Wabbit Season

This is an actual jar on an actual shelf, inside my actual house, and if I get one more phone call from one more political candidate for whatever.... I'm going to start putting people in it.

Let me explain how I feel about politics/politicians: I HATE them. I don't just hate this party or that party... I hate them all. I don't watch them on the news. I don't read about them in the paper. I don't listen to their pre-recorded phone calls. Ugh.. mostly this time of year, I just try to avoid them as much as possible.

Seriously?! Don't call my house, during dinner time, and chirp to me over the phone about your "traditional family values!" Really?! If you're such a stand-up family man how come you aren't at home, I dunno, eating dinner with your family? And why are you annoyingly interrupting other families' dinners? I don't want to take your stupid survey. I don't want to listen to your campaign. I just want you to shut-up, stop calling my house, and leave me alone so I can listen to my daughter describe the entire plot line of Marmaduke one more time, K?

OH! And what is with all you creepy politicians squatting outside of my house?! This is no exaggeration: last week, I noticed a huge red SUV, emblazoned with posters and American flags, parked outside on the grass right in between my next door neighbor's yard and my own. It, and the guy inside of it, sat out there for 30 minutes. Just sat there, staring at our houses. It was right at the time I always go pick up NB from school. He sat there and watched me as I carted Calvin out, strapped him into his car seat, came back inside, grabbed the baby, strapped her into her seat, came back inside, grabbed my purse and my keys, and as I'm trying to sit down in my car, he GETS OUT and walks over to my WINDOW and starts tapping the glass trying to hand me a damned political pamphlet!!!! The old man is lucky I didn't run him over with my car. He is lucky all he got was a slammed car door in his face and a very blunt, "I don't have time for this now!!!!" before I quickly backed out of the driveway.

The very next night, I noticed, yet another car parked across the street facing our house. It and the man inside sat there for a good while. I noticed it when I was leaving to go pick up some dinner (dinner time, again). I had enough time to drive into town, wait in line for 15 minutes or so, stop at the grocery and get drinks, and drive back home, at which point he was STILL SITTING there. As I get out and start gathering up all of my grocery bags and such, he gets out and starts making his way over to my house. I could see the pamphlets out of the corner of my eye. It was like one of those horrific dreams you have where you are trying to run away from a monster and you just know you aren't going to make it. But I did, and I closed the door and locked it before he made it halfway across our yard. He must have knocked on the door a good 5 times before he gave up and realized that even though we were in there, we weren't going to answer it. So he just shoved his pamphlet into the door and FINALLY left.

The next time I see some creepy politician perched out on the street I'm calling the police and reporting them for loitering. Even if nothing comes of it, maybe they will at least move along.

It's politician season, folks. And the little buggers are everywhere!!!!

Halloween Costume Photo Dump!

So. Every year, I have the same grand idea: I will MAKE the kids' costumes! They will be awesome and better than store bought crap costumes that are way overpriced! I will get lots of cute photos!!

And every year: I FAIL. Usually one of two things happen: I run out of time and energy to get them completed, OR I mess up the costume and am unable to fix it due to time constraints or there not being enough fabric to start over. And then I'm always rushing around trying to get out trick or treating and snapping crap pictures that barely show the crap costumes I had to run out and buy at the last minute. *sigh*

But this year?! I DID IT! I made 3 costumes! Three. Whole. Costumes. And they are all awesome (IMO). AND they all match a theme! Yay! AND! AND!! I got lots of super cute pictures! So here they are:

Here is Nadia, all decked out as the Cheshire Cat. I made her dress and her ears and did her make-up, but we bought the awesome pinky-purple hair.


This is my favorite photo of NB. Apparently, the trick to getting her to be all smiles for the camera is to paint her face like a cat! She would wear the make-up every day if I would let her.


Here is the Baby! She is the Queen of hearts, obviously. I like to imagine that in the above picture she has just said "Off with their heads... bleh" in a very bored tone.


I made her tutu, stenciled her onesie, and made her head poof. The center of it has a sparkly red heart, but it's kinda hard to see it in this picture.


And here is Calvin, giving ole' Johnny a run for his money! He is such a handsome Hatter!


I made his hat and his bow tie and vest. The rest is just a white shirt and black pants.


Like any toddler, he wasn't a big fan of leaving the hat on for very long and kept yanking it off, which is why Tim's hand is in the photos.

I don't believe I'm going to dress up this year myself. If I decide to, I have a closet full of things like peasant dresses, witches' hats, coin scarves, etc. But I'm really thinking I'm just going to enjoy the kids this year.

I am so proud of myself for completing these costumes! I even made costumes for OTHER PEOPLE'S kids! I made a Wicked Witch of the West, Wicked Witch of the East, and Dorothy costume set for three little girls, a Tinkerbell tutu for my niece, and a purple fairy tutu for my other niece. I don't have any pics of them in their costumes yet though.

So what you doing for Halloween? Are you dressing up? Going trick or treating? Staying in?

Aplin Farms Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday, Tim and I loaded up the kidlets and drove up to see my sister a couple of towns over. After meeting up with them for lunch at their place, we took a family trip over to Aplin Farms for their annual pumpkin patch. It was AWESOME. It was hands down the BEST pumpkin patch I've ever attended.

When you arrive, the very first thing you see is a huge produce pagoda where they sell pumpkins as well as other produce from their farm such as: apples, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, etc. You can buy pumpkins from that area, but it's much more fun to do the "You pick" pumpkins. They load several people onto these huge tractor-pulled wagons, and then drive you up into the fields where you can pick your own pumpkins, fresh from the fields.

One of their other features is that they also grow large fields of sunflowers! Which they let you pick: FOR FREE! They are SO pretty, but they start to wilt almost immediately after you pick them. We brought home a few and I have them in a vase now. I'm hoping they will start to perk up a little, so that we can enjoy them for a bit longer.

I took quite a few pictures of the sunflowers, but this one with the bee inside of it was my favorite. They also kept a few bee-hives on the farm as well and were selling jars of honey in the produce pagoda. I unfortunately didn't get any, but I'm definitely purchasing a jar next year!



I love this picture of our whole family coming back from the wagon ride. We rarely get any of these, since I'm usually the one behind the camera. There's me, holding Lena; Tim holding Calvin, and of course, NB who is not looking at the camera (typical) but is at least, smiling! I'm going to have this one blown up and framed for above the fireplace. Speaking of fires, another feature of Aplin Farms is that you can arrange to have a bonfire after dark on their property! We've already decided that next year we are going to plan it where more of the family can come so we can have a bonfire and smores after our day of pumpkin picking!





All around the front end of the farm, they have hay bales "dressed up" in costume! We saw spiders and pumpkin hay bales, but our personal favorites were these piggies. (that's my sister, Allie and her b/f's daughter, Haley).

There were also the obligatory "face in hole" photo opportunities, inflatable bouncy slides, a corn maze, reasonably price concessions, an animal barn or two, and train rides. Needless to say, we had an amazing afternoon followed by this:

on the way back to Allie and Jeff's. You can't see Lena because she is rear facing (we're legal that way), but she is having a screaming melt down too! Apparently wedging three tired, cranky, hungry kids into the back seat of a small vehicle brings out the worst in them! I can't WAIT until we get the new car. Only a couple more weeks!!! Anyway, we took them back to my sisters where she was gracious enough to cook all of us an awesome dinner, after which we headed back home. The kids slept most of the way on the home trip, except for the last 20 minutes, in which Calvin woke up and screamed the rest of the way home. I can't wait to go back next year! But, before I go, here is one more sunflower pic.

This one has a grass hopper on it!

Stoooopid Comment Thingy:

For some reason, a few of my comments have been disappearing after I hit "publish" and not posting to the blogs, so if you have commented recently and it hasn't shown up this is why.

So, HI BONNIE! I was so excited to hear from you and then stoooopid blogger ate your comment! You'll have to send me your email so we can catch up!

All about Lena

~***** Warning! This post contains gross stuff like news on baby spit-up and poop is mentioned.*****~

* The other night she did this crazy little fluke thing where she slept through the entire night. She is only 6 weeks old, so as far as I know, sleeping through the night is unheard of for her age. We were kind of astounded, and I spent the morning hovering around her crib checking her breathing and nudging her every now and again to make sure she was ok. But, not to worry! It was only a fluke and hasn't happened since!

*Spit-up. Ohhhhhhh my! Lately it has seemed as though our little Beanah has been practicing for her upcoming role in the exorcist. I mean, I know babies spit up, it's what they do, but I'm beginning to become concerned that she isn't getting enough nutrition what with the constant spitting up and also: poop. I am thinking she might be lactose intolerant or at least lactose sensitive, so I'm going to talk to her doctor about it on Monday and see about switching her formula.

* Speaking of formula, how about that scary recall of Similac? I've been diligent about checking all of ours to make sure we didn't bring home any bad cans, but still.......it makes you nervous.

* Lena is so different from my first two children. Where they were BIG babies (9-6 and 8-8 respectively), she is small. Where they were chubby and dimpled, she is long and skinny. Where they had little fat feet with sausage toes and fingers, she has long skinny feet and fingers and toes. Her eyes are big and blue, just like my other two, but are shaped differently. I just can't seem to get enough of looking at her. While my other two weren't big fans of the sling, she is content to chill in there all day. She just has a different energy and personality all together. I am so interested to see her grow and develop.

Ahh... Fall!

The leaves! The cool weather! The colors! The incessant coughing! Every year around this time, NB develops this horrible chest-y cough. It seems no matter what we do, we can't get rid of it. We've tried cough and cold stuff and allergy stuff. We've taken her to the doctor to see if it might be asthma since Tim has it, but even that trip proved worthless in defeating the cough. It has gotten to the point where yesterday she was having a bit of difficulty speaking, so back to the doctor we will go. Hopefully we can get her an appointment for this afternoon.

In other news, I feel like a complete jerk. Nadia has been chirping about popcorn at school for the last few weeks, and I had NO IDEA what she was going on about. It is sometimes really difficult to get information out of NB that makes sense, because you have to try to filter it through her 5 year old brain which is jammed packed with shiny things and unicorns and rainbows and happiness from what I can tell. I thought it might have been something that the school supplied for snack every once in awhile, so I tried sending snack money for a week or two. According to NB, all they ever gave for snack was chips and juice boxes and she was tired of eating the same things every day, so we went back to sending her snack from home. Then yesterday, I'm reading over the daily behavior report that they send home DAILY, and I notice in tiny print along the bottom "Kid's may bring popcorn money every Friday" or something along those lines. So now I feel like "jerk mom" because it's probably been there for weeks, and it's only $0.50, and I haven't sent any money, and she really, really wanted that popcorn. I sent the $0.50 today, but I still feel like a jerk. I hate for her to feel left out of things like that, and it's obvious from the way she asked about it before that she did. I apologized for my jerk-ness on the way to school this morning to which NB replied, "It's okay, Mommy!" and all was again right in the world.

In other news, Calvin did the sweetest thing a couple days ago. We had just gotten back from the store and Lena was crying to be fed. I propped her up in the boppy and went into the kitchen to fix her bottle. When I returned to living room, Calvin was crouched by her pillow and alternating between giving her big sloppy kisses and poking her in the face with his sippy cup. It was obvious he was trying to console her as well as share his milk with her. It was so sweet, my heart just melted. However, Lena was not impressed. All she got out of the idea was brother slobber and a face full of milk. I have to admit that sometimes I am surprised by the amount of empathy Calvin feels for her. Whenever she is upset or crying, he will come over to "pet" her and say "Ohhhhhhh."

I finally finished up all of the Halloween costumes and things people had ordered in the last few weeks. I am also all finished with NB's and Lena's costumes. We are doing an Alice in Wonderland theme this year with NB as the Cheshire cat, Lena as the queen of hearts, and Calvin as the Hatter (of course!). All I have left to finish Calvin's costume is to make his bow-tie. I can't wait to get a picture of them.

Other exciting news includes:

We're soon getting a new (not brand new, but new to us) car that will actually fit all of us comfortably and safely!

We're going to a big pumpkin patch this Sunday with my sisters and their kids and possibly some visiting relatives from New Orleans. There will be corn mazes and hay rides and a petting zoo and of course PUNKINS!!

I have a stack of fire wood to burn!

And that about wraps it up.

Well... You can Hang that Up....

Yanno... when I was preggers and BORED and had NOTHING TO DO, it seemed as though all of you went on a blogging hiatus. Now that I'm bargaining for five minutes to sit down that the computer, you have all started posting bookoo blogs. Let's be honest. As much as I love reading about you guys and your lives and your kids.. I am NEVER going to get caught up on all of these blogs! Sheesh! So I'm thinking I'm just going to pick up on the latest ones you've posted and just keep going from there. Sorry. :(

Also........just out of curiosity, has anyone watched any of the new TLC series, "Sister Wives?" I am so intrigued! And not really in a "yeah I could see myself doing this" kind of way, just more like, "hunh???!!!!" kind of way, followed by daydreaming about having another person here every day helping me do laundry and make dinner and feed babies all day. Is there anyway to have a Sister Mom instead of a Sister wife. Because I really don't dig on sharing my hubs.

Making No Promises

I haven't updated this poor blog in so long! I even have to admit that I haven't caught up on reading your blog posts either. Did you know that having 3 kids is kinda crazy? Especially when one is in kindergarten, one is a toddler, and the other one is an infant? Well, I'm telling you right now, IT'S CRAZY. I'm consider myself pretty lucky at this point if I get the opportunity to pee more than once a day. (did I just say that on the internet? You bet your bottom I did)

Here's the latest picture of our little Lena-Bean-ah. She is one month old and she HATES me for putting that silly flower on her head. Or she could be passing gas. She does that. A LOT.

Here's one where she could either be smiling or passing gas.

She is a really good baby. She sleeps fairly well at night and is awake and alert during a good part of the day. She is very expressive and Tim says she looks a lot like me! Especially when she is annoyed. I must agree. Her mad face looks a lot like mine!

NB is still doing fairly well in school. About 2 months ago, I thought I'd try my hand at making her some hair bows because we didn't have very many. NB likes to wear hair things, but it was difficult finding some to match her clothes and also? I didn't want to spend a fortune on bows when ribbon is fairly inexpensive.

Check out my handy work here. Oh, and you might notice NB's drastically shorter hair. I took her to get it TRIMMED and the lady butchered her hair. I seriously should have snapped a photo of the job she did. It looked like NB had done the job herself. I had to rush her to another salon to have them fix it so she wouldn't have to go to school looking all funk-i-fied. I was in hysterics, guys, but ya know, hair grows and she loves it, so I guess it's okay. And if you are wondering what that obscene ball of fluff is that she is holding, it's a webkin that her Aunt Barb sent her. ......... we THINK it's a cat.........we could be wrong.

Since NB has been wearing her new hair bows to school, her teacher has started sending home notes requesting me to make some for her little girl and sending notes to all of her friends with little girls. I have learned that just because I am not willing to spend tons of money on hair things, doesn't mean that other people aren't. These ladies have some serious obsession with hair things. BUT, it's actually turned into a nice little at home side business for me. So far be it from me to complain.

NB is already reading short words! She gets a new word list every week that she reads over every night for homework. There are about 12 words on each week's list. I can't believe she is already that far along! It's pretty neat though!

As for Calvin. He is just ALL boy. He is walking and starting to talk. He loves Lena. He will walk up to her and touch her very gently and say "Ohhhhhh Bay-bee! Ohhhhhhhhh." He is a little rotten stinker though. You can't leave any open cup or bottle laying around or he will grab it and start chugging frat boy style. The other morning I forgot and he finished off my diet pepsi in about 2 seconds.

In other news, the weather here has FINALLY started to reflect the season! To celebrate we had a bunch of friends out last night and I cooked up a big pot of gumbo. It was AWESOME. The first chance I get I am putting our fire pit to use. I already have a nice big stack of wood and limbs just waiting for me in the backyard.

I'm sure there is plenty I've left out as far as updating everything goes. I am going to try to blog more now that we are starting to settle a little more, but I'm not making any promises. I hope you all are well!!