I get a kick outta this

So i got thinking about all the things that make me happy. Well, besides the obvious things like my hubs and the babies... But I am talking about the weird things that make me flip out cause I am so happy about it...... So laugh if you will...

1-comments here on the blog or little emails. (I am not asking for them, just telling all y'all that do comment that it means a bunch and makes me happy)
2-Finding a killer deal on kids clothes or my clothes for that matter. I am a true to the core bargain shopper. It gives me a rush to find great deals. On clothes... Food, not so much.
3-I have to agree with Shauntell, new socks and PJ's are pretty awesome.
4-I know I said really good food, but I mean.... REALLY YUMMY food.
5-sparkly toes, on me and on my baby... I think I started painting Ry's toes when she was about two weeks old.
6-Romantic-vintage decor' and little Boutique stores, like those you find at Gardner Village.
7-All the laundry done and put away all at one time.
8-All the beds made (this happens way more often than the laundry)
9-Craft stores/aisles
10-A good/easy hair day.. Now don't even say that curly girls have it easy... If you knew what went into taking care, maintaining and laundering of the curls just so you don't have head pubes (sorry, but it feels like that sometimes) Then you would be happy. Don't get me wrong, I love the curls... They bounce.. I am a bouncy kinda girl.... But, there is more involved than just jumping out of the shower and going. Nuff said.


Ten of the many many things....

Treats

Want to know something about me? I think this ranks right up there with yummy food, brand new underwear and holidays......

CLEAN CARPETS!!!

I got mine done today....

WOOOOOHOOOOO!!!!

snippets

Mommy-Girls will you please be my special helpers today? Alex is potty training and I need you to help me listen for him when he says he needs to go.
Ry-Sure mom!
Ellie R.- uhhuh
Maddie-(too busy with makeup)
Ellie J.- Who is Alex?

Ry- If Gator keeps having accidents on your carpet, are we going to have to give him away too?

Gator-We going home mom?
Mom-No, we need to run to the store.
Gator- I gotta go potty at home!
Mom-Argh! No, did you go potty already? Lets go into the store. (PetsMart)
Gator- I go'in on the floor like the puppies?
Mom- NO, they have a potty for people too!
Gator-Oh

Ry to my 15 year old client- Are you going to get your nose waxed too?

Ry- I am pretty hungry, what is a healthy snack that I can have? Cheese puffs, cookies, Popsicles, or some of that candy?
(in my defense the cookies are the snackwells 100 cal grasshoppers, the Popsicles are sugar free, and the candy is sugar free butterscotch, but the cheese puffs are really cheese puffs...)

Mommy- Yeah Gator you did great, you are getting to be such a big boy. You are going to get to go see the Monster Trucks!!!!!
Gator-Yeah, Awesome! (come on, what two year old uses awesome, cool, and sweet in the right context?)

I may have found the solution

Remember how I was worried about our Sunday dinner turning into an event of full on food fits.... Well there must be something about marinating steak, mushrooms, pineapple, eggplant, zucchini, red pepper, yellow pepper, and red onion in garlic and olive oil for 24 hours that makes it all super yummy.. Then cooked up nicely and placed on a bed of rice... Gator had three helpings. It was amazing. Okay so I used the starve him, till a meal, trick.... But... It worked..... Then tonight I hadn't made my menu and made it to the store so we did breakfast for dinner... Blueberry pancakes.... I let Ry make them up and had my back turned for two seconds when she HELPED with the veggie oil. I tried to get it out to where I thought it was about two Tbls... I made about six cakes with this and figured out that it was way too yucky... It took that many to throw in some extra water and pancake mix. Anyway, Gator ate this all up too... I guess I was offering too many snacks in the day. OOOps my bad. I love doing a menu now and often I will add a 'make something new' day just so I can try out a few new things. It isn't anything special, I just made a list of everything I know how to make. I included breakfast items too since we seem to have "breakner" pretty often. When I first did this I only had a few things on my list. Come to find out I short sighted myself because I can actually fix a whole bunch of things. Then I found this handy template from the project girl @ www.theprojectgirl.com. Now I just go down my list and insert meals on the days and find out what I need to buy. Sometimes I deviate from the list a little, and that is okay. On days when I make something like chili or a casserole I split it into two pans and freeze it for another night. It doesn't take any effort to do this. Anyway I got off onto a weird food tangent. I am not a very good cook, I am just a willing one.

Green Veggies

It is ONE tiny piece of broccoli. He gags on green veggies every time. I know I am a mean mommy because he is GOING to sit there until he has consumed the one veggie I put on his plate. This has been the routine lately. He won't finish and I make him. I am either ready to force feed or put him to bed hungry. This isn't a heart baby thing, thanks to my two little sisters I know that this is a two year old thing. I think one of my baby sis's only ate Ramon Noodles for three meals straight for three months. They didn't eat many veggies then and now they are pretty darn good eaters. My baby sis even wants to be a Chef when she is old enough. In the mean time, we will continue to introduce veggies and he will continue to eat what we are having for dinner. Who wouldn't like sweet meat balls over rice? Tomorrow we are having kabobs with eggplant and zucchini. It will be interesting to see how that goes over. I am not too too worried because he isn't going to find and fun foods around this joint. It's all diet food. Bleh. He will just have to go over and give eyes to our next door neighbor; Debbie Girl for some Cheetos or a cookie. Come on... So the other day I made roast beef dinner, complete with mashed potatoes and gravy. We had a ton of mashed potatoes left over, I didn't want to waste them and because cinnamon rolls made with mashed taters are a tiny bit better for you than donuts made with mashed taters I opted for those. I think it about evened out in the end with the super yummy cream cheese frosting. ANYWAY. I made the cinnamon rolls the next day and wanted to share them so that I wouldn't devour all of them myself. So we decided to run some next door. I had one more batch in the oven and Gator was up to the table (again) needing to finish his supper. He really wanted to come and help deliver them. So I told him that if he finished his dinner then he could come, if not he had to stay home and finish. He wasn't even close when the timer went off. So I strapped him a little tighter into his booster and off Ry and I went to drop off a couple plates of warm rolls. He screamed bloody-guts-murder.... Poor little boy. I could hear him standing on the porch next door. Granted it isn't far away but... SHEESH....

This is another one of those this too shall pass things, isn't it?

This is cool

This is going to be amazing.... I loved listening to Paul Cardall and all of his music buddies last year as Paul waited for a new heart. Now Paul wants to pay it forward and do his own benefit to help families with CHDs..... Go if you can!

*good read*

I am reading this really interesting book call 'Messenger'. It tells the story of a mother who has passed this terrible life threatening illness on to each of her four children. Three of whom pass away as either infants or toddlers. Her last son Mattie is an extremely intelligent child who learns to read at three and begins writing poetry at age 4.... Any way. Mattie ends up passing away at 13 as well, I know this because of the prologue. But, he lived each minute with the knowledge that his body would fail and that he would follow his siblings. So, he decided to become a peace maker... It is really... really neat... So if you are in the mood for a deep read... You gotta check this out.

All Babies Sleeping!

Newly washed/de-gummed (you would think I would learn) slime green snugly blankie, Didi doggie, super spidey boy.. In bed and asleep..... CHECK!

Filey-Face toasty warm quilt, lamp on, music playing, wild hair little women.... In bed and asleep.....Check!

Foot warmer while folding laundry, feet in the air, already been to the potty, puppy... Now, In bed/crate and asleep.... Check!


This momma... Should be in bed asleep...

Good Bye, See Ya, farewell!

This is a view of Gators Closet. Now I never knew that all this gear is typical of a kiddo with special needs.. The kicker is that this isn't half as bad as some of the kids I have seen. I am surprised at how much "STUFF" it can take.. We don't even have half as much as we used to when he was smaller...

But..... Guess what... I called Home Health and had the nice man come to our house to pick up...

All these tanks. Gator hasn't needed O's in such a long time and I don't feel like we need it on hand right now. This is a little scary to let go of... A much needed step in the right direction. The handy-dandy tank holder was thought up by me and built by my handy-hubs... GO HUBS!!!! I also love that they send this 'No smoking' sign... So I hung it appropriately by the tanks. Here is to hoping that we won't need them soon and here is also hoping that our health insurance deductibles aren't met this month...LOL

Not that this is that important... I just wanted to remember...

Potty training

Hummm, I have never owned a pet that I was totally in charge of besides my Beta fish. Those things never die, plus it really didn't require much, an occasional water change, some food, and yup that's about it. Our family could leave for a week and that thing would still be alive when we returned, doing so on just a pinch of food..... So this puppy thing has got me fit to be tied.... You have to understand that my knowledge is limited to what I see other pet owners doing and also books. I run to the library when I need to figure something out. Well all the books say patients and a calm disposition and in no time your puppy will be relieving themselves outside. HA! My carpet has suffered and as soon as we get this down it is getting shampoo-ed. This is the total nutso thing, Gator is on board with the whole potty training thing. We have bribed him with what he thinks is the ultimate- A Monster Truck Rally- Can you imagine this little boy! He isn't very good at it yet and now I need to have my carpets cleaned because of two mess makers...

We haven't been out much.. Also if you come by and there is a FUNK! Sorry....

There I did it... All caught up.

Christmas clothes... I chose black, gray, and white for our colors this year. I always go with some sort of theme to unite us a little. I got daddy a tie and I have a dress that goes swimmingly.

Forgive my photography, I was in such a hurry to get to church that I grabbed my little camera and took these in a snap. I will take better ones later. I just didn't want to miss this moment, in case I don't get around to it later.

And this would be our newest family member.
Meet- Lola
She is now 11 weeks and is a female chi-terrier mix. I call her a chi-terr.... Or she could be a Terr-chi... Either way she is supposed to stay little. Which means little poops. As you can tell she is bout the size of a remote control. Ry got her for Christmas, although a little earlier then planned because on the day I went to get her the breeder was leaving to go out of town and I had no way of getting her home. We had no food for her, but I just thought she was so sweet so I let Ry bring her home. That night we decided to wait for daddy to come home so that we could have a family meeting to name her. Ry and I talked about names all day. I would write down the names that we both liked so that we could review them all at the meeting. When we finally sat together as a family, daddy wanted to make sure that Gator was feeling part of it so he turned and asked him. "What would you like to name the puppy?" without even a hesitation gator replied "Tractor"... So we wrote it down... It was hard to choose something suitable... After all, we had some awesome names... Daisy, Lollie, Hazel, Tractor, Zoey.... In the end I think we found the perfect name for little Lola... She hardly walks, Ry carries her constantly.

About three days after we got Lola, Christmas day, we took her with us to G-ma and G-pa's house. After opening all the gifts we were playing with toys when Gator started wrenching and gagging.... Worried that he might loose his brunch, daddy grabbed the nearest thing to "catch" it in... Gator spit out a little bit of brown gooooo... What??????? Daddy asked Gator "Why did you spit in there, What did you spit in there?" to that Gator said "I DON'T LIKE DOG FOOD!!!" ----Nuff said!

Gator is also just the right size for an attack of his diaper area... So we must watch that he doesn't run around without protection... The other day she managed to nip at him. He could have been injured, injured bad.

So now I am caught up on our family. I need to blog hop to all the others I have been meaning to read.

Gator, where are you?

I found him! Smart kid... He really must have wanted those treats.. A stool, a chair until he could climb... I am not lying when I tell people he hurts himself.

Checking out the goodies that mom and dad will totally have to relocate.

Those are some good treats over there... He must have been feeling brave he is wearing his Spidey sandals with socks. He put those on all by himself. When I asked him what he was doing, he told be just getting a snack... Huh, I guess!

Ry's Christmas Program

Some of the gals in her class....

Up on the roof top!

Ry has been able to memorize her parts for all of her little programs.. The funny part is that Gator totally memorizes them too....

Then there was snow

Gator looks like a blue and orange marshmallow!

With all the gear on, you would think he would look warmer/less blue.
He couldn't even stand up on his own. He would fall over or slip and just lay there calling for help.

Wanna little HAM with that?

Snow angel

BA... No relation to AA...

I need to enroll my son in a Biters anonymous group... The child is like a puppy getting teeth. He chews on everything. Ahhhh... Is there no end to this? If you can't tell what each picture is, allow me to help you out: starting at the top left. Those would be the blinds on his window, just at his height... The next is a picture of the flip flops I got on a screaming deal at target for NEXT YEAR, destroyed. Then his shoe lace that he has so nicely shredded. It doesn't end with his things... The pass along card of Jesus was caught in his mouth with minimal damage although it seems like I said something to the tune of "please don't chew or bite on the Savior" Then comes MY Ipod earphones. I know that these are rather cheap, however, I like my stuff and don't really care to have it gnawed on by my two year old. The last two photos are two of many many books that have chewed corners... Books happen to be his favorite thing to chew on...
This too shall pass- I hope!

Pictures from the Echo

The dreaded stickers!

Blue sucker! It lit up!