Three Years of Grace

Happy Third Birthday Gracie!

I can't believe my baby girl turned three years old today. A little under two hours ago actually. She has changed so much in such a short time span that I can hardly believe that the little newborn in these pictures is my now running/talking/potty trained little girl who is constantly on the go and chatters up a storm. She was my initiation into motherhood and has taught me so many things and I can only imagine what more is in store for us.









I love you so much Grace! I can't wait to see what this next year brings us and how much you will grow!

I love my kids

Tonight when I took the kids outside to snap a quick picture of Grace with her birthday goodies from Great Grandpa and Grandma I noticed the lighting was exceptionally good so I switched to my zoom lens and got some really good photos. I've been meaning to get some 3 year pictures of Grace for her third birthday this Wednesday so now I've got a start on them! Isn't she beautiful, and looking so grown up these days?!?







And just because these are hilarious...here's Ethan discovering the joys of sliding glass doors!

Mommy & Grace Went Shopping!!!

I had the opportunity to do some shopping on Saturday since we were up in Portland and my Mom was with me to wrangle the kids while I did some looking. I had birthday money and a gift card to spend and spend it I did on two new pairs of jeans that actually fit me! I'm happy to say that the jeans I bought are the same size I was buying before I had kids. That's right, it took me four years but I'm back to single digit sizes and I'm loving it! I've been picking up pants on the cheap for the past few years since I didn't plan on staying in the "transition" sizes forever (we all know "transition" sizes are not as temporary as we all would hope) and I had a hard time justifying spending much on clothes for myself since they get pooped on, peed on, puked on, and slimed on. This time I bit the bullet and indulged myself in jeans that make me feel good about myself. If you're lucky I'll get David to take a picture of me sporting my jeans...

While at the mall Grace had the opportunity to spend her birthday money from her Great Grandparents. She found a Disney Princess pool towel, a Cinderella, and Little Mermaid figurine which has made her very happy. Here she is with her goodies!

Furlo Wedding

Today our good friends James and Jessi got married. It was a beautiful outdoor wedding. We love them both and are excited for their return from Paris so we can spend time with them.

Happy Birthday David!

Happy Birthday to the love of my life, my best friend, my soul mate, my husband. I love you!

Fridge Update

No working refrigerator yet. No traction with Kelly's either. The fridge repairman came today and it's a different part then last time that needs to be replaced and it's just out of warranty. Lovely. He said the part will need to be shipped but that he should get it Monday afternoon and will be back to install it between 3 and 5pm on Monday. Called Kelly's and was only escalated to a "customer service" representative who wasn't even at her desk. I left a message five hours ago and still haven't heard back. Not acceptable.

It's not my day

Guess what I did again today. If you guessed that I locked myself out of the van and had to make a long hot trek with two grumpy kids you would be right. I got up at 6:30am this morning and started working on getting ebay packages ready to ship and had about 20 done and in the car with two dressed/somewhat fed children at 10am. I had to stop and buy more packing tape since I had ran out and a big box for my big lot of baby boy clothes since I don't have a box that will work. After a quick stop at the postal store we ran home to finish packaging the big box and then left for the post office. The post office was a breeze since I had all but four international packages paid for already. After the post office we ran by City Hall to drop off our water bill that was due today. The Dallas Summer Fest had started so some streets were blocked off and there were a lot of cars and people. I wound up parking in the Courthouse parking lot across from City Hall and brought the kids with me to pay the water bill. As I was getting everyone in their car seats to go back home Grace announced she needed to go potty. Since she just got the hang of things last week I've been trying very hard to impress upon her that she can ask me anytime anywhere and I'll find a potty for her. So I lugged everyone back out of the car as quickly as I could to run into the Courthouse lobby's restroom where Grace successfully used the potty! Once we got back to the van I realized that in our haste to get to the potty I had once again locked the keys in the car.

It's supposedly only 70 degrees in Dallas right now but man it felt hotter then that walking home on the hot pavement! Grace cried 90% of the way home and wanted to sit down every ten feet. Ethan didn't make a peep but was a bear to lug uphill while dragging poor Grace. I also made the tragic mistake of wearing my new cute shoes sans socks which gave me a lovely blister on my heel. My hope was to get home and have the neighbor's once again rescue me from my predicament. When we finally got to Heath Street I saw their van go by....and then they slowly backed up and rolled the window down to ask if I had locked myself out of the car again. Was it that obvious? All three of us panting from the heat and Grace having a mini-meltdown probably gave it away. Hopefully they'll be able to help me go get the car in the next hour or so. The one benefit from the ordeal is that Grace actually asked to go take a nap and Ethan fell asleep after nursing so they are both quietly sleeping at the same time. That's a rarity!

And since I obviously didn't make it to Salem this morning I'll be trying to call Kelly's about the fridge situation this afternoon. Wish me luck and pray that tomorrow is a better day.

Refrigerator Malfunction

So we got home last night a little after 10pm and I pretty much did the bare minimum I had to do before I was able to crawl into bed at 11pm. Hey it was a long day and the suitcases could wait. This morning I was greeted at 8am by Grace at my side of the bed, a relatively new phenomenon since she has just learned how to operate door knobs in the last week. Not a skill I was hoping she'd learn anytime soon, but I digress. We ate bagels for breakfast since I knew the fridge was empty after being gone for a week and we worked on putting stuff away and playing with all of Grace's toys that she missed during the week we were gone. Especially the dress up clothes, she was sooooo happy to see them again! By lunchtime everyone was hungry and I remembered that there was some yogurt in the fridge that was still good and I went to get it and noticed that the yogurt was liquid. I went back to the fridge and realized that it wasn't cold inside, in fact it was room temp. Uh oh. So I did a quick scan and noticed that all the perishable items weren't looking so good so I did a fridge clean out and was grateful that it was relatively empty and that I hadn't made it to the grocery store that morning like I had hoped. The worst of it was throwing out a brand new package of hot dogs and almost new non-dairy creamer which wasn't too bad. The two bottles of salad dressing were nearly empty, the mayonaisse was half empty, two almost empty yogurt containers for the kids, one regular yogurt, a small amount of hummus that was probably bad anyways, and an expired container of sour cream. Could have been much worse. The freezer is still working which is a good thing, since that would have been way more expensive!

We bought our refrigerator in April 2006 when we moved into our new house and the exact same thing happened that November. I lost a lot more food that time since the fridge was full. Of course it was under warranty that time and won't be this time. I'm still pretty peeved that a two year old fridge has broken down twice and will be going to Kelly's Home Center where we purchased it tomorrow. I called around a couple of places to have it looked at this afternoon and everyone told me I'd have to wait for a service technition until Tuesday which I didn't think was acceptable. Finally found a company in Monmouth that can come out tomorrow afternoon. This whole fridge debacle is giving me a huge headache and I think that the store we bought it from is going to need to do something to make this right. Any fridge that breaks twice in two years is not a good product and I don't want to be throwing away an entire fridge full of food every year either. I hate making a scene but this just isn't acceptable in my book.

Heading Home

Waiting for the plane in the Boise airport.

And you thought your kids were naughty...

Sunday night we put the kids down to bed early after three late nights for the rodeo. Grace was practically falling asleep in her spaghetti at dinner so she was obviously tired! We bathed them and put Grace in bed, letting Ethan stay up a little later since he wasn't as sleepy. Once I nursed Ethan and brought him up to bed around 7:30pm I was surprised to find Grace rocking in the rocking chair in their room. I put Ethan in the crib and put Grace in her bed. She started crying which woke Ethan up and I decided to let them cry a little since I knew they were both tired and should fall asleep fairly quickly. We heard them cry for about 10-15 minutes before it quieted down and we thought they had gone to sleep. Around 9pm we thought we heard them up so I snuck upstairs to listen outside their door. I didn't hear anything but thought I might as well open the door just to check. Good thing I did! I found Ethan laying asleep in the crib and Grace sitting upright in bed...and white gesso paint ALL OVER. She had found some paint in Sam's stuff that is being stored in their room and had gotten it all over the carpet, walls, her bed, the crib, the door, Ethan, and herself. It was a MESS. I grabbed her and brought her downstairs and dumped her in the tub. One sight of Grace and everyone else jumped into action and an hour later we had the mess reasonably cleaned up, or at least contained. I scrubbed the kids in the downstairs bathtub while the boys scrubbed the room and my Mother in Law attempted to scrub out the clothes and bedding. If you've never tried to get gesso paint out of your children's hair then you're lucky. It's a good thing Grace is cute because she's getting close to not being invited back to Opa and Oma's house!


The naughty artist painted herself all over

Poor Ethan had his hands, feet, face, and hair painted

Quick clean up picture, notice how much white paint is on the crib!

Paint on the wall

By the way, my new shirt, Grace's pajamas, and David's shorts were saved by my mother in law's laundry efforts. Ethan's pajamas and the crib quilt were not so lucky. They are still usable but not exactly in good condition! The carpet and crib still have some work needed...

Snake River Stampede

We had a blast at the Snake River Stampede this year! We went to three nights of rodeo and enjoyed every minute of it. Or at least every minute of the first three events before the kids were done for the evening. Good thing the first three events include my favorite event...saddle bronc riding! Opa bought Grace a pair of pink cowgirl boots on Thursday and they haven't left her feet since. She loves them! She also loves her cowgirl hat this year which is a change from last year when she refused to leave it on for more then 2 seconds. She was so excited about going to the rodeo this year she told everyone we saw that's where we were going. She got to sit with her Great Grandpa for two nights which I know he really enjoyed. Ethan seemed to enjoy the show as well, though when we brought him up to the Rodeo Club he crawled directly to the bar every time we put him on the ground. I'm not so sure that's a good sign!

One exciting thing that happened this week was that Grace has turned a corner and is finally getting the hang of potty training for real this time. She's connecting the dots and is asking to sit on the potty and then actually goes! It's pretty exciting. She filled up her potty sticker chart and got new Curious George underoos as a reward. She even told me she needed to pee when we were watching the rodeo Saturday night so I booked it to the ladies restroom (thank God there was no line at the time!) and plopped her on a seat and she went! It was a pretty monumental event as anyone who has ever potty trained a child knows. So she got some cotton candy for a reward, her first taste of the fluffy stuff!

By Saturday evening everyone was pretty wiped but we still managed to stay up until 2am partying on the deck outside and eating more Breakfast Casserole and Butterscotch Rolls then we should. Tasty stuff! Sunday was a lazy day until that evening. More on that in the next post...it's a doozy of a tale!

Pictures!

Miss Grace checking out her spiffy new boots in the mirror

Sam watching the rodeo from the sidelines

David giving me a nice smile :)

Isn't that iphone handy? Yes he still loves the thing!

Oma and Ethan watching the rodeo together

Daddy and his little cowgirl

Grace loves her cowgirl hat!

Ethan getting his first dose of Rodeo Week

Doesn't he look cute in his Daddy's hat?

Mutton Busting! Super cute, although I'm not so sure my kids will be doing that!

Grace sitting with Great Grandpa and Great Grandma

Kellie and Ethan watching some rodeo

Her first taste of cotton candy

Sam and Jackie digging in to the midnight breakfast Saturday night

David and Sam fighting over the Butterscotch Rolls