Boys, Boys, Boys

Right before we left Holton Ross took a fall off of the little jungle gym at my mom's house.  I thought he had hit the back of his head before we got in the car and he wanted an ice pack for his forehead.  We drove home the 90 minutes and when we got home he had little rock indentions all over his forehead.  By the next morning he looked like this:

Rock scratches on forehead

 Then as Reid and I were heading out on an errand after school Monday before picking up the little two I received a call from daycare that Ryan had hurt his eye.  They were building a structure out of PVC pipes and one kid started shaking one and it fell and hit Ryan, cutting him on the eyelid.  It had busted open and bled and the daycare was afraid he might need glue to close the wound.  We swung by and picked him up and went to the walk in clinic.  By the time we saw the doctor the gash had closed up from him just opening his eye.  The cut was right on the crease of the eyelid.  They cleaned it up real well and did a vision test on him, checked the bone around the eye and said he'd be fine, just might swell up a little bit.

This was in the waiting room of the walk-in clinic

It was a little swollen when he woke up this morning and he has a bit of a head cold so I let him whine and talk me into a stay at home day.  He has entertained himself really well, except for when I had a contractor here measuring to give me a bid for the office remodel.  Mostly he has just played by himself all morning and it hasn't bothered him at all.

This was the morning after (Tuesday morning)

I do think he's going to end up with a bit of a shiner but other than that, he seems fine to me.  One minor incident for a family with three energetic boys... I'm sure we will have much worse to come.

Happy Graduation Brenner!

I took Ryan and Ross to Holton this weekend for my nephew, Brenner's, high school graduation.  Russ and Reid had to stay behind for Reid's final spring hockey game.  We had such a great weekend!!  Here's a pictorial recap of what we did:

We had some Face Time with Aunt Courtney

We cleaned up to help Brenner celebrate his graduation

We posed with grandma

We saw Avery (and Aunt Cheri and Uncle Jerry)

The boys with the gradate.  

These pictures are all from Brenner's graduation party.  It was from 2-4.  I left around 3:00 and took the boys to grandmas so Ross could get a nap in.  I knew without a nap he would be a disaster at the graduation ceremony.  He did get a decent nap; however, he was still a disaster at graduation.  They did good for about 20 minutes but the ceremony was a little over an hour long.  I spent the rest of it in the hallway and outside chasing Ross around.  NOT FUN when I chose non-practical shoes.  So, I didn't get any pictures of Brenner in his cap and gown but I'm glad we could be there (kind of) to support him.

The weekend was a great break for me.  I even managed to get in two runs (3.5 miles on Saturday and 8 miles on Sunday) and a little scrap booking time!!  I guess it doesn't sound like a whole lot but we did manage to keep pretty busy and the boys did a lot of playing outside at grandmas and we took a quick trip to the park.

When Mom's Away...

Last week I had to go to LaCrosse, Wisconsin for work.  I left Monday afternoon before school was out and did not return until Thursday night after midnight (I guess technically that's Friday morning).  So dad was running the household basically all week.  I tried to help by having a few dinners prepped and ready, hiring a babysitter for Reid's hockey practice and enlisting the help of our neighbors in the morning so Russ could get to work only "slightly" later than usual...

I left notes and lists, etc but basically it was all up to dad for FOUR whole days.  I've got a well oiled scheduled machine at home though... how bad could it be with me being gone only four days?

Well, apparently all rules go out the window:

filling their shoes with rocks and dumping them on the swings

Russ sent me this picture by text message.  The clean freak in me starting breathing into a paper bag.  The kids were at the playground, with their shoes off and they were putting rocks and sand in their shoes and then dumping them on the swings... WHAT??  UGH.  I imagine all h*ll going lose at my house - I bet they were hanging up their shirts backwards or the short sleeves were in the long sleeve sections of the closet.  I started calling for earlier flights home.

The next night they went to another park... and what do you think Ross did:

same dirty shoes, now in his face... ugh.  Where is the antibacterial soap?

Seriously, this stuff would not happen on mom's watch.  I may find it hard to relax at times most of the time.

But, HONESTLY... I'm so glad that Russ had this time with the boys.  They had a great week.  They went to a park multiple nights (I think three different parks), they had a picnic, the managed JUST FINE without me.

When they weren't causing cross-state panic attacks for mom, they were having tons of fun:

McD's and Gatorade at the park

This guy can tackle any obstacle at a playground, he has no fear and he's an awesome climber!

They did what boys are supposed to do... they played, and they played hard.  I hardly ever heard from them at all actually.  Russ did send messages to make sure I knew I was missed and I appreciated that but I didn't get any panicked calls because things were going rotten or anything like that.  The boys were well behaved and they had a great week.  I'm actually enjoying that as the boys get older it's easier to get away and easier for one of us to handle the three of them.

Now, if you'll excuse me - I need to go make sure that my spice rack is still alphabetized...

Getting back on track... hopefully

I know, I have been a very bad blogger.  I'm going to try and do some short blogs this week to see if it gets me back into the blogging mood.  Tonight I'm going to start with updates on ME :)

1 - I'm on day 3 of a new diet... tied closely off of phase 1 south beach diet but since I haven't really studied south beach diet I'm just doing it my way.  So far, so good.  My goal is to stick with it for 14 days.

2 - I've finished my spring races.  I ran 4 half marathons and competed in the Smithville 8 hour adventure race with Russ.  Now I'm just going to try and maintain my base until I start marathon training in June.  I'm actually ready to have a schedule and be marathon focused again!

Running the Rock the Parkway Half Marathon - missed my PR by 3 seconds... that hurt!  Next year it will be mine!

This is Russ and I carrying our canoe into the water at Smithville - those things are NOT light and we had to carry it down a big hill and then back UP that hill after we had canoed for 5 miles!

3 - I found this sign on a random runner blog.  This is SOOO me... I love it!

I swoon... over the training schedule, not the guy ;)

4 - Russ has agreed to remodel the office so we can have dual workstations.  I'm hoping the bids come in reasonable so we can afford to do it now.  Here's the "inspiration" picture that we're working off of.

Top cabinets will be open... we'll see - measuring and planning still to come.

5 - Blogger has updated it's format since the last time I blogged and it's SOOO much easier to add pictures now - YEAH!  This might just get me back into regular blogging now.

Ross

Our "baby" turns 2.5 in a couple of weeks! I haven't updated the blog for a LONG time so I thought I'd put some effort into it. So, starting with Ross, here are some updated pics of the guy that keeps us on our toes all the time!

This was St Patrick's day... the Sesame Street sign on his shirt was green so he wanted to wear it... but I couldn't get him to stand still for a decent picture.

Playing basketball in the garage. He kept saying "Ready... Set" and then shooting. Typically the ball went straight up and then hit him on the head.

Heading out the house one day he knocked his head and got an ouchie (very small) but he needs an ice pack immediately when he gets hurt. I got him a blue ice pack out of the freezer and he was a happy guy. Minutes later I hear a sucking noise in the back seat. He ended up biting a hole in the corner of the ice pack and sucking the ice out of it. I called Russ and told him to put poison control on speed dial :) The ice pack said 'do not ingest' on it... but luckily it also said non-toxic. He was pretty mad at me when I took it away from him.

Baby Kameron is done borrowing our car seat and Aunt Cheri returned it to us last weekend. Ross wanted to see if he still fit... I think he's grown a little :)

This was last night after bath time. He was cooperating and taking good pictures because I had pez candy :)

A few more updates:

* Ross is talking up a storm. Full sentences, knows what he wants, when he wants and can finally communicate those desires to us. His screaming and fits have decreased tremendously... although not completely.

* He's still scratching and biting at daycare :( They are moving him up to the 2.5 - 3 year old classroom and he bit in his new class yesterday... ugh! I can't WAIT until he grows out of the darn biting stage.

* LOVES to read books. His favorites this week are Llama llama and Diego seek & find book. The last couple of nights he has laid in Ryan's bed with Ryan and I reading books and then gets a couple more in his room as well... Little sneaker has figured out how to prolong book reading time for sure!

Ryan's Special Day (and a pretty good one for mom)

6:00.. I'm ready for bed. Ha ha. The alarm went off at 4:30 for workout. I did my measurements for the end of my 30 days of no sweets. I was down 6 pounds and 1% body fat.

When I got home all three boys were still in bed. I woke Reid up and he ate breakfast and got ready for school and left before the other two boys got up (NEVER happens). He commented how nice it was to be just him and I awake (I agreed).

Then I woke Ross up, got him dressed and started his breakfast. He was actually calm, ate well... and ate a ton. He had a pop-tart and two half bowls of cereal (with milk). He's the only one of the boys that eats their cereal with milk on it and he makes quite a mess but he does sit up at the table eating pretty well.

Eventually Ryan rolled out of bed and ate breakfast and got dressed so we could take Ross to daycare. After we dropped Ross off we began Ryan's special day with mom!!

It started with kindergarten roundup! Ryan entered the classroom acting very shy. He wouldn't talk to the teachers or wear a name tag. He did separate and go to play while I went to fill out paperwork though. He did several stations - toys, draw a picture, play do, and finally make a cookie with Mr O. (the principal of the school). Our school is the Regency Place Lions so they made lion cookies.

(I didn't do a great job capturing Ryan here but I didn't want to be "that" mom that kept asking Ryan to pose while the principal smiled in the background)

After Kindergarten roundup we went home and played "kitchen" for quite a while and then did some mazes and dot-to-dots in some books. We then went to the beauty shop where I got a hair cut.

After my hair cut we went to Johnny's for lunch. I wanted to hit up Orange Leaf today but I was full from lunch so we went home to play for a while first. We drew pictures and cards, moved Ryan's easel to his bedroom, did a couple loads of laundry, dishes, and made rice krispy treats. I let Ryan do almost all of the measuring for them as well as buttering the dish and flattening them in the pan. Mostly all I did was melt and stir the ingredients on the stove. He LOVED making them.

(Paula Deen and Ree Drummond would be proud of the butter usage by this kid!)

Around 3:00 we ended up going to Orange Leaf for a treat... yummy! Some funny stories from OL:

* The owner of the yogurt shop knows me pretty well and by my first name. NO, not because I have an insane addiction. Honestly, I did a fundraiser for the hockey team there once and she handled it all and just knows me... honestly! Anyway, she brought over a tax form and asked me a question about a field. I told her I wasn't sure. Ryan says, "Call my dad, he's smarter."

* Right before we went to OL we got a letter from Ryan's teachers (Laurie and Demmi) about some inappropriate touching that's been going on in the classroom. A lot of the kids have picked up the habit of spanking each other and even adults. I was talking to Ryan about it and how we do and don't touch people. He claims he NEVER spanks adults. I reminded him that he had JUST spanked Kendra (my hairdresser) that day at the salon. He looks at me and says "Are you going to tell Demmi?" LOL, I guess we know who he's afraid of :)

* Also while pulling in to get our OL, Ryan is telling me a story about a store that he's going to open that will make lots and lots of money. He's going to get a big store and put all kinds of signs on the outside that says everything is free. Then everyone will come and get lots of stuff and then he'll tell them it's not really free and make lots of money.

* As a follow up he asks me, "What do rich people do anyway?"

YES - he talked ALL day. I'm glad that I jotted some of these down though (I got a new app for that - thanks Suzanne!!) Normally I remember that the kids said funny things but can't remember what they were.

After Orange Leaf I took Ryan to Archivers to get some stickers and paper. He LOVES my scrapbook stuff and I had an old gift card from the Christmas before last with $6.00 left on it. He really liked picking stuff out. At first he asked the price of everything and was being really careful, then eventually he wanted everything he saw :)

After Archivers we picked Ross up from daycare and came home for dinner (leftover lunch). Russ and Reid were heading out the door for hockey practice as we came home. Ryan, Ross and I have just hung out playing toys. Ryan played with his new paper and stickers immediately after dinner and is now putting together a 24 piece puzzle by himself and watching cartoons. Ross is playing with Ryan's Alphie (without cards) and pretty much being his usual terrorish self.

The Final Product

Paul finished our cabinet yesterday afternoon...

We let it set to make sure all the "tacky" feel was off the shelves and doors and then today I brought all the books back in. This was my first attempt but I didn't like the paperbacks laying down on the top shelf.

So, this is what we've got for now. I wish it was about 15 - 20 books less so we could add a decorative piece or two. Russ has a flag raising statue that would look great as a book end... but we've FILLED this space to the max. And he's still got a bookshelf full in his office. I do give him credit though... this winter he was able to part with about 30 books - that's HUGE for him! I did find about 6 books on here that I own - a Children's bible, a Dr Seuss book I got for the boys, and my college yearbooks. A pack rat I am not. :) Honestly, I also have a shelf of books in my closet that I thought I might read some day - discount finds at library sales, but none of them have interested me enough to read them yet... so they might be getting recycled out soon. (I usually just pass my books on to friends or family as I never reread anything)

The bottom of the cabinet is going to be used for some board games and puzzles that we have overflow of. I just put some puzzles in there for now. These were on the kitchen counter as Ryan has been pretty into doing them as of late.

I'll probably find something around the house to put on top but haven't decided what just yet.

Quite an improvement, huh? I really like it. We ALWAYS trust Paul's workmanship!! I guess if my home is going to be overflowing with something, I'm glad that it's books. Both Russ and I are avid readers and have read to the boys since they were very little. All of the boys love to listen to books, have large collections of their own and Reid has quite the reading skills himself.