WWF Family Style

Sometimes for fun we turn the Shetland Pony lose in the house to play!

"But we looovve you Catie!"

Poor Abbey........, sorta'.......

This evasive maneuver may be 'sacrifice the weak' or 'you only have to be faster than the guy behind you'!

It should be the 'Terrible Threes'

As you all know Alex struggles with his speech.
Specifically with articulation, he'll talk to you in complete sentences, but is very difficult to understand.

Alex's uttered his best, longest, clearest sentence this morning. I say uttered, but actually it was screamed... shrieked really, right into my face.

"Mommy, you give me dat bak wight NOW!"

I don't even remember what it was that I took away from him. But it was something he had taken off of the bathroom counter, and was not supposed to have.

But the righteous indignation, the shout, glare and demand was all rewarded by me saying "Good words, Honey!"

What he really needed was a time-out.

The Big "3"!

Just so everyone will say, "Awww, I can't believe he is already three!".

Because that's what I walked around saying all day Monday & Tuesday.
"Three, that can't be right, He's not three years old. He can't be..."

Catelin and I made a birthday cake. Alex requested a blue cake. The best we could do was a 'Funfetti' cake with blue sprinkles in and on the cake.

After requesting "blue" for everything from cake and ice cream, to napkins; when we got to the store he spied the "Cars" decorations and only wanted THAT! So much for my blue and Thomas Train theme.

Loving Mack.

Ooohhh, what's in there, look Catie!

In all of the pictures, except the first one, he has icing on his lips. We hadn't even cut the cake yet!

By the way, Funfetti cake with cream cheese icing and sprinkles is waaay gooood!

What Limb?

At 7:00 pm last Thursday the kids and I were hanging out in the backyard. Alex was playing tractors in the dirt and Catelin was turning cartwheels.

Suddenly, Catelin remembered Friday was "puzzle day" at school. Everyone was supposed to bring a puzzle.

Of course, we do not even own one puzzle! Tears began, whining continued, etc, etc... 'she'll be the only one without a puzzle, she won't get to play, life ruined, etc...'

After a few minutes the guilt got to me. There wasn't really any reason we couldn't go back out, I just didn't want to.

We pulled Alex out of the dirt and we piled into the car and went looking for Dollar Tree or someplace to get a puzzle.

("NOT a baby one and it can't be more than 300 pieces, and I want it to have a dog....")

About 7:40 we cruised back home, crisis averted. The day would not be ruined, we had a 300 piece dog puzzle.

Mark asks from the back deck, "When did this happen?"

Me: "What happen?"

Mark: "That Limb, that fell."

Me: "Huh, WHAT limb??"

THIS LIMB!

In the 30-ish minutes that we were gone the top broke off one of the trees. And it fell down into the backyard.

RIGHT WHERE ALEX HAD BEEN PLAYING IN THE DIRT!!!

If you look closely you can see 2 green John Deere tractors in the leaves.

The view from the deck.

Hmmmmmmm........

A Sunny Winter Day

I will take a break from talking about houses to post some pictures! I knew you'd be happy about that!

This is what a 2 year old can get up to when you are not looking.

It was a beautiful day today. Sunny and about 69 degrees. Not to rub it in or anything, but, the daffodils are blooming here.

We spent most of the afternoon playing in the backyard. Alexander was as happy as a clam!

If he's a good boy, for fun, we let him move the wood pile.

It's a special treat.

Load the wood, move the wood to another area of the yard. Unload the wood.

Reload the wood into your wagon. Move to another part of the yard. Unload the wood.

Repeat endlessly.

Remember how Alex used to like to 'line things up', trains, cars, etc.? I think I may have a whole post I could write about this little eccentricity of his...

I swear, I had him tested, he is NOT special!

He just likes things order-ly.

Of course, Alex playing in the yard would not be complete without his trusty sidekick. Whenever Alex goes out, he calls Lucy to come out with him. Very cute, especially since he calls her "My BeeBee". He stand at the back door and calls, "BeeBee, BeeBee gout" (yes, he says 'gout' not 'go out', it's not a typo). And that cat comes running for him.

We can't figure it out... but she had a lovely time rolling in the dirt.

She's finally grown and put on some weight. We were starting to think she was going to be a runt forever.

Eventually, he will take off his shoes and socks. If you're lucky you'll catch them before he pitches them over the fence.

Now, I did not deliberately leave out Catelin. She allowed me to take one picture so everyone could see her hair cut. Then she was off to do more important things than play with us in the backyard.

Although she did leave instructions for me to be sure and take some pictures of Lucy. See how good I follow instructions!

THE END!

A New House!

We have a hoouusse, we have a hoouusse, we have a hoouusse, hooray!
The seller signed off on the last counter offer yesterday evening!

For those of you who received spamish type e-mails from me with pictures of houses; it is the big beige two story house. Five bedrooms, big family room in the walk-out basement.

It is just the next neighborhood down from where we live now, so we don't have far to move.

This is one of the very first houses we looked at over last summer, before we were even seriously house-shopping. The size of the house and the way the floor plan is laid out is going to be perfect. The fact that the price kept dropping was appealing as well. Ha, Ha!

Our closing is in the middle of March. Now, we have to find a good home inspector and start pricing a fence for the backyard.

More pictures will come.

Christmas 2008

We made our own home-made Reindeer Food to feed Santa's reindeer.

Alex wasn't too interested in sprinkling out the 'reindeer food'. The neighbor's cat came over and started eating the Wheat Chex out of the Reindeer Food. Alex was more interested in chasing the cat around the yard!

Some of us took nice Christmas picture.

Some of of didn't....

Catelin put out letters for Santa and cookies and milk.

We played our favorite Christmas Game. Wrap the baby in a blanket and wait for him to find his way out...

Catelin ripped through her gifts on Christmas like a crazy kid. With her usual 'jump in with both feet-gotta see everything' zest for life and excitement.

Their very different personalities were obvious.

Alex was content to open one gift at a time, take it over to the coffee table and examine it completely. It didn't bother him a bit that there was a whole pile of presents with his name on them.

It drove Catelin nuts. She wanted to open his presents for him.

They really liked all their gifts and had a great time playing. Thanks for everything!!!

Santa even brought a toy for Lucy. What a nice Santa we have.

The best "free" Christmas present ever!!

Playing Wii Boxing.

Happy Holidays!

The kids and I spent yesterday afternoon making Christmas cookies! Lots of chocolate chips were snatched and eaten.

We made Chocolate Chip, Cream Cheese cookies, Fudge and No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies. Today, after we go to the store, I will make some Buckeyes and maybe one other kind of treat. This time I intend to make the cookies when the kids aren't around...

I tried to be one of those "good Moms" and let the kids "help" and "make memories" and all that on Sunday. But, geeesh, all the messes and burnt cookies, and flour spilled all over Alex, and nuts all over the floor, and Alex trying to lick a Ginsu knife. It was enough to give me a twitch.

We did use our fresh picked pecans from Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving dinner Rita, Catelin, Alex and I went for a walk in C-Hill and picked up pecans. We ended up with two BIG plastic bags of fresh pecans. We cracked/shelled these pecans to use in one of our cookie recipes. That was pretty neat! I hope to get a bunch shelled so we can make a Pecan Pie for X-Mas. The fresh nuts were really good, better than store bought.

We put our tree up last week. Between Alex and the kitten, Lucy, the bottom 1/3 of the tree is bare and about four ornaments have been broken. Catelin has put herself in charge of guarding the tree. Two gifts have "accidently" been opened. One by Alex, of course, and one by Lucy. Who knew kittens were kinda like puppies? She chewed and ripped at the paper until it was shreds, ummm, thanks Mom, I like the Arbonne Travel Kit!

Today, we are going to clean house and get the last of the gifts wrapped. I can't believe it is December 22nd already. Even though we have seen every old Rudolph Christmas movie made (about 5 times), decorated a tree and made cookies, listened to endless Christmas music on the radio and paid insane amounts of money to ship gifts, it still does not feel like it should be Christmas time!

Well, better go this house isn't cleaning itself and Alex is getting his own breakfast, Ha, Ha!!
Merry Christmas, ya'll!

You Can't Beat Free!

Back in October, when I first started thinking about Christmas shopping, Catelin was going on and on about her friend's Nintendo Wii. She wanted a Wii for Christmas. Well, I thought, it could be a gift for the whole family to use, Mark could play with Catelin with it, etc, etc.

Then I priced them. Not only were they hard to find, but they were $250 for the basic console with one traditional controller and one "action" controller. Well, when you start adding in all the second controllers and a couple games to play, it became quite pricey.

So, we decided, maybe not this year. Maybe next year, when the prices start dropping and we have a big family room to play in, etc...

BUT, while feeding my blogging addiction I came across a Blog Giveaway. Blog giveaways, they are so much fun and I never win anything, and Mark just laughs at me, but I'm always hopeful. One of these days I will win a Kitchenaid Mixer from http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/!

Sooo, http://www.noobie.com/ is having a Wii giveaway for Christmas!! Fantastic! I sign up, BUT, if I "tell my friends" about it I get 5 extra entries. Well, of course I pimped out a few e-mail addresses so I could get 5 extra entries!

I warned Mom that I had done this, and told her she could just delete any junk looking stuff.
Well, SHE ENTERED THE WII GIVEAWAY TOO! And out of 8,000 entries.............

No I didn't win, of course not................ MOM won the Wii giveaway! How cool is that!!!!!!!!!!

Post Thanksgiving Burn-out

Happy Post Thanksgiving Burn-out. I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving and a great turkey feast. Hope you got to see friends and family and remembered to be Thankful. We had a great time visiting with our Grandmas and making memories.

Catelin was off school for the week so the kids and I left on the previous Saturday, drove to Illinois and spent the whole of Thanksgiving week with Grandma Angela. On Wednesday, Mamaw and Papaw drove over from Indiana to spent the holiday with us.

Three Grandparents, two Grandchildren; it's a good thing.
I slept in, finished a good book and even took time to shave my legs. (TMI, sorry, but you just don't understand how significant that really is...)

Now, the drive up to IL was uneventful, just looooong. The weather was good, and no one screamed unnecessarily. Catelin ran the DVD player and Alex was allowed a pacifier. ( I know, I know... but I just don't care...)

We break up the drive with a lunch stop at a McDonalds playland. I always pray against, staph infections, pink-eye germs or random bodily fluids being in the playland.
I wasn't disappointed, Catelin came out to report one little boy was guarding the top of the slide by spitting at everyone. Yeah... there's one in every crowd. At least this time it wasn't mine.

The playland is perfect for Alex to run out all his energy and maybe sleep a little for the second half of the trip. It's a treat for them, for being in the car so long and it's also good-behavior leverage. "If you don't stop fighting/whining/crying/kicking we are NOT going to McDonalds!"
What did parents do before McDonalds?

Coming back to GA was another story. We left an hour and a half behind schedule, it was foggy, it rained, it was dark by 5:00pm, Chattanooga was bumper to bumper traffic for miiilllles and somehow I completely ignored my GPS and got lost briefly in Atlanta. Ack...

So, now it is time to prepare for Christmas. I need to finish my shopping, of course.
Catelin and I always choose a charitable cause to support for Christmas. This year I think we are going to purchase coats for a local 'coat-drive' and maybe even donate supplies to one of the county animal rescue groups. We also need to decide on a tree: real or fake? And see if our decorations made it here in the move or are they in IL? Hmmmm.
I want to spend one afternoon, with Catelin, making cookies.

Geez, I need to start a to-do list.
There are many, many things I need to get started on and get done.
What are you doing to get ready, now that the Holiday season is in full swing?

Friday Observations

1. Ants do not die when it gets cold. They just move into your closet. And the upstairs bath.

2. It is possible to turn the whole television upside down and shake it to get the DVD out. That would be the DVD that Alex shoved past the DVD tray.

3. There needs to be a LAW, that any Halloween candy left over past November 5 must be thrown in the trash immediately.

4. Forty degrees is considered a serious cold-front in Georgia. Everyone broke out the scarves and fuzzy boots. Catelin is still wearing a cotton jacket.

5. Candy Cane Creme Oreos are from the Devil. Purchase at your own risk!

6. When you really need one, every flashlight in the house will have dead batteries.

7. When you put your jeans in the dryer, by mistake, they will never fit again.

8. Oh, and Candy Cane Creme Oreos are evil. Do not buy them...... but if you do... send me two.
Just two, no more than that...

Pumpkins! (or punkuns)

We went to The Pumpkin Patch this past weekend. It was a cute little pumpkin patch run by our neighbor's Methodist church.

Alex was fascinated by the small pumpkins. Mostly, because he could pick them up and throw them like balls. I guess we were lucky we didn't have to buy a dozen bruised baby pumpkins.

Pumpkin Love!

Look at that face. He was not havin' any of that sittin' down stuff!

"Let go, Catie!"

Sweet little angel. *snort*

The church was giving out Halloween coloring sheets and little boxes of crayons.

If you look closely here, you can see that Alex is scribbling on a pumpkin, with a crayon.

Catelin is trying not to laugh out loud.

Me: "Shhh, just get up and go! Alex give me that!"