Shared Traditions

For Christmas my parents got us a Coffee maker that uses the K-cups to brew coffee, tea or hot chocolate. We LOVE it. I drink tea all the time now because its quick and easy, I don't have to take the time to heat the water and brew the tea. I just pop the tea cup in the machine, select the size I want and wait a couple seconds. Voila! When I was a little girl, I remember sharing a cup of tea with my Dad on the weekends. I'd get up and he'd be sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea and reading the paper. We'd hang out and I'd drink most of his tea. Now that I've started drinking tea regularly, I have my own little munchkin who sits on my lap and shares my tea. It makes me really happy when Nick spots a mug and gets all excited. "Sip! Tea!" he says, jumping up and down. Then we sit together and finish the whole cup. If I take 2 sips in a row he says "NO!" and opens his mouth wide to show me I skipped his turn. It reminds me of all those cups of tea I shared with my Dad. I'm so glad I could pass along the tradition. Maybe someday he'll share his cup of tea with his own munchkin and remember drinking tea with me.

Safe Places

I have a baby shower to go to next weekend. I think. I had the invitation. I left it right on the dining room table. Then Tim cleaned up. He remembers seeing the invitation. In fact, he remembers putting it in a "safe place" because he knew I needed it. Problem is, he can't remember where that "safe place" is and, for the life of me, I haven't been able to find it either. This isn't the first time this has happened in our house. When I was pregnant with Collin I got a sonogram and put the pictures in a "safe place" so I wouldn't lose them. Needless to say, I still can't find them. Maybe if I find my invitation I'll find my sonogram pictures too. That "safe place" is a treasure trove of stuff I'd love to find again. Does this ever happen to anyone else or am I just completely scatterbrained?

Snow Pictures

Today we had our first real snowfall of the season. I HATE winter! But as I watched Nick staring in amazement at the snow coming down this morning, I almost liked it. Had this been a Saturday I might have actually enjoyed it. However, it was 6:05 and I still had to get Nick in his car seat and drop the boys off at daycare before going to work, I didn't have time to let him admire the snow too much. This afternoon however, I left work a little early, picked the boys up and let them play in the snow. They loved it! They had such a good time trying to make snow balls and snow angels. Here's a couple of pictures. This is the picture I took the other day of Collin giving Nick a hug.
Collin was trying to make his own snowballs.
Nick finally sat down to play in the snow.
Here's both of my boys hanging out in the snow.
Collin is making his first snow angel.

Brotherly Love

Collin slept until 8am this morning! That, I can assure you, is nothing short of a miracle. He came in and got me and asked me to meet him downstairs. Before I could get my butt out of bed I heard him in Nick's room. "Nicholas....Nicholas...Wake up Nick. It's time to play!" Of course Nick woke up and wanted to go play so we all went downstairs and had some breakfast and then the boys spent the morning playing together until it was time to get ready for church. I love to watch them interact when they play nicely together. They share very well most of the time. Sometimes one of them will tackle the other and just when I think its going to begin a battle, the other will giggle and tackle his brother back. Its one of my greatest joys watching them become friends and seeing how much they care about one another. I took a really sweet picture of Collin hugging Nick today. Nick is smiling and looking at the camera but Collin has his arms around him and you can just see in his face how much he loves his brother. I hope they'll always be such good friends.

Mr. Clean II

Last night before I went to bed I straightened up the living room by putting all of the boys toys back where they belong. This morning I heard Collin exclaim "All Right! I don't have to clean this morning!"

Mr. Clean

Thursday morning before I left for work, I looked around the house and had a minor melt down. Since all three of my guys were sitting there I informed them that before we did anything on Saturday, we were cleaning the house. Then I added "Collin and Nichols, there are things you can do to help and you will be expected to do it before you can do anything fun." Friday night I was making a grocery list and said to Collin "Do you know what we have to do tomorrow?" I was going to ask him to come grocery shopping with me. To my surprise he said "I know, I know, we have to clean the house" in a totally exasperated tone that clearly said, I get it, quit nagging me Mom. Saturday morning Collin woke Tim and I up at 7 a.m. by saying, "Come downstairs, I have to show you something." Tim got up and went downstairs and sure enough, Collin had picked up all his toys in the living room. It looked beautiful. Who knows what time he had gotten up to do that. We were so proud of him. Needless to say, he got to play the wii that day.

Video Games

Since we got the wii, Collin has loved playing it. It's fun and there are plenty of games that he is more than capable of playing very well. However, I'm learning that there are some drawbacks to the wii, or video games in general for that matter. He is obsessed with Mario Kart. When he wakes up in the morning the first thing he asks is if he can play it. On the way home, he talks about which character and car he wants to race with. If you turn it off, he freaks out. I let him play for a half hour today when we got home while I fixed dinner. Then I said it was time to turn it off and play with his toys, watch a movie, whatever as long as it didn't involve a video game and he flipped. He screamed, cried, threw things and hit me. I dumped him right in time out because he was out of control. I told him he could stay there until his father got home in 20 minutes but, although he was upset and cried and promised he'd be good, he never left his room and he got himself under control again so I let him out after 10 minutes. I think 20 minutes would have been too long. He's still little after all. I'm limiting his time to 30 minutes a day and less if he complains about it. He's not allowed to play tomorrow at all because of his outburst today. I want to teach him a couple of lessons. 1. There will always be someone who is better than you and you will not always be the winner. You have to lose gracefully. 2. There is way more to life than video games. The winter is hard because it's cold outside and it gets dark early so we don't get much of an opportunity to play outdoors. Indoors, I'd rather he play the wii than sit on his butt watching tv but I still don't want him to do it for hours at a time. Wish me luck on this one because its going to be an uphill battle.

Finally Finished

Last January we took a trip to Disney World. When we got back I made my parents a beautiful scrapbook on the computer and had it printed. Then I set to work on my scrapbook. It took 3 scrapbooking weekends with the girls but it is finally completed. I am pretty proud of it. Most of the pages turned out really great. Having said that, it took a lot of time and probably money too. I haven't figured out exactly how much it cost to do the album, but between materials and the money spent on weekends with the girls (which is money well spent) it was way more than what I spent on my parents album, which was equally great, just different. I think this year, I will scrapbook most of my stuff on the computer as each event happens. MyPublisher (get the software through Costco) is a great program. It's easy to use and doesn't take much time at all. Especially if there is only a few photos at a time. Snapfish also does this sort of thing. I'm still going to scrap some stuff the way I've always done because I really enjoy my weekends away with the girls, but I'm going to try to do more of the computer stuff. Maybe that way I'll be able to stay more current. The next time I go away (and don't worry Tim, I don't have any plans for another weekend any time soon) I'm going to be working on Nick's baby album. When I left off he was 6 months old. I'm a whole year behind already!

Frustrated

Since a toy bomb exploded in our house over Christmas we thought we'd start the new year off by organizing some of those toys. We went shopping at Ikea and bought a great shelf(we're turning it on its side), and a bookshelf and dvd rack too. We began putting the bookshelf together before putting the boys to bed. Bad idea. They both wanted to help. Tim had it all put together he just needed to put the last side on when Nick climbed on the exposed shelf and we heard a loud crack. He'd snapped the dowels that were holding it together in half. Tim went out to Home Depot and Lowe's to get new dowels but since it's new year's day they seemed to have closed early. Which, if you ask me is stupid. The holiday was last night so why not open late and give your employees a chance to sleep in rather than close early. Needless to say, I now have a shelf in my living room that is half put together and the toy bomb explosion has not been cleaned up yet. In addition to that, we took the tree down and were in the process of putting all the ornaments away so they are also still out in my living room. Please God, let the cleaning fairies come tonight while I'm asleep.