Good Grief

Good grief it happened again!

I do take credit though for the folded up pack and play on Babydoll's bed, I left it there yesterday afternoon.  I've had a quiet day with just Little Man home to get stuff done, looks like I'll be heading in here next.

Q&A Revised

Changed my mind on the names thing. If you ask a question, I'll just post the question and the answer, no names. 

Also, Lets let the comments section be a place for you to give your answer to any questions you want to answer!   I really want this to be a discussion, not just me rambling on about my opinion! :o)

My throat is crying

   I don't have anything fun to talk about today, just strep.  Sunday night I had a fever, felt better monday morning but as the day went on I was feeling worse.  By tuesday my throat was sore and swollen so that night I went to the minute clinic and got checked for strep throat.  I figured they'd give me the typical, "it's just an upper respiratory virus, get lots of rest and fluids and you'll feel better soon" but instead I got, "your strep test came positive right away."  Bummer.  When I got up to go the bathroom that night at 4 AM my throat felt majorly swollen so I took a peek in the mirror.  Open up and say AAHHHH.  Wowzah! my tonsils were like tennis balls, and my uvula (courage hangy ball to all of you who grew up watching Full House) was so swollen and long that it either layed on my tongue or I had to swallow it.  Yucky.  So I've spent the day mostly on the couch eating ice cream, antibiotics, and ibuprofen while Spencer took care of me and the kids.  He went to a nearby cafe and brought us soup, and 2 blizzards from Dairy Queen.  I ate one blizzard for lunch and another for dinner :o)  I wish I could eat like that more often!... without being sick of course.  Spence got a couple of pizzas for him and the girls and it smelled incredible... I think I'll have a piece of cold pizza soon here, cold because anything warm makes my throat cry out in pain.  Tomorrow is another day and hopefully I'll feel great, my throat will settle down, my courage-hangy-ball will be exactly where it's supposed to be, and I can finally get on with my life, because I'm getting my haircut tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it!

Here is me and Spencer at a wedding he was in

"Why Wednesday"

   Remember last week when I hinted at a new weekly feature?  Well it's here!  This helpful (I'm using the term very loosely here) little feature is called "Why Wednesday" and is a place for us to vent/complain about the little things, or big things, that are bugging us this week.  It's sort of a spin off of McMama's Not Me Mondays.  I'll post a couple of "Why"s and then let you take it from there in the comment section.  Go ahead and spill.. but lets keep it clean people :o)

   Why must my 3 year old daughter constantly suck on a chunk of her hair? gross! And then she complains that it hurts when I brush her hair.

   Why must all my hard work and motivation come to a grinding halt and completely fall apart when I get even a moderate illness?

   Why is it that when I watch Lost at night I have night-long dreams about being on an island with crazy people and weird creatures.

   Why do I need to do my makeup everyday?  who am I kidding... half the time I don't wear any makeup anymore.

   Why don't people realize they have an entire lane to merge onto the highway and instead sit there blocking up traffic, waiting for a "break" in the cars?

You're turn!!

I Tackled Little Man's Closet

   Back a few weeks ago I had made it my mission to get the toys organized (among other things in my life) as they have taken over my house.  Honestly, they took over my house 7 years ago when my oldest daughter was born and we experienced our first Christmas with children.  When you have a daycare in your home, as part of your living space, organizing toys/getting rid of toys becomes quite different than typical parents.  If I didn't have a daycare I would currently be getting rid of all my boppy pillows, bouncy seats, small-sized pack and plays, and would soon be getting rid of bunches more!  I would, since my last baby... as far as we know of the future... is a boy, I would have gotten rid of barbies, dolls, and other girly-type things (though I am adiment that little boys have every right to play with barbies and dolls if they feel like it) when my girls tired of them.  Instead I pass them on to the daycare, making it really difficult to get rid of "extra" toys.  So there's my excuse, or... um... reason, for the excess toys.  Now, on to what I did over the weekend before I got sick and slept through the football game.

Remember this?  Little Man's closet, where "extra" toys are currently being stored?

Yikes that's scary!  As you can see the closet is unable to contain the madness.

Now look...

What you can't see here is that I've gone ahead and put together a very small pile of  "extras" that I have realized I don't need, and they are going to whoever wants them or goodwill.  There's a bouncy seat that doesn't vibrate or play music like it's supposed to (not sure if I can actually give that to goodwill), a Snugli infant carrier that none of my babies and I got the hang of, so it barely got used, and I don't need to keep it, and a couple more odds and ends.  After I got the closet better organized (it's not perfect, but hey.... I'M not perfect either!) I was able to really clean LM's room for the first time in weeks.

See what little boys can do when they have a nice clean floor to play on?

They play with the legos they got for Christmas!  And by "play" I mean smack them around the room. :o)

I can tell he appreciates it.

My Oldest Girl is Awesome Part 2

Like I said before, my oldest girl is awesome!  After graduating to her gold belt last friday night, she attended her karate school's board breaking seminar.  Each student would be able to try 2 different methods of breaking a board... a real board!  She chose "hammer fist" and her foot.

this picture was snapped by Babydoll, Sweet Pea is waiting in line to break a board with her fist.

She's up next!  She and her friend are watching the girl ahead of her break a board, she wasn't even nervous (but I think her friend was!)

Sweet Pea's turn!  Fighting Stance, bend your knees and aim for the floor, not the board.  You need to tell your fist to go all the way to the floor or you won't have enough power.

Hi-Yah!

she had a hard time breaking the board with her fist.  She would get nervous at the last second and slow down her "hammer fist".  After several attempts the instructor took her hand and they chopped a board together.

Success!

Here are the boards she broke with her fist

Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough or close enough to get a picture of her breaking a board with her foot, but she did it all on her own, without fear, and with great pride!

Here it is!

Yep, I'll say it again, she's awesome!

Look at those baby blues!

Sweet Pea

Baby Doll

Little Man

My Oldest Girl is Awesome Part 1

My oldest daughter is Awesome!  This has been a big weekend for her.  Friday night she graduated to her Gold belt in karate!  We got there early so we could buy her hand and foot pads and karate bag.  As soon as her group was able to go out on the mat she started warming up with the other kids on their own.

Her push-ups are 10 times better than mine!

Practicing her self-defense moves

Then they got stuff started for the parents.  First some organized aerobic warm-ups.

Running in place.

Jumping Jacks

Lets show your parents your karate moves.  Are you ready?

Yes Sir!!!

Hi-Yah!

After showing off their kicks, punches, chops, 1-steps, and self-defense techniques, it was time for their new belts.

We are very proud of her!

Now bow

And get your graduation certificate.

After graduation we took the kids out to Broadway Pizza for a celebratory dinner... the girls got personal cheese pizzas, Little Man ate cheerios and a bottle, and Spencer and I got a buffalo chicken pizza... it was pretty spicy, but Ranch calmed it down and it tasted good.

First we have Sweet Pea

Me and Little Man

Me and Sweet Pea

Spencer and Babydoll

Spencer and SP

Part 2 is coming up next, but first, a message from our sponsers (not really, I don't have sponsers, just really cool advertisments)

Sesame Street Live

   What did we do last Sunday?  Did we meet up with a bunch of friends and watch the football game? Nope.  Did we stay home eating chicken wings, drinking beer, and watching the football game? Nope.  Did we go to the Metrodome to watch the Vikings play on their home field?  Nope, we went to the Target Center and saw Sesame Street Live!  Did we have a good time?  You bet!  We didn't tell the girls where we were going, trying to keep the suspense alive and all, so they had been making their guesses all morning.  Sweet Pea guessed various places like the movie theater, Texas, Chuck E Cheeses, New York, Disney World,  the cabin.  It was really quite entertaining letting her guess! 
   After dropping Little Man off at my parents' house to play with Grandma and Grandpa (he wouldn't have made it sitting there that long) we hit the road PLENTY early expecting some possible downtown traffic trouble.

here the girls are, clueless as to what's going on

Remembering that I hadn't been taking many pictures of SP lately, I told her to smile.

Spencer finds it hilarious to fake that he's sleeping at the wheel and then wake up startled, sometimes swirving a little (if there are no cars around)

There was no traffic what so ever in Minneapolis at that point, as a matter of fact, we had a hard time at one point finding any moving cars/people at all. It was like a ghost town down there! Because we were there early and before the doors even opened, we parked ourselves down on the floor and drank some of our Diet Dr. Pepper and juice packs.

Good product placement there honey, now if we can just get Dr. Pepper sent to us by the truck load we'll be good to go!

When the doors were going to be opening we finally told the girls what we were going to do, Babydoll was excited but confused, and Sweet Pea was happy, but not as excited as we were hoping for.  Once we were able to go find our seats, we headed in and got comfortable.

The girls were happy about their spinny-lightup-elmo thing

Babydoll is really excited for it to start, can you tell?

Look what I got!

Elmo and Abby Kadabby

Babydoll had a great time!

Sweet Pea was bored and told us that unless it's Disney On Ice, or Princesses on Ice, not to take her next time!  Just after this picture she took a nap on my shoulder.

Off to Mexico, In Our Imaginations That Is

   Because I like pictures of eyes I took one of Babydoll's eyes today.  Now I just need to get one of Sweet Pea's eyes and I'll have them all.  Wow, that sounded a little weird.

She has always had the most beautiful eyes, from the time she was born they were a fabulous feature on her.

   I feel a little guilty that Sweet Pea has only one picture on here, it's just that she's at school all day and I tend to take pictures during the day, and since I'm not putting my daycare kids' pictures on this site that leaves just BD and Little Man.  We went to see Sesame Street Live on Sunday (yep, missed the Vikings game) and there are plenty of pictures of Sweet Pea there, but tonight is not the night for that post. 

   Back to our world travels in daycare... Today was about Mexico!  We told each other "Hola Amigo" throughout the day, spoke more Spanish than usual today, and I whipped out the Sombrero and Maracas so we could sing about pinatas and dance.

   We looked up pictures of Mexican pottery and intended on using playdough to make our own versions of Mexican pottery, but the kids had more fun dancing and singing and playing outside... and since I'm not a strict schedule follower we danced, sang, and played outside.  We discussed how it snows here in the winter but not in Mexico, talked about Mexican food and families, and practiced counting groups of 10 in Spanish.  Want to hear something cute? I asked them, "The language we're speaking is Spanish, if we're speaking Spanish what country are talking about?"  They answered, "Dora".  I thought it was cute, kids say the darndest things.  We also of course did our standard letter and number practice, calendar, weather, preschool math games, and all that good stuff... it's just not as fun to blog about :o)

   Hey look, I do have a recent picture of Sweat Pea!  BD was taking pictures this morning with my camera and snapped a photo of SP bouncing on a big ball.

   On a side note, this post was a bit late due to the fact that we are currently watching season 5 of Lost since when it was airing on regular TV we were getting caught up on seasons 1-4.  That catching up involved 4 weeks of late late nights watching back to back episodes during my maternity leave last spring.  It all came back to me tonight when we were interupted by Little Man waking up (which he rarely does at night).  I told Spence that it would be Lost if Little Man didn't wake up at least once!  Hopefully I can get through this season without waking up from bizarre dreams about people living on an island with other strange people and even stranger creatures/phenomena. 

   I'm also thinking of starting a new weekly feature on my blog starting next wednesday, once I decide to do it and probably get a first post started for it, I'll let you know what it is!  Oooo the mystery of it all, I'm sure you can barely contain yourself with all the suspense!  Ha ha.... right.