Children Are So Funny

Last week my silly boys were at their best! Ollie, totally naked, crawling up on the counter to lick frosting out of a bowl.
And Dexy, so excited for his bath, that he just walked into the bathroom and crawled into the tub, without a pause or a moment of hesitation.

Totally clothed, socks and all! He crawled right over me and climbed in. We all laughed so hard. Then, he realized that his clothes were sopping wet and heavy, so he finally decided that bathing with them on wasn't such a good idea. My cute, silly boys! I love them tons!

Parade of Homes! Oh, I mean, Parade Homes.

Cristina and I had so much fun doing Parade of Homes, doh! Parade Homes this year. I've never actually done it before, but have been wanting to for the last while. She loves it, asked me if I wanted to go, and when I said yes, she wrote it on my calander and kept on me about going. I'm so glad!! It was great! We will do it again next year. While we were leaving the gianormous, totally unoriginal, no personality, $4.3 million mansion (it really was lame) we found this amazing chainsaw!
It was so HUGE! It looked super rough, tough, and powerful. So we of course had to get pictures by it to be associated with something so spectacular! It was by far one of the coolest things we say the whole time we were doing Parade Homes.

While out and about, we saw some things that were really only just nice to look at for us. There were tons of things that we will never have, nor would we ever want. The up keep at some of these places would be astronomical! I don't want to have to clean or maintain such lavishness. All though, the hot tub nestled in the forest, without a neighbor in sight was quite cool!

Then there were somethings that were much more livable and realistic. We did get some good ideas for our own home wish lists. A) the bathroom should be roomy and luxurious and 2 shower heads in a big shower is a must. One day we took Ollie and Jude to one house, and one house only. They did a good job, but it was so hard to make sure that they didn't touch a thing. The house we went to was fairly empty though and they were behaved and had fun. That shower that they were in was big. The little nook fit both of them. B) a little sort of sitting area in the master bedroom would be quite nice.

C) there needs to be some specific place to put your fruit where people can find it easily and actually eat it, but it won't get all gross on the counter - fruit baskets in the kitchen island is so genius! D) a dry sauna will not happen, but a big shower where you can close out the cold air is important. E) tons of natural light flooding the house and F) a kitchen truly fit for a chef and a family at the same time. We cook a lot in our family and almost all of it is from scratch, so we need a serious kitchen. The one in this picture was a favorite of mine. Oh, and one big, deep sink in the kitchen, not a divided one, plus a water tap over the cook top. And we just found this little kids nook to be quite fabulous! There were 2 little arm chairs and a TV up there. Too cute!

Random Cuteness

Dexy sleeping with his bum way up in the air - I still love my sleeping babies and find them so cute, even if they aren't really babies anymore!
Ollie giving loves to his cute cousin. He always refers to her as, "Oh, Baby Alice!"

Toby parked precariously on a slat right in the middle of the living room blinds. Ollie's handywork. I just found this so cute and distinctively Ollie.

Yesterdays clothing choices. The boys have been kind of sick lately, so I think that they just really wanted to be comfy. They got up and had breakfast and were kind of messy and smelly like pee, so I let them sit in the sink to get clean and play. Then, after they were all clean and fresh, these are the clothes the picked. Ollie would only wear jammies. These aren't the jammies that he wore all night. He specifically picked out new, clean jammie to wear as his clothes. And Dexy didn't really want to wear anything, but he finally (after much crying) agreed to wear his tiger shirt and his red diaper, no pants!

Ollie chillin' in our bed by his daddy just this morning while rocking out to the tunes on Brian's phone. I love his feet thrown up over my pillow that he moved and placed there purposefully.

Video Post

My boys are very funny! I love them tons! But, I don't get around to posting videos very often. Partly because it takes a while for them to load and partly because I think that sometimes people won't find them as fabulous as I find them. But, I guess I will give these a try. I just love them and think that they are cute, funny boys and want everyone else to appreciate them, too. Sorry if they are too long. Here goes nothing.

I don't know if I've already told this story on my blog, but it's funny so I have to make sure we get it recorded. This happened a while ago now. But we had put the boys in bed and I had lots of dishes to do, so I wanted to have something that I like to watch while I did them. I love Harry Potter (as my blog followers have seen), but Brian teases me about watching the movies all the time. That night I just wanted to watch a Harry Potter movie while I did the dishes, so I went and stood in our door frame and asked Brian, "if you come into the kitchen, will you make fun of my if I'm watching Harry Potter again?" Brian said, "no" and then immediately after we heard, "Oh, mommy! No more Harry Potter!" floating down from the loft! Ollie was not only out of his room, but he heard us, and he responded perfectly (his daddy has trained him to say that to me)! It was hilarious!! The next morning, we were flipping through a party supply catalog when I came across some Harry Potter plates. In an attempt to undo his Daddy's training, I acted like they were the coolest thing ever. He got the idea! Maybe someday I'll get to watch the movies without him "scolding" me all the time.

Brian was flipping through the channels the other day and we came across a gymnastics meet. I asked him to leave it there for a minute to see if Ollie would respond the way I thought he would. He did!

Dexy dancing to the theme song of his favorite show, Team UmiZoomi. I love the way kids dance! It's so not really dancing, but so precious!

Dexy did this with his balloon over and over and over, but as soon as I started recording he of course stopped. At least I got it once. It was funny and it kept him entertained for a while.

I love you my clever, cute, funny boys!

More Family Fun

Jude Oliver's 2nd birthday was yesterday, so we went to Derek's house to celebrate with them. They had a small family party with Cristina's mom and sister, and my family and my mom. It was nice and the perfect kind of party for a new 2 year old - familiar, comfortable and not too overwhelming, but still fun and special. We watched videos of little, baby Jude, which reinforced to us how much Jude and Alice really do look almost exactly like each other. It seems like our boys were all teeny babies just the other day and now they are all getting so big and grown up. I think this is a fabulous idea and will probably be stealing it for my boys' birthdays.

The boys had such a good time playing in the little tent and tunnel that Jude got for his birthday.
They found the tunnel to be most excellent!

Then we had pizza for dinner and sang to Jude. Cristina made him this amazing Kermit cake herself. Jude loves the old school Muppet Show, so she did this just for him to make his birthday cake exactly what he wanted. It was so cute!

Jude blew out both of his candles and then got served his piece of cake and dived right in. He opted for the "just pick it up and shove it in" method.

Dexy choose the "stick your finger in it and lick it off" method.

Ollie, as our resident big boy, used a fork.

Yumm! Birthday cake.

Then it was time to open all of his presents (a harder part for the boys who weren't getting presents, but they handled themselves very well)......

......and play with them! Cristina found this little bubble blower for only $3 and it was instantly worth ever penny. I'd say that each boy had a dollars worth of fun in the 5 minutes that it worked before it got bubbles in it and needed to dry out. And they'll have more fun with it again, I'm sure.

We had a great time! It has gotten us ready for our run of birthdays. We will now be celebrating birthdays every single month through June. But that's fine by us. We love parties!

Ollie's Quiet Time

Yesterday I put both of the boys in their rooms for nap/quiet time. Brian was at class. I started in on the dishes. As I was just washing away in a quiet house, I all of a sudden heard, "T, t," the sounds of Starfall.com floating down over the loft. Ollie had come out of his room, climbed up into the computer chair, double clicked on the internet icon, clicked on the Starfall icon on the favorites bar, and started playing Starfall all by himself!! He is just getting so big all of a sudden. I only heard him do about one letter and then it was quiet again. After a couple of minutes, there was a break in the show that I was watching where I could hear a deep breathing coming from upstairs. I thought to myself, "did he fall asleep playing Starfall that fast?" And sure enough, he had. He was snoozing away in the comfy chair. After Dexy woke up, he wanted to go upstairs to play so I let him thinking that if Ollie woke up it would be ok, but Ollie kept sleeping for another 5 or 10 minutes, until Dexy and I were loudly playing blocks and Brian was on the computer. He must have needed the extra sleep that day!

Fun With Family

Life has returned to normal, or at least to where it was before all the madness. I have restored our computer and nothing was lost (so glad I made the back up discs as soon as I noticed it was struggling). Brian still has a mound of homework everyday, but we're both getting use to what that means. Oliver is sleeping sooooo much better. I have adjusted his schedule. First, he was still just all messed up from the holidays, so we finally got bedtime back to about 8:30 where it should be. Second, I have started more closely monitering his "quiet time." He goes into his room to play quietly and rest. After an hour, I go in to check on him. If he's still awake then his quiet time can be done because he must not need the extra sleep that day. If he's asleep, I leave him, but make sure that he doesn't sleep for more than an hour and a half, waking him up if necessary. He is sometimes pretty unhappy with me for waking him up, but it's much better in the long run. We also had to just divide the boys. Ollie is still in the upstairs room, but we offically moved Dexy to the room downstairs. I cleaned it up a lot (it's still very full of stuff, but at least he won't feel as crowded) and we moved his crib in there. Both boys have been sleeping much better and are much happier about their new sleeping arrangments. So, we got back to trying to relax and enjoy life. It was easy to do when we had some chances to play with family. On the 4th, my grandparents and Mom invited my family and Derek's family over to their place for a most delicious dinner. It was so yummy! The kids all love playing at Grandma 2's house. After dinner, we went downstairs to play a little bit more before heading home and it got wild.
Derek and Brian helped the boys get into an all out bean bag battle. They all loved every minute of it. Bean bags were flying everywhere and boys were laugh histerically. It was so fun!

Then, the very next morning the boys got to wake up to Brian's family. They stopped here for a couple of days on their way to Disneyland (I know - we didn't get to go:( but it was fun to see them and the boys probably aren't quite old enough anyway). Every time we see them, Grandma Bowles has a whole bag of poppers for them. They love them and want to do them every second that they're here. The started with the poppers as soon as they woke up. They couldn't even wait to get dressed. They threw poppers several times through out the day.

We went to Chuck A'Rama for dinner. Ollie wanted to go in the "sabbudon" so we moved his seat and Angela rode with us. The whole way to the resturant and the whole way back home, Dexy had to hold Angela's hand. If she put her hand down, he'd hold his hand out and say, "ha!" (his word for hand) to get her to hold his hand again. And on the way home he fell asleep while holding hands. It was so precious!

And then of course, to finish off the day of fun with Brian's fam, they had to convince Grandma to let them throw the last 2 boxes of poppers, even though it was dark. That actually made it pretty spectacular though, because we could see them spark when they hit the ground. It's always so nice to play with family!

Easier Said Than Done!

It's been a while since my last post. I tried to give myself a new, energizing, hopeful mantra when I last spoke with myself, but like most things, it was far easier to tell myself that than it has been to actually put it into everyday practice. Since then, my computer picked up a virus; I almost lost my 240 page digital photo book again (lost it last time my computer crashed and had to do the whole thing over - almost ripped all my hair out at the thought of having to do it a third time, but fortunately I uploaded and ordered it just in time; the silver lining to all this); my computer crashed; I have backup discs, but they aren't being so cooperative; my boys seem to be usually fighting, screaming, whining, crying, toy snatching, etc; Ollie is still having sleep issues, so much in fact that about a week ago we removed Dexy from their room to a playpen in the then completely full junk room at 5 am, at which point Oliver proceeded to scream for an hour and a half; he did the same thing the following two nights, although he is getting better now; I've had to clean out at least part of the junk room so that Dexy had a place to sleep without feeling like the room was going to collapse on him; Brian is always at school, doing homework, at scouts, playing men's basketball, etc. as he gets into his upper level classes and does all of the duties for his calling; the house seems to be in a continual state of upheaval; there has been a unending flow of urine and blood (no worries - just potty training and lots of minor toddler injuries); and now it's February and it's my month to do sharing time and I am not even prepared and it's Thursday!!!!!!! I know that this is all just one long, exhausting, whiney sentence, but that's the way things have been going around here lately. And I have no pictures because I'm still trying to get our computer up and working and it's not currently reading the SD card from our camera. So now I must reiterate to myself, more forcefully this time - IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT!! RELAX AND ENJOY THE RIDE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! JUST CHILL OUT!! Maybe I should look into finding some diazepam. OK, or maybe I should just go lay on my bed and stare blankly at the ceiling for 5 minutes before it's time for the boys to get up from their naps. Sorry you all had to deal with this, but I feel better now that I've let all of this out!