35 minute panic

Over this mutt!I opened the back door to let the pups in for the night. In came Zoe but Weston wasn't behind her.. I stepped out on the porch calling him but he didn't come. I spent the next 10 minutes calling him, searching the backyard and then back inside calling him again. I wasn't sure how, but was sure he'd gotten out. I called and called.. No Weston. I wondered if he'd gotten through the back fence somehow.

Mattie and Megan were both in bed so I couldn't venture far from the house. After about 20 minutes I was panicking. I finally called my sister. She's only a few blocks away, and knowing she'd do anything for a dog, knew she'd come help me.. 5 minutes later, Steph, My Mom, and My brother were scoping the neighborhood for my poor puppy. I spent another 5 minutes calling him and searching out back with the flashlight. I decided to check the house one more time.. I'd called and called through the house and not heard a thing, so I didn't think I'd have any luck..

I checked the upstairs, I checked downstairs, I checked the laundry room, the bathrooms, and THEN... Then I checked his Kennel.. where he lay sleeping cozily in his bed.

Turns out Megan had put him to bed already...

Catching up......

Bionater

We went to the Orthodontist today. Ali's Bionater is doing its job, but as Dr J says it's a Long process. He thinks it will be a good couple of years for those teeth to come down and meet.

She's got a nice indentation on her tongue from the bar that goes along the top of the piece, and that apparently is a good sign because it means that her tongue is in the right spot.

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After the Orthodontist we stopped off at my parents house for a visit..

I love my Mama, She's so good to me.

The kids ran around the neighborhood playing with their friends, climbing trees, and screaming at each other.....This immediately resulted in two little girls in time out. I took advantage of a little snuggle time with Meggers.... And of Ali's camera as you can tell.

Matties cute pouty lipAnd his cute little legs as he runs away from me
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In other news.....

The Artificial pollination worked!

just look, Zucchini!unfortunately it didn't do as hot with the pumpkins..... only one has made it through...

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And for posterity purposes…
This is Me…. 50 % of the time me….. I LOVE talking on the phone. If I’m not talking to Angie, I’m talking to Megan. And If I’m not talking to Angie or Megan, I’m talking to my Mama, or Stephanie…. Not little phone calls, oh no…. hours and hours… I can make dinner, bathe kids, do hair, apply make up, scold children, snuggle children, you name it.. all with a phone stuck to my ear… The irony? I don’t use a cell phone!

Just another Lazy Saturday

Yesterday was a very lazy day for us. Taylor took the van so we didn’t have a whole lot of options on places to go. Brooke had stayed the night and as usual had us up at the crack of dawn. I was pretty disappointed to be waking up early on my only day to sleep in, but I got over it quickly and made them all German pancakes.
Brooke had a soccer game and her Mom agreed to let Ali tag along. I was glad that she got to get out of the house for a while. Megan spent a few hours doing art projects and had smiling as she showed me each one exclaiming, “I am such a good artist!”, “ Mom, Why am I so good at art?” “I’m the best painter huh mom?”. She had the table completely covered in colorful artwork, and dripping paint. When Taylor got home around 8 she sat him down and showed him each one, explaining in great length what each one of them was. As I watched from my favorite chair I heard her tell him “I don’t know why I’m such a good artist, I just am!” he looked over at me and we smiled agreeing silently that she is the cutest 6 year old in the entire world!
I spent the day in my pajamas, and so did Mattie. With nowhere to go, there was no point in getting dressed. I cleaned the house, and got to read a good portion of my book while sitting out back. Mattie spent most of the day completely covering himself with dirt. I had to give him two different baths to get him clean enough to put in bed by the end of the night. I didn’t mind though, I had fun watching him dig up ant holes, and make gourmet dirt entrees in the play kitchen outside. He has such a good time in the backyard running around .
Craig and Merry stopped by and brought us a water snail and a sucker fish for our fish tank... cool huh? Taylor got home and said... "um, snails can crawl out of the tank....we should really have a lid on that" so for the rest of the night I was totally grossed out thinking that the snail was going to be lying all slimy on the bookshelf drying out and smelling up the place.. EWWW.. Megan thought it was brilliant and kept asking if she could go check to see if it had gotten out yet. I had to warn her each time that her hands DO NOT go IN the tank.
We ended the day by forcing Taylor to sit on the couch and watch Camp rock with us.

dog update.....
Zoe is fitting in quite well in our family. She’s only had two accidents in the house, and she’s learned her lesson from stealing too much birthday cake instead of eating her dog food like a good puppy. She spent Saturday morning throwing up her mistake. Weston has a gut of steal and will ingest just about anything but we’re hoping that she’s got better taste than he does. She’s really such a sweet thing. Poor Weston is getting the shaft man! Even Taylor is carrying her around like a princess! She and Weston seem to be agreeing on who’s boss, and I saw quite a lot of tail wagging as they fought yesterday.. Sibling rivalry already!

Party Party Party

Grandma, Papa, Grandma Connie, Papa Bob, Stephanie, Jason, Alison, Kiana, AnaLisa, Stone, Jason, Teryn, Destiny, Connie, Kaden, Kristina, Curtis, Tajun, Dakota, Aryanna, Mommy, Daddy, Ali, Megan...................

Those are all the people that came to help us celebrate Matties 2nd birthday.

He's SO loved!

We had everyone over for Pizza, cake and ice cream.. Mattie was mesmerized by the birthday candle, and stared at it with wide eyes before announcing "Appy Birday" . We took that as our cue to sing him his song. He clapped joyfully when we were through, and Taylor helped him blow out his candle.

Papa tried talking the kids into taste testing the cake before we started.. Megan was the only one going for it though. (well, and Mattie ofcourse). Its awkward when you have to scold your father.Everyone just hung out and ate Pizza while the kids ran amuck.

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Taylor's Mom

Taylor's Brother Jason, and girlfriend Allison..... They have her son Stone, and his daughters Kianna, and AnnaLisa

His sister Connie......

She has Kaden (below) he's just 5 months younger than Mattie.. Very cute. Taylor's sister Kristina......her boyfriend Curtis, and her three daughters Tajun, Dakota, and Aryanna (below)

Taylor's brother Travis.. Married to Teryn, they have Destiny and one on the way.***

Taylor has two other sisters Marcie who is married and has two children and Kim who is married and has three children. but neither of them could make it.

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(below) My Dad...........

Its obvious who I get it from aye? Even with a 'point and shoot' he's got the 'stance' going on....

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Mattie and Kaden had fun running around the front yard. They're so cute together.. I think they've only played together like 4 times , we don't get to do it often.

Mattie was so overwhelmed with so many people around that he cried and begged for Taylor to hold him atleast 70% of the time. I was glad when he actually played with Kaden because for the most part he was too nervous to leave Taylor's or my own side.

Grandma and Stephanie were there too, but were hiding out in my living room away from the crowd... I can't blame them, I am not one for the whole fuss either ...

I went downstairs to check on the girls in the play room. I gave Megan a quick hug and noticed that her arms were wet.. I asked her why and she replied that she'd just washed her hands.. Aryanna immediately protested saying "NO!, her was trying to get the fish, her was catching it in the water!". I turned to Megan with a scowl on my face, and she had no choice but to fess up.. She spent the rest of the night grounded for lying about it. I could have handled the whole, have to touch the fish part, but she's got this little problem with the whole truth and nothing but the truth.. THAT we will be working on.......

tonight Ali is having yet ANOTHER sleep over with Brooke..

Animal house

Taylor's sister gave us their old fish tank. Because Mattie seems to love fish so much we thought we'd set a tank up for his birthday. Keena is a self proclaimed "fish nerd" and volunteered immediately to help set us up. We took a trip to Fish world, and purchased the necessities. Keenacame home with us and 30 minutes later, viola..... Fish! Its downstairs in the family room behind the couch. I think it looks quite Nice in the room. Mattie likes it well enough although something bigger happened to come along today that stole the spotlight.

****ZOE****

About two weeks ago a friend at work was trying to find a good home for their Miniature Schnauzer . After talking to Taylor we decided that we would like to have her. She's 9 months old, and just darling. She gave her to us for free, along with two kennels, a huge bag of dog food, leash, toys, bones, and a few other things. She's 'papered', and not yet fixed, which I would like to remedy soon, but Taylor thinks it would be good to breed her once. She's been great so far, and we're very excited to have a friend for Westie.

The Tooth Fairy is not on her game

Would you believe that the tooth fairy forgot to leave Megan a dollar for her tooth 3 nights in a row? My goodness she must be pretty busy these days. I’m positive that she feels really terrible. It’s a good thing that this morning I ‘found’ a note with a dollar bill in it from the tooth fairy while Megan was in the bathtub.
Dear Megan
Sorry I haven’t been here. I’ve been very busy. I will leave your tooth for you this time.
Love the Tooth Fairy.
I brought it into the bathroom for her, pointing out that she must have missed it when she was looking under her pillow. She liked the note, although she appeared to still be a little disappointed in her 3-day delay.
Ali witnessed the whole thing taking in the presentation with obvious uncertainty. It’s apparent that she’s just been let in on the whole scheme of things.
I feel guilty for both.

I'm just saying.......

Last night I watched Chandler; I picked him up from Cherie’s on my way home from work. So I had FOUR kids, all night long, until about 8:30.. Things were going just fine until Chandler decided to start SCREAMING his little preemie lungs out! I'm not kidding it was SO high pitched, and loud that I had to go inside and shut the door so that my neighbors wouldn't think someone was dying! He wouldn't stop no matter how I held, him rocked, him, burped him snuggled him. If I held him just right facing outward with pressure on his belly, he was okay, but dare I move him and he was back at it again.. Keena said he just does that and there isn't anything you can do but wait it out.. He’s gotten better, she said, but holy cow it was unnerving! I had to feed my three children and cooking while holding him outward was just not going to work, so I finally put him in the swing and let him scream it out till he fell asleep.. It took about 4-5 minutes.. (Which felt more like 20 because he was breaking my heart).. I was so relieved when he was sleeping contently.
So in that 3 hour time period between 5-8 I managed to cook dinner, serve dinner, eat my own dinner, clean up dinner, feed chandler a bottle, burp him, notice that my fridge was a mess, clean it out, including scrubbing the nasty shelves, take all the dirty clothes down to the laundry room where I quickly did a load of laundry, folded the clothes out of the drier, watched Ali do her gymnastic routine TWICE, listened to her tell me about the fire drill the school bus had in front of our house today (where Porter acted like a clown in front of her) 6 times, changed two poopie diapers, gave chandler a bath , put him in darling outfit from Mattie's bin, took cute pictures of him, carried him around screaming for 20 minutes, baked cookies, yes I baked cookies! (Two different kinds thank you) checked the girls backpacks, signed planners, helped them do homework, kept a watchful eye on Mattie, got him two sippy cups of water, AND cleaned off the chunk pile on my table…!So I guess what I’m saying is.......................I could totally handle another one......
And no, this is not an announcement.. As Ali would say….. “ What? I’m just saying…”

Bedtime

Megan came home with a note from her teacher today saying that she'd had a "bad day". It said "too much talking, and messing around in the bathroom". Her teacher wrote "lets have a great day tomorrow".
I really hope this is the last of its kind sent home....... I really do.

Playing in photo shop..

Before.............After............

Day in the life of a two year old

Mattie Turned two today. He started his morning with a gift from his thoughtful sister Megan. A flower. He held it for a good twenty minutes after she gave it to him. He must of known how special it was.

After getting the girls off to school, he spent a fun day with Daddy playing outside and enjoying the Sunshine.
When I got home, Taylor left for UPS and the girls were with their dad,, so Mattie and I decided to take a trip to the store for a treat.
We stopped to enjoy our shadows for a few minutes.. He’s getting so big..

We will be having cake this Friday when all the family can come but I felt bad that he wasn’t getting the chance to eat cake on his birthday, so I thought perhaps I’d buy him a cupcake and let him enjoy that. However the cupcakes didn’t appeal to him so we strolled on.. That’s when he saw the Donuts. He kept pointing at them saying “dat one, dat one” where I would point to one and say “this one?” to which he would answer frustratingly “no, DAT one!”. After 3-4 tries at this I finally got him out of the cart and let him show me. He immediately chose the one with sprinkles of course, how could I have not gotten that? He said “ Spinkles, Yes, Spinkles” then insisted LOUDLY that he hold it right away. It was his birthday after all, so I gave in. He picked each sprinkle off and ate them one at a time. When the sprinkles were gone, he discarded the uneaten donut into the back of the cart. I realized very quickly that I could have gotten away very easily with a bottle of rainbow sprinkles. I’m glad I had my camera in my purse. When we got home we had some dinner and he spent the rest of the evening doing his favorite things; playing outside , torturing the dog, getting filthy, taking a bath and watching “buzz, and buddy” a.k.a. Toy Story. By the time I laid him in bed, he was happy to sleep..

My Baby boy is TWO!

Mathew