Easter Mugshot

Well...since our blog header picture is from Easter...2 YEARS AGO, I thought I should give you all a slightly more recent Easter shot.

Here is a pic taken just days ago...and it actually catches each kiddo in their true personality.

So, Happy (belated) Easter to everyone from 'Eager-to-Please' Garrett, 'Too-Cool-for-Pics' Ethan and 'Goofball/Prankster/Never-Serious' Olivia!!!

Rewind to Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving last year, we took off on an adventure.  We rented a cabin in Arkansas's Ozarks and spent our Thanksgiving week exploring and enjoying doing nothing but being together!  

We hiked, boated, built a campfire or two (or ten, if you're Garrett!).  We played frisbee golf and horseshoes and had a Star Wars marathon (only the old 4, 5 and 6...the new ones are not worth watching!).  We  cooked a super yummy Thanksgiving dinner, played board games galore, drove the tractor, threw rocks in the lake and caught leaves as they were endlessly falling from the trees, watched the wildlife outside our window(especially the yellow-bellied sap sucker!)...and a million other things!  The cabin was perfect and being hundreds of miles away from any responsibility was exactly what our little family needed!

It was honestly the most wonderful week...and the greatest memory-making trip ever!  Wish we could go back!

100

100th day of school???  Well, of course, one must dress up like they are 100 years old to sufficiently celebrate, right?

Ethan, my little old man, donned the mustache, put on the glasses, sprayed his hair gray (which you kinda can't really tell in these pics!) and even did the unthinkable...he tucked in his shirt and wore a belt in his attempts to look 100!  Yep...cutest little old guy I've ever seen!  

Nightly Movies

Liv - Mom!  Guess What?????

Me - What?

Liv - I watched a movie all night last night.

Me - Huh?  You watched a movie?

Liv - Yep.  When I closed my eyes last night, a movie started behind my eyes and I just watched it all night.  Isn't that funny?

Me - Wow!  That sounds exciting!

Liv - Yep.  It was a good movie.  

Please Bless

For the past couple of weeks, Olivia's prayers have been super cute!  She always puts a lot of thought into her sweet prayers, but here's my favorite phrase that has been said quite frequently:

"Please bless my mommy and daddy to have fun...with me"

shortly followed by...

"Please bless Garrett and Ethan to have fun...with me"

So cute...and so sweet...and so completely proves the fact that she is the center of our universe!  

Scaling New Heights

So, let me just get my excuses out of the way.  I am devastated that it has been MONTHS since my last post.  I usually find so much joy in keeping this blog...but life has gotten away from me lately.  And that, paired with the fact that anything photo related on my computer, phone and camera has completely stopped working (or at least stopped being compatible) so my drive to blog has waned just a bit.  BUT, photo-posting or not...I'm back and determined to catch up.  So please bear with my trip down memory lane for a post or two!

First of all, a funny story.  Rewind a couple weeks and picture a lovely Texas family putting up their christmas lights.  You know...complete with flip-flops, shorts and lovely 80 degree weather!  Totally Texas-style!  So, as Steve and I are tackling the lights (he on the roof and me on flower-bed duty), the kids are all over the place playing/riding/exploring...mixed in with a small does of helping.   So, the fact that I couldn't see the kids every second didn't really bother me...they were in and out of the garage trading off bikes for footballs and hula-hoops for sidewalk chalk.  No biggie!  

So, imagine my surprise (or horror) as I hear these words coming from the roof above me:

Steve - OH!!!!!!!!  (scramble...scramble...scramble as he is attempting to fly up the roof) Hi Olivia!!!  

Olivia - (happy as a clam and now peering over a pretty steep roof peak!)  Hi Daddy!!!

Yes.  That is right.  All within 2 minutes, Olivia, my pint-sized pipsqueak, had gone inside the house...found the window that Steve had gone out of...climbed up to the window...dropped down out of said window and climbed around the house and up the garage peak.    AAAAAHHHHHHHH!

Seriously, this girl is going to do me in!  

So yes.  Mother of the Year.  You can send me my award now.  Just make sure to send it via CPS...I'm sure they're on their way over too!  

Sassy Little Thing

So, Miss Liv is as sassy as they come right now.  We are butting heads like no other and she has not obeyed one single thing I've asked her to do in over a week!  Yes...life is good!

But lately, I have been finding humor in her complete stubborn-ness.  At least, now that she's been asleep for a couple of hours, I can find a little humor in it.  And I'm posting it here on the blog for all to see.  Mainly, because one day, she's going to have a little girl...just as stubborn as she is, and I want proof!!!

So, today I was reminding Olivia what we do after with our dinner plate as she is up and ready to make a quick escape to go play.  She was standing at the back door, 2 feet away from said plate.  She has her hand on the doorknob, ready to escape, when she turns around and we have the following conversation:

Me - Liv, can you take your plate over to the sink before you go out?

Liv - No.

Me - Remember what we've talked about?  We don't talk back AND we need to do what needs to be done before we get to play!

Liv - Nu uh!!  Liar, Liar...pants on fire!

There you have it...I apparently lie to my children about their responsibilities and she gets to sing about it!!!

And then this lovely exchange...

Liv has always had issues with putting away her shoes.  EVERY SINGLE time she takes off her shoes, she does not put them in the shoe closet.  Seriously...every single time!  I don't even care if she puts them on her shelf in the closet...I just want them IN THE CLOSET!   She'll kick them off in the front room and then runs off to play.  Apparently, I've been using the line "If we don't have a place for our things, then maybe we should just get rid of them" a bit too much because lately!  The past couple of days, when she kicks off her shoes, she now accompanies it with the line, "I don't reawy yike dees shoes anymore."  She's said it a few times...and when I do ask her to put them away, she says she doesn't want them anymore and I can just take them away.  (Yes, your highness!!!)  Guess that's a sign that she has too many shoes!  Stinkin' cheap flip-flops!  I did even make a big show about throwing a pair away the other day...hoping she'd see I was serious!  But it didn't work...or maybe she knew they were getting too small anyway and she was ready to hold her ground no matter what!

Sassy little girl...finding loop-holes in every parenting theory I have.  More like she plays off of every weakness in my already weak and exhausted state!  We are desperately working on the talking back and respect issues, the cleaning up and responsibility and so on...but she's just so darn funny sometimes that I just have to laugh.  That is...when I'm not crying!