Monday, August 27, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
Two years old...
Get ready...here they come...pictures of the CUTEST two year old boy named Jasper ever!
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Locked out...
So, tell me this. How does a mom get locked out of her house when she has a dial pad entry system? While, the handle gets locked somehow (we do have a curious two year old who is proficient with the pincer grasp) and the keys are in the house because we went for a walk! Do we call a lock smith? Do we call the police? Oh no! We pull out the handy footstool from our garage and pray there is an unlocked window somewhere.
Well, this is one time when our drafty, rickety, original-to-the-house (which was build in the 1940s) windows come in handy! Mom pry's up the screen, opens the window, and voila! we have broken in to our house! The rest is self explanatory. This was definitely the highlight of our day! Oh, by the way, there is a set of keys hidden for the house in an inconspicuous place in case this ever happens again. Lesson learned!
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Introducing...
Our new little guy Reginald "Ace" Johnson IV.
He came all the way from Canada.
(Yes, Canadian dogs bark the same as American dogs.)
He is an Old Boston Bulldog.
And I think we will keep him!
Friday, March 23, 2012
Jasper's 2nd Birthday Party!
For Jasper's 2nd birthday we had a little "glorified" play group. It was so fun to
have Jasper's friends come play and celebrate with us. After relighting them several times,
Jasper became very proficient at blowing out candles.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
St. Patty's Day...
Our leprechaun trap!
We didn't catch him (our leprechaun's name is Bailey O'Brien)
but he left us chocolate coins.
Going to get green donuts at the bakery.
Everyone is in green. No pinches here!
Erin go braugh!
Monday, February 6, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
If he only knew...
Luke was a trooper today while he got fitted for his expander, etc. In three weeks they will start cranking (literally) the roof of his mouth open to make space in that tiny mouth for adult teeth. Then a couple weeks after that is braces. If he only knew what was coming!!! Would he be so willing to cooperate?
About a year ago...
this cute little chubbin' bundle crawled around my house getting the toe tops of his socks dirty! Just remembering...sigh...
Monday, January 9, 2012
Macoroni and Cheese (if you please)...
Luke loves the mac. Everyday for lunch and sometimes breakfast! So when we heard this song by Bill Harley we had to buy it. Have a listen...
Friday, January 6, 2012
A mom alone...
What does a mom do when she is left alone for 5 days? I am sure visions of pedicures, hours at the mall and eating out with girlfriends float around in your mind. That, however, is not my report. Although there were a couple themed movie nights (Hugh Grant and Jane Austen) and, thanks to the serendipitous union of a laptop and Hulu+, the viewing of the new show Once Upon a Time, the days were filled with work, work, work! After finishing the basement our home was in upheaval and it was up to me to put it all back together. So I dug deep into my premommy life and miraculously recovered my super-efficient-focused-get-it-done-mode that I thought had been pulled out of me with the placenta of my first born. Nothing was going to stop me from conquering!! (I know you will stop reading now and just look at the pictures and I am okay with that. That is what I would do!!)
Let's start with the garage. When we started the basement we had to move all of our basement life into the garage. It was a whole lotta nothing: a jumbled collection of toys, underused workout equipment and heaps of old school papers to name of few categories. Combined, it was a massive force of stuff that required too much of our time to purchase, slightly use and then toss in the basement to be forgotten forever. Here is the very embarrassing picture of everything when the basement was empty:
All I wanted was to park a car in the garage again (even if it was the small car). After two days of sorting and hualing and donating this is what was left:
And yes, the small car does fit!
So where did all that stuff go? Let me show you! First all of the Christmas decorations came down (on the day after Christmas, I felt like the Grinch) and all the holiday bins were sorted through. Lots in the donation pile!! Then the boys clothing:
I went through every single one of those bins!! Then they joined the food storage and "memory" bins down in the room we refer to as the "broken wall room" which is just a storage room in our basement.
Deep breathe...okay...on to the livingroom, kitchen and bathroom. Now that there is no TV upstairs I reclaimed the livingroom as a quiet room. My friend took our chair and a half (the one which was in mint condition that I found on the side of the road...e.g. "free".) I rearranged it to look like this:
In the kitchen I cleaned out the entire fridge, scrubbed the oven and fixed the drawer that was missing it's front. And in the bath I rearranged Jasper very creative interpretation of an "organized" bathroom drawer. Zeke and the boy's drawer now look a lot better:
The last day was the hardest. I so wanted to blow it all off and scrapbook all day. I knew, however, that I would never have a whole day to focus on these household tasks (realizing that all these projects really just need focus to get them done). I had built my scrapbook filing cubie-thingies during my Hugh Grant fest so those were ready for my over six foot span of paper.
A quick nod here to my Kirkland Chicken Thigh box from Costco that I have loving stored my scrapbook paper in for the past 4 years. You were wonderful in your time. I so enjoyed how you held my paper. You really were the perfect size. Who knew that day at Costco when I needed you to haul all of my odd, obnoxiously large dairy and meat products that you would become such an integral part of my life. I was very sad to see you go but you just didn't fit in my beautiful new basement. (I know I have a picture of said box but can't find it in my ten-thousand plus pictures.)
Then it was onto the dreaded back entry way closet. How I loath this closet. Stuff is always falling down off the shelf. We can never find our shoes or, at least, both parts to the pair. And our plastic grocery bags (that I always have the best of intention of bringing to Target to be recycled into those neat park benches) take over the floor and force everything else out so we have to hire a small skid loader to shove everything back in just to be able to close the door. Surprisingly, all the closet needed was one more storage container from Ikea and a good cleaning. Here was the end result:
Whew!! I know I did a lot more than this but just writing about it has made me tired. As any stay at home mom can attest, it doesn't really matter WHAT you do with your time, if you can get even one day alone in your home, even if you just sit on the couch and stare at the wall, you will feel at least rejuvinated. A few hours, or days, into it, sadly enough, you will realize it doesn't matter how much time your are given...you will never get it all done!!
Let's start with the garage. When we started the basement we had to move all of our basement life into the garage. It was a whole lotta nothing: a jumbled collection of toys, underused workout equipment and heaps of old school papers to name of few categories. Combined, it was a massive force of stuff that required too much of our time to purchase, slightly use and then toss in the basement to be forgotten forever. Here is the very embarrassing picture of everything when the basement was empty:
All I wanted was to park a car in the garage again (even if it was the small car). After two days of sorting and hualing and donating this is what was left:
And yes, the small car does fit!
So where did all that stuff go? Let me show you! First all of the Christmas decorations came down (on the day after Christmas, I felt like the Grinch) and all the holiday bins were sorted through. Lots in the donation pile!! Then the boys clothing:
I went through every single one of those bins!! Then they joined the food storage and "memory" bins down in the room we refer to as the "broken wall room" which is just a storage room in our basement.
Deep breathe...okay...on to the livingroom, kitchen and bathroom. Now that there is no TV upstairs I reclaimed the livingroom as a quiet room. My friend took our chair and a half (the one which was in mint condition that I found on the side of the road...e.g. "free".) I rearranged it to look like this:
In the kitchen I cleaned out the entire fridge, scrubbed the oven and fixed the drawer that was missing it's front. And in the bath I rearranged Jasper very creative interpretation of an "organized" bathroom drawer. Zeke and the boy's drawer now look a lot better:
The last day was the hardest. I so wanted to blow it all off and scrapbook all day. I knew, however, that I would never have a whole day to focus on these household tasks (realizing that all these projects really just need focus to get them done). I had built my scrapbook filing cubie-thingies during my Hugh Grant fest so those were ready for my over six foot span of paper.
A quick nod here to my Kirkland Chicken Thigh box from Costco that I have loving stored my scrapbook paper in for the past 4 years. You were wonderful in your time. I so enjoyed how you held my paper. You really were the perfect size. Who knew that day at Costco when I needed you to haul all of my odd, obnoxiously large dairy and meat products that you would become such an integral part of my life. I was very sad to see you go but you just didn't fit in my beautiful new basement. (I know I have a picture of said box but can't find it in my ten-thousand plus pictures.)
Then it was onto the dreaded back entry way closet. How I loath this closet. Stuff is always falling down off the shelf. We can never find our shoes or, at least, both parts to the pair. And our plastic grocery bags (that I always have the best of intention of bringing to Target to be recycled into those neat park benches) take over the floor and force everything else out so we have to hire a small skid loader to shove everything back in just to be able to close the door. Surprisingly, all the closet needed was one more storage container from Ikea and a good cleaning. Here was the end result:
Whew!! I know I did a lot more than this but just writing about it has made me tired. As any stay at home mom can attest, it doesn't really matter WHAT you do with your time, if you can get even one day alone in your home, even if you just sit on the couch and stare at the wall, you will feel at least rejuvinated. A few hours, or days, into it, sadly enough, you will realize it doesn't matter how much time your are given...you will never get it all done!!
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