Hair

I am here to tell you that all hair cuts are not created equal! Take this new cut I got for example. Really cute, right? It's stacked in the back, too. My hair stylist said, oh this is really easy. It'll only take you 5 minutes in the morning. Yeah, right! I haven't been able to reproduce this look yet!! My hair doesn't want to lay that way for me. I can't reach the back to make it look the way it is supposed to! UGH! I am a mother or three who has never been very good at fixing my hair and now I definitely don't have time to spend trying to figure it out! But, of course, I want an awesome cut that makes me look awesome!

Oh well, here is the day it looked awesome!!

Attitude

It's all about attitude, Al says this morning at about 5:50 a.m. as I am grumbling....You are complaining about being tired tonight and it's only morning. How do you know how you will feel tonight, he says. I am tired now, how is that going to change? I ask. Am I going to lay down and take a nice 2 hour nap this afternoon to catch up? Like, right in the middle of my work day? I don't think so.
He's probably right, though. It is about attitude. A bad one. Mine. I HATE mornings. Especially ones that start before 6 a.m.! I have always been this way, a second shifter at heart. I only started getting up early because I have this quilt that I have been working on for *cough* 10+ years now. Wow, I can't believe it has really been that long. Anyway, I got it out yet again this year thinking, okay, maybe if I machine quilt it instead of hand quilting I can just get this sucker done!! Afterall, I decorated my bedroom to match this quilt and by golly I am going to see that quilt on my bed in that room before I change it or move! I am determined. Alas, I don't like how the machine quilting looks! UGH! Hand quilting is beautiful, but it takes forever. My mother in law, bless her, has tried to motivate me. She helps me quilt whenever I bring it over. (She quilts 3 times faster than I do, by the way). And she tells me that I am not giving up! I am finishing that quilt in 2008!!!
So....I get up before 6 to give myself and hour by myself to work on my quilt. Lately, my boys either wake up to be up with me or they wake me up at night so I am tired and have no desire to work on my quilt. That would be today. Carter started radomly waking up and talking to me around 2 and then Casey decided he needed me at 6:15 a.m. That translates into no quilting and a tired crabby momma. Maybe, since I am a second shifter at heart I should stay up later and work on it. My problem with this idea is I tend to fall asleep putting my kids to bed. Excuses, excuses, I know.

I am hoping that by writing about this it can help me be motivated again and not hate my mornings quite so much!

Delectable Mountain

It's finally up!!

Last year my mother-in-law joined the Butler County Barn Quilt Trail committee. Last summer, we raised an Ohio Star Barn quilt at the family farm. I wanted one, but we live in town....Then we stopped at a street fair after church one Sunday andI noticed one booth had mini quilts painted on wood for hanging on your wall our house or whatever. That got me to thinking, why can't I have one. I said something to Al and he said he didn't care. If I've learned anything in the past 11 years it's when Al says he doesn't care, I'd better jump on it!!! Anyway, I looked at all of the Kentucky and Ohio barn quilts online (this is where the idea originated) and picked a pattern I liked. I actually found lots I liked, but in particular I liked triagles around the outside like a border and I liked the addition of the color black which can be found in many Amish quilts. So here's my garage quilt. I think the pattern is called Delectable Mountain, but it's kind of like an Ohio Star too.
Oh and if you notice, Al did trust me to lift him in the skid loader bucket! Silly man!!

Geocaching

For my birthday last year, Al and the kids got me a handheld GPS unit so that we could go geocaching. Emily, Carter and I took a little class from Crawdaddy Outdoors last summer and were hooked! It's like one big treasure hunt. In this case, we went Easter weekend, so it was like an Easter egg hunt!
The weather was decent and I couldn't wait any longer to try it out so we loaded up some coordinates and headed out. I must say, the first one we tried to find was flooded and the last one we needed to get back home so we didn't get to finish looking. We did find one cache though! It was really exciting! We signed the log book as our first find and the kids each took a bouncy ball. We left a pencil, key chain and shell. It was fun to take a momento of our hunt, but the real fun was spending time outdoors together and the "hunt"!
We can't wait for summer! Camping and Geocaching with family and friends! What could be better?

Bowling

My baby boy turned 6 March 13th!

It's amazing to me how much time has gone by as I can remember his birth sooo clearly! I visited Kindergarten on Carter's birthday. What a fun time! Carter made sure I had a milk and cookie at snack time and he asked his teacher if I could borrow her mat for rest time...such a thoughtful boy! He got to read a book in front of the class while I was there, too. He is getting so grown up! It is still hard for me to look at him and try to imagine him as a man who might not want to hug me every time he sees me. Especially when Carter says, "Oh Mommy I love you soo much I just have to hug you!!" and he leaps at me regularly. I am very proud of the big boy he is becoming and I am sure the man will be awesome too!

For his party, we went bowling. He got to have 4 friends, 2 girls and 2 boys from his class, the neighbors and all of the cousins were home and got to come along!! Wow! We had a bowling theme, bowling ball and pin cake, bowling napkins, etc. The bowling alley even decorated a pin with green paint and stickers for him to take home!! What a fun party!! We could be as loud as we wanted and the kids got food and to run around! What more could you ask for?!

All in all we had a great time and Carter is one year older! I survived!

Hannah Montana?

Look out Hannah Montana, Here Comes Emily!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Carter

I woke up Wednesday morning dry eyed, stuffed up and really tired as I slept (if you call that) in the chair with Casey because he was coughing so hard he threw up! Anyway, when I stumbled into the bathroom, Al cheerily says, Good Morning!! And I reply, I find nothing good about this time of morning, 5:50 a.m. Then Carter wakes up...

I found something good about 5:50 a.m. in the morning...
making birthday cookies with my son!

We had forgotten to do this the night before and I had to work Wednesday night so I was afraid we wouldn't get to as his birthday is Thursday!! What a perfect opportunity I was given to spend time with my 5 almost 6 year old!! Carter has always been my cookie maker, wanting to crack eggs, measure, and mix. Most of all he likes to taste the dough after each ingredient is added and then even more before they get baked!!! So we made cookies together at 6:00 a.m.

I can't believe that Carter is 6 already! It seems like yesterday Al and I were at the doctor checking to see if I was really sick or in actually in labor and now 6 years have flown by! Carter is Moma's big boy now! He is definitely one of extremes!! Very excited and happy or very upset and mad! Some days there are no in betweens. He always has a big hug and kiss for me though no matter what.

This morning, Thursday, March 13, Carter's actual birthday, he wakes up before 6 again, because he is soo excited to open his presents. He was hoping for a Webkinz. We let him wake Emily up (no easy task) and open one early: his choice. Imagine his surprise and joy that he got a Webkinz tree frog!!! He and his sister then played on the computer until it was time to walk out the door. I am visiting his class at lunch time so the whole day should be fun. This weekend is his birthday party. We are going bowling. I'll post pics as I am baking a bowling ball and pin cake. Fun fun!

Here's Carter's video...He wanted to do one ever since I put one up of Casey...

HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY CARTER RYAN!!!

Bloggable Moments!!

Remember when I posted about the broken DVD and how my friend Beth told me I should take pictures instead of being upset?? Well, last Thursday I walked in my house into one more such bloggable moment.

We had just gotten home from school...I took the kids all inside and then told them I would be just a minute while I fed the bunnies and the birds. When I got back inside, there was Casey, my 2-year old, cracking eggs into a bowl! He was even getting down off of his chair and throwing the shells away!! Then he proceeded to get into the silverware drawer and get out the mini whisk I have let him use before and stir his eggs!!

Actually, he did pretty well. Only one dropped egg on the floor and no shells in the mixed eggs!

He and his sister ate scrambled eggs for a snack that day and all was well.

Emily's Story

Emily got on Al's laptop the other afternoon and wanted to type a story. This is something that I used to do all the time when I was little, except I hand wrote them as computers weren't as common as they are now. I loved writing and miss it now. I 've been trying to get back into it...this blog helps and I also write articles for the library in the paper. But anyway, here's Emily's story just as she wrote it.

The helpless people

Once upon a time there was a helpless family that had four(five) people in their family a boy named Billy and two girls. One of them is named Sally and the other one is named Susan the mom is named Rose and the dad is named Henry and their dog is named Maddy. And one time that helpless family was just minding their own business and this guy came up to them and said, Get off my property!!! And then the dad said when did this become your land? And the guy said since I bought it! And then he kicked the family and all their stuff to Canada and a boy saw them and then the boy asked where is your house? The mom said, We don't have one. Oh so would you like to live with me and my family? The mom and dad both said ok and they went to the boy's house and lived happily Ever after

THE END

Another Day Off...

Last friday the kids had ANOTHER day off of school! This one had been scheduled, but still!! I managed to get the day off of work, too, so we played....

It was a beautiful day for playing in the snow. We made a "snow Thomas the train" in the morning! Complete with blue, red and yellow "snow paint!" Then in the afternoon we went to grandpa and grandma's to go sledding. When Al got home from work, he got the 4-wheeler out and pulled us everywhere! We tried to toss snowballs at him while he tried to throw us off of the sled! We all were soaking wet, but happy! We also built a snowman for them in their yard.


What a great day with my kids in the snow! We all tumbled into the bed at night and slept well!

Tooth Fairy

As you can see, Carter has recently lost his second tooth! It was so funny. He was eating pizza and complaining that it hurt and I told him to pull his tooth out. Lo and behold the next bite, pizza went down and tooth came out! He put the tooth under his pillow and went to bed. When he woke up, he quickly looked under his pillow and saw that the tooth fairy had left him a dollar. (For the first tooth, the tooth fairy left one dollar and one gold dollar.) So he says to me, "Mom, the tooth fairy must be rich! She left me another dollar!"

Lesson Learned

My good friend Beth told me this should be my lesson learned. What really should be pictured above is the DVD in little pieces.... Casey got this DVD for Christmas. He does have a habit of opening the cases, but I have always been right there and I take the case and put in the movie he wants to watch or try to interest him in something else. This particular day, who knows what I was doing, but I was not right there. Needless to say, Casey came to me with DVD case and DVD in pieces! Of course, I was frustrated. I promptly took the DVD and threw it away and then packed up all of our other DVDs in a rubbermaid container that he cannot open! UGH! The lesson learned is that this is a bloggable moment and not that big of a deal. He's 2. It's a DVD. I'll get over it. My friend Beth reminded me of this when I was telling her about how Casey now brings me the empty case and says, "Mommy, uh-oh." And isn't that cute?