When Guncles Attack Come Visiting...

Last weekend, my cousin James, (read...Boog's best friend) came in for a visit. He moved to Seattle a few years back and broke my precious baby's heart! Anyway...back to the story. He came in last weekend because he wanted to have a garage sale and get rid of the things he has been wasting money by holding on to storing for the last few years. We had a great time, as I am sure you will see from the pictures below...


Fun with the garage sale items...oh what a mother will do for some pictures of her boys! This is my cousin, our friend and my 3 boys! They are bringing disco back!

James and Tutti-Frutti, who was too young to remember the last time James came to visit. This little one is usually a skeptic when it comes to new people, but he must have read Boog's best buddy vibe because he latched on and they became quick friends.

All of the boys...

Boog and his BFF. He is heartbroken each time we have to say goodbye. James's flight out was way early on Tuesday so he did not wake us to say goodbye. Boog was not impressed. He remembers us taking/picking him up from the airport on other occasions and each time we go under the toll road, he always asks if that that is that way to James's Washington...did you know he owned the whole state?!

Sour Apple and the main man of the hour...

We miss you already! Come back soon, this time stay longer and devote all of your time here to your smallest, biggest fan!

Weekly Wednesday...food face.

Today was my sweet oldest boy's birthday, we went to eat and I got hardly any good pictures :'-( funny thing is, most everyone looked drunk! LOL and I swear no drinking was done. So...I will leave you with this picture of Mr. Foodface, the only non drunk dinner guest!

Happy Birthday Sour Apple

Where has the time gone?! I cannot believe that my baby is 12 today. It seems like only yesterday when he was born, yet it seems so long ago. So much has changed in 12 years. He is growing up to be quite the young man. He is in 7th grade this year, junior high. He is playing junior high soccer. Wow. He changes classes, he has a locker, he is growing up.

Part of this makes me happy, to know that he is growing up. Part of this tears me up, to know that he is growing up. I do not know if I am ready. So much is changing, so fast. He will always be my baby, he will always be my little boy, he will always be one of my best friends. Where does the time go? I can remember him being so little, so sweet and always wanting to be with me. Now, his is bigger, not always so sweet and not always wanting to be with me. He has friends now, he has a life beyond me. That is good. For me, sometimes that is bad. I miss my little boy but I am proud of the young man he is becoming. He may not always be responsible, he may not always be mature, he may not always be reasonable or respectful...he is 12. He can be responsible, he can be mature, he can be reasonable and he can be respectful and most of the time, he is all of those things.

He is a wonderful big brother, most of the time. He loves his baby brothers, he does not always like his sister, that comes with age but I know he loves her, he tells me. It is sweet. He tries to look out for them even though they do not want to be looked out for. He tries to hard to "mother" them.

He is a good boy. He makes me happy, he makes me mad. He is me when I was younger. I think that is why we butt heads the way we do. He is me. We have a special bond. I love him.

When I think back to 12 years ago, so much was different. I was a new mom. I knew nothing. I knew how to love him and that was all I needed to know. I have learned a lot about being a mom over the past 12 years. Some of it I learned the hard way, some of it I am still learning. The one thing that is for sure is that I love my kids with all that I am and all that I have. They mean the world to me.

I love you, my first born. You make me happy and I am proud of who you are becoming. I will always be here for you. No matter what.


I cannot believe how old my little boy looks here!

He has changed so much in the last year, and he changes more each day.

He will always be my baby.

He is so funny. He makes the best faces and has a huge personality.

He is a great big brother. He loves his little brothers more than anything.

I still cannot believe my baby is 12.

Wow.

Happy Birthday Diz! I love you!

Not me! Monday

Welcome to Not me! Monday, where we can be brutally honest and live to tell about it.

This last week has not been a week from well, you know where. Nope, it has been relaxing and fantastic.

I did not almost lose track of time on Thursday and almost get to Boog's school late to get him. Nope, I am an attentive and organized mother. I would never do that.

I did not let my cousin, who recently moved to Seattle, have a garage sale at my house this weekend. Nope, not me. I hate garage sales, they are too much work for too little return.

I have not been stuck in a funk for days for no apparent reason. Nope, I am chipper and happy all of the time!

While we were not having that garage sale on Saturday, 3 of the most adorable dogs did not show up to entertain my kids. Nope, no dogs here. Good thing too because my kids would be way too overly attached to those dogs and would be begging almost hourly to keep them! Glad that did not happen. Speaking of not having those dogs, I do not suppose anyone is looking for a (or 3) small dog (s) for their own family to love and care for? I am sure if they were here, they would be the cutest and sweetest dogs ever! Not that they are still here though!

Today, Tutti-Frutti has not learned how to climb on things. Nope, he is still tiny and fragile and does not ever get into anything. Not my perfectly well behaved baby. Good thing too because I might have had to remove him from a climbing cube with slide that he was not standing on, and the table over by the window in the play room, he was not standing on that either!

Ok, come join the fun. Head on over to MckMama's and see what everyone else has not been doing! And if you do not need a dog, please do not leave a comment with a way for me to contact you!

Happy Not me-ing!

Good Grief...What a day!

Ever just had one of those days where by 6:00pm, if not sooner, you were ready to put your kids in bed and just veg out? Geez...today is that day for me. I have been running ragged all.day.long. I was up late last night, against my better judgement, finally went to bed, could not go to sleep. Story of my life. I go to sleep, guess who wakes up! Finally get him fed and back to sleep (I guess) because when I woke up this morning, he was laying between my legs.

I get up, get everyone dressed and out the door, early even, and we were still late getting to pre-school. Again. For the second day. The Church where we have pre-school is home base for an ESL (English as a Second Language) program and they have registration going on this week so that means there are a billion more cars in the parking lot than really fit. That means when we arrive (late) there are NO parking spots, I had to circle around numerous times before I found someone leaving.

I get him dropped off and figure I will run to the mall to get some candy for the special VIP snack Boog is taking tomorrow. He wanted to take worm dirt but I thought it would be cute to find gummy worms, frogs and bugs. I ended up messing around at the mall and forgot why I was there. I was in a store and realized that I had stayed way longer than I had intended. Of course you know I am going to say that I was at the complete other end of the mall, Tutti-Frutti was refusing to ride in the new (very lightweight) stroller that tips over when anything is on the back of it and nothing is in it. So we are rushing through the mall, the kiosk people are running out in front of us trying to rope us into stopping and buying something. We are dodging them, other patrons and anything else that gets in our way.

We finally make it to the car and rush back to the school to...you guessed it, circle the parking lot and wait for someone to leave. Man, I hope that gets better soon.

We left school and headed home for lunch and a nap. I finally get them fed and we head upstairs for a nap. I get Tutti-Frutti almost to sleep and he decides he needs to poop. Great, he is nearly out and the changing will for sure wake him. What am I thinking? There is no way I can send this poor sweet baby to bed with a log in his drawers. Oh well, you know it perked him up and now he was ready to party. I ended up beaing able to threaten Boog to sleep and finally wrestled the little one to the point he had no more energy.

I rushed downstairs for a quick sandwich and almost polished off my gallon of peppers. Guess I had better hurry and get more. That might be a tragedy! Thank goodness Daddy is making pancakes for dinner, I do not need pepperoncinis for that!

I ended up having a few quiet moments to myself before having to wake, yes wake, Tutti-Frutti from his nap. The sweetest thing happened when we were coming back down from waking him. We were coming down and Boog was coming up to find us, the little one saw big brother about the time he said, "Hi, Baby Tutti-Frutti" (no that is not exactly what he said, we do not all call him Tutti-Frutti normally) the baby started waving frantically and smiling his biggest, cutest smile ever. He was so excited to see Boog, I thought I was going to cry. They love eachother so much.

I had to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home for the fixins for worm dirt, I thought it would be quick, easy and pain free. Huh? What was I thinking? I only had my 3 boys and the neighbor girl, should have been a cake walk. Uh, not!

For starters, it was raining...on top of that, Boog has been going to bed late, getting up early and not napping. Need I go farther on that one? LOL. We get in the store and I look down and he is licking (YES LICKING) the basket. I ask him what in the world he is doing and he just looks at me with all of his brown eyed cuteness and says, "I'm thiristy." What? Are you kidding me?! He is thirsty. This is the first I have heard of this. He never mentioned being thirsty. Oh well, nothing like a good lick of a shopping cart to quinch your thirst.

We continue on our way gathering our worm dirt goodies and I notice once again, he is licking the freakin basket. Oh my good grief! Time to go people.

We get to the register and start to check out and Tutti-Frutti pulls himself to a stand, he is belted in by the way...he grabs on to the cabinet at the register and hangs on for dear life. I am trying to check out, I have 3 gift cards and only one of them has money on it but you guessed it, I have no idea which one. Here we go again, they start to tumble to the floor. Great. We finally work out which one has the money on it, this time I leave the others behind.

We start to the car, finally, after what ended up being nearly an hour long trip after all and the little one stands up again, this time nearly toppeling over head first into the main part of the basket where by this time I had trapped Boog to keep him out of stuff. I catch him, get him back into a seated position and he is up again, facing backward trying to pull up. We finally make it to the car. I am sure at this point the little neighbor girl is thinking she will never go in public with us again (there was a grocery shopping trip last Friday that I have neglected to blog involving all of the same parties and she told her parents when asked how the trip went, "Very interesting!" LOL) but we shall see.

We finally get home and start some kitchen clean up and quickly realize that Tutti-Frutti has been eating old stale dogfood. Can someone please watch their children!! For pete sake, feed the kid. We get started on something else after we have swept the mouth for reminants of anymore dogfood and discover he is now eating a bug. Great. Just great.

I am off...it is dinner time. Food I hope. I think we took care of all of the dogfood and bugs from earlier. Just hoping it is not bug pancakes...yummy!

Weekly Wednesday in the rubba dub tub

He thinks it is funny to try to stand up in the tub! Mommy was not impressed.

We tried to do a swirly...this is what we got.

No matter how many times you take away the wash cloth, he always gets it back and insists on sucking the water out of it! YUCK!

And this was all we could do with the "head full of hair" that this one has!

Cheesey McSmiley!

On a side note...I really wish babies understood that if they would be still for 7.3 seconds, they could be dried, diapered, dressed and on their merry way. BUT...instead, you wrestle with them for a full 12 minutes trying to get them dried, chased down, attempt to diaper them, chase them, flip them back over, chase them, attempt the diapering once more, flip them, chase them, finally say to heck with it and hope that both cheeks are tucked in, chase them, fight them to get their pants on them, flip them, get their pants on, finally, get their shirt on, get their shirt back on, chase them, attempt to button the shirt to the pants, chase them...you get the picture! I am completely worn out!

Not me! Monday

Ever have just one of those weeks? You know the kind...nothing seems to go right, you send your kids to bed several times with no bath, a sandwich (or in our house quesadilla) for dinner on numerous occasions or eating out just one more time because you are too lazy to go to the grocery store. Well, Not me! Monday was born out of the desire to confess those little imperfections and have a little free therapy along the way.

Last week, my precious little 4 year old did not start pre-school! Nope, no way. We love him way to much to subject him to such horror!

Said 4 year old absolutely does not love pre-school. Nope, he loves being with his mommy and daddy way too much to ever enjoy 3 whole hours away from them, even if there are 15 other children to play with. He would much rather spend his time at home.

Since I have never left my precious baby anywhere with anyone, I most certainly did not stay at the school the first day while he was in school, I did not just go to the shopping center behind the school the second day or hang out at the mall which is 5 minutes away in the rain on the third day, just because I did not want to drive all the way home and leave him in another city so far away. Nope, I trust people way more than that.

I do not have such control issues that I would suffer by not going home just because it made me uneasy to leave him and be 15 minutes away. Nope, I am a well adjusted, confident individual.

On Saturday, we were not invited to 2 different birthday parties, nor did we go to both. Nope, that would have been way too much of a hassle since they were more than 30 minutes away from each other and one started at the exact time the other ended. I would never stress myself out for such petty things as a child's birthday! Not me!

We did not have a blast at the birthday parties either, you know...since we did not go!

I am not sitting here at the computer at almost 10 pm on Not me! Monday, just now typing my Not Me's! Nope, not me! I have all the time in the world to get this done. I wojld never wait more than 12 hours after everyone else posted theirs!

I have not been so busy this last week that I totally forgot that I promised you all pictures from the actual birthday party! Nope, I am on the ball and got those posted days ago! Or not...I am not going to promise that they will indeed be done this week and put up for you to enjoy.

I have not been working on my photography blog this week, I have not spent time putting pictures up and hoping to actually be able to pass along the link in hopes of being able to snag a shoot with someone soon! Nope, that sounds like too much fun!

Well, believe it or not (probably not...) I am out of Not me's! I am sure I am not actually out of them, it is more like I am way too tired to remember any more of them!

Happy Not Me'ing! Now, hop on over to MckMama's and see what everyone else has been up to!