I was beautiful in mine because I smiled pretty". And she was right. Her pictures turned out very nice. See proofs:

Ethan on the other hand did not take very good pictures. Pretty bad when one of the "best" ones they picked out is him looking at a fake pumpkin. So, I think I might need to take him into the portrait studio to give it another shot. Here's his proofs:

Blah

I've never actually thrown up during the first trimester of any of my pregnancies. I've always just felt like I would most of the time for weeks on end. During my first pregnancy I thought maybe I'd feel better if I did (like when you're hung over), but I quickly realized that even if I pulled the trigger, it wouldn't make the feeling go away.

This morning was the closest I got to actually doing the deed. It was only because my stomach was empty that I didn't. So instead, it was dry heaving over the toilet. Awful. I haven't even had morning sickness so far. It's been "night sickness", meaning I feel progressively worse throughout the day and then I usually wake up fine in the morning. If only I actually liked the taste of ginger ale, maybe I might actually drink it. Oh, these first trimester weeks go by so slowly...

Back by popular demand....

...another pumpkin patch post! Sinkland Farms has gotten enough of my money for this year! I went back today for Blythe's school field trip. First there was an attempt to take a class photo.

Hey, if they don't have someone right there to greet us as soon as we get there, we can't guarantee the pumpkins and hay that were set up nicely for a group photo will still be that way after Blythe's class is through with them.

Nor can we guarantee all of the kids (or even most of the kids) will actually look at the camera.

Anyhoo, afterwards we took our hayride out to the pumpkin patch. This time there were no potty issues, so Blythe took her time searching for the right pumpkin. She ran to the farthest end you could go to and selected a pumpkin. Then she said, "here Mom, you carry it". To which my reply was, "Nope - it's you're pumpkin. You carry it.". So she decided she didn't want that pumpkin and instead picked out one much closer to the tractor hay ride.

After the hayride it was time to pet the animals. Unlike her brother, Blythe has no fear of the animals and tried to encourage her classmates to pet them as well.

She pet Maude, the 2289 lb horse (THAT'S a big horse!), pet the donkeys, and harrassed the girl holding the bunny to pet. She also fed the goats.

Another fun trip to the pumpkin patch, but I am DONE for this year! Until next year pumpkin patch!

Ethan's pumpkin patch field trip

2 pumpkin patch trips down, 1 to go. Today Ethan had his pumpkin patch field trip and what's more fun than 11 toddlers picking out pumpkins? Actually, there were more adults than kids, so it was a really nice trip for the little guys. We loaded into the hayride to head to the kids pumpkin patch (where they grow little pumpkins) and of course, really enjoyed seeing the tractor at work pulling us all. Once there, Ethan wandered around looking for the perfect pumpkin (which he seemed to think were the small green ones). Walking through all those vines makes it a bit difficult on the little ones. I tried to shoot some video but was worried he might fall into the thorny vines, so I only got a short one.

Afterwards I found it a bit difficult to handle Ethan and 2 pumpkins (yes, I got a pumpkin too...we're working on creating our own pumpkin patch at home). So, I headed towards the car. Ethan was kind of following me, but on the way, the hayride driver asked Ethan if he wanted to drive the tractor. Apparently he was the first kid to get to drive a tractor at the pumpkin patch so far this year. So they drove to the parking lot while I walked there.

We visited the animals, which Ethan loves to see. He pretends he wants to pet the horse, but when you bring him close, he shies away. He got a little too close to the turkeys and one tried to bite him. Anyway, after a quick lunch they were headed back to the daycare for nap time. Fun trip and I'll be going back again tomorrow with Blythe's class!

One Day...

One day...I will no longer be able to blog about Blythe. She will be too "cool" for that and will not be happy with me if I write things online about her that her friends might be able to read and make her look less cool than she actually perceives herself to be. So what will I do?

I will blog about Ethan.

But one day....he too will be trying to impress some girls at school and will not want me writing to the world about how cute he is and about those awkward moments. What's a blogger to do?

Well, blog readers, I will write about #3.

Yes indeedy, we are expecting number 3 around May 28 next year. I am 7 weeks along and feeling fabulous. Okay, actually nauseous, bloated, and generally crappy, but you know...fabulous.

Actually, I'll be blunt. I do not like being pregnant. So a warning now that for the next 7.5 months my blogs might be filled with "minor" complaints about how yucky I feel. Sorry.

But my goal this time is not to gain more than 40 pounds. I'm off to a not so great start as I have already gained 3 pounds. I'm thinking of continuing this "exercise" thing during at least some of this pregnancy instead of sitting around on my ass like I did with the other 2. So maybe that will help.

But anyway, we went to the doctor yesterday and everything looks good so far. Only 1 baby, so that's a relief!

Well, time to get back to thinking about food working.

A day at the pumpkin patch

On Saturday we headed over to Sinkland Farms for our annual visit to the pumpkin patch. Actually, it's my first of 3 visits this year (both kids have field trips there scheduled). As soon as we got there, we went right over to the pony rides since we figured there'd be a line there later. So Blythe got to ride "Moon" the pony.

Moon was a little anxious while she was riding him because in the fenced area of the farm, the biggest horse we'd ever seen was quite unhappy about being tied up temporarily to the fence and so he broke the fence, which caused quite a commotion. But Moon did okay and Blythe had herself a nice pony ride that she can talk about until next year.

Afterwards we headed over to the petting zoo to pet the cow, sheep, goats, donkeys, turkeys, bunnies, and chickens. Oh, and pigs. Except you're not supposed to pet or feed them. They bite. Ethan loves seeing the animals, but he's a little on edge around them. The sheep got him jumping pretty good.

Then it was time for the hayride down to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins. As expected, Ethan loved the tractor ride. We should have asked Blythe if she had to potty BEFORE we got out there, as she said she needed to go only a few minutes into our search for the perfect pumpkin. So she and I flagged down the next tractor back and headed to the port-o-john. Which left Braden out in the pumpkin patch carrying Ethan in his arms and 1 large pumpkin. Except when then came back he actually had 2 pumpkins. I still can't figure out how he managed to carry Ethan and 2 pumpkins. We played around on some other tractors. Accidentally hit a button on the camera and this one came out black and white, but seems kind of appropriate.

Blythe was the picture of white trash in this photo:

And we didn't get Ethan to look in this photo, but it turned out nice of me with my new haircut, so I'm posting it anyway.

After a super cheap lunch of BBQ, hot dogs, chips, and dessert, we called it a day and headed home. Ethan was exhausted. Clearly Blythe was not as this is how she woke up from her "nap":

A day out with Thomas

Last Friday, the kids and I drove to Gommy and Poppa's for the weekend (Braden had recruits in, so had to stay in town). On Saturday my mom and sister along with the kids and I headed to Spencer, NC to the transportation museum to see Thomas the Train (the REAL one!). We had bought tickets before the event and it's a "rain or shine" event, so even though it was misting we still went and it was still fun. Could have been worse, here in Blacksburg it dumped rain for 4 straight hours during the VT/Miami football game.

Anyway, first up was the train ride on the big train with Thomas as the steam engine.

It was about a 25 minute train ride, which I wasn't sure how Ethan would do, but he was glued to the window the whole time, waving to the passersby and having a great time.

After the train ride, we followed the signs to see Bob the Builder, which Blythe was very excited about. Before getting there, we stopped for some temporary tattoos and Blythe got one of Bob the Builder so she could be his #1 fan. Ethan got one of Thomas the train, which is apparently not so temporary as he still has it on his arm with no fading whatsoever.

We got to the Bob the Builder show just as it had started and Blythe had a great time right at the front wishing so badly she could get right up on stage.

Afterwards, we skipped out on the magic show and Blythe and Laura colored and did stamps while Ethan played with the Brio train set for a good 30 minutes (and I still had to pry him away).

On the way out we stopped to see a band that the kids could participate in. We got there after the tamborine song, but just in time for the bongo song. We were bummed Blythe didn't win a prize for her superb bongo playing skills, so we left before the maraca song.

A stop into the gift shop for some overpriced stickers and toys and then we were done with our day out with Thomas. Despite the weather, it was a lot of fun and something we'll definitely do again. Thanks Gommy and Laura for going with us!