Pretty Pots!

Over spring break we let the kids paint up a couple of pots and pick some flowers to put in them.  The kids and I each picked a paint color.  I figured that way they could paint their hearts out and we could have some coordinating new pots.  Can you guess what color I chose?  I can't help it!  I love black.  The kids did such an amazing job.  I love the fun abstract look of each one.  I think I am going to buy one of those huge terra-cotta pot and let them have at with the same colors.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  Now to keep the flowers alive.

On a side note: Any advice on sealing them?  The paint was an outdoor paint but I am wondering (probably a little late) if I need to use a sealant on them?  They were rained and snowed on and seemed to hold up just fine but I want them to last for at least a few years.  Any advice?     

   Oh I am into spring.  I love it!  

Who wins when you tangle with a street sign?

My sweet cheese ball of a son.  Which looks way to old since cutting his hair!

Tomorrow is picture day at school... again.  I found out they do pictures in the spring now too.  We were lucky we got pictures at all when I was a kid.  More on my deprived childhood later.  I actually like that they take their picture twice a year.  A kid can change a ton over the course of a year.  It is fun to see the comparison.  And get this not only do they do pictures twice a year but you can also now pay for touch ups.  Yeah you can get your child's picture air brushed.  Now to each their own but I feel like that is borderline messed up!  Aren't the best pictures the ones that are a little off?  This is where my story gets more interesting.  Let me spin you a tale of a boy and his bike.  

A few days ago Nicco was riding along up and down the street on his bike.  I was cleaning out the car and obviously not paying close enough attention to him.  Great mom award will be accepted right over here.  Anywho.... I hadn't seen him in a few minutes so I walked to the front of the yard and saw a stranger talking to him.  My momma senses started going haywire.  What the hell is a crazy strange chick doing talking to my son?!  All kinds of thoughts started running through my mind.  She is going to steal him and I will never see him again!  OH yeah full force.  I immediately walk down to the corner calling to him just to make sure she knows I am coming and that she better slow her roll.  As it turns out I needed to slow my roll.  Poor Nicco had ridden his bike straight into the street sign at the bottom of our street.  Like full on rammed his bike into it.  The bike Santa brought him is bigger than his last bike and he has had a hard time getting used to it.  It has been like learning to ride all over again.  We are working on controlling it.  We clearly need some more time.  Luckily he had his helmet on!  Oh and the crazy lady that was going to steal my son?  She was a kindly stranger that helped him get upright and calmed him down.  Again mother of the year award can be sent via UPS straight to my home!

Wondering how this all relates to picture day and airbrushing the photos?  Nicco has a black eye and a bruise on his cheek from his spill.  I would say that the sign won.  Now what to do?  Have a forever memory of that infamous day when Nicco took on a street sign and lost?  Or let them photoshop the marks away?  I am leaving the bruises and black eye!  I am looking forward to pulling them out every year and telling him the story over and over until he can tell it better than I can.    

The toast is the only way to keep him still.  See the bruising on the cheek and the black eye?  Awesome!

Heart Bombing!

We went out as a family to do some heart bombing ala Sheepish Knit.  I love Meredith and her lovely blog a little bit and by a little bit I mean a ton!  The wrapped yarn heart is the only one we made from yarn.  The kids had a hard time standing around and waiting for that one to be done.  The rest were cut out of pink and red felt.  

I wish we had gotten a picture of Lola's whole outfit.  It was so her!  A red and gold geisha style dress with black tights, blue chucks and a pink sweetheart sweatshirt.  Oh that girl kills me!

The kids wanted to put them on their friends houses so that is what we did mostly.  That is why our pictures were hurried and not so hot.  We had to be quiet and run as soon as they were done!  It is really cool to watch them get excited about doing things for their friends.

We had a lot of fun running around the block spreading some love in our neighborhood!  In fact, we had so much fun that I am going to plan some other stuff for us to do to spread some guerilla-style love around our community.  

Little Reminders

I had to share this because I feel like I have a lot of short comings as a mother.  I sometimes yell and get told that I am mean.  I am far from perfect but then I will get a reminder that I must not be totally screwing up my kids.  You see that picture right there?  Yeah they did that without me prompting them.  My babies truly love each other.  They are kind and loving towards one another.  I would go as far as saying that they are each others favorite people.  Granted they also really don't enjoy each other at times.  They fight like cats and dogs or like siblings really.  But they turn around and make up and are playing again like little angels 5.5 seconds later.  They make my heart swell!  Life can be rough at times.  We are in a rough patch right now.  Things don't always go my way but I have a happy little family and kids who love each other.  

Plus rough patches have a way of smoothing out eventually.

Block Party Crashers

We totally crashed a block party this weekend.  After some major coercing from some friends we headed over.  I still maintain that going to another blocks block party is a bit trashy but they had a bounce house and a snow cone machine.  That is ritzy!  It was free and fun- two things that are deal makers for me lately!  HA!  Needless to say I was pretty glad we went.

Good food and good friends- a great combo!

Bounce house buddies.

Snow cones!  They were a little on the yucky side but the kids lurved them.  They do not have distinguishing tastes!

Lovely night.

It was a good little farewell to summer party.  We almost had to wear jackets on the walk home!  I can't wait for chilly weather.  I love fall and early winter so very much.  I am trying to pretend that I want summer to last but that is a lie!!

Oh thank heaven.... a haiku

So on Friday the chitluns and I went to 7-11 to get them each a slurpee because I was too cheap to pay for a treat at the zoo.  Yeah I am that mom!  Anywhoo....  I got them each their cup, filled them on up, put the lids on firmly and set out for the register to pay.  Next I hear a sound of disgust come from the little lips of my boy.  I turn around and what do I see?  Freaking slurpee all over the floor and a popped off lid.  I run back and get him a new lid and fill his cup back up.  I then proceed to the register feeling like a jack-a to tell the clerk that I need some help cleaning it up.  After I had begun to tell the clerk about it he stops me mid sentence and says oh I need you to speak up!  I can't hear a word you are saying.  He then mocked the way I was speaking to him.  I was like excuse me?!  I apologized to him- trying to stay civil.  However I changed my mind about helping clean up the mess.  I told him we made a mess and it needs to be cleaned up.  He then asks me oh is it a big mess?  oh yeah?  Hmmm!?  Needless to say I was about to grab two handfuls of his Ace Ventura hair-do and run for the door.  He eventually let me pay and we got out of there.  Before he got his butt kicked up into his throat!  I blame the whole situation on the stupid slurpee cup that was warped.  And the jerk clerk.  Welcome to my life.



OH thank heaven

Freaking slurpee lid
Pops off and makes a big mess
 hey clerk kiss my butt



    

Happy Birthday Nicco!

We celebrated this boys 5th birthday this last weekend.  OH my gosh I can't believe that he is 5 already!  It is so cliche to say but the time has flown by.  He was a little baby just yesterday and now he is about to start kindergarten.  I can't say enough about how sweet and wonderful Nicco is.  He has turned into a polite, sweet and funny boy.  I am not sure how we ended up with such a good kid.  We are blessed!  Nicco loves his baby sister so much and defends her.  He is her champion!  He is kind and wants to be friends with everyone.  He is hilarious! 

Nicco is a notorious thumb sucker.  He came out the womb with his thumb firmly in his mouth.  Earlier today I pulled his thumb out of his mouth for the 70th time.  I then told him that he needs to stop because he will mess up his beautiful teeth.  He precedes to tell me that he just can't control himself!  I laughed and let him stick his thumb back in.  I am a push over mom!  I guess I better start saving now for his braces.

I am in love with this boy!  I am bursting with pride over the person he is becoming! 

Happy Birthday boy!!   

Shave Cream Wars

I can't believe I haven't posted about the shave cream fight the kids had! It was so fun!  They loved it.  Well Lola hated every second of having the shave cream on her but the rest loved it.  The kids and some of their cousins were each given a can of shave cream and then left them to their own devices!  Nicco was a little bit too small to spray it straight out of the can so we ended up spraying "snowballs" into his hands.  When he threw them and the hit someone they stuck.  It was hilarious!  Good summer fun.

my boy baby is growing up

These are my first flowers from the boy baby!  *Tear*  He handed me one flower to start and then proceeded to hand a whole handful to the girl baby.  It was so sweet that he gave a whole bouquet to his baby sister but I couldn't help but want to knock her over and steal her flowers and run.  I resisted and was rewarded with two more flowers for me.  And just me!  My Nicco is so sweet!  He is an actual little person now.  I can hardly even call him boy baby anymore.  But I won't ever stop!  Even if he begs me.  He is funny, charming, kind and eager to please!  I am in mad love!

Here comes Santa Claus!

We went and saw the big man on Saturday.  And by big man I mean Santa Claus.  Can I get a what what?!  I have always thought that sitting in a huge Ace line waiting to see Santa with two tiny children sounded awful and so I never have.  But this year they had Santa at Nick's union party.  So I figured what the hey?  Best part was that we got there late so there was no line!  Bonus!!  They both handled it beautifully.  No tantrums on Santa's lap for us. I wonder if missing out on pictures of the wee babes crying on Santa's lap was a mistake though.  That is a classic Christmas image!  

  I had to include this first picture of Lola because it is so cute!  She freaking ran up to Santa and said "Santa!  I love you!!".  There was none of that stranger danger crap at all.  She was beyond thrilled to see him.

After the huge hug she became awfully timid.  She told Santa that she wanted a Barbie and when he asked her if she wanted anything to go with it she told him she wanted Christmas.  Get it guy?!  She wants a Barbie and Christmas to be here already!!

Nicco was way more shy than Lola.  He told him his name- that he wanted a plane- took the bag of treats and hopped down without looking back.  The best part with Nicco was the clowns.  I wish I had gotten a picture.  He was scared shiz-less of them!  I had to drag him over to the clown and then hold him while the guy made him his penguin balloon animal.  And the face painting?  Forget about it!  He absolutely refused to do that.  We learned something new about Nicco that day.  To be totally honest I get the clown thing.  Clowns are creepy.  The whole painted on smile with a real grimace underneath thing is a tad on the creeper side.  Anyone else afraid of clowns?  How about awesome screaming pictures with Santa? 

Old Thankful Tom

I am trying really hard to not skip Thanksgiving and head straight into Christmas.  That is hard!!  It seems like the time just flies by after we get Halloween past us.  Then a few short weeks later it is Christmas and I find myself saying "Thanksgiving who?".  Well not this year!  I have a few activities I want to to do with the kids and I pledge to get them done!  The first one is a fantastic idea from Michael at life is all about things and stuff.  His family does a turkey every year and his beautiful feathers are filled with things that his family is thankful for.  I really loved this idea when I saw it here on his blog.  I feel like we all need to be reminded that we are truly blessed.

So old Tom is up and he already has some feathers.  Some are funny and some are serious and I love it already!

I was able to find that turkey on a site that has free coloring pages and I made his feathers out of construction paper.  Not as fancy as Michaels but it gets the job done!!  I will be sure to post some pictures before Thanksgiving and show our progress.

Easy Chimichangas

OH chimis- how you speak to me!  How can you not like a chimichanga?  Fried and meaty?  Yumm-o!  On to this insanely easy and pretty fast recipe that my family has been using for years!

2 lbs ground meat 

2  4oz cans green chiles

1 large onion chopped

10 tortillas

Enough oil for about 2 inches in pan

10 toothpicks

Items for topping

  

In large skillet cook up chopped onions and ground meat.  After meat is cooked thoroughly add both cans green chiles stir up well and set aside.  Heat up oil on large pan/pot.  Put about 1/2 cup of meat mixture in middle of tortillas and wrap like a burrito.  Wrap up tight otherwise you may have splatters from the juices  leaking into the oil.  Secure with toothpick (as shown above!)  Fry chimis in batches of about three until crisped up as much or as little as you like.  Remove from oil and top as you see fit!

* I use a large cast iron pot to fry them.  It heats a little more even than a regular pan of pot.

* They are wonderful topped with any traditional taco toppings! 

*I used gordita sized tortillas this time but since that is not something I normally see at the store we usually use burrito size. 

Fun in the Leaves

Yay for Autumn!  We raked up the leaves and this kids of course jumped in them!  On a total random side note- I found out that I burned about 400 calories raking said leaves.  So I pretty much need to be constantly raking leaves the rest of my life to compensate for the food I eat!  Any way..... back to the cute kids!  They built castles and piles and all sorts of stuff.  It was so fun to watch them!!  Such a great fall day.  Perfectly chilly and beautiful sunshine.

Lola has an covered oreo face!  He he!!

Aren't they doll babies?  I think so!

This was Halloween!

Yay Halloween!!  I loved halloween this year.  The kiddos loved it as well!  They chose their costumes for the first time this year and I really tried not to influence them.  No matter how bad I wanted too!!  It was also the first year that we went trick or treating in our neighborhood.  Crazy fun! We also went to a mall which I am now thinking was over-kill.

Yay Bumble Bee!! I have one obsessed little boy.  He adores Bumble Bee.  Like to the point where he sleeps with his Bumble Bee transformer!

Sweet cupcake!  Lola loved this costume so much that she hugged it when she saw it.  

Mall trick or treating. In the light and safe but kind of lame!! 

 

This is my favorite picture of the whole night.  Bumble Bee blur!  He was so excited to get to the next house.  

We went out with some of their cousins.  The older kids were super excited about helping Nicco and Lola.  It was so great because Nick had to work.  It is like herding cats sometimes with those two.  You need help for sure!

After trick or treating we headed over to a friends for a party.  I wish I had gotten more pictures.  They had probably 15+ pumpkins that took two days to carve!  And they looked like it!

This little zombie guy in their yard scared many a trick or treater.  It was super hilarious!

My friend Dani and her husband Mark went all out for their decorations!  She hand made all these bottles.  It was an amazing spread.

Winder Farms

I have been looking through all of our pictures the last few days because I am on a mission to find some pictures of the kids for my close friend to paint (more on this later!  I need some help choosing!).  In my search I found these ones of us at Winder Dairy Farm.  We took a little adventure one day this summer and drove out across the valley and stopped in.  They have a neat little country store/cafe.  They have the absolute best soft serve ice cream evah!  I am a sucker for a good soft serve.

I wish I had gotten a picture of the kids in front of this wall.  It was kitchsy and a whole lot of country and I loved it!  I guess that means we will have to go back.

Towering ice cream cones!!  WOOT!!  As a matter of fact mine was so huge that I ended up needing a cup to stick it in as it toppled and landed on my arm.  Which Lola then proceeded to lick off. 

Look at those baby blues.  Oh she makes me smile!

Nicco got a twist cone and licked all the root beer off and pretty much left the vanilla.  I love root beer ice cream.  He is a boy after my own heart! 

                                      

Okay so I have a rant real quick.  The above picture is the best one that I was able to get of Nick.  The man won't take just a simple smiling picture for anything!  Kind of drives me nuts some times.  Other times it makes me laugh and love him more!

The Great Pumpkin Patch

This is a little image heavy but I couldn't resist!  We went to the pumpkin patch this week.  OH it was so fun!  My kids are great- does every mother think that?  I hope so!  I hate to say it but my kids are the best kids in the world.  Yeah I went there!!!!!!!

Nicco was so cute with that wheelbarrow.  

Lola rather ride in a wheelbarrow than use one!

Lola showing off her awesome pumpkin.  She could barely lift it!

At this point Nicco decided the wheelbarrow was too heavy and refused to wheel it around anymore.

My pumpkin!!!!  I almost always get a grey one.

I almost had a heart attack with them up on those hay bails.  They were all tipping over.  Momma needed a breather after that!

Yay corn maze!!  I tried to take a video of them in there but they were way too fast for me and it was just a 18 second video of shaking corn stalks.

umm kay- Are they not the cutest kiddos around?