Weekend

Friday morning I hitched up the wagon... ok maybe I didn't but i did drive my husbands big manly truck. Kelly, the girls and I went to Indiana to bring home the beef. Dad usually makes the trip by himself, however because Kelly and I were buying a side this year for the first time, we got to go with him to help him haul the load.
We spent the day playing with Grandpa & taking the traditional gator trip to the creek (about a mile from his house), which smelled like wonderful fall leaves and walnuts and dirt. The girls threw rocks and ate rocks and had a wonderful time :o)
By the evening Uncle Joe was finally able to get in the field and so Kelly harvested beans for a few hours with him while the girls and I played with Grandpa "Meal" & Aunt Lan.

The next morning after an Uncle Joe special of farm fresh eggs and bacon for breakfast we headed to the packing house. It was a friendly morning of arranging little white packages of frozen meat in coolers to be brought home to 9 waiting families. Dad thought it would be cheaper (and probably lighter) if we had brought home 2 truck loads of contraband :o)

I never managed to get my camera out while we were there, however Annie did and here is the result.

I can't look at this picture without laughing hysterically! maybe it would be funnier if you knew the man.

The One With the 3 year old

This day started off by a naked almost 3 year old bursting into my bathroom and jumping into the shower with me. :o) I love this little kid who at 11:something will officially turn 3 years old. Is it sad that I can't remember what time she was born?
The day only got better in her opinion.

We started off the morning by stopping at Buskin for a doughnut with sprinkles. There in the case was a lone glazed doughnut with pink icing and purple sprinkles among a maze of plain old glazed boringness. Of course she declared to the lady at the counter that it was her birthday and she pulled a shiny quarter out of her change purse (she wouldn't let her daddy pay) and proceeded to slide it across the counter as if she had been paying people all her life. The kind woman picked up that little girls quarter and declared it "just enough" and then pulled 2 buskin smiley face cookies from the case and added them to her bag as well! (dude, Im going to let the cute blond little bargain shopper pay for things more often!)



With many thanks we left the store on to our next destination Frisch's Big Boy where in route she declared that there was a "hole in her doughnut" as she proceeded to suck the icing off the doughnut in the truck :o) She even shared some with her sister (the part with the icing already off of course) The two tiny little girls managed to eat their weight and mine in Frisch's breakfast & salad bar (where by the way they now have chicken tenders on their salad bar, what!?!) It was literally making me sick watching the three of them consume breakfast & lunch at the same time! Blah! I stuck with my scrambled eggs and toast!



We headed off after a complimentary lolli pop to the "bank store" because Annie declared that she was going to put her $5 birthday money from Grandpa Neal in the bank. Little did she know that in 3 years we had yet to open her a savings account so that was the next task. They now both have savings accounts. Of course we also left there with another lolli pop and headed to her favorite hang out the pet store. We informed her that today, after a years worth of many, many trips to the pet store with her daddy she was finally allowed to take home a pet...goldfish :o)
She happily picked out a fish (with a whopping 14 day guarantee).



"Fishy fishy" now resides in her room and in 2 days she has yet to pull the dresser down on herself trying to see the fish in its bowl. We will see if that continues :o) I also feel like each day that fish stays alive is like its a death defying act. With a 14 day guarantee I feel like it is destined to just keel in minutes within bringing it home.

She received many phone calls with people wishing her a happy birthday and when asked how old she was she proceeded to show them 3 fingers through the phone. She even took the phone upstairs to her room to show Grammy her fish :o)

Needless to say with all the sugar she had before noon we couldn't get her to wind down for a nap until after 3! We wrapped the day up doing some school work which she was too tired for and a walk to the park in which we got rained on. I was super ready for bed time when 7:00 came around and when tucking her in I asked her what her favorite part of the day was to which she replied "school".

The next morning when we were getting breakfast ready Mia declared "Happy Birthday" :o) it was the cutest thing! It kinda came out "Hap Bahbay" and i have been making her say it all day long because its so cute!

Airshow

Annie and I went to the airshow in Waynesville OH a couple of weekends ago with my Daddy and Kris, John & JP. The weather was over 100 degrees and so Mom had no desire to go sit in the heat. She kindly offered to keep Amelia & Hope, then Dora declared that she hated air shows and Anella was all too happy to be left behind to have tea parties with Grammy. I just knew Annie would love it although I had never been to one before myself.
It was amazing! These crazy pilots would fly 10 feet above the ground, upside down, straight up, swirl, twirl, cut the engine & fall out of the sky in an instant! There were parachuting men and wing walking stunt women and it was all free, including dinner! That is my favorite kind of entertainment! It was fun to watch 2 cousins interact with each other with out the siblings around to pick fights and annoy. They chased, explored, played, had tractor rides, their faces painted, got glow sticks and sno cones and were so wound up on the way home we couldn't get them to quiet down for over 50 miles! Dad had the wonderful idea to recite nursery rhymes to get them to settle down. When they finished reciting every one they knew my dad threw an ancient tongue twister into the mix to impress them to which Annie replied "Papa, that is not en-ga-lish" :o)
I can't wait to go back again next year and will start praying now for cooler weather. Although there was always a breeze blowing (as is typical in the part of the country with no hills) and Dad brought the shade of umbrellas that made it a very delightful afternoon!

The Perfect Storm

Annie loves Popcorn. A pretty healthy treat in my opinion so I am ok with her obsession.
It was about 3:00 in the afternoon, we were in the post nap portion of the day.
"Babe" is the current favorite movie playing in our home and it was rolling,
"I CAN DO IT!" was exclaimed as I was opening the popcorn package. I handed over (after encouraging kinder word choices) the package and she climbed onto her chair opened the microwave, deposited package, pushed the automatic 30second button a few times.
Unfortunately the button was not pushed enough times and the popcorn only half popped. Oh well, a waste of about half the bag, she had tons of "seeds in my bowl".
I sent her off to the couch with her popcorn as I grabbed a yogurt & spoon for Mia & headed there myself.
Just as I sat down with Mia, Annie fell backwards in her attempt to climb onto the couch, popcorn went flying in seemingly slow motion through the air and landed all around her as she laid sprawled out on her back.... I laughed, sort of in that way moms do so their kids don't loose it for the 4millionth time that day, and sort of because it was pretty funny and an easy clean up (unlike the orange juice catastrophe of lunch). However my precious daughter was SCREAMING! Her eyes were squeezed shut and it was then that I realized she had hot popcorn kernels sitting on her eyelids burning her poor little eyes!!! Oh I felt so bad, awful, really, really bad! I tried to offer a soft ice pack even though I didnt see much damage, but she just wanted to sit on the couch however she held a blanket to her face which I thought was odd.
A few minutes later I left to run an errand and Joe called me and said she had blisters on her left eyelid and she had rubbed them open! :O(
We can't put anything on it either because its so close to her tear duct that it just goes right into her eye and she screams from aloe in the eye which hurts worse than the burns she amazingly has not complained about at all yet!

Mom of the year award goes to...... someone else!!!

p.s.

Upon walking into the bathroom and finding Annie holding roughly 20 feet of tp wadded up in her hand I wanted to yell (it was after 7:30 my rope was at the frayed end and barely hangin on). Instead I knelt down next to her and here's how it went.
Me "Annie, what made you take so much toilet paper off?"
Annie looking at the sky filling her cheeks with air, popping her tongue out through her pursed lips and letting all the air escape looks at me and said with her little head bobbing in a convincing matter "Jesus told me to"......

What do I do with that!?!

p.p.s I told her she must have heard Him wrong, He told her to take a little bit of toilet paper off :o)

The Ann Girl Update

Annie
is not a baby anymore! She will be 3 in a month and it is starting to show! She has some of the most serious faces and lately has been using big words more appropriately. What surprises me the most is her observations and her understanding of complex things. She gets that her Grammy and Papa are my Mom & Dad & every day on vacation when my mom would wake up in the morning and come into the living room she would jump up and exclaim "Mama its your Mama!" so excited every time. It was adorable because it shows me in a different light how excited she gets when she sees me.
She also figured out the whole husband role lately. I think she she used to think that Daddy was also her husband. She told me the other night that she only had 1 sister and it was Mia, what makes her think to say these things I don't know.
I love hearing her prayers, usually she wants me to say the prayers and when she has something to add its usually for a relative. When she prayed one day on vacation it was "dear Jesus, thank you for vacation because we Loooove vacation, amen!" sounds about right to me! Then another day I was laying with her and she wanted to pray and said "Dear Jesus thank you for Uncle John and Baby Hope amen" "now get out Mama"!

She can finally peddle her tricycle which she learned a few months ago, I think she just couldn't because it was too big, she can finally reach the peddles!
She loves her "Pink Baby" and sleeps with her clutched in her arms every night.
She was waking up earlier that I liked this summer so I plugged and alarm clock (some people use a night light) into a timer and set it to come on at 8am. She stays in bed or at least in her room until the clock comes on flashing 12:00 and then she knocks on the door!!! I was SO happy that it worked!
She looks, acts, talks, walks just like her father which is fine with me because I like him too :o) She found out her eyes are blue "like my dad" and is very happy with that.
She loves animals (although doesn't want to touch them) and the zoo and anything that resembles a map even if its a junk mail catalog its a "map".
She likes to do anything artsy and make tents which she calls a "secret". I caught her under multiple pillows on her bed the other day and after asking her what she was doing she said "oh we were just playing secret" I asked her who is "we" and she shrugged her shoulders and said "oh Pink Baby & me".
She calls butterfly's "flutterflowers" or "flutterfly's" which I think was their original name, I bet it got changed in translation from Adams time dont you?
Anything on the radio is "kukucks music" and boy is she picky, she doesn't want to listen to anything slow and she wants me to sing along to all of them!
She has what she calls a "nakey dance" that she does when she changes her clothes and although inappropriate for this website I need to get her on video because there is a lot of jumping side to side and flapping her arms like a chicken and well its hilarious.

Decorating

... I have blogged about it before. Our Bellevue house was easy to decorate, plus we were a... whats the word... DINK household :o) That's right, duel income no kids, the recipe for living on one income, saving the rest and still having some left over for frivolous spending. Spending on things like house decor. It was on the top of my list before kids, unfortunately people would judge if they see my kids naked, if my walls are naked people just think I am a bad decorator or don't plan on staying put long :o)
I have had the decor from our last house sitting around in places and in boxes for over a year now and I cant decide if I should hang them just to get tired of them being on my walls for 5+years now! I am SO over it and I wish it would just look decent.
Problem #2 since we have been married I have not been a picture framer. I have 1 picture from the wedding of me and my dad in a frame that floats from room to room and 1 picture from our honeymoon that sits in the exact same spot since the week we got home! I have 2 frames that I LOVE set up on some shelves that are still advertising Homegoods signs as I have not even thought about finding a picture to put in them. Joe came across a few pictures of us from college that he has always loved and found frames to put them in and they sit on his bedside table.
It is a sad reality check but I was watching a story about a couple whos 3 children died in a car accident and they showed alll the pictures of their children that they had framed on their walls and how therapeutic they were to look at... I have NO pictures of my children, anywhere! How sad is that!?! I want shrines! I want a wall of family pictures to remind me of wonderful times and cute chubby cheeks that aren't quite as chubby any more. I want to FRAME! So look out Hobby Lobby, I am coming, and I am spending money I don't have to dress my house!