It's Time...

I have been complaining for the past month or so that I keep gaining weight. I have literally gained 10 lbs. over the past couple of months, but I keep telling myself I look great and living in denial.

Then today at church someone called me pregnant.

So I am officially proclaiming to all that I am starting a diet TODAY! And I am crying on the inside.....maybe that will get rid of a little water weight.

:(

Gobble Gobble...

So....we had a pretty typical T-day here. Family...lots of great food....football....falling asleep....and then the night ended with Chris putting his fist through the window. Same ole, same ole. Year after year we all drink a little too much cider and things just get out of hand.


The morning started with my cat puking on the back porch and then eating it. I thought I would spare you all, so I didn't take a picture of that.

Then my kiddos colored pictures to put on the front door.

After that Nathan and Owen headed off to play football with the church folk.

Hazel and I stayed home to be all domesticated. We decorated and cleaned and cooked to prepare for our company.

Then some of the people I am most thankful for gathered around the table to eat lots of good food.

Then we got ready for the game. Go Cowboys!

The game was so good that all the boys fell asleep.

Then we decided to take a walk and work off some of those turkey calories. Being the genius that I am, I locked us all out of the house. :) So we were all trying to find a way in the house, and to make a long story short....Chris tried to slide open a window and his hand went right through it. I can't say I'm surprised since our windows are the crappiest, thinnest, single pane windows in the world, but I have to say it was pretty darn scary. I heard the shatter and went running around the corner expecting to find a bloodied carcass (ok that's a little extreme, but it was scary). So now you know the story. It wasn't Chris' insane temper that caused the break, and he wasn't too bloody. Just a few scratches. What a way to end the evening. :)

A whole lot of nothing..

I'm back! We haven't had internet for a while. It's crazy how much of my life revolves around the computer. Thankfully I was at least able to check my email on my phone....otherwise I would have gone completely crazy.

Anyway- like I said. I'm back.....with absolutely nothing interesting to say. So- here are some of the non-interesting things I can share:

We've been doing a lot of yard work lately in preparation for the bulk trash pickup in our area. I'm really trying to find ways to improve our yard and our house's curb appeal without spending any money.

I realize you can't see it, but there is a huge flowering bush that was taking over our front porch, so I put up this lattice (that I found behind the shed). It still needs to be boarded up on one side so that it stands up straight, but at least we can get in the front door now, and I think it will look much prettier to train it to grow up something.

We finally got our palm trees trimmed!!! We have been complaining since we moved in about how hideous and trashy they looked, but weren't willing to pay $100 per tree to have them trimmed. We literally had someone stop by every day and ask if they could trim them. Or if we weren't home they would leave a card on our door. I just kept saying "Sure- for $20 each!" and they would laugh and drive away. I guess someone came by that was desperate enough and he agreed to my lowball price! I wish I had taken a before picture, but maybe the huge pile at the curb will give you some idea of how bad they were! We have two other smaller palm trees that I trimmed myself with a little hand saw....it was very time consuming.

I took the kids to a park on Saturday that we had never been to. We fed the ducks our leftover McDonald's. I had no idea ducks ate meat, but they devoured Hazel's cheeseburger!

Hazel was literally just a few inches from this duck and he just sat there. Creepy.


They were having some kind of old timey car convention thingy. I thought these cars were cute.

Just a sweet moment. I love when they pretend to love each other.

I know this slide doesn't look like much, but it was REALLY fast and Owen and Hazel each went down it about 25 times. They acted like it was an awesome roller coaster or something.

JUST KIDDING

Just in case you didn't see my facebook post....I love Judy Grimes

Danger to your Derriere

We have a piece of crap chair that the seat falls out if you move the wrong way.

We have a daughter that throws crazy almost epileptic fits about just about everything. In this case, she was sitting in said chair playing on the computer and I told her it was time to turn it off.

This is the result:

A little dirt never hurt...

This post is for all you who claim that my house is always spotless. Owen apparently got hold of my camera and took a few pictures of our family room. I decided I will swallow my pride and show these pictures just to prove that I am not as clean as you all think.

Fingerprints and dust all over the TV

stained pillow case

dusty candles

cluttered desk

And if you are wondering....yes- I did immediately go clean all of these things because I was mortified to see how gross it all looked! :)

Loose... Looser...Lost!

You know how you have a brand new jar of (pickles, spaghetti sauce, jelly, jalapenos, whatever else comes in a jar...) and you are twisting and tapping and shaking and banging and panting and straining and screaming but you just CAN'T GET IT OPEN?!?!?! Then so and so saunters into the room and pops it right open without even flinching. Doen't that make you furious? I don't know if this is really the best analogy, but that's kind of how I feel about Owen's tooth. I have been wiggling it for WEEKS hoping to get it out, and then in the extremely rare moment that I am gone for an hour while Nathan is home with the kids, it pops right out while he is brushing Owen's teeth. *sigh*

Oh well. At least I got to play tooth fairy. :(

He's on the phone with Aunt Meredith telling her that the tooth fairy only brought him "one buck!"

G-Mommy brings us an early Christmas!

This is my third post today, so scroll down if you care to (that doesn't include you, Claire)!

G-Mommy wanted to go ahead and get the kids their Christmas presents while she was here so she wouldn't have to deal with shipping. And we definitely didn't hear any complaints from Hazel and Owen. She did end up having to order Owen's online, which was a portable DVD player, so he opened a piece of paper, but he was still pretty thrilled when he realized what it was...and even more thrilled when it arrived!



Santa

A new Dora bike!!!

Thank you G-Mommy!!!

What is this?!

Looking at a picture of the DVD player

We were sad to see you leave, too! :(

Dear Christopher

And a big shout out to Chris! Happy Birthday brother! Woot woot!

Missin' my Momma...

I still haven't posted about all the fun things I did when my mom was here! It seems like I was immediately thrown back into the "real" world once she left. Come back, Mom!

I took a lot of pictures of her with the kids, but we managed to go ten days without getting a single picture of us together! So this will just be a log of sorts.

Even though Nathan was working non-stop while she was here, we managed to get out by ourselves twice! We went to a great little Mexican restaurant here and out to see The Secret Life of Bees. We did a lot of shopping- including all my favorite consignment stores. We found a thrift store called Everything Goes that we both fell madly in love with and visited three days in a row. There are no words to describe how awesome this place is. No matter what your style is, you can find something you love at an amazing price. Thanks to this store, I finally have furniture in my dining room! My wonderful mother bought me and Nathan a table and chairs for an early Christmas present, and I found a gorgeous dresser for $32 that is also in the dining room and I am storing all my music in it. I will put up pictures when it is all put together....which will probably be no time soon.

I wish I could wake up every morning in the middle of this store and stare at all of the beautiful things they have. I think I will go back tomorrow....

Let's see...what else did we do? We made Chicken Tetrazini (which I ate for every meal until it was gone). We made and ate through three pans of the famous Erwin fudge. We went to garage sales. We visited Owen at school and went to his Fall festival. We stayed up late watching recorded HGTV shows or nightly dramas or a movie....whichever sounded best at the time. We went to the gym a couple of times. We had a couple of visits with Chris and Erin and Baby T. It was just fun to have her around. I'm glad she was able to survive all the noise and chaos that comes with our family.

DANGIT!!!!

This is Owen's new word. He says it a LOT. I wish you could hear him saying it, though. It blows my mind that his southern accent comes out so often when neither of his parents have one.

So- anyway....I am saying Dangit because I forgot to post yesterday. I challenged myself to post every day this month and I screwed it up within the first week!

I came around the corner the other day to find Hazel making "Cat cupcakes"

"Try it Carly!"

Then she ended it with a big hug! Isn't Carly such a lucky cat?!?!

Nerd Alert...

WARNING: Fits perfectly in a three yr. old's nostril.

When I put Hazel in the car to leave this morning, she had a tissue in her hand that she kept trying to stick up her nose. She had been doing this for about the last 20 minutes, but I didn't think anything of it since she has had a little bit of a runny nose lately. After buckling her in her carseat, I finally took the tissue from her so I could help her wipe, and I looked up her nose to see some kind of white bulbous thing filling up her nasal cavity. Of course I went into panic mode and reeled through a list of possibilities in my head while jumping in the car and speeding towards the doctor's office. After a couple of minutes, I calmed down enough to convince myself that it wasn't a tumor, and I turned back towards the house. I used a bulb syringe and a little white NERD came out on the second try.

Thank goodness I didn't waste that $20 copay! I just think it's hilarious...and strange...that she didn't come tell me right away. Usually her fear of being hurt outweighs her fear of being punished, but I guess the latter won this time around. She got a long speech about putting stuff in her nose and ears....including threats of going to the hospital and having her nose cut open! I'm pretty sure that will do the trick.

And the winner is....

Today Owen got in the car after school and said "I voted online for the president today."

Me: "Oh yeah? Who did you vote for?"

Owen: "John McCain"

Me: "Why is that?"

Owen: "Because he's the president"


I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I have a few ideas. I tried to ask more questions to figure out why he felt compelled to vote for McCain, but the most I could get out of him was that he had seen pictures of them. I guess he just thought McCain looked like what he assumed a president looked like.

Then he told his G-Mommy the same story but he said

"I voted for John McCain and some lady. I didn't know that lady was on there. My teacher just told me about John McCain and Orama."

Then we had to explain to him that there was a vice president because he wanted to know why he had to vote for two presidents. Such a funny conversation. I should have recorded it immediately, because I'm pretty sure I have forgotten half of the cute things he said....

"Bumblebee and a pink poodle!!!!"

For Halloween, we went to a block party in my friend Bekah's neighborhood. When we went trick-or treating around her block, we stopped at one door where a sweet little old man answered and was trying to guess what everyone was dressed as. The boy in front of us was Thomas the Train and the man said "Oh- Spongebob!" if that gives you any idea of his guessing abilities.

So our turn comes, and my kids step forward. He says "Ohhhh...what do we have here? A princess and a space man!" and Hazel yelled, "Nooooo! Bumblebee and a pink poodle!!!!" but he just smiled and nodded and moved on to the next set of kids.

I think the space man was a pretty good guess for a guy his age who has probably never seen Transformers, but what kind of princess carries around a big dog head?! Weird.

We have been on a sugar high for 4 straight days...how bout you?

G-Mommy brings us Halloween....

The next few posts will be catching up on my mom's visit. We had tons of fun and I had to rest from it all for a couple of days before returning to the real world.

I am ashamed to say that before my mother arrived, I had NO Halloween decorations. It's just not a "holiday" that I really get into. But my kids adore all the creepy things that come with this non-holiday. So we made a run to Wal-Mart and bought a bunch of marked down decorations (that's the plus when you are shopping three days before Halloween!). The kids have been thrilled with the spider web on our porch. They threw a bunch of bugs and snakes and such and shrieked with joy every time one stuck.

Oh, the happiness of which I deprive them on a regular basis. Thanks for setting me straight, Mom. ;)

Trying to pose for a picture when all they really want

to do is rip that package open and get started!

The finished product!