*Sorry Mom*

I killed the plant that you gave me for my birthday. 

I didn't attempt to kill it. But I think I forgot to water it when it was 100 degrees for a few days... apparently the 80% humidity doesn't necessarily count as a water source. I tried to revive it for a few days, but after the heat killed it, a bunch of spiders decided to start engulfing the once budding flowers with webs, so I threw it out. In better news, the other day I removed the tab on the batteries and now it is a nice light for the dog to go potty outside during the night.

I'm not a gardener and I don't play one on tv. My garden currently is blooming nice flowers, but they don't match, are overgrown, not set according to height, and generally looks like a greenhouse blew up and happened to plant these haphazard plants in a square area. I want my garden to look nice, but I don't know how. I like full, bright colored flowers. Mine are pale and not interesting. Maybe next year I'll get it right. \

Speaking of home things... I want to let you know what my hope is for our new house.  I want a wall. A wall for just photos. I saw it on an HGTV show and I can't get it out of my head. I want a full wall in either our bedroom or the family room that is just a solid collage of our family photos in black and white. This would take lots of photos, and I know I would just love it. Here is an example of what I'm talking about, only with lots and lots more photos. 

Tomorrow Abby is 5 months old (already!). I'll post her update then!

*Tumbling (an update)*

Well, what can I say? It is hard being a parent sometimes. Even on the small stuff. So as blogged about before, I've been having a tough time with Hunter at his Tumbling for Tots class. He has been refusing ANY help from the teachers and will only do an activity if I'm helping him. I guess I see the point of view that he needs to learn how to accept help from the teachers regardless if I'm there. All of the other children were able to leave their mom/dad and accept the teachers helping them on an apparatus.

So I was obviously a bit reluctant to even go tonight. But it was the last night, so I figured I might as well give it one more shot. It started with the usual stretch and song, which Hunter as usual, sat through the whole thing just staring at the other kids participating. He then got put in a group of 3 which seemed to work out better than a group of 2. The first activity, he just sat by me and refused to participate. He would have to say "No thank you" if he didn't want a turn. Which he did, every single time. At one point, I looked at another mom and said "Oh well, I guess I just need to learn he is only two!"

On the next activity, the high beam, he was more excited to participate, and even let the teacher hold other hand! He hadn't done this since the first night of class. I was so excited. He did great on that and then we went to two more activities that he was excited about participating by himself in. I even got a video of him doing a somersault on the floor with teacher assistance. I was pretty excited! The last two activities he required me to help him on, but I was just excited that we seemed to have made some sort of progress up to that point!

The night finished with him getting a certificate, balloon, cookie, and juice. He ate the cookie, drank the juice, took a picture with the certificate, and I asked him to leave the balloon there. I hate balloons :) 

*The Family Car*

 Here is the new vehicle that is parked where the truck used to be!

So... for those of you who know us... you may know how many cars we have bought over the past couple of years. Since we got married 3.5 years ago, we have owned a 2008 Saturn Vue, 2007 Ford Five Hundred, 2005 F-150, and now today, we added to this list with a 2011 Chevrolet Malibu. Don't misunderstand me though, we have traded all of these vehicles for the next one listed. This is a bit difficult since new cars depreciate so quickly, but I think we are doing alright in the end. Our credit rating has skyrocketed in part since we don't default on payments, but also because we keep showing paid off loans. This is very exciting when it comes to us getting a mortgage. The business guy said that anything over 750 is great and above that is just bragging rights, you already qualify for the best interest rates at the 750 mark.This wonderful news because we are both over 750!

Back to the new car... so we (I) have been looking at the amount of money that we were spending in fuel for the truck. It was on average $300.00 a month. On top of the truck loan, this is a lot of money for a vehicle that is driven 10 miles everyday to and from work, and then some on the weekends as a family car. We then started taking the 99 Saturn more places in order to save on some of the fuel costs. This however, is not a safe option for us not only for the kids in the car, but Jake has to sit so close to the airbags that if one were to deploy, it could seriously harm him. We decided that looking into a new, more fuel efficient vehicle, would be a better option. Jake's car of choice is a Ford, but their new cars are not big enough for my 6'3 husband. We looked into the Chevy Cruise's for a while, but for the same payment as the cruise, we could get the Chevy Malibu and just sacrifice a few miles per gallon, but have more room and luxury interior. The car we ultimately got is gold mist in color, has two tone interior, gets 33 miles per gallon on the interstate, and about 26-27 combined. This is more than double what we were getting with the truck. I figured that with Jake's driving to work and our family driving, we would save on average $1700 per year with the car. Although we are sad to see the truck go, we didn't use it all that much for the purpose of owning a truck. We only used it to haul the garbage to the dump, and then on rare occasion when we needed to haul something. That convenience is nice to have, but I'd rather borrow a truck and fill it with gas than spend $1700 on something we don't utilize to the full capacity. I'm hoping though, that this new car will stick with us for much longer than the ones in the past have. We are hoping that in a few years this will be my car and Jake will get either a truck again, or another vehicle for going to and from work. We are happy with our new purchase and are excited to have a vehicle that seems to meet all of our needs at the time. Even the car seats fit in nicely with room to spare!

Note from the author: Hunter's reaction to the new car: Kept saying "Papa! Look at MY new car!" and I asked him who's car it was, and he said "Hunter's" I asked him if it could be dad's car and he said "No" I asked him if he was going to pay for it and he said "No", so I asked who was going to pay for it, and he said "Mom"... Oh boy...

*Badger Country*

This weekend was a busy one for our little family! Friday night we spent our time doing laundry and getting packed for our travels down to Lake Geneva for Ryan's graduation party. Ryan is one of the two boys I used to Nanny for. He was nine when I started working for his family and he was going to turn 13 when I left. Thus, I have missed out on most of his teen years, and to this day I still am in denial about his age and where he is in life... so I asked him to just pretend he was graduating middle school :)  He is a great kid with a wonderful future ahead of him. He is accepted into and attending college at UW-Madison for Pre-Med.

Hunter wouldn't sit right next to Ryan for the photo so we got the next best thing!

So we arrived at the party on Saturday at 2pm. It took us about 5 hours for the drive down. The kids did really good in the car and were quite happy when we got there. The party went really well. It was great to see some familiar faces from Denver that I haven't seen in a while. The food was also very good :) Hunter required his typical warm up period from people before he was able to interact with anyone, but there were a few who he opened up to in our short 4 hours that we were there. The one he warmed up to the most was Papa Al! Although, I think Al had a very sharp advantage over the competition because he had a new John Deere lawnmower that Hunter was allowed to sit on! Abby had a wonderful time at the party and loved the interaction with the women at the party. She just loves a crowd!

After we left the party, we traveled back to Madison for our hotel stay. I had gotten a great deal on a room at the Crown Plaza (yay hotwire.com!). I was excited to get the kids into the pool before we settled down for the night. We headed down to the pool right after we got our stuff into the room. Hunter and Abby both enjoyed the pool so much! Although it was a bit chilly, it didn't seem to affect Abby in the slightest. She didn't even wince when I put her in to her shoulders! Hunter however, held onto me like his life depended on it and kept saying he was cold. Abby automatically kicks her legs when you drag them behind her in the pool. She is a natural swimmer! I think she will end up being our fish. Hunter has never really taken to a pool without hesitation and fear first. Hunter did however, take the the girls at the pool that night! By the time he left, they were doing tricks for him to watch and he was yelling "Bye friends!" as we were leaving...

Abby was wide-eyed and enjoying the pool!

Hunter pulled out his 'cool factor' behavior when we were in the hotel room that night. I cannot explain this behavior really well, but sometimes he just acts so 'cool' like nothing can bother him. It is really, way too cute. He was walking around the room trying to find something to do/get into/explore, I loved watching every minute of it. The funniest thing was that he couldn't figure out the phone in the room and he kept picking it up saying he was going to call everybody (literally, he said "I call everybody"). At 9:40pm he was being told to fall asleep and he was still trying to come up with excuses to refuse sleep!

This morning we woke up with a cheery "Today we go home!" and an enthusiastic "Yeah!" when I asked if he wanted to swim again this morning. We enjoyed our swim before we hit the road again. It was a quicker drive home since we were already 1 hour closer to home due to the location of the hotel. We were happy to be out of the car by the time we were back!

Now, I'm just one blog off from my goal of three this week... hopefully I'll be able to do another one in the next day or two!

*Tumbling for Advice*

Que the sad face that I have seen often...

So there comes a time in every parenting career when you stop and question the real answer to a parenting problem.  Such as the one I have been facing when taking Hunter to Tumble for Tots.  I signed him up thinking he would love the tumbling experience.  The playing on fun equipment is what I thought would be the purpose of it all anyway.  Well I was wrong. Hunter seems to be the MOST shy kid in the class, refuses to do ANYTHING without me glued to his side, and flat out REFUSES to allow the teachers to help.  It has progressively gotten worse over the past month or so, and now I'm wondering, what can I do to stop this? I've been on the teacher side of things, wishing I could say something to "that" parent. Like "Hey Lady, leave your kid alone, let them learn on their own" but now I'm on the mom side thinking "If he wants me there, I want to be there for him... but I also want him to learn how to participate like all of the other kids do" so now I'm trying to figure out where to stand. Luckily tonight there were only two kids who showed up out of our class. I tried hard to get him to participate by first just me helping him.  Then I would only let him participate if I held one hand and one of the teachers hold the other hand.  This abruptly stopped him from participating in anything.  He became very stubborn and literally just watched the one other girl participate and have turn after turn. I eventually just took him out of area we were sitting in and sat against the wall with him saying that if he wouldn't participate with the teachers help, then we were not going to participate at all.  The group moved to one of Hunter's favorite activities and he really wanted to go. I told him he could go by himself, hoping he would get more confidence without me by his side.  It worked. He played by the teachers with only needing to look at me a few times for reassurance. He then moved to the next activity and I again told him I was going to stay by the wall and he needed to sit on the rug with the group. This worked I think in part because there was only two kids participating tonight. I feel guilty doing this any other night when this is a "parent assisted" class.  So, my question is, what would you do?  Suggestions, opinions, advice???

*Chowza!*

Do you want to know what my weakness in life is?  Butterscotch Chowza!  I'm craving it right now, so I thought I would blog about it!

This is made here in Menomonie, and I can't help but buy it everytime I'm in La Dee Dah (which I love as well by the way...).  It is puppy chow made with butterscotch and it is like opening a bag of heaven everytime I get it.  They also make it in Original and Mint.  I've tried the original, but when it comes to purchasing the mint, I stick with what I KNOW I like so I haven't had the guts to try it yet. I try to not eat it all in one sitting... but if I'm going to eat it all anyway, why not all at once?  I really want them to send a sample to Ellen Degenerous or someone famous (too bad Oprah went off the air) and get themselves nationwide!  Like them on facebook and show them some support... oh and stop into La Dee Dah and try it for yourself, and then pick up an extra bag for me!

*Cereal*

Hunter is such a great helper!  Notice he even coaches her saying "Chew Chew Chew!"

She loves to eat!

So the other day I decided to pick up some cereal for Abby to try.  Usually they don't recommend trying solids until they are 6 months old, but she seemed very interested in food, so I figured she could at least try it.  She is very funny to watch eating!  She eats it really well like shown above, until she gets sick of it, or forgets how to swallow, and starts spitting it out.  I'm thinking for the next month or so, I'll just give her a couple of teaspoons, or tablespoons of cereal a day. When she gets closer to 6 months we will start introducing more foods than just cereal.  But until then, I'm pretty sure she is ok with some cereal!  

*These Crazy Kids*

I was busy doing some laundry in the kids room tonight... when I went into the room after gathering some clothes, I see Hunter trying to scale the dresser and get into Abby's bed.  He had gotten his leg stuck and was scared.  I told him if he wants to get into Abby's bed, he just has to ask.  So he played in Abby's bed while I put away some laundry.  I then heard Jake giggle at Abby and I go out and see she has completely fallen asleep in the jumperoo.  Hunter never did this and I thought it was hilarious so I quickly grabbed the camera to take a picture of it. 

 After taking a few shots, I peeked into Hunter and Abby's room and this is what I see...

 Half of a bottle of baby powder being squeezed into her bed...

These crazy kids.  All I could do was laugh!

*Big Girl Bed*

Helping dad

 Notice the tool box to his right (photo left)... he had to get it right away!

 The finished product...

Abby loves her new bed!

Well we finally have a big girl bed set up for Abby Dabby!  I asked Jake a while ago to set it up so we have it for her when we want it, and it all got put together today. She is still sleeping in our room in her own bed, but we have her crib set up for when she is able to sleep through the night on her own.  We want her to be used to her bed before that happens as well, so when she wakes up in the middle of the night she isn't scared about where she is at. We had just enough room in her and Hunter's room for the two beds to be side by side. Any smaller and it just would not have ever fit! It is a tight squeeze as it is, but they will have their own rooms in due time. It would have been easier had we been able to make bunk beds... but that is kind of hard to do out of two cribs!  (insert scene from Step-Brothers the movie here)

We have had a nice two days.  Yesterday we spent the day with Jake's dad's family for a memorial celebration of his Grandfather Walter Verdon's life. Walter had passed away at the end of May, and he didn't want a full memorial service, so they had a nice celebration of his life out here at the Verdon compound. It was a nice day, the kids enjoyed seeing their cousins, and Hunter was of course thrilled to see his Uncle Bob come over too. 

The worst part of the weekend was when Abby started to feel ill this afternoon.  She got progressively cranky and whiny.  She actually started full out crying for a little bit (which has never actually happened that I can remember). She refused to nurse around 4pm and would only take a bottle, she fell asleep when I layed her in our room for a couple of hours. She woke up and was warm so I took her temperature which was 101.1. I gave her some tylenol and hopefully she will start to feel better. I'm not sure if this is still from the shots she got on Friday, if it is an ear infection, or teething. My guess would be an ear infection since her first instinct on nursing was crying. I will have to see how things go tonight and into tomorrow and hopefully she will start to feel better really soon! I hate seeing her upset and crying like she was today.

Have a great week everyone! Remember Abby's pictures are only available online through Monday, so if you would like a copy of one, please let me know which one before then!

*Thankful*

Welcome to the new blog! With the two kids being busy growing and our lives being busy keeping up, I figured that having one blog might be easier to keep up as well. I'm going to follow the goal of my friend Lizzie and hopefully post 3 times a week. That is my goal, lets hope it works.

Today I am thankful. The saying I believe is "If you have your health, you have everything". I visited my friend and her son in Rochester at a Mayo hospital. He had a surgery to fix his skull which had pre-maturely fused. He is doing really well and will hopefully go home in a couple of days. When I was there, we were talking about how the nurse in the ICU said she was happy that they were there, because their son would be going home and how many of the children there never do. Wow. Never. How finalizing is that? I have been thinking about this a lot lately because the 5k I'm running in August is for the Wren Sprague Memorial fund. Wren was 2 1/2 when she suffered a head injury at an at home day care in the Barron area. She died a week later from the accident. I just look at her photos and think that Hunter is the same age, and in an instant everything can change. It makes me hold him tighter at night, kiss him more during the day, and constantly thank God for the many blessings we have between him and Abby being so healthy. When I was driving away from Rochester today (on the wrong road mind you...), I was thinking of the families who have had to drive away without their baby in their car.  I'm thankful for what I have everyday.

Speaking of doctors- Abby had her 4 month check up yesterday. She weighs in at 16 pounds, is 25 inches long, so that puts her at 80% for length, 90% for weight, and 90% for head size. I giggled when Grandma Julie said "Oh she will be short then!", well, 80% is still pretty tall!  She took her shots like a trooper, but did get a strange welt/hive on her leg immediately after the shots. It is slowly going away, and we still aren't sure what the cause of that was!

Enjoy listening to this song that sums up what I've felt ever since Abby was born and encompasses my thoughts of being thankful...