Mommy the Boys and a dog, oh my!

I'm SUCH a bad blogger!

2008-12-22T21:58:00.001-05:00

Over a month! I aught to be ashamed of myself. Oh well.
We had a good Thanksgiving. Lots of family, lots of food. Ok, enough of that.
First Friday in December we went to the annual downtown lighting of the buildings and reindeer. Awesome sight. Very cold, but we all had fun. A few pics of course.
Ginormous Christmas tree

"Snowflakes" in the trees and buildings lit

Stuff inside done by local schools!!!

HUGE "snowflakes hanging inside the rotunda (not the word I'm looking for but you get my drift)

And the beautiful reindeer back outside.

Have you hugged your reindeer lately? :-)

All of these were taken with the new camera my mother "got" me for Christmas. By got me, read I bought it and she gave me the money for it. Not my idea of how I like to do it, but I'm liking my new camera and looking forward to all the new things I can learn to do with it.
HOPEFULLY, I'll be back after Christmas with more updates.
MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL!!

Birthday/Chuck E. Cheese bash

2008-11-13T23:56:00.003-05:00

So, the weekend before Tylers (and EJ's) birthdays they came into town and we all went to Chuck E. Cheese. Tyler hadn't been in AGES and J's older son was wanting to go as well. So, with E's birthday the friday before, EJ's birthday on the following Tuesday and Tylers birthday the following Wednesday I made a cake(that didn't turn out very well IMO) from scratch and icing from scratch and off to CEC we went. There was cake

And everyone got to blow out their own candles:
(E)

(Tyler)

and of course EJ

Oh, and did you notice their matching shirts? EJ is wearing the shirt I made for Tyler when he was 2 and Tyler had a new one this year. :-)

All the "kids" had a blast playing games. Including those over the age of 20. :-)
Quite the exhausting weekend as the very next day we went up to their house for the party just for EJ. I forgot my camera. :-( I was very sad about that.

Chesterfield Berry Farm trip

2008-10-19T01:24:00.002-04:00

What a busy/exciting day we had. First we had a soccer game against a coach who REQUESTED to play our team. So much so that he called the league office and did some switching of BOTH of our schedules just so he could play our team. This coach is very, um, enthusiastic, to put it mildly and there were times where this "guy" would be yelling so loud that Paul and I would jerk our heads aound to see if something was wrong with one of the kids. Anyways, we did not win, but we only lost by like 3 or 4 (no we do not keep score at this age, but I was curious as to what the outcome would be). After that we went straight to the Berry Farm. Of course, on Thursday in was in the upper 80's and we were in shorts. Today we all but needed winter coats.
My parents came with us to the berry farm and that was nice. (Dad came in very handy at the pumpkin patch as I always get 3 pumpkins for the 3 of us :-) and he helped carry the "daddy" pumpkin). After that and the soccer game he was very worn out. Went straight home and hung out with Daddy while I did my grocery shopping. Of course I have a few pics. I'll try to keep them at a minimum, but hey! it IS MY blog. ;-)
The corn "pit"

Horseback riding (he LOVED this)

Thought of Kim the "how tall are you"

My annual lets try and pick up the biggest pumpkin in the field pic :-)

My parents and Tyler on the ride to get pumpkins

Our Daddy, Mommy, and Tyler pumpkins

Thanks for reading and if you stop by, leave a comment for me! :-)

While I'm at it...

2008-10-14T21:56:00.003-04:00

Tyler has his very first school pictures tomorrow. Am I the only one obsessing on picking just the right outfit for the pictures?? It doesn't help that they are making me choose a package sight unseen (or pictures unseen), although, they do state that if I am not happy with them they will retake them on their retake day (and after that if I'm still not happy my money back). So, not only do I have to choose a package (and the package selections suck btw, none of them are exactly what I would want) but I also have a choice of background colors!!! Have mercy! While I'm usually not this indecisive (at least I don't THINK I am ;-)) I apparently do not do well with choices when I can't actually SEE them myself. Sure, they sent home a pamphlet with "sample" pictures of kids on each background it's not MY kid or my kids clothes on the backgrounds, KWIM??? Try asking DH his opinion. He's of little help. I just dont think that men care that much about stuff like this. He gave a few opinions, but he knows that i'm going to make a decision myself, eventually.
Anybody else had first pictures yet and have the same thoughts or is it just me?? :-)

Scooby-Dooby-DOOOOOOO!!!

2008-10-14T21:43:00.002-04:00

It's a birthday party!! Yes, it IS a few weeks early for the party, but, when you "win" a free one, you take what date you can get. In our case, October 11th it was. The foursome had a really good time, and it was a great mix of the kids from the soccer team. They all had a blast as witnessed here:

AND HERE:

AND HERE!

And then there was the awesome Scooby Doo cake my sister did for him!

See all the sprinkles? She asked if he liked sprinkles and I mentioned that he LOVED sprinkles. He REALLY loved the cake. Scooby-Doo (one of those edible image things - thank you Ebay) AND covered in sprinkles?!?! What could be better than that?

Now, 2 more weeks and there'll be cupcakes. This time he says he wants Wall-E. Sigh. :-)

Finally! An update on our lives!!

2008-09-30T22:04:00.005-04:00

Yes, yes, I KNOW its been months since I've updated. A new job (thanks to God), Tyler starting a new daycare, then Kindergarten, my computer f'ing up, these are all things I'm going to use as excuses. If you don't like them, tough! :-)
Tyler is thoroughly enjoying school. He likes his teacher (as do I) and I've just without the last 2 weeks cut the apron strings a bit more and I am dropping him off at the front door of the school instead of walking him all the way to class every morning. That envolved stopping off at the office and signing in telling them WHY I was at the school and what i was doing, getting a big obnoxious flourescent orangey/red VISITOR sticker, walking him to class (his classroom, all the kindergarten classrooms are on the very last, furtherest from the front door hallway) going BACK to the office on my way out the sign out, you get the picture. I'm sure by now most have seen pics of my boy on the first day, but I'll post a couple anyway.

He is back in soccer for his 5th season I believe. Same team from last season and I love it. The kids are great together. He actually requested to invite his "soccer friends" to his birthday party this year. We've also just in the last week started him in a county sponsored (I think, we got the flier regarding it sent home from school) Karate classes. He is super excited, especially since he's been begging to do Karate for like a year now. Most (ok, all of the ones we visited) are WAY out of our price range. This is not.
DH is interviewing with yet another company to go work for. He goes on Thursday for the walk through the "plant" to show him what they do and what his job would entail, and for the actual interview (face to face, he had a phone one on like Tuesday) and "testing". He seems enthusiastic about it (he'd be making more money, though traveling a bit further to get to work) so I'm enthusiastic as well. Must support, right?

Last Day...

2008-07-19T00:26:00.002-04:00

So, I'm considering this my official "last day" with my boy. I am sad about this as I have been enjoying my time with Tyler. I hope, years from now he remembers this summer. Hopefully, it will stand out in his mind as one of his earliest memories as the summer Mommy stayed home with me (for 2 months). On this, his last summer before he starts BIG school (AKA Kindergarten) in September. Asking him what he wanted to do today and he wanted to go to play. Gave him the option of going to the local park where there are lots of animals, a small barn with barn type animals and he wanted to go to The Playroom. Ok buddy. Whatever you want. He had fun with the dress-up. I didn't have my "good" camera with me so excuse these pics (taken by camera-phone).
Not sure why he was making this mean, lionesque face in the cow costume. Maybe the cow had Mad Cow or something. LOL

Then he found the dinosaur (or is it a alligator/crocodile???)

Then there was Piglet. He loves to make this "I'm a rockstar" type pose

And last, but not least, Cookie Monster. He's munching a cookie :-)

On Thursday we had a lot of fun staying at home. That morning he helped me make homemade (from scratch) blueberry muffins. He liked doing that a lot but didn't eat but one muffin. As we were cooking, I didn't take any pics of that. I also didn't take any "in progress" pics of our afternoon project tye-dying a t-shirt for Tyler. Found a great kit for tie-dying at Wal-Mart and now that I've done my first one I'm not quite so intimidated. Tyler really enjoyed doing this too. Here is our end results.
A pic of the front

And a pic of the back

Now, to spend the weekend deciding what I'm going to wear to my first day at my new job...

Buckroe Beach

2008-07-15T20:14:00.003-04:00

So as promised here are some really cute pics from our weekend at Buckroe Beach. Everyone had a wonderful time. EJ wasn't enthused with the beach, sand and all that, but he loved the pool and the lobster swimtrunks Grandma Michelle bought for him from the consignment store. I don't think I managed to get a pic of him in them. Hmmm, maybe my DIL did and I'll share when I get pics from her. Anyways, here are a few of Tyler jumping off the side of the pool.

Part of a Summer Fun Photo Contest here

One of him sea shell hunting on the beach (which has the softest sand, definitely not like sand on the ocean, Buckroe is on the Bay)

Some of the boys after a long day at the beach/pool

One of the littlest boy who couldn't last one more second on the beach.

This is a cool one of a flag around the circle down there in front of a stage. Sky is really pretty.

Isn't he a cutie?!?!?

Isn't he a cutie too, tuckered out after a long drive home and a morning of last minute pool and beach play.

TGTIF (Thank Goodness Tomorrow Is Friday)

2008-07-10T20:09:00.004-04:00

So yesterday, or was it day before yesterday??? We found this in our front yard. He(she) was kind enough to stop and pose for a few pics.

We thought he was pretty cool.
Yesterday I had my first interview for a job with a local law firm downtown. Seems like a really great place to work and the job sounds busy yet interesting. Not what I was doing before, but hopefully they'll take a chance on me. I went back in today for a sort of second interview with the rest of the attorneys in the practice group I would be working for. I think it was something like 5 attorneys total that I saw between yesterday and today. 3 of the 5 women. I like that. So, now I get to play the waiting game once again to see if I got the job.
We're leaving tomorrow for a weekend trip to Buckroe Beach. My step-son and his girlfriend and their baby(my dear step-grandson) and GF's son by another marriage, my parents and us are all going. Should be a full house but lots of fun. Hopefully I'll have pics to share when I get back from that.

Happy Independence Day!

2008-07-05T02:16:00.000-04:00

I hope everyone has had a safe and fun 4th of July. I also hope it was full of family and friends and fireworks and laughter. We had a busy day here. We spent the morning and the better part of the early afternoon making a place for and putting up our little pool we got for a great price from a really nice and great lady off of Craigslist. This was the first time I ever bought anything from anyone from off of there so I was of course apprehensive about the whole thing. But, it seems we really lucked out and got something really great for a reasonable price. I think making a spot for it in our ever so slightly sloped backyard kicked DH's ass today though. Of course he had his "little helper" "helping" him some of the time. He is really great for fetching things for us. More water, Gatorade for DH, my gardening gloves so I could rake and not get blisters on my hands, things like that. We then got showered to knock the BIG dirt clods off ;-) and cooked out steaks for supper. YUM! Tried to head out to our usual 4th of July firework-watching spot, but, a BIG storm had just rolled through and even though we didn't get hit really bad with at OUR house, apparently the County Fairgrounds did and the fireworks there were cancelled (we're calling tomorrow to see if they will do it tomorrow instead, I mean, after all, what are they going to do with all those fireworks they have???). So we were scrambling to decide where else we could go. Ended up heading out to the Carillon where they shoot fireworks off at Dogwood Dell. We waited for about 2.5 hours for the 'works to start (and by around 9:30, 10 o'clock the littlest man was getting VERY restless) and they were pretty, but I wasn't impressed. I'll end with a few pics from today.

Inaugural post!

2008-07-01T23:32:00.000-04:00

So, I finally decided to jump on the big blogging bandwagon. (Didn't want to feel left out ;-)) Now, to decide what to say on here day to day, week to week. So, today we went to see "Bee Movie" at the Regal Cinemas free movie day. We have seen it before (Tyler and I), but, hey it was free, right? Who can pass that up??? Certainly not layed-off, jobless(at the moment) Mommy like me. Lunch at the "Cookie Store" (A.K.A. to us adults as Ukrops) since I had to take make some moldy buns I had bought on Saturday. Thats what I got apparently for trying to be good and buy some light, wheat hotdog buns. They were moldy from the start. Oh well, I guess the turkey dogs I was eating counteracted the full everything white buns I bought for DH. After all that Tyler and I visited a new place today called PretendTown. He had an absolute blast as witnessed here

(Sorry pic is not that great, I took it with my camera phone.)He was doing pretty well until we got home and he played with his bubble mower for a while then wanted to throw his soccer ball with me (yes, throw it, not kick it) and I asked him to wait so I could put the lid back on the 100 fl. oz. bottle of bubbles we have and he didn't and I got a soccer ball in my right ear. I think I still have a headache from that. I KNOW my ear still hurts. Anyway, he was good as gold the rest of the night. He better have been. ;-)

2008-07-01T22:25:00.001-04:00