Pretty Pretty

She Forgot Again

Owen has lost 8 teeth. He forces his teeth loose and works them and works them untill they are just barely hanging there. Then they dangle for a good couple of weeks until he gets up the nerve to finally yank them out. He's got a huge gap up on top where the permanent teeth haven't grown in yet.


Just as we were leaving this morning to head out to swimming lessons, Owen said, "By the way, the Tooth Fairy forgot to leave me money again!!" I felt so bad and felt like telling him the whole truth about the Tooth Fairy, but Ethan was right there and I chickened out. Then Ethan said, "Maybe she ran out of coins. She'll be back." I better not forget tonight!

Thanks For The Warning

Found this written in huge letters on the driveway...

Sooper Hlmet

I was cleaning out the boys' closet yesterday and found a pile of notebook pages ripped out. As I looked through the sheets I found this. It must have been a journal assignment. I love Owen's "best-guess" spelling.

I've Got Three Cute Kids...Yes I Do!

I just thought I'd share a few pictures... Here are the kids, watching t.v.

Emily is really getting close to crawling!!!! She does better on the wood floor than on the carpet. She rolls all over the place, but when she wants to go forward she pushes with her feet and does an "army crawl" without using her hands and rubs her face into the carpet.

Here are the boys, sporting their Batman goggles and fins/flippers.

Check out the big spot on Owen's chest. Last week he and Ethan put Spongebob tattoos on. Ethan put his on his arm, Owen put his right smack in the middle of his chest. Well, the other day at swimming lessons I was telling Owen to give me his shoes and take his shirt off. Just as he was handing me his shirt, he quickly grabbed it back and said, "No way, I'm not taking off my shirt!" When I asked him what was wrong, he pointed to the tattoo and said he didn't want anyone to see it. I tried really hard not to laugh. He said he wanted to try to wash it off in the bathroom. I knew it wouldn't work, but we went anyway. I had a really hard time convincing Owen to take off his shirt and go into swimming lessons, but he finally did. He kept his hands over his chest the whole time during his lesson. He also scratched and dug at it in an effort to remove that tattoo. Instead, he got a huge raw bleeding sore in the middle of his Spongebob tattoo. I tried removing the tattoo with rubbing alcohol (we did not have baby oil) and that was awful, his sore stung like crazy. Finally after a few days, the tattoo has pretty much faded and the owie is crusty and gross.

Goodbye, Grand! Hello, Van!

This is The Grand. It's a 1991 Pontiac Grand Am that Eric and I bought 12 years ago in November of 1995. It was affectionately named "The Grand" by some of Eric's co-workers when they discovered that the "AM" part of "Grand AM" on the trunk had fallen off.

We've had a lot of great memories with this car, our first big vacation to Yellowstone, trips to northern Minnesota, bringing our first baby Owen home, moving here to our new home (this picture was actually taken just before Eric and Duke our pug left to move here). It's been such a good car for us, and has actually been Eric's car for the last 5 years.

I've been driving a Buick LeSabre, up until a few days ago, when we got THIS!!!

We traded in The Grand and got a 2004 Honda Odyssey. I kind of felt sorry for The Grand, picturing it being cold and lonely out there in the parking lot of the dealership, missing it. I'm sure it was an emotional time for Eric, too.

But I LOVE this van!!!!!

It is soooo much easier to get the kids in and out. Right now I have both boys in the very back seat, that way if they are fighting, I can just kind of crank the radio way up and not hear them...hahaha! Emily is in the seat right behind me. It's so nice to not have to climb into the car and over a booster seat to buckle her in. I don't even have to bend over, the seat is right at my level. Today after swimming lessons I didn't hang around for 10 minutes waiting for a dressing room to open so the boys could change into dry clothes. I just had them change in the van!

And look!

I still have my pink fuzzy steering wheel cover! I kept it in the glove box of the Le Sabre during these hot summer months. I think Eric thought I forgot all about it and was hoping to be able to just kind of throw it away when he took ownership of the Le Sabre, but I remembered and immediately put it on the van's steering wheel.



Yeah, I love my van. I'm still getting used to parking it in the garage along side the other car (makes Eric a little nervous...my dad can relate I'm sure). It's a nice van for our little family, and I'm looking forward to seeing the kids grow up in it over the years as I drive everyone to soccer, baseball, football, dance, piano...

Ethan's First Bee Sting

Today Ethan, Owen, Emily, and I joined a group of other moms from our church who also have young children for a trip to the zoo. We had a great time, except for that time just before lunch. I saw it all.


Ethan was running to catch up to me, he was about 20 feet away. I saw the bee coming. I saw the bee fly into Ethan's wide open mouth as he was huffing and puffing. Ethan immediately began to spit and the bee shot out. I quickly squashed the bee and went to Ethan. He was hysterical. I thought it was because he was utterly freaked out, but then I saw his lip bleeding a bit. I looked more closely and saw a little hunk of "bee butt" which I'm assuming was attached to the stinger. I did that scrape thing they always tell you to do to get the stinger out. His poor little lip started swelling immediately.


We got some ice on it and told him we'd go eat lunch. Food seems to have a calming effect for Ethan. By the time lunch was over, he was feeling much much better even though he still had a fairly swollen lip. We finished our zoo trip and came home.


The Terminix guy was in our driveway waiting for us. I nearly forgot that he was coming sometime between 3 and 5 today to help us with the ants. Ethan thought he was here to spray for bees. I'll let him believe that if it will help him not be afraid to play outside.


Actually, two of the boys' buddies came over right away when we were home. Ethan was really excited to tell them all about a bee flying in his mouth and stinging him. Kids think stuff like that is really cool, especially when it doesn't happen to them. I think Ethan was liking the attention and amazement from his friends. I'd rather see him brag about being brave than be too scared to play outside.


Now, I'm just thinking about the countless times I've told the boys that bees do not fly around looking for children to sting. They are looking for flowers and sometimes need to check us out. Once they discover that we are not flowers they go on their way. It was hard for me to help Ethan understand that it was just one of those things, he and the bee clashed and the bee tried to protect itself. I hope Ethan understands.


He's my brave little buddy.

New Stuff!!

Weeeeeee! I'm so excited, we finally got some patio furniture!! I found a table and 5 chairs that I love love love from Sears. I had ordered and paid for the base and umbrella from a different mall, of which I received a call two days later informing me that even though I paid for them they didn't actually have them in stock. That was disappointing. I decided to keep the table and chairs because I completely love them and I'll just take my chances on finding an umbrella that matches. I probably won't find one till next year, it's slim pickins this late in the season. Our friends across the street helped us bring the dining set home in their mini-van, which leads to MORE stuff!


We are currently looking for a mini-van! No more crowded three-kids-in-the-back-seat, no more Owen and Ethan smacking at each other with poor Emily in the middle having to endure it, no more "He's touching me! He's teasing me! He's LOOKING at me!!!" because they'll have their own seats hopefully one behind the other...ahhhhh I can't wait. We aren't going to rush it, though. We are buying a used vehicle and will wait it out till just the right one comes along.


We are also going to be getting a WATER SOFTENER! No more itchy scratchy skin and dull life-less locks, no more soap-scum on the skin between my fingers. No more scrub scrub scrubbing just to get the showers/tubs/fixtures to look clean.


Oh! I bought a tent! It sleeps 6. We set it up in the back yard on Friday night and the boys and I "camped out." Except our experience was short-lived because of some extremely noisy late-night neighbors having a little get-together on their back patio. About 12:30 a.m. I brought the boys in because I just couldn't sleep. We'll try it again another night, maybe on a week night before school starts.


Anyway, that's our latest exciting news!

Mommy's Baby, Mommy's Girl...

Creation Museum

We took a little vacation with some friends and went to the Creation Museum. It was incredible!!! Since I don't have a scanner I had to take a picture of our picture.

Swimming Lessons!

Tomorrow the boys have their last day of swimming lessons. I signed them up at the Y rather than the public pool, and I've been really impressed with their teachers. Last summer Owen took swimming at a public pool and I don't think he got much out of it. They were in water that came up to his waist and played "What time is it Mr. Shark?" pretty much every day.


This year at the Y, both kids have to be in four feet of water, so it's over their heads. They HAVE to pay attention and do what the teacher says so they don't sink to the bottom of the pool. They've been working on things like kicking, blowing bubbles, back floats, front floats, and being comfortable with jumping in and going all the way under before bouncing back up to the surface.


I think I'm going to sign them up for lessons this winter so they will hopefully remember everything they've learned this week.

Summer Sports

Owen and Ethan both wanted to play t-ball this summer. Ethan had his first practice and I'm pleased to say he has shown TREMENDOUS improvement from last year!!! Not once did he wrap his arms around my leg and say he was too shy to go out on the field. He went after the ball when it was hit to him, and he hit the ball good and hard when it was his turn. With about 15 minutes of practice time left, he said he had to stop because he was sore. You see, he had an injury earlier today. He opened a bottom cupboard door so he could climb onto the kitchen counter to get the ice cream cones down. When he jumped down off the counter, he straddled himself on the open cupboard door!!! I've never seen him cry so hard. Poor kid. So when he said he needed to stop because he was sore, I didn't have a problem with that.


Tonite, Owen has his first practice at 8 pm. He's pretty excited. I wonder how all of this is going to work. Once again I over-booked the kids. They are in t-ball and football. I guess we'll have to miss a few practices here and there. I need to remember to sign them up for only one thing at a time.