Fun with the Kids…

Well I am happy to say, I am feeling much much better! Yay.

The kids and I didn’t do much this weekend. Just the usual, cleaning, running errands, going to church, crafting, sewing, cooking, etc. Nothing special. On Saturday morning I took the kids to get their annual flu shot. Owen was lucky enough to get the nasal spray so no poke for him, but unfortunately Autumn was too little for the nasal spray so she had to get an old fashioned prick in the leg. She actually did GREAT, not a single tear to report. She just kind of whimpered at the nurse. Well, since I knew her little leg would be sore we came home and the kids took a nice warm relaxing blue bubble bath. Owen loves to use his fun color drops to take different colored baths. So much fun.

You can’t really tell the water is blue in this pic, but you can see the wonderful bubble beards Owen and Autumn have. Lol.

Being Silly, their specialties!

Pretending to drink from the faucet. Check out how scrawny Autumn looks. She is such a skinny tiny little bitty girl. I try super hard to fatten her up, but she is so active I think she burns every single calorie she consumes!!!

 

My little warm clean cutie pies! I love bath time!

Later that day we were bored and the weather was really nice, so the kids and I decided to go on a nice long walk around the neighborhood.

The weather has been really warm lately. So much for the cold front we got a couple weeks ago. The high on Saturday was 81 degrees! Are you kidding me??? Its October. I am so ready for cool weather, as in 50’s and 60’s!

We have also started back up Owen’s behavior reward board. He has been doing really well with it. When he starts acting up we just have to remind him that he is not going to get a star for the day and he usually straitens right up. The biggest behavior struggle right now is whining. Slowly but surely we are working on it. Anyway, this week he got enough stars to get his reward. The reward for the week was a trip to the $ store. His favorite store ever! I took him after church on Sunday and he got to choose whatever he wanted. He chose a Bible Story 24 Piece Puzzle. The kid is obsessed with puzzles…

 

He put this thing together in a matter of minutes. He was so excited to get a puzzle about Daniel in the Lion’s Den and told me the story over and over all day. He kept saying, “Mommy, Daniel wasn’t even scared in the Lion’s Den because God was with him the whole time!” It melts my heart to hear him repeat Bible Stories to me. What a sweet boy. I am sure God is smiling down on him every time he hears him tell stories out of the Bible!

This morning was so beautiful out so I decided to go explore and take the kids to a new park. I know, we are park obsessed. It is free entertainment and the kids get exercise out of it so what’s not to love? What a nice cool, fun morning. Too bad the high is 79 today. O well we soaked up the cool weather this morning.

Here are my two cheese balls. I know it looks like Owen is strangling her, but he is really just giving her a hug. I promise!

They really are Best Friends and LOVE playing together….most of the time anyway. They are still Brother and Sister so the fights do break out every now and again.

Climbing, climbing, and more climbing.

Down the super big twisty slide! His favorite.

Little Cutie!

Did I mention she is RUNNING now. So much for walking. This girl runs everywhere! Hints why she is so skinny!

This is a terrible picture, as in very very blurry. I wanted to post it just because it melts my heart to see them play together. My Heart Is So Very Full!!!!!

Our Weekend Recap…A little this & A little that!

From my lack of blogging, as in I haven’t been blogging every other day like I have been lately, I am sure you have guessed we have been busy. You pretty much guessed right, well kind of. It is partly because of that and partly because I wound up with a kidney infection. Yuck. No fun at all. Let’s just say Tuesday was a no good very bad day. Here is a long story for you all, feel free to skip right over this because it is reeeaaallllyyyy long;

A not so fun Tuesday:

I mainly want to share this story because sometimes I feel like blogs tend to glorify the good parts of our lives and then it seems like we have wonderful perfect children and life is a piece of cake. Well, the reality is that life is a continuous struggle and in this house we are having to continually rely on God for the strength to get through the day to day. Don’t get me wrong though, I love this life God has given me and would not change a thing, especially the wonderful children he has blessed into my care. Okay. Tuesday morning started off good other than me felling pretty yucky. Took Owen to school, ran some errands, took Brandon some lunch all the usual normal stuff. Well, I really needed gas so I decided to pack Autumn up a little early to go get Owen from school so we could swing by Costco and get some gas. I put Autumn in her car seat, buckled her all in and then the bad day started. She gave me a kind of strange look and then started vomiting EVERYWHERE!!!!! All over me, all over herself, all over her car seat and all over my car! Needless to say, at this point I was not going to have time to go get gas. I ran inside to call Owen’s school because I was obviously going to be late picking him up. Thankfully I had another car seat for Autumn so I could just switch them out. I cleaned us off as much as possible outside and then ran in to clean us up and change both of us. I attempted to clean out the car as much as possible and put in Autumn’s other car seat. Everything else I just threw in the garage to deal with later. We made it to Owen’s school about 15 minutes late with the gas light blinking a bright red light at me the whole way there and back. Got the kids home, fed them lunch and got them down for their naps. Late of course. Once they were down, I headed out to do some serious cleaning up. At this point, my entire garage REEKED of vomit. I still have the smell engrained in my nose. So so so nasty. I had to completely take the car seat apart to clean every single inch of it. Not fun. My mom showed up half way through and by this point I was literally in tears, remember I am feeling sick this whole time myself. After about a good hour of clean up I had to run out the door for my doctors appointment, which is why my mom was over in the first place to babysit while I went. I had to take her car because I still needed gas so bad and knew I couldn’t make it there on time if I had to stop for gas.  I get to the doctor and find out I have a rather bad kidney infection. Ugh. Guess that explains the nausea and terrible back pain I have had for the last week or so. The day just kept going downhill from there. I ended up having to have Brandon come home early from work because I was in so much pain, and the meds they gave me were making me sick to my tummy, really sleepy, and dizzy. Brandon got home about 5pm and I headed upstairs to lay down. He was so sweet and took the kids out so I could have some peace and quite to rest. I ended up going to bed at like 8:30pm and slept solid until about 8 am the next morning. It was one yucky terrible day. On a good note, Autumn is not sick and I really have no clue why she threw up but she has been fine every since that one time. Strange but I am so thankful she is not sick.

First trip to the Movie Theater:

So that is my long story of my no good Tuesday. Thankfully the kids are all good and I am on the road to recovery although the meds I am on for my kidney infection are still making me sick and I still have 5 more day of taking them. Not fun. Anyway, back to our weekend. By Thursday I was feeling okay, which was good since we had a special outing planned for Owen. We had our wonderful sitter McKenzie come over to watch Autumn and Brandon and I decided to take Owen to his first movie in the theater. We took him to the dollar theater to go watch Cars 2.

Here he is on the way to the movies. I can not express how nice it is to have special one on one time with each kid. Owen was beyond excited to have Mommy and Daddy all to himself for an afternoon.

Owen brought along his Lightning McQueen car to watch the movie with him. We also let him choose a few snacks to bring since we are both way too cheap to buy food at the theater. Brandon made him some Black Cherry Kool-Aid for him to take and he was so stoked! For snacks he chose Popcorn (Yes, we popped our own bag at home and stuffed it in my giant purse. Call us cheap, we don’t care), Pretzels and Gummy Life Savers.

Owen had a blast on his first trip to the theater. We were a little nervous as he is a 3 year old boy on the go and we were unsure if he would sit through it, but he really did good. After the first hour he got a bit fidgety but I think that is expected from a toddler. We are so proud of our sweet boy and can not believe how fast he is growing up. He said his favorite part of the movie was, “when the cars raced really really fast!” He LOVES Lightning McQueen!

Family Fun Lunch:

Friday we decided to take the kids out to lunch to our favorite kid friendly place…Chick-fil-a! The kids LOVE it there as do Brandon and I . Between the food, the play area and most importantly the nice Christian atmosphere and music it is a sure winner for all of us. This was the first time we really let Autumn loose to play there and she had so so much fun.

Eating…

and playing!

A Yummy Dinner:

And my pinterest obsession lives on! I have basically been making all my dinners lately from recipes I find on Pinterest. Let’s just say my husband is loving all this new delicious food I have been cooking up. However, I did make one dinner that was terrible, as in barely edible. O well, I still have fun trying new things. Anyway, I came across this one called Roasted Asparagus Penne in Balsamic Butter. Sounds delish right? Well, before I make any new recipe I always read the reviews. Unfortunately, this one did not get very good reviews. But it just sounded too good not to try so I took my chances and made it anyway. Glad I did because it was AMAZING! Amazing as in my husband had almost 3 full servings! I can see how if you don’t like Balsamic Vinegar you may not like it, but really, why would you try it if you don’t like one of the main ingredients. Anyway, it is defiantly going to be made again and again in our house.

The recipe did not call for meat, but I wanted to make it a nice hearty meal so I roasted some chicken breasts when I was roasting the Asparagus.

This was so easy to make. Roast the Asparagus, and Chicken if you want meat. Cook your Penne…

Mix the Asparagus and Penne with some fresh Parmesan Cheese, Balsamic Vinegar, Brown Sugar, and Butter! That is seriously it. So simple and o my goodness, so delicious!

Top the pasta with some shredded roasted chicken and a side of garlic parmesan bread and there is dinner. If you’re a balsamic fan, you must try this recipe! I knew my kids wouldn’t like the flavor of the balsamic so they ate roasted chicken, peas and grapes. Owen’s chose his dinner that night.

He likes to take silly pictures now. This is how he wanted to pose for his “silly” picture. Weirdo!

Autumn refuses to sit down to eat! She insists on standing up in her high chair. I don’t care how tight I strap her in it, she ALWAYS finds a way out. She is such a stinker.

The Terrible Two’s:

So pediatricians say that kids can go through their “Terrible Two’s” anytime during their second year of life. Autumn is definitely in her second year of life and she has defiantly started her “terrible two’s”! Well, she was having a major temper tantrum melt down the other day while Owen was at school. We couldn’t quite calm her down and she was being so mean so we decided to try her first ever time out. Warning this is pretty mean of me to take a picture during this time out, but I really wanted this as a memory of the “not so good” moments of parenting. Also, I ‘d like to show her this later in her life when her kids are doing this to her. Haha…

Here she is in the Time Out chair facing the wall. It started off okay until she realized she couldn’t get up when she wanted to…

Pitiful, I know. It reminds me of a little boy I used to know….

Here is Owen in his first time out a couple years ago. I am not looking forward to these days again. Haha.

Have a great weekend!

Nothin’ Much…

…that is exactly what has been going on with us. I really have nothing to blog about simply because not much has been going on with us. Just the same ole stuff. Since I feel as if I can not go another second with out blogging about something, I am simply going to blog about nothing. Make Sense? Anywhere here is the randomness of our week…

Naps have stunk lately. Why? Well, I have a 3 year old who thinks naps are for babies and a 1 year old who is miserable from teething. As you can tell, after they simply can’t make it another second without a little nap, they crash wherever they are. They are so so precious when they are asleep.

This little boy, oops correction this BIG boy, as he is always quick to correct me is still LOVING school. I really hope this continues through college. Big hopes I know. He especially loves school on the 1 day a month that he gets to bring snack for the class. Why? Well because on his snack day he gets to be the teachers special helper. Meaning he gets to be the line leader, he gets to do the calendar and he gets to pass out snack to the class. He just loves being the star for the day. He kept referring to himself as “snack boy” all day on Thursday. Sounds like a new super hero huh?

I let him choose what to take for snack. This month he decided on cups of Honey Nut Cheerios & Raisins, Yogurt Squeezers, and Grape Juice Boxes. All his favorite things.

On Saturday it was my day to have my beautiful niece. I really needed to run to Target for a few items so the insanity kicked in and I packed up all three kids and headed to the store. They were wonderfully behaved, minus my crazy Houdini Daughter who can escape the shopping cart no matter how tight I strap her in it, and allowed me to make it in and out of the store in less than 20 min and without pulling out any of my hair. I just love these kids so much!

Just want to brag on my niece real quick because she is just so stinkin’ adorable! Look at her beautiful smile. I love being an Auntie, especially her auntie!

These two little girls are really starting to become best buds. They had so much fun being around each other yesterday playing side by side. Autumn loves to bring piles of toys over for Abi to play with. They especially loved playing in the tent together.

Little cutie pies. Have to brag on Owen too, he helps me so much with both the girls on our crazy Saturdays.

And life with these two is continually an adventure. They fight, they love and they play. Their relationship with one another has really bloomed over the past month. They are just like most brother and sisters. One minute they love each other and play so well together and then the next minute they are fighting and driving each other crazy.

And these two pictures sums up their individual personalities. There is Owen who is Wild, Crazy, Rambunctious, and Silly; and there is Autumn who is Sweet, Sneaky, and very Mischievous. If you can’t tell, she stole this pen from Daddy’s pocket and is trying to run away from him as fast as she can so he can’t take it away from her. In other words, Owen loves to make you physically exhausted and make you laugh; and Autumn loves to make you mentally exhausted and make you smile at her cuteness.

Have a great week and I applaud those of you who stuck it out and finished reading my blog about nothing!