Happy 5 years to us!

5 years have gone by since our wedding, and in that time, we have managed to buy 2 houses and have 2 kids.  Those big life changes have certainly kept us busy, but in that time, we've also managed to make a lot of great memories (as both a couple, and as a family).  We've also learned a lot about finding balance, between marriage, kids, careers, etc....  It has been a fantastic past 5 years, and I like looking back on days like today and reflecting on how lucky and blessed we are to have found each other, and created a life for ourselves and our children.

Jake: Unsupervised.

Last night after work, Jake was coloring and putting some stickers in books in the playroom.  I told him I was going to start dinner, and to keep playing nicely by himself.  I put Liam in the bouncy seat in the kitchen, get dinner started....elapsed time of approximately 5 minutes, I peek my head into the playroom to check on Jake & find this:

 

Me: Jake, where are your clothes, why are your underwear backwards and what are you doing exactly?

Jake: *sigh* Mommy.  (said as if I should clearly know the answers to my questions)  I am a transformer.  So I had to take off my clothes and transform my underwear.  My legs have lasers.  These are my wings.  Is dinner ready yet? 

Love this kid.

Book Reviews

I'm reading faster than I can review these books!  The past 2 books I've read have both been from the Kindle Daily Deal site; I think the books were .99, so I figured I'd give them a shot. 

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

This movie was released a few months ago & I thought the ads for that looked decent, so when the daily deal came out I figured I'd give the book a shot first.  I really, really enjoyed the book!  It was a John Grisham-y type of plot, but a bit more....snarky?  I don't know what the best adjective would be.  But the plot was suspenseful, and the author kept you guessing. 

Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand

Again, another daily deal, but the description sounded like something I would enjoy (actually, the description reminded me a bit of Beaches)  I found the author to be a teensy bit wordy at times, and I found myself skimming some of the long, super-descriptive passages, but overall I really liked it. I found it interesting that at different times in the book, I liked and disliked the same characters...there were times you were rooting for one of them, and agreeing with their choices, and other times I just wanted to reach into the book & slap sense into one of them.

The book was set in Nantucket, and I loved the setting and the way the author made you feel like you were right there in the quaint little beach town.  I would read more books by this author, they would make for great summer reads!

Happy 4 months!

Happy 4 months to my little Liam, looking dashing as always in his little business casual outfit.

Go Steelers!!

All decked out for Steelers day at school!!  (Jake was sporting his jersey, too....but was not really feeling the photo session at 6:45am.  I'll have to try to get some of him on Sunday instead)

Falling in love with fall.

Every year, I fall in love with fall even more.  Like a lot of other things, I've found that having kids gives me a whole new perspective on holidays and seasons.  While I've always loved the season, I really look forward to it now, knowing that we get to take the kids to pumpkin patches, Zoo Boo, dress them up for Halloween, etc...

But of course, I still love fall for my own selfish purposes:

Pumpkin Spice Lattes---I love you.  I love everything about you, from the warm, cozy feel of your cup in my hands, to the lovely dollop of whipped cream that is perfectly placed on the top. 

Boots and Sweaters---there is something about pulling you back out of the closet after a long, hot summer that brings me much joy.  Putting you on today for the first time in months made me squeal with delight.  Opening up my armoir that is devoted entirely to my sweater collection nearly made my eyes fill up with tears at the pride that I felt over acquiring such a lovely collection.  (I think Brian's eyes fill up with tears when he sees that same collection, but probably for a different reason)

Fall Decor---I put you out last week.  I love you dearly, but I need to get you some more friends, the house looks a bit bare this year.  Must buy more pumpkins!  But I do love the fact that I catch a wiff of spicy candles when I walk into certain rooms...ahhh.

New nail polish---I'm not a big fan of dark or deep red nail polishes, as I feel that my vampire complexion mixed with dark colors tends to make me fall into the Goth side of life.  But, I saw this new Essie color ("Carry On") in a magazine and had to have it (side note-did we know that walmart now carries Essie?  I was excited to see that as well).

Pants off, dance off!!

"Mommy---want to have a dance party with me??"

I was excited to hear this question..I became even more enthused when I turned on the radio & Britney was playing.  My excitement level was completely over the top when this was his reaction to the song, I immediately had to sneak away unnoticed and grab the camera to capture this moment (because you never know when you're going to need blackmail down the road):

You may or may not be aware, but I have a teeny tiny obsession with Britney Spears. This obsession has been going on for 10+ years now; Britney & I have had our ups and downs (I refer to the whole KFed incident as the dark ages in our make believe friendship), but I will always have a place in my heart for Brit & her fantastic music. After this dance party over the weekend, Jake has asked multiple times for the "Bwitney" song to play....love it!

Time to eat?

It's not quite time for Liam to start eating food yet, but we figured it was time that he moved up to a seat at the table.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I had been stalking craigslist for a used Fisher Price Space Saver seat that attaches to a chair, rather than the big high chair we had with Jake.  I struck out on Craigslist, but did find a good deal on walmart.com (marked down to $44 from $60 and it shipped free to my house-I love online shopping deals!)  Here he is, showing off his new seat at the head of the table (and his awesome slippers):

 And looking confused as to why there's no food in front of him....

"This is what you meant?"

Why yes, that IS my kid in his Christmas PJ's.  Sitting in a cardboard box.  With a sour look on his face. 

Jake was home sick from school yesterday, he had been sent home the day before with a fever of 102.5.  Fortunately, he was feeling better the next day, but still had to stay at home.  It was nice to spend the day, just him and I, snuggling on the couch together, watching "Nemo", then making this deluxe edition pirate ship.  Why are you laughing?  Oh wait, probably because you saw the picture above.

Ok, so we needed to pass some time before lunch, and I told Jake that we could make a super cool pirate ship! What kid wouldn't want that?  I guess he had different visions in his head.  Because when we finished everything (like drawing windows on the side of the box, putting that flag up and making a telescope out of a paper towel roll), he said (and I quote): "This is what you meant?"   Ouch.  My creative skills are clearly not up to par.  Walk the plank, mama!

One of the perks of being a baby....

...is that overalls are socially acceptable for every day use. 

Happy Friday!! :)

Big Boy, Big Backpack

Thankfully, the "summer camp" aspect of daycare is over!  I'm sure the kids really enjoy the camp idea since there's water play every morning, picnic lunches outside and generally much less structure than during the school year....but as a parent, it was kind of a pain.  I needed a personal assistant just to keep things straight for me, since every day required sending Jake to school in swim clothes (and shoes!), but packing extra clothes and shoes to put on after water play was over.  A clean towel had to be sent in on Mondays, then brought home for washing on Fridays.  Thursdays were outside picnic lunch days, which meant a brown paper bag with items that didn't need to be refrigerated or microwaved.  It might not sound like much to do, but since I was on maternity leave most of this time, I never had any idea what day of the week it was, let alone which camp day it was at school.

Which brings me to my post today---camp is over, which means that Jake got to start carrying his brand new backpack.  Over the summer, I took him to Toys R Us one day & told him that he could pick out his very own backpack and lunch box.  I had no idea that this would turn into a 30 minute agonizing decision. (I'm such an indecisive person myself, I'm guessing he picked up this trait from me)  In the end, he went with a superhero backpack and a Cars lunchbox.

I can't wait to hear about all of the new things he's going to learn in class this year! 

Labor Day Weekend 2011

Sometimes, I feel like I live for 3 day weekends. I measure time at work in between paid holidays. (thus, the time between Labor Day and Thanksgiving seems to draaaaaaaaaag) We spent our Labor Day weekend visiting the Martini family in Virginia! The boys had a fun time reuniting, as always.



On Sunday morning, we headed out to Great Country Farm to participate in their potato dig. Our reason for going was two-fold; the adults got some potatoes out of the deal and the kids were forced to do some manual labor (in the hopes of wearing them out before nap time!)



The farm had so much stuff for kids to do! We enjoyed a pancake breakfast, tractor ride, train ride, playgrounds and a moon bounce.





Liam enjoyed his time at the farm by taking a nice long nap while Brian carried him around in the Ergo, then had a little snack, then took in all of the sights and sounds for the last hour or so.



On Sunday evening, the men headed into DC for the night to celebrate Brian's 30th birthday. They enjoyed themselves (even though they headed back to the hotel early in the night and still woke up out of habit at 6am!), and we had a girls night back at the house once the kiddos were in bed.

Thanks for having us, we look forward to the next visit! :)

Rock & ROLL

We have a roller!! While doing tummy time last Friday (3.5 months), Liam lifted one arm up and after just a moment's hesitation, flipped right over onto his back.

Happy House-iversary!

Wow...we closed on our house exactly one year ago today. A quick look at the updates we've done so far:

1st floor bathroom

Before



After (painted, replaced faucet, towel bar and knobs)



Kids Bathroom

Before



After (just new decor, but it made a huge difference, as I couldn't stand the southwest theme that the previous owners had left us!)



4th Bedroom/Liam's Room

Before



After (just some new paint)



Jake's Room (big boy room makeover plus new dresser and new curtains!)

Before



After





Of course, there are other projects that we (I) would love to do...nothing major, just some updates. The bathroom in our master bath has gold fixtures that I don't care for, so eventually, I'd like to replace those and maybe paint the vanity (it's just a meh color, I think it would look better if it were white) and replace the mirror/medicine cabinet. Same thing with the bathroom in our gameroom---replace the gold faucet, and repaint eventually.

The paint in the dining room is a beige color, which is fine, but there's a nice white chair rail in that room & I'd love to have 2 different colors on the wall eventually. I'm thinking a warm latte type color scheme....I need to find some examples/inspiration at some point.

We also have this set of doors in the playroom:



They look fine from that angle, but if you look carefully by the door knob, you can see that the previous owner's dog must have had a field day clawing up the wood on the doors, it's totally scratched up. At first, we were kind of like, eh...oh well we'll deal with it for awhile. But, then the winter rolled around & we also discovered that the doors/windows are terrible in terms of keeping the cold out!! That room is always warmer in the summer, and downright cold in the winter. And since it's what we use as a playroom (and thus, are in there quite a bit) it's annoying. we'll be looking into replacement options at some point soon.

Those are really the only "projects" that we would want to do at some point. Other than that, it's just little things that need to be done (that we can hopefully tackle this winter when we're not quite as busy), like touching up paint in some of the rooms and patching up holes that the previous owners left behind, scraping some peeling paint from the outside of the house and touching that up, and hopefully planting some bulbs that will pop up next spring! (I was disappointed to find that there were no tulips left behind this past year)

Happy 1 year House-iversary to us!! :-)