Phoning It In

Just little everyday snippets of our life, courtesy of my Windows Phone camera. Many of these would've possibly been posted from my phone while out and about but since I'm off Facebook for a few more days, I'll catch you up here.

Autumn up out of her seat while we wait to pick up one of her brothers somewhere, I'm sure:


Easton was incredibly crazy before bed one night and was having trouble listening. So he landed himself in bed very very early that evening and the little two stayed up to watch a quick show:


The week after Easton's birthday found us at Children's Hospital for our annual toy and game donation:


Autumn doesn't have a scheduled nap anymore, but sometimes it all catches up with her and every so often she'll fall asleep in the car on the way to or from getting Easton...and this day she must've stayed asleep even once we got home:


Friday a week and a half ago, Autumn and I met one of my oldest friends Tonya for breakfast:


We're planning a laundry/mud room makeover and I'm eyeing this fabric for my window treatment:


On Wednesday morning last week, I'd made muffins but then Jason proposed going out for breakfast with his girls once we'd dropped the boys off at school. So the boys ate muffins and we ate Atlanta Bread:


On Thursday the little two and I made an impromptu trip to IKEA due to the aforementioned laundry room re-do. Autumn had woken up at 6:00 that morning and by 11 was having a hard time keeping her eyes open on our drive down:


The kids were very excited to get to go to IKEA's Småland babysitting. Dalton and Easton had been before and Autumn, who wasn't potty trained at that time, couldn't go. Well, you not only have to be potty trained, but you have to be at least 37 inches tall which Autumn is so not even close. So, she burst into tears and begged and begged both me and the Ikea employee. :( Dalton decided he wanted to go even without his brother or sister with him so we signed him in and headed upstairs. We hadn't gotten far when my pager went off signaling that I had to return to Småland. Apparently Dalton was crying and wanted to leave. But that's okay. The little two are very easy to manage and they like Ikea anyway:


The chair matched her outfit!


This one too!


More Ikea fun:







And then we decided to eat a little lunch there:




Good times and now I'm ready to go on my laundry room after Dalton's birthday party. It's going to be here at our house this year so I probably shouldn't move everything out of the laundry room until that's over with.

On Friday Autumn and I headed to Lowe's and Home Depot to look at paint...and tractors, apparently:


Autumn's fancy Valentine hair on Saturday:


She was the only kid to get dressed that day. Gramoo came to babysit that night for our date-of-the-month. Jason and I headed to a wine and cheese bar. So cool! We each had 3 samples of wine:


Once our cheese tray arrived I was too excited and forgot to take a picture. But it was oh so yummy. However, with the wine and such we were too tired to go on the rest of our date (we were going to go to Dave and Busters) so we came home instead and just before midnight Easton started vomiting. :( It's, gosh, his 3rd tummy issue in these last 5 months. It only lasted a couple of hours so that's good. Praying everyone else stays healthy (which I always pray that anyway).

And that's got us up to date as far as my phone goes. Bye now!

Highlights of the Week Thus Far

I tackled the kitchen on Monday. I know our guests were here on Saturday, but there was still much I wanted to get done. So Sunday night I planned ahead and I tried this trick I saw on Pinterest where you clean stuff with ammonia fumes. The oven itself was also supposedly able to be cleaned with ammonia fumes...just heat the oven and then stick a bowl of ammonia in there overnight. So I did. Super stinky....and then it didn't even work. Nuthin'.

So frustrating!

My burners looked like this:

And I was so excited to stick them in some baggies with a bit of ammonia and have that do all the work for me. It didn't do much. :(

So instead I geared myself up:


Relegated Autumn to the living room:


And got to work with good ol' fashioned Easy Off in the oven and steel wool on my burner pans and a lot of elbow grease. Oh well. I got the results I wanted:


Tuesday was Autumn's earring day and while we were in her room hanging out, the kids wanted pictures of themselves:




I took this and Dalton said, "Did I look a little bit awesome?" :)


This was in Dalton's folder when I picked him up from school on Wednesday.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw the "art" he thought worth saving. He said it was Pluto's nose.

And then he requested a "McQueen face sandwich" for his lunch. I did my best:


My big guy came home with this in his backpack this week:

I said, "Easton, who is this from?" And he was all, "I don't know...where did you get it?" and seemed super surpised that I found it in his backpack. Could he have an admirer? He brought home another note last week from his friend (a girl) who said he was the best friend anyone could ever want and wrote "BFF" and such. But she is a good reader and speller and that "liek you so moch" note couldn't be from her.

Hmmmm....

It's Been 6 Weeks...

...since Autumn got her ears pierced. And you know me. Rule follower that I am, I most certainly waited exactly six weeks. It's not just that I like to follow rules, but there's something about me that just loves the anticipation of "events" however small they might be. I like having a day on the calendar that we count down to.

And so it was for January 24th...the day Autumn got to change her earrings for the first time.

We took a before picture with the teeny tiny gold studs:


And then she had decided several days beforehand that she was going to choose her owl earrings as her first pair. Now, I started buying earrings waaaaaaaaaaay before I knew she'd be getting her ears pierced. I thought she'd be about 4 before it happened so after her cupcake themed 1st birthday, I bought her a pair of cupcake earrings. After her owl themed 2nd birthday I bought owls. I was going to keep doing that so she'd at least have a few pairs with less expense once the time came. So...all that is my way of saying, these owls are a little big for her tiny lobes:


But she was so excited:


Pose!


She didn't want to change them this morning. She loves the owls. That is, until she put on her Cinderella costume this afternoon:


Then the large orange owls just didn't "go" anymore. What's a girl to do?

I pulled out her jewelry box and offered a few other choices saying "pearls" first in my list of flowers and hearts and diamonds and butterflies. She chose "curls". Hee hee.


I've always had a thing for pearls, even before I lost Pearl, so I just love those on her dainty lil ears. I might not even offer a new pair tomorrow. Then again, this girly stuff is just so fun that maybe I will...

The Latest

Not much new around here, really. Jason and I are both taking a Facebook break as part of our church's "21 Days of Prayer and Fasting" going on through the end of January. I haven't missed it too much but I feel like many of you keep up with what we've been up to that way.

But here's a few noteworthy things that probably would've gotten mentioned on Facebook.

With Easton's decreased appetite lately, his lunches were coming home relatively intact. Like, his lunches of choice are usually a yogurt, some fruit, and a side of crackers. Plus a small milk or juice (4 oz.). And he'd come home not having eaten any yogurt and only eating half of his normal amount of grapes and crackers. This morning I made muffins for breakfast. Normal Easton would easily eat 2. Maybe 3. Today Easton had a half. A half! Autumn eats more than that!

Anyway, thinking maybe he was getting bored with his usual lunches, I made him a menu. I bought a 4 opening frame in the Dollar Spot at Target and typed up the current options of stuff he likes and each night he uses a dry erase marker to choose "at least one from each rectangle":

He's really not eating more but it's working out. I like him to have variety but he seriously prefers his vanilla yogurt most every day.

While he's off not eating at school, the other two and I are home. I've been motivated to get movin' for health this year. Not because I'm trying to lose weight ('cause I'm not) but just for general well-being and all that. I've actually been doing a good job doing at least a little something most (but definitely not all) days. I like to change it up and one day I was doing a kettlebell DVD in the living room. The kids wanted to join in. Autumn initially grabbed our big green hoppity ball and Dalton grabbed a tin purse. By the time I was able to snap a picture she had moved onto holding something else:



Cuties!!!

What else?

I took Easton to his best bud's birthday party yesterday. Dalton was invited but it was at kind of a daredevil place and that's just not Dalton's cup of tea so he stayed home with Autumn and Jason while Easton wowed everyone with his fearlessness. And ate ice cream:

And then he was full. And couldn't have his cupcake (fine by me) or drink his juice (again, fine by me but dude...full from a teeny cup of ice cream?!?!)

Jason and I made a resolution this year to try to have people over at least once a month. We're really bad about "entertaining" because our house isn't that big, I never know what to cook, and we tend to be a bit anti-social. The people we do have over on occasion are always the same: Mallory and family, Baby John's family, my family... So we made this resolution as we've been wanting to build relationships with people in our church for one thing. Plus just hang out with other friends. And then there's the whole "clean house" excuse. It's always so nice when we're expecting guests...the kids all run off to play and Jason and I team up on some different kinds of house-cleaning than I normally do--more decluttering and "deeper" cleaning. Like, he's a big fan of using our vacuum attachments...so, for example, he vacuumed the valance above our sliding glass doors to the backyard...and, sadly, I think that's the first time we've cleaned that in the 7 years we've lived here. Or, I use it as an excuse to organize toys that have gotten misplaced. Most of our toys have a specific home, and the kids know the "home" but sometimes they don't make it back there when we pick up each night. So, we filled a bag with things that were out of place and the kids put them away while I organized Autumn's hair things. Now, I certainly wasn't expecting them to check out Autumn's hair things upstairs in her bedroom but sometimes you just get that bug when picking up, am I right? And, unfortunately, either their kid or one of mine dumped out all the hair stuff anyway. Ha!

So last night we had some friends from church over. This family had us over for dinner nearly a year ago and it's taken us this long to return the favor. We invited them on Friday (because plans with Baby John's family fell through) and they were able to come over last minute. They have a daughter that's a couple months younger than Autumn:


Eventually I had to put my kids to bed even though we had company. They stayed till 10:30!

Jason played electric guitar at church this morning and Easton decided to ride home with J. The boys have a new tradition as of late where the kid that arrives home first arranges a few "soft friends" on the washing machine for the other brother to see when he walks in. Pretty cute:


And now our weekend is nearly over. Gotta start dinner and the kids and I will do a movie night while Jason watches football. Ugh. All our teams are done but still the season isn't over. I love football but I'm ready for it to be done. For sure.

Hope all of you had a nice weekend as well!

Our Weekend

Friday afternoon:

Big brother (who hates to read despite being in a 2nd/3rd grade literacy class) reading a princess library book to little sister.

Saturday morning:
Jason slept in (a lot!) while I made these fabulous peanut butter chocolate chip muffins. It was a suggestion of Easton's. He was all, "Hey Mom, wouldn't it be gross if there was a muffin that was peanut butter, chocolate chip, garlic and tomato?" But leave off those last two and he had a winning idea so I searched for a recipe online and it's a definite keeper. Highly recommend.

The cat snuggling a pair of Autumn's underpants.

Autumn is in underwear 100% of the time. Yes, that means even at night!

Daddy-daughter dance:

Autumn loves to dance. If she hears any princess song she'll ask any one of the rest of us "Will you dance with me?" and she holds your hands and spins and sways with her little eyes shut all dreamy-like. The plan is for her to start dance classes (hopefully with her pal Berkley) very soon.

Saturday lunchtime:
I got to escape for a bit to redeem the deluxe pedi/mani gift certificate Jason gave me for Christmas:


Saturday afternoon:
We watched the Saints barely lose to the 49ers. :(

Saturday night:
As soon as the Saints game ended we hopped in the car to head to Mallory's house for pizza and to watch Tim Tebow and the rest of the less-mentioned Broncos embarass themselves agains the Patriots. Pathetic. We left during the 3rd quarter. It was probably 3 minutes and 16 seconds into the quarter. Just kiddin'. ;)

'Twas a very bad week for the S family's football teams including the LSU loss to Alabama on Monday. Boo!

Sunday morning:
We headed to second service church where I had to work in the 2 year old room. One girl smelled like vomit the entire time. We couldn't figure out why. I flipped out (in my head) when I saw Autumn sucking on the same plastic apple that girl had just had in her mouth. Apparently this little girl also had diarrhea all up her back while in my care but I didn't notice thanks to her already reeking of puke. Time will tell on that one. Eek!

And...for a touch of nature to finish things up: some robins enjoying a bath in the water on top of the caved in sandbox:


The end.

Lucky Number 7!

Easton was officially 7 years old on Monday.

He spent his last [conscious] 6 year old moments playing a little bonus Wii with Dad on Sunday.

He loves to play with Jason but they just don't get the chance all too often. And Jason had plans for the BCS National Championship game on Easton's birthday so they had to get it in ahead of time.

He was up later than normal and we actually had to wake him up on his birthday! We opened his door and made noise and that didn't work. We turned off the humidifier and sound machine and sang happy birthday and eventually he wandered in clutching the "Happy 7th birthday, Easton!" balloon I'd stuck to the wall by his head:


I'd also decorated Jason's and my bed with 7 blue balloons:


He hopped up for some birthday wishes and then Jason suprised him with his first gift which was a remote control helicopter. He hid it on the side of the bed and just made it fly right up. Here's Easton trying to figure out what the noise was:


It was a hit!


The battery only lasts about 5-7 minutes of flying so then he was like, "I wonder what's next?" and ran down to grab himself a gift off the table. Stinker:




It was Battleship. We like games around here.


Then he got dressed for school. He had wanted to wear a "handsome shirt" for the occasion. I had him pose outside his room which I had also decorated a bit:


The kitchen table of gifts minus the helicopter and Battleship:


He wanted to open the gift from Dalton. Dalton had very carefully selected a book about dinosaurs for his big bro who is currently planning to become a paleontologist. He also found a T-rex shirt on clearance that he wanted to get so we stuck that in there too:


Then it was on to his birthday doughnuts he'd requested:


Dalton and Jason headed off at that point to pre-K and work and not too much later it was 8:08, his exact time of birth so I had him stop putting on his shoes:


Then Autumn and I took him to school. It made me sad. This is the first time he had school on his birthday. Last year it was on a Sunday and the two years before that he didn't have school every day so he just happened to miss having school on his birthday. But not this year. :( It was the first time I didn't spend his whole birthday with him.

I take that back.

On his actual birth day I saw him for a minute before they took him away to the NICU:


And for a few minutes when my employee friends broke the rules and snuck him over to see me because they felt so bad for me:


I was the sick one on his birth day, remember? He was doing just fine (for the circumstances) that first day:


So I guess I didn't spend that birthday with him either. But I was hardly conscious of the fact that I had become a mother and was instead more concerned about the Broncos playoff game and mad that Jason was drinking a Vanilla Coke in front of me when I could only have ice chips. :) Anyhoo....

Instead of spending the day with him (and therefore, Jason didn't take off work like he normally does for the kids' birthdays) Autumn and I went thrifting with Z's mom and sister. It was a good time and I got lots of deals. She's got a talent for that sort of thing. She helped me find all sorts of stuff I didn't know I needed. :) I left in the nick of time to pick up Dalton and our neighbor Emery from school and got them home to pick up the cupcakes I'd made:


And I got to use the cupcake feature of my cake transporter for the first time:


Do you, perchance, remember when this happened?

Well, Jessica and Janna made sure to get me a super cool cake carrier that I just love:


I use it a lot but that was the first time I'd needed to carry cupcakes anywhere since getting it. We took it and some McDonald's up to E's school to join him for lunch:




I think he felt pretty special, so many kids wanted to sit with him but the table was already pretty full of us plus 3 other boys from E's class:


Easton didn't eat much of his requested lunch. His appetite has been strange lately. It's actually got me a smidge concerned because he never has eaten much to begin with, ya know? But anyway...because it was his birthday he still got a cupcake. But not before he wore the foolish headband:


And was serenaded by his classmates:

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They have a class rule where no one else can touch their cupcake until the birthday kid has taken the first bite:


Which is why I waited to even put a cupcake in front of Autumn:


Rascal!


Kaelan just loves Autumn. Autumn loves Kaelan too but in this picture it appears she loves her cupcake more:


Easton was loving having his best brother there with him:




In fact, as we were leaving Easton looked on the verge of tears. When I asked him about it, he said he didn't want Dalton to go.

But before that...lunch turns into quiet time. They eat in their classrooms at this school and so they have to clean up before they move on to quiet time. The kids are supposed to clean up after themselves but there was still chocolate crumbs all over the floor so I started sweeping up. Autumn was laying on a bean bag with a stuffed mouse pretending to nap and Easton and Dalton were together. I finished up and Autumn was no longer on her bean bag. She wasn't with Kaelan (the other likely possibility) I couldn't see any short people running around the room. Before I was able to panic I spotted her two tables away at a table full of girls just coloring away:


She carried her drawing out of the school and was all, "I made this. I had a good day at school" like her brothers do. Goob.

The little two and I left and ran some errands until it was time to get Easton again. We hung a few balloons out the window to make him feel like the special birthday boy he was when we pulled up in the car line:


I had wanted to write on the windows like "Just Married"s do but didn't have time to get that kind of paint. Oh well.

We drove home where Jason was already waiting for us after leaving work a little early. Easton wanted to dig into some more gifts, so that's what he did:


A skateboard!




He was pretty excited about that one:


It was a hit with the other kids too:




His Clone Wars Wii game was another big hit:




A couple more gifts:




And then it was tough to decide, "What should I check out first? Hmmmm"


After checking out some stuff and playing his new Wii game with Dalton, we eventually headed over to Joe's Crab Shack because my crazy child wanted shrimp and crab for dinner--again, his lack of appetite lately, he didn't eat too much but he was happy.

We came home for some cake:




The little two went off to bed and J had told Easton he could stay up as late as he wanted watching football with him that night. So E was up for the entire sad shutout. :( Then our biggest boy headed off to bed.

I think he had a great day turning 7.