Remembering 9/11

today as I was remembering 9/11 and silently praying for the people murdered on that day, i suddenly was very grateful for my husband and all he is doing for our country, it didn't seem like such a sacrifice to have him gone. he is there to protect the US and us! thank you Josh, to you and all the military personnel, we need you, we respect you, we love you!

"tag - you're it"

I've been tagged by the Youngblood's - so here goes 7 funky facts about me

1. I am left handed but play tennis and racketball with my right hand (I don't play well with either hand, I should also add)

2. I am clutsy. Painfully clutsy. If there is a rock, hole, ant hill of any kind in my immediate direction while walking, running, jogging, skipping, whatever I am going to hit that target and ultimately fall down.

3. I have a set of freckles that look like the little dipper, I know I had too much free time on my hands at one point in my life!

4. I was partially deaf as an infant, and eventually had something like 6 sets of tubes in my ears to help me hear.

5. I really like to cut my grass, I don't know if it's because I didn't actually start cutting grass until I was in my mid-twenty's or if it's time away from the chaos of motherhood, or if it's the beautiful fresh cut lawn look, but I love it.

6. My favorite color is white, yet I can't ever wear it, because I always get something on it. Along the same lines, I love the look of a crisp white couch set for a living room, but resigned myself years ago, that I'll have to be a pattern girl (you know because patterns, hide all the stains).

7. I absolutely LOVE finding a bargain, whether it's Macy's 70% clearance sale, or the thrift store 50 cent day, to me there is nothing like a bargain find...


I know bestow my tagging abilities on to Sophie, Tonya, and Andrea C- "tag-you're it"

Blue October

I have a new FAVORITE band right now. Blue October, if you are like me and LOVE the Twlight series and are often on the Stephenie Meyer's website, you might already know who these guys are. If not, they are all over the place on her playlist for her books.

My personal favorites from Blue October
Congratulations
Into the Ocean
Calling You
Overweight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJFPxSs49Iw

Roar

This weekend the boys and I along with our friend Crystal and her son Zack all went to the Great Wolf Lodge located in Sandusky OH. This place is OUTSTANDING!! You immediately go in and there's a huge fireplace with 3 big wolves sitting on the mantle and Collin says "Roar, Mom, Roar" and I think to myself, "Awww Jacob..."...

The outside and inside alike have a Log Cabin feel, the rooms are great too. We got a room that had a kid room too. With wood bunkbed and wood daybed, but we didn't spend much time in the rooms. We spent the majority of our time at the waterpark!

This waterpark was great, it catered to kids all the way up to adults. My personal favorites were the Lazy River, the huge Hot Tub and the Huge Bucket of water that would spill over for all about every minute!

But this place had 2 restaurants, one we went to for breakfast had a skillet type all you could eat hometown breakfast, yummy... And it had alot of kid activities, including a storytime pajamama party, kinda like Chuck-E-cheese with the characters that moved but a woodsy type characters like a true and racoons and such, big screening of movies, they had High School Musical while we were there... And they had an arcade!

This place was great and we are definetly going BACK when Josh gets home!

Preschool Here I Come!!

Cregan starts preschool and is excited as all get out about it! He's bursting at the seams to "get the heck outta here". He will be starting a new preschool this year at Hawthorne Elementary which turns out to be where he'll go to Kindergarden as well, so it turned out really well.

Cregan was going last year as a typical child (that's the term used by the Westerville School Program) for the Special Needs Program offered by Westerville School System. Towards the end of the year, the teacher asked if she could speak to me after school. I immediately thouht, OH no, has Cregan been making guns out of legos AGAIN.. but it wasn't that at all. She asked if I'd mind having him tested for delayments in Gross and Fine Motor Skills. I agreed ofcourse, and he was tested and was found to have a delayment in his Sensory Perception, which affects him in different ways. I'd always assumed he had inherited his mom's clumsiness and probably still did, but this explained why he couldn't walk 5 steps without falling over nothing... So now, he'll have a Occupational Therapist and Physical Therapist work with him and hopefully, soon all of this will be a non-issue! However, thank GOD for those teachers and therapist who thought of Cregan when they really didn't need to, didn't have to, but did anyway. They went above and beyond their job description and I'm thankful for them!

Dreaming

Last night, as I lay in bed, I started to day dream about when Josh comes home, don't worry, this post is "G" rated. But I lay there, dreaming about Josh and how wonderful it was going to be when he came home... the reason you are thinking is different than mine (get your minds out of the gutter by the way). I was laying there, short ways on the bed, Collin on one side of me and Cregan on the other, Laynie (my dog) curled up somewhere on the bed too. And all I could think of is, hehehehe, when Josh gets home HE can deal with this... It was a laugh of insanity at four in the morning, but I layed there giggling, YES, HE could deal with this when he came home and I'd go sleep on the couch...
You may be asking why I just don't go sleep on the couch when the kids are in my bed like that?? Well the answer is clear, they have a mommy radar attached somewhere in their brain that goes off everytime I leave the bed and they come follow me, having 2 or 3 kids in the bed is bad enough, but try on the couch!!

Back to school

Clay had to wear his Star Wars shirt that matched his Star Wars backpack, he also informed me that he wasn't allowed to wear sandals to school on the 1st day, he HAD to wear his soceer shoes! I took him to school and he was excited to see a friend from church in class with him.
My little guy (I mean big 2nd grader) likes school a lot, except that he told me,
"Mom, I didn't do anything wrong at all but after lunch we had to put our heads down, the whole class..." I chuckled thinking, this teacher is old school...

Collin's Car's Birthday

Collin celebrated his birthday with a Disney Car's themed party. I wanted him to have a great party, I know he won't remember it, but I had all this guilt about not throwing him a 1st birthday party, instead I threw a party for Josh. So this year I decided to go all out. I recruited the help of Sophie to decorate the cake, which turned out great!! It was 2 round cakes put side by side and iced and then crushed oreo around the edges and piped green icing in the center and piped green on the edges and for the "race track", we used tic tacs! I had Lightening McQueen on the cake and made Black and White checked flags out of scrap paper, a Sharpie and toothpicks. I put Guido and Luigi on there, viola, one gorgeous Cars' themed cake. My friend Crystal helped me with the decorating and the next day helped with the cooking. We decorated the dining room with black and red streamers and white balloons and at first I was going to be creative and make a checked board table cloth from a white table cloth and a sharpie but thought better of it after about 2 hours of drawing vertical lines and getting NO where... I ended up buying the Car's themed tablecloth. For the activities, I was going to have pin the hood on Mater, but time didn't allow it to happen, but the kids decorated plastic visors with Lightening McQueen stickers and paint and colored pictures when they came in, then we ate hotdogs, chips and pork and beans, opened the presents and we all had cake and then we got to play on our own "race track". I had been working on making these boxes for about 2 weeks and they turned out so much better than I thought they would! I found a website that gave you a 360 degree view of the cars characters and I drew the four sides on the boxes, I had ofcouse Lightening McQueen, Sally, Mater, Doc Hudson, also Luigi, Guido, Ramone, Flo, and Filmore and the kids got to race around the track that Papa made for the kids outside! It was so fun, although Collin wasn't really into it, his brothers and cousins loved it! Lastly, I sent each of the kids home with I think an awfully cute treat bag! I found these foamy make it yourself race track at Joann Fabrics regularly $9.99 for .97! They came with this cute box, so in the box I put a box of Car's themed crayons that I got at Dollar Tree 4 for a buck and a little thing of bubbles that I got at Target and then I put a Car's themed sticker on the outside, along with a note thanking them for coming to Collin's 2nd Birthday! It was soooo fun.

Cottonheadedninnymuggins

This week I've been getting ready for Collin's 2nd birthday party, I've been painting Disney Car's characters onto boxes every evening for a week while I put a movie of the boy's choice on TV. There favorite movie of late has been Elf with Will Ferrell. If you haven't seen this movie, it's a great kid-friendly movie, Will Ferrell plays the character of an adopted Elf (who loves syrup on EVERYTHING). While at dinner one night with his real father and his family, eating spaghetti, he pulls out the syrup and puts it all over the noodles, yuck, I know...

Anyway, the reason for the intro on Elf, Collin comes up to me while I'm painting and starts to speak gibberish, I don't know what he said and so I just say,

"Yep, buddy, whatever you said sounds good"

He comes back in a minute or two with a plastic plate from the table and gibberish again, and again,

"OK buddy you sure can, let momma work here, OK?"

So I should not be surprised or anger when I finally finish my box and come around the corned into the living room to find my son with a plate on the couch and a bottle of syrup poured out all over the plate and the cushions... yep all I could do was laugh... albeit a little hysterically, it was still laughter...

Pretty Butterflies

More pictures from the Butterfly Conservatory, I was fancing myself a photographer, but I actually like the way these pictures turned out.