Mom of Boys

We had a pretty good Easter Sunday!  The kids woke up and got their Easter baskets and then we all crept downstairs to find some plastic Easter eggs that were filled with bunny marshmallows, stickers, bouncy balls and fruit snacks.  We ate breakfast and waited for MIL and BIL’s to get here so that we could do another Easter egg hunt (with dyed eggs) outside.  She brought the chocolate that made Alec go crazy for cocoa puffs.  After making some deviled eggs, we headed over to my moms where we had yet another Easter egg hunt, only this time the eggs were filled with money.  We had a wonderful dinner and my mom gave me MY Easter basket!  2 dozen chocolate covered strawberries that were arranged in a bouquet.  “The older you get, the better your Easter Basket gets too!” is what she said.  YUM!

Thank you Mom!  BB loved finding all of the eggs!  Bean could care less really, he just liked walking around and have everyone follow or chase him. 

On a side note… I got my portable EEG today.  They glued these things to my head, and they burned!!!  and now I have to carry them around until Wednesday night which is fine I guess except that it hasn’t been 6 hours yet and it’s itchy and heavy and annoying…  In the back of my mind I just think this is silly like they wont find any seizures.  Marcus thinks the same thing of course.  If I have to wait another 3 weeks for the results of this test I’m just going to say forget about it… I’ll live with the dizziness.  After all I’ve lived with it for 16 years now, right? 

I’m going to eat a chocolate covered strawberry now…. I wonder if the doctor will be able to tell how happy I am while eating it! 

Bean woke up today not knowing that it was Valentines Day.  I just havn’t really talked to him much about it I guess.  He knew that we were baking cupcakes for the party and he knew that his friends would be here to play, but we have been inviting our playgroup over more and more…   So, before the party, I told Caleb that we were going to make Daddy a card for Valentines.  Caleb did pretty good with his writting and the placement of his stickers.  He wrote “Happy Valentine” on the front and on the inside he wrote, “To Daddy, Love Caleb”  It was sweet!  Then his friends came over and we had a great party!  I love hosting and having people come over.  The boys love it too!  I can see the change in lil’ bean when his playmates are here!  He loves to show off and share his toys. 

As the guests were all leaving and Beans best friend M and her brother were getting ready to leave too.  They hugged and kissed and Bean said, “Happy Valentines!” as she was putting on her coat.  She ran over to him to hug him again and almost knocked him down.  It was sweet.  Later he comes to me and says, “Mom, you forgot to give me my Valentine Kisses!”  He loves hugs and kisses, so any excuse to get more!  I love that kid! 

So, this year for Christmas I basically decided that I was NOT going to host a big hoo ha since it usualy takes a lot out of me AND I did Thanksgiving.  However, we still ended up having people over at our house since everyone wanted to see the kids.  I picked my grandmother up on Friday and she spent the week with us.  Christmas is usually a hard time for our family since my aunt died Christmas morning several years ago and it’s also another year without my uncle Eddie and it’s the first year that we are celebrating without my sister since she converted.  I tried my best to keep her spirits up about it which backfired on me, because I could barely keep mine up!  But my boys made it all better for everyone! 

Christmas Eve afternoon, we went to my moms house for lunch and gifts.  My brothers and I went in on a new digital camera for my mom, so that was a big deal…  My mom got me a sound machine, which I have wanted since Caleb was born!  Marcus got a book called Weird Virginia which he thought was pretty cool and the boys got all sorts of books and toys.  From my moms, we went to Marcus’s moms house for dinner and we had agreed on not exchanging gifts, but the boys of course got a whole new wardrobe from Oma! 

Later we went to sing Christmas Carols in Leesburg, which wasn’t as fun as I had thought it would be…  We got home and set out the milk and cookies for Santa and then the boys went to bed.  I drove out to pick up my youngest sister (because my dad came down with something last minute) and then got home to get Santa’s things in place.  This is what our basement looked like after I got done:

Instead of gifts for everyone who came over Christmas morning, I just bought stockings for them and filled them up with all sorts of treats.  We went to bed pretty late and the boys were up extra early to see what Santa had brought!  Caleb was super excited and Alec…  well Alec had no clue what was going on.  We noticed right away that Alec’s favorite gifts were the wooden peg puzzles.  He didn’t care much about anything else.  Caleb got a lot of things Avatar and loved it all!  He also loved his spiderman action figures, that you can see in the tree in the picture above.  He didn’t see them at first, so after opening all of his gifts, he thought Santa forgot about the only thing he asked for!  Until we pointed it out!  He screamed with delight!

As for me and Marcus… I got Marcus a special edition version of Halo for his xbox 360.  It comes with the helmet that they wear in the game.  I also got him a Garland GPS and a massage pillow thing.  Marcus got me a bunch of things for my camera, including a camera gaurd, backdrop and flash.  He also got me a Redskins football that would have been signed by the team except the whole Sean Taylor thing happened…  And he got me a sandwhich maker, an MP3 player and a Redskins shirt. 

We packed up the tree early this year and put everything away pretty quick.  The only thing left that’s still out is the garland and the lights outside.  I suppose I should get those down soon… Last year I left them up a little long…  I think marcus finally took them down in May?  Ha ha!  Ah well!

Last night I hosted a Christmas Cookie Exchange with some girls from my play group.  We had a lot of fun and we got to taste a bunch of different cookies!  I made Gingerbread Men and Snickerdoodle cookies.  I made the dough for the Gingerbread the night before since it needed to be in the fridge and since I didn’t have to bake anything yet… (and didn’t taste any…)  I just felt like I just needed to make some other cookies! 

So everyone got here and we played a little game.  I had them all take the number of Ingredients, the number of kids they had, the amount of time they had to bake and add that up.  Then I had them add 5 points if they worked part time, 10 points if they worked full time and 5 minutes if they had to refridgerate the dough.  The winner was a girl who made lemon bars, which… to me were WAY too sweet!  They were good, I just couldn’t eat a whole one! 

There were also sugar cookies, chewy coconut cookies (YUUUUMMM!) and some Buttermilk Cookies that were so soft and melted in my mouth!  I forgot to grab a copy of that recipe, but I will have to get it!  Anyways, we have a few more then that but these were my favorite.  I happened to get left with MORE then my share of cookies, which is ok for the cookies that I’ve already eaten tons of!  I do have a whole plate full of those lemon bars though.  Ack!

We just got back from our trip from New Jersey, where we were visiting with some friends.  The trip up went well.  We left around 1:00 right after eating lunch.  Marcus had to work, so I drove while he was working remotely from the car.  As we got into New Jersey, we realized that they had snow on the ground.  We expected it, which is why we took the jeep, but it’s still amazing how 6 hours difference can change the weather conditions.  So, we got there and we ate some yummy chicken quesadilla’s!  It took no time at all for Bean to hit it off with their boys and they were off playing together for the rest of the night.  Later, after the kids were in bed, Kolby and I stayed up and chatted over a cup of hot tea.

Saturday, we got up with the boys and had a nice breakfast.  The boys were crazy excited because they all knew that we were planning on going to the Polar Express later that night.  We were scheduled to get on the 6:00 train, so we were trying to figure out when we should leave to get there and eat dinner before getting on the train.  We found a place called the Ladybug Café, that was temporarily the North Pole Café that was located right across the street from the station.  So, we made our reservations for 4:30 so that we would have plenty of time to eat and get our seats.  We took the big boy beans out to play in the snow for a bit, and then went in for lunch.  After eating, Kolby and I took a nap with the little beans, while Rick and Marcus looked after the big boy beans. 

After our nap, we dressed the boys in their pajamas and their robes and we packed everyone up in the car.  Big boy beans were in the jeep with Marcus and I, which little beans rode with Rick and Kolby.  We got there a little later then we had planned, but we were able to finish up our food and get to the station to get our GOLDEN TICKETS, which bean had been asking me for all week!  We got on and found some seats that were all together… They played music from the movie and passed out cookies and hot chocolate.  Santa came thru with his elves and gave out bells to all of the kids.  The boys had a BLAST and were jumping and climbing all over the seats.  By the end of the night we were all ready to get home and climb into bed.

When we got the boys home and into their beds, Kolby and I listened outside the door while they talked about Santa and God and how they were going to miss each other… Aww…  It was so sweet!  When they fell asleep, we stayed up and chatted some more over our tea and watched MORE snow coming down!  Anyways, I had a great time!  We were sad to leave in the morning.  The weekend just went by too quickly.  It continued to snow as we made our way down the mountain and we made at least 4 U-turns to get ourselves on the road that we needed to be on because they had closed off the exit ramp that we needed to take because of a car pileup.  (Thank goodness we had that jeep!)  Now we are home and Caleb keeps talking about his *NEW* best friend!  We’ll have to plan to see them again sometime!

 

It’s Tuesday, so it’s taken me forever to blog about my Thanksgiving and black Friday.  I’m still trying to catch up on sleep from the weekend, and I think I can finally start to feel my feet again!  We got back from New York late Sunday night.  It was close to a 10 hour drive back!  Traffic was just crazy!  Saturday we walked over 250 blocks, which I think Marcus said was about 14 miles.  I almost didn’t make it back to the apartment, my legs and feet hurt so bad!  Next time, we take a cab back! 

The day before that,(Friday) I think I got a few hours of sleep before driving up to NYC.  Crystal blogged about our black friday experience, so I wont re-write what she wrote.  What she didn’t put, was that by the time the manager let a hand full of us in early, I had to pee so bad, that I knew before he opened the door that I may not make it to the camera without peeing in my pants!  So… the doors opened and only me, Crystal and a few guys behind us were let in.  I’d say we had a good 2 minute head start on the rest of the crowd.  We were all headed to the back middle of the store towards electronics.  Mostly everyone took the path that went straight there, but since I was skipping and trying to keep up without wetting myself, I cut thru the shoe section which probably delayed me more then saved me time.  I heard Crystal yell out, “Robyn, where’d you go!”  Which made me laugh a little… laughing is not my friend when I have to pee….  And then there was a guy who also cut thru a section in the store who yelled out, “AHHHH!!!  I’m LOST!!!  Where am I!?!?!?”  Now, THAT was hialrious!!!!  I stopped for a second to make sure that I could make it to the camera or if I should go back tot he bathrooms.  Of course I kept going to the camera!  I wasn’t about to loose out on getting the 1 thing I stood in line for 7 hours for!  Anyways, I made it to the bathroom just in time!  I swear ever since having kids, I can’t hold my bladder like I used to!

And then before THAT, we hosted a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with several family and friends!  20 people showed up and I think at 1 point most of those 20 people were sitting somewhere in my living room and kitchen!  There were people on the couch, floor, in chairs that were randomly placed in the room, on the stairs, and at the train table.  The kids sat at the kitchen table.  Not the Thanksgiving that I am used to, but it was nice to have everyone together!  We’re still eating Turkey over here… Although tonight we decided last minute to just get out.  We found a pizza place, so we walked in and ordered… OMG, the bill (for pizza) was close to $50!!!  We wont be eating there again anytime soon!

About a week ago, I walked from my moms house, to the 7-11 across the road.  Caleb of course wanted to walk with me, so I let him.  We were there to get some drinks to go along with dinner.  We were standing in line when Caleb looks up to me and says, “Mommy is that Christmas?”  I look at him and hes looking right up at me for an answer so I had no clue what he was talking about, but there are Christmas decorations everywhere, so I said, “yes!”  Well we get up to the counter and the teller was an older man who did not know much English.  (I think Indian…)  He had white hair with a long white beard.  I didn’t realize it right away, but Caleb looked at him and asked, “Your Christmas?”  He just smiled since he didn’t understand…  I laughed a little because now I understood that he was trying to ask me if the man was Santa.  I paid for my things and grabbed Caleb’s hand.  As we walked out the front door Caleb turns and waves to the man saying, “Bye Christmas!”  I told everyone about it!  It was the cutest thing!  I’m noticing lately that he has no problem talking to strangers… In this store for instance, he had no problem confronting the old man. 

Well, today we picked up our Christmas tree.  We got to the lot of trees and a young guy came out to tell us how they were priced.  When he was done, Caleb says to the guy, “What are you talking about?  I don’t understand what you just say!”  The guy laughed and said, “Well your parents understand…”  Caleb wanted to continue talking to the guy, but we moved away…  I guess it’s time to have the stranger talk! 

Alec is starting to hold his head up more.  He still wakes up 2-3 times a night and I am sleeping on his bedroom floor so that he can sleep in his crib.  I would have him in our room, but Marcus is a light sleeper and wakes up with every sound he makes… I need to get an air mattress or something because my back is killing me.  Maybe after Christmas I can pick something up.  Speaking of which, I should be off to sleep here soon.  Caleb wakes up every morning with the sun, and will NOT let me sleep in.  “It’s wake up time,” he says…  Sometimes it’s just too early for him to be cute!