Shhh, don't tell. Also, advice?

I've never been one much for April Fool's Day. Pranks aren't too much of my thing. However this year, I think I'm going to give a few things a try. Mostly for dinner. I think we will have cupcakes for dinner and meatloaf for dessert. I'll let you know how it goes.
What are you going to do?

In other news, A goes up on her hands and knees all. the. time. She doesn't actually crawl though. She just hangs out there for a minute before flopping down and army crawling like a veteran. It is really cute. but it makes me sad. She is so cute and fun and (here's the cliche) growing up too fast.

K is going through a 'phase'. She started out so promising on the potty training thing. Then she started having accidents. of the gross kind. Now she refuses to poop. This is her thing. When her body wants to she holds it in. We've tried bribing with various treats. We've tried sitting on the potty. We've read stories. We've done tummy rubs (magical tummy rubs that my OT friend showed me!). Does any one have ideas for how to get a stubborn stubborn child to poop?

Fresh from the battlefield

I have a terrible dislike of large stinging insects. Some may even call it a fear. Some a phobia. Potato. Potawto. Anyway, imagine my dismay when I looked up from loading the dishwasher to see this offender climbing my window....on the inside!

(okay, not this exact offender. you should have seen the terrible pictures I saw while looking for this guy. no you shouldn't.)

This started a 20-30 minutes of intense anxiety over how to dispose of the offender without any chance of him surviving and being really mad. In hindsight, I have probably damaged my children and passed on the same nearly paralyzing fear I struggle with. Still, who better to mess them up than me. Their mother.

I grabbed a shoe (Roy's. I totally wouldn't use my own shoe.) and began to strategize about the best method of attack. The wasp was between the blinds and windows. I was afraid that pulling the blinds up would startle it and it would fly. Or worse, sting. But I couldn't kill it without getting inside the blinds. As I weighed my options, the wasp wandered all over my window and even the blinds completely unaware of the doom he was in. The kids alternated between wanting to see and being freaked out by their freaked out mom.

I ended up using the shoe to push the blinds as hard as I could to squwash him between the blinds and window. After about a minute of holding them like that with as much pressure as I could I realized I needed to check to see if it worked. But what if he wasn't dead and escaped? He would be mad.

Even after checking and seeing that he was decapitated I was still anxious and kept squwashing and prodding with a knife until I was sure he was dead. Then I proceeded to shake for a full 10 mintues as the adrenaline left my body. But it's dead.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go vacuum up his corpse.

We've been stuck here too long.

"Adolph Hitler was rejected as a young man in his application to art school. One thing led to another and the United States dropped two Atomic bombs on the sovereign nation of Japan."

Brian Regan

Roy tried to change the breaks on our car.

One thing led to another and K decided to 'decorate' the baby with oatmeal.

Photo Tag

Thanks Mel...
D had a great time bouncing around the house after me suggesting all the things I should photograph. You'll notice he pops up a few times in here.

My Closet

Favorite Room

Notice the wall....I've been meaning to let you know that I hung my pictures

Favorite Pair of Shoes

I realized that I don't actually have a favorite pair right now. How sad! I must need to go shopping.... Here are A's cute boots that I love and would probably wear myself. If only they weren't a size 3.

Refrigerator

Kitchen Sink

not too bad...

My Bathroom

Laundry Room

FIVE loads yesterday and still laundry to do today :(

What the kids are doing:
D, besides following me around trying to get in the pictures and telling me what to photograph:

K, sleeping soundly with her face pressed into the corner of the couch:

The happiest ignored baby ever:

Self-Portrait

lovely. It took ALOT to not cheat on this one. I would have showered and put on makeup had I known you were all going to see me today!

So now..... who will do this with me? I tag Lisa H., Callie, Uncle Rick and Shannon. Come on.... you know you want to! Remember, NO CLEANING. These are candid right-now shots. We want to see everything "as is"!

More Beach Fun

D had so much fun he says he wants to move to the beach!

Typical K! She loves Cheetos! and cookies. and suckers. and pretty much anything with no nutrition base.

K had to take her shirt off like Uncle Rick.

We went to the beach.

And everyone knows the Oregon coast is SUPER WARM so naturally......

Dry Rick

Wet Rick!

(You totally knew this was coming, Rick.)

Wellllll.....

....look who finally decided to show up......

......two days later.

Jet Blue Woes...

Mom, Dad and Uncle Trusty arrived Saturday afternoon. We were all anxious to go pick up Uncle Rick from the airport (in the middle of the NIGHT!) until he called to let us know his flight had been cancelled. Something about too much wind or something. People puking. Whatever. Jet Blue apparently only has one flight (yes, one flight!!) here a day so he's on stand-by with a confirmed flight Monday night. That's two days later! And the best part............
THEY WON'T GIVE HIM HIS LUGGAGE BACK!
They won't give him his money back either. So he can't go get another flight with another airline.
So he's hanging out in JFK waiting for a Jet Blue flight. Any flight. Here. Up north. Something that will connect to here. ANYTHING.
Then the flight that was supposed to leave on Sunday was cancelled. Now we are just hoping the the Monday flight takes off.
I think when we finally get him here we will hose him down before he can get in the car. Seriously. How good can he smell after spending 2-3 days in the airport?

Pictures from the hike

Thank goodness I'm not a pioneer...

My friend Emily has been here visiting. She arrived in the evening on Thursday. Friday and Saturday she spent at a training for her career (she's an occupational therapist). That means we had Sunday and Monday to play before she flew home Tuesday. Well, Sunday is a special day. We went to church then took naps. We were supposed to go do something or go somewhere but nope. We slept. Monday is a different story entirely.
We got up, got ready and headed out to see some of God's beautiful creation. Seriously, I love the NW. It is beauty everywhere.
We decided to hike up to the top of this waterfall.

Not just to the brigde, but to the top. The sign said 1 mile. Really how hard could it be? Well, the sign lied. We passed the 1 mile mark and kept going. This wouldn't have been so bad had it been just Emily and I or even D. We had K and A with us too. That's what made it so difficult. Obviously, someone had to carry A since she doesn't walk. We did have the good sense to put the monkey leash on K so she didn't fall off the side of the mountain. (A very real possibility!) Still, 11 switchbacks are hard on a sleep deprived 2 year old.
So I packed A in the baby backpack while Emily alternated holding the monkey leash/ carrying the monkey package. At one point, near the top, Em was carrying K and she fell asleep. That's how worn out she was. A slept part of the hike too. It was fun and awesome and all that but also very hard.

Favorite parts:
me: "It's a good thing I wasn't a pioneer or my family would have died."

Emily let D carry her sunglasses. He dropped them. Then dropped them again when he tried to pick them up. Then looked at them and said, "I ruined them." (he broke one of the ear pieces off.)

lady on trail: "Wow, you are two brave mommas." (or crazy) whatever.

There was a big puddle covering a section of the trail. Emily had K by the arms and was counting, "1....2...3..." to hoist her over the puddle. Emily said three and started to hoist K just in time for K to jump in the puddle and splash water everwhere. (perfect timing and seriously funny!)

When we reached the top, Em had to put a sleeping K down. She tried to lay her down gently but K just flopped down face first and didn't move. She was so out!

The stupid bench of deception. About 2 switchbacks up there was a bench to sit on. This deceptively led us to believe there would be benches here and there. There weren't.

Also, the switchback markers... near the bottom of the trail a switchback was counted every other curve. At the top, a switchback was counted at every trail bend.

As soon as we got back to the car and were all loaded it started to hail/snow. SO GLAD TO NOT BE ON THE TRAIL!

Takin' a day off

So....I was going to update the ol' blog today but I read To Kill A Mocking Bird instead. Great book. I haven't read it since high school. I think I understood it better this time around. Since I was 15 the last time I read it, one can only hope I got more out of it this time! Maybe tomorrow.... For now I'd better go make dinner and clean up the messes the kids made while I ignored them :)

K's favorite video

Everytime K sees me on the computer she asks for "sleeping Elmo". I have seen this video purt-near 100 times at least.

Just for Macey

Well. We are still busy.
Here's some funny K-isms. She is the best bedtime staller there is. Last weekend, Roy and I had put the kids to bed and were enjoying a movie on the couch. K was upstairs fiddling around -- not going to sleep, but she was leaving us alone so we were ignoring her. When we came up to bed she had dragged her little rocking chair that Grandpa Pyatt made into the doorway of her room and was rocking her monkey to sleep.
Last night I looked in her door to see her "makin' a bed". This is her way of justifying pulling out every blanket and spreading them on the floor in her best 2 year old fashion. She then sleep on it. In the last week, she has probably spent three nights on the floor.
D is smart. I used to feel like I couldn't say this because then I'm just the braggy mom. But, really. He's smart. He's been studying about volcanoes lately. He is just loving Mount St. Helen's. (Sometime we really need to take him there.) He explained to us the difference between magma and lava.
He was telling Roy about Kangaroos a couple of nights ago. D was saying, (in reference to them jumping) "...and when they come to an obstacle -- do you know what an obstacle is?" Like he needs to explain his vocabulary to us.
He's also been reading The Magic School Bus books. Recently it is has been The Search for the Missing Bone. On the way home for the store yesterday he asked me why we have a grain of rice in our ears. I was confused until I realized that in the book it talks about the stirrup bone-which is the smallest bone in our bodies- being as small as a grain of rice.
A is the cutest, sweetest baby ever. I mentioned on FB that she is finally showing signs of teeth. Two. Bottom center. She doesn't crawl yet. I think she may never crawl. She rolls and stretches. She can get anywhere and anything she wants this way so crawling may take a while.

Last night one of my very favorite people flew into town for and extended weekend. She was my surrogate sister in high school. She is an OT now and came up for a special class she wanted to take on Friday and Saturday. Then she'll stay until Tuesday so we can play. Hooray for old friends! It reminds me of a saying, "Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver the other is gold." Ahhhh. Bask in my philosophical nature....
Potty training stinks. Literally.
Laundry NEVER ends.
Our gold fish named Robert finally died.
One toilet out of three is clean in my house.
I haven't been to the gym since Monday and my hopes of losing 15 lbs before my 10 year HS reunion are fading.
I love chocolate.