Ben's costume

"Just pretending"

This morning Addie insists on wearing her Halloween socks to daycare.  This also means that she must wear her Halloween shirt.  Ok, I think, she'll just wear it twice this week- no biggie.  So I get her shirt and her black pants out and give them to her.  She tells me that she is going to wear her shirt, but not those pants.  Instead she wants to wear her new sparkly fuchsia pants.  Now keep in mind that her Halloween shirt is white with orange spots and black kitty faces.  I tell her I think she should wear her black pants.  She informs me that she's wearing her fuchsia pants- and that "I'm just pretending they're orange."  So she totally knew she didn't match.  

Linvilla Orchard trip 2008

OK, so these are in reverse order, but oh well

Benjamin LOVED the straw bale maze.  He ran through like an absolute nut.  So much so, in fact, around a corner he and Addie ran full force into each other.  Addie had a bloody nose- both nostrils!!  

Hmmm, let's see: There's a 2 year old, a 3.5 year old, a 4.5 year old and a 24.5 year old!

Addie and Graham showing off the snake gourds

Enough said!

Ben wasn't so fond of the feeling of his head through plywood.

A good one of the four of us

Look at the crossed leg! We have this shot each year now!!

Ben was signaling that he had the goods.

Muddy joined in the 'sitting in the pumpkin batch fun'

Graham and Ben

Look at Miss Thang's pose!

The ritual picture

Is that SKENG?

I am pretty sure Benjamin and Kimberly both smell SKENG in this picture!!

Addie updates

Holy moly, she's on a roll!

Her current topic at daycare is PETS.  

Yesterday the question asked was, "if you could have any pet in the world, what would you want?"

Now most of the answers ranged from cat to dog to bunny.  Addie's answer: a baby zebra.  She was the only one who said that; not so shocking!

Today's question was "How do you care for your pet?"

Again, the answers were like "give water and food."  Addie's answer, "First you get a bottle and put milk in it. Then you hold the piggy and put the bottle in its mouth.  Then you gently pet the piggy's back."  Her teacher dictates exactly what the kids say and hang them on the wall for the parents to see.  When I commented on Addie's thorough explanation, Miss Desi said, "Yeah and that's only the part that I wrote.  It got too long." Ha!

Finally, Miss Desi told me that Addie got her in trouble today.  I was like "huh? Over what?"  She said she was proudly telling Miss Faith, the Director, about Addie and her Obama song.  Then she said "Have you heard her explain why she doesn't want John McCain to be president?"  Miss Faith said, "no."  Desi asked Addie, who happily chirps "He'll take away my reproductive rights"  Miss Faith tells Desi that she's voting for McCain.  I was like, "you got in trouble for that?!! It's the truth."  Desi explained she didn't get in trouble per se, but was very uncomfortable. LOL

Also a classmate told Miss Desi that Addie hit him.  Addie was very adamant about the fact that she hadn't.  (God forbid you accuse her of something she didn't do!!).  When Miss Desi asked why he would say that then, Addie replied, "I don't know. Maybe because he's silly?!" And she put her hands up like she wasn't sure.  Desi said she laughed so hard.

Pictures from Muddy & Guppy's

Walking to Muddy & Guppy's front door.  Notice he's carrying his trick or treat bag from Uncle Jeremy & Aunt Amanda. It's full of his clothes.

Especially for Uncle Jeremy & Aunt Amanda, look closely at Ben's parka!!! He LOVES wearing it. I knew you'd be proud!

Introducing Addie's Halloween costume!

Originally she wanted to be Ariel, hence the wig.  We're not sure if the wig will make its way to Halloween night though.

Many updates coming!

Ok, so I'm going to do lots of blog updates tonight, I've decided.

First, our weekend was so nice.  Muddy & Guppy were champs with Addie and Ben.  All four slept relatively well, which I'm really happy about.   Brian and I got just about all of the kids' Christmas shopping done!  They are getting one REALLY cool thing for both of them, and then the smaller typical toys.   Brian and I watched two movies, "Baby Mama" which was cute and "The Happening" which so wasn't, er uh, happening.  It was really gory.  Not the typical M. Night Shaymalan movie at all.  We also managed to eat at two really nice dinners, one at the Melting Pot and the other at Sullivan's Steakhouse.  I got ALL of the laundry done in our house.  For those of you who have been to our house, you know what that means! Brian got the lawn all mowed and leaves raked up.  Overall a very successful and relaxing weekend.

When we picked Addie and Ben up we, of course, wanted play by plays of what they did/said/ate, etc. ;)  Muddy told us this story about Addie:

She got up and started walking around the house and said, "Muddy, do you smell that?"  (She gets her keen sense of smell from me!) "No, I don't. What does it smell like?"  She crinkles up her nose and says, "It smells like S-K-E-N-G!" Now we have no idea what Skeng is, but apparently it was bad enough that Addie thought it was necessary to spell it! Makes us think about how many times we spell something out in the course of a day around her. :)

Whatever you do, stay away from the skeng!

6 years

of wedded bliss!

Then October 19, 2002

Now October 19, 2008

Here we are and it's Friday!

Really, i don't know how I ever managed to post every day or even every other day a few months ago!
This weekend Brian and I celebrate our 6 year wedding anniversary. I asked Muddy and Guppy if they'd watch the kids on Sunday afternoon and evening so we could see a movie and have dinner. Muddy agreed and then offered to watch them Saturday THROUGH Sunday. Yes, that means overnight! When I asked Addie, she about flipped her lid to have a "sleepover with Muddy and Guppy." She is very curious if she'll sleep in her bedroom, "with the letters." (The guest bedroom has letters that spell out "Sweet dreams"hanging over the headboard. I'm looking forward to them having a chance to sleep away from our house without us. It's never been done before...so we'll see.
Addie informed me the other day that "Mommy, I know how to say Holy Camoley in Spanish." What?! Ok.... "Really? How?" "speas lados." "Spes ladis?" "No Mommy, say it with me- ssspppeeaaasss llllaaaddooosss." Ah! Of course. Silly me. So now my daughter is translating words into foreign sounding things, without really knowing any of them. Although she can count to 10 in Spanish and she knows quite a bit of words from Dora.
Which leads me to Benjamin, who when asked who Dora is, by holding up a doll of her or showing a sticker with her on it, replies, "Do-do-do-do-Dora." He actually thinks that's her name! Just like he's convinced that Diego's name is "Go, Diego, Go."
Ben is fast on pace to become a poster child for head injuries, more specifically on the face. Yesterday he was on a cube jungle gym thing at daycare (all the moms of toddlers know what I'm talking about) and slipped. Somehow in his fall he caught the corner of his eye on the corner of the cube. So he's swollen up like a boxer who's been punched on the brow. It's not black and blue yet. It might just stay red/brushed burned. We'll see.
Oh and I bought something that I was tickled with, for the kids. To give you a tease since I haven't uploaded the pictures yet- Addie and Ben were both enthralled with them when I presented them. Addie had not problems using it and activating it. She thought it was hysterical. Benjamin was terrified once he realized what it did! He's much more interested in Addie engaging with it, and Ben just pushing the button to turn on. Aren't you curious now? :)

Updates

welcome home Guppy!  After 9 days in the hospital, it's probably nice to be home!

As you can see, Tyrese came over for a visit on Sunday. For those who don't know this already, we ran into Tyrese 2 weekends ago at the Riverfront Day for Families.  We exchanged phone numbers and hoped he would call.  For those who really don't know this, Tyrese was Brian and my foster son before we had our own children.  He went back to his mom on his fourth birthday.  Weird to think that Addie is the same age as he was when he lived with us!  Needless to say, he has fond memories of us and called on Sunday to ask if he could come over.  His mom said he had been begging since we gave our phone number, to call to ask if he could come over.  :) He is an older brother to four younger bros ages 6, 4, 2, and 5 months.  He's awesome with Addie and Ben.  As you can make out from the pictures, he LOVED the jeep.  Makes me feel good to know that at 8.5 Addie and Ben will be loving the jeep still.  When we picked him up, I told his mom we would bring him back in a few hours and she said, "or next week.  Seriously, as soon as he gets home, he's going to be asking to go back to Cory and Brian's house." 

A funny thing going on now: Ben puts his hands on his hips when he's frustrated or mad about something.  It's like he just knew where to place them, and he does it so exasperatedly (like that word). I'll try to capture on video, however usually it's directed at me so I doubt I'll be able to grab the camera in time.

Also, Addie has made her Youtube debut, with her Barack Obama song. You can view it here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzXS5qjqq3s

Tyrese

So life is insane!

Sorry for the lack of posting. I feel like there's just no time. My life has been insane this past week!
Quick updates:
Guppy/my Dad has been in the hospital since Sunday night when Muddy and I convinced him he needed to go to the ER. Long story short, he didn't have a stroke (which is good), but they can't figure out what's wrong (which is bad). He's having lots of tests and catherizations done over the next few days. He's bored out of his mind there...just sitting in a hospital bed all day. Luckily Muddy brought him his Obama shirt last night, so he doesn't feel so alone.
We've visited twice now. Last night Addie serenaded Guppy, his nurses and everyone else within earshot of a shrill 3.5 singing voice with "There is a man for president {Barack} Obama is his name-o. O-B-A-N-N, O-B-A-N-N, O-B-A-N-N and Obama was his name-o." We'll have to work on that a bit :)
Benjamin has perfected the look of sadness. All one has to do is say "Ben, are you sad?" and he goes into this pathetic sad face. It's very cute.
Brian has been insanely busy at work, big shocker. He told me last night he has to work on Saturday morning, so he'll miss gymnastics this week.
I've been busy with work and meetings all over the place.
I haven't *gasp* taken a picture of the kids since last week! *faint*!

School pictures!!

Luckily I happen to have two of the most photogenic children ever!

Not sure why this one rotated....anyways it's not a good one.  I knew the two of them together would be disastrous, remember?

Addie apparently wanted to show all of her teeth.  Not kidding, there are pictures of me as a child just like this!

Report from our weekend

Sorry it took so long to get this posted, but my life is busy. I'm virtually a full-time working single parent during the week, so my blog suffers. :(

The drive up to Onkteb and Aunt Gail's on Friday took about 6 hours and included 4 potty stops.  Actually one stop was on the shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike, when Addie declared, "the peepee is coming now!" Amazing how fast I could get out of the car, run to her side, unfastened her seatbelt and get her pants and underwear down over the grass!  I should be in competitions or something! 

Addie and Ben were both so excited to see Onkteb and Aunt and their cats, that even though it was 1am, they wanted to visit.  We ended up crashing around 2:30 or so.  Saturday morning was nice, just hanging out there. Their apartment is huge and really nicely open for kids.  It'd be an awesome place to decorate/design if they owned it!  

Saturday afternoon we met up at one of my online friend's house.  I've been online with Rebecca for almost 4 years now.  I've always thought our children were remarkably similar and putting them together validated my belief.  Rebecca and Steve were the ultimate hosts, giving us pizza, then letting every toy in Gracie's room be out, then painting in the basement, then putting on a concert with full audio-capabilities.  Everyone had a lot of fun and it was a pleasure hanging out with them.  Even our husbands got along right away. Makes me wish they lived closer. I imagine we'd be hanging out a lot more.

We got back to Onkteb's and decided where to eat dinner.  We closed the night out with watching the cartoon version of Charolette's Web. 

Sunday morning the kids dressed in their Eagles clothes and we went to the town center where we had breakfast at this cute diner.  It's really nice that they live in a place where there seriously is a town center and things are within walking distance. I bet Hudson, MA gets a good walk score!

We ended up leaving shortly thereafter, after lots of swinging around with Onkteb and Aunt Gail.  The drive home was uneventful, except for tons of rain for about 90 minutes on the NJ Turnpike.

Overall, a trip well worthwhile.  And thank God for portable DVD players! Amen!