The 40 year old hat

Wesley's little personality is shining through more and more each day. Last week he went up to his coat rack in his room and put everything on. Everything. He had a jacket, vest, hat and gloves on and then went racing through the house so excited with himself. It was hilarious. These are horrid pictures because he won't stand still much for the camera anymore, but you get the idea. He looks like a little fisherman.




He loves hats now. He constantly throughout the day will bring a random hat to me and ask me to put it on him. While I was surfing eBay the other day for a Bert doll to round out his Sesame Street characters he sleeps with, I found a Bert hat. This is a hand knit winter hat that was knit by this guys grandma 40 years ago. I couldn't pass it up. Combining Wesley's love of hats and all things Sesame Sreet....I mean how could I go wrong? Plus it was only $1.00. So it came yesterday and I washed it and he wore it around today, all day. Funny stuff, I wonder what the next obsession will be.

Bye bye

So the weekend Wesley had with my folks went so well that when I entered his room this morning I was greeted with "Noni"? "Papa"? He was wildly looking around me out the door looking for his beloved grandparents. Boy, don't I feel special. Once he figured out they weren't here he settled for playing with old Mom. We went down stairs and admired the new basement full of GeoTrax. My father spent something like three straight hours creating this maze of tracks and buildings while Wesley was sleeping one day. Wesley does enjoy it, he's still more interested in trying to take the track apart than actually playing with the trains. But I'm sure he'll get there. Along the lines of kids and toys, my father also found the Mega Bloks to be quite fun. During Wesley's naps he would take the 200 piece set and build a giant castle that was bigger than Wesley. Then Wes would wake up and run into the living room and tear it apart as fast as he could. Boys and their toys.

I shot a small video as my folks were leaving last night. Wesley was really sad to see them go.

Fun times in Phoenix

We made it home in one piece. We flew to Phoenix Friday and enjoyed some fabulous southwest cuisine as soon as we arrived. It was wonderful to sit and chat and laugh with family. Especially family we see only a couple of times a year. We hung out around the hotel pool, soaking up the 75 degree weather. I can see why Phoenix is a popular winter location. The sun was just glorious. Another really cool aspect of Phoenix? They have citrus trees growing EVERYWHERE that are just drooping with fruit. This is just the coolest thing ever. It reminds me of visiting California while growing up. I can't even imagine just going into my back yard and picking an orange off of my own tree. They had little stands set up where you go pick your own oranges for 10 cents an orange. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to bring 40 pounds of oranges home with me on the plane. Darn.

The wedding was just beautiful. It was held at the brides brothers house which was this enormous, beautiful house with a backyard straight out of a backyard makeover show (the end result). What a gorgeous setting for a wedding. It was all perfect. We are so happy that Nate found Stacy because she belongs in the family. She made a gorgeous bride. Congratulations you two, now go enjoy lounging around Hawaii while I sit here being jealous and cold. :)

Now to the part of the blog where I tell you about how horrible it was leaving Wesley home with my parents, and how he was just miserable without us, and how my folks were just itching for us to come home and save them. Yeah, none of that happened. Wesley was an angel for my folks. He was smothered with constant attention, doted on hand and foot and thoroughly enjoyed his time with "Noni and Papa " (as he now calls them). In fact, we returned home this evening expecting a gracious welcome, only to receive a glance while he searched for Noni (while saying "Noni, Noni, Noni"). He quickly warmed up to us though. How quickly he forgets who gave birth to him (grumble grumble). Just kidding, it was cute. No separation anxiety happening with this little one just yet. I'll write a future blog about Wesley's fun fun time with the grandparents. For now, we have wedding weekend pictures.

Here is the happy couple for the rehearsal dinner

Hubby and his silly momma

Officially tied the knot!

Sister-in-law Becca with darling Sasha

Hubby and I and our surrogate child, niece Claire

Family photos

Off we go!

We are off to Phoenix in the morning. Wesley will be spending the weekend with my parents. We are praying there is no Mommy complexes happening this weekend, if so he'll have to deal (there might be large amounts of Elmo's World if he does have issues). I wish my parents luck and I know they'll all have fun. I'll write about the whole experience on Sunday. Have a great weekend!

Fun with Dad

Weekend update

What a fine relaxing weekend we had. Relaxing because we did nothing. The winter months are the glorious months when we don't have to go outside and do house repairs "because of the weather". Of course on 55 degree days, such as today, it's hard to keep our mantra going about the cold weather. Instead I took my little monster outside to soak up some vitamin D while exploring. We ventured into the walnut grove and he picked up as many walnuts as he could hold in his hands.

Other winter activities include game play. After Christmas Hubby and I tend to become Playstation 2 nuts for at least 2 months. After the two months are over, it tends to wear off until the next Christmas. My parents are good about getting Sean whatever game is currently to his fancy. This year it was Shadows of the Colossus and God of War. Watching him play gets me wanting to play something as well, so I found Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus. Super fun game. Come February I'm sure we will both have drifted off to new lazy day hobbies, but for now this is it. Tell me, when do you get too old for video games?

I've been organizing everything needed for our Phoenix trip this Friday. Since we aren't checking any bags we have to pack light. We were having a dilemma about Hubby's suit and how we'd get it there without checking it, so we decided to roll up his suit pants (and iron like crazy when we get there) and he'll wear the suit jacket on the plane. I thought I'd be antsy about leaving Wesley for 2.5 days but I really feel good about it all. I have several lists ready, along with medical info, schedules and food options to give to my folks. This is going to be a blast! Stacy and Nate, we are so excited to see you tie the knot!

Seriously....

...I don't think there is anything cuter than this little kid smiling on the tractor.

Blue teeth

The kid has a new love in his life. It is blue and squishy and goes by the name Play Doh. Several times a day he will wander into the kitchen and point to the cabinet where his little friend lives and say in his most precious little voice "play doh?". Although it sounds more like "pla duh". So we get out the clay and the little clay station (that we found in my parents attic from when I was a kid....can we say antique?). He'll stand at the table and play for about half a hour or until it starts getting licked repeatedly. I know once the licking commences I have about one minute before the whole chunk goes into the mouth. And what I learned yesterday is that once it goes in the mouth it stays in the mouth. The kid just about bit my finger off yesterday after I went in after some clay. He ends up with lovely blue teeth after the whole experience is said and done. But he loves it....playing and eating.

Trains, diets and more

Now that our kids are back to being healthy, Wesley has been visiting Alex and Abby regularly. Jessica brought her kids over this past weekend to play and we had a nice time. As I mentioned before my father is a train nut and has purchased little toy trains called Geo Trax by the buckets full. These little train sets all connect together and some (crazy) people build huge layouts that span several floors in their house. Now I hope to not become one of those people, but we nearly have enough Geo Trax to cover the entire basement floor. Unfortunately Wesley is not yet at the age to think these trains are "da bomb" BUT little Alex is. So we brought up just a few pieces of track and two engines to test the waters and see if Alex was ready for it all since he's a little over 2 years old now. Yeah, he's sure ready. He thoroughly enjoyed playing with it which gives me hope that one day soon Wesley will find it all quite interesting.

Alex the train conductor



The window lookers



Nine month old Abby (I swear she was born just the other day)



On the diet front, I hit my goal of 5 pounds already. I started the Atkins diet on the first of January, so in 14 days I've lost 5 pounds. Not bad. My jeans are fitting better and there is not much of anything hanging over the top of the jeans when I sit down. So, if you all want to drop some LB's quickly and painlessly give old Atkins a try....it works. I've started adding in whole wheat bread here and there but don't plan to splurge on my big delicious dessert just yet....soon.

I'm getting excited about the up and coming trip to Phoenix next Friday. I'm a little anxious about leaving my little man here while we jet off to the southwest but I know I'm leaving him in capable hands. I can't even imagine the amount of lists I'm going to have to write to make sure I've informed my parents of everything...from how to feed the horses to what Wesley's schedule is. And everything in between. They'll have fun though, that I'm sure of.

I leave you with a video taken in Wesley's destroyed bedroom the other day while Jessica and her kids were visiting.

Soaking up the rays

This weekend has been a fun one. The weather has been quite good, in the mid 50's and Wesley and I have been outside exploring today. Jessica was kind enough to let us borrow some of her lawn vomit (Little Tykes Slide) and so Wesley was out today climbing all over the slide and even learned to slide down it all by himself.




We then wandered over and saw the horses. He likes to pick up any form of vegetation and thrust it at the horses. I'm sure he'll have fun with them more and more as he gets older.




Then we decided to go see what Daddy was doing in the shop. Sean got his circuit board etched with the vat of acid in the basement and preceded to drilling holes in it next. His homemade circuit board project is a success.



Last on the agenda was playing in the dirt pit that was our pool. It is almost finished, we'll need to have a load of dirt brought in this spring and leveled. Wesley thought the loose dirt was too much fun and managed to get himself covered. He also enjoyed poking the cat with a stick. Ahh the joys of cat poking. Hope everyone is having a nice weekend!

Scary stuff

Yet another reason to breastfeed your baby for as long as possible.

Sweet Cookie Lovin'

The kid just adores Cookie Monster so I give in whenever I find something fun and Cookie related. The other day I was wandering around Toys R US (totally not something I would normally do unless I was laden with a gift card) and ran across a dancing, giggling Cookie Monster. Who doesn't want a dancing, giggling Cookie Monster on their kitchen table? Why, you ask, is there a dancing, giggling Cookie Monster on your kitchen table? Well if it goes anywhere near the floor the demons dogs will rip it limb from limb and the kid will sob and be permanently scarred for the rest of his life. So he must climb up on a chair and play with Cookie on the table. And yes, Cookie joins us every night for supper....he's part of the family now. Here is my Cookie lovin' kid:

No more muffin top

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am trying out the Atkins diet and so far so good. I don't have a large goal as I just need to drop five or eight pounds, mainly I need to tackle the "muffin top" that came along after the pregnancy. I've only technically been on the diet for 6 days now but my pants are already fitting better and there's not as much of me coming over the top of my jeans. I'm excited! It hasn't been too hard to accommodate the diet into my life as I'm not a huge bread junkie to begin with. My weakness is sweets. In this diet I've had to give up bread, fruit (a hard one), pasta, sugar and dairy products other than cheese and butter.

I've been waking up and making a tasty one egg omelet with mushroom, swiss cheese and cilantro. It's really good and keeps me full until lunch. Lunch has been a salad with ham and feta cheese and a drizzle of greek olive oil dressing. I've been snacking on string cheese and sugar free jello. Dinner last night was shrimp scampi (without bread crumb topping) and seasoned broccoli. I'm not making my skinny hubby and youngin eat this diet, so they get rice or noodles with the meal. It's funny but I'm not even craving the sweets or carbs anymore.

I'm going to keep this up until I loose the 5-8 pounds and then I'll start slowly adding in whole wheat breads and pastas and I'll occasionally indulge in a sugary dessert. My first splurge is going to be these (DROOOOOOL):



And I can't wait. Don't they look good? They are Whoopie Pies and they are going to be my prize for sticking to the diet. Wish me luck!

Lesson learned

So to beat the winter blah's, Wesley and I went into our little tiny town and wandered around. This is a one stop sign town (not even a stop light), yet surprisingly they have a really nice little library. So we wandered into it and had a nice time killing almost two hours. Wesley is finally at the age where he can go into a library and not yell and scream and totally mortify me in front of other library goers. He went from board book to board book quietly taking them off the shelf, sitting down and flipping through them until he looked up and discovered there was, in fact, row after row of more books. It was fun.

We went outside the library and he was wandering around when, to my dismay, we discovered that precisely at noon on the first Monday of every month the city does a test run of the tornado alarm. This was RIGHT ACROSS the street from us. I almost crapped myself and the poor kid looked like he was getting ready to be attacked. Just stood there shaking and wide eyed. I don't think either of our hearing is ever going to be the same. We hid in the library for the three minutes it was going off. Note to self: Don't be in town at noon on the first Monday of the month. Lesson learned.

Back to life, Back to reality

It sure has been nice having Hubby home for all these consecutive days in a row. It's wonderful having him home for two weeks around Christmas and New Years and then it's back to reality and back to work. Wesley and I will miss him this week. I'm already bored and the week hasn't even begun. I can't seem to get back in the swing of things with my work either. Sculpting like crazy before the Holidays takes the creativity right out of me and I'm left with an empty shell. Now I have to crank it back up to pay bills, uggg such is life.

Wesley has been, er, interesting the past week. I'm not sure what has gotten in to him but we are having some really crazy mood swings that involve him giggling one moment and throwing himself on the floor the next. When I got him out of his crib this morning he managed to have two tantrums before we even make it out of his room. Don't have a clue what going on but I hope he snaps out of it soon as it's growing maddening. My friend Jessica says her little boy did the exact same thing right around 18 months. No fun at all.

In the category of Adorable, Wesley has grown to adore Sesame Street characters. He used to only have eyes for Elmo and occasionally Cookie monster but now whenever he sees any of them in a book or on TV he'll point and excitedly say "Ernie" or "Zoe". We got him some little stuffed Sesame Street characters for Christmas which he sleeps with now. Sometimes he won't leave his bedroom without clutching one under each armpit. We only have Elmo, Ernie and Cookie, but I hope to find Bert and Zoe soon as they are his favorites too. Here he is sitting on the couch with his "friends".

Lazy bums

Welcome 2009! We spent yesterday enjoying the many football bowls on television, eating blueberry muffins, taking naps and reading new books. Being all around lazy bums. What a great day!

My husband has started a new project that requires him to dress like this:


He found some instructions online on how to etch his own circuit boards at home. So he went out and purchased a small aquarium, some different acids, and other supplies and set up this lovely bubbling aquarium of acid in my basement. Luckily it is in the window well, so noxious fumes won't kill us all. I guess he just feeds this tank of acid pieces of copper until it turns from brown to green then you know it's ready to etch away. This is pretty standard in the way of bizarre projects he starts up. I wonder what it will be next month? Hey, whatever makes him happy!

Happy New Years Eve!

I hope everyone is having a great New Years Eve! I didn't even realize today was New Years Eve until the lady at the feed store told me so. Wesley and I then decided we needed to go to the grocery store to pick up yummy treats to ring in the new year. What is new years eve without tasty fattening food. After saying this I have to add that I'm trying out a low carb diet, I plan to shed 5 pounds. I'm doing this along with Pilates every afternoon during Wesley's nap to tone up and feel good about my body again. So I will be watching Sean and Wesley munch away on the said tasty treats while I munch away on salads and nuts. It's all good!

Wesley has been adding to his vocabulary over the past week. He's got about 30 words now that he uses regularly. Yesterday he started stringing words together. He walked up to me with my sneaker and said "Mommy's Shoes" and gave one to me. He'll also say "Hi Daddy" when Sean gets home from work (we worked on that one for a couple of weeks). He also says "Bye Daddy" or Mommy when one of us leaves. It's great.

The other day we were flipping through a photo album and we got to a picture of my father and he pointed to it and said "Papa". So I guess my Dad is going to be known as Papa instead of grandpa for the time being. I called them up to tell them this and my Mom said in her saddest voice "When will I get a name?" Soon grandma.

The kids newest feat is that he discovered how to climb into his highchair all by himself. I will get a video soon as it is quite something to see. He's quickly gaining his monkey skills. That's all for now. I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Years!

Vroom vroom vroom

It seems Wesley turned into a little boy overnight. He's starting to do the typical "boy" things now. He'll pick up one of his Hot Wheels and vroom it around the floor, complete with vrooming noises. I had no idea this would start so early! I mean, who knew the little boy genes kicked in at 18 months? I thought I would have at least until he's 3 or 4 before the car infatuation began. I suppose he never had a chance with his genetic background. Here he is "vrooming".

The fun fund

Several months ago I was surfing eBay and ran across someone selling their formula checks. You know, the coupons that the infant formula companies send out on a monthly basis? I still get these Similac coupon/checks every few weeks.....and until recently I would throw them out since I don't need to purchase formula anymore (hallelujah). They aren't much, usually each check is good for $5 off a can of formula and I would get one or two checks at a time. So over the past few months I've been collecting the checks and once I had three or four I would put them up on eBay. The strange thing about all this is that people on eBay bid them up to 50% of their value. Not just occasionally, but always. So every few weeks I post $20 worth of checks and I make $10. It's never much money but I save it up and then yesterday I bought these cute pair of black leather pumps with stuff I normally would just toss in the trash. It's my fun fund. Yea me!

Christmas Rewind

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I was hoping to get a blog about Christmas up sooner but we came home to a dead desktop computer. Poor old Mac wouldn't even power up. So I am now an official laptop user. Rest in peace my old Mac. We spent Christmas with my sister, her husband and my folks in Kansas City. Wesley had a great second Christmas! After about the fourth present he learned how to delicately unwrap the paper, no crazy ripper here. He liked the bows the best, putting them on his head was super cool!



We all made out like bandits. Santa was very generous this year. Wesley decided each new present was more awesome than the last. He got a tricycle, a bulldozer toy, oodles of new Geo Trax (it's going to take over the whole house now), Fridge ABC toy, Turbo Turtle and countless other cool toys. He is very excited to watch his new Elmo DVD, Elmo in Grouchland, although I'm going to prescreen it since I hear it can be a little scary. He made a good haul this year, thank you to all the family and friends for being so generous.

My sister got my father Guitar Hero for Playstation 2 and we all sat around playing it. What a fun game! Sean was a natural at it and kicked all of our butts. Here is my father playing it, what a hoot that was to see.



Here is the whole family.



Here is Wesley cuddling with ol' Mom.



My favorite picture of Sean, looks like he's meditating and making the balloon float....what a silly picture.



So excited to see all the presents!



Thank you Betsy and Blake for hosting a great Christmas. It was very nice of you to let us all crash at your house and eat all of your food. We all had a great time and Wesley already misses your cool coasters (one of which made it home with us...somehow.) Thanks again!

Tornado Wesley

This is what my living room looks like at the end of every. single. day. Usually, though, my kid is not standing on a box.

Just around the corner

Boy am I excited about Christmas! I am really looking forward to it this year because Wesley is becoming more and more aware of everything and I can't wait to tell him about Santa. Looking at this time of the year through a childs eyes is so much fun. With every passing year I can only imagine it getting better. Plus, I'm psyched about getting new toys for the kid! He SO needs something new to do around here on these long winter days...poor bored kid.



On the down side, the weather is already horrid and winter has only just started. Doing my outside chores twice a day has become a lot of work. I resemble the abominable snowman when I go outside....sweater, jeans, jacket, coveralls, hat, mittens, scarf & boots (I REALLY want a ski mask but we don't live in ski mask country so I'll have to order one). Thankfully we put in the stock tank heater for the horses several months ago. It does a great job of keeping the water from being a block of ice but it doesn't keep water in the tank. The hose that goes from the house to the stock tank is frozen stiff so I have to haul 5 gallon buckets of water out there once day. It's a lot of work, but I signed up for this when I got those animals I suppose. I do feel bad about them out there in sub zero degree weather. They have a nice cozy shelter with all they can eat hay and thick fuzzy coats, so I don't worry too much, but still....brrrr.

We are leaving Wednesday to go spend Christmas at my sisters house in KC with my family. It will be nice and I'm looking forward to it.

Tractor Love

Last Christmas my parents bought Wesley a tractor. It's a little John Deere ride on toy. Yes, we live in the Midwest...tractor toys are popular here. He was all of five months old last Christmas so it didn't get much use up until lately. Well ever since he started walking he's decided this little green tractor is the bomb. He's so in love with it and will ride it around for a portion of every day. He's also discovered he can wheel it over to the baby gates and stand on the seat in an attempt to get over the baby gates. Sneaky little boy. Here he is riding his tractor with his "hat" on.

More ramblings....

There seems to be a total lack of interesting stuff to blog about lately. I feel at ease after shipping out my last Christmas sculpture this morning, along with the last of the Christmas presents to family. I'm so happy to have that all out of the way! One less thing on my shoulders. Hubby took today off and I ran into town to finish up the last of my Christmas shopping without my little 17 month old tag along. With the weather bitterly cold and the unknown forecast of freezing drizzle it was nice not having to lug him around.

On the subject of dicey weather, I finally got to try out the four wheel drive on my Jeep yesterday. I've never had a 4 wheel drive vehicle (never really needed or wanted one) but I thought "since I've got it, I'm going to use it!". On a day like yesterday, when I would have normally stayed home because of the thick blanket of snow and ice, I plowed right through it. It was nice, I actually felt very safe driving around with Wesley in the back seat. Not over-confident, but safe. I guess I'll have to hang onto the Jeep for awhile, even though it's proven itself to be somewhat of a lemon.

Wesley is getting over his second cold of the year. Looks like it has almost ran it's course. He starting to do more new things every week. He's starting to be clingy. He'll walk up to me and throw his arms up toward me, once I pick him up he'll just lay his head on my shoulder and hug me for several minutes. It's very sweet, I adore it. Then Sean will walk by and he'll throw his arms out to him and I'll pass him off and he'll give hubby the bear hug. We are hoping this isn't developing into a "won't let Mommy out of my sight" phase with the impending Arizona trip next month. Hubby and I are flying to Phoenix for Sean's brothers wedding in January and leaving Wesley with my parents for two nights. They offered and we couldn't resist the chance to escape for a long weekend by ourselves. It will be nice to travel light, for a change.

That's about all that's new here, hope everyone is having a great Holiday season. Can you believe Christmas is in 8 days?? Yikes, where does the time go?

Elmo's back

I have reinstated Elmo's World back into the house. It was banned from the house after the endless watching that happened on our trip home from New Mexico. Wesley did good during the banning period, only asking for Elmo several times a day.
Here he is this morning with Cookie watching it, you can almost see the drool rolling down his chin. Elmo will only be allowed once a week. His weekly treat. Just call me the "Elmo Nazi".

Victory

We have a snow storm predicted for our area this week. So while I was at the store I decided to get Wesley a hat. He's not a hat lover and yanks them off immediately after they are placed on his head. SO I found one of those hats that velcros under their chins. Wonderful inventions. Here he is trying his hardest to remove the hat:

And here he is giving up. Victory!

The little black escape artist

I am a self proclaimed animal lover. Sometimes I don't necessarily like my animals all the time, for instance when my little mini horse Rocky decides to try and kick the crap out of me but that's another story. Anyways, I do love the animals around me....especially our little terrier Chance. Chance is a 12 pound wiry little fellow we adopted from the pound five years ago when he was just a little 7 pound kind-of-puppy. It was love at first sight. My mother and I went in there and he just stared up at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen. I put my hand through the bars and he laid his head in my cupped hand. It was precious and he went home with me that day. He got along splendidly with our golden retriever, spending countless hours rough housing and chasing each other.

I'm building all of this up to explain how much I care for that little dog. So when last week he decided to squeeze through the wrought iron bars on the fence and take off I was freaked out (to say the least). I ran outside barefoot with Wesley (thank goodness it was not a freezing cold day) and immediately took off running and screaming his name. Luckily he hadn't gotten far and I scooped him up and ran back inside. Then last night he decided he needed to escape again. My new routine was to let them out and then go to the window and watch him do his business and let him back in. By the time I got to the window he had already shimmied his way through the fence and was gone. Did I mention this was at midnight? Hubby and I took off outside and walked the property with flash lights calling his name. We found him finally. Crappy little dog, doesn't he know how good he has it? Nice warm house, good food, great kid to play with. I feel like I should leave him outside sometime during a snow storm and see how much he likes living here. It might make him not want to escape.

So now he can only go outside with a leash on. Yeah!

Building immunity one kitty turd at a time

The kid is sick...again. This makes number two for this winter so far (and it's officially not even winter yet). He's not real sick just big wads of green snot running down his face and sometimes into his mouth. Yum. He's sleeping just fine which I'm grateful for. He's got his humidifier going all night and it seems to keep the snot nice and thin so it doesn't wake him up.

I try to figure out how he gets sick since it's just him and me all day here in the house. He rarely goes to the store with me anymore (I prefer to do my shopping without him on Saturdays) and it's not like he goes to a play group or daycare. Must be all the ickies floating around our house or maybe that hubby brings home from work? The kid is always doing something that makes me say the phrase "Oh he's just building immunity one _____ at a time". You can put anything into that blank. The other day he walks up to me with a dried up kitty turd in his hands. Kind of like "hey look what wonderful prize the kitty left me!". Nasty kitty. He does this with anything and everything. During late summer I would catch him sucking on my flip flop. Or every so often I'll walk into a room to see him lying on his stomach sucking on the wood floor. My favorite is he'll get a hold of the dog's food dish and will lick it out right after they ate. It doesn't even phase me anymore. You can't say he's not building up that little immune system every time he does something like this.

I shall leave you with video of Chance the dog chasing Wesley around trying to steal his beloved cracker. Wesley loves being chased by the dog....I think I might try hanging a chunk of meat around his waist, endless fun!

Confessions

Ok, I am about to admit something to all you internets. I am addicted to the Twilight series. I had a ton of Christmas orders and on any other given year would still be doing them, but I promised myself that once I finished them this year I could re-read the books. So of course I finished them last weekend. I've been reading ever since. Now I'm not totally over the top here as this is only the second time I'll be reading them, but the addiction doesn't end at the books. Oh no, I've seen the movie twice now and am trying to find a way to sneak in a third viewing. I say "sneak in" because my husband thinks I've lost my marbles. He might be right. It's not helping that the second book is soon to be in production for the big screen and might be out next Christmas. Yeah! Ok, that's all.....first step is admitting the problem.

First snow

We are in the midst of our first snow storm here. I love snow. It really sucks for Sean to drive in but when my family is all home I love being all cozy inside surrounded by animals and hot cider on the stove. Yum.
It's just a few inches and it will probably be gone by tomorrow....nothing like what my brother and sister-in-law live with every day in South Dakota! I don't know how you guys do it! Here is a picture of our mini snow storm.


Wesley and I are just chillin inside today. Here he is showing off his favorite expression. He'll just walk around the house with his mouth hanging open. Strange child.


And here he is dog stomping. Sophie really is a good dog putting up with his toddler antics.

Twinkling lights and football....what a combo.

Christmas has arrived at our house. I set up the tree, wreaths, garland and such today. I'd like to say that it was a family affair but no, I do this myself every year. Sean is not much into decorating (it must offend his manly side) and Wesley would be more interested in smashing the glass ornaments than helping me decorate. But it's ok, I'm not complaining too much...I get to put things exactly where I like them and it really does put me in the Christmas spirit.

Sean and Wesley watched the college football championship games today. When I say that Wesley watches football I used to mean that Sean watched football while Wesley played with his toys. Not anymore, Wesley actually will sit on Sean's lap and watch football with him. It's kind of sad just how early the fascination with the game starts in this house. In fact last week Wesley started saying "football". Sean taught it to him and now he'll randomly ask Wes what he wants to watch on TV and the kid will automatically say football. It's just so wrong, yet cute at the same time. I, on the other hand, am desperately trying to teach the kid "chick flick" but it's not working.

More cute new stuff with the kid: When he's ready to take a nap or go to sleep at night he'll lay his head down and say "nigh nigh??". It's pretty darn cute. It's great that he'll now let us know when he wants to go to bed, rather than the other way around.

With only 19 days until Christmas I am about half way through my shopping. I just ordered some stuff off of Amazon and hope with the free shipping it will be here before Christmas. Now I just have to get everything shipped off to out of state family before long.

This last picture is Hubby and Wesley by the tree. Sean has decided in an attempt to keep his face warm he will try and grow a beard. I think this is more of an excuse for being too lazy to shave, but hey....whatever, we'll see how it looks after a few weeks. Maybe I'll like the mountain man look?

Christmas spirit?

We have gotten back into the swing of things around here since getting back from the trip. Wesley seems to be moping around without all the constant attention he got down in New Mexico. I think the poor kid is bored being home. We can't go hang out with his buddy Alex because poor Alex and Abby are recovering from croup. We can't go outside because it is friggin cold. I think it's going to be a long winter.

One idea for keeping this kid happy and entertained is to release him into the house. We have about half the main floor baby gated off for dogs and Wesley. This keeps everyone safe and happy, Wesley can't get into too much trouble and the dogs are contained to an area that they can't destroy too much. But there is quite a bit of the house that the kid has never been in or only briefly. The basement for one. This weekend I plan on cleaning up the basement and setting up the GeoTrax train set down there so that we can go down there every so often and play. Maybe just getting him into a new situation will make him happier. It's worth a try.

Tomorrow we are going (back) to Sears to get some more pictures taken. When we got home from the trip we had a message on the answering machine saying we won some raffle and received a free photo shoot and some wall portraits. So Wesley is getting all gussied up and getting some Christmas pictures taken tomorrow.

I am planing on getting the Christmas decorations put up this weekend in between getting all my Christmas sculpture orders finished. I'm looking forward to getting them up, I'm hoping seeing the house all decorated gets me in the Christmas spirit!

I wish I had pictures to post but I'm kind of pictured out after taking oodles over the trip last week. That's all that's new here.

The refrigerator coffin

This post drops into the "strange" category. Yesterday morning I go into the kitchen and smell something hot. You know when an electronic somehow overheats it gives off a hot smell. Well there was definitely something overheating in the kitchen. Sean pinpointed it to the bottom of the refrigerator, where the coils are on the back. So we pull the fridge away from the wall and the outer cover looks like there is some dog hair on it (imagine that). Thinking that it's just a layer of dog hair that making it overheat, Sean gets the shop vac out and goes to town vacuuming it all up. He takes the cover off and continues to vacuum the inside of the compartment. He notices the fan that cools the coils is stopped and finds out why. There is a dead mouse stuck in the fan. Yep, this poor little mouse was just walking around near the fan when it decided it needed to come on. So the mouse got stuck in the fan which in turn made the coils overheat and give off that lovely overheated smell. I'm glad we were home to catch it as we aren't sure if it would have started a fire. Luckily, the fan started right back up once it was free of dead mouse (and brains...Mmmm).

And there wasn't just one dead mouse in there, another one was curled up a few inches from the other. Weird stuff I tell you.