Monday, February 15, 2010

Valentine's Day Events

So, as promised, here is my Monday blogpost. I will be trying very hard to post something every Monday from now on. Hold me to it. If you don't see something from me on Monday send me e-mails saying...where's our blogpost????

So, we had some fun Valentine's Dayheppenings around my house. I am not a Hallmark Valentine's Day type. I am also not a couple's Valentine's Day type. I hate that it is supposed to be a day to do to an over booked restaurant, get overpriced flowers and go to an overcrowded movie theater. Just not my thing. So, since I had kids I decided to start focusing Valentine's Day on them and making it a family event. Now to go with the whole non-Hallmark holiday, you'll never believe this, but I don't buy Valentine's cards either. Big shocker, right? LOL!! So, last year we made little treat bags and so when Ethan asked if we were making treat bags again I got online to see what we were going to do. I can't remember who, but somebody posted a website for these awesome little "Treat Transmitters" aka robot valentines online. As soon as I saw them I knew they were the thing this year. When I got home I showed them to Ethan and he agreed that they were the thing to do this year. So, I bought everything and got all the prep work done so that the night before we could get them all put together so that Ethan could take them to school for his Valentine party. It went flawlessly. Addie even got to help and we had an assembly line set up at our table to put them together and Derek and I weren't even up all night long putting them together. We got to bed on time that night and even watched some TV before bed. It was awesome. I did got to bed with dried glue all over my fingers, but that's the price you pay to send your kid to school with robot Valentine's I guess. They came out really cute though and I got a call from one Ethan's classmate's parents a couple of days later that Ethan's robots were the hit of the party and Ethan said he got at least 15 comments about them. he was pretty excited about it. So here are the pictures of us making them and our Robot Army in the kitchen.To make them we used Cardstock for the bodies, sticks of gum for the arms, life savers for the eyes and starbursts for the feet. The Ethan wrote Happy Valentine's Day! From: Ethan, on the back while I wrote things like Hug Me, U-R-A-*, B-MINE, etc on the fronts.
Our Robot Army

So, like I said on Valentine's Day I like to do something with my family, not just do something with Derek. So this year with Valentine's Day being on Sunday, I thought that sounded like a great day for a brunch. So, after sending out an initial text message invitation to a list of people that Ethan gave me, we started planning. It was awesome. The food was great, the company was awesome. My sister came the day before to help me get everything set up (and do a little cruise shopping). We stayed up waaaaaaaaay to late and came up with some really bad ideas like fake gangster tattoos. We failed miserably at looking gangster and really just look lame, but I thought I'd share the pics with you anyway...don't judge us...it was very late at night. We were a bit delirius.The next morning Alisha did put this gorgeous unhealthy looking cake together. Don't let her fool you. She has some tricks to make it much less fattening. Isn't it yummy looking??
Alisha decided that everybody must have a tattoo and put herself in charge and so Jack decided for a day he could have his very own tramp stamp. Isn't it cute?? Can you believe we got proof? Niki is the best sport when it comes to playing with Addie. More than anybody she gets down on her hands and knees to play with Addie. Not that nobody else plays with Addie, but I've never seen this before. Addie has an imaginary baby she plays with and likes to pretend that she's the mommy and she is taking care of her baby. Well, here instead Niki got to be the baby and when Addie turned around Niki got up and hid. So Addie decided Niki was in big trouble and put her in time out and was scolding her about staying in bed when it was her bedtime. Then Addie told her that she still loved her and she could get out of the corner. Oh dear!! What have we gotten ourselves into with this little girl?? Jack on the other hand thought it was a good idea to stay put and not move with the other babies in bed. So, that was our Valentine's Day. Thank you everyone who celebrated Valentine's Day with us and took time out of your day to hang out with us. I know there were 4-5 of you who I said would get an invitation to in the mail and they didn't come...well, I thought I sent them last week, but I came in to work today and guess what...they are still sitting my desk. Oooops!! I did have them for you. They are addressed and ready to go. :) Let me know if you still want them. Ethan decorated them and has a little hand written poem in them that he came up with himself. I was going to mail all of them but ended up seeing some a large portion of the people who came at our "cruise dinner" or just didn't think to give you your invitation because we see you everyday.

Well, I hope everyone has a fantastic President's Day. I had to work today, but Derek has it off and is spending the day with Addie and Ethan has it off along with Tuesday and is spending it with his grandparents in Snohomish. Enjoy your week. Ciao!!

Friday, February 12, 2010

apologies

Yes, I know!! My poor blog has been highly neglected. So, I need to fix that. So I am going to start changing that and post every Monday with a weekly post of what has gone for the past week. Great way to start the week, right? So that is my newest plan. Hold me to it. If I fail to post kick me in the rear and let me know I have failed miserably. I will also try and load pics. I have been a horrible picture taker. I have a beautiful camera with no pictures on it. I am going on a vacation in 14 days so I'll have lots of picture to upload from that very soon. Yay!! Okay, see you all Monday!!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Happy Halloween

So, for halloween Addie was dead set on being a rock star and Ethan wanted to something scary, so he chose an alien. I had some ideas for Addie's costume running through my head but nothing major. Nothing in her costume except the hair color had to be bought in the Halloween section so I wasn't in a hurry...until I got sick last week. I didn't leave my house until Saturday morning, although I had planned to go last week during lunch. So Saturday morning Addie and I headed off to Target to come up with an outfit for her "Rockstar" costume. Ethan had his several weeks in advance, so that was easy and he had a mask and everything. easy breazy. I was sick as a dog and was counting down the minutes to make a doctors appt. I didn't really think I needed one but my mom was worried and I knew some better cough syrup with a little codeine to calm my cough so I could get some sleep wouldn't hurt. So we went to Target got a mish mash of stuff then headed off to the doctor. The doctor told me I wasn't allowed to go trick'o'treating. Whah!! I love taking the kids out. I was pretty bummed. So we went home and took a nap, well I took a nap while Derek chased Addie around the house not taking a nap. When I woke up I got Addie ready with the help of my friend Paige, my parents and Derek. Ethan's costume was pretty simple although needed a little bit of work to sit the way it was supposed to. After the little bit of work i had to do I thought my head was going to start spinning so I threw the kids out along with Derek and they went to a friends house up north about 10 miles for a kid Halloween party and some t'o't-ing and I had a quiet house. You would think it would be restful but feeling as crappy as I did and missing the kids get to be so cute and fun it wasn't as restful as i'd have liked. Plus I was hungry and having had been sick for the past several days all the easy food was gone so i had to actually think about what food to eat. Lame. I am ready to be healthy. But it sounds like the kids had a great time...although the candy givers were a little chincey with their reese's this year...not that I would know...it's not like I went and got candy or anything. LOL. Here's the pics of the kids getting ready and in their costumes.

Paige was a super duper rockstar hair stylist. 2 gold stars for sure!!
Gotta have the rock star crimping going on!!
She's got diva primping under control
Ethan is putting the Earth under his spell
Let's roll and be as difficult as possible for mommy to get pics of us
Ready to rock and roll
She's got down that diva pout, dang it...I had hoped she would miss that part
Addie had to do some practicing to get those little fingers to move right
Addie LOVED her rockin costume
Rock on dudes from outerspace!!
Rock on Nanoo
The silly rocker aliens
Addie has got her bag and is almost ready to go...now she just needs to find some shoes.
Ethan and Gabriel getting ready to do some trick'o'treatin'
Ethan is leading the way
Apparently addie needed some makeup. I wasn't there so I am guessing sunglasses.
Not sure why...but this picture just freaks me out. A little too rocker gone, I don't know what...just not right.
As long as she can still rock I guess we're doing okay.

The Pumpkin Patch

Every year I try and plan a trip to th epumpkin patch. Some years we go to a pumpkin patch by my parents house and other years we go by our house. There is a nice pumpkin patch about 5 minutes from our house. this year we thought we would try someplace different and went about 20 minutes from home to a place I had heard about the maze a little further south. Alisha decided to join us on our adventures and showed up in the middle of the night the night before. A fun little last minute addition to our plans. We got down Rutledge Farms and no one was there. It was awesome. It was the weekend before Halloween so we expected it to be packed. I always have to come up with a million reasons why we can't go until the last minute so that Derek doesn't carve the pumpkins to early. Otherwise we end up with moldy Jack-o-Lanterns.

The maze was awesome. The ground was packed down perfectly. No big mud holes or pits in the ground. The maze was pretty easy to follow and although Addie started on Derek's shoulders she quickly joined in and was running through the maze with everyone else. We had a blast.

After the maze we had to catch a ride on a horse drawn hay ride to the pumpkin patch. Now the pumpkin patch was definately lacking as was the entire rest of the field aside from the maze, but we were still able to find some good pumpkins and Addie thought the chickens were cook even if they had no feathers on their butts. They were mean chickens that seemed to pick on each other and pull out each others feathers. So although we will never go back to that pumpkin patch again, we had a great time and while complaining about what it lacked got some ideas of some new ones to check out next year. So here are the pics...

Getting started
Here began Ethan's obsession with the corn
Alisha posing on the bridge
A family pic on the bridge
These 3 were hiding in the corn waiting to jump out and scare us. Don't tell them...but we knew we were there.
Always looking adorable
Ethan captured his sis
Punching out a marker at a checkpoint in the maze.
Ethan talking to Addie while walking through the maze
The boys on the bridge
All the corn
Addie hanging out on a bridge looking at all the corn
Ethan was obsessed with the corn through the entire maze. What is it with kids and caring about the least important thing in an event.
No Ethan...Mommy takes the pictures and you stand and look cute!!
Ethan is always so sweet to his sister (well, almost always)

Being silly waiting to head over to the pumpkin patch
A family pic while we are waiting for the hay ride to the pumpkin patch
We had to take a hayride to the pumpkin patch from the maze area
Derek and Ethan are working together to find the coolest pumpkins
Ethan is on a mission to find the best pumpkin EVER!!!
This one looks waaay toooooo big!!
It looks like it could be a nice pumpkin
Uh oh...it might be too heavy
Addie's last test to see if she could lift it up
Addie made her decision
Ethan was checking out all sorts of pumpkins but this was the one he was pretty sure was the one
Ethan's final pumpkin choice
Ethan decided to hitch a ride to weigh in the pumpkins