Back to Blogging

If there's some kind of disorder
that's defined by a weird one-track mindedness
where you get totally obsessed with doing one thing for a little while,
therefore throwing the rest of your life badly out of balance,
and then, shortly after, moving onto the next big thing and repeating,
then I think I have that.
{Sorry for the major run on sentence}.
But luckily for my seriously neglected little blog, my latest obsession is blogging so I have a sudden burst of badly needed entries. And some of you out there might have noticed you suddenly have all kinds of comments coming in from me. Well, maybe it's the new year or something but I am back into blogging baby!
{at least for the moment}

Christmas Photo Shoot

My sister Jamie and I decided to try to take our own pictures of the kids this year to give to the grandparents so as not to cut any more money out of the Christmas budget. So we borrowed a nice camera from the Barretts {thanks guys!} and attempted to get a shot of the 3 grandkids. How hard can it be right? I mean there are only three of them. Well, let's just say I'm never doing that again! What a disaster. I think we literally took like 200+ pictures and ended up with maybe 6 that were useable. We didn't even get one decent group shot and ended up just doing individuals. Between Caleb making faces, Janie throwing herself on the ground crying and Ellie crawling out of the picture, it was pretty much impossible. It really makes me appreciate any picture out there with more than one child looking good. How do you do it? Here are the highlights and the lowlights of our little photo session gone bad.

Thank Goodness for Peanut Butter!

So Janie got a sucker the other day for enduring a long shopping trip with Mom. And not just a scrawny little dum dum mind you, but a big, green, full-size sucker. She was eating it in the car so we had a really nice, quiet ride home. But when I went to unbuckle her, I discovered that somehow the sucker had ended up in Janie's hair! And if you know how long it's taken her to get any hair at all, you'll understand how upsetting this was to both of us. But I think Janie was only mad because she didn't get to finish the sucker, and because it didn't feel very good when I was removing it. Luckily, with some peanut butter and soap, we got that sucker out!

December Playgroup

I LOVE Christmas so even though December is insanely busy, I was still glad that it was my month to host playgroup because we got to have a little Christmas party. Ok, so it was pretty much a repeat of Janie's Birthday, but the more Christmas the better! And this time there were more kids who could actually make the gingerbread cookies. The boys were really cute. We wrote letters to Santa which was really hilarious. I wish I could remember what everyone asked for because there were some good ones, but since this post is a little late {shocker} I forgot. I do remember that Kyson asked for "raspberries" so I hope Santa delivered!

a New Kitchen! {Angie-this one's for you!}

For those of you marveling at my blaring inability to update my blog more than twice a year {that is if there's anyone out there who still bothers to check my blog}, here is my only explanation... I recently renovated my kitchen cupboards {keyword being I} and it totally took over my life. Well, actually it wasn't all me. I couldn't have done it without my amazing father-in-law helping me build and install some new shelves {which was my favorite part}. It was so fun learning how to build a few things with some power tools. Thanks Dee! And of course, thanks to Grandma for watching the kids so it didn't take me even longer! I tend to be a little "project-obsessed" and am usually trying to cram way more projects into my life than can actually fit with me still sleeping at night.{I'm pretty sure this is a genetic problem because it seems to run in my family.} I've been wanting to refinish our cabinets since we moved in 4 years ago, but for some reason I woke up one day in September and decided "today is the day!". And once I got that idea in my head there was no stopping me. So my poor husband and children had to endure a long while of dust, searching the basement for a cup or plate , pizza every night, a house of chaos, and a moody and very sleep-deprived wife and mom. Was it worth it? I haven't decided yet. But now that all that's behind us, I think we all love our new yellow kitchen. And anyone who doesn't will pretend to love it anyway to avoid my wrath.

Janie Turns {2} Oh NO!

..{December 6, 2008}..

With Caleb just recently emerging from the "terrible 2s on into 3s", I'm not quite ready to have a 2 yr. old around the house again. But still, we had a fun little birthday for Janie and so far she still seems to be pretty sweet {knock on wood!}. My favorite part of the day was when she opened her present from me and didn't notice the tissue paper and present part fall out of it. She looked at the box, then very sincerely looked at me and said "Oh! nee nu {translation: thank you} Mommy!". I guess we could have just wrapped up empty boxes and she would have been a happy girl. With her birthday being in December, we had a Christmas-themed party, of course. She had chocolate & peppermint cupcakes and we decorated gingerbread men. Happy Birthday to our cute Janie!