My Little Trick-or-Treaters

Bekah -Bug's 1st Halloween (we didn't take her out last year as she was only 4 weeks old!)

Caitie the bride!

And last but not least...Ashy the Ballerina Princess!

27 and Counting....Backwards from Now On!

Well, today I turned 27. I decided that I am now qualified to start counting birthdays backwards from now on. So next year..I get to be 26 again! What? What do you mean it doesn't work that way!?!? It HAS to!!! LOL

Went out to lunch w/ my Mom and Sister. They bought me some nice tennis clothes for my b'day present. YEA!!! I don't have to freeze my rear off when I play my last Fall League match next Wed. night!

Going to call it a night early tonight though, I think. Hubby and I have to go to kindergarten with our oldest daughter tomorrow to watch the Costume Parade and help out with the Fall Festival/Halloween Party games. We'll get home just in time to eat lunch, let the girls take a nap, and get ready to take a bride, a ballerina, and a ladybug trick-or-treating! I'll try to post some pics as soon as the replacement USB cable for my camera comes in!!!

Baby Bug Turns ONE!

Well, Wednesday my youngest daughter turned one! It was both a happy and sad time. I can't believe my baby is a year old already! So sad to think that she might be the last baby and she's already growing up too fast. She had a great time though, opening her presents (with her big sisters' help of course) and eating her first birthday cake! (I'm hoping she will save THAT diaper for her Daddy! LOL).

Playing with her new doll!

Bekah's 1st B'day Cake...made by yours truly!

Yummy!

School Pic

Thought I would drop in for a moment and share my oldest baby's school picture. We just got these back today and I am so happy! I love them!

I'm Still Alive

OMG, I cannot believe that I have not made a blog entry here since May. Especially since I am frequently online...off and on. I can usually be found hanging out over at www.paperbackswap.com though. Even when I'm not hunting for books, I'm there playing the games, participating in swaps, and chatting in the chat rooms. So much has happenend in the last few months that it will take me several entries to get caught up. My summer babies had their birthdays, we went to the beach, my oldest started 5-yearl-old Kindergarten, and there was a goat...yes you read that right.... a GOAT in my kitchen. LOL Give me a chance to get things organized in my head, and I will start trying to update. Hope all my blogger buddies are doing well. I know I have a lot to catch up on in your lives too! :)

Coming Out of the Closet... LOL

Yep, it's that time again. YARD SALE time. So for the past week I have been methodically moving from room to room in my house going through dresser drawers, digging under beds, and bulldozing through closets removed the old, unwanted, and outgrown items that seem to multiply when no one is looking. We have only been in this house a year (next month to be precise) and I cannot believe how much junk we have managed to accumulate! Where did it all come from? I have finished my oldest daughter's room and have battled about 95% of the way through the middle daughters room. Already I have removed 5 large black trash bags full of outgrown clothes, and three garbage bags full of toys! My kids are growing faster than I can keep up with them! The baby is 8 months old now and really starting to get into her baby food and toys! In fact, she has outgrown her infant car seat. So I'm hoping that I will make enough money from the yard sale to buy her a new carseat and a high chair. I'm getting tired off feeding her on my lap. Strawberries and bananas is suprisingly difficult to remove from MY hair! I just hope it has some kind of conditioning benefits! LOL

Family Funnies - part 1

(Caitlyn – age 4 & Ashlyn – age 2)

“The Imaginary Bicycle”
One morning I was sitting at my computer desk in the den when I heard an awful commotion in the hallway. “Girls!” I yelled. “What in the world is going on?” “Mommmmeeee” Caitlyn yelled. “Ashy stoled my imaginary bicycle and she won’t give it back!!!” I got up and looked, and sure enough, Ashlyn was riding an imaginary bicycle down the hall! “Well Caitie,” I said. “If it’s an imaginary bicycle, just imagine yourself another one!” “But Mommmeee…” came the reply. “I don’t want another bike..I want THAT one!”

“The Treadmill”
The girls and I had stopped at Nana and Papa’s house to visit on a Thursday that Chris was working security for the Nascar race in Talladega. Mom and Dad have several pieces of exercise equipment out in their sun room, and the girls like to play on it – especially the big workout ball and the mini trampoline. It was getting close to time for lunch, and Ashlyn was complaining about being hungry. I had already told the girls that we would stop at McDonald’s on the way home to get a Happy Meal. So when Caitie asked Nana what one of the pieces of exercise equipment was called, Nana said, “that’s a treadmill.” Ashlyn…who was sitting in Nana’s lap at the time, piped up and said “I don’t want a treadmill… I want a CHICKEN meal!”

“It’s Potty Time”
We were so excited when Ashlyn (soon to be 3 yrs old) finally decided that she was ready to use the “big girl potty.” She had made up her mind that she was done with diapers. One day while she was playing she jumped quickly to her feet and ran down the hall towards the kids’ bathroom, yelling “Move, I need to make a dirty!” Needless to say, we all quickly got out of her way. I headed towards the bathroom to provide assistance… when she suddenly stopped in her tracks, and headed back to her room. “Oh…wait a minute.” She said. She quickly returned to the bathroom with something in her hands. It was her Baby Animals board book, which she promptly laid on the back of the toilet before taking her seat.


“Where’s the Dog?”It was a quiet afternoon and the girls were lying on the floor in the den, coloring and drawing while I worked at my desk. Every once in a while, I glanced down to see the progress they had made on their pictures. Our oldest daughter (who is 4) had done a commendable job drawing a sun, clouds, some birds, a tree, a doghouse, grass, and what I thought to be a hole in the ground (maybe for a chipmunk or some such creature). When she finished her drawing, she came to show it to me. “Look at what I drew Mommy!” she said. I once again took note of her picture before replying “that’s great baby… but what happened to the dog?” “Oh!” she says. “He ran off…” Then, pointing to what I thought was a hole in the ground she continued… “but he left his poop behind!”

Busy, Busy Busy

Hey Guys and Gals,
No, I have not fallen off the face of the Earth, but face it folks... with three kids under 4 years old...I'm a busy little bee. (As blogging buddies Sydney and Ben certainly know.) My youngest is now 7 months old and well...she's not quite sleeping as much as she used to. She spends a good portion of her day awake now, and seems to be under the impression that Mommy's sole purpose in life is to provide her with entertainment. LOL She is at that difficult age where she needs to be stimulated, yet is not quite completely able to do it on her own. I hope that soon she will be able to sit up completely by herself. Right now, we can prop her up with pillows, etc. but's she's still a little too wobbly to maintain the position on her own, and she gets frustrated with lying around all the time. As a result of her demand on my time, other things have fallen by the wayside...housecleaning....laundry...blogging... Oh well. Maybe one day! :)

HAPPY EASTER!

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Easter! Here's a pic of my little bunnies! :)

Cheap Entertainment

Like most parents, I'm sure...I sure do get a kick out of my kids sometimes. I was trying to fix breakfast this morning, get my four year old dressed, and get things ready to take her to kindergarten when "Baby Bug" started crying. "Bugga bugga!" I shouted. "Go in there and talk to your sister until I can come get her!" So my two year old takes off down the hall to "rescue" her baby sister. Within a couple of minutes the crying stops. Within a few more...I hear gurgles and giggles. The baby is laughing her little butt off. I stop what I am doing and head down the hall to investigate this miraculous change in her temperment. Bugga Bugga is standing beside the baby bed tickling Baby Bug's feet and mumbling something. I listen closer and her my two -year old's modern rendition of "This Little Piggy":

This little piggy went to Walmart
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy ate peanut butter and jelly
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy went wee-wee in his britches...
All the way home.

No wonder Baby Bug was laughing so hard!!!

Home Again, Home Again...

We just returned home late Saturday night (around 10:30) from our trip to Texas this past week. We were gone for 8 days. It took us an excruciating 14 hours to reach our destination. Imagine a 14 hour trip with a 4-year old, a 2-year old, and a 6-month old. Sounds fun huh? Now imagine that the 4 year old was HORRIBLY carsick and threw up about ever 10-15 minutes for the last 8 hours of the trip. Exactly! It was miserable. We had to stop several times, to clean her up, to bum plastic sacks from a convenience store, to stip her naked along the side of the road and change her clothes. I can't even begin to describe how frustrated we were. We did have a quite enjoyable time once we got to Houston though. We visited several different places, looked up an old friend of my husbands and saw his new home, drove down to Galveston for an afternoon - visited Moody Gardens and then walked along the beach for a few minutes. We stayed with Alan's parents in their new home. (They moved about the same time we did this summer.) Their new house is lovely with lots of room. They even have a small coy pond in the backyard which my 4-year old got a kick out of "fishing" in. I took the opportunity to visit several stores out there that are not available to us at home. We took another day and turned it into an all out excursion of the Katy Mall. That thing is so big that it actually has about 15 different "neighborhoods" and you could spend an entire afternoon in each one. The day before we returned home, we took the girls to visit the local area's park. It too was huge. (I guess everything really IS bigger in Texas). I'm used to our little rinky-dink parks around here where you are lucky if there is a slide and more than 2 swings. This park that we visited actually had paved roads with names within its boundaries. It had a HUGE playground with all sorts of equipment that made me wish I was a little kid again. It also had a small zoo that included: emu, a donkey, some sheep, some Texas longhorns, two buffalo, several varieties of parrots, some peafowl, two owls, a few goats, and a BIG pig. I couldn't belive that it was just open to the public for free. It had almost as many animals as our local zoo that costs us 25 bucks a piece to get into. Oh, and there was also a large pond with a little wooden bridge in the center where the girls got to feed bread to the ducks and geese. My two-year old (Bugga Bugga) was feeding one duck when another sneaked up on her and snatched the bread out of her other hand, nipping a few fingers in the process. "HEY! That duck duck BIT me..." she cried... "Stupid duck!" LOL

*** Late Breaking News ***

OH MY GOSH! I'm so excited! My two year old all of a sudden decided that she wanted to use the big potty today. When she woke up from her nap this afternoon she said that she wanted to use the potty, so I put her little padded seat with handles ontop of the regular potty, helped her "wiggle wiggle wiggle" her pull-up panties down, and plopped her little naked bottom on the throne. Then I just left her alone. Walked out of the room to attend to the baby and in a few minutes I heard "MOMMY! I made tee tee come out of my bottom!" LOL Sure enough..she had done her business and was waiting on me to assist with the final paperwork. We had a miniature celebration in the bathroom after watching the potty flush and waving "bye bye" to tee-tee. Then she got to pick a treat out of the goody basket. Well, after that she went twice more in the big potty. Then tonight while we were getting ready for bed, she asked to go again. Her big sister assisted her in mounting the porcelain pony, and she sat and sat and sat. We yelled at her asking if she was okay and did she need help getting down. "Nope" came the reply. So we let her sit there. To be honest...I almost forgot about her. Then suddenly "Princess" starting yelling "Bugga Bugga" made a dirty in the potty! Sure enough..she had!!! All by herself with no coaching or encouragement! We made a big deal over her and told her that if she continues to go in the big potty all the time, that we will take her to Walmart and let her pick out her very own "big girl panties" with whatever cartoon character she wanted. That made her really excited. We tucked her into bed tonight with visions of "fruit of the looms" dancing in her head.

Surprisingly Painless...

That's how I would describe my first (and hopefully only) experience having a root canal performed on my tooth today. I knew before I went to the dentist on Tuesday that I had a cavity in need of filling. It was one of those things that just kept getting put off. I'm sure you other Mommies out there know what I mean. First I was pregnant and didn't feel like dealing with any additional poking or prodding - no matter that only my mouth was involved. Then of course, the baby was born and I was pretty much quarenteened to the house with her until she was 8 weeks old. Then there were programs to attend at my daughter's kindergarten... and things just kept popping up that were more important that making that dentist's appointment. We are planning to go to Texas for Spring Break though, and so I decided that I wanted to have that tooth fixed before we left to go on our trip. Alan called and made the appointment for me since I had never been to that particular dentist before. We had recently decided to change dentists and Alan had been to him several times but Tuesday was my first visit. I absolutely loved my new dentist and his staff (at least as much as anyone can love a dentist! LOL ) However, I was shocked to discover that what I perceived to be a small cavity was actually a tooth in need of a root canal. I dreaded it for the 48 some odd hours between appointments, and then was tremendously relieved today when the procedure turned out to be totally painless. I turned down all medication other than the local anesthesia and opted out of a prescription for pain meds following the procedure, choosing instead to use Advil when necessary. It's been 11 hours since my appointment and I have yet to feel any pain. I even ate pizza for dinner! :)

Silly Ole Me!

Hey All!
Thanks to a dear blogger buddy, I realized that when I changed my email address I failed to update it with my comment notification even though I changed it on my main blogger account. As a result, no one has been able to post comments to my blog lately. I was wondering what happened...if everyone just forgot me! LOL Thanks for the heads-up -A- and if anyone has tried to leave comments, please try again. They should be working now!!! :)

A Blinkie a Day?

Well, a friend of mine suggested that I add some blinkies to liven up my blog a bit, so I am going to try to add at least one new blinkie per day to my sidebar. Er...that is as soon as I figure out how! LOL Feel free to email me any cute blinkies you find!

Cobwebs and Dustbunnies

Now that I have finally RE-discovered my own blog, I am trying to do a bit of housecleaning. I have added the new mood indicators in my sidebar to the right, and have done some cleaning in my blog roll and have even added a few new (to me at least) and noteworthy blogs. Plus some that I have been meaning to add forever and have just not gotten around to. (Sorry Sydney!) I'm not very good with HTML and too broke to hire anyone to design me something cool, but I'd like a couple of jazzy or fun little additions. Does anyone have any ideas?

Time for a Nap!

We got off to a rough start this morning and I think that it affected us all more than I previously thought. I could not wake "Big Sister" (the oldest one...my 4 year old) up for Kindergarten this morning. She always goes to bed by 8:00 pm, but she is still impossible to drag out of bed in the mornings. I literally pulled her limp little body out from under the covers and dressed her like she was a big ragdoll. Pushed her little zombie-booty down the hall to the kitchen where she proceeded to stare listlessly at her muffin and milk. After urging her to hurry up and eat, I abandoned her to go dress the other two and point them towards their breakfast, and then finally to dress myself. I don't mind driving her to school with the hair in a ponytail and no makeup, but I do prefer to at least have all the essentials covered. Not to mention the fact that it was 23 degrees outside when we got up this morning. Anyway, we finally made it to the Kindergarten (more than 15 minutes late). Good thing I got dressed because I had to take "Big Sister" in the front door, down the stairs where I shoved her towards her teacher and ran back to where I had temporarily abandoned the other two rugrats. Then I went to my Mom's where "Little Sister" and "Baby Sister" played until time to go back and pick "Big Sister" up. By the time we got home, everyone was tired and hungry. The girls ate their lunch (thank God for Wendy's 99 cent chicken nuggets) and played while I finished up my own. Suddenly I heard Big Sister crying in the hallway. "What is it this time?" I called. "Little Sister has my imaginary bicycle and she won't give it back!" came the reply. I got up and looked, and sure enough, Little Sister was riding an imaginary bicycle down the hallway, waving proudly. "*big sigh* If it's an imaginary bicycle, just imagine yourself another one..." I said. "But MOMMMMY, I want THAT one!!!!" I had to laugh. I mean really...when they start argueing over imaginary toys...it's time for ALL of us to take a nap! :)

Yes, I'm Still Alive...but Barely

Hi All!
Yes, I'm still alive and bloggin'! I can't believe it's been this long since I logged in last, but then a lot has happened since Thanksgiving and I've been REALLY busy! Right after Thanksgiving, all the girls got sick, including the baby who at the time was only about 5 weeks old and WAY too young for over the counter meds. Actually, she developed an ear infection as a secondary to the cold she had the previous week. Fortunatly for us, it was one of the RARE ear infections that is NOT accompanied by a high fever. In fact, she never ran a fever at all. Praise God! For those of you with small kiddies, you are probably aware that for some reason it appears to be mandatory to run spinal taps on all babies who present with a fever under 8 weeks old to rule out spinal meninjitis and other nasties such as blood poisoning. We went through that with "Little Sister" - the two year old - when she was a baby and it was heartwrenching. Anyway, after they all recovered from their colds, of course it was Christmas. Alan had to work the entire time which means that I had to play the "elf" and do most of "Santa's" work for him. PLUS my entire family get-together was at MY HOME, so I was up for two days cooking and literally ended up going 36 hours with no sleep. After that I slept for about 20 hours straight. Then, a couple of weeks after that, my computer died. SOooo I'm just now up and running again. New computer....new wireless keyboard and mouse...new DSL service. NO MORE DIALUP!!!! HURRAY!!! I will close by stating that I missed you all and have been trying to catch up a bit on your blogs as well.