Packing...

Just a few words.

Packing with kids:
Snacks, books, extra undies, blankets and animals, swim stuff, snacks, drinks, toothbrushes, shampoo, diapers, wipes, music, toys, stroller, pack n play?, tylenol just in case, clothes, sun screen, snacks (did I mention these?)

Packing for me: clothes, deodorant, toothbrush, book, eye liner, OH and ear plugs, cause the kids are in the same room.

Why in the world do I feel the need to pack their room up and take it with us?
This is why I hate hotels. At least at someone else's house there are toys and food, or at least the fridge to put stuff in. The hotel thing, as fun as it sounds, is hard.

Before kids we'd throw in a backpack. And babydom...wow, traveling with a baby is just like packing to move! Goodnight, a baby requires its own transportation, the special stroller the size of the dining room table and enough diapers to cover Rhode Island at least.

At least I feel like we're on the downward slope of packing. Emmy doesn't require as much now. And honestly Cam would wear the same thing 6 days in a row. Its just the food and entertainment factor. And with gas being 27.99 per gallon...we ain't stoppin' for food! And entertainment...LOOK OUT THE WINDOW you say, but there is something to a quiet back seat that allows the adult passengers to speak to one another for the first time in, say 16 days. Conversation is worth more than gas these days. So, I like the kids quiet back there. (horrible momma). So, entertainment is of upmost importance.

So there is it...my rant on packing. Now I just need to make that list and do it. Sigh...

In the car

So, today was lovely.
A jaunt to Louisville to hear Rachel sing. Oh. my. word.
Our friends, Tom and Beth, have this little girl...okay she's 19...and boy can she sing.
We sat in the park and soaked it in, as much as possible with a no napped two year old and a still tired 5 year old.
It was beautiful. And I'm going to be glad to say, "I knew her when..." she was a free gig! :)

Then Andrew Peterson's kid's CD is in the car aplayin' and there's a lovely falsetto part in one of the songs.
This is where it doesn't get any better: CAM sings the falsetto! LOVING IT.
You can't laugh. Its sincere. BUT wow, its about the cutest thing.

And not to be out done, Em pulls out ALL the words to our fav. song, Beautiful Girl.

Andrew Peterson, Bugs and Slugs.
Beautiful moments in the car. (inbetween the silbling wars ofcourse! mine mine, no mine...)

The Trophy

Our last game...and a trophy.

We have the best coaches in the world, wow! They made this season so special, presented each kid with a trophy and had nice things to say about each player.

Cam was thrilled beyond words!

Plus, last hit - awesome

The Team

Cam's T-ball Team pics

Playin' at Befanee's house

I dropped of Em at Bethany's while Cam and I went to Big Lots (thank you Nora).
Apparently at Bethany's eating lunch can be dangerous, so Em decided to play it safe and wear the bike helmet. She's very safety conscience. We are so proud.

Please note, the dress up she's wearing is about 3 sizes too small, Nora said soon after lunch she asked for it to come off.

Lazy Day

Its been a busy summer. I've been determined to make the most of each day, but today I determined that we all needed a break. So, we lazed around!

Great breakfast: blueberry pancakes, eggs, coffee (for me!)
Playing upstairs in Cam's room: jumping on the mattress on the floor, playing a leap frog alphabet game, playing princesses
Short trip: Em went to Bethany's for a bit and Cam and I had some alone time at BIG LOTS...love that store
Nap: well, for Em.
Project: Cam and I put together a K'nex dealie and then I took apart this headboard thing we made in Rockford
Movie: Cam and Em decided to sit together in the comfy chair and watch Enchanted while I listed a bunch of stuff on Craigslist
Dinner with Daddy: chinese restaurant and the kids LOVED it, tried EVERYTHING we put on their plates
Story: daddy
Prayer: family
Bed!

Beautiful

Play Day...

Our MOPS group is having a few summer play dates...this one was WONDERFUL (did the zoo a few weeks ago).

One of our wonderful moms hosted us ALL, water fun, swinging, baseball, watermelon...all things summer

Swimmin'

Its what we do! Swim, swim, swim!

Cam has officially learned how, no floaties!!!

Em, loves to float!

Here they are with Addison and Jake, their swim buddies

Few more tball pics

Emmy and her buddy
Cam running the bases!

What happen's at g-dad and g-mom's??

So, Cam gets the FUN of waterguns, finally!
He shoots Sis!
She gets a tutorial...and WATCH OUT CAM!

Fun for everyone, and let it be noted that by the end of it my dad and I were both soaked!
But it was HOT and totally worth it!

More TBall

Here are some t-ball pics that g-dad (grand-dad) took.

One of Cam connecting with the ball and two of him chatting with his buddy Ben, although Ben's head is cut off in one of the pictures I still thought they were great. Two kids having fun!

Reminded of a funny in Florida

Betsy just reminded me of a funny (okay, super funny) Emmy moment in Florida.

Em had decided NOT to go to sleep. For two nights in a row she pulled her cute little stunt. But the second night, it was too much. I was tired, it was late. I threw down the gauntlet. I would take away Stinky if she did not go to sleep.

Now, Stinky (I named him, early on in his life and the name is accurate) is Emmy's pink bear/blanket dealie that the Hanna's graced her with upon her birth and Em chews him until she falls asleep. She LOVES Stinky and cannot, will not go anywhere overnight without him. So this threat was the mother of all threats.

Em looked thru tear stained eyes (we'd been battling for awhile) and suggested to me, "How 'bout you take Alice instead."

Alice is Em's imaginary, pink cat.

THAT is a smart girl. Funny. Smart. I was undone.

And if you're wondering Stinky did have to be absent from Em for about 30 minutes. It was all I could take and apparently it wore her out. So, yes. I win the cruel mom award of the year, but let it be noted, there was a sleeping girl in the Florida home. And Betsy got a pretty big kick out of Alice being offered up as the sacrifice lamb.

Oh OH and...

We're Weight Watchers people.

Its been GREAT and Stu has ROCKED it...

He's at OVER 20 lbs lost and I'm, well, it WAS 10, but then there was this homemade ice cream...

Anyhow, I've got some creative recipes for some serious high fiber muffins that will FILL YOU UP and some yummy desserts and so far its been kinda fun trying to eat carrots.

Honestly, this seems to be the best way to lose weight and keep it off. All our friends that have done this have managed to keep off the weight for a long time, so its a good training in how to change your habits.

ANYWAY, go Stuart! And get your rear in gear me! :) Seriously, I'm so proud of Stu!!! He's doing so well and his tennis game ain't hurtin' either!

Oh and...

here's the stuff I forgot to blog:

the pond has baby ducklings (redundant?) and we've SO enjoyed walking down and watching them with their momma. God gives us some fun gifts! Also, robin's nest in the backyard tree with three babies!

Cam is swimming! Started this past Sunday night after Stuart helped him out at a friend's pool. It took him going underwater with goggles on and watching us kick our feet/legs. The swimmies on the arms cause them to kick like they're on a bike, not a swimming kick. But in ONE evening he was off and jumping off the diving board and swimming to the ladder. SO cool!

Em is a fish, she's in the water in just swimmies with her face in the water AND if you don't watch her she'll try and sneak the swimmies off to be like Bu. Ugg.

Cam continues on a two wheel bike and Em finally mastered a three wheel "big wheel" type deal. She still goes backwards quite a bit, but it's a vast improvement.

Other big summertime hits: the zoo, home, water, swimming, walks, bike riding, friends, throwing bird seed, late bedtimes, sleeping in, movies, water guns, grilling out (ohhhh grilling, its sooo wonderful - zucchini with Parmesan cheese and salt/pepper on it, grilled for about 10 mins on top rack - bliss!), badly needed baths at night...(the list could go on)

And with my one woman determination to suck the fun out of the world's shortest summer (school Aug 5th- ridiculous) there will be more summertime favorites to list!

LOOK OUT BELOW!

Lots of posts...found the card reader and a few minutes to myself...ENJOY

Befanee's Birfday

Em was invited to a tea party birthday for Bethany (she says Befanee) and all week long she talked about her birthday and how it was going to be her birthday...too cute.

The party was a rip roaring success! The girls had a great time: they danced, sang, played in the sand, ate icing and well, some cake. And the adults had, yum, scones (ahhhh thank you Nora)

So here are some cute pics of the girls being the princesses they are

T-BALL

Its ridiculous. SERIOUSLY! We are SO proud of this boy. And its a BALL GAME. I mean REALLY. Get a grip parents.
But no, not us. We're loving Cam and this baseball thing.

First, its SO fun to see him LOVE it! He's into it big time. Concentrates and is all "game faced" when he's on the field. The other thing, he's good. Now, I know I sound like one of "those" parents, but since the kid has been swinging a baseball bat of some kind and throwing any ball he can since the age of about 8 months...we kinda figured he'd be good. We also realize that he's playing with kids that are doing this for the first time and haven't been hitting the ball in the backyard with mom and dad for a few years. Disclaimer aside: here's our official brag

He can hit!
He can throw pretty straight!
And he's learned how to field a ball pretty well, now there is a nasty bruise on his chin...

Stu's been helping as a volunteer coach and Cam's been thrilled with that. The one night daddy wasn't able to be at the game Cam was a bit more nervous. So when he's in the majors Stu will be his lucky charm :) We also enjoyed the night he played against his buddy, Ben. They would grin at each other when one was one first base and the other was fielding first and have a short chat. TOO CUTE! Also, we have some awesome coaches! They don't take it too seriously and yet they're teaching the kids all kids of stuff! We've been so fortunate to have the best first organized sports experience!

Anyhow its been fun! And apparently here the ballpark is the place to be. Every night we see people we know. One night there were some little girls yelling, "Hi Cam, Hi Emery!" and I don't know them. Cam looks up at me and says, "Yeah, I know a lot of people". Cracked me up!

Emery is more into the playground part of the whole baseball thing. She also likes to see "dabid" (david) and say hi. (our youth minister's son). Its a beautiful thing!

AND aren't their uniforms the CUTEST???

The Park at Grannie and Poppa's

Okay, there's a park around the corner and seriously, its awesome!

The kids LOVED it and both accomplished some serious feats...Cam climbed up this rope thing, all the way to the top and Emmy, well before I turned around she was halfway up the rock climbing wall.

We just took about ten gallons of gatorade and enjoyed a few hours a day at the park (we went two different days).

Emmy also perfected her conversationalist nature,
"What's your name?"
"I Emawee"
"Do you have a cat?"
"I have a pink one, her name is Alice"

She barely paused for the little girl to answer, then they played in the sand. Beautiful.

Cam also had a big time playing wall ball outside and the biggest hit: water balloons!

Preschool Graduation (?)

Cam "graduated" from pre-k. He's now officially on his way to school-dom. I'm NOT excited. Ugg.

Anyhow, I managed to get NO good pictures during the mayhem/fun that was his beach party graduation. By the way the cap is a baseball cap with the board attached. Cute!

It was the cutest thing...his class sang a song and did the ABC's in sign language! AWESOME!

We're so proud of him, Cam really loved his class and made some wonderful friends. We're forever grateful to Miss Linda and Miss Debbie. We had SUCH a positive experience for Cam's first school! Plus, they put together the coolest book with pictures and art projects chronicling the whole year! SO NICE!

Florida Girl

Need I say more?

More Beach Pics

In Clearwater I braved the beach with both kids and they did FANTASTIC!
I managed to get dehydrated one day, but nothing a little Gatorade won't fix!

Em loved the sand, Cam loved the waves...

we discovered that sea gulls are quite aggressive as one took a sandwich out of my hand! Nice. And I think I screamed like a girl, well I am a girl, so what do you expect?

I was amazed at the ease with which the kids took to the water, they really haven't been swimming yet this year at this point, and the beach posed no problem. Emmy was a bit timid at first, but that 10 minutes passed!

All in all, it was so nice, even schlepping all our stuff back and forth was no big deal! Amazing!

Dance Party?

Frank and Amanda had a fun Sunday afternoon planned, we did this kid dance party thing...seemed lame to us adults, but the kiddos loved it.

And there was face painting, really what more could you want. We also tested Emmy's endurance level, she lasts a pretty long time with no nap and a full beach day the previous day, however there's only so much a girl can take and the car ride home proved that! Cry, cry, cry...

Aleah's

We hit Frank and Amanda's over the weekend of the 10 days in Florida trip (don't hate us!)

We went to Shark Tooth Beach, a dance party and most importantly - the pool!

It was SO good to see friends again, it had been too long!

Loaded up and Headed South

The kids and I (no Stuart) headed to Florida to visit the grandparents and Frank, Amanda and Aleah!

We had a WONDERFUL time! We hit the beach right away, many days over. Played at the most rockin' park right next to Grannie and Poppa's house and got to play with Aleah. It was the kids perfect vacation! They got loved on, played with, swam and came back more tired than ever.

We managed cheapo tickets and the flight was perfect. Cam and Em both travel very well.

So, here are some kids and Grannie shots:

I promised more info on Cam's words Exhilarating and Accumulate.

Here's the deal, he learned them from NOGGIN. And used 'em both in one day! He was outside alone playing wall ball and came running in the house exclaiming, "That was exhilarating!" Then he went on to say that he would like to "accumulate more stuffed animals" because that's what he collects. TOO CUTE, and accurate!