Birthday Party

Last night was Brady's birthday party. Too bad he didn't feel like partying. Silly kid plugged his ears when it came time to sing happy birthday to him.

Thanks to everyone who came over. Thanks for all of the presents too! :) Maybe next year Brady will be more festive.
And maybe next year I'll be smarter and not fill the goody bags with whistles. Sorry April.

Grandma's birthday visit

Friday I left work early to go home and clean before my mom got into town and also to be there for the carpet guy. We finally got our nasty carpets cleaned!! Yay! (You can see where the guy stopped cleaning to show me the before and after.)

Friday night we didn't do much: just played and ate the dinner my Dad homemade and sent down with my Mom. It was his birthday present to me. Very sweet Dad. BBQ chicken, cucumber salad, macaroni salad, and homemade applesauce. Yummy.

Saturday after both my mom and I exercised we went to FleetFarm so she could pick up feed and junk for her horses. Then Saturday night my Mom kicked Brian and me out. She said we needed alone time. So off we went to dinner and then we picked up a movie (the Inside Man and it was good) to watch back at the house. We also opened up presents and had cake. Brady LOVED his presents. I think his favorite was the Garbage truck.

Sunday we went to Cabellas and Pinehaven Farm. Cabellas is always kind of neat. Always makes me feel bad for the dead animals though. Pinehaven was a blast. Everyone had a good time and I highly recommend it to anyone who lives in the cities. The kids loved the animals and pumpkin patch. My personal favorite was Mooster the cow. He's my new boyfriend.

If you want to see a ton more pics you can go to my snapfish album.

My friends Olive Garden and Party City

I love traditions, especially when they include free salad and breadsticks and birthday presents. Thank you Bethany for my annual lunch at Olive Garden and my 3 book set of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! (I haven’t read the books or seen the movie yet so I’m pretty clueless – she swears I'll like it though.)

Before I went to lunch I ran to Party City and bought stuff for Brady’s birthday party next week. Party City is my new best friend. I can’t wait for Jayda’s birthday to roll around.

After Party City I ran to Famous Footwear to see if I could find a pair of Rocket Dog shoes like Erika’s and they didn’t have them. I was seriously sad. And the people working there were serious dinky-doos. That will be my last trip there (unless of course they have an irresistible sale).

After lunch I ran to Byerly’s to pick up a bday cake for my mom, who’s coming tomorrow and I also ordered Brady’s cake. Yay for me for knocking some things off of my to-do list.

UPDATE
Thanks Erika! I just bought my sought after rocket dogs from my newest friend shoes.com. They were even cheaper here than at Zappos.

My friend winkflash

I love winkflash. I don't love it for uploading and sharing photos, for that snapfish is my buddy, but for ordering prints and presents, winkflash is my man (99 cent shipping for all print orders and prints are just 12 cents). I just ordered my mom a mouse pad with the bath picture on it, a mug for my dad with his two dogs on it, and then I ordered a stretched canvas for me with Zara Z on it. I'm ever so happy now.

For mommy


For daddy

For me :)

Purple specs and more

So here is a picture of Brady in his pretty glasses. Too bad he isn't wearing them anymore; this morning we got his old pair back.

Saturday Erika and Alex came over for a visit. We played for a while and then went and had lunch at McDonalds. I always have high hopes for that place (visions of happy meals and happy kids dance through my head) but it never ends up being a good idea. We had to wait in the smallest line ever for like 15-20 minutes. I have no idea what the hold up was and it was seriously pissing me off. Apparently though I wasn't pissed off enough. Erika (while holding a very disgruntled Alex) made some crabby comment about how long she'd been standing in line and she got her whole meal for free. That almost made the lunch worth it - almost. I guess some people just weren't cut out for fast food.

<- Here is a picture of Alex looking at me like I'm loco. Wonder why...

Saturday night was crazy weather night. At 10:00pm our tornado sirens went off. Scared the crap out of me. Didn't help that Brian was down near Iowa watching some race. So I turned on the TV and saw that there was indeed a Tornado Warning for our county. Having been chastised before for not going down to the basement after hearing the sirens, I decided that I didn't want to get yelled at again. So I hauled the kids out of bed and brought them down to the basement until we got the all clear. Fun times. Fortunately they slept through all of it.

Good job guys

So last night after baths Brian was cleaning out Jayda’s ears like he always does; only this time something happened and he poked the Q-tip too far in her ear. She started screaming. It took her a couple of minutes to quit crying – tears were streaming down her face. We knew it had to have hurt. Both Brian and I have poked ourselves in the ear before so we know how much it hurts. Poor kid, we both felt really bad for her.

That’s not the last of it though. Around 3:00 am Jayda woke up and wouldn’t go back to sleep, not knowing what was wrong I just held her and then let her come into our bed with us. This morning she woke up and seemed fine but I noticed she had blood on her finger, I was like huh? Where did that come from? She wasn’t cut on her finger so I figured she must have been picking her nose or something (see post below). Then as I was doing her hair I noticed her entire ear was covered in dried blood. Yikes!! So I called the DR to see if I should bring her in and they were like “uhm yeah?! She could have a ruptured eardrum!” So I get into the DR office and the doctor is like “No matter what anyone tells you, Q-tips do not belong in a child’s ear – EVER!” He was pissed. So I apologized to him. Thinking back on it, I really didn’t owe him an apology but whatever… So he checks Jay’s ear out and thankfully she just has a ripped ear canal and not a ruptured eardrum. He gave me drops to give her 3 times a day for 7 days and told me to come back on Monday to make sure the ear canal was healing properly. He also said that blood would still be seeping out of her ear canal for about 5 days. And then he frowned at me and said DO NOT TRY AND CLEAN IT OUT. Use a wash cloth a couple of times a day and wipe the outside of the ear.

So that’s that story. Seems like Bri and I always have to learn proper child care the hard way and at the expense of our poor kids. I’ll never forget the time when Brady fell off of the washing machine. Big Fat F- - for us!

Here is a picture of a more happy bath time. :[

I think he's going to die

Last night I broke Brady’s glasses when I was trying to straighten them out, so this morning I ran around trying to get them fixed. To make a very long story short: he now has on a new temporary pair of glasses (with purple frames – he looks pretty flaming) and his other ones are being fixed for free since they’re under warranty for a year. It will take at least a week to get his other pair back. This is where the I think he's going to die comes in. Brian is going to freak out when he sees Brady sporting his purple specs. I giggle every time I think about it.

One out of two isn't bad

Brady is successfully NUK free.

He is not however potty trained. The worst part about it is that he wants to wear underwear. He loves watching his Elmo potty time video and wants to be like the kids on TV but for some reason he is terrified of the toilet. We have no idea why. He won't go in his potty chair either. He just doesn't get that if he wears undies he can't pee willy nilly. So every night we go through the battle of him wanting to wear underwear and swearing that he'll go pee pee in the potty and the next thing I know he's peeing in his undies. Granted he goes into the bathroom to pee so at least I'm not having to clean pee off the carpet but still... I want to just tell him no, no undies until he learns how to use the toilet but if I do that then how will he ever learn? I don't know what to do. Big fat F- for me.

FYI - We've tried a sticker chart, we've tried bribing him with candy, we've tried forcing him to go by making him sit on the toilet for minutes on end, we've tried books and videos (which he loves), and we've tried "going with him." Nothing works. (Oh, and he's not interested in sinking cheerios either.) I think we might just need to let up for a while. However, any advice is welcome.

Here is the little peepeehead sleeping.



And to top it all off, Jayda's developed a fondness for her nose.

The Weekend

Our friends from Michigan came for a visit this past weekend. Highlights of the visit for the majority of us were the Zoo, dinner at Acapulco, and the Twins/Tigers game. Highlights for Brian and Jason would be "Haydays" (snowmobile swap meet) and alcohol. :)

No joke: At the game Jason and fam went to purchase food. When they got back to their seats and opened up one of their hotdogs, they found that someone had spit gum in it before wrapping it up. Gross! I'm more pissed about it then they were. They just threw it out and figured it was because they were wearing their Tigers gear. If that's the case then I'm even more pissed. I mean what kind of person does that?

State Fair

My parents came for a visit and we went to the State Fair - I do love that place. I had roasted corn, chicken on a stick, soft preztel, and dt coke. I shared all of that food with the kids except for the corn, it was too hot and they didn't want any. I love getting food all to myself.



Good times!!

About ready to throw in the towel

The NUK experiment has not been going well at all. I am this close to breaking down and buying him another NUK. We're going on day ?? (lost track because of minimal sleep). Its getting worse as each day passes instead of better. He just keeps getting crabbier and crabbier and so do we. I'm starting to not care anymore if he sleeps with a NUK until he's 50. Enough is enough. We're giving it one more day...