Picnic in the tent

How fun is it to have a picnic inside the tent you've just erected in the living room?



Dare I say, uber-fun?

How fulfilling is it to be the mom that successfully snaps an up-close picture of your kids without them knowing it?

What trumps uber?

Spring Break

Don't laugh, yes I'm a little behind on the blogging.

Our Spring Break started out truly spectacular.  Katherine got the Friday off before the week-long break.  My dad, CowPapa, just happened to call that Friday morning asking about stopping by.  Well, it had been on my mind for a while to nail down a weekday when Katherine was out of school but public schools in the area were still in session and I had a helper.  I wanted to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese, but without all the crowds, and braving it on my own made it unappealing.  I've been there before on a Sunday afternoon and I'm pretty sure I'd rather lick the Wal-Mart shopping cart handles instead of braving that chaos again.

But low and behold, CowPapa was ready to spend time with all 3 kiddos (he misses seeing Katherine a lot because he usually stops by when she's in school), AND he was willing to brave a potentially crowded Chuck E. Cheese.

Our blessing was that we had a GRRREEEAAAT time!  I think there were maybe 15 people in there for an hour and a half.  Can I hear an Amen sister?

The kids had fun hopping from one bright and shiny entertainment box to another.

Side note: the food there isn't bad either.  I'm just sayin'.

So Friday kicked off our Spectacular Spring Break Extravaganza!!!  That's what I felt like anyway.  I had all these grandiose plans of ALL the fun things we'd accomplish that week.  I miss her being gone all day, so I was really looking forward to spending lots of time with her.

Oh little did I know.

Friday night we continued the Spectacular Spring Break Extravaganza with a camping party in Nathan's room.  Each kid got out their tent and we set them up in his room.

Do you remember how fun it was to sleep somewhere different, even if it was in your own house?  I do.  I just love that they thought camping in Nathan's bedroom was the funnest thing EV-ER.

It did take them a while to get to sleep, but I'm sure them sleeping together in the same tent had a little something to do with that.

 They even opted to eat their snack near the tents.

 Can anybody spot the photogenic differences between the two?

Mr. 'I could care less'

Miss 'Always make the effort'

 They had so much fun goofing off and just being silly, it was hard to impose any type of curfew.  Although, 10pm was starting to push it for this tired mom.  Something finally worked and they feel asleep in each other's arms.  Sniff, sniff.  I just love my babies.

 

 

We were off to such a Spectacular Spring Break Extravaganza!  YES!

I forgot what we did Saturday, probably spent some much-needed time with Daddy.

Sunday was church and the usual.

And then it started.  The never-ending reign of sickness-terror our house endured.

It started with me on Monday, then spread to Brandon, then quickly to Katherine and Nathan and then we loved spending soooo much time with each other we just kept sharing cooties and germs and who knows what else until we painfully endured, although not very gracefully, 3 weeks of putrid, disgusting and frustrating sicknesses.  It was a marvelous concoction of throwing up coupled with it's equally undesirable hind-end companion, double ear infections, fevers, body aches, and a little known (to us) yet very common - adenovirus.  We had about 4-5 days of breaks in between all that 3-weeks of yuck, thinking each time maybe it was all over.  But it wasn't.  We endured 3 full weeks of it and poor Jim somehow managed to avoid it all.

Mr. leave-the-Gatorade-by-the-front-door opted to still come home to all us sickos Every. Single. Night.  What a sport.

So that was the ending to our Spectacular Spring Break Extravaganza.  Thank goodness we crammed lots of fun stuff in the first couple of days.

Tent fun

Baby steps, Kel, baby steps.

Rather than dive into the longevity that a Christmas post merits and take away time from teaching my anxious pre-reader more about blending sounds, today's post will be short.

I remember loving to build tents in the house and play in them. I also remember that if I constructed the tent, it was usually going to fall down easy and if I actually spent the time to make it sturdy it was taking away from productive play time. So where was that happy medium?

Rather than put that type of pressure on two little ones who don't need to be moving furniture by themselves and leave it up to them which sheets to pull out of the closet, I decided to put one together on a day that was too cold to go outside.

VIOLA!Complete with a rocking chair for mothering baby dolls, pillows to lounge on while reading, and a tractor blanket surrounded by none other than, Monster Trucks!
Usually, the amount of time I spend building the tent is equal to the amount of they spend playing in it argument-free. So, after a while, Captain Destructo must be removed and put in his bed for rest time. That way, Little Lady can read in peace.

(What I'm not able to convey with just words and pictures about this marvelous sheet-tent was it's abhorrent smell. I chose to use the yucky sheets we cover the dog's bed with and my lawdy-be, they stunk up the entire house. Thankfully the little people didn't mind the concentration of smell collecting inside the tent, a marvelous combination of wet dog and soured sheets. Needless to say, all the sheets got a good run through the good ole' washin' machine after the tent was dismantled.)

Weeks worth of updates

I've been jotting down "events" that have happened in our household over the past 2 weeks. Here's the run-down...

The GREAT news: Nathan has started letting me hold him to sleep. It's not something I do every night, but sometimes I just need the cuddling. Also new, he was fussy in the middle of the night last week and did the unthinkable. When I brought him into our bed to calm him down, which usually doesn't work, he fell right asleep. He usually thinks it's time to play, bonk Daddy's head while he's sleeping, do the back-arch-baby-roll out of my grip, and I end up putting him back in his bed to let him cry it out. Rocking him in the chair and sometimes even walking around with him wouldn't do it. But that night, dare I say it for fear of jinxing any chance it might happen again, he cuddled. And I ate up every second of it. He nestled right in between my arm and side and fell asleep with no resistance. It has been the only time in his life he's ever slept in our bed, and I loved cuddling with my baby.

The NOT-SO-GREAT news: Nathan has found one of my weaknesses and last week decided to take full advantage of the situation. My weakness: paying attention to our children when people first come into our house. I feel it is my duty as the hostess to at least open the door, say hi with a smile (which means no raising my voice at children), have a small conversation with them when they come inside (and I mean small, "Hey, come on in. Have a seat. You find it okay? Want a drink?, etc.), get them situated (seated or at least comfortable) and then go back to paying attention to children. This is usually a 5-minute process. Not long, by any means, but the little stinker found it out and exploited the situation. The first incident happened when I was letting the babysitter in the door. She had been here before, but only once, and I was trying to show her the food set out for the kiddos' lunches, etc.

Mistake #1: I left the door open to the animal's food. ('Animals' being the dog & cat, not my children). Not one minute into my hostessing duties, I run back to the room and notice my son hunched over the dog food and water bowl. He was holding a couple pieces in his hand and making a yucky-fied face while sticking out his tongue. The front of his shirt was covered in water, along with the floor underneath him, because he had been violently splashing the water in the bowl. So, within a minute he did all this. I should have locked him up then.

Mistake #2: I left the door open to the bathroom. After cleaning his hands from the dog food incident, I mistakenly put him down and assumed the worst had passed. Oh no, dude made a bee-line straight for the bathroom, when he saw me opening the door to let in Aunt N and J. My time, again, was occupied with something other than watching children. Within minutes, the house was eerily quiet, so I went looking for the little monster. This time he was playing in the toilet. Thankfully (I say sarcastically), his sister forgot to flush. Without going into details, I know Nathan prefers solids that float and disintegrating toilet paper is fascinating when he tries to pick it up and it falls apart in his fingers.

Sigh!

On to Katherine: Jim was talking to her one day about how beautiful he thought she and myself were. He asked, "Do you think your mommy is beautiful?" (Does he not understand the significance of 'loaded questions'?)
Her response, "No, I'm the most beautiful."
I guess that's what happens when you hear over and over again how beautiful you are.

She's wearing a hat with a gator on it and Daddy's hat says, "Life's Too Short to be Dancing With Ugly Women."

My beautiful little lady showed her 'rougher' side the other day. Us 3 were outside picking up magnolia seed pods for brother's birthday party. She was sitting right next to me, chatting away like usual, then next thing I know it's quiet. I looked to my right and about 15 feet away, IN THE FRONT YARD, she had hiked up her skirt, pulled down her panties and was peeing in the grass! Uh, okay. It's not like she's ever seen one of us peeing in the yard.

There must be something about being able to pee right there, without having to bother yourself with going inside. I have a nephew that helped himself right outside of his school, in front of a mess-load of people. Half of them didn't even notice but the few that did thought it was cute and totally understood.

I actually got a picture of them playing in their tent this time. And they played together so nicely for about 15 minutes.
Katherine and her best bud, AC, watching Tinkerbell. This was Nathan's actual birthday. We 3 made cupcakes and decorated them together.
Some quality outside-time with Daddy. I'm so glad his schooling is over.
Some of the "finer" moments for Mommy and Daddy...

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