Watch out for the "Cryptsteeburg!"

Our New Year's Eve tradition (the past few years, at least) has been:

• make home-made pizzas
• have a dance party in the kitchen/living room 
• watch a movie
• try to stay awake for the ball drop

Ringing in 2014, we made pizzas, had a dance party, watched an awesome firework show at the end of our street, watched a movie and stayed up until after midnight (thanks to fireworks and two scaredy cat little boys).  Last New Year's Eve (ringing in 2013), we introduced Jacob to the wonderful wizarding world of Harry Potter by watching "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."  Since, in my opinion, the HP movies get a little scarier with each movie, we decided to go a different route this year and watched "Freaky Friday" with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan (before she went crazy).  It's one of my favorite movies and is always good for a laugh.  I didn't know how the boys would react since it wasn't animated, but they both liked it.  In fact, they've even asked to watch it again and again.  

Sometime in January, Ryan came into our room during the night and climbed in bed with us.  Generally, when he does this, he likes to talk, talk, talk.  You can't get the kid to be quiet.  Here I am, trying to go back to sleep and Ryan's all talky-spice.  I roll over with my back to him, the only thing that helps with his constant chatter and he says to me, "What's wrong with you, punk?"  I said, "Excuse me?!?" and he repeated himself, "What's wrong with you, punk?"  Since punk is not in our vernacular, I was very confused.  He has no idea what punk meant.  I didn't think he was being disrespectful, so I eventually laughed and finally went back to sleep.  I told Jeff about the incident the next morning and he literally spat his drink of water out in the kitchen.  We talked about where he would have heard punk and came up with "Freaky Friday."  At some point in the movie, Anna, who is in her mother's body, says to Harry (her brother, who thinks he's talking to his mother), "What are you looking at, punk?"  

Weeks later, Jacob starts talking about the movie one day in the car.  We were on the way to pick Ryan up from preschool and he said, "Mom, you remember in Freaky Friday when the girl says, 'I'm old!  I'm like the cryptsteeburg!'?"  I died laughing.  The crypt-stee-burg, a.k.a. the crypt keeper.  

Jake's dream house

Often, when we visit Popi and Mimi in Georgia, we drive by this house:

The first time we saw it, Jacob told us he was going to live there when he grew up (and we could come too).  This week, Jeff came home from work and told Jacob he had good news and bad news for him and that I should come hear it too.  I thought, "Oh, boy...what's going on?"  His good news was that Jacob's dream house was for sale!  His bad news was the price tag...$15 MILLION.  Ouch!  We then took a "virtual" tour of the house and it's incredible.  During the tour, we saw it had an outdoor basketball court.  Jacob announced that Ryan could come live with us too.  Isn't that nice of him?  At the end of the tour, Jeff pulled up a mortgage calculator - just for fun.  If we didn't put a cent down and had a modest interest rate close to our current mortgage, our monthly payment would be over $66,000/month!  That's INSANE!  Jacob thought for a minute and said, "well, I guess I don't really need any new Lego's when we go to LEGOLAND Discovery Center for spring break.  I'll just save my money."  I think my heart melted right there.  Bless him! 

Thank you Lord for allowing me to be Jacob's mother and for his sweet spirit.
 

"Well, I guess this has been the worst morning of my life"

It's a hard job being seven, but someone's got to do it! This quote is what Jacob told his RoRo the other morning when she came by to take him to school. You can imagine her shock, when she innocently asked, "How are you? How's your morning going?" Little did she know that major surgery had occurred just minutes before she arrived at our house. And, by "major surgery," I removed a splinter out of the bottom of Jacob's foot. He had gotten a bath before school and when he was getting dressed, he said, "Momma, I think I'm going to be walking funny today because my foot hurts, or I've got a splinter...wait, let me check. Yep, I've got a splinter." I examined the bottom of his foot and sure enough, he did have a splinter. It was red around it and had to come out. Here's where the blood curdling screams came in. I'm surprised our neighbors didn't alert the authorities to the abuse/murder that was taking place. Poor Ryan was trying his best to be helpful and even let Jacob hold his, "Frosty of the Reindeer" (you're confused, I know...is it a snowman or a reindeer? Rest at ease, my friend, it's a reindeer) until the screaming got too bad and then he waved his hands in a "come here" motion and announced, "OK, give it back, give it back." He was my little helper and held the flashlight so I could see better...until he started moving it around and shaking it back and forth. When I asked him to please hold it still, he said, "but, Mom, my hand's shaking." Bless it! After about 15 minutes and countless screams and tears, the splinter was extracted. Jacob limped around the rest of the time he was getting dressed - until he forgot that his foot was supposed to be "hurt" and I caught him walking normal. Don't think I didn't point out that he was just fine.

Jacob slipped out the door while Ryan was going potty. We continued to get ready and Ryan didn't notice his brother's absence until we were in the garage to leave. "Where's Jacob?" Uh oh...busted! I did what any parent would do to avoid a complete meltdown...avoid answering the question! "Um, I guess we lost him?" Clever, right? Good thing Ryan's only three and doesn't see through my poorly thought of farce. "Oh, ok." Whew!!! Close one!

I take Ryan to school, all the way rocking out to some Veggie Tales. I get to work and my Mom calls me. I ask, "How'd it go?" (this is the first time we've attempted this school drop off). She replies, "Oh, good, he was very talkative, wanted me to come in to see his classroom." Blah, blah, blah...then she tells me he told her in the car, "Well, I guess this has been the worst morning of my life!" "Why?" she asks? "Because of the splinter, Ro!"

I laughed so hard that I literally could not breathe! My little drama king!

Guess who's back?!?

I have decided to revive my forgotten blog. It wasn't really forgotten...I've just had a bajillion other things to do besides blog. After scrolling through some blog posts, I'm sad that I've missed over 2 years of what's been going on in our lives. Here's to doing a better job!

The rocking chair session

It's hard to believe that Ryan is already 8 months old! He started crawling towards the middle to end of April and as soon as May rolled around, he was pulling up on everything. He's an excellent crawler and fast! Here are some pictures from what I've been calling "the rocking chair session!" (the antique looking chair was my Dad's when he was a boy, mine when I was a girl and now my boys...the other two chairs belong to the portrait studio)

Easter pictures...as promised.

Here are Easter pictures!

Easter pictures and laundry

The boys were supposed to have Easter/7 month/4 1/2 year pictures on the 10th.  The lack of pictures in this post isn't due to laziness or technical difficulties.  Pictures were scheduled for 9:30 a.m.  I was getting their clothes ironed and ready Saturday night. I pulled Jacob's polo shirt out of the dryer, the shirt that he has never worn, to find something had bled all over it in the wash. It was a sea-green color shirt and it looked like it had red wine all over the collar and two buttons. I wanted to cry.

I treated the shirt with an assortment of products and washed it again. It has been washed about ten more times since then and you can still see the stain. Its better, but still there.

I called Sunday morning and canceled our appointment. They had matching outfits for Easter and the store I bought it at didn't open until noon. I looked online for the shirt and it was no longer displayed on the website...guh-reat.  I called and they had ONE left in his size.  Hooray!!  Jeff picked it up for me and what do you know??  It was half-off!  SCORE!! 

This time, I'm not watching it before he wears it to pictures.  Maybe I should try some of those new Shout things that are supposed to catch colors?  It wasn't even something red. I had already learned my lesson with red clothes.

Stay tuned for some pictures so cute you can hardly stand it!!