Hello strangers!

So a whole week has gone by without an update. Do you all still have pulses?
Even though a week has gone, it does not mean nothing has happened. In fact, a lot happened. I will tell you about it now:
Saturday was Aunt Amanda's birthday. Happy birthday, Amanda! We love you. Addie and Ben very nicely sang "Tootie Ta" for Amanda. Because Blogspot hates me, the video won't load here. It's over on the dropshots account and also on my Facebook account, if you haven't seen it yet.
Sunday was Brian's 30th birthday!! I cooked, for real cooked, dinner for 14 people! He requested pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. My little munchkins and I shopped on Saturday for the ingredients and prepared all day Sunday. I told everyone (Brian's parents, and siblings, Muddy, Guppy, Aunt Kim) we'd eat at 5:00pm. Dinner was on the table at 4:59 ready to eat. Kudos to me! :-) We ate creme brulee and yellow cake with chocolate icing and had a really nice time. We happen to have exactly 14 dinner chairs in our house, so that will be our maximum from now on.
Then this week we got a snow storm/ice storm. We have a nice coating of ice on everything right now, including the cable lines. This explains why I haven't updated this week. My internet at home is S-L-O-W! Oh dear lord, it's ridiculous. I can't even attach a picture to an email without it timing out. Hopefully the ice melts and I'll be good to go again.
In 30 minutes I'm picking Addie and Ben up from their last day at KinderCare. They'll start the new daycare on Tuesday. It'll be sad for me to have them leave their friends, but they'll make new friends, I'm sure.
After we get home and get our bags packed, Brian and I are taking them to Muddy and Guppy's house for the weekend, while I take Brian on his surprise 30th birthday trip to an undisclosed location. (Ok, fine, some of you know where we're going). We don't get back until around 5:00pm Monday night. I guarantee there will be lots of pictures. And we're doing a once in a lifetime thing as part of our trip!! I'm so excited. He won't know where we're headed until we're at the airport tomorrow. Woohoo!!
Safe weekend to everyone. Happy 27th birthday to Uncle Jeremy. The kids made a video for you too, I hope it'll upload before we leave tomorrow morning. If not, know that they made it ahead of time and everything!!!

Some more gems

I'm all mushy right now I guess, realizing how fantastic my kids are. I know parents are largely for responsible how their children behave, etc, but I also think part of it is just who your kids are. I feel really lucky to have such funny, independent, light-hearted, fun, energetic, smart, polite, well-rounded kids. Not everyone can say that, for real.

The other day Onkteb emailed me and asked how life was in Delaware. I ended up writing this long thing about what great ages Addie and Ben are at, etc. That evening I had to teach a class at UD, so I dropped Addie and Ben off at Muddy and Guppy's house. As I was recounting my email to Onkteb, I said outloud, "It makes me sad that she's not a little girl anymore." Addie immediately stopped what she was doing, climbed up on my lap, threw her arms around me and said, "Aww, it's ok. I'm still your little girl." Talk about tear inducing! I proceeded to squeeze her tightly and said, "even when you're almost 3o with two kids of your own, you'll always be my little girl." Reminds me of the I'll love you forever book.

On Monday morning there was a dusting of snow on the ground, so I got the kids excited to wear their snow boots to daycare. Addie put on her hot pink boots, with grey trim faux fur. Ben apparently really wanted to wear them too. He refused to wear his blue boots. He did his version of a tantrum (which involves laying face-down on the floor, with his knees tucked up under his chest), insisting he must wear "the boots with fur." Addie wasn't budging on wearing them. So after 3o minutes of conversation and negotiation, Benjamin left the house wearing his blue boots, his winter coat and my fur-lined gloves, complete with the fur edging. This boy has a definite sense of style. Not to mention his favorite socks to wear all have Hello Kitty on them.

This afternoon I will take Kota the dinosaur to daycare for all of the kids to play on/with. Last week I was supposed to bring him in on Friday, but they had a pipe burst in the center so the kids came home early. Should be fun. When I left this morning I could hear Addie telling all of her friends, "sit down, sit down, you all need to be really good today so Mommy can bring in the dinosaur!" It'll probably be the best day of behavior ever!

Too good to forget

This morning Addie came into the bathroom just as I had gotten out of the shower.  She asked me, "why is the mirror all messy?" She meant it was all steamed up from the shower.  I said, "well that's what happens when I take a hot shower, it makes the mirror all foggy."  She stood there in disbelief and said, "Mommy, I didn't know the shower was magical."  I went along and said, "Oh it sure is."  And she said, "But I didn't see it turn into a froggy!"   I had to laugh out loud.  Then I tried to explain FOGGY v. froggy, but eventually decided it's better for us to have a magical frog-morphing shower. :-)

Disney favorite memories

Which way, Bub?  Dat way!

In line for almost 90 minutes to ride the Dumbo ride.  The ride itself is about 20 seconds long.  And Addie slept through the whole thing.  Brian wasn't the happiest man in line, as 35 pounds of dead weight for that long isn't the most comfortable.

Downtown Disney.  Addie told Santa she wanted the BJ's babies and he incorrectly called them the Buddy babies, which she thought was hysterical. This was a really cold night.

Muddy bought Addie a tiara to wear with her Ariel dress.  Couldn't get much prouder. She actually curtsied to people all day long, who of course responded with something along the lines of "Ohhhh a princess!

Talk about going in 90% huh? :-)  His neck couldn't get much further back!

Mickey wanted to escort Princess Addie to her picture spot.  Talk about making grown people swoon! 

Picture worth a thousand words

This is while getting her hair blown dry for the first time.  You can't get much happier than that, can you?

A WHAT?

Addie's got a cold too, but more in her sinuses than her chest. This morning en route to daycare, she sneezed and the motherload of snot came out. (Yes, you can thank me for not warning you ahead of time!) As I'm driving I'm trying to reach back to wipe this enormous amount of snot that is now hanging down to her chin off of her. She exclaims, "Mommy, it's a boogie beard!" Then she proceeded to laugh in her gut-wrenching laugh and told me how she's going to tell all of her friends she had a boogie beard.

Dreams of a 2 year old

Not the Martin Luther King Jr. type dream- but the for real while you're sleeping dreams.
Ben has a cold, and has been having bad nights of sleep the past two nights. Last night, in between kicking and tossing and turning, while coughing up a lung and having a runny nose, he said the following out loud.

"Ok, guys, it's circle time. No, that's my spot. That's my spot!"

"There's boogies." So I replied, "here I'll wipe them off." and Ben said, "No, there's boogies on the blocks."

In case you ever wondered what Ben dreams about, now you know. :)

Big Day for Addie

This morning, after her bath.

Tonight, after a visit to Kidz Kutz.  

A little over 8 inches taken off.  I'm excited to see how much easier it will be to do her hair in the mornings!!!

Additionally, today is the one year anniversary of her last seizure.  Thank God.  Let's hope she's outgrown them now.

Disney

We woke Addie up for this picture, as you can tell.

After this session of pictures, we won  one of the prizes for "The Year of A Million Dreams."  We all won the Epcot fastpass, which gave us immediate access to the most popular rides!!

This would've been our Christmas card, had it been ready in time.

At the Animal Kingdom lodge, where we had dinner the first night.  Cate hadn't even arrived yet.
Best group portraits

Our Disney pictures are in!!

So I will begin the Disney posts again.

To start things off, a few of Benjamin. 

Can you tell what he's thinking?

How I managed to get 4 loads of laundry done last night

It's also why there's a delay whenever someone asks to borrow a cooking staple- imagine the organization! :)

Happy 30th birthday, yesterday, Cate! 

Party animal

Addie was so stoked to have a New Year's party.  In fact at daycare, she told every parent who came in that she was having a party and they were invited.  Her teachers told her they'd be there, and I quickly had to explain that Addie will be expecting them. They had to change their stories to "we'll try to be there."  

Our wild party attendees ended up being Muddy, Guppy, Aunt Kim and us.  Talk about a roster we've never had together ;) We sang American Idol Karaoke on the Wii and had a lot of fun.  Addie said at one point that she was so excited for Miss Desi to come.  Muddy explained that she's pretty sure she saw Miss Desi at the gas station and it seemed like she was having car problems.  That answer sufficed.

Remarkably, Addie made it to midnight, without shutting her eyes once.  Ben lasted til 11:30pm.  Really.  They even outlasted Guppy.  We ushered in 2009 with the NYC ball dropping on tv and by 12:20am Addie was fast asleep.

Even more remarkably, they were both awake by 8:20am.  I had secretly hoped they would last til 10:00ish, but knew that was a fat chance.

Happy 2009 everyone.  I hope this year is better for everyone than 2008 was.