little helper

while i was cleaning out the drawers in the built-in this morning, brandon decided to help! he pulled all the mardi gras beads out of the second drawer and proceeded to throw them all over the den. at first i was kind of annoyed, but then he played with them for almost an hour. now that is awesome. he's such a chill kid!

aetrex

if it weren't for these running shoes and the ymca, i'd be crazy. okay, crazier! ha ha.

lately i've been super disciplined about going 4-5 times a week. running at least an hour each day and fitting in my personal training with sheila and body pump. for the longest time it was about losing weight and getting fit, but lately it has been more about keeping me grounded. and yay for my awesome workout buddies who keep encouraging me to do more and be more!

lauren

i just love this girl. everything about her. i love mondays with her. i'm going to miss this when she's in kindergarten next year. she's just growing up way too fast.

i've got nothing

i was in the worst mood today. even as the clock is getting ready to roll into a new day, i can't snap out of it.

it all started after church today. the kids wanted to stand outside lauren's sunday school class so they could see my mother. well, of course that isn't going to happen because she's a nutcase and completely undeserving of seeing us. how do i tell them that though? i just keep saying that she's not at church because she's out of town.

then just knowing that we're not going to close this week on the house like we had planned on it. i'm just so mad at those people for essentially having our house pending when they knew the husband couldn't purchase the house due to his critical health condition.

i could go on...but i won't. no sense in wasting bandwidth on people or things that don't matter.

gymboree

brandon got invited to his first friend birthday party. adrian had his first birthday party at gymboree. brandon had so much fun climbing all over everything. he especially loved the bubbles and the big parachute!

brandon's showing daddy...

how big of a walker he is! daddy got to see him take a few steps the day of lauren's surgery, but he was in pittsburgh when he really started walking.


it's so sweet watching him toddling all over the house. i can't believe how fast he's growing up. seems like just yesterday that he was born.

hugs & kisses

i love me some chocolate. i love that they are now packaging the regular kisses and the hugs together in one giant bag. i just don't like what the scale said this morning after a week of binging on this bag of chocolate. oops!!!

happy meals

james is in pittsburgh again. i am overwhelmed with our house situation and just not in the mood to do anything. the kids are okay with that. i know mcdonald's is not good for us, but in my mind this is better than a toaster strudel, tater tots, chocolate pudding and skittles!

little reader

this boy loves to read. he loves this book series. he's excited that the movie is out now. when he finishes all of them, i'm going to take him to see it. i hope he hurries up because i want to see it too!

all you need to know

i'm sure that we'll get a visit from a census bureau worker even though i mailed this in today. i didn't exactly fill out all the sections. i won't get into it on my blog, but i think our government is entirely too nosey. i don't mind telling you how many people live in this house and what our ages are. but all the other information is none of the government's business.

jokes

after church this morning, we headed back to CR to look at more houses. we thought we had scheduled enough time before meeting with our real estate agent for a nice lunch, but we didn't...so we stopped at jack in the box for lunch. on the sides of the kids meal bag, there were all sorts of silly jokes. jared reads them to us. since lauren can't read big words yet, she decided to make up her own jokes.

lauren: "why do mommies and daddies pick flowers?"
me: "i don't know."
lauren: "so they can get married!!! {insert giggles}"

i never picked flowers for daddy, but okay!

james had stayed in the car with brandon because he was sleeping, so he missed her joke. i proceed to tell him. he laughs. then lauren tells us she has another joke.

lauren: "why do daddies stop giving mommies flowers after they are married?"
mommy: "i don't know!"
lauren: "i don't know either!!! {insert even more giggles}"

that girl is a hoot. i take full responsibility for my sense of humor passing on to her!!!

mexican train

game night! the kids picked mexican train. the kids were in the lead most of the night (can't believe how strategic they are, especially lauren), but at the very end...daddy won!

sunny day at the park

my friend nicole posted on facebook last night that she was taking her kids to the park. so i messaged her to find out what time she was heading out. we made plans to meet together with the kids.

this morning we got up early and made an early trip out to the ymca. i got my run in and the kids had fun playing in the new childwatch. we ran back to the house, i showered and grabbed our picnic lunch and we headed north. we met nicole and several of her friends and their kids and had lunch and played for hours. it was great because there were so many kids that jared had boys his age that he could play with, lauren had girls her age that she could play with and brandon had all the mommies undivided attention! there were actually a few little girls that were a little older than brandon that played with him, but he was the youngest.

the weather was gorgeous and the kids had so much fun playing together. there was no drama and no boo boos. the boys found a big mound of dirt and played star wars. the girls found a few patches of wildflowers and managed to pick them all! they had fun playing on the swings and climbing all over the jungle gym equipment. nicole's friends were all so sweet and down to earth. sometimes i'm not sure about meeting other moms. it seems like so many moms compete about who's kid did this first or who's excelled at that the earliest. i can't stand that. her friend's were so not like that. refreshing.

here are just a few (of the many) pictures i took today:

there were several of these little bouncy animals. brandon loved the demonic looking horse the best!

lauren and russell on this strange contraption. they don't make teeter totters like the old school ones we played on anymore.


the mound of dirt that the boys found. OF COURSE they found a big pile of dirt. they are boys.

earlier in the morning, kelly called to see what we were doing. i told her that we were heading to the park and she decided that she and dion would come up and play with us. a few hours later (ha ha), she and dion FINALLY made it to the park. the kids were still happy and going strong, so we stayed and played some more. lauren was so cute with the boys. we were at the top of the slide and she was at the bottom. the would slide down to her on their tummies. they would squeal in delight. she would too.

as my kids started to get tired, we laid out the blanket and had some more snacks and just chilled out. and yes, we had to try for a group picture. i know...i'm obsessed. :)

what a fun day for us. the kids have never gotten to stay at the park for this long, so i'm sure that they'll be talking about this for a long time to come! we ended up being here for 6 hours!!! so glad that i have fun friends and great kids to spend the day with!

old macdonald had a farm, e.i.e.i.oooooo

lauren was feeling great this morning when she woke up, so i decided to take the kids some place fun. i had heard about this farm in the early fall, but never had a chance to take them. because it was so beautiful outside, i got us all ready and a picnic packed. we made the trek out there and i was so glad we did. it was a gorgeous farm with lots of fun playgrounds, animals to pet/feed, and even a train ride.

as usual...before we got going, i got the kids to take a picture together.

the kids played on a few playgrounds before we started going around to see the animals. we saw a really greasy emu first. the kids were really skiddish. well, jared and lauren were. brandon was not! we went and saw some sheep and the peacocks. i was hoping one would open up their feathers, but no such luck. then we went to the goat pen. they were so small and i wanted the kids to feed them (we bought a few bags of feed). brandon went in and was all about trying to tackle them. jared and lauren were freaking out. i warned them that if they didn't come in and settle down, that we were leaving. it would be one thing if all the animals were in pens in this farm, but there are deer and all sorts of other animals roaming around. they were still very hesitant, but they came in. FINALLY, lauren got the nerve to feed a goat. and then jared realized that they were harmless, so he fed them too. what an awesome sight to see my kids not freaking out over 4-legged animals!

we walked over to the corral with the ponies, but they were on a break. these trees were gorgeous, so i took another opportunity to get another picture of the three of them.

after this picture, we headed over to one of the many picnic areas and ate our lunch. i was so surprised that brandon sat on the picnic bench and ate like a big boy. the kids watched the pony corral like hawks so that they didn't miss a chance to ride them. as soon as we finished cleaning up our area, they opened up for pony rides again and they dashed off to get in line. i was a little hesitant at this point because i didn't want them to get on the pony and then freak out. i was SHOCKED to say the least that they both got on and loved it. i wasn't surprised to see that brandon really liked it, but i was surprised when he would not let go of the saddle after his ride was over!

the big kids were ready to play on the other playgrounds and ride the train, but i reminded them that there were a few more animals to check out.

this picture of brandon cracks me up. totally looks like they were having a conversation there! brandon probably telling him, "my mommy puts me in a "cage" every night too...i feel your pain!" ha ha.

sometimes the kids are sad when daddy can't make it to these kinds of activities. when we got to this pen, i told the kids..."LOOK! daddy is here!" they didn't get it, but it gave me a little chuckle!

the last group of animals was the rabbits. lauren said those were her favorite and jared tried to talk james into getting them one that night. they really did have a great time at the farm and hopefully one day soon we can get back out there again.

lauren's surgery

lauren failed her hearing test at school a few weeks ago. you can see the post a few weeks back (titled cerumen) about our doctor's visit and the plan going forward. we went back to the ENT and she still had fluid in her ears, and one of her ears had a partially collapsed eardrum. we scheduled a surgery for the following week to have the tubes placed.

this is my sweet little mama being wheeled off to surgery. {insert mommy not wanting to be strong, but having to so lauren wouldn't freak out.}

the doctor told us it would only be about 15 minutes for the surgery, but almost 35 minutes later the doctor still had not come out. he FINALLY came out to give us the news. he was able to get the tubes inserted in both ears, but there were complications because her eardrums had both collapsed (one completely, the other partially). he's hoping that the tubes help drain the fluid and that the eardrums can heal. if not, we'll have to explore some other things. ay ay ay.

lauren woke up very unhappy from the anesthesia. we knew this was going to probably be the case, so we were prepared to give her lots of love and extra attention today. she cheered up when she got her popsicle. she and tom kitty were soooo brave. we were so proud of her.

we went back to grammy carol's house (yay for her helping us with the boys), and we arrived to brandon trying to take more steps. grammy was so excited that she was seeing him take more of his first steps! lauren requested whataburger for lunch. she also requested a chocolate shake. normally daddy says "NO!" to ice cream and chocolate shakes, but today he gave in to his daughter!

and i have to add that the doctor warned us that lauren would probably be a moody mess all day long, but she was actually quite pleasant. maybe she should have anesthesia for breakfast more often!!!

it's raining men...

it's our second day of spring break. yesterday i planned on taking the kids to the beach, but we woke up to a really dark sky. i was really hoping that we could go because after lauren's surgery tomorrow, we won't be able to go for a while. bummer. anyway, we made the most of it by having fun playing with some toys we haven't seen in a while. we busted out the little people and the activity rug. i'm glad the kids are having fun, but i remember why i bagged them up and hid them in the back of the closet. those things HURT when you step on them!!!

i wish i would have taken a picture of the whole area. omg. it was a hysterical disaster. little people and cars in the foyer. tent made out of the coffee table, pillows from the couch and lots of blankets (my grandmother would love that they used all the quilts that she made) in the middle of the playroom. star wars figurines had exploded all over the landing by the bay window. and brandon managed to pull just about every book out of the bookshelf that he could reach.

despite the rain, the kids had a great day! and i did too. it's nice watching them play together and be imaginative.

sweet dreams from caleigha

brandon got a package from caleigha today. she sent him these cute little sports jammies. he will definitely be having sweet dreams in them! hopefully soon!!!

thank you caleigha (and crystal) for thinking of brandon. we love and miss you guys!!!

st. patty's day parade

today was the big st. patty's day parade outside our neighborhood. thousands of people head over to our side of town for this event. the kids and adults always have fun catching beads and candy from all the parade "floats." once a "float" would pass by, the big kids were ready for the next. they were all about getting lots of goodies. but i love how i captured brandon hanging on the last one...it was one of the neighborhood fire trucks. i was lingering over it too. love me some firemen! ha ha

busy saturday

we went down to CR today to look at some more houses. while we were down there, we stopped and played at one of their many fun parks. this one is neat because it had a gorgeous lake and big hills around it. today was windy, so there were several people out flying kites.

jared had fun running up and down the hills

lauren always has fun seeing how high she can swing!

and brandon had fun exploring the big kid playground. he'd be able to enjoy it more if he'd get up and walk already!!! regardless, he's getting soooo big!

we got home from our visit out west, and everyone laid down to rest. around 2 p.m., jessica called to see what we were up to. we ended up chatting on the phone for almost an hour and a half, so james suggested that she and zach just come over for dinner and playtime on the driveway. so they did. the kids had riding the big wheels and trikes up and down ( and up and down) the driveway. they also had fun drawing with the chalk. well, the big kids did...brandon liked eating it! ha ha.

one more picture before heading out to dinner at clementine's.

in the wee hours...

i was up being a crafty girl and watching james' flight progress on continental.com. so glad he's finally on his way home from london. it's been a long week.

class picture day

i love spring photos at lauren and brandon's mother's day out. i usually get the cutest pictures. much better than subjecting them to the h.e.double hockey sticks of sears or jcpenney portrait studios. the photographer was taking individual and class photos. well, except of brandon's class. he said he didn't think he'd be able to get them to all sit still and look at the same time. so i took it upon myself to get one myself. of course MY kid is the only one doing something silly! ha. he didn't like that his feet was touching mud!

lunch date

this is catherine. she has been my friend for almost 8 years. (i started tearing up after typing that!) i can't believe it's already been that long. sometimes it seems like just yesterday! jared and her son william started daycare the same week in 2002. jared and william's birthday's are only two days apart! i remember being so exhausted from all of jared's colic and sleepless nights. she and her husband were always so kind to me during that time in my life. it's neat looking back at how our friendship has grown from our two kids being in the same class. i love that she says, "if jared ever starts to treat you bad (which i highly doubt that sweet boy will ever do), i will tell him all the things you went through with him!" and i know she will! we don't get to see each other all that often, but when we get together...it's like time hasn't skipped a beat. catherine is definitely on my "list" of why i'm so lucky to be me! thanks for lunch my friend. being with you is like a breath of fresh air. looking forward to our next lunch date!

to build or not to build?

joyce went with me this morning to talk to the people at trendmaker. got all the details on this house, and what it would cost to add the upgrades that we want. we went and did a walk through of the house. they are getting ready to sheetrock it on thursday. it's a gorgeous house, and it has everything on our checklist...except that it will back up to a future elementary school. i posted a poll on my facebook page questioning future resale, and it's about 50/50. just so i don't forget (because it was so funny), someone questioned why i had kids in the first place since i'm not sure about the noise, etc. um...i don't always like all the noises my kids make...why shouldn't i consider the noise i'm going to be subjected to monday-friday during school hours?

anyway, love the house, just not sure about the location. at least it's another option. i don't feel so desperate or panicked after the other incident.

moving along...

so glad yesterday is over. i had another terrible night of sleep. well, i wouldn't even call it a night of sleep. the few hours that i slept were horrible.

we got up and went to visit another new community in our area that has the model home of the house plan that we like. we loved almost everything about this house.

the biggest downfall though is that it only has 4 bedrooms, and we wanted five. we could compromise by having the media room as a bedroom though. lauren would probably like that because of the little landing and half wall. i could totally see her using it as her "stage" to act out all of her drama! ha ha. the house does not have that "flex" room upstairs like the other house, but the master closets are so huge that james and i could share one, and use the other one to store my craft stuff. it even has a huge window in it, so i could actually craft in there if i wanted to.

our biggest thing is the location of the house. we're not sure if it is going to back up to more homes or not. the map is misleading, and it could be backing up to a future elementary school. well, that would be a deal breaker for me. the traffic by our neighborhood elementary school is terrible. the kids walk through the yards, the parking on the streets during the day and any activity night is terrible. so i'm meeting with our agent and the sales counselor to discuss some things tomorrow. hopefully we can get some things cleared up and either put money down on the house or start looking at some other homes. i'm really getting sick of this, but i know that it has to be done. if i don't follow this through, i'll always wonder the "what ifs."

thank goodness for my friend erica! she is visiting houston from alaska this week. i so appreciated her fitting me into her busy schedule this week for lunch. seeing her helped take my mind off the craziness. i hope that she finds a great nursing job and a place to call home soon so that they can get back to texas asap! she and i have fun just hanging out, and we both like to take pictures. our kids are probably the most photographed kids ever! (and my friend cheryl's son eli! ha ha.) anyway, we went to lunch at pappasito's and then she stopped over to see the house. i wish she could have stayed longer. i miss her already.

punk'd

we knew yesterday that the seller's agent had an open house listed on the house. because we had an accepted offer from them, we asked that they not host the open house. their agent told our agent that he was not going to have it. i did not feel very comfortable about this (i just don't trust people as far as i can throw them), so i told my agent that if we didn't have the signed documents by the time their open house was scheduled, the deal was off. she assured me that everything was on the up and up and to not worry about it. she had an email from the seller's agent that the documents were going to be signed and delivered.

all morning i felt uncomfortable. while brandon was taking his morning nap, james and i decided to rest. i haven't been sleeping well (worse than normal) due to the passing of james' grandmother, worrying about our house sale, etc....so i was about to pass out. my intuition kept me awake though. i told james that i wanted to go down to see if that open house was going on. james didn't want to do that because he didn't want to waste the time, money, or gas to find out that the guy was telling us the truth. but if you know me at all, you know i don't back down. he finally agrees.

we head down to the neighborhood and right before we turned on the street, we made a bet that if i was right about the open house, i could pick out the restaurant for dinner. if he was right, he could. as we rounded the corner, you could see many red, white, and blue balloons in front of the house we had an accepted offer on. my heart started to race. i could feel my body start to get really hot from my toes up to my nose. i pulled the car over, took my cell phone and my agent's business card and got out of the car. james was really hesitant to let me go inside, but he did.

i walked in and peek in the downstairs study and the dining room. as i came out and headed towards the kitchen, the seller's and the agent were standing there. the agent introduced himself. and i reached out my hand and introduced myself. the looks of "BUSTED" on their face was priceless. i then handed him my agent's business card and said, "here's my agent's card. i'm sure you're wondering what i'm doing at this open house that was not supposed to be taking place." i can see the panic in the wife's eyes. the agent says to me, "we had the open house listed on the internet, and we decided to go ahead and have the open house since you and your husband had not executed the contract." i respond with, "WE haven't done our part??? WE are the ones that wanted this signed YESTERDAY. you had no intentions to get that document signed before this open house because you wanted to see if you could get any other offers since you weren't satisfied with the price that we offered (and you accepted) for it. if anyone else wanted this house AND if it were priced appropriately, it would have been sold already." now the wife is really wanting to get out of the house. i decide to call my agent.

me: "guess where i am at?"
agent: "where?"
me: "i'm in the {street name} house."
agent: "what do you mean you are in that house? how did you get in there?"
me: "i'm in their open house!"
agent: "OMG!!!"
me: "i told you not to trust this agent or these people. we had a bad feeling about this situation, so we made the trek down here."

i ended up handing off the phone to the agent so that he and my agent could have a little conversation. he starts stuttering and saying, "we are getting the documents signed right now! the seller's are right here and they will sign right now." he hands me back my phone and i tell our agent that i am on my way out and i'll call her in a bit. at some point, the seller's have gone outside. they were probably too embarrassed about what they had done.

as i walked towards the front door, i told the agent "YES, we did not have a signed and executed document, but it was not us that was holding up the process. it was you and your seller's. they had no reason to believe that we weren't going to get it done because we were the ones wanting it executed the day before." i reminded him that we had even given them an extension until today at 1 p.m. and skipped going to church so that we could get it signed. he said, "this is just business." i said, "i understand that this is business. it's bad business, but yes...it is business. and since you brought it up, then you will understand why i'm rescinding our offer for this house." and i walked out the front door. he chases after me and starts to cut the balloons off the signs and pull the open house signs out the yard, the damage was done. they thought they were punking us...but in the end, it was them.

i had promised the kids before making the decision to go down to this open house that we would go to the ymca. since we were not going to make it back in time, we went over to one of the many playgrounds in the neighborhood. it was really overcast, but thankfully the rain didn't start until after we left.


the kids had such a great time playing here. the slides were HUGE and even brandon went down one of the big ones with jared. big smiles the whole way down! he is our little daredevil!

afterwards, we went to the model home village and i talked to one of the sales counselors about one of their inventory homes. i showed him our prequalification paper, new home comps, and the house we were interested in and asked him to give me his first number. he came down so much, that we now have to seriously consider finishing building out this house. it doesn't exactly give us what the other house was going to, but it would be brand new. and we wouldn't have to give those people a penny of our hard earned money. now this isn't to say that we won't put an offer back on that house if this new build doesn't work out, but the old offer is gone. they are going to have to renegotiate with us, and it's not going to go for the price that we offered this weekend. especially now that we have something so close in price with the new build. these people made a really bad decision.

as for my agent, i'm really upset with her for not getting this paperwork finished by saturday afternoon at the time her husband (and our other agent) demanded be signed by if the terms and conditions were accepted. but the thing that really upset me the most was that she didn't drop what she was doing to come down to the neighborhood to either salvage the deal or to go look at the new home. if i would have been her, i would have moved back or cancelled all appointments. we just feel like we're given no priority, and it's unacceptable because she is making a whole lot of money for hardly any amount of work. grrrrrr.

puzzles

we got an email late last night asking if it was possible to have the inspection on our house around lunchtime. because our offer on the house we like had not been accepted yet (they actually had until 5 p.m. today), we decided to go back to the neighborhood and explore looking at homes in inventory from the new home builders. afterwards, we headed over to grammy carol's house to visit. while brandon took a nap, grammy and susan busted out all the fun puzzles. lauren concentrated on her puzzle until she got it completed. jared's was a little more difficult. he finally gave up and went to play with james' old star wars toys! i don't like to deal with puzzles after a while either!!!

i love how i caught grammy looking at jared. lauren does this same thing with her eyes.

**update**
when i got home from girl's night out with frances and michelle, there was a message on the voicemail that as of 8:28 p.m., the seller's accepted our offer and conditions on the house.

driveway fun

yay for brandon having a big boy haircut!

he loves pushing his mickey mouse airplane up and down the driveway. he's going to sleep good tonight!

some of the neighborhood kids came out to play on the driveway with us. caleb, isaiah and jared were in the yard playing with the frisbee...until it got stuck in the tree!

chopped that mullet off!

omg. this haircut was long overdue. after brandon's last haircut attempt, i was just not the slightest bit interested in trying it again. but after seeing his picture yesterday, yikes...i knew it had to be on the "to do" list today! now he is a respectable looking 14 month old! ha ha.

r2d2

out of all the possible things in this shelving system for brandon to want play with, he is obsessed with jared's remote control r2d2. of all jared's toys, this is one that jared freaks out over most if he sees brandon near it. i guess i could put it on another shelf, but i'm not one for childproofing. i'd rather just teach boundaries. i will admit...i let brandon play with the remote. hey, it entertained him for almost 30 minutes!

the ledge

they are going to miss this little ledge to the bay window in their playroom when we move. jared and lauren will play for hours at this window. they are so imaginative and we are so thankful that they play so well together. especially on a difficult day like today. we received news this morning that grandmother maxine, our beloved g.g., passed away peacefully in her sleep. james came home early from work because he was so upset. while james was resting, the kids played quietly and nicely with each other.

sick boy

since jared started kindergarten, he has never missed a day of school. i don't think he's left school early but maybe three or four times. i think only one of those was because he wasn't feeling well, and the others were to catch a plane to kansas or roadtrip to my in-laws. so to get a call from the school nurse at 11 a.m. was alarming. he was so upset that he was leaving school early. he didn't feel good, but he said that he wanted to stay so he could get smarter! what a sweetheart. anyway, we came home and he ate his lunch and then fell asleep on the floor for almost five hours...all snuggled in g.g.'s handmade quilt and sleeping on his favorite star wars pillow from grammy carol.