Thursday, January 15, 2009

One week down...one to go!

Well, Mike has been out of town for a week now and the kids are still alive so that's a good sign.  Actually, they behaved amazingly well for me.....I'm starting to to think that they are turning into good, kind, and responsible little kids and that maybe we as their we parents aren't totally screwing them up.  Mike and I have a little agreement going that he puts the kids to bed every night.  To be honest, he really is better at that than me anyway....maybe it has something to do with the "night-night horse" that delivers the kids into their beds.  With him gone, I was really dreading having to do that for 8 nights straight with no help.  Does that make me a bad mom?  Well after taking care of their every need all day long, sometimes putting them to bed puts me over the edge so I'm really grateful for our little agreement when Mike is home.  It gives me a chance to relax for a moment while Mike is fulfilling all their silly bedtime requests....I need my transformer blanket, I don't want my Thomas blanket, can you get my flashlight, where's my omnitrix alien, can you spread the books out on my bed?, I need my purse, I need my babies, can you move the shopping cart closer to my bed?.........the list of requests could go on and on if we didn't nip it in the bud and tell them to GO TO SLEEP already!  Anyway, like I said I was really dreading this, but seriously they have been such good kids this week!  I haven't had any issues with the exception of coming home late one night and Maizy having to be woken up to get her jammies on.  She was not so happy about that!   I'm just really grateful that Heavenly Father answered a little prayer for me and made bedtime a cinch for me this week.  And I'm grateful for a husband who's whipped the kids into shape!

Mike will be home tomorrow night.....yeah!  The kids are super excited to see him.  I can't remember the last time he was gone for this long.  It may even have been before the kids came along.  We are looking forward to a nice weekend together before he heads back to South Dakota on Monday.  Then we have another week without Daddy.....bummer!  Definitely better than no job at all though!  I just hope next week goes as smoothly as this one did!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Miles and Maizy's Greatest Hits

Here are a couple funny videos of my kids singing....I'm thinking Maizy inherited my musical talents....or lack thereof.....

Maizy singing "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam"

A song Miles learned at school....

Pure silliness!

This week I'm watching Zac and Julie Heslip for a few days while their mom is at work in the mornings.  They are Miles and Maizy's best friends that they have known since birth (they are just a month younger than Miles) and I have to say this may be the easiest babysitting job that I've ever had!  They haven't seen each other much in the last few months because they are all in preschool now, with the exception of Maizy, so I think they are just loving being around each other. I can tell because there has been some extreme silliness going on this morning.  The girls dressed up as princesses and Zac was their prince....that wasn't too silly but it was cute!


The boys decided they didn't want to play with girly things and put on the manly glasses and mustaches that we got in our stockings!  They thought they looked hilarious.....or "ilarious" as Miles would say. 

Then they started to play the "name game"...you know Miles Miles Bo Biles Banana Fanna Fo Files......they were cracking themselves up so much.  I love that they can entertain themselves and aren't sitting in front of the TV.  I only had a few times where I had to break up a fight over a toy or game or whatever, but they are all getting better at sharing and taking turns every time we get together.  We shall see how this week plays out.....hopefully they don't get sick of each other!


Monday, January 5, 2009

Getting back into the swing of things

Well, Mike's back to work so the holidays are officially over and we are just trying to get back to our normal routine.  I'm attempting to get the Christmas decorations put away and get the dust cleaned up that seems to be EVERYWHERE from working on the basement...okay, I'll admit there was probably a lot of dust that was there before all the sanding.  I HATE DUSTING!  The kids are busy playing "Mike and Katie" with Maizy's babies.  They crack me up.

We are also working on potty training Maizy since Santa gave her Little Mermaid and grandma gave her princess underwear for Christmas.  We had been prepping her for it for a while before Christmas telling her if Santa brought her underwear that she'd have to start wearing them instead of diapers.  She was pretty excited out opening up the underwear and I told her once we washed them she could start wearing them.  So we put her new undies on after my family left on Friday and she is doing GREAT so far!  She's only had a couple accidents (luckily no #2!) and has been really good about just going to the bathroom on her own and she doesn't require a bribe like candy or a sticker like I had to do with Miles.  I feel like with him I always had to remind him or he'd get too distracted.  She seems to have picked it up a little faster, so I'm hoping it will stick!  We've attempted twice before (once in the spring and once in the summer) but she didn't really go for it like I was hoping she would.  With the warm weather, the kids would be outside and she'd be distracted....who could blame her? So I'm hoping the third times the charm.  I've always heard of kids that potty train themselves and it seems as though I've lucked out this time with her.  I just needed to wait until she was ready, I guess.  It will be so nice to have kids out of diapers!

I am also gearing up for Mike going out of town for the next couple weeks.  He will be in Aberdeen, SD working on software for those big windmills that are popping up all over the country.  I'm so very grateful that he still has a job and still has work to do, but it's pretty much going to suck to have him gone for so long.  I guess the hotel he's staying at has a waterpark, so I wish we could go with him, but airplane tickets are about $1700 so I'm thinking that's out of the question.   Plus, Miles is in preschool so I wouldn't want to pull him out of school for too long.  He starts back up on Wednesday and as I'm sitting here listening to Maizy scream about him bugging her, I'm already getting excited for school to start again.  Sometimes they just need that break from each other.  Anyway, I guess I'm going to have to find some things to do while Mike's out of town to keep myself from going crazy!  I'm going to start right now with putting a crabby little girl down for a nap!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Christmas 2008

What a great Christmas we had!  We stuck around here for Christmas day which was a nice change from the usual traveling we do this time of year.  My entire family came to Michigan this year to celebrate.  We had a fabulous time and I'm sad it's over!  I also convinced my sister, Erin, to come a few days early and spend Christmas Day with us.  We had so much fun hanging out with the kids and shopping and going to the movies and working on crafts....my kids are so lucky to have an auntie that loves them so much!   I'm lucky too cause she helps me out so much when she's here!  It's like a little mini vacation when someone's here to help with the chaos to being home with two kids.  Anyway, we made some delicious steaks for Christmas Eve and had a nice quiet dinner with the kids.  Then Miles decided to crank up some Christmas tunes and sing and play the air guitar....well actually the wrapping paper tube guitar. What a funny kid!  


Then we put out cookies and milk for Santa and apples for the reindeer!


The kids were totally geeked about Santa coming when they went to sleep, but by the morning they were clueless.  I was a little afraid we'd wake up to a mound of wrapping paper and the kids in a sugar coma, but they slept in until 8:15am and hardly even remembered what day it was.  I asked them if they knew what day it was and they asked "Is it Saturday?" I asked if they knew who came last night and they were oblivious. Finally, I asked if they knew of anyone who wears a red suit and has a white beard and that seemed to trigger their memory....it was about time!  We ran downstairs and they opened their gifts. I was kind of afraid that the kids would be disappointed because we didn't go crazy this year on gifts, but they couldn't have been happier!  It was so much fun to see the looks on their cute little faces when they opened their gifts!  





After opening gifts, we went to Mike's parents for the day and had a great time hanging out and playing games with his family.  

On the 27th, we had our good friends Maggie Walker and Sammy Bean (Jordan had to work....bummer!) and Kate and Adrian Klemme over for lunch.  It was so great to see them and for Mike and Kate to reminisce about their high school days. We really enjoyed meeting Adrian for the first time and seeing Kate's cute little baby bump!

The rest of my family came into town on the 27th, which was great cause it felt like Christmas was stretched out for a few more days.  My sister, Jen, and her family hadn't been to our new house yet so it was nice to finally have them over in our neck of the woods.  All the cousins and the adults had a great time with each other!  We celebrated Christmas on Sunday with my mom's potato soup and then just enjoyed a nice relaxing week of scrumptious food and good quality family time!  We all gave my dad a Nintendo Wii for Christmas so we played that pretty much nonstop for the rest of the week when the girls weren't cooking or making crafts and the guys weren't working on mudding and taping our basement.  I had a Wii age of 73 the first day (yeah, I know....that sucks!) but improved to 36 by the next day after getting used to using the remote.  I didn't get around to testing my age the last few days because I was sucked into doing a 2000 piece puzzle with about 50 different snowmen on it and about a thousand different patterns of plaid that my mom brought along.  It was a beast but we finally finished it last night!  

For New Year's we had Mike parents and sisters, Tiff and Beth, over for prime rib. As always it was delicious and we had a blast playing the Wii, doing the puzzle and ringing in the New Year!  I'm so lucky to have two wonderful families that enjoy spending time together!  On New Year's Day, we celebrated my brother-in-law, Joel's, birthday (he's actually a Christmas baby!) by going out to lunch at BD's Mongolian BBQ....yum!   

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas!  My family left this morning and it seems like time just flew by too fast!  Why is vacation always like that?! Anyway, I'm so grateful for my family!  I'm so glad they could come and spend time with us here in Michigan!  I'm so blessed!

We have a blog....finally!

Welcome to our blog!  Mike has been trying for over a year now to get me to keep up on our Facebook page, but I just can't seem to get into that.  I think it has something to do with our account being linked to his email so I never get messages or know when there's new postings, etc. Anyway,  I know several friends that have blogs and I love reading their posts and seeing what's going on in their lives.  I love the cute little stories that people tell about their kids and the hilarious and precious things they say and do.  Those stories help me to reflect on my own life and help me to appreciate the little things that my family does everyday to make me smile. But, I was feeling a little like I'm spying in on peoples lives by reading their blogs and not having one of my own. So, I figured with the new year, I'd try something new.....I'm not really into New Year's resolutions, but I do hope to accomplish a few things with this blog.  
  • I'm hoping to keep in touch with friends and family a little better this year
  • To document things that make my happy in everyday life
  • To appreciate my family more 
  • To help me remember all the pictures and events I want to scrapbook throughout the year 
  • And to share some stories about my kids....because I think they are freaking hilarious!
So here goes!  Hope you enjoy!