At our house, make sure you sleep with your mouth CLOSED.

Justin has not been sleeping great due to throwing his back out before his birthday. Therefore, after a week without great sleep, he was very, very tired. Every other Friday, Justin has Miles at home with him. This past Friday, Justin really needed some sleep and had fallen asleep in his reclining chair, dosing in and out while Miles watched his new favorite show, Olivia. Justin could hear Miles talking and saying something, but not sure what. Miles then started putting his fingers in Justin's open mouth. Then Justin realized that Miles had been saying, "Dad, look at my huge booger."

So, if you sleep at our house, remember, sleep with your mouth closed!

Tornado Drills

We have all been in school when they did a tornado drill. However, how many of us, as adults, have been around children during a tornado drill??

Today is national weather safety and there were tornado drills at 9:50 a.m. This is of course during the time that I volunteer in Sophia's school. The kids all lined up, on hands and knees with heads covered. And then it happens,

someone said, "who farted?"

I am glad that I did not completely start laughing out loud, but it was close. The problem was that someone did actually fart, and it STUNK!!!

Pokey-no

why is it that Disney created all the characters with names that are very hard for kids to say??

Our current character that is difficult to say is Pinocchio, also known as Pokey-no at our house.

Miles just keeps walking around the house today saying, "Pokey-no, Pokey-no. I just can't say it. Pokey-no"

all good things....

must come to an end. We are checked-out of the hotel. Planning to get some lunch soon before getting the cab to the airport. It has been a great escape/vacation. I will try to post pictures once i get home. We will probably get into our own beds about 1:30a.m. It will be a long day, but well worth it.

And tomorrow, we get to see the kids.

CAVED

as my good friend put it, " SO you caved in on the facebook thing, me too"

Okay, so i am now part of facebook. This could be interesting. Looks like you can talk to people, but only if you want.

I have found heaven....

and it looks like this:
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/tussp-jw-marriott-starr-pass-resort-and-spa/

Justin and I are in Tucson, AZ. We are using the perks of a business trip to also enjoy/relax/celebrate our 10 year anniversary. It was dark when we arrived here, but the sun quickly came up in the morning and it was very bright. It is now overcast, but still warmer (80 degrees). The views are amazing and the SPA is even better! I do believe the sage and lavender exfoliating scrub that I just received and the sauna may have been heaven.

I am catching a quick bite to eat and then heading out to be poolside. They say the pools are heated, but that is questionable at best. I think that I will just enjoy the view and read a bit.

I think I will need to go on a spa vacation more often. Mom and Margie, are you up for joining next time?

Somewhere warm.....

We are all getting pretty tired of this crazy winter weather. It even snowed in Atlanta, and to all of our friends in the D.C. area, I hope that you do not have to try to get to work. Luckily, we do not have any snow, BUT, it is FREEZING COLD HERE.

So, if you could go anywhere warm (leaving today or tomorrow), where would you go?

I'm excited to see some answers

it WORKS!

Today, just a few minutes ago, Miles shouted,

"It WORKS. My butt works."

miles was having trouble pooping, but then announced to all of us when he was feeling better.

Thought his perception was very interesting.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY . . . .

. . . to my blog. Today is the 1 year birthday of my blog. In the past year I have shared 122 posts about my crazy family and busy life! I have to say, I wish that I could post as good as my friend Josephine, she posts almost daily. I hope that you have enjoyed celebrating and enjoying the last year with us.

Carrie, Lucas, Jim and Francine

Today Sophia went to the dentist for her regular check-up and cleaning. They took x-rays for the first time and the hygienist mentioned that her 6 year molars were starting to come in. One had already erupted and Sophia could see the other ones that were waiting to erupt on the x-ray. Tonight, while trying to fall asleep, Sophia decided she wanted to name her new molars.....
Carrie
Lucas
Jim
and Francine.

Not really sure where she came up with these names, but they did keep me entertained!

Little fingers

Yes, this post sounds all cute and cuddly, but it is NOT!

Today, while getting ready for work, I walked out to put my purse and lunch in the car. When i returned to the garage door, i found that little fingers had locked my out of the house. We had kept a key in the garage, expecting it would happen, but i could not find it.

Then i got my house key out and determined that IT DID NOT WORK.

At this point, i was starting to think, "Okay, go to the front door, ring the bell if the key does not work." Luckily Justin was still home.

I opened the door and Miles ran into the front room asking, "Who is it?" Luckily, he is really, really cute, Otherwise, he could have been in serious trouble!!!

Happy CHD awareness Day!

Today is of course Valentine's Day, but it is also ......
CONGENITAL HEART DEFECT AWARENESS DAY!

Celebrate your heart healthy kids and those born with broken hearts.

Happy Valentine's and CHD Awareness Day.

Come back in a year.

Good news to report. We went to the cardiologist today for our annual echo, ekg, and cardiology visit. Miles ACTUALLY held completely still for the entire echo. We were so surprised!!

at the end of the meeting, Dr Wheller said, "Come back in a year. If we need to do anything sooner, we will call you."

These could not have been better words. See you next year Dr. Wheller.

Pinkalicious

Pinkalicious is one of our favorite books, you should check it out at your local library or resale book store, here is the story synopsis:

Pinkalicious eats so many pink cupcakes that she wakes up the next morning with pink skin and hair. The color just won't wash off, and the doctor diagnoses her with Pinkititis and tells her to eat green food to get better. Still, when her parents aren't looking, she sneaks just one more treat–and turns red. Startled, she starts to choke down her veggies and finally returns to normal. When everything seems okay, Daddy asks what happened to the other cupcakes, and Pinkalicious's little brother bounds into the room with one in hand, happily showing off his new pink skin. The final Pink-a-boo! is sure to garner smiles. The computer-generated collage pictures are bold and appealing and will draw readers into the story. Although the main character is a bit obnoxious, children will be amused by her obsession with pink sweets. Reminiscent of David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes (Scholastic, 1998), Kann's lighter confection is a pink lover's dream come true.–Erlene Bishop Killeen, Fox Prairie Elementary School, Stoughton, WI Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


So, I decided to do my own version of pinkalicious:

I used 1 box of cake mix (any flavor will do)
1 can of diet soda
Pink and Violet food coloring (purchased at any local craft store for $1.67 each. I barely used ANY coloring and got great colors. This concentrated food coloring is supposed to last for a long time, and give vibrant colors)

Mix the cake mix and diet soda. (weight watchers cupcake recipe). DO NOT ADD anything else. Any diet soda will do. and give you a different flavor. I used Cherry chip cake mix and diet dr. pepper --- a nice combination.

I divided the batter to allow to make the 2 different colors. Just divide in 1/2.





Here is the cake batter color. A little off, a little more brown than usual due to the diet dr. pepper.
Here is the food coloring. I used Violet and Pink.

Here is the great pink color. I am glad I stopped here, the final product came out really dark.


The purple or violet looks a little blue-ish. I used a kid spoon to scoop the food coloring from the container since it is thick and then I used it to scoop the batter into the small mini-cupcake wrappers. Much easier than using a bigger spoon.

The final product. Sophia is not home from school yet, but I bet she will be extra excited about the "Pinkalicious" cupcakes. I just hope that she does not turn all pink like in the book.

What a great idea.

Recently, I was reading the Columbus Parent Magazine. I make sure to pick up this magazine at the 1st of every month. It also has some great ideas in it. I wanted to take a few moments to point some of my favorites out.

www.columbusparent.com

Feature from Amber Stephens

Boredom Busters
* Tape bubble wrap on the floor and dance on it
* Fill a spray bottle with food coloring or liquid watercolors and go outside to spray paint the snow.
*Make a caterpillar or spider out of egg carton sections. use pipe cleaners for antennae and legs.
*Fill a water bottle with colored water, glittle, plastic hearts, and other objects to create a liquid valentine. Close the cap tightly.
* Make sock puppets from lost socks. (i got this idea from if you give a moose a muffin book)

* Mix 3 parts cornstarch with 2 parts water to make Oobleck, a substance that behaves like a liquid until it is smacked. Kids hit the Oobleck expecting it will splash.
* make flubber by mixing 3/4 C warm water and 1 C school glue. Next mix 2 teaspoons Borax with 1/2 C warm water. Add Borax mix to the 1 mixture. Add food coloring to the Flubber.

* Create an octopus from a toilet paper roll. Cut 8 legs of equal length from one end of the tube. use a pencil to roll each leg to curl the tennacles upwards. Finish by drawing eyes and gluing paper circles to the underside of each leg.

What a great idea. I cannot wait to try these with the kids!!!

ode to recipe girl....

There is another great blog that i love to read, The Recipe Girl @ www.therecipegirl.blogpost.com

She does such a great job taking the pictures the entire way thru the process of cooking. This has to add atleast 30 minutes to the cooking time.

So i decided to do my own recipe, this one is great for kids and super easy!!!
Jello Jigglers.

Purchase 1 set of cute ice cube trays (in the dollar spot at target, but $2.50) or even regular ice cube trays should work too.
Spray container with cooking spray, enough to coat the container to allow for the jigglers to pop out easily.

Ingredients:
1 C Hot water (I use a 2C measuring cup)
2 packets of jello, any flavor, even sugar free.

Heat water in Measure cup for 2-3 minutes until boiling. The hotter the water, the better the gelatin will melt and mix.
Mix 1C hot water and 2 packets of any type of jello in the measuring cup.
*Note, if you mix cherry and lime, it looks like a pretty gross brown. I recommend 2 of the same flavor or similar color.
Pour the mixture into the ice cube trays as seen below.
Make room in the fridge before transporting. Jello can be really sticky if spilled.
Place in fridge for 1 hour.
Remove from fridge, use a knife to remove jello from ice cup tray.
Enjoy. These treats can be placed in a lunch box as a great surprise for the kids. They are easily handled by kids of all ages. This is a great and easy treat if used with sugar free jello.

Note:

The original recipe calls for 2 1/4 C of hot water and 4 jello packets. I found this made too much liquid. I had used a 8 cup measure cup to heat the hot water in and mix the jello packets. However, i had to transfer into a smaller measuring cup to pour from as not to spill. You can also just make this amount and pour into a 9x13 pan and cut the jigglers into small squares as needed. A lot of fun for the kids to pick the color/flavor of jello, watch the mixing of the jello and water and taste the final treat.

More fun for the 2nd snow day.

Yes, we are having a 2nd snow day. no one is stir crazy, yet. Justin did go to work. Since i am not a fan of being cold and wet outside, I thought i would bring the snow inside. This idea worked pretty good. I got a large rubbermaid container and filled it with snow from the front yard. Luckily, the snow was light and fluffy and shoveled into the container easily. Also, the lightness helped because then i carried it upstairs to the bathroom. (so if you do this and the snow is heavy, use a smaller container many times or not too much snow.) The kids had not even noticed that i did this while they ate their breakfast.

Sophia was so excited, she said, "wow, you are the best mom ever." She was pretty excited to be able to play in the snow and the only part that was cold were her hands. You can see that the kids climbed right into the bathtub to play.

I do not recommend to do this right after you have cleaned the bathtub. Since I had left the container on the driveway, there was a lot of dirt. Then the snow was dirty too, after i dumped all the snow out, i then had to scrub down the bathtub. However, it was worth all the 'contained' dirt that it made.

What to do on a snowday

Of course, we finally think the snow is done. It took Justin over 3 hours to shovel out our driveway and sidewalks from all the snow and ice that we received over the past day (not sure of the actual total snowfall). I decided we needed to keep the kids extra busy today, so we put up the tent. This was a great purchase from www.craigslist.com. Sorry that the pictures are out of order, still working on perfecting the blogging, but here are the pictures.

Miles is enjoying his grilled cheese sandwich as a picnic in the tent.

Sophia also enjoyed the picnic.

Miles was attempting to tell us how great the tent is, but he just looks angry. I guess that he is making a point.

Sophia and Miles were really enjoying their "clubhouse"

Here is a picture of our tent sitting up in the living room. It is big enough that the adults can even get in and stand up most of the way.

While Sophia and Miles were still in their p.j.'s, they took the time to bring down friends, blankets, and bean bags to make the tent more comfortable.

We really enjoyed our snowday!!! we even made cookies and enjoyed all of our time together. However, Justin vows to get out of the house tomorrow, NO MATTER WHAT! (he was off tues, wed, and is scheduled to be off with the kids on friday and does not want a 6 day weekend at home) We hope that Sophia can return to school tomorrow, but we will just have to see. So what did you do during your snowday???

too cold to be out

The past 2 weeks, the weather has been REALLY cold. Once i got to work, i checked the temperature and took a picture (below). I did not even realize that my van could read in teh negatives.

What a beautiful day.....

to not go to work or school,
stay in our p.j.'s all day
eat cereal for all 3 meals (well, maybe not ALL 3 meals)
and watch the snow fall, fast and furious.
The snowflakes are atleast 1" in diameter

For those of you who are reading this and not in central ohio,
we recieved 3" snow yesterday, then ice overnight and probably another 3-6" today. The school canceled classes last night before we went to bed, so we could all sleep in. Justin actually stayed home yesterday d/t not being able to get into work with all the traffic. He was able to move all of his meeting around so he could stay home. Luckily, he can call into work later today for the meetings that were not canceled. I would miss working with people, but that is a definate perk of his job!

I hope wherever you are, you take a moment to enjoy the weather, and try to stay warm

what have we been up to??

There is no one good reason for not keeping up with the postings on the blog, there are MANY good reasons that we have been so busy.

Things since last posting, many will be addressed in upcoming posts

*new years eve dinner with good friends
* visits from Kevin and Margie
* Charlie's 40th b-day celebration. Wow, we have friends that are 40, now i am really starting to feel old.
* take down of all the christmas stuff- lots of work.
* Finishing sophia's 16 day christmas break, we all survived better than expected, but Justin WAS ready to return to work.
* lots of snow and cold.
* playing out in the snow.
* getting back into the swing of things, school, work, packing lunch, etc.
* re-arranging bedroom furniture.
* Sophia becoming a jr. turtle and starting more swim lessons.
* Great-grandma carr's 87th b-day
* G.G.'s 60th b-day. (Sorry, i mentioned your age, but you do not look or act like it, so no one would actually know!)
* Painting the downstairs bathroom. the kids really wanted to help justin.
* New baby sitters for the kids. They were so excited to see the babysitter and SO UNHAPPY to see us return home. Sophia actually said, "NO, not yet. I don't want them to leave." and miles kept coming back to us saying, "Go to work now." (also trying to get us to leave.)

I am hoping to try to keep up with the posts a little bit better. i am sure that there is something that i am missing.

When i grow up.... by Sophia 2008

while riding in the car today, Sophia talked, a lot. However, it was some really good conversation.

We had to go to my work and she wanted to talk about jobs.
S: "there are too many jobs to pick just one."
R: "sometimes people never pick one, they just change jobs a lot."
S: " I have 5,
1. painter (not sure if she meant artist or house painter)
2. hospital worker
3. teacher for gymnastics
4. teacher for swimming
5...........

and then she got off on a tangent.

we are in for some TROUBLE!!!!

Miles is really starting to show his true colors, i.e. a mischievous little boy. some examples include the following:

*Miles enoys taking his sisters drink, getting her attention, "soph, soph" and waiting until she is watching to actually take a drink from HER cup.

*Tonight at dinner, we were having grapes. Miles 'armed' himself with 2 grapes. When Justin was not looking, Miles got his attention by launching the grapes at Justin, one at a time. When asked about throwing grapes, he just laughed at Justin.

*Also tonight, Miles said, "pants falling down." Justin helped to pull them up, however, Miles quickly responded, "no dad, no." Miles removed his pants, went over to sophia, called, "soph, soph, " to get her attention. When she did not pay any attention to him, he then took off his diaper and ran around naked trying again. THEN he crawled onto the coffee table. It has been cleaned, but i do not recommend placing any type of food on the coffee table.

* At naptime, Miles had finished the 2 books that he gets at naptime. Then, asked for another, "read Thomas?" I reminded him, only two books. With this information, he tried another tactic, the puppy dog eyes and speaking slowly, "read Thomas?" with a big smile at the end. When he was called on it, he said, "man," and turned around to lay back down.

now remember, this all happened in the span of just a few hours. He keeps us very, very entertained each day.

Miles' 1st snowfall

Last year, Miles did not get the chance to 'play in the snow'. Therefore, this year, when it started to snow, he was eager to get out in it. Sophia had fallen asleep on the couch and Miles asked Justin, "Go out, Go out??"

Miles enjoyed trudging thru the snow, all 1/2 in of it.

He was especially excited and happy to be out in the snow, even if it was cold.

Writing a letter to santa......

Last night, Sophia was working on her late letter to Santa. She needed some help, it went something like this.....

Dear Santa,

I want
2 barbies
1 princess bean bag chair
3 princess chapter books
2 necklaces- dog and cat
love, sophia

About 1/2 way thru writing the letter, i asked Sophia if she wanted to tell Santa how good she had been. Her answer,

""NO!!!""

I think that she was not sure that she had been good enough, and did not want to tell Santa.

Christmas tree and such

Sophia has always enjoyed helping to decorate the house and trees for Christmas. Here she is helping un-roll the lights to allow Justin to place them on the tree.



Miles was excited that he was allowed to help this year.

Sophia took the time to unwrap all the ornaments.

Miles took the time to review all the ornaments, especially the angel.

Miles attempted to string the lights on the tree as well, with less luck.

Firetrucks galore!!!

While in IL, we had the priveledge to visit the local firehouse. My friends son is a volunteer firehouse chief. He invited us to the firehouse on Thanksgiving day to see the truck. This was a GREAT experience for all the 'kids'.

They both LOVED driving the big trucks.