lion eyes

I took this picture!

We love the zoo. Colt especially loves seeing the "Dinosaurs"...aka. The alligator.

We love that we can call up my parents and do an impromptu zoo day.

It's so awesome having family close.

molly turned one.

I'm blogging!  I almost don't believe it myself.  I'd like to apologize to my avid followers [grandma and mom] for the blogging hiatus.  I promise to do better.

Where to start, where to start...Well since I'm recommitting to blogging I won't try to cover it all at once.  We'll take baby steps here...

I'm starting with Molly. My dear sweet Molly.  I've done everything I said I wouldn't do with the second child.  There were minimal pictures taken of you until we bought a working camera.  I've talked about you on this blog, like, 5 times.  Which my blog is supposed to be a modern day, cheap, virtual scrapbook...so in translation to a real scrapbook this would mean that I have 5 completed scrapbook pages of your life and I started 6 more but ran out of those cute stickers.  Let's just say your life has been really great.  That's all you need to know.

She never gets held.

We had a TuTu party with some friends and then had a few family parties too.  I thought this year that instead of doing one gigantic birthday party, I'd do a few smaller parties.  Let me tell you that I didn't save on time/money/party panic by having the smaller parties...so I might hop back on the huge-shin-dig train because there isn't much difference. 

Vivi changed Molly's diaper and the powder was in reach therefore the "CasperMolly" in the top right.

Tutu Party with some pals.

Molly and her G.Grandma Breden celebrated their birthdays together which explains the matching tiaras.

I love this video.  It was taken on her the morning of her big day.  She's such a little rug rat first thing in the morning.  I don't think she expected the paparazzi at such an early hour and Colt turned every light on within seconds giving her poor eyes a jolt.  I shall name this video...'Hey Molly, Mornin'...Hey Molly, Mornin'...Hey Molly, Mornin'...Colt would be a good Walmart greeter.

 It was a special day for my baby girl.  She's growing so fast!

hey, howdy, hey!

We had a good start to 2011, here's what's been happenin'...in a nut shell:

1. Andy and I did another weight lose competition which we both sucked at. I ended up gaining 1 lb I think. Ha! Not really the goal I had in mind. I need to seriously dig deep here! I wanna loose 20 more by June. We're thinking about trying the Paleo diet together. Not that I WANT to but I've been at a standstill since Thanksgiving. Blah. I would miss cheese. I'm also on the slow track to training for a 1/2 marathon June 6th too. I'm scared! Shizz!
2. We celebrated our 4th Anniversary at home on the 27th. Good times. :)

3. Copper wore one of Molly's skirts.

4. We planned a ski trip for our Anniversary and just before getting to our destination I realized that I forgot my wallet and we had to drive the long road home...skiless and wordless because Andy wasn't talking to me. Ha! He really wanted to go skiing I guess : /
5. Molly got on all fours and with all four limbs trembling from the weight of her chunky torso, she stayed up for a few seconds. We all clapped and cheered like a bunch of idiots.

6. Colt fell in love with Buzz & Woody. One night Colt ran over with his bottom lip out yelling, 'Wood, ARM OFF!!' What he meant to say was...Woodys head fell off. I laughed. We tossed Woodys head in the trash, then Colt wanted to keep the headless Woody to keep playing with. I laughed some more. Eventually he tossed Woody that night and the next day Andy upgraded Woody. Colt was so happy. Colt IS so happy. I've never seen the kid play with a toy like he plays with Woody. Unfortunately, little Buzz got the boot and is typically found at the bottom of the toy box or under the couch :/ Just like in the movie. Someday we'll upgrade little Buzz too. Someday.

my time in the woods

You might remember a few weeks back I mentioned I was going hunting with Andy. Well that day came and we had some fun times.

I know it's hard to make anything out in the picture below but if you look really close, you'll see me. Andy did a great job decking me out in his camo boots/jacket/overalls/mask so all you can see is my eyes floating in the middle [well, they're shut] but you can see the side profile of my eyes and a small part of my nose.

I mentioned my eyes were shut and no, I wasn't playing dead. This is a picture of me taking the most effective cat nap of my life. Seriously, I was drooling.

Ya see, I spent the first hour sitting in complete darkness waiting for the sun to rise. Andy found a spot for us in the woods and guided me to my seat. I couldn't make out where the trees were. Primarily because I wore that face mask from the second I stepped in the woods because I was freaking about getting a tick in my hair...so the mask cut off all my peripheral vision, well practically all my vision.

I sat down in the seat and stayed in the fetal position while Andy situated his bow and arrows. I was nervous because it was so dark I didn't know if there was poison ivy by my feet, a gigantic spider web two inches above my head or a 10 point buck flashing me a peace sign a few feet away. I, of course, acted brave and pretended that the lack of knowledge of my surroundings wasn't throwing me off.

I was informed on the car ride over that I wasn't allowed to talk or make any quick moves so I spent the entire time acting as a mute sloth.

When the sun finally rose and it was time to start looking for the animals, I was so pooped from having to meet 5am for the first time in a long time AND from being so nervous-jervous from sitting in the darkness that I took myself a little siesta. Every once in a while Slothman would turn his head to check on me. I felt him poking me in the leg with his bow cause he thought I was kidding...I'd raise my head to ask him in sign language what he wanted and he just laughed. He said he thought about walking away and leaving me in the woods to wake up by myself. That would have actually been really funny.

We unfortunately didn't see any deer. BS [before siesta] I did see a black and white kitten pracning around. I originally thought the cat was a skunk though. It was still kinda dark and all I saw was the black and white. I might have pee'd my pants a little.

After the skunk scare and IS [inbetween siestas] I heard more critter noises and noticed a mouse about 2 feet from my foot. He was really cute though. I named him Sir Mouse-A-lot. Andy got me a stick to throw at him, which I held onto for a long time before dropping it MS [mid siesta].

Kinda funny, I just noticed that when Andy took this picture I was still holding Sir Mouse-A-lots stick.

We had a good time though.
Next time I'm taking a pillow.

cupcakes and cowboy boots

Colt's 2nd party was a few weeks ago and I'm finally around to blogging about it.  Unfortunately,  my mind went to silly details & getting all my ducks in a row for the big bash which caused me to forget my camera completely.  So the pictures I've taken are the few I snapped with my camera phone.  They don't start remembering things until they're, what? Three?  Hopefully he'll forget who I blew it in the picture category.

I decided to do a Cupcakes and Cowboy Boots theme for Colt's party.  I was trying to think of what he was into so I figured, Eh, he wears his cowboy hat around and thinks that's kinda cool.  Lets go with that.  Actually, my first thought was...let's do a balls party...cause Colt really likes playing with balls.  Baseballs, footballs, juggling balls, etc.  But what exactly would that invitation say? 'It's my party and I've got balls!' or 'Come play with my balls'...wrong.  There are about a million more ball jokes I could keep throwing out but surely someone would defriend me or report me to CPS.

So, cowboy party it was.  Here was the invitation I made.  I thought it was pretty cute:

To protect my parents identity[who allowed me to use their house since mine is the size of a nutrigrain bar] I slapped a gigantic fake mustache over their address. 
That was not apart of the original invitation.
Obvi.

As a party favor [which I forgot to handout, or no one really wanted. haha!] I had cowboy hats & just for fun I bought a bunch of fake mustaches.  My brother and a few other friends had a jolly good time sporting the stache'.  Colt, of course, wanted nothing to do with anything cowboy/mustache/fun related.  Figures.  He was in a semi-weird mood that day.  At first didn't even want his cupcake!  He eventually snapped out of it.  Honestly, I'm not sure he likes all the birthday attention and/or is a fan of large crowds.  He was much more himself after the party when it was just us.  Which is why in the future we're ordering pizza and inviting over the grandparents.  I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that cares about his party. 

Here's a picture of the decor and the cupcakes/cupcake toppers which I spent 86 days making.  The cupcakes were good.  I made the frosting from scratch and piped the frosting all on my own.   Thank you Martha Stewart...I'm glad you're not in jail anymore.

Although our picture taking sucked we did however take lots of video so I sliced together a movie showing the highlights.  You'll see Colt's 'big' present.  We [Andy's family, my brother, my parents and us] all pooled our bucks together and surprised Colt with a John Deere Gator.  He loves it.  But he loves to sit on it and pretend he's driving it more than he likes to actually drive it.  He'll drive it for a few minutes but then gets a little scared.  He'll grow into it...Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.  If not, guess what Molly's getting for her 1st birthday?  She loves John Deere.

All in all it was a great time. 

I love my little doodie head.

Yeehaw.

the parade

Andy is in the honor guard for our Fire Department so for the Memorial Day Parade he got to carry an axe and walk in front of all the trucks and the fire men followed behind.  Carrying an axe might sound stupid but it's actually an honor and cool.  Which means he's kind of a big deal. 

Colt had a blast.  We got rained on while we were there. Not just sprinkled on, but it was like a pitcher of water was being poured on our heads, kind of rained on.  I acted like rain was awesome and getting soaked was the most fun we'd ever had.  He went with it and didn't make one peep.  My little trooper.  Molly slept through the down pour.  She was in her sling and I was carrying her.  With the help of a blankie she didn't get wet at all.  Supermom...right here.

The parade was really fun. There's all sorts of crazy things going on at once. This is another thing I had to video real quick. The bagpipes. Not sure what is more weird...the lady playing that drum and swinging those white pom poms around or that crazy red headed child doing a jig.

I love parades

one quarter of a century.

I turn 25 today.
In my head I'm 23.
Sometimes when people ask me I accidentally say 23.

I feel kinda old. I mean, 25?? You're closer to 30 than you are to your teens. I'm almost 30. BAH! But on the other hand I've accomplished a lot by 25. I mean, I popped two kids out by 25. That a great feat.

Speaking of my kids...I love them so much. Every birthday that passes I feel like my life has gotten better. I keep wondering when all the goodness is going to stop but it just keeps coming. Thank you Lord!

I love my life.

spring shopping

I have a coupon this weekend for 30% Old Navy and Gap and luckily I don't live too far from the outlets and the coupon is good for the outlet pricing too. I planned a last, last minute trip with my mom and were making a day out of it. Shopping, lasjdflkasjdfkl I love.

Typically what happens [as I'm sure it does with most mothers] I go to buy myself something and end up getting a pack of gum for me and carts full of clothes for my children. It's now worse since Molly came into the picture. Little girl clothes are irresistible..

My focus this weekend is Colt's closet. He's got clothes but most of them are play clothes and sweats. I've realized that Molly is going to be in the most adorable little sundresses and rompers while Colt will be wearing sweats for the rest of his life. Not that they aren't comfortable and practical, just not near as cute. My children need to match.

We have no need for the underwear quite yet.
They're just so cute.

3:30am

One annoying thing about being pregnant is the constant urge to have to urinate and sometimes in the middle of the night. At 3:30a last night I rolled to my side and gave myself a pep talk, I know you don't want to get up but you have to pee...just go now. Move your feet and start walking or you might wet the bed. So I did.

The bathroom light was so bright as soon as I had assumed position on the toilet [TMI? haha!!] I just decided that I didn't need to use my eyes at this point so I sat there with my eyes shut. I my head I was thinking of a friend who had seen a man standing at the foot of her bed and I thought to myself what if I opened my eyes and there was a dude standing there? That would be crazy right? Right!

A few seconds later I opened my eyes to grab some toilet paper and saw TWO FEET standing in the doorway of my bathroom!! I screamed at the top of my lungs, about flew off the toilet and did some karate chop hand movements in the air, as to defend myself . I hadn't heard Andy get out of bed and walk over to the waiting line for our bathroom so there he stood with his eyes closed waiting for me.

I jump all the time, I'm really jumpy, he scares me without even trying on a daily basis but he realllly got me this time. I walked back to bed and flung myself in the middle trying to calm down. I'm pretty sure that's the quickest my heart has ever gone from a resting heart rate to wanting to jump out of my body.

When Andy returned to bed I lay there all bug-eyed still trying to calm my nerves. He told me what I looked like from his view...sitting on the toilet with my eyes closed and a second later screaming and flailing my arms around. He said at one point he thought he was going to have to try to catch me cause he really thought I was going down. We both started to laugh uncontrollably. I was crying from laughing so hard. Ahh good times.

Then we went back to bed.

Moral of the story?
Don't pee with your eyes closed.

just MOVE the table already!!!!

First off even though this blog title sounds pretty dramatic I'd like to take a second and focus on my mom because this is actually a blog about her birthday...

I always knew my mom was a strong lady but her strength has been really been tested this year . Right off the bat this year my Dad had a trip in the ambo from his fall at work. She panicked, then paused and prayed. Then a month later Dad had his emergency brain surgery. Again...panicking, but mostly praying. She slept for a week on a couch in the ICU waiting room. If that ain't a crick in the back...? Dad just found out a few weeks ago that he has to have a complete shoulder replacement because he has virtually NO rotater cuff left & on the way to meet his surgeon to talk about his shoulder surgery he hurt his knee and now must have knee surgery and be completely healed before the shoulder replacement takes place. Looking down the road...months and months of more surgeries and physical therapy for my dad...which OF COURSE my mom will be right by his side.

On top of being his moral support and strength to realize that 'a break has to EVENTUALLY COME, Steve'...my Dad has also been unemployed for 10 months and mom has been working 50-60+ hour weeks to make sure all the bills are paid. AND STILL...after all this weighing on her heart day in and day out, she is one of the happiest people I know. You know what that is my friends? That's Jesus. So Happy Birthday Mom. 50 years is a long time to be so happy. My life surely wouldn't be the same without your cheery and positive disposition.

Moving on to the celebration portion of this Half a Century Feat that is my mother's 50th birthday dinner...[have I mentioned she turned the big 50? No? I didn't think so. She's 50! 50 years old ladies and gentleman!]

I thought it would be nice if her immediate family got together [which is sometimes hard to organize] so I planned a fancy dinner at Tabor Hill. We all piled into cars and drove up into Michigan for our destination dinner. We got there 30 minutes before our reservation which I kept applauding my entire family, I can't believe we're early! This is freaking amazing!! I should call the local news station to let them know. We did the wine tasting [or sparkling juice tasting in my case] and went to the front desk to be seated.

NOW here's where the story gets dramatic...I had made the reservations a week prior and was told we would be at two separate tables because our party was so large. We would be at a 8' round and a 6' round and the tables would be next to each other. It wasn't the perfect scenario...I would have liked to have been at one giant table but I asked if we'd be close enough to reach over and chat to the other table and she said 'Yes, they'll be next to each other.' So I was like...cool that works.

They go to seat our party of 14 and 8 people are seated at a long rectangular table in front of the fire place and the other 6 of us get put at a round table in the corner. Now if you were looking at a diagram of the table set up in the dining room TECHNICALLY the tables would be 'next' to each other...but there was a good 10' between our party. I immediately thought this is not what I was told. We're in Timbuktu over here.

I got a shot at mom's face and she looked totally confused and weirded out by the seating arrangement. I was a little confused and so was everyone else. We asked our waiter if we could move the table or pull more square tables together with the party of 8 portion of our party of 14 and we were told we had to go to management for that. Susanna, my brother's girl friend, has no problem getting things done so she went and found the manager. After being gone for a good 5 minutes she came back pissed and asked, 'She's not budging and saying you confirmed that two tables were acceptable." Well YA! Two tables that were actually NEXT to each other. So after the table of 8 and the table of 6 glanced back and forth at each other from afar and my mom still had that sad/disappointed 'what the heck' look on her face I decided to go talk to the manager myself. This is what I was told [kind of]...but definitely what I expected.

Kathy, the manger, [name dropping just in case you wanna call and complain...OH and the General Manager's name is Paul, he'll be getting his phone call from my husband today. :] kept repeating herself to me. "You confirmed that two tables were acceptable. I asked, 'You realize that this is a big event for us. We've all driven from out of town for this dining experience and one of our tables is in Timbuktu. Our party of 14 is a party of 8 and a party of 6! Two tables would be fine if they were actually NEXT to each other. Can't we please just move the round table close to the other table so we can feel like were one party??' Her answer to me??? 'The tables are where they are and they're NOT moving. I'm sorry.' Oooo, then I put my dukes up.

The whole time she's staring me back in the face saying, 'I'm sorry you misunderstood us. I see here you spoke with multiple people when creating/confirming your reservations so someone probably misled you..we told you the tables were ACROSS from each other and they can't be NEXT to each other because the noise level of a party of 14 gets too loud and disturbs the other guests." Oh! Oh! It's not that you CAN'T do it...it's that you WON'T do it. I guess the tab from a party of 14 wouldn't be high enough to accommodate us!?!? And there seriously were like 4 other tables in the whole dining room. Why didn't ya just tell me..."We don't do parties that large because of the noise level", that would have saved us all a big head ache. I mean, really lady! Do you have ANY customer service experience? You said it yourself that I must have been misled by someone I talked to. We're all here now...can you make it right?

What makes us all laugh looking back is we couldn't sit together because of the noise level yet across the room someone brought their toddler to this fine diner and the kid was scream at the top his lungs...at 7:30pm?!? Don't babies go to bed at 8?! Yet WE'RE the problem with this picture. I ended my conversation with her like this...'It's my mother 50th birthday dinner...we've been planning this for a month...try to make this work for us because we're on the verge of walking out.' And she ended it by saying, 'I understand you're upset. But that tables aren't moving'

So, long story really long. We left. Tabor Hill you can kiss your party of 14 tab goodbye. And you bet we'll talk bad about our experience to everyone we know. If we all tell five people what happened [I've already told like 20!]...and all those people tell a few more people...that's HUNDREDS of people which is far worse than eating a party of 14 tab.

While we wondered what we'd do for dinner now Andy stayed inside and tried to void my mom's gift cert we had gotten her and my brother called Villa Macri, which is only 5 minutes from where we all live. Go figure! His conversation went a little like this...'Hey Margy! It's Spencer. We're out celebrating my mom's 50th birthday and we all just walked out of Tabor Hill due to a bad experience...can you accommodate a party of 14...like, right now??' He said she was really excited and said that our table would be ready for us when we got there!

40 minutes later our entire family pulls up and can't help but notice the parking lot is jam packed and bushels of people are waiting for a chance to eat at this fine ristorante! We're all thinking, 'Are ya sure they can seat us??' We walk in, ask for the owner and we're taken to the wine cellar in the basement where we're seated at this HUGE table for 14! We had our own private server. They treated us with a free appetizer platter and mom got a bottle of wine on the house! I'm sure they were going bonkers upstairs [because there wasn't a table free in the whole house] but they made it work. We'll tell everyone we know how Villa Macri saved the day!

Although our evening was dramatic as all get out and nothing like we had planning, Mom said her birthday was perfect!

da patch

The patch was fun this year.
Flippin cold, but fun!

Colt had cried & whined almost the entire 3 days previous to our trip to the patch so I was nervous that we would have a not-so-great time. BUT, luckily the color orange captivated him & he even smiled a few times. I'll be so happy when all his teeth are in. His K9-pointy-vampireish teeth have been killers to break through.

Here are a few last year compared to this year shots from the patch... thought they were cute :) AND a slide show. TA DA.

The Patch:
[Colt has gone up in price. Bad economy.] The cart:

The family portrait:

[yep, same scarf] The pumpkin head:Goats:

[yep, same goat]

punkin

Fall is finally here. I'm so excited to take Coley to the punkin patch this year. I have a feeling he'll try to french kiss the goats. He likes to kiss animals. AND now that we're officially walking/running everywhere we go, maybe he'll pick out his own pumpkin too. I of course will be video taping. What is it about Fall that makes me so giddy? Here are some pix of Coley enjoying his trip to the patch from last year :)