Holloway Stars

I'm sexy and I know it

2012-01-27T14:36:00.000-05:00

Spider Ethan, Spider Ethan

2012-01-25T12:50:00.001-05:00

Does whatever a Spider Ethan can

Pretty good, huh? Did it myself. Okay, not really. One of Ethan's classmates had a birthday party at school during school, so they had a face painter come in. He was super stoked to be Spiderman for a day.

Blythe is 6!

2012-01-22T21:12:00.001-05:00

Blythe turned 6 on January 20th. It really is still hard for me to believe. Brynn is learning to talk and tells me made up sentences with made up words and I answer "really?" and "wow" and "no kidding" just to keep my side of the conversation going. I swear I was still doing that with Blythe not that long ago and now all of the sudden she has grown up and is starting to ask real questions that deserve real, thought out answers. And I'm so not ready for that!

She is something else, I tell ya. She can make a new friend in about five seconds after walking into a room. I think she's friends with everyone on her bus, including a gigantic 5th grader. From what I can tell, she's friends with everyone in her class. Ethan started swim lessons a few weeks ago and within 10 minutes of the first class she had made a friend and they spend each swim lesson duration coloring, drawing, or designing.

She's also a smart little girl and is learning to read so fast it's incredible (to me at least). She never has trouble with her homework and I can tell already she is going to like math and be good at math.

She has a good eye for fashion and the girl loves her some accessories!

When she has a friend over, they still always go for the dress up clothes first. With Ethan, she'll play legos or Trio or dress up or make believe. When Brynn is in her room, she turns on the music and they dance together.

But Blythe is my crazy one. When she gets excited or just happy, she can be wild and difficult to calm down. She makes me nervous when she gets like this as she could easily break something or hurt Brynn or Ethan.

And while Ethan is generally my rule-follower, Blythe's probably more follows the "rules are meant to be broken" motto. And she's sneaky about it.

So in general, she's friendly, popular, smart, and sneaky, which will make for some pretty terrible teenage years, so I better enjoy these next few years while I can.

And for her birthday, she got an American Girl doll, which she has named Jasmine.

Today she had her birthday party, which was at "Paint Your Pot", a place where you choose your pottery and paint it. The girls (and Ethan) had a great time!

Brynn is in love

2012-01-19T20:55:00.000-05:00

...with her new bed. Okay, it's not a NEW bed, but we changed over her crib to a toddler bed and she LOVES it. We haven't tackled naptime in it yet, but the nights have been just fine. We put her to bed and I think she stays in her bed until morning time. Blythe and Ethan used to run around their room playing and throwing books, but Brynn makes no noise at all. We haven't used a monitor for Brynn since she was about 9 months old, so I have no idea really what she does in there, but she's quiet and when I check on her before I go to bed, she's asleep in her bed.

What she really loves is that in the morning Ethan comes into her room and she can play with him. They appear to play a while in her room, maybe some in his room, and then sometime later come and wake us up in our room.

Prior to her new-found freedom, she was in crib jail. Ethan would still come in her room in the morning and play with her. He would throw things into her crib for her to play with and then he would leave. He'd leave the door open, so she could watch him play while she stood in her crib and occasionally she'd shout "E-YAN!" at him. But Ethan would never try to get her out of her crib and Brynn also never tried to escape.

So now the 2 are morning buddings and Brynn couldn't be happier about it.

Another dance video

2012-01-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

Blythe isn't the only one in our house that loves to dance.

A little lesson in money

2012-01-17T10:22:00.002-05:00

I can't remember. I think I might have blogged about starting an allowance for Blythe and Ethan. Anyway, we started a couple of weeks ago and it's been going pretty well. Making my mornings getting the kids ready way easier. Blythe has 5 chores - Make her bed, get dressed, do homework, clean her room, and say "Please" and "Thank you". Ethan has 3 chores - Get dressed, clean his room, and say "Please" and "Thank you". When Blythe turns 6 later this week, she will get 1 more chore.

Sometimes I still need to remind about Please or Thank You, but sometimes the Thank You's are a bit over-the-top. "Mom, thank you for making us breakfast" (after I just plopped down 2 pop-tarts directly out of the box). "Mom, thank you for letting Gommy and Laura come visit" (after they came to help while I was out of town). You get the idea. But excessive is better than not enough, so I'll take it.

At the end of the week after doing all chores every single day, they get $1.00. The first time, Blythe said, "That's it?" and I told her a dollar was a lot of money, so she was good with that.

I think Blythe had $1.00 to start with. They both got wallets for Christmas and I think Peep gave them each $1.00 for their wallets. I paid Blythe another dollar for helping me take down both Christmas trees, put away all the ornaments, and clean the kitchen. Then after 1 week of allowance, they each got another $1.00. So if you're good at math, you'll see that Blythe now has $4.00 and Ethan has $2.00.

Well, just before Gommy and Laura left on Saturday, Ethan was in a foul mood and decided he would break the crayons Blythe and Brynn were coloring with. Gommy caught him and told him to stop, but he kept on. When I came in and saw the damage, I told him those were my crayons and now he ruined them and would need to buy me some more. He was a little upset about this. Later I made him go get one of his dollars out of his wallet so we could go to the store. Then he was REALLY upset. "But then I only have ONE dollar left!". And I further explained that that was a shame, but he had to spend one of his dollars on new crayons.

We went to Target. Unfortunately for Ethan, they were out of the crayons on sale for $0.65 and only had ones that were $1.19 (I spotted him the extra change). Either way, I wouldn't let him get change from his transaction because then he'd think he got more money back than what he lost ("look! I gave them 1 money and they gave me back 5!"). I made him pay separately for his stuff and continued to ask him, "Next time you won't break crayons, will you?" hoping that this lesson will teach him to respect other people's things.

Since it was Saturday, just before bed both kids got paid another dollar for the week. So now Blythe has 5 dollars and Ethan has 2, which made him very upset again. Guess time will tell if this little lesson in money worked.

Super Sunday

2012-01-09T22:07:00.000-05:00

I finally made it to an NC State Basketball game last night! First ACC game of the year too and we won!

Blythe was there too (next to me, playing the ipod). And of course Braden took the picture, so it was a family event. We even made it almost to the end of the game. Pretty amazing.

We were a little late though as we had a very busy day. Poppa, Gommy, and Laura came the night before and stayed the night so we could attend Harper's baptism in the morning. Beautiful baptism for such a sweet little girl! And the kids were all even pretty good in church. Afterwards, we headed to Doug and Lynette's for some yummy BBQ and some Quirkle. For those of you who don't know what Quirkle is, look it up and then buy it because it's super fun. Even if I did get last place. I'm sure I could think of a clever excuse, but really I just didn't play well. Still fun though.

We had to play speed Quirkle though because Ethan had a swim lesson and we needed to go home first. We were home literally 15 minutes and Ethan got changed, Blythe got changed (into Wolfpack gear), Brynn had a snack, dogs went out, Braden got changed, I got changed, we grabbed snacks, and all changed shoes. Pretty efficient!

Ethan's swim lesson went well. There are 5 kids in his class. They started exactly on time and even went a bit late, so I'm happy with that. And he was under water and blowing bubbles within 1 minute of the class, so we had no anxiety about the lesson, which is always good.

Busy Sunday that started well and ended well and was fun all in between!

Working on Mom of the Year...

2012-01-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

For 2013.

2012 is already blown. I met up with one of my college friends at a park yesterday with the kids. While the kids played, we chatted it up. I admit I wasn't paying as much attention as I should. Brynn did a belly flop off a 5 foot platform, but fortunately landed pretty softly on the mulch and wasn't hurt. I did have to get the "look" from the disapproving grandmother who watched it happen though. Whatever...she was fine. ~~Mom of the Year..~~

But later (again while chatting it up), Brynn apparently rolled down a set of stairs. Or at least that's what Ethan said happened. She was covered in mulch, so appeared that she actually did do quite a bit of rolling. And her face was scratched right by her eye. And she was crying. But she got over it. Went home and she took a nap and then woke up with a swollen eye that was a little but black and blue. Later we broke in Braden's new fire pit. While getting it going, Brynn decided to walk on the seating wall like a balance beam, and of course Clumsy fell off and scratched her face. That time I watched her fall and yet still couldn't prevent it from happening. ~~Mom of the Year.~~

In an effort to salvage 2012, I took Brynn and Ethan to school today so I could spend the day with just one of the 3 kids. On the way, I put in Peter Pan in the DVD player. Before it started, there was a preview for Tinkerbell. These days Blythe asks me 1 million questions a day and most end with "...right, Mom?". So of course my response to her question, "Fairies aren't real are they? Right Mom? Are fairies real?" was "Mmm..Hmmm...No". She asked for further clarification so I said I didn't think they were real because I had never seen one.

She said, "Well, what about the tooth fairy?". Crap. Forgot about the tooth fairy. Then Blythe said, "Maybe the tooth fairy is real. Or maybe it's just people's moms and dads". What the crud? We haven't lost a single tooth in this house and already we're shooting down the tooth fairy? Geez, can't we at least make it through a few teeth? So of course I told her the tooth fairy was indeed real. I hadn't seen my tooth fairy, but I wrote letters to my tooth fairy when I was a kid. And she wrote me back and told me her name was Penny. That seemed to suffice as believable. At least for now. ~~Mom of the Year.~~

I think I did salvage at least the day though. Blythe and I had a great day. We started at home by making a chore chart so she can start getting a weekly allowance. We'll see how that goes, but for today it was great. Then we took some of her birthday party invitations to mailboxes of her friends. Then we went to a pottery painting place and spent a couple of hours painting pottery. She painted a mug that turned out um...nice. I painted a dog jewely box for Brynn. Guess we'll see how they look in a week or so. Next we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch. Then went to the mall and hit up H&M. This was Blythe's first experience at a trendy store and I think I am completely out of touch. We looked at kids clothes only. Found lots of cute things, but I swear H&M isn't as cheap as it used to be. Blythe found a dress and some shoes she loved and I found a Lighting McQueen shirt on clearance for Ethan. Although I could tell the dress would fit just by holding it up, Blythe wanted to try it on. Her first experience in a fitting room. She was so grown up today. Makes me feel like she'll be sixteen before I know it. But anyway, we had a great day.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-31T21:51:00.000-05:00

Christmas 2011 was a good one. One major reason was....we did NOT have to travel! Yahoo! Braden's parents, Grams and Peep, made the drive up here from Louisiana with a car full of presents. Unfortunately just before they got here, I came down with a really bad cold that lasted throughout their entire visit. Boo. We still managed some fun (some of it sans Mary). Braden, Peep, Ethan, and Blythe hit up an NC State basketball game on the first night, we headed to Marbles kids museum on Friday, and Braden took his parents and Blythe and Ethan to Pullen Park and to show off his new office on Saturday. We also made it to church on Saturday night (of which I have no pictures...I barely functioned to get to church, let alone take pics).

Sunday was Christmas morning, and Santa actually made it to our house the night before. Although the Indy Santa promised Ethan a bike AND drums and Blythe a purple guitar AND an American Girl doll, he did not deliver on that promise. Ethan did get that blue bike and some Thomas trains and Blythe got that purple guitar and a microphone. Brynn scored a shopping cart and some dishes. Here's a video of the kids checking out the living room to see if Santa came. First here's a pic of what the living room looked like after Santa came.

Ha! No mention of the presents Santa brought (at first)???

After a nice lunch, Grams and Peep drove off with a whole lot more room in their trunk. And we chilled and played with new toys the rest of the day.

The next day we headed to Durham to celebrate Christmas with the Mittendorf's. There were some pretty exciting gifts given. Ethan got a new train table, which he was super stoked about. Blythe got a boombox and a cool NC State backpack on wheels. Brynn loved the Bogie look-alike she got. Braden got a firepit (which we'll be trying out tomorrow) and I got a family membership to Marbles (yay for lots more trips to Marbles!).

Christmas shows

2011-12-31T21:35:00.002-05:00

Something new for us this year were the Christmas shows our kids put on for us. Ethan's class at school put on a show on Dec. 16. They started practicing their Christmas songs even before Thanksgiving and it was really quite impressive! They sang about a dozen songs. Thank goodness for the one little girl in black who knew all the words to all the songs. Ethan I think did too, but he got major stage fright and barely performed. And with all fo the parents in the audience, many of the kids felt it necessary to run out mid-song and give hugs to their loved ones. Ethan didn't for a long time, but since it appeared to be the "cool" thing to do, eventually he did too. I'm so glad their day care actually celebrates Christmas and allows them to learn Christmas songs. They all were really cute.

Next up on Dec. 21 was Blythe's Winter Show. Because she's in a public school, it was not a Christmas show and they did not sing Christmas songs. They sang songs about snow, penguins, winter, and colors. And skidamarink a dink a dink. Organizing over a hundred kindergarteners is no easy task, but it turned out pretty well.

Last up was also on Dec. 21. Blythe's ballet show-off. Time to actually see what we've been spending our money on every month for a once/week ballet class. Clearly our money is not being wasted...I mean the natural grace and talent she has is so clear. Fortunately Braden and I's lack of grace and dance talent has no affect on Blythe and must have skipped a generation.

Okay, clearly I am being sarcastic. At this point it's about experiencing different things and having fun, which is what she is doing. Do I think she will someday move to NYC in hopes of joining a major ballet company? No. But she's meeting friends and she loves to dance, so that's good enough for me. Looking forward to the actual recital in June.

Lots of piggies!

2011-12-19T21:17:00.001-05:00

These are Brynn's first pigtails! She did NOT want me to put them in her hair, but when I put them in Blythe's hair, then she decided it was okay for me to put them in her hair too.

So cute! I LOVE pigtails!

Bloomington, IN

2011-12-13T20:35:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday Blythe, Ethan, and I hopped on a plane to Indiana. That sentence makes it sound like an impromptu trip, but in reality I bought the tickets back in September when I found them really cheap and we've had a countdown to the trip ever since. So first off, traveling with kids who are almost 4 and 6 is WAY easier than travelling with a baby or a 1 year old or a 2 year old. Both Blythe and Ethan were pretty good on the plane (short of the occasion kick to the seat in front of them and the fascination with the tray tables).

We arrived in Indianapolis and Ashley, Luke, and Amy picked us up and we drove the hour down to Bloomington to see the Freel's new home. The kids picked up right where they left off like the last 4+ months never happened. Amy and I talk still at least 4 times a week, so of course we picked right back up too. Their new house is beautiful and they (like us) have been very busy since they moved in painting, working in the yard, hanging stuff up, and trying to get acquainted with a new city. Their hard work has paid off!

Ethan and Luke dove right into the endless supply of cars, trucks, and trains that the Freels have and Ashley and Blythe were out of their street clothes and into dress-up clothes in probably less than 2 minutes after getting to the house. Neither Blythe or Ethan have had much of that kind of play since we moved, so it was so nice to see them play so hard for the whole trip. Makes us miss the Freels even more though.

The trip was Saturday to today (we woke up at 4:35am to catch the early morning flight). The 3 day trip was highlighted by a visit to the Wonderlab...a science kid museum, a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo (which was decorated with lots of lights for Christmas and had an amazing Santa), some shopping, a trip to the park, and a movie outing to see The Muppets (do NOT waste your money on it!).

A few pics from the Wonderlab. The place was super cool and the kids had a blast!

And some pics from the zoo. Although the Santa was awesome, he did have a fault. He told Blythe and Ethan they could each have 2 things (instead of 1). So Blythe then also asked for an American Girl doll and Ethan asked for drums. WTF?

And a few others from the trip:

Thank you Freels! We had a great time and can't wait to come back!

Christmas shopping

2011-12-08T13:27:00.001-05:00

So I have nearly finished all of my Christmas shopping and have purchased 2 things in a store. EVERYTHING else has been purchased online and I am eagerly awaiting many of my purchased items. Shopping online is SO much less stressful...why doesn't everybody buy everything online? One of the things I purchased in the store was a guitar for Blythe. I tried to buy it online on Cyber Monday, but had no luck. So I had to go to Toys R Us to get it (which is only 5 minutes from our house). The other was a gift for Brynn which was much cheaper at Toys R Us than on Amazon.

Problem is, I purchased a PINK guitar. And as previous post indicated, Blythe has asked for a PURPLE guitar. Now, normally I would not mess with exchanging it. It's not like she's really gonna care. In fact, I asked her if Santa brought her a PINK guitar, what would she think. She made a face, but then said she would still like it.

But I got to thinking about it and that whole write-a-letter-to-Santa-and-he-will-write-a-letter-back thing may cause issue. She wrote in the letter that she wanted a purple guitar. What if he writes her back and tells her he will get that for her? SO - back to Toys R Us I went today. Good lord. Everybody and their mother was there today at lunch time returning things or picking up site to store items or trying to call every freaking Toys R Us this side of the Mississippi in search for who knows what. I almost settled on pink right then and there. But then some assistant manager finally came to the front and yelled to page all available cashiers, which appeared to snap everyone out of their stand-around-and-do-nothing-but-look-busy attitude, so after that I made it to the front relatively quickly. Geez. She better not change her mind to pink now.

In other news....the Walmart closest to our house finally has added a grocery section. So that knocks off 4 minutes each way of my bi-weekly Walmart trip. Yahoo! It's the little things people....

Getting into the Christmas spirit

2011-12-04T14:51:00.001-05:00

Now that it's December, we are in full fledged Christmas spirit. The house is now completely decorated for Christmas (Braden finished the outside lights today, so will have to post decorating pics later). We put up our 2 fake Christmas trees. I need to plug in the pine tree scent my mom gave me, so it feels sort of like real trees. I saw a sign at one of the places selling real trees that said "Support North Carolina not China. Buy a NC tree". I thought that was a good sign, though it didn't change my mind.

Last night we headed to Durham for the "Santa Train" at the life and science museum. We met up with Doug, Lynette, Ada, and Harper there and then afterwards went for dinner. Although it was almost 60 degrees yesterday, the temperature did fall pretty fast, but still wasn't TOO bad. They had hot chocolate for everyone, you could make your own reindeer food, and Blythe got her face painted. Brynn enjoyed her free candy cane. The train ride was fun. About halfway through, we stopped at an area that was all decorated with lights and Santa was there. He went to each and every seat to ask each kid what they wanted for Christmas. When he got to Blythe, she told him she wanted a purple guitar (despite us trying to convince her she wanted a PINK guitar). When he got to mine and Ethan's seat, Ethan told him he wanted a blue bike. That was after Brynn freaked out and yelled "NOOOO!!!" right in Santa's face. This picture was taken right after that (notice Brynn as far away from Santa as she could possibly get):

After we left the Santa area, the kids had to keep their eye out for Rudolph's red nose, because Rudolph had run away earlier in the day. Fortunately, the kids spotted the red nose and told Rudolph to go home. Anyway, it was a good family affair to get into the spirit of Christmas.

A couple of weeks ago, Grams sent us some pre-printed Santa letters for the kids to fill out, color, and put stickers on. Fortunately for us, the town of Cary has a "Santa Mailbox" that has been designated by Santa as a pickup spot for all letters to Santa. So today the kids filled theirs out and and we went up to the Town Hall to find the Santa Mailbox. Now we just anxiously await his reply.

November catch up

2011-12-02T09:26:00.001-05:00

Man, what a sucky blogger I am. 6 posts in November? Seriously? That's right up there with July and August. Was I as busy as I was in July and August? Uh....hell no. I seriously hope I am NEVER ever ever again in my entire life as busy as I was in July and August of this year. Actually, things finally settled down in November. I no longer had a worker at my house almost every single day. Only a few days in November. I actually started to get caught up in my job (the one that pays me money). Imagine that. I started planning for swim camps next summer. I even started Christmas shopping (ALL online except I went to ToysRUs 2 days ago because I couldn't get their website to play nice with me on Cyber Monday). We found a church we really like and will be joining later this month.

We went to a few football games. NC State basketball games started up. Went to 2 home swim meets. Went to the Raleigh Christmas parade (that is held every year BEFORE Thanksgiving). Went to Pullen Park, which is right next door to NC State, but has been closed for 2 years for renovations. It is the 5th oldest amusement park in the country. Let's not think Six Flags though. It has a carousel, kiddie boats, a train, and peddle boats. And they souped up their playground and swings. The new additions are very nice and each ride is only $1. We'll be going there a lot.

I also spent the month trying to figure out what causes Brynn's eczema break outs. I was convinced it was food-related, but it doesn't appear that it is. But it drove me crazy all month!

Brynn also had her 18 month checkup, where everything checked out fine and she is exactly 50th percentile in height, weight, and head circumference.

We also headed to my parents' house for Thanksgiving, which was quite relaxing (as relaxing as can be expected with 3 kiddos and then 2 more when Doug and Lynette arrived).

So why didn't I blog much in November? Blame my Kindle. I think I read 3 books in November. It consumes me completely when I get sucked into another book. And I'm reading another now (not on the Kindle though). Maybe my New Year's resolution should be to blog more and read less. And eat more junk food and stop exercising. Okay, so maybe I should just take breaks between books.

So there you have it, now I'm all caught up and can start fresh with December. Here are some pics from the month of November:

The kids playing Ride Horses - Giddy Up!

Forgot to mention I also painted the dining room

Kiddie boats at Pullen Park

Blythe and Anna Grace on carousel at Pullen Park

The kids made masks at Thanksgiving

Harper and Brynn cozy in the Cozy Coupe

Holloway answering service

2011-11-22T11:37:00.001-05:00

Last night after I picked the kids up from school, we came home and played outside. I was trying to hook up a light outside so the kids could play in the dark and of course, since I wasn't holding Brynn, she was crying. Ethan went inside to get a snack and through the chaos I didn't hear the phone ring.

Never fear...my personal answering service was available inside (since he was getting a snack). He came out some time later and told me someone called on the phone for me. Good thing we have caller ID because "someone" is a little vague. I figured it was a telemarketer, but Ethan said it was Daddy. He didn't say anything about the conversation that took place other than that he talked to whoever it was.

So I checked the caller ID and saw that it was my co-worker. I had called her from the house line earlier in the day, so she must have just called me back at that number. So anyway, I asked her today if she got the privilege of speaking with my 3 year old. She said yes, she called (not realizing what time it was) and he answered. She asked if she could speak to me and he said "No". And then he hung up.

Looks like we're going to have to have a discussion about phone etiquette :)

Ethan and Brynn

2011-11-17T20:52:00.001-05:00

I love that Ethan and Brynn play so well together (most of the time). Ethan really is a great big brother and lets Brynn get her way almost as much as she'd like to.

Here they are watching Dora together:

And being silly together:

Brynn has learned how to say "Cheese!" now when I break out the camera. She looks so pretty in this picture, but also looks so much older.

Indoor Soccer

2011-11-14T15:29:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday (or actually 2 Saturdays ago) Ethan started indoor soccer.

Here's what's great about indoor soccer:
1. It's for 3-4 year olds and does NOT require parent involvement
2. There are 2 coaches and they are actually making an attempt to teach the kids how to play soccer
3. There are no games, which means I don't have to bring snacks
4. It's indoors, which means no cleats
5. No cleats means no shin guards
6. There are no teams, therefore no jerseys I have to buy
7. Ethan has a lot of learning to do, starting with learning that soccer means no hands on the ball. In the first class they had an exercise where the coach asked them to get all of the balls from one goal clear across the field to the other goal. They should have been a little more specific as Ethan thought that was pretty darn easy. Just walk over there, pick up the ball, and carry it to the other goal.
8. Brynn LOVES watching Ethan play soccer. And waving at him. And yelling "Ethan! Ethan!" at him.
9. Ethan loves it

What's not so great about indoor soccer:
1. I have to entertain Blythe and Brynn for 50 minutes in a very small space
2. There are 2 coaches, but probably 2 too many kids. And there's one kid who just cries the whole time distracting the other kids. But the parents keep making him stay out there.
3. It's 20 minutes away and at 9am on a Saturday. Means we got to get our butts moving in the morning!
4. If Ethan doesn't hear Brynn shouting at him or see him waving at her, she cries
5. Considering it doesn't come with a jersey or any other form of equipment, it's not all that cheap.

As you can see, the good list outweighs the bad. Especially #9 on the good list.

And look....he's a natural! (he's wearing blue on the right side of the field)

Blythe's Parent/Teacher conference

2011-11-04T10:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we had our very first ever parent/teacher conference. Okay, actually we had one when Blythe was 2 (she had a really great teacher at the time). But anyway, first one in public schools. Since we have 3 kids, it's not feasible for both of us to attend, so Braden went to the conference. Here is the report:

Blythe is doing great in her writing
Blythe is very interested in reading and is doing very well
Blythe is a natural leader and the other kids listen when Blythe talks
Blythe is popular
Blythe talks too much

Okay, so nothing all together enlightening there. I'm going to guess we'll get generally the same feedback at every parent/teacher conference we ever have for Blythe.

In general, she has good behavior. She's on "green" most days at school, but occasionally gets put on "yellow" because she's talking too much when she's not supposed to. In ballet on Wednesday the instructor told me that she has to separate Blythe and her friend Anna because if she doesn't, they talk too much and don't listen.

I guess the girl just has a lot to say.

In school, if they are on "green" for the whole week, they get to pick out a "treasure" from the treasure box. This motivated Blythe the first month or so of school, but now not so much. I need to find something at home to reward her if she is on green all week that might be better than a pencil from the treasure box. Ideas are welcome!

Halloween

2011-11-01T12:38:00.001-04:00

It's ridiculous how much candy we have in our house right now. Because:
1. My kids went trick or treating in my parents neighborhood on Saturday
2. Ethan and Brynn had Halloween parties at school. The note said to bring in some candy and a treat for their party (all optional though). So I sent Ethan with some Halloween fruit rollups (1 for each of the kids in his class) and 2 pieces of candy per kid in his class. Brynn same thing except instead of fruit rollups, it was fruit snacks. I must have missed the fine print (written in invisible ink) that said "put together really awesomely cute goodie bags and include at least 15-20 items per goody bag. Make custom name tags for each child in the class and it's optional, but recommended, you have Halloween photos taken of your child and make gift tags from the photos". Seriously! WTF? These other parents work full-time too. Where do they find the time?
3. We have LOTS of kids in our neighborhood, so I bought LOTS of candy to give out (in our last neighborhood we would usually run out of candy at some point and I'd have to start giving away the candy our kids trick or treated for). But this year it rained. Boo for rain on Halloween. It rained from 5pm until about 9pm with a few minutes here and there of no rain. Therefore, I think the really little kids stuck to only a few houses instead of venturing out in their wagons to rest of the neighborhood. So we ended up with quite a bit of the candy we started with.
4. Our kids went trick-or-treating in the rain. They held umbrellas and away they went. They hit up quite a few houses before they got too cold. I think they did pretty well...basically all good candy and not any crappy or weird candy.

They were pretty proud of the costumes they picked out this year. Blythe loved the makeup job I did for her (after I googled "Easy witch makeup for kids"). I love Google. Makes my kids think I know EVERYTHING (which of course, I do....I just reference Google for verification). Ethan's face is also a shade of yellow. Yellow doesn't quite cover the face like green face paint does.

And with Daddy (as scary, mean-looking guy) and Brynn (as a beautiful butterfly):

I should clarify point #4 above. By "kids went trick-or-treating", I mean Ethan and Blythe. Other than the picture above where she is eating a fruit snack, Brynn spent the rest of the evening like this:

which meant no trick-or-treating for her. Not if I had to carry the screaming, wiggly toddler while carrying an umbrella and a candy bag. It's not like she needed to bring home any MORE candy.

Boo at the Zoo

2011-11-01T09:47:00.001-04:00

My parents live about a half hour from the NC Zoo in Asheboro. It's a beautiful zoo and it HUGE. I've been a couple of times, but last year heard of their Halloween event, Boo at the Zoo. So this year we decided to go. The weather looked better on Sunday, so Saturday we drove to my parents house and spent the night there before heading to the zoo on Sunday. Worked out well because my parents neighborhood had their big Halloween event on Saturday night. It consisted of a hay ride, some trick or treating, and food and games at the clubhouse. The event was free for kids 6 and under (therefore all 5 of my parents grandkids were free!). Suckers.

Brynn didn't so much love the hayride, but the other kids had lots of fun. We had to break out some secondary costumes so as not to mess up our real Halloween costumes. And it was kind of cold, so had to get some WARM costumes as well.

Blythe was a cowgirl, Brynn was an owl, Ethan was a monkey, Ada was a skeleton, and Harper was a chicken.

Sunday we headed to Boo at the Zoo. We didn't get to see ALL of the animals at the zoo (since that zoo is SO big), but we hit most of the big ones. The best ones were the chimpanzees (because there was a baby/toddler monkey and she was SO cute!) and the ostriches, zebras, and giraffes. The last 3 were all together and at one point the zebras were chasing the ostriches and the giraffes were chasing the zebras. They were playing! Those giraffes were running all over the place. Giraffes are incredible to watch running. They look like they are floating on air! I think my parents said something like, "Wow, they really put on a show for us!". So the next day, Blythe and Ethan were pretending to be the ostriches and said to me, "remember the show we saw?" I looked lost, so they said, "with the ostriches and the giraffes?". Guess they figured that was a planned show!

Anyway, Boo at the Zoo was a success!

The back yard transformation

2011-10-26T10:03:00.000-04:00

Our back yard transformation is (nearly) complete! Just missing the door in the screened porch to our new patio.

Here is the before picture (which of course is the worst possible picture I could find of it...fallen tree and all):

Here's what we did (or had done for some things):
1. Had fallen tree removed from house
2. put up a fence
3. removed sticks, branches, vines, weeds from yard and natural area
4. had 4 trees removed
5. used wood chips from 4 trees and spread in natural area (removed some pine needles first)
6. painted inside and outside of screened porch
7. painted floor of screened porch
8. added a patio with seating wall
9. put in sod
10. planted a new crepe myrtle tree
11. planted a few new plants between house and patio

AND......(drum roll please).....

Looks a tad better, don't you think?

Back from Temecula

2011-10-26T09:51:00.000-04:00

Well we made it back from our trip to Temecula (on Sunday). Friday night was the wedding (Braden's best buddy from high school). BEAUTIFUL wedding and beautiful location.

It was the first wedding I've ever been to where they served drinks BEFORE the ceremony (and afterwards of course). The wedding was supposed to start at 4pm and people were still hanging around sipping wine at probably 10 after. I guess that's how things are done in California? Just that "we'll get around to it at some point" relaxed mentality. Whatever. Works for me.

The next day we were taking the red eye flight back and so our flight left at 10:30pm out of San Diego. So, we needed to find something to do to fill our whole day. I've already been to the San Diego zoo twice, but I had never been to Sea World (not any of the Sea World sites). So Braden was a sport and took me to Sea World. So weird being there with no kids. In some ways good (no meltdowns, less potty breaks, no stroller, etc) but there were so many things we wished the kids could have seen. So we took LOTS of video clips of the shows and sent some back home for the kids to see. Then we showed them the rest when we got home. Anyway, Sea World was awesome. LOVED the Shamu shows and the Dolphin show. Definitely would love to take the kids sometime.

Did not so much love the 10:30 red eye flight home. But overall, was a really nice trip and so happy to have been able to spend some much needed alone time with my hubby.

Hot Air Balloon ride

2011-10-21T15:03:00.003-04:00

So as I mentioned before, we did basically no planning on things to do for this trip. Literally the day before we left I went on Google and searched for "things to do in Temecula". Wine Tasting came up, which I already knew, and Hot Air Balloon rides. So I thought that would be really cool. Figured we would wait to get here and see what sort of deals there were. I've always wanted to go up in a hot air balloon, so I was pretty excited about the possibility.

As soon as we got to the hotel on Wednesday, we found a place and made a reservation for this morning. You have to meet there at 6:30am, which is no biggee since we are used to being 3 hours ahead and have not adjusted to west coast time. The mornings here are cold, so we dressed in layers and met up at the winery where we needed to go. From there, we got in a van and drove out to a launch site (a dirt field). The guys there got the balloon laid out and filled it up. We all climbed in (there were 10 people in our balloon plus the pilot) and just like that we started to float up. It was spectacular!

They don't normally have low/thin clouds around here in the morning (usually no clouds...think desert). But this morning they did and it was beautiful. Sometimes we would go down really low (to the point where you could almost pick the grapefruits off the grapefruit trees) and sometimes we would go way up above the clouds (to about 2200 feet). It was incredible how the wind would move the balloon in different directions depending on how high we were. The balloon ride lasted about an hour and 20 minutes I think. We had some issues trying to land near the other balloon in our group. The winds changed after they landed and so we ended up on the other side of the street, but our pilot got us maneuvered up over the power lines and across the street. Just takes experience and lots of patience I guess!

Here are pics from our ride:

Wine Tasting

2011-10-21T14:40:00.000-04:00

Probably the most popular thing to do in Temecula is wine tasting. Temecula doesn't have any really big wineries, mostly "boutique" wineries, but good wine is good wine, right? And coupons for 2-for-1 deals are sweet. Temecula has 37 wineries (as opposed to over 600 in Napa) and we tried them all. Okay, no not really. We went to 3.

The favorite wine I had was at a small winery called Churon. It was actually a Rose wine, which I normally don't like at all. This one was called a "white merlot". It tasted like there was no alcohol in it at all. Could get in some big trouble with that one. But since we brought carry-on luggage here, there was no wine bottle buying by us and Churon doesn't even sell in stores, so oh well. We shared a tasting there (of 5 wines). Braden's favorite there was the cabernet.

Next up was a slightly bigger winery called Falkner. We each got our own tasting there. Falkner also had a restaurant, so we ate a really nice meal and lingered on the patio for a while. The weather here is gorgeous! Falkner also sits up high, so the views up there were pretty good. Here is a pic of me standing near the patio of the restaurant.

With our tummies full of food to soak up the alcohol, we headed to another winery. This time Thornton Winery. At this one, the tastings are outside and you sit like at a restaurant. We each got 4 with our tastings and each tasting pour was 3 ounces, so 12 ounces of wine later we were all tasted out. Headed back to the hotel to relax....ahh.

To finish off the day, we headed to Pechanga Casino. The place was GINORMOUS. We played slots for a little while, but putting money into a machine that just takes it all away gets old after a while. Braden was dying to play blackjack, but from what we could tell in all our searching, there were only two $5 minimum bid tables. The rest were $10 or higher. The $5 tables were full. So just when we were about to leave, Braden decided to play the $10 tables and got chips for his $20. He got up to $40 and cashed out. So, we ended up winning at the casino and called it a night.

Made it to Temecula

2011-10-20T12:18:00.000-04:00

Braden and I made it to Temecula, CA. Only took us 22 hours to get here! But you know, those were 22 kidless hours of travel, so wasn't bad at all. We had to fly from Charlotte because we made the reservations before we knew we were moving and we are using miles, so we couldn't change it to Raleigh without paying like $700. So we left Tuesday night and drove to my parents house, slept 5 or so hours, then got up early and drove the rest of the way to the Charlotte airport. Unfortunately, we aren't using US Airways miles, but instead United, so had to fly to Chicago and then on to San Diego. Rental car took FOREVER to rent (and instead of the compact car we had rented, they only had full sized cars....so, we are driving the hooptie mobile...a Grand Marquis). Seriously, why does ANYBODY buy those cars? It's like driving a boat. San Diego is about an hour from Temecula, so drove the rest of the way and then got here around 2:45 in the after Pacific Time. We were SO tired, so took a nap and then forced ourselves to wake up and go out to dinner.

We headed over to an area called Old Town, which was pretty dead, I guess because it's a Wednesday. We did find one of the few restaurants that appeared to be popular on a Wednesday night. It was wonderful and the wine was delicious as well. What was even more wonderful was that they were trying out a new menu that night for the first time and so all food was half off. Cha Ching!

So this has to be the only vacation I've ever been on where I had no plans on what to do while we are here (other than going to Braden's friend's wedding on Friday night). So we will kind of be playing it by ear. We'll try to take some pictures and post them when we do fun things. For now, just relaxing...ahhh!

New links added

2011-10-17T11:39:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let you all know that I added 2 blog links in my blog list to the right. One is Blythe's kindergarten class blog. They just started this last week. Hopefully they will blog a couple of times a week. The other isn't a blog, but a link to Blythe's school artwork on Artsonia. They scan it in and upload it to the Artsonia website so it all stays together in one place. How awesome is that? It is AMAZING how technology is helping even kindergartners at school. They have this iPad looking thing (forgot what it's called) that they write on that gets projected at the front of the room. So cool. Anyway, enjoy!

NC State Fair

2011-10-14T13:24:00.000-04:00

My sister has been staying with us all week. I feel bad that I don't have time during the day to do fun things with her, so she's been pretty bored. Except on Monday and today when I made her help me spread mulch. Fun times! Woohoo! So anyway, our big plan all week was to head to the State Fair on Thursday evening. It's right up the road from us and Thursday was the first day (it goes for 2 weeks). Doug, Lynette, Ada, and Harper were going to go too. But then they called for 80% chance of severe thunderstorms. We decided to wait and see and then in the afternoon decided not to go (the percentage kept fluctuating between 30% and 80%). Basically nobody had any freaking clue. But my track record at amusement parks in the past several years has been pretty bad (rained every time). So we decided not to go. Then at about 4 or 4:30 the chance of thunderstorms went away. By then Doug had already planned to stay at work, but I knew Laura really wanted to go, so Laura and I took the kids and then Braden met us there later.

In all my years growing up near Charlotte and then the 5 Octobers I spent in Raleigh while I was in college here, I never went to the State Fair. I was pretty shocked at how big it is. We probably saw maybe 20% of it. And wow, you can spend money like water there. Especially with 3 kids. $6 on ice cream...gone. $33 on ride tickets...gone. $12 on admission tickets....gone (thank goodness kids 5 and under get in free). $16 on games trying to win a REALLY crappy stuffed animal....gone. But everyone had a good time. Blythe's favorite thing was the free fall ride. No one would ride it with her, so we had to wait for Braden to get there because we knew he would ride it with Blythe. Ethan said his favorite ride was the monster trucks. Brynn rode the carousel and altered between kind of fun and deathly afraid. In the end, she decided on deathly afraid. Laura and Blythe rode a caterpillar roller coaster that they both loved. What Brynn really did like though was the petting zoo. The goats and the camels were very amusing to her.

The place really is gigantic though. We didn't see any shows, rode only kiddie rides, and only ate 1 elephant ear and ice cream out of ALL the food there to offer (we opted against the fried oreos). You could probably spend several days there, but then we would be broke. So, especially since it's 1 mile from our house, we will opt for once per year. \

[Insert Title]

2011-10-13T10:37:00.001-04:00

I think having 3 kids has fried my brain.

Everytime I think about blogging, I no longer can think of anything to blog about other than what we did over the weekend. It's like my brain has left and gone on vacation. I mean, I can't even come up with a blog title. Maybe it's not just the 3 kids. Maybe it's the moving and the unpacking and the painting and the hanging pictures and the gathering of estimates and the walking of the dogs and the working at my job and the homework I need to help Blythe with and the laundry and the grocery shopping. Maybe there's just no more room in my head for real thoughts.

I'm hoping to slow things down a bit pretty soon. In fact, next week Braden and I are taking a much needed mini-vacation just the 2 of us. We haven't done that in 4 and a half years. Maybe my brain is already vacationing in California and I can find it and bring it back with me. Stay tuned...

NC State Swimming Alumni weekend

2011-10-10T20:47:00.002-04:00

Last weekend was our NC State swimming and diving alumni weekend. We had Emily and Sue and Richard and their daughter, Sadie, stay with us. I'd say the weekend was a huge success, thanks to the hard work of some very dedicated swimming alums. I had volunteered to help (since moving, unpacking, painting, working full time, and taking care of the 3 kids isn't time consuming enough), but fortunately I didn't have to do too much beyond help with the planning.

It is nice to have an event to give everyone a kick in the rear. In my case, it was my motivation for getting most of the pictures hung, getting the screened porch painted (inside and out), getting the living room painted and curtains hung. At the pool, it was the deadline for getting the new lobby finished and decorated and getting the bathrooms redone. And I have to say, both our house and NC State's pool look pretty darn nice. Although a little bit of grass at our house would go a long way. Hopefully that will come sometime later this month. For now, here is a picture of our living room:

Looks more orange in the photo than it actually is, but I'm very unskilled in taking photos. Now that we have color on one wall in our entire house, I'm anxious to get some more walls painted.

Back to the weekend...Everyone got here on Friday afternoon. We had a meeting at the pool at 4pm. Thank goodness my parents were here on Friday night so I could make it to the meeting sans children. They brought the kids to the pool later for the team intrasquad meet. Though Brynn was sweating like crazy, I think they had a good time. The team walkouts and logos they created were incredible! And I think there were some pretty fast times as well. My kids might have had more fun outside than inside (due to some amazingly beautiful weather).

After the meet, we came home briefly before heading to the University Club for dinner and drinks. Blythe and Ethan also went because there was a kids room, FREE babysitters, and Mr. Wuf (the NC State mascot). Too bad I suck at remembering to take photos. I really have none from the rest of the weekend except a few we took playing with the cool glow in the dark glasses Emily brought.

Saturday was a big tailgate and a football game. Thank goodness they actually won this one. We took Blythe and Ethan (my sister babysat Brynn). They were not as much fun as normal at the game which I suspect had something to do with being up until 11pm the night before. By Saturday night everyone was EXHAUSTED! We all went to bed early! So happy to have gotten to see everyone and loved spending the weekend with my Wolfpack swimming/diving alum!

Family time

2011-10-04T11:28:00.000-04:00

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that we now live so close to my brother, sister-in-law, and nieces. We've already done so many fun things together since we moved here and our kids are becoming so much closer. I can just see already that Brynn and Harper are going to be best buds. Okay, so right now Brynn just likes pushing Harper and trying to pull her hair. But they are love pushes and love hair pulling. The potential is there.

This past weekend didn't fail in the fun with fam department. With Braden very busy with recruiting some nights and weekend mornings, I've depended on Doug and Lynette to help me keep my sanity. A week ago Saturday Doug and I took the 5 kids to a museum. Would I have tackled it by myself with my 3? NOOOOO. But add another adult and piece of cake (okay, still not THAT easy, but easier). Last Friday night, I met up with Lynette and her girls at their house while we waited out the rain (supposed to be 0% chance of rain...what the hell?). After the rain ended, we went to downtown Durham to meet up with Doug (he works right there) for an outdoor concert. Once the rain moved out, the weather was very nice and so we all had a good time. Brynn determines everyone's schedules these days, so once she had had enough, we left and went home.

Saturday was a perfect day for tailgating and a Wolfpack football game (too bad the game was not so fun to watch). We made it until halftime with the kiddos (ALL the kids went to the game...it was Harper's first NC State game!). Then we came back to our house to watch the rest on TV (at that point we were only down by 1 touchdown). Quickly after we had to change the channel (it was too terrible to watch), so we watched Virginia Tech and Clemson game until that one got too terrible to watch. The kids were probably happy that football wasn't going our way because then we had a dance party. So fun!

The next morning, we met Doug, Lynette, Ada, and Harper out at Hill Ridge Farms, a "pumpkin patch" north of Raleigh. It's not a real pumpkin patch, but is super fun with all sorts of fun things for the kids to do. And you do get to ride a tractor out to a field with a bunch of pumpkins and come home with your very own pumpkin, so it's every kids dream come true. We got some good pics of the kids there (mostly Lynette's photos) and everyone had a blast!

Anna confusion

2011-09-29T21:09:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow Blythe has no school. A teacher workday. Should be awesome in the morning when I make Ethan go to school after he knows Blythe didn't get on the school bus. Anyway, Blythe has made a friend in her ballet class named Anna that goes to her school. Her mom doesn't have to work tomorrow and so she offered for Blythe to come play with Anna for the day. Sounded like a good plan to me. So after ballet I told Blythe she might go play at Anna's house on Friday. She seemed quite excited.

Tonight I was finally able to confirm plans with Anna's mom, and so before bed I told Blythe again she was going to Anna's house to play tomorrow. I told her she needed to be nice and say "please" and "thank you". She seemed a little worried and said she wouldn't be eating dinner over there. I told her she would be eating lunch there and then Blythe asked if she could bring her own lunch there. Thought that was a little strange. So I told her no, I'm pretty sure Anna likes the same things Blythe likes. Blythe said, "Anna wasn't born in North Carolina. She was born somewhere else." Wasn't sure when exactly they had that conversation, but whatever. She asked again, "can I just bring a snack over there?". She said Anna knows how to say "Konnichiwa" (I had to look that one up on Google to know how to spell it).

Then she said she sometimes sees her friend Cassidy (who's in a different class) at lunch and at recess. I asked her if she eats lunch with Cassidy and she said no because she's in a different class. She then said she also sees her friend from ballet. At which point I realized she must have a different friend Anna in her class. So I told her she was going to Anna from ballet's house tomorrow to play. She seemed a little embarrassed and maybe a little disappointed. Appears that she told her friend Ariel and her friend Zury and her friend Owen that she was going to play at Anna's house. She also told the Anna from her class (who I'm sure was excited and a little confused). Then Blythe said to me, "I wish you had told me which Anna". Guess that's what I get when I ASSUME she knows what I'm talking about (and when I don't realize she knows more than 1 Anna). So I felt a little bad. But she should have fun at ballet Anna's house.

We've had a lot of rain

2011-09-26T16:10:00.000-04:00

Lots of rain means lots of inside time. Especially when your yard is full of mud (we get sod next month sometime). Can you tell we've been cooped up a little?

Caniac Carnival

2011-09-20T16:00:00.002-04:00

Braden is pretty busy with recruiting weekends all Fall, so the kids and I need to fill our time with some sort of fun activity on Saturday mornings. This past weekend's fun activity...flu shots! No? Doesn't sound all that exciting? Maybe I need to work on my delivery because the kids weren't all that excited about them either. Figured I'd go ahead and knock them out since our new doctor's office was doing clinics every Saturday morning and since all 3 of my kids are healthy right now and I sure know that won't last long with the changing temps. I told them we just had to drive over there to "check out the new doctor's office". It was a good trick. And they even liked the waiting room since there was a kids section. Blythe sort of caught on and asked if they had to get shots. I told her "maybe...I have to check". So at the last minute, I said yes, we need to get shots. Just one each. And then the wailing began.

Ethan went first because he's the bravest. He cried, but held still and then it was over and he was fine. Blythe was cowering in the hall hoping we'd forget about her. I had to drag her in there as she was screaming. She wouldn't hold still and it took 3 adults and a lot of coaxing to make her stay still, but we got it done. She said, "I'm never, ever, ever going to get a shot ever again in my life". I told her she didn't have to....until next Fall when she'd get another flu shot. Brynn went last and was the easiest (probably because she weighs the least and is easiest to restrain).

Maybe this Saturday we'll find something a little more fun to do.

But Sunday I was determined to find something fun to do that was actually, um, fun. I saw on the news in the morning a clip about the "Caniac Carnival". A kickoff to the Carolina Hurricanes (NHL hockey team) season being held at the RBC Center right up the road. Braden was just finishing up so he met us there. This was a really fun event! TONS of inflatables for the kids, free cotton candy, free popcorn. Even a Taco Bell mascot (guy dressed as a taco) that gave out free coupons for FREE tacos! We racked up! And to top that off admission to the Hurricanes Red/White game for free too! Brynn was tired before the game, so I left and took her home to nap, but Braden stayed with Blythe and Ethan and they watched 1 period of the game, which was really cool. They had an exciting entrance and then there was actually lots of scoring. Plus, they were on the 5th row. They all came home with not-so-free Carolina Hurricanes goods and apparel. But they loved it and maybe we'll go back sometime this season for a game or 2.

Here's the only picture taken. Blythe looks a little crazy, but you get the idea. She's wearing her new Canes t-shirt and Ethan has his new Canes padded hockey stick.

The rest of the weekend was filled with house projects. The never ending list of house projects.

Blythe's Ballet class

2011-09-14T14:58:00.001-04:00

Last Wednesday Blythe started ballet. It's a rite of passage for every 5 year old girl, right? It's only once a week for 45 minutes. I'm commitment-phobic when it comes to activities for young children, so the fact that it's once a week is a big plus. There is only one recital and it's in May or June next year, so it's kind of a commitment, but I went with one that doesn't make you sign some sort of contract so we can opt out at any time. But I think she may actually stick with it. There were about 6 girls in her class, all 5 or 6 years old. She seemed to have a really good time, so she may even make some good friends in that class. It's only a few minutes from the house and I don't have to be there the whole time (though I usually will). But days that Braden is out of town that means I don't have to bring Ethan and Brynn in there for 45 minutes and entertain them...a huge plus!

Anyway, here are some pics before class last week.

Ethan and Brynn update

2011-09-13T09:31:00.000-04:00

I've had quite a few posts about Blythe (and actually still have another to post soon), so what have Ethan and Brynn been up to? How are they adjusting?

Well, they both started at their new school on the same day that Blythe officially started kindergarten. Braden takes them both to school in the morning and I pick up. With no traffic, it takes 7-8 minutes to get there. The first 2 days took me over 20 minutes. Darn 1-40 and the wrecks that are on that interstate every.freaking.day. There are lots of ways to go to avoid I-40, so just need to check traffic reports before I leave each day. Anyway, Brynn of course screamed and cried at drop off, but Ethan did well the first couple of days. He seemed to like it and was playing well when I picked him up.

Then we were home for 3 days for Labor Day weekend. Long enough for them both to feel like that was just a visit period and they never had to go again. Braden was gone Tuesday morning, so I had to take them both. That meant we had to wait for Blythe to get on the bus first. Ethan and Brynn both (but Ethan especially) LOVED watching Blythe get on the bus. Both of them did not love getting dropped off at school though. All last week Ethan had rough drop offs. But ever since he watched Blythe get on the bus, now he wants to watch her get on the bus every day. He gets so excited. Here's a little video clip and he is actually toned down on this particular day. Usually there is much more waving and "Bye Blythe!" going on. I love it. It's so cute.

So I think he's making some new friends at his new school, but as I suspected it will take him the longest of my 3 kids to adjust. Being in the middle, he's getting a little lost in the shuffle and is acting out some to get some attention. Hopefully it won't take him that long to adjust and things will settle down. He's already ALL about the Wolfpack though. He got a Wolfpack football at Target yesterday and it doesn't leave his side.

As for Brynn...her biggest accomplishment in the last couple of weeks is learning how to go down stairs. Our new house has 2 staircases (like our last), but both are carpeted. I figured it wouldn't hurt that much to fall down them and I really didn't want to mess with baby gates, so we didn't put them up. She fell down (maybe 5 or 6 steps) about 3 times in the first 2 days. So then she was scared of the stairs. It was like we had an invisible baby gate. She would just call for us at the top of the stairs to come and get her (and by that I mean she said, "Eh....Eh....EHHHHH" until we came to get her). That lasted a few days and then she got brave and figured out how to go down on her belly feet first. Now she goes really fast. When she gets out of the bathtub, I try to dry her off, but she runs away from me, out into the hall, and then down the stairs really fast. She loves being the naked baby on the loose!

She's doing pretty well though. I might have to have her start taking naps in a pack n play on weekends. Her room is positioned the worst for noise, so I turn her noise machine way up. That seems to work, except Ethan has been going into her room and waking her up mid-nap. Which is pretty awful when you are trying to get organized and unpacked and only have the 3 hour nap window on weekends to do it.

The first day of kindergarten

2011-09-08T14:37:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, the start of kindergarten is a little weird here. Staggered visitation days and actually riding the bus on the visitation day, so I'd say it tones down the first day of kindergarten to not as big of an event.

Aug. 31 was "meet the teacher" day. We went to the school at lunchtime and checked a list for each teacher to find Blythe's name. I have no idea who the other teachers are and therefore have zero expectations, which is a good thing I guess. Ignorance is bliss, right? So anyway, Blythe has Mrs. Kingston as her teacher. Mrs. Kingston is the only new kindergarten teacher this year, but she seemed really cool and has been teaching in an elementary school for 9 years. Her husband went to Radford and is now going to NC State, so what's not to like? Blythe is now on her 5th day of school and still doesn't remember her teacher's name though. She had a bag for each kid at the "meet the teacher" with a bit of candy in it, so that's all Blythe was really interested in.

So anyway, first day of kindergarten was Sept. 1. She was hyped about riding the bus to school. I was slightly concerned, but figured she'd make it there alright. She had her Hello Kitty backpack and Hello Kitty lunchbox and was all set!

Here she is getting on the bus:

She has made a couple of friends on the bus. She says one is 9 and in fourth grade. 2 others are in kindergarten. One of those 2 is in her class. They sit together on the bus, but Blythe still can't remember her name. She has made another friend in her class named Sophia and they sit together at lunch.

She had a great day though. I'm looking at her picture now and realized she wore the exact same thing today. Guess that's the "Thursday" outfit. Blythe is dressing herself now and I guess has a few favorite outfits.

Anyway, she had PE that day and then Music on Friday. She was bummed about the holiday because she didn't get to do Art on Monday.

Blythe LOVES kindergarten so far. She is so excited to show me her papers or artwork when she gets home. But her favorite part about kindergarten is, unsurprisingly, riding the bus.

We made it to Raleigh!

2011-09-07T11:09:00.000-04:00

Ok, so hopefully I haven't lost many blog stalkers in my hiatus from blogging. I tried to fit it in, but something always comes up. My last blog was on my last night in Blacksburg. I slept like crap because ~~I was way too excited about he move~~ they had packed up my white noise maker. So anyway, on Thursday, August 25 the movers came and loaded the truck. The landscapers finally came (at the very last second) to fix the damage my neighbor across the street had done with her car and in the afternoon I went to the closing and was there all of 10 minutes. The family buying our house was really reserved, but also very excited. It was their first home purchase after living in an apartment for 15 years. They have 2 kids who are 10 and 9. I was so happy for them. Gave me a little more motivation to make sure the house was clean for them.

After the movers finished up, my dad drove home and I drove to Durham to stay at Doug and Lynette's. Our final walk-thru at the new house wasn't until 1:30 on Friday so it was weird not having anything to do all morning and having none of my kids around, especially after being so busy for the past 2 months. But the final walk-thru went well and the closing was fine too. The attorney was very comical and actually made it fun. Our realtor said it was the strangest closing she'd ever been to.

Our stuff wasn't being delivered until Monday, so we had all weekend to knock out stuff around the house. Hanging window treatments, grocery shopping, etc. Was hoping to do some painting in the screened porch on Saturday, but Hurricane Irene had other plans. So Saturday was wet and windy. In the morning on Saturday I looked out the window in Ethan's new room and noticed a tall tree that was leaning A LOT. I swear as I stood there, it leaned even more. The base of the tree was just on the other side of our property line (in the common area) and was going to be in the way of the fence we wanted to put up. Made me wonder how long it would take the developer to take it down because we wanted to start the fence a few days later. About an hour or so later that problem was solved. Unfortunately it was solved by falling on our screened porch.

The good news is that because it was leaning so much already, it didn't do much damage. Just a few bent shingles really. And the builder took care of getting the tree removed, so that was good too.

Sunday cleared up, so we were able to paint/seal the screened porch floor and then head back over to Doug's to finally see the kids and hang out at the pool. I hadn't seen Blythe or Ethan in 10 days at that point and hadn't seen Brynn in 6 days. Finally we had our whole family back together again!

Monday our moving truck came. Gommy and Lynette took Harper, Ada, Brynn, and Ethan to the Life and Science museum in Durham. Blythe got up early with Braden and I and came to the house so we could be there for the movers at 7:30 in the morning. At 8:45 I took Blythe to her kindergarten visitation day. They do a staggered kindergarten entry here, where each kindergartner goes to school for one full day sometime between Aug. 25 and Aug. 30. They meet all of the teachers and counselors, they get familiar with the school, and they are assessed on their language, math, reading, etc levels. Then they are placed in a kindergarten class and start officially on Sept. 1. They also recommend they take home whatever transportation they normally would. In Blythe's case that is the bus. I was a nervous wreck about her taking the bus home, considering she'd never even slept in that home or really knew what it looked like. I put a lot of faith in the school to get her on the right bus and the bus driver to make sure she got off on the right stop. But she made it and she loved it! Here she is before school that day:

While Blythe was at school, Braden, Poppa, Doug, and I unpacked like crazy people as they were unloading the truck. The motivation being that any box that was unpacked could be thrown right back in the truck and they would take them away. The movers finished up by 1:30 though, so although we got tons of boxes out of the way, we were still left with a whole lot. And mounds and mounds of packing paper.

But we were in our new house! All of us under one roof again and ready to start our new adventures!

VERY grateful for all of the help provided by Gommy, Poppa, Laura, Doug, Lynette, Grams, and Peep. Couldn't have done it without you guys!

So long Blacksburg

2011-08-24T21:26:00.003-04:00

Well, tonight is my last night at our house in Blacksburg. Still seems a little surreal even while I sit amongst a house full of boxes. There was no going away party or any big event for leaving. My family actually left 2 people at a time. Blythe and Ethan left last Thursday and my mom took them to meet up with Grams and Peep and they spent 5 fun-filled days in Cashiers, NC. Pretty sure Grams and Peep will probably be sleeping 12 hours a day for a while to recoup! Then Braden and Brynn (and Juni and Bogie) left on Monday. Brynn went to my mom's and Juni and Bogie went to my brother's and then Braden went on in to work in Raleigh. So I was here alone. It was SO quiet! But I had no time to enjoy the peace since I was running around like a maniac doing all of the last minute stuff. I swear I felt like those last minute things would never end.

Today the movers came to pack all our stuff and my dad came up to help me with the last 2 days. Yep, that's right...I said movers came to PACK all our stuff. We've never had that done before and it's AWESOME! Thank goodness for NC State and a good moving package! Tomorrow they will be here to load the truck and we close on our house here in Blacksburg in the late afternoon. Then I will drive away leaving lots of memories.

Memories of learning I was pregnant for the first time (and the second time and the third time) and telling Braden each time after I found out.
Memories of figuring out how to hang cabinets and build a sandbox and tile a countertop.
Memories of going to t-ball games and Blythe's first swim meet
Memories of bringing our 3 beautiful children into this world at a small, but great hospital by an awesome doctor I will certainly miss!
Memories of our kids playing outside with the neighbors playing basketball or drawing with chalk
Memories of Braden organizing an impromptu neighborhood water balloon fight
Memories of walking at lunchtime with Amy or meeting at the gym for Zumba
Memories of dropping my kids off at daycare for the very first time and crying hysterically as soon as I got in the car to drive away
Memories of Blythe and Ashley meeting and becoming instant friends at the age of 1 and a half
Memories of Hokie football games and Hokie swim meets
Memories of snow. Lots of snow.
Memories of rocking on our front porch
Memories of drinking a glass of wine while sitting on our back deck and listening to music
Memories of hanging out on the deck for hours while Blythe sat in her exersaucer (ah, that was relaxing!)
Memories of playing upstairs before bed and throwing a ball for Ethan so he could hit it with his soft Hokie baseball bat
Memories of watching Blythe and Ethan jump off of Ethan's bed and onto his bean bag while acting like crazy animals
Memories of putting together the biggest doll house known to man before Christmas
Memories of taking the kids to see Santa at the mall (who looked a lot like Santa, but not nearly as jolly as he should have been)
Memories of looking at the clock in the morning on the way to daycare, realizing it took 2 hours to get all kids up and dressed and fed before school, but feeling pretty proud that I did it all by myself
Memories of teaching Blythe and Ethan (and Ashley and Luke) how to drive the jeep around the neighborhood
Memories of taking Blythe to see a high school play of Beauty and the Beast while I was 9 months pregnant and she wanted to sit on my lap (or lack thereof) for most of it
Memories of rocking Brynn to sleep in the glider in her room (that I wish I had had for the first 2!)
Memories of Braden surprising me on our 7 year anniversary with a night at a local hotel and a fantastic dinner!

I could go on and on. But the memories are coming with me. It's hard to forget a place where all 3 of your kids were born. Even if my kids won't really remember this place.

I'm ready for the next chapter now. Here we come Raleigh and hopefully we will be there for a LONG time.

So long Blacksburg.

If you're happy and you know it....

2011-08-16T21:59:00.002-04:00

What you don't want to see when you are on vacation

2011-08-12T21:02:00.003-04:00

...is a picture text message from your next door neighbor of the house you are closing on in 13 days that looks like this:

Um, yes, that is a car in our flower bed. 1 inch from our house. Barely fitting in the space between a tree and our front porch. Sitting on top of our very best lilac bush and crushing a few solar lights and some sprinkler heads. And that is our neighbor from the house across the street in the driver's seat.

How did this happen (I'm sure you are wondering)? Well, apparently she was about to leave to go to the airport and her car wouldn't start. She needed to jump start it, but wanted to move it a bit out of her garage. So she put it in neutral and (with no one in the car), pushed it out of her garage. I'm not exactly sure how she thought the car would stop considering her driveway is sloped down hill (towards our house). It rolled down her driveway, missed her mailbox, rolled across the street, missed the tree in front of our house, ran over some bushes and came to a stop 1 inch from our house.

So...not the text I would really love to get while on vacation, but obviously could have been a whole lot worse. The bad thing is that the buyers for our house are back in the country and wanted to come at 6pm today so the guy could show his family the house. Which was bad enough since I wasn't prepared and it looks like a house that has been ransacked while packing for vacation. Now it looks like a ransacked house with a car that's been driven through the front yard.

Never a dull moment my friends...

Virginia Beach - Day 1

2011-08-11T13:46:00.003-04:00

Yes, we have SO much to do at home before we move in 2 weeks, but long, long ago (several months ago), we planned a mini-vacation (3 days off of work) to Virginia Beach. Paid for with Marriott points, so the lodging part is free (food and gas ins another story). We're actually only staying at a hotel for 2 nights and then 2 nights with our friends Tommy and Angie.

After a 5 and half hour drive (with stops), we made it to Virginia Beach. Staying at a hotel on the beach certainly has it's perks (namely the beach)...and a pool, a playground on the beach, and the awesome Virginia Beach boardwalk. But staying in a hotel room with our 3 kids, early bedtimes, and nap times (for Brynn) is a bit of a challenge. But the hotel is nice and Brynn napped yesterday in the car, so when we got here we were ready to party! We started at the pool, which Brynn was totally digging despite the massive amounts of pool water she drank. We then moved on to the pirate ship-themed playground right on the beach. That was a huge hit! Then after that we made it down to the ocean. Blythe and Ethan had a blast! Brynn wasn't quite sure what to think of the giant sandbox. I don't think she liked it as much as Blythe or Ethan did on their first trips to the beach. She likes the seagulls though. And Ethan is pretty much in heaven. There must be a lot of training going on at the air force base as their are jets flying around all the time.

A quick trip up to the room to throw all 3 kids in the tub and change clothes and we were off to stroll the boardwalk and find a place to eat. We found a place where we were able to get some decent seafood and then strolled back to the hotel (was after 8...so was getting pretty late ).

It's difficult to take pictures when it's just the 5 of us, but we managed to get a few decent ones:

Puddle Jumper...how I love thee

2011-08-05T13:11:00.003-04:00

It's a little big for Brynn (she can't get Cheetos in her mouth while wearing because her hand can't reach her mouth), but I've had her start wearing Ethan's puddle jumper and now pool visits are SO much easier (especially when it's just me and the 3 kiddos). Now I don't have to chase Brynn around every second. In the baby pool, she can fall in and get back up. In the big pool, she likes to be close to me anyway but is really enjoying learning how to float in this thing and understands that this magic green monster will give her independence at the pool.

Ethan no longer needs it. That's right, he's been swimming like a crazy man. He can't really swim very far (about 5 yards max), but he can play in the 2.5 foot area and he can even jump off the diving board and swim to the side. I'd get a video, but I have to hold Brynn while Ethan jumps off and I have to sit right on the side in case I need to stick my leg out for him to grab onto because he usually forgets to breathe after he jumps off and comes back up to the surface.

The day I've been dreading

2011-08-03T10:50:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was the day I've been dreading for the past 5 and a half months. The day we had to say goodbye to Amy, Ashley, and Luke as they drove away to Indiana.

The day before, the movers were at their house loading up the truck. I headed over there to help Amy some and to get a sneak peek on what I can expect when we move (apparently I can expect them to give me an order for lunch (as opposed to asking for lunch), drinking a case of Gatorade, and spending strangely long amounts of time in the bathroom with the fan on). So anyway, after everything was loaded on the truck, Amy, Ashley, and Luke spent the night at our house. Side note - Mike had to leave the day before to start his job and her other 2 boys are staying in Blacksburg for another couple of weeks because their baseball team made the World Series.

The kids had been looking forward to a sleepover at our house. It was clear they still didn't get that Ashley and Luke were moving away and they wouldn't see them for a long while and that everything was changing. But I remember moving away from my best friend when I was 5 and I wasn't sad, so it brings comfort that the kids won't really be sad about it.

In the morning Luke asked if it was a school day. Amy told him, "No, we're moving to Indiana today. Tomorrow you start your new school and you get to go on a field trip and ride a bus." And Ethan was immediately very jealous. He asked if he would get to ride a bus when he starts at his new school. So I said, "maybe", knowing he won't because in North Carolina the law actually states that the kids CAN'T leave the day care center until they are 4 to go on field trips.

When it was time to go, they loaded into their packed van. Luke asked, "where are we going?" And when Amy replied, "Indiana", he said "why?". So....very clear that they don't get it. But Amy and I both cried while hugging each other's kids and then hugging each other and saying goodbye. Blythe was already back inside because you know, Curious George was on and she didn't want to miss the end (so important and all). They both reacted when they saw me crying and asked what was wrong.

Amy said when they got almost to their house in Indiana Luke said, "I miss Ethan. Mom, do you miss Mary?". When Braden called this morning to talk to the kids, Ethan told him "Yesterday Luke was here but then he left. And Luke's mom cried. And then Mommy cried."

So change is sad. But I've already set up my computer with "Southwest Ding" software since Southwest flies to Raleigh (yay!) and Indianapolis. So now I will know right away when great deals come available. And our walking and talking routine will continue as soon as we both find the time to actually start working out again and this heat gives us a bit of a break.

Safari Park

2011-07-31T12:32:00.006-04:00

We've lived in Blacksburg for 7 years and there's quite a bit that we've never done since we've lived here. Snow skiing is 1 hour away in West Virginia and we've never been. Some of the best white water rafting in the country is an hour and half away on the Gauley river and we've never been. The new river is 15 minutes away and we've never been kayaking or canoeing on it (we have tubed on it...only twice or maybe only once). This weekend was our last weekend in Blacksburg that my whole family is here. So I wanted to do something we'd never done. But skiing, kayaking, canoeing, and white water rafting are all not very toddler-friendly (thus the reason we've not done any of them since we've lived here). So we headed out to Safari Park, which is a little over an hour from our house in Natural Bridge, VA.

Safari Park is a drive-thru zoo. You pay an entry fee and buy some buckets of feed, then you drive through the zoo (very very slowly) and you can feed the animals. We came prepared. It's best to go in a minvan (because then you're allowed to have your sliding doors open) and an already dirty car (because your car will be FILLED with animal feed). Ethan sat in the front seat with his window open so he could see and pet the animals but didn't have to feed them, Brynn was strapped into her car seat with her door open so she had a very close view, I sat in the back seat so I could lure the animals practically into our car to eat from the bucket of feed, Blythe roamed all through the car, feeding and petting the animals, and sticking her head out of the sun roof, and Braden drove and fed animals so Brynn could see them up close.

The llamas are fun, but a little obnoxious.

The ostriches, emus, and rheas are funny and the way they eat is funny. There were also some super-cute baby ostriches.

The camels are not allowed to come right up to your car (they are behind a loose fence), but you can drive as close to them as you want. They are sneaky and like to steal whole buckets of feed.

There were also lots of deer, reindeer, and other animals I don't know the names. There were zebras, buffalo, and yaks. The yak peed while standing next to our car. Peed a lot. Apparently it made an impression as last night Ethan made a gun out of legos and pretended to squirt us all with yak pee. Nice.

This guy was waiting for us to drive up and fortunately did not try to get in our car. The kids had fun touching his antlers, which were actually very soft.

We started out with 4 buckets of feed and ended up with only 1 empty bucket. Our other 3 were stolen by sneaky animals.

After driving through, we parked and walked through the petting zoo area with giraffes, flamingos, kangaroos, and lots of other things.

It was REALLY hot and humid and no breeze though, so in hindsight, it would have been better to just buy some more feed and then drive through again (in our air conditioned car).

But anyway, we wrapped it up with a picnic lunch and then headed back to Blacksburg. It was a fun time and I'm glad we went because I don't think there is anything like that in North Carolina (even though there's LOTS of other things North Carolina has to offer that we are looking forward to).

We're in so much trouble

2011-07-29T19:49:00.003-04:00

Blythe has had a great time in summer camp this summer at the day care. But at the same time, she has grown up SO much spending the summer with the older kids. She was so sheltered in that pre-k room filled with 4 and 5 year olds. We were only in the car a few minutes each day to and from day care, so she almost never listened to the radio. Now, when we get in the car and a song comes up it's, 'Mom, turn it up...this is my favorite song!" and then she proceeds to sing all of the words. Which I find myself cringing sometimes as she sings some words. I know she has no idea what some of them mean...but I do.

She says things now like, "Ethan, you're annoying me".

She's learned how to roller skate, how to make real sand castles, how to do a scavenger hunt, how to milk a cow, how a water wheel works. She's gone hiking, bowling, swimming. She's gone to zoos, Chuck e Cheese, the police department.

But lastly, she has a boyfriend. 5 year olds are not supposed to like boys. Don't they have cooties when they are 5? The boy's name is Cooper. Blythe talks about Cooper ALL the time. She says Cooper is not her boyfriend, "he just likes me". Last week Cooper was on vacation and every single day she would tell me, "Cooper isn't going to be at school today". Then "Cooper rides in the red van. I ride in the red van too. Cooper has a brother. Cooper goes to Kipps Elementary". Tuesday they could bring a movie to school (so everyone could vote on which movie to watch). Blythe said, "I'm don't want to bring a movie. I want to watch Cooper's movie". Yesterday they went on a hike on their field trip and Blythe and Cooper held hands during the hike. She blushes if you ask her if Cooper is her boyfriend.

Cooper is also 8. We are is SO.MUCH.TROUBLE!!!

14 months

2011-07-29T19:40:00.005-04:00

When Ethan was 14 months old, I blogged a picture of him and compared it to Blythe at 14 months. They looked nearly identical. Here they are again:

And here is Brynn at 14 months

Pretty darn close to the other 2, huh? But in going through every drawer, cabinet, closet we have trying to get rid of stuff we don't need before we move, I came across this picture of Braden:

Other than the fact that he has WAY more hair at that age than any of our kids, I think Brynn looks the most like Braden.

Summer League Championships

2011-07-24T21:29:00.004-04:00

Yesterday we had our summer league championships...marking the END of the summer league season. I was so excited for Blythe and I to do summer league swimming this year so it would be a fun activity she and I could do together. But through the process of Braden first interviewing at NC State, then getting the job, unfortunately he was only here for 1 of the 5 regular meets this season. My mom was here for 2 of them, so between those 3, I was able to swim at 3 of them. The 4th one it was just me and the 3 kids. We showed up and there was a thunder/lightning delay, so we just left. Brynn wouldn't have made it very long, so why bother. On the 5th one, it was me and the 3 kids again. We made it through the meet, but just Blythe swam. We didn't make it to a whole lot of practices, but did make an effort to go at least once, sometimes twice, a week.

Fortunately the championships were on a Saturday, so Braden was here and could entertain Brynn and Ethan in the stands while Blythe and I swam. Blythe had to swim 3 events: 50 free, 25 back, and 25 free. She had never swum the 50 free before and it was first. Tired her out for the whole meet probably. She did well though and swam it in 1:33. Backstroke was...crap, I don't remember. I do know she didn't turn over, so she did not get DQ'ed. 25 free was 43 seconds.

I managed to make it through 4 events (50 fly, 50 breast, free relay, and 100 IM). Setting meet records (for 30-39 year old division) in the 50 breast and 100 IM. Yes, apparently a 37.0 in the breast is a meet record. 1:08 in the 100 IM. 29.5 in the fly (which was not a meet record). And holy moly was I sore and exhausted after that! I felt like I got hit by a truck. But then to make matters worse, I must have gotten food poisoning from a McDouble I got on the way home from the meet. So late afternoon/evening was no fun for me (or for Braden for that matter since he then took all 3 kids grocery shopping with him).

But summer league is over. I am very proud of Blythe for trying so hard and doing so well. I'm not sure that she loved it, but she never complained and I think she had a pretty good time. Next year we'll be in Raleigh for summer league and I'm pretty sure 6 & unders don't have to swim a 50 free there. Maybe someone will even teach her how to swim breaststroke between now and then!

The rollercoaster continues

2011-07-22T20:37:00.005-04:00

Okay, so even though life is super busy, I can't go through the month of July with only 1 blog post. That would be ridiculous. Plus I left you all hanging on that last post wondering if we got the house we wanted.

The answer is yes, we did get the house we wanted. We countered offers back and forth a bit, but finally settled and have signed the contract. So if all goes according to plan, we will close on our house in Blacksburg on the morning of August 26 and close on the house in Raleigh on the afternoon of August 26. Since I don't have complete faith that the wired money from the sale of our Blacksburg house will get there in time, we have the movers scheduled to deliver our stuff on Monday, August 29. So that will allow us the weekend to get in there and put up blinds, hang curtain rods, etc.

So the last week has been filled with super-fun activities! Like mortgage applications, scheduling inspections, calling insurance. I'm having SO much fun! Okay, too much sarcasm. I am ready though to finally get settled. I'm thinking the next month might go by a little slow.

Also squeezed in there was another trip to Raleigh. Probably my last until we move there. The mission: find a daycare. Actually there were two missions: find a daycare and celebrate my brother's 30th birthday. Mission 2 was accomplished. Mission 1 was a failed mission. Instead we ruled 2 out and found 1 that might work, but we weren't thrilled about it. So last week while Braden was in town, he went to see 3 more and found one he really liked. So that's the one we are going with. The daycare hunt is so discouraging because it is SO much more expensive than here in Blacksburg. And not only that, but the state-mandated ratios (teacher to children) is definitely worse in North Carolina than in Virginia. So you really aren't getting anything more for your money. But it is what it is.

Celebrating Doug's birthday was lots of fun. We surprised him at Angus Barn (delicious restaurant). Not just us, but my parents and sister and several of Doug's friends. Lynette had arranged a babysitter for the kiddos so I got some adult time...ahh! We spent the next morning at the pool before taking Blythe and Ethan with us to go back to the new house so we could arrange furniture (theoretic furniture), drive by Blythe's new elementary school, go see the outdoor pool we will join, and drive by the 3 daycares that Braden was going to look at on Monday.

Anyway, drove back Sunday and another week of work and here we are at the weekend, this time in Blacksburg. Tomorrow is the summer league swimming championship meet and then summer league swimming is over (thank goodness!).

And in other news, we did get the sad news yesterday that my grandmother (my Nana) passed away. She had been sick for a while and none of us even thought she would make it to my cousin's wedding in May. But she did and my whole family got to see her and spend some time with her. She was such a strong lady. She was so sick, but she hid it so well. You would have never guessed it at that wedding. She knew she didn't have much longer, so we (she and I) actually said our goodbyes at the end of the wedding. It was very sad at the time, but I'm glad we did. She died happy at the age of 92.

Life is Busy...But SO Good!

2011-07-12T15:52:00.002-04:00

So sorry, blog readers, that I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks. My life is just boring and I have nothing to blog about.

Okay, so normally, yes, we live pretty boring lives. But the last 2 weeks have been anything but. Let me just recap it for you real quick.

Tuesday, June 28 - Braden got a call from NC State as we were walking into daycare to pick up the kiddos. It was from his (now new boss) offering him the job of Head Swimming and Diving Coach at NC State (where Braden and I both swam and graduated from). We actually were picking up our 3 kids and Ashley and Luke, so then it became a flurry of trying to call everyone we knew. It was insane!

Wednesday, June 29 - My first call on Tuesday night was to my mom to ask her to come up the next morning and help us stage our house to put on the market. My second call was to our realtor telling her to be here Thursday morning to take pics. Third call was to my boss asking for Wednesday off. So Wednesday was a FULL day of staging, filling nail holes/painting, packing a few things up, and cleaning. Whew! This was also Braden's official first day on the job.

Thursday, June 30 - Met with realtor, signed all paperwork. Tried to get a little work squeezed in. Braden left to go down to NC State so he could get a phone so he could call recruits on July 1 (first official day he can call them and very important to call them and line up trips for the Fall). Note - he has no other staff at this point other than a diving coach.

Friday, July 1 - Mom left. We had 2 showings (same people both times). Getting excited about selling early!! Freaking out though...guess we need to contact a realtor in Raleigh??? Contacted a realtor friend and made list of 8 houses to see the next day.

Saturday, July 2 - drove to Durham (to my brother's). Dropped off kids to be watched by my parents and brother and sister-in-law. Braden and I met up with realtor to see the 8 houses. Saw 2 we really liked. Had further questions on one of them, so arranged to see again next day.

Sunday, July 3 - took whole crew (kids, parents, brother, sister, sister-in-law) to see house we really liked. New construction, so no options for contingent offers or lease to purchase. Hoping our house sells quickly!

Monday, July 4 - head back home to Blacksburg. Braden comes back too.

Tuesday, July 5 - Braden spends the day finalizing everything at Virginia Tech and cleaning out office. We get an offer on the house! A really crappy offer :( We reject it completely and never hear from them again.

Wednesday, July 6 - Braden heads back to Raleigh to start putting together a staff and getting all the other beginning-of-the-job stuff done. No showings on the house.

Thursday, July 7 - 2 showings on the house. Yay! Follow up questions from one of them (good sign!). I have to get 3 moving quotes. First one comes. As does realization that earliest move dates available are mid-August. Blythe starts kindergarten 8/24. Must make a decision soon. Most likely will need to find a rental house.

Friday, July 8 - Braden comes home. But first I have him go check out a rental house and another house on the market (so we can make a better informed decision). I let our realtor know we want to make a contingent offer on our second choice house. We decide to put it together on Sunday. Also 2 more mover quotes today.

Saturday, July 9 - I email the guy for the rental house and tell him we are interested. Don't want to lose that house, so hoping the whole lease signing process can be dragged out several days. In the afternoon, get an offer on our house! A real offer (one we can work with). We counter-offer. And celebrate that maybe we can get the house we want!! Downer is that closing date buyer wants is August 26 (after Blythe would start kindergarten). Beggars can't be choosers though...we'll take it!

Sunday, July 10 - Buyer counter-offers again. We accept! Need to start thinking about that offer for the house we want in Raleigh.

Monday, July 11 - Sign contract on our house in the morning (woohoo!). Make offer on house in Raleigh. Talk to mortgage company to get pre-approval letter. Inspector comes in the afternoon. Make attempt to send him good vibes. Apparently he's a tough inspector.

And that, blog readers, leads me to today. Still waiting to hear on our offer on the house in Raleigh. Just got the inspector report and it isn't too bad. They also set up a radon test, which he'll verify tomorrow. Braden is back in Raleigh again, and Juni (our dog) had surgery today to get her teeth cleaned and a few molars pulled.

So uh, yes, our lives have been insanely busy! I also have 4 projects going live this week (normally I have 2 per month). We still have summer league swim team going on. I'm researching day cares in Raleigh and trying to manage being a mom and housekeeper. And eating. And sleeping. And showering. And a very feeble attempt at exercising.

But we are living the dream! And life is good!

Brynn's walking and talking skills

2011-06-27T15:41:00.003-04:00

Poor Brynn....being a 3rd child means I have other things to blog about (like swim meets and t-ball games) and I completely forget to blog about really, really important things like first words and first steps.

So I'm backtracking a little here. Although Brynn isn't really saying much, she does say "Daddy", "Mama", "WOW!", and "Hi!". And she been trying to say "Doggy". She's been imitating a lot of sounds like "Uh oh" (except she just says "oh") and animal noises like "moo" and "quack". Other than those, I can't make out much of what she says, but she has been quite talkative recently.

As for walking....she's now officially a walking machine and uses it as her primary mode of transportation. She took a handful of steps before her first birthday, but was not at all interested in walking. On May 31, she started in the toddler room at school and she suddenly had all of the desire to learn to walk (because I guess it's that or crawl on concrete during outside time with shorts on, which doesn't seem very fun). So anyway, throughout the month of June, she has been perfecting her walking skills. She's better than she seems in this video. I think she was distracted. But anyway, will give you an idea.

Carpet Poopit

2011-06-22T09:07:00.002-04:00

That was Ethan's word yesterday...Carpet Poopit. As in "Dad, there's a bug on your Carpet Poopit!" No? Doesn't make it easier to decipher?

Ok...it's Ethan's term for "Barbeque Pit". Ha! That's a pretty good one.

In other news, Blogger FINALLY let me upload the video of Blythe's backstroke in the post about Blythe's first swim meet.

A Day on Claytor Lake

2011-06-20T13:45:00.003-04:00

Saturday we headed out for our annual Claytor Lake visit. I say "annual" like it's some ritual, but basically we've just rented a boat once a summer for the last 4 years. This year we rented a pontoon boat with the Freel's for the whole Saturday.

We couldn't have asked for a better day. When we got there, we dealt with a few raindrops just as we were parking the car. They went away and even most of the clouds went away and we spent a lot of time tubing and swimming and tubing some more and swimming some more. And eating. Brynn spent a lot of time eating Cheetos. She also did a bit of sleeping. And a very small amount of swimming. I don't think she liked not being able to see the bottom.

Ethan spent zero time tubing and some time swimming. He loved just riding in the boat and driving the boat and even just pretending to drive the boat.

Blythe was a tubing machine. There were times we thought there was no way she would hang on...surely she was about to fall off...but nope - she stayed on at all times. Guess it's pretty hard to knock a 40 pound kid off of a tube.

We also cruised the lake quite a bit and checked out some of the really awesome docks people had (some with boathouses, bathrooms, slides, diving boards, kitchens, beaches, and seating for at least 20).

When we finally tired of the lake, we started to head back. Along the way we finally were able to see the clouds coming near us. Storm coming! Quick! Darn those no-wake zones that make you go like 4 miles per hour. We knew it was coming, so we started packing up all of our stuff. As soon as we got to the dock, we unloaded quick. Not even 30 seconds after I got the kids off the boat did it start raining. We ran out to the car and managed to get in before the real downpour started. It was dumping and blowing like crazy. I cannot even imagine what it would have been like if we were still on the boat when that happened. But phew! Turned out to be a GREAT day!

Blythe's first swim meet

2011-06-17T13:34:00.005-04:00

Blythe had her first ever swim meet last night.

It was so fun to experience her very first swim meet since she had no idea really what was going on. I made sure not to really volunteer for anything so I could make sure Blythe was in the right place at the right time and I actually had time to explain everything to her.

Here's how the meets here work for 6 & unders: 5 total meets and 1 Championship meet. Events at each meet:

Meet 1 - 25 free, 25 back, 4x25 free relay

Meet 2 - 25 back, 25 breast, 50 free

Meet 3 - 25 free, 25 fly, 25 back, 4x25 free relay

Meet 4 - 25 back, 25 breast, 50 free

Meet 5 - 25 free, 25 fly, 25 back, 4x25 free relay

Yes, my friends, 6 & unders have to swim 50 free and 25 fly. A little ambitious if you ask me. But they don't have to swim all of the events if they don't want to. So anyway, last night was 25 free, 25 back, and the relay.

25 free - she did great! Got 5th place (out of about 8) and her time was 46.28 (it's meters)

25 back - DQ She did so great and swam the WHOLE thing on her back and then turned over at the very end. It was about 55 seconds I think.

relay - she was on an 8 & under relay, so was definitely the slowest, but did okay. I think she was quite tired by then.

In this league, adults can swim too. I only have to compete against 30-39 year olds (which there aren't many of), but swim in heats with 15 & up. I was in heat 1 on both events since I had no time. Due to lack of much competition, I won both events - 50m free (31.33) and 50m back (37.28). Pretty stellar, huh?

Blythe was pretty excited this morning at practice to get her ribbons. She got a green one (5th place) and a purple one (participant...DQ). She said hers were better than mine because she got different colors and I only got blue.

Anyway, here's a video clip of the 25 backstroke. The 25 free was her better event, but the video didn't turn out so great.

The end of t-ball season

2011-06-14T20:41:00.004-04:00

After pre-school graduation last week, Blythe and Ethan had their last t-ball game. I will kind of miss sitting amoung the gnats and the blazing sun while entertaining Brynn non-stop throughout the game. No, actually I will not miss it. But the kids really did improve throughout the season and seemed to have a pretty good time. I highly doubt Blythe will ever play t-ball or softball on a team ever again. For now, we've moved on to swim team, where the meets last 4 hours instead of a 45 minute t-ball game. Which is perfectly fine with me.

Gommy, Poppa, and Laura stayed for the last t-ball game and then the league picnic. The picnic turned out great because it was actually cloudy for a couple of hours and was not nearly as crowded as last year. They had the dunk tanks, the bounce houses, a firetruck spraying water, snow cones, cotton candy, and of course, trophies!

We also hit up the pool a couple of times over the weekend. Fun times! Here's some pics from the weekend:

Blythe's pre-school graduation

2011-06-11T17:51:00.004-04:00

On Thursday Blythe had her pre-school graduation. Sniff sniff. She's growing up so fast. She asked us if we were coming to her pre-school graduation and then if we would come to her next one when she goes to college. We told her of course and that we'd be at every one in between too.

Their class had been practicing for the last few weeks and apparently dress rehearsal took an hour and 45 minutes, so the teachers were kind of freaking out that it would be a flop, but it was really really great.

Gommy, Poppa, and Laura came up to see Blythe at her graduation and we got Ethan out of his class so he could watch (he calls it her gradulations).

The teacher's mom made this awesome cake:

And they had nice decorations of art work the kids had made and pictures of them in their caps and gowns and baby pictures and posters.

I was really impressed by the amount of work they put into it to make it so special for the kids.

It last about 30-40 min and had a bunch of singing, some poems, a few readings by the kids on what they are looking forward to in kindergarten (Blythe said she's looking forward to playing Play-Doh and doing centers), and a distribution of their diplomas.

I'm so proud of my little girl, the graduate (and her BFF Ashley).

Spaghetti Face

2011-06-06T23:04:00.003-04:00

Notice the handprints on her forehead. Because eating spaghetti with your hands just isn't quite as fun without a game of peek-a-boo.

And so it begins....

2011-06-02T12:18:00.001-04:00

Swim Team!

Memorial Day weekend

2011-06-02T11:24:00.004-04:00

Grams and Peep came to visit us for Memorial Day weekend. It was a good weekend to visit since the weather was nice and our outdoor pool opened! Yay! First up on the agenda was t-ball game on Saturday morning. Just like when Gommy was here, Ethan cried at first and said he didn't want to play and I used the same speech again on him..."Peep came all the way here just to watch you play. If you don't play, he will be so so sad." Worked again.

We didn't make it to the pool on Saturday and instead spent time riding bikes (yes, actually Blythe wanted to get right back on her bike after her accident the night before), driving the jeep around the neighborhood, and napping. We headed out at about 5pm for Salem, VA to go to a Salem Red Sox (minor league baseball) game. I had never been before and Braden hadn't been in years. It was super fun! And the stadium is so nice! We even had front and second row tickets. The Red Sox didn't do very well, but the kids were there to watch the mascots, eat junk, and play anyway.

Ok, I cropped that down from this picture. What the heck is that guy behind Braden doing???

After Brynn passed her fidgety stage, she entered her chill mode.

Then she entered her "I don't want to be here anymore" mode and we had to leave after 6 innings.

Sunday the guys played golf and the rest of us hit up the pool (the guys joined later). Ah the pool....how I love thee. Good weekend!

Freddy Krueger attack?

2011-05-31T11:26:00.001-04:00

Or bike accident?

Trip to Texas

2011-05-29T15:59:00.003-04:00

Last weekend (Thursday - Monday), we flew down to Texas. Yep, flew. With all 3 kids and no checked bags. There have to be people like us in airports so other people who are delayed or missed a connection can think, "well, I guess things could be worse....at least I'm not travelling with 3 small children".

Getting down there was not so bad. Getting back was another story. One I will save for the end of the post.

We got in on Thursday evening and headed out to Murphy, TX to my cousin Amy's house. She and her husband Mik also have 3 kids, all girls - Anna (5), Mia (3), and Lila (3 months), so pretty much the same ages as my kids. Ethan had to play with a bunch of girl toys and may have dressed up as Minnie Mouse 1 or 4 times, but he still had fun with all the girls.

They just finished a new pool in their backyard, so compared to our sandbox and 1 swing in our yard, their house was fun central. They have a pool with a diving board and slide, a hot tub, a trampoline, and a playground with playhouse, swings, and slide. The kids were in heaven.

We did a lot of swimming and playing! We had a little party/get together on Friday night at their house and then on Saturday we headed to my cousin Chris's wedding in Dallas. Chris is my cousin who is closest in age to me. Only 5 days older than me. Although he's from Dallas, he went to college at UNC Greensboro so we got to see him quite a bit during our college years.

We got all gussied up on Saturday and headed to the wedding at 4 o'clock.

After a full day of swimming, the kids were a little tired. All of them!

Glad they snuck the naps in because we stayed at the reception until about 9:30pm when Brynn had just about had it. The wedding was beautiful though and it was so nice to see that side of the family. Wished we could have socialized a bit more, but weddings go by so quickly and even more so when you have 3 kids with you!

Sunday we headed out to Irving to my grandmothers house (Big Gaga) for a little birthday party for Brynn and my sister, who turned 35 the day before Brynn's birthday. I say "little", but I guess there were at least 35 or 40 people who were there. At one point we did get a picture of my grandmother with 14 of her 20 great grandchildren (and actually #21 was born 2 days ago).

Monday it was time to head home. Little did we know it would take us 2 days to get home. We knew a storm was coming, so drove a little faster so we could turn in our rental car and not get dumped on (and not get hailed on), but we could have taken a 4 hour detour and still made our flight. Stupid storm. So we missed our connection in Atlanta and then the last flight to Roanoke was full so we had to spend the night in Atlanta and then fly home in the morning.

Although the travel home was not great, at least the rest of our trip was really, really fun.

Brynn's first birthday

2011-05-24T16:18:00.001-04:00

Ok, I've got some blogging to catch up on, but I'm starting with Brynn's 1st birthday. I missed updates on 10 months and 11 months (and maybe even 9 months), so I simply cannot be slack and skip the 1 year update.

On her actual birthday, other than saying, "happy birthday", we did nothing special. We flew home from our delayed flight, took her to daycare, picked her up later, did dinner and bath and put her to bed. No presents, no cake, no ice cream. We're pretty crappy parents, huh? Well, she actually did her cake and ice cream in Texas on Sunday at Big Ga Ga's house (Brynn's great-grandmother). Brynn had a blast with that and was not interested in sharing at all.

Holy Moly! How did she get that way? Here's the video....a little long, but priceless.

And presents? Well, we got her that tricycle a couple months ago and that was her present.

Unfortunately the day after her birthday (yesterday), she got a fever at school and had to be sent home. Not sure what it was as she isn't really sick (maybe teeth), but she's also been home with me today. I still ended up taking her for her 1 year doctor appointment yesterday, but due to the fever she could not get shots yet.

So what is Brynn up to these days?

She is 20 lbs 14 oz and 29.5 inches long
She has 6 teeth (4 on top and 2 on the bottom)
She is taking a few steps, but not quite "walking". She seems to be getting a little braver each day about it, but unlike Blythe she is not fearless
She hasn't really said her first word yet. She says mama and dada and "dis" and "dat" (actually it's usually "disdat!"), but no "real" words.
She's starting to imitate sounds that I make. She can make an owl sound and a monkey sound and earlier today tried to make a duck sound.
She's good at trying to let me know what she wants, however, by pointing. On the airplane to Texas the woman next to us was playing with a stuffed animal to entertain Brynn. After a while she put it down and then Brynn started pointing at the lady and then to the stuffed animal. Back and forth until the lady started back up again. Thought that was pretty smart of Brynn.
She's happy most of the time. Except when I put her down and walk into another room. OMG, mom has left me! FOREVER!
She is madly in love with her "bubba" (her blanket). Instead of burying her face in it though, she will touch it very softly to her lips so that she can feel it and smell it at the same time. It's so sweet.
She has a friend at school (named Ryleigh) and is anxious to reunite with her. She turned 1 on May 4, so moved up to the toddler room then. Brynn moves up next week.
She actually likes riding in the stroller. Hallelujah....I finally have a child who will sit still in a stroller! When we were in the airport last weekend, we actually had a child in our stroller and not a stroller full of all our crap while we held our child (like we had to do with Blythe and Ethan).
She continues to have a very laid back personality, which makes for a great #3 child. She is very much loved. Happy Birthday Brynn the Panda (that's what Ethan calls her...not really sure why).

Gommy visits for the weekend

2011-05-16T13:10:00.007-04:00

Gommy came to visit over the weekend. Braden was out of town so I asked Gommy to come so we could do fun stuff. There's lots of things I'd like to do with the kids, but it's hard to do by myself. Go to Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke, go to Safari Park, go to Cascades.....lots of stuff OUTDOORS to do. But Gommy brought rain with her. Lots and lots of rain. We had a few dry moments.

Friday wasn't too bad for a little while (got rain and lightning and thunder later....VT graduation was cancelled). So we were able to ride bikes for a while.

It's the South-going Zax and the North-going Zax

Saturday morning we had a t-ball game. The rain held out for half of it. The other half we sat in the rain. Ethan cried because he didn't want to play. I convinced him that Gommy had come to see him play and she would be sad if he didn't play. So he played. He wasn't as into the game this time, but kept himself entertained.

The game was over early and then we had a whole day of nothing planned. And lots of rain. So we headed to the public library and got a library card. Spent a while there picking out some books and checked out 7 books and brought them home to read.

The kids were bored and were fighting a lot, so we went out to dinner at Red Robin. It was fairly uneventful which means it was a pretty good "out to eat" experience. Brynn has suddenly become an extremely picky eater and won't even put things in her mouth to try them. Although she loved grilled cheese and french fries 2 weeks ago, now she throws them on the floor. So she ate 3 mandarine orange pieces and that's it. But she was happy, so whatever.

Sunday we went to church for Sunday school. Tried to drop Brynn off in the nursery so my mom and I could kick back and enjoy a cup or 2 of tea, but Brynn had other plans. Cried and screamed and cried some more. So we hung with her while Blythe and Ethan were in Sunday school. Later at home Brynn seemed just fine.

Anyway, after lunch Gommy headed back home. And go figure that as soon as she left, we got no more rain and the rest of the day was beautiful. Hmmm.

Farewell to the Envoy

2011-05-14T10:57:00.004-04:00

On Monday last week we finally sold our Envoy. It was bittersweet. Nice to get rid of it since we had already bought a new car and didn't really want 3 cars (especially when only 1 is in the garage), but sad since it was the first new car we ever had and we loved that car the whole time we had it.

I bought that car for Braden as a surprise birthday present in 2003 (and when I say "bought", I mean "put down a small down payment"). We were living in Chicago at the time. Braden had gotten a 1998 Tahoe from his parents when he graduated from college. After moving to Chicago, we soon found out that it wasn't so practical for parallel parking in tight spots and it got like 9 miles per gallon in city driving. We tried to sell it, but go figure that no one in Chicago wants a 2 wheel-drive SUV. So my dad decided he would like it. We traded cars (and some money) and ended up with a Mercury Mystique. Not exactly Braden's dream car, but much more practical. Then in 2003 Braden started looking for coaching jobs and we knew we would probably move. So I took some of the money we had saved and went to test drive some cars (one weekend when I had the car and Braden was out of town). I didn't buy the car that day, but I settled on the Envoy and bought it a different day. I left work early one day and took the train and then the bus to the closest bus stop, then walked the remaining half mile to the dealership. Got a great deal on it, bought it, and did not drive it home. Instead I left it there for 2 weeks (to install sunroof and clean it and because it was my birthday in a few days and I wanted to wait until after my birthday). 2 weeks later my parents were in town, so they took me there to pick it up. It wasn't cleaned and had no sunroof, but I needed to pick it up that day....it was all part of my plan. So I got the sunroof for free and agreed to bring it back in a couple of days for install. In the meantime, it was time to give Braden his surprise.

I wrapped up the key and the window sticker and he was pretty surprised when he opened the gift.

We thought we'd have that car until the wheels fell off. Then we had 3 kids. In carseats.

Hopefully the next owner loves it as much as we did! Farewell Envoy!

Mother's Day

2011-05-13T13:47:00.004-04:00

Finally had the motivation to blog last and then Blogger is down. Grrr.

Anyway, it's back up now. Mother's Day this year was really nice. Blythe and Ethan made me frames with their photos in them when they were at the church the night before. I finally cleared off all the junk on my filing cabinet in my office so they look nice there. They gave me those and a card they had written in. Ethan wrote "E" "T" and "H" from his name. He's getting there.

Braden got me some nice lotion, gels, and spray from Bath and Body Works. Thought it was going to rain most of the day, so we didn't really plan much to do, but we did grill out BBQ chicken burgers (mmmm!), had a dance party in our driveway, and let Brynn have her first bike ride!

She had a helmet on, but she couldn't really see and she REALLY hated it, so we took it off and she enjoyed the bike ride much more.

Poor Braden then had to give Ethan a bike ride and Blythe. It's not exactly flat around here (FAR from it), so it was quite the workout with all that extra weight.

I actually got to celebrate Mother's Day for 3 days. On Friday, I went to Ethan's class at school for a Mother's Day breakfast and we had donuts with sprinkles (and fruit). Then later in the afternoon I went to Blythe's class for cake and ice cream. Both kids also made me flower pots and gave me candy (which I somehow managed to get none of). Saturday I guess we didn't really celebrate, but Braden did finish doing the Trex on our deck (so that is a celebration in and of itself).

More "firsts"

2011-05-07T20:52:00.002-04:00

We had a couple of pretty exciting "firsts" over the last couple of days.

Blythe tied her shoes all by herself yesterday for school. Quite the accomplishment! You know, that's actually one of my early memories. The first time I tied my own shoes. I was so proud of myself. I showed my mom and she was very proud as well, but then pointed out that my shoes were on the wrong feet. Doh!

Brynn took her first steps! She hadn't even taken one step on her own, but then took 4 steps on Thursday. Only because she wasn't thinking about it and just walked to Braden when he called her. Then he tried to get her to do it again and she did what she normally does and act like her feet are glued to the floor and try to lunge forward and hope that someone catches her before she does a face plant. Yesterday though she did take 1 step a couple of different times.

Progress, people. Progress is being made.

Date Night....ruined!

2011-05-07T20:42:00.002-04:00

Tonight was SUPPOSED to be date night. Free babysitting for 3 and half hours...how can you pass that up? It was "Kids Fun Night" at our church from 5:30 to 9:00 for ALL ages. Awesome! Even Brynn can go!

But Noooooo....Brynn had to get sick on Wednesday this week. Diarhea during the day then fever, then threw up after I picked her up from school. Poor thing was miserable. Woke up miserable Thursday morning too. Fever again and more diarhea. She went through lots of clothes on Thursday. Friday she woke up feeling pretty good. No fever and was eating again. I tried to take her to school, but they said she had to be diarhea-free for 24 hours. Ugh. Good thing though because she still had it all day on Friday. Poor thing...her diaper rash was SO bad. We stopped all milk and formula and switched her to Pedialyte.

Today she's been quite a bit better. Only pooped 2 times, but man, the diaper rash is SO bad. I think she may even have some blisters. So really, free babysitters at the church shouldn't have to deal with that. And she didn't nap that long today, so she was tired. We opted instead to send Blythe and Ethan and try to take Brynn with us out to eat. But she was screaming in the car as soon as we dropped off Blythe and Ethan.

So date night? Calzone carry-out to the house, a bottle of white wine, and some good conversation (all after Brynn went to bed). So actually in hindsight, date night turned out pretty well.

The weekend...with photos!

2011-05-01T20:45:00.006-04:00

In my mind, this post was going to be called "the weekend...in photos". But I'm a slacker. A total slacker when it comes to taking photos, so instead we get "first quarter of weekend...in photos".

So clearly, we had a t-ball game. Went pretty well. The snack was mini pop-tarts and Blythe knew about the mini pop-tart snack since practice Wednesday when her friend told her about them. I think Blythe was a little annoyed she had to make through an entire practice and a game in order to get the snack.

After the t-ball game, Ethan had a birthday party to attend. I took Blythe as well so Braden could work on our deck (while Brynn napped). It was a construction themed party at the park, so they got the cool hats and the Home Depot aprons. They were excited to help Daddy with the deck when they got back, but Daddy was super fast and had already finished all the boards by the time we got home (all the boards we had...still need to buy more).

Not pictured activities of the weekend....

Our first successful family movie night at home. Well, 80% of the family (since Brynn was asleep). We rented "Despicable Me". Cute movie.
We had a picnic at the Duck Pond, which we hadn't been to in almost 2 years. We brought lots of old bread, but the ducks mostly weren't that interested in food. Their interests were elsewhere. Apparently it's mating season and the male ducks were very busy trying to woo the female ducks. It was quite interesting to watch as some of the males would try to fight off other males. We also saw a horse drawn carriage from a wedding that had just ended.
We had ice cream at Ben & Jerry's. Mmmmm.....
We went to Ginsey's birthday party at the gymnastics place. It had a big inflatable slide and of course, the foam pit, so that was loads of fun.
Braden played in a golf tournament with some other coaches and some local big wigs and his team WON! He got a new golf bag as a prize.
Brynn started on whole milk, so we'll finish up the formula we have and then will not have to buy anymore! Yay for saving $$$!

So an eventful, but nice weekend. Got to love a nice weekend at home sometimes.

That can't be comfortable

2011-05-01T14:19:00.003-04:00

She's been like that for almost 2 hours now, so I guess it's comfortable to her.

Tornado Warning

2011-04-28T10:52:00.003-04:00

We live in the mountains. We're not supposed to have tornados in the mountains. Only flat places like Texas, Indiana, and Kansas get tornadoes, right? Apparently not. Though Blacksburg didn't have a tornado yesterday, a very close town only about 8 miles away did. And baseball sized hail.

Last night was crazy. I didn't wake up to the booming thunder or lightning that was occurring every half second. I heard Ethan wimpering. Heard him through our wall in the room next door. Crazy how your ears get tuned to only certain frequencies during the night. But when I woke up I saw Braden standing at the window looking out at this crazy storm. Although we didn't know it at the time, I think we were both actually woken by the tornado siren that went off at VT only a couple miles away.

So we stood there...should we go to the basement? Wake all the kids from their slumber and go to the basement? What a pain! I went to get my phone so I could check the radar from my weather app. We were in a tornado warning until 1:55am and it was 1:35am. My brain was still asleep so I still stood there for a bit trying to decide. But it's better to be on the safe side. So, we woke all of the kids.

As Blythe was walking down to the basement she told me, "it's a tornado and if we stay in our rooms we will die". The power of fear to make them do the right thing!

Brynn was quite confused, but fell back asleep on me as we waited in the basement. Blythe and Ethan climbed into the guest room bed down there and went back to sleep. Once the tornado warning was over, Braden stayed down there and slept on the couch so the kids wouldn't freak out in the morning when they woke up. I took Brynn back upstairs and went back to sleep (eventually).

Braden woke me at 5am when he left for morning practice and I took his post on the couch in the basement. What a crazy night! Hoping not to have to do that again ever (though glad we do have a basement to go to).

As a side note, when Blythe and Ethan woke up this morning, they didn't see me on the couch and they were not the slightest bit concerned. Ethan seemed a little confused, but Blythe reminded him they were in the basement because of the tornado. They were busy jumping on the bed and trying to play with the treadmill in no time (while I laid on the couch and listened).

Party at my crib

2011-04-22T10:19:00.003-04:00

6:30am

Be there or be....asleep. Like everyone else. 6:30 is TOO early.

Play Ball!

2011-04-21T10:25:00.002-04:00

T-ball season is officially in full swing.

Yes, Blythe and Ethan are playing on the same team. It's supposed to be for 4 and 5 year olds, but Ethan is "almost 4" (at least that's what he will tell you). Really he just turned 3 not too long ago. The difference between 3 and 5 in running ability is huge.

(Excuse the shakiness...Brynn was trying to grab the camera the whole time).

We signed Ethan up because we knew he couldn't sit on the sidelines and watch Blythe play. Plus, Luke was playing too (though he is 6 months older, so at least closer to being 4). And Ethan can hit better than Blythe and throw the ball as good or better. But running? No contest. And yesterday I learned another big difference between 3 year olds and 4 year olds. Ethan cried while playing outfield because the ball never came to him so he never got to throw it. Luke cried also for the same reason in the second inning. None of the other kids cried. But oh well, they all had a good time and they got their snacks at the end (because, let's face it, that's their motivation for getting through the game).

Ethan's ready for Easter

2011-04-18T14:48:00.004-04:00

Ethan's class was having their Easter egg hunt at school today. I went to the basement to dig out the Easter baskets and couldn't really remember who's was whose. They all looked girly including the one I pulled out for Ethan which was pink and yellow. Whatever...all Easter colors are pastels and therefore girly.

When Blythe came downstairs she saw the basket and said, "is Ethan using MY basket?" "Why can't he use his own Elmo basket?". Ah yes, Elmo basket. That's right. Now where the heck is it? Fortunately I found it and all the problems of the world were solved.

Ha, ha...Ethan looks funny. How about a photoshopped version?

Long torso.

2011-04-13T21:28:00.001-04:00

Short legs.

Chunky butt.

No wonder she wears 18 month onesies and 9 month pants.

Epcot

2011-04-07T22:12:00.007-04:00

We didn't think we'd end up going to Epcot because we had heard there wasn't much for little kids to do. But we had a 5 day pass and still had a day left and had basically seen everything else we wanted to see. So today, we headed on over to Epcot. Personally, I really like Epcot. Lots of technology and science, which is cool to a dork like me. And speaking of dorks, we went to Target and got all matching shirts and we all wore them today. Disney dorks!!

When we got to Epcot, Ethan saw the big silver ball and said, "There's Apricot!". I think we finally figured out the Fast Pass system pretty well, so we worked the system just right and ended up riding basically everything we wanted to without waiting in lines. Our 2 favorite things at Epcot were "Soarin" (where you feel like you are in a hang glider flying over California) and "Turtle Talk with Crush", which is actually not a ride, but an interactive show with Crush the turtle from Finding Nemo. It's too hard to describe, but was totally amazing.

Another hit was Test Track (you race in a car going 65 mph). Not a hit - that Ethan is only 38.5 inches tall and most cool rides (like Soarin and Test Track...both of which Ethan would love) have a 40 inch minimum. And they definitely check. And Ethan definitely tried (he stood up very straight. On his tiptoes). Poor guy. Guess that's why they say Epcot is not great for the little ones.

So our 5 days of Disney are over. We have 1 more full day of vacation, which we will spend swimming and relaxing and maybe even getting a "tan" (or sunburn).

Hollywood Studios

2011-04-06T21:56:00.002-04:00

Blythe's favorite rides now are Space Mountain and Tower of Terror. She clearly does not get her thrill-seeker sense of adventure from me since:
1. I never rode a roller coaster until I was 12 (and even then, I didn't really want to...never underestimate peer pressure).
2. I was too chicken to ride Tower of Terror. Blythe rode it 3 times.
3. I was too chicken to ride in the front on Space Mountain. Even if I had wanted to, I would have had to fight Blythe for the front (she rode in the front both times she rode it). Braden did try to ride in the front the first time and she faught him and won.

Ethan however probably gets his wimpy attitude toward rides from me. He may be even more extreme than I was when I was little. He was scared during the "Disney Junior Live on Stage" show because Big Jet created a little bit of smoke when trying to race against the rocket from Little Einsteins. I'm pretty sure he has gotten scared on just about every ride except Dumbo, Swiss Family Treehouse, and It's a Small World. Oh, and Buzz Lightyear at Magic Kingdom. He loved that ride (pretty sure it's been his favorite one).

Princess lunch for the Princess

2011-04-05T21:37:00.009-04:00

Tuesday was our rain day. We might have chosen for that to be our "off" day, but we had a date with the princesses at Cinderella's castle. Turned out to be a good thing to have plans at Magic Kingdom and not take that day off. Rain stopped around 12:30 and then the park was not crowded at all.

The original plan was for all of the girls to attend the lunch, but last minute we decided to leave Brynn with the guys. The lunch ain't cheap, so why risk having a screaming infant (although Brynn has been great on this trip and has hardly cried). Plus it allowed Blythe to be our princess and get ALL of the attention. She of course had a blast. Had her picture made with Cinderella and then got to meet Snow White, Jasmine, Belle, and Sleeping Beauty. I think her favorite part was dessert. She got a HUGE cupcake with purple icing. There were 3 cups of toppings so she could decorate her own. She used every bit of every topping. Ate everything EXCEPT the cake part of the cupcake. It was definitely the most expensive meal I'll probably ever wear flip flops, jeans, and sweat shirt to, but it was SO worth it.

Before the lunch we went to see Mickey. Character sightings here are not like what us old people remember them to be (where they would show up out of nowhere and a hundred kids would mob the character). It's much safer now for the characters. Now, you have to wait in a line to see the character and get your picture made. Some of the lines can be quite daunting. The line for Mickey actually has a fast pass. So anyway, we went to see if Mickey, but were not all that optimistic. HOWEVER - NO ONE was in line. So we basically had our own photo shoot with Mickey that lasted a good 10 minutes. Good times!

After the lunch, we met up with the guys. They had come later and they too went to see Mickey. They did have to wait in a line, but it wasn't too bad. Plus, they got to see Minnie too. Now, mind you, Ethan is and has always been deathly afraid of characters. We were hoping the overexposure to characters here at Disney would help him with his fears, but no such luck so far.

All of that changed with Minnie though. Minnie helped him overcome his fear. And now he is in love with Minnie. He even said Madeleine isn't his girlfriend anymore. Minnie is now. He also saw Minnie the next day at Hollywood Studios and practically made out with her. Hugging her. Kissing her. Kissing her some more. Totally, totally adorable.

Later in the day we met with up with Chip and Dale at a dance party and Ethan was all into it.

Other than seeing and dancing with characters, we got to ride LOTS of rides due to the lower number of people there. We stayed all the way through the light parade that started at 9pm. It was a great show...glad we did one nighttime activity. But all 3 kids fell asleep on the short drive back to the house.

Magic Kingdom

2011-04-05T11:01:00.007-04:00

Yesterday we headed on over to Magic Kingdom...the "real" Disney! We went on a Monday, so it wouldn't be so crowded...ha! Fast Passes and signs that tell you how long the wait are are VERY convenient. The original plan was to walk down Main St to Cinderella's castle and then head on over to Thunder Mountain to catch a Fast Pass. But since all of the THOUSANDS of other people who arrived at the exact same time as us seemed to also have that as their plan, we decided to instead catch the train over to Frontierland, which dropped us off right at Thunder Mountain. We rode it with minimal wait AND got a Fast Pass and then rode it again. So far, it's Blythe's favorite ride. Ethan is 2 inches too short to ride it, so after that we needed to find some stuff he could ride. First up...Haunted Mansion. Braden and I had to TOTALLY downplay it otherwise he would have freaked. He did scream in the room before the ride when the lights went off. But he made it through alive and now claims it's his favorite ride.

Other rides we hit up were It's a Small World, Peter Pan, Dumbo, and the 3D show "Mickey's Philharmagic" (which was excellent and almost no wait).

Actually Blythe and Ethan rode Dumbo while Gommy, Poppa, and I took Brynn on It's a Small World (she was sleeping the first time we rode it). She loved it!

And hats off to Braden's parents and my parents who have traded turns staying with Brynn and/or Ethan when they can't ride something.

We ended the day right around the time for the parade, which makes getting out a challenge. We ended up back over in Frontierland and hopped on the train again. Perfect timing actually as we ended up at the Main Street stop just as the parade was there and we were able to see everything and then get the heck out before the masses of people that were also watching the parade.

Yesterday wasn't our only visit planned to Magic Kingdom, so we didn't feel the need to push it and try to fit everything in. We're basically done with Fantasyland (aka StrollerLand), so thank goodness for that. Next up is Tomorrowland (Space Mountain!) and Adventureland (Pirates of the Caribbean!).

Disney!!

2011-04-03T20:07:00.007-04:00

Well, after a "quick" 11 hour drive with 3 kids under the age of 6, we made it to Disney World! Okay, so it wasn't so quick and involved an overnight stay in Savannah in a small room with 2 double beds. We all slept SO well. Not. Oh well, it was a means to an end.

We got here too early to check into the house, but we were able to use the neighborhood clubhouse and go swimming, so that's what we did. How refreshing after leaving a SNOWY Blacksburg behind.

After Poppa, Gommy, Laura, Grams, and Peep all arrived, we headed out to our first Disney experience...Downtown Disney. Pretty cool. Like a Myrtle Beach "Boardwalk at the Beach" on crack. We're pushing the envelope a little with Ethan this week (making him do stuff that might terrify him just a little), so we went to the T-Rex restaurant and experienced some very real looking dinosaurs and some frequent "meteor showers". It was pretty intense. Pretty late too, as we didn't finish until about 9:30. I don't think Brynn has ever been up past 8pm, so she was tired, but she was a trooper. Needless to say, the kids were WIPED OUT!

So for our first FULL Disney day, we headed out to Animal Kingdom. As soon as we got there, we went to the Everest Roller Coaster ride to get a "Fast Pass" and ride it later. But there was only a 15 minute wait, so we decided to ride it then. The height requirement is 44 inches and just so happens Blythe is exactly 44 inches tall. So her very first ride experience at Disney was a full blown roller coaster, complete with high speeds, going backwards, complete darkness, and even backwards in the complete darkness. But she LOVED it!

Her second ride experience was a much more toned-down dinosaur version of "Dumbo". Ethan could ride this one too.

After a quick photo op with Pluto and Goofie (that Ethan completely chickened out of), Ethan went to play on a giant playground and Blythe went with Poppa, Laura, Gommy, and I to ride "Dinosaur".

After that ride, Blythe said, "Mom, I don't ever want to ride that again". I had thought she was having a great time, but apparently she was terrified.

Have you ever seen a look that says "utter terror" more than that in your life? Hilarious.

Before lunch, we hit up the Finding Nemo show, which was AMAZING. A really, really great show. Brynn was enthralled and everyone in our party enjoyed that show.

Blythe begged and begged to have her face painted, so after lunch we found a place. I have to admit, it is pretty adorable.

We did a safari ride through Africa, then finished off with a 3D show of "It's Tough to be a Bug". We ignored the signs that it might "terrify young children", because our kids are pretty tough right? Not Ethan. Screamed and screamed at the pretend 3D bugs trying to get the audience.

And how did Brynn do at the park? She quite liked her stroller and took 2 good naps in it. She seemed like she loved the park, don't you think?

Feelin so fly like a...

2011-03-31T10:41:00.003-04:00

I think we've all heard this song (well, maybe not my dad...not his thing)

It was on the radio yesterday on the way home from school. In the far back of the van, I heard Ethan tell Blythe, "Blythe....the cheese stick song is on!". Hilarious.

It's official...

2011-03-29T10:17:00.003-04:00

Blythe is registered for kindergarten. And now I feel just a little bit older (as I pulled away from the Elementary school in my mom-mobile, aka minivan). Next up...dance practice, swim practice, school dances, boys, graduation, college...

First sleepover (at our house)

2011-03-27T19:51:00.003-04:00

Blythe had her first ever sleep over at our house on Friday night. Ashley spent the night on Friday night. Yes, it wasn't Blythe's first time participating in a sleepover, just the first at our house.

It went quite well. The girls played dress up and put on a little makeup (note that Ethan destroyed Blythe's makeup kit today putting lipstick on himself while he was supposed to be napping. Now said makeup kit is in the trash...don't tell Blythe).

And what's a sleepover without a nail painting activity? I had gotten some new bright pink nail polish at Walmart that day just for the occasion.

Ashley brought over suckers for after dinner. Guess who had blue and who had red?

Before long, it was bedtime (well, bedtime for Ethan). I put a movie on in Blythe's room for the girls and hoped they'd fall asleep to it. No dice. Blythe came downstairs at 10:15 and asked me to put in another movie. The answer, of course, was "No, time to go to sleep". Both girls were barely functioning by then, so there was no argument.

They were SO tired, they slept late. NOT. Up by 6:30 giggling and talking. The next day they built a fort, watched another movie, and played inside all day because of our crappy weather. Oh well. They had a great time!

Go ahead....

2011-03-26T20:59:00.002-04:00

Make my day.

Make the days go faster

2011-03-24T10:49:00.003-04:00

I'm kind of having writers block and don't know what to write about. All that's on the mind recently is VACATION and DISNEY, DISNEY, DISNEY!

We're all getting so pumped up to go! There's about a million things that need to be done before we head out (and drive 12 LOOONNNGG hours to Orlando), but hopefully that time will go quickly! One thing I'd like to get done before we go is to sell the Envoy. Have someone coming today to take a look, so fingers crossed! Got another more promising call last night, but she said if it was 4 wheel drive she'd definitely buy it. Oh well. We'll find the right owner.

Anyway, I've been reading through our Disney book, making lists of things we need to bring or buy, working on my "pre-tan" (okay, so not really since it's 40 degrees out...brrr), and getting the kids all pumped to go. Hurry up and get here vacation!!!

Another new ride

2011-03-16T21:58:00.004-04:00

Found this on clearance a couple months ago at Wal-Mart. Was going to save it for Brynn's first birthday, but had a feeling I'd put it together early, as soon as the weather got nice. It's still her birthday present....like she knows the difference.

Anyway, I LOVE this bike! The red "cage" around her is removable, along with the harness, the foot stand, and even the handle in the back. So it's a 3-stager (can't even hold on, can hold on but not coordinated enough to pedal, and then full on regular tricycle).

We have so many freakin toys with wheels - 2 tricycles, a 12" bike, a 16"bike, 2 scooters, a tractor (actually 2 tractors right now), a wagon, a jeep, and a few strollers. Thus the reason we only park one car in the garage in all non-winter months. And the reason our basement doubles as a garage for wheeled toys during winter months.

But anyway, I'm loving this new addition and so is Brynn! And yes, Blythe is dressed up as Ariel.

Friends

2011-03-14T21:21:00.003-04:00

It's amazing how quickly kids can make friends. Blythe could be at a McDonalds playland and meet someone who, 10 minutes later, might as well be her best friend. My kids changed day cares and each instantly had a classroom full of new friends. When I was young, my best friend lived next door to me until we moved when I was 5. 2 months after we moved, I started kindergarten and met my new best friend on our first day of kindergarten. We moved to North Carolina when I was 10. Through swim team and school, I had lots and lots of friends. After I graduated from high school, I went to college, recruited to be on the swim team. On that first day of college (actually 2 days before the first day), I met the 50 people I would be friends with for the next 4 years. There was no effort involved in making friends. It just happened.

I'm sure we've all had similar experiences.

Then we graduate and enter the working world. In my case, I moved to a state and city I had never been to. I was lucky enough to move with my best friend, my partner, to the new and scary place. But making NEW friends? Hits you like a damn sledgehammer that making friends is hard. We lived in a city of 8 million people and met very few friends in that time we lived in Chicago (though I do have to say that the few we met are keepers).

After a brief stint in Tennessee, we moved here to Blacksburg. I've worked from home for the past 8 years, so meeting new people wasn't so easy. I relied on Braden to meet people I could also hang with. We had fun times, but I didn't share a lot in common with most of the people we hung out with. Then we had Blythe and I REALLY didn't have much in common with the people we were hanging with.

3 and a half years ago Blythe met Ashley at her day care. Almost instantly, they were best friends. Through that relationship I met Amy, Ashley's mom. We talked some at pickup or dropoff and on field trips. She had just had Luke when we met and I was pregnant with Ethan. Eventually we arranged for some playdates. It was nice to have another woman I could have adult conversation with, someone I had something in common with, a friend.

After a while we started walking together at lunch time, then added some Zumba classes. Because I work from home and don't talk to many people during the day, the hour walk/social time for me was great! A huge mid-day stress reliever.

Over the past 3 and a half years, Amy has become my best friend here in Blacksburg (well, best female friend since Braden is my true best friend). Ashley and Blythe are inseparable and now even Luke and Ethan are best buds. Amy keeps me stable. Brings over dinner when Braden is out of town and I've had a rough week of work and kids. Gives me advice about what to expect as my kids grow older (she has 2 other boys that are 10 and 8). Let's me drop off my kids at her house so I can do a trip to Wal-mart by myself. Made me stay in shape when I was pregnant with Brynn. Even walked with me, slowly (like snails pace), when I was 8 months pregnant. Brought a peach milkshake to the hospital after I had Brynn.

A little over a month ago, Amy took a job in Indiana and she started 2 weeks ago. So she has moved away. Her family is still here while the house is on the market, the kids are finishing school, and her husband looks for a job in Indiana. I'm dreading when Ashley and Luke move away and they all finally understand what, "we're moving to Indiana and it's far, far away" really means. But for now Blythe and Ethan's best friends are still here.

Doesn't seem very fair that it takes so long to make a great friend and then things change. But we'll still be friends forever. I'm sure we'll take trips together as families. So we'll never lose touch, but we just won't see each other everyday.

We both have found we need each other's motivation to keep on walking at lunch time. So we're keeping the walk and talk method going. Just by phone instead. We schedule a time we can both walk and then we chat the whole time. If I didn't have that, I'd sit in my work chair all day long. So far it's working for us!

Miss you Amy!

A new ride

2011-03-13T12:53:00.004-04:00

We've always loved Braden's Envoy, but once we had Brynn, we couldn't fit 3 car seats in the backseat (okay, once we actually did, but it took like 25 minutes to maneuver them in there and buckle kids in). Especially now that the day care is further away (and only 2 minutes from Braden's work) and we've started doing some carpools, we've found it would be very beneficial for Braden to be able to fit more than 2 kids in his car. So we started looking at crossovers with a 3rd row. Problem is our garage is so freakin small that we needed a car that was just about the same size as the Envoy. So that limited our options. We finally decided on the Hyundai Veracruz because of its size and its price.

A week ago we went to test drive it here at the dealership near us. They didn't have the EXACT one we wanted, but were able to find one close at another dealership they could work with. Of course, when we test drove it, they didn't want us to walk out the door, but we certainly weren't going to buy that day. Instead, I came home and researched. Ahh...the power of the internet these days. I found some pretty darn good deals. One especially at a dealership in Fayetteville, NC. Another at a dealership in Maryland. So I printed that stuff off and we headed back to our dealership on Friday hoping they would match them and we wouldn't have to drive to either Maryland or NC.

But they didn't. Basically they said they had no idea how those dealerships were offering those prices. They couldn't come down on price and the salesguy said, "If it were me, I'd drive to Fayetteville". So that's what we did.

Fayetteville had the price we wanted, the style we wanted, and even the color we wanted. And I had already worked out the price through email before ever going there, so there was no negotiating to be done. Only problem - it's 4 hours away and it's closed on Sunday.

Blythe and Ashley were supposed to have their first ever sleepover at our house on Friday night. The girls were SO excited about it, so instead of cancelling, Ashley's dad offered to have it at their house. And offered for Ethan to come over the next morning so we could drive the 4 hours there and 4 hours back with just Brynn. It was quite the offer of Mike considering he's single parenting 4 kids right now while Amy is out of town. And they had 2 showings on their house on Saturday (it's on the market), which meant keeping it clean all day with 6 kids (i.e. tornados) leaving nothing but destruction in their paths. It was quite the day for him.

Brynn did super-well with us. The drive was about 30 minutes too long for her, as she got fussy both ways the last 30 minutes, but we had mission accomplished. How does that Fayetteville dealership offer such good prices? They deal in volume. They were selling like you wouldn't believe! Most people trade their cars in too, so they have a good used-car business going. Customer service was excellend and we had a really good experience. We love the car!

Very roomy! This is Blythe and Ethan in the 3rd row.

Now we just need to sell the Envoy. Let me know if you want to buy a car!

Ethan's birthday party

2011-03-06T21:50:00.010-05:00

My little man turns 3 tomorrow. To celebrate, we had a little birthday party yesterday with a few of his friends and their families. The birthday theme this year - Firetrucks. I mean, what's more exciting than firetrucks? In preparation, I made a firetruck cake.

Pretty sure I spent more on the cake pan, the cake mix, the icing, and the food coloring than I would have to just buy a cool cake from Kroger (and let's not forget the 2.5 hours it took me to make it). However, buying a cake from Kroger would have required me to think ahead and order a cake more than 18 hours before the party was supposed to start.

So we took a field trip for the first part of the party to the firestation. Fireman Wayne, who I think normally does the tours for schools and day cares, doesn't work Saturdays. So we had Fireman Billy. Pretty sure Fireman Billy has never actually spoken to a 3 year old before. So we got the tour, dumbed down to maybe a high school junior level. Oh well. All the kids really wanted to do was see the fire trucks, go inside and hear the siren. They got to do all that and even see the firetruck shoot water really far (on Gommy and Poppa's car).

Here's Ethan, recapping to his girlfriend Madeleine, Fireman Billy's explanation of the air tanks and the safety mechanisms built into them to alert you when your air is halfway out so that you can plan your escape as it is time to get out! Except Ethan's explanation was, "You gotta be in a firetruck so you can get out". He was very matter-of-fact about it.

Ethan and Soren on the firetruck-gator-thing

And Ethan inside the firetruck.

After the field trip, we all headed to our house for lunch and cake and presents. Good thing we planned an indoor party since we had a monsoon here this weekend!
It was fun and I think Ethan liked having all his friends here, but five 3 year olds (and siblings) can be exhausting! Just ask Braden who somehow got stuck in the basement with all of them by himself.

Anyway, fun times, but glad it is over!

9 months!

2011-02-28T20:44:00.003-05:00

Brynn is 9 months old! Okay, so she was a few days ago. But my excuse (other than being a slacker) is that I was waiting on her stats from the doctor.

She is 18.5 pounds (about 40th percentile) and 28.5 inches long (about 75th percentile). I don't really see her as being skinny, but I guess in baby terms maybe she is

She is crawling like crazy these days. It started about a week and a half ago, and she is a changed baby. And a dirtier baby (thanks to dust and dog hair).

She finally started saying "Da da" the other day (just the sound, not about Braden). Says "Ma ma", "Ba ba", and "Pa pa" too

Loves sticking her tongue out recently

Still has only 2 teeth

Eating lots of things and chunky things - small pieces of bread, spaghetti chopped in food processor, and lots of pureed menu items at school. It's nice because I'm not buying much baby food these days!

Finally found her pincher grasp and can pick up "puffs" and feed herself. Buys me more time with her in the high chair feeding herself.

Loves riding in the baby backpack. Stroller - not as much

Very entertained by her big brother and big sister, though still a little scared of her big sister because she's just a little overboard sometimes (or all the time)

Loves playing with Ethan in the mornings. Ethan goes in her crib almost every morning and brings her toys and jumps in her bed, narrowly avoiding jumping on Brynn.

Doesn't like Mommy to hold her quite as much these days since she discovered crawling

Still sleeping great at night and takes 2 naps most days (not today - just 1 hour this morning)

There's a reason...

2011-02-27T19:34:00.001-05:00

why Blythe's middle name isn't Grace.

Crawling video

2011-02-16T16:29:00.002-05:00

Here's the video proof of the one-step-forward-one-step-back

She's like, "hmmm....I WAS right next to the white bear. Til I pushed myself way back and sat up".

Coming Soon - baby gates

2011-02-14T11:44:00.004-05:00

Brynn can now make forward progress while crawling. I've tried to get video proof, but to no avail. I'm sure she'll be all over the place in no time and video proof won't be too hard to capture. For now, she can crawl about 3 feet forward. She doesn't so much like being in the crawling position though, so after that she then wants to sit. Problem is, she will push WAY back to where her feet are and get into a sitting position, which is usually in the same location she started from. One step forward. One step back.

I did, however, get some pics of Blythe and Ethan over the weekend.

Dry, Dry, Dry!

2011-02-11T10:16:00.002-05:00

Whoop, whoop! No more pull-ups! Or at least no more pull-ups for Ethan. He's been potty trained since last March or April, but we've continued to put him in pull-ups at night. His pull-up is almost never dry in the morning, but really I have no idea if he was going during the night while sleeping hard, or in the morning after he woke up and was too lazy to go to the potty since he was wearing a pull-up. Plus we were too lazy to jump out of bed as soon as we heard him up and take him potty.

So anyway, waited almost a year until he had mastered going potty by himself and getting past (sometimes) not announcing to us EVERY single time he needs to go potty. Last night, we gave it a try to sleep in underwear and no pull-up. He went pee before bed, then went to sleep (well, not really). I dried Blythe's hair, put her to bed (or said goodnight and left her to read books on her own), then went to dry my hair. Ethan came in and said he had to go potty. Totally procrastinating going to sleep. I told him "then go potty and go back to bed". But of course, he can't go to bed without screaming "MOMMY!" every night, so I had to put him in bed and say goodnight again and leave while he screamed "MOMMY!" in his bed. Went back to drying my hair. He came back a few minutes later and said he had to potty again. Such a terrible liar he is. Whole process again...screaming "MOMMY!"...go back to drying my hair. Finally he was quiet.

Went downstairs to watch TV. After a little while, Braden said he heard a conversation going upstairs, so he went up to intervene. Ethan was standing in Blythe's room playing her Leapster by her bed, while she lay there with one eye barely opened, clearly annoyed Ethan was in her room. Ethan said, "Blythe asked me to come in her room". I'm telling you...terrible liar.

Oh, it was going to be a long night.

But it wasn't! Ethan slept in this morning. We thought for sure there was no way he would be dry. He had slept too hard and it had been too long. But we were so wrong! Woke up dry, then went potty. He was so proud of himself! So no more pull-ups. I'm sure we'll have accidents, but hopefully they are few and far between.

A little rant

2011-02-08T14:11:00.002-05:00

I suck at blogging recently. I've entered the stage of being too tired to blog. Too tired from working non-stop all day to be able to get out of the door by 4 o'clock so I can go get Ethan and rush him over to a swim lesson (where he says in the car he's going to have a great lesson, then gets on the pool deck and hugs my legs for 15 minutes refusing to get in the water while I count off 50 cents per minute that he's wasting playing his stupid little game), then go back and get Blythe and Brynn from school. Or get out the door by 4:15 so I can go get all the kids and take them to gymnastics (and put Brynn in the baby backpack while I "participate" in Ethan's class....and get there early enough to get Blythe dressed for gymnastics so she can do her class as soon as Ethan's ends...and remember to bring snacks and paper and markers or Blythe will have a complete meltdown...yes, she is 5, but she's a drama queen). After said activities, we get home and Brynn is tired, so I can't put her down, but the other 2 immediately want more snacks (because dinner isn't ready, because I haven't even thought about dinner, because I have to hold Brynn and then get her some dinner). Then dinner still isn't ready, so they want even more snacks, then I yell at them to stop bothering me so I can feed Brynn. Then I turn on the TV (aka the babysitter) and hope that suffices at least for a little while. Once Brynn is fed, I take her up to get a bath and Braden is home, so he tries to feed Blythe and Ethan dinner and gets mad at them for not eating their dinner because they've had too many snacks. I get Brynn bathed, fed, and then in bed and then can finally go downstairs to eat (of course, not as a family these days because of utter chaos). I can't have a conversation with Braden because Blythe and Ethan like to interrupt and talk really loud only while Braden and I are trying to talk. Finally at about 7:30, we have some time to spend with Blythe and Ethan and we play a game, or color, or work on letters. Then it's time for more baths (Blythe can bathe herself, but still needs help and needs her hair dried). Then bedtime, which is a fight with Ethan every single night. Every single night he goes to bed screaming "MOMMY!" in his room. I can't go in there after I've put him down and left the room, because the vicious cycle will never end and then it will just suck away even more time.

At this point, I could blog. Or I could pour a glass of wine and watch a TV show or 2. As you can see, option 2 has been more appealing.

Hey, how's the weather?

2011-02-01T21:28:00.002-05:00

Ethan and Brynn had an official "conversation" this evening. If only I could speak "Charlie Brown teacher" language, then I might know what they are saying.

The dreaded 5 year shots

2011-01-28T19:42:00.004-05:00

It's official. Blythe is ready to go to kindergarten.
Pee'd in cup. Check.
Vision test. Check.
Height/weight check. Check.
Reflex test. Check.
Blood pressure check. Check.
Hemoglobin test (aka finger prick). Check.
Vaccines (4 separate shots). Check.

Too bad she failed 3 of them and will have to redo.

Pee in cup - Fail. Although we were successful in getting some pee in the cup without making too much of a mess, they found protein in her urine. She needs to drink more water during the day and retest in 2 weeks. I just cannot contain my excitement of having to hold that cup for her once again.

Vision test - Fail. She tested at 20/40 vision and they like to see 20/30 or better. I personally think she can see fine. She was reading letters and didn't even try to read that last line when they asked her. But - may just need to keep an "eye" out for her and possibly retest. In 2012 when I add her to my vision plan.

Height/Weight check - Pass! Not really sure how you could fail that one, but anyway, she's 50th percentile in both. Weighs 39.5 pounds and 42.75 inches tall.

Reflex test - Pass!

Blood pressure - Pass (I think). Don't actually know the results of this one.

Hemoglobin test - Fail. 10.5. Whatever that means. Should be a little higher apparently. She needs to take a multivitamin daily to increas iron and retest in a few months. First off, did you know most kids vitamins have no iron? Found that out today as I was trying to buy some. Finally found a special "Flinstones with Iron". Second, I call "not it" on taking her back in a few months for a finger prick.

Vaccines - Ummmm.....I guess technically it's a Pass, but the process in getting from beginning to end...FAIL, FAIL, FAIL! She knew she had to get 4 shots. Okay, so first she thought it was just 1. Just before going to the doctor I told her I thought it was 2 shots (I was thinking it was actually 3). Then doctor said it was 4. Yikes! She acted like it was going to be okay. But then those nurses came in and told her to lie down and pull down her pants and that's when the screaming started. So one nurse and myself pinned her down while the other one did the shots. She screamed SO loud after the first one. Then EVEN LOUDER after the second. And then somehow managed to scream even louder after each one. I don't think there were any other kids at the doctor's office at the time and actually it was surprisingly very UNcrowded at the time, so good thing she didn't scare off TOO many people. It was awful. While I was pinning her down and she was screaming, I was actually fighting the urge to laugh. How awful is that? My little girl in agony and I just want to laugh? Weird how the human brain works sometimes. I guess I had to either cry or laugh and my brain chose laugh. Oh well, as soon as it was over she was completely fine. Never complained about her legs hurting or her finger bleeding. I think just glad it was over and now she was in the clear as far as shots are concerned.

Afterwards she picked out not one, not two, but THREE Hannah Montana stickers. Then we went to 7-Eleven so she could pick out some candy. She chose Wild Berry Skittles (gross). Then we came home and she played with Ginsey the rest of the day. See how traumatized she looks?

Sorry - bit of a wardrobe malfunction!

Anyway, we're ready for kindergarten registration!

8 months old!

2011-01-24T14:01:00.003-05:00

Today Brynn is 8 months old. 2/3 of a year old? Boo. I know she must grow and get older, but I don't have to like it!

She is still the easiest, best baby on the planet. So laid back, goes with the flow, and happy just about all of the time. Before this month I would have qualified that with "as long as Mommy is around or Farida (her care provider at day care)". Those conditions, however, have been taken away. She changed day cares so no longer has her Farida. And she's been perfect in every way at her new day care. Eats great, sleeps great (or as great as can be expected at day care), plays well, etc. And Mommy went out of town last week for the first time since Brynn was born, so she was forced into a new dependence on Daddy and she was digging it.

So what is miss Brynn up to these days?

She cannot crawl quite yet. She really wants to get things and will stretch very far to reach. She'll end up on her belly, but she will just go in circles or make only backwards progress. She'll figure it out in the next few weeks though. Then we'll have to put the baby gates back up. Yuck.

She loves "talking" and says "Ma ma", "Ra ra", "Ba ba", "Pa pa", but no "Da da" from what I've heard so far.

She has tried just about every baby food there is and likes (or tolerates) most of them. Does not like green beans and tolerates peas barely. Also not a huge fan of apricots.

We're having a hard time with moving to the next phase after very pureed baby food. She still chokes on puffs. Now I've tried letting her bite them (with the 2 teeth she has) and that works a little better. We've tried moving to baby food with more texture and she's doing OKAY, but we've got a ways to go. She's slower at this than my other 2 were.

She can stand with assistance, but doesn't pull up yet.

She sleeps on her back and barely moves in her sleep. She has never rolled to her stomach while in bed. And she still sleeps with her hands behind her head.

She can now hold her own bottle. She gets tired and lazy though while doing it.

I have no idea how much she weighs or how long she is. Guess we'll find out at her 9 month appointment.

She is growing out of her 6-9 month clothes. Things sized 6-12 month seem to fit her well. Except her feet..she must have small feet as 6-12 month Robeez are still too big.

She still goes in the exersaucer some and love the Johnny jumpup

I'm pretty sure bathtime is her favorite part of the day

Anyway, that's Brynn in a nutshell these days!

Ethan never ceases to amaze me

2011-01-22T10:44:00.003-05:00

This is the bathroom in Blythe's dollhouse.

It's pretty clear that the toilet is not a real toilet. It's for BARBIE'S. To PRETEND pee in. Right? Pretty obvious, right?

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

Blythe is 5

2011-01-20T18:20:00.002-05:00

Blythe is 5 years old today. She's probably celebrating it right now at Taco Bell eating cheese rollups and cinnamon twists while I'm 1200 miles away at a conference for work. Sometimes having a full time job really sucks. We did have her birthday party last Sunday and she opened our gifts to her on Monday, so we have already celebrated it, but it still sucks to be gone.

The big milestone in our household with turning 5 is that she can now chew gum. So Braden took her yesterday to the store to pick out 2 packs of gum. She chose strawberry flavor and Juicy Fruit. Hopefully she doesn't swallow too much of it! Ethan keeps saying, "I five. I chew gum." Keep dreaming buddy.

There are some very exciting things that will happen at 5. Namely, she will go to KINDERGARTEN! Still over half a year away, but it will be here before you know it. I actually have quite a few memories from when I was 5. I remember my first day of kindergarten. I remember moving to a new state. And I remember getting shots. It's very traumatic. Not looking forward to next Wednesday when Blythe gets hers. But I am looking forward to getting past that so she can actually enjoy being 5. She's quite stressed about getting shots sometime while she's 5. So it might as well be soon so she can just move on.

We haven't measured her recently (guess the doctor will next week), but I do know she weighs about 41 pounds. She wears size 5T or 5 or 6 or girls XS or S. At this toddler/girl overlap stage in clothes, it's hard to find what actually will fit.

She's wearing size 10 or 11 shoes. 10.5 would probably be best, but I'm pretty sure they don't make those.

She is just barely starting to learn how to read. She knows the sounds of most of the letters and can put some together (but has a hard time with the vowels). I started using flashcards with a few words a week or so ago and she did okay. "Rug" gets sounded out as ruh-uh-guh though, so even when I say "say it all together fast", it still doesn't sound like "rug", but it's a bit of progress.

She writes letters and numbers very well. She's always wanting to write and asks me how to spell stuff all the time. There are some words she knows how to write on her own. At church one day all the kids got a paper that said, "I am thankful for..." She made a list of all of the things she knows how to spell:
books
dog
cat
dad
ethan
brynn
mary
ginsey
ashley

Other than cat, that's actually a pretty good "I'm thankful for..." list. Interesting how she writes "mary" and not "mom". For a while she wrote "mom" on everything. Every piece of art she made was for mom. "mary" is more challenging to write/spell than "mom", so she's just showing off how smart she is.

She's now started making her bed in the mornings. Thank you, Laura.

She's actually a pretty good dancer. Must have learned all her moves from me (and anyone who's ever seen me dance knows I am being completely sarcastic about that). She can also learn songs incredibly fast these days. Amazing how quickly those little kid brains absorb things.

She starting to use her imagination a lot these days and it's so fun to watch. I always felt that Blythe and Ethan would play well together when they were at least 5 and 3. Now we're getting there and I can totally see it. Blythe has the imagination to make up games and scenarios and Ethan just wants to play along. So they'll play "going to the store" or "going to a dance party" or "ice cream shop".

I think I'm going to like this year. 5 will be lots of fun. Happy Birthday to my sweet Blythe.

Blythe's birthday party

2011-01-17T21:42:00.004-05:00

Blythe's birthday is on Thursday, but we had her birthday party yesterday. For the 3rd year in a row, she's had a combined birthday party with her best friend Ashley (who's birthday was on the 10th). Sure makes it nice when you can split the cost of the birthday party in half! Probably this will be the last year as they likely won't be at the same school next year (and therefore won't have the same group of friends).

I just cannot believe Blythe is turning 5. 5? 5 years old? Already? Unreal.

Anyway, the birthday party was at the pool. The new pool where VT swims. All of the friends they invited were from their old school (except Ginsey next door), so it was really nice for them to get together with friends they went to school with for several years (but haven't seen since mid-December).

Last year's party was also at a pool and the theme was Ariel (fitting for a pool party). So this year's theme was....Rapunzel. It was fresh on the mind.

Here they are blowing out the candles. Geez...5? 5 years old?

Despite the one mom who had to jump in after her kid because the sucky lifeguard wasn't doing her job, everyone had a great time. Even Brynn swam and only cried a little when she got splashed in the face (okay, she cried a lot).