The day the Mayans said the world would end.....again

Gorgeous sunrise on the day the world did NOT end.  So glad that drama is over.  :-)  It will be nice to get a break from that mess until the next crazy starts it up again.

Happy Winter Solstice!

Hot Lunch

Since the first day of school, Cole has told us he does not ever want to eat a hot lunch.  He said that waiting in line for hot lunch cuts into his time to eat (my kid of guy!).  Flash forward to today.  It was hectic like any other Monday.  Rainy, running out the door, etc...  The kids were at each others throats and in a rush to get out the door I asked Cole to get his backpack.  He questioned me as to why there was no snack in the side pocket but I just assumed Mike forgot and didn't think much more.  I gave him a snack and we went on our way.

When I picked Cole up from school, I was walking with the other moms like we do each day and one mentioned that she had helped at lunch and noticed Cole was eating a hot lunch.  It kind of threw me off guard since this is something he was so against and Mike had packed him a lunch.  I asked Cole if he had a hot lunch and he gave me this sneaky look.  I just assumed that he pretended that he didn't bring a lunch and snuck in the hot lunch line.   She said she had helped him with his tray because he didn't know where it went and he didn't have his little blue box (Goodbyn).  I look in his backpack and turns out Mike forgot to put it in and I didn't even think to check to make sure it was in there.  

I of course felt horrible at that point because if Cole's anything like me I can only imagine is little heart breaking when he opened his backpack and saw no lunch.  But bless his little heart.  He told his buddy that his dad "must have not been thinking right" (i am dying by this point laughing so hard) and he had help from his "hot luncher" friends who showed him the hot lunch ropes.

He told me in the car ride home that the hot lunch was gross and that dad made better lunches.

I love that we have raised such an independent little guy but at the same time I feel so bad that we forgot his lunch.

Acupuncture

This is me.  Relaxing.  With out kids.  If going somewhere and getting needles stuck in my face, neck, head and 18 other spots gets me 1 1/2 hours of quite time, I'll take it!  I am going to acupuncture for treatment of my inflamed intercostal nerve.  Since it landed me in the ER 3 weeks ago and pretty much made me unable to walk I needed to do something else.  My doc wants me to have a nerve block.  I am trying other options before resorting to that.  I currently also have two seeds on taped on to pressure points in my right ear that are supposed to aid in the healing of the intercostal nerve.  

The Doc offered to take a photo for the kids.  She's awesome.  Cole loved it.  Siena is more concerned that I don't have my shirt on.

Star of the week

Siena is star of the week at preschool this week!  She is beyond excited!  She's even using it as an excuse to get her way:

Siena: I am star of the week so I get to choose and I say no tv

Cole: well I am bigger than you and star of the week doesn't matter at home.

Siena: MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I pledge allegiance....

Cole simply amazes me every day!  Today he walked up to me and said:

"Mom, every day in class we pledge to the flag.  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.  And to the republic for which is stands, one nation, under god, for liberity and justice for all"


So cute!  We are working on him not forgetting the "indivisable" part.  :-)  I really wasn't sure they were still teaching that in school.  And I am impressed he knows it already.

Improv

Tonight I discovered Siena's ability to improvise.  She is quite the little "thinks on her feet" kind of girl. For bedtime we played the game of "Siena sings a song"  Basically you give her a subject or event and she will instantly make up a song and sing it to you.  It was hilarious!!!


Other bed time rituals include reading books on her own after story time

And falling asleep while doing it

I take it back

Well Cole isn't dealing too well with Kindergarten.  He has flipped out the last two days this week.  Poor guy thinks I will not come back to get him.  He says that he wishes he was Siena so he could have short school again.  Mike and I have decided to approach the situation in this way:

Bribery.  If he can go 5 days in a row with out crying he will get a lego after school on the 5th day.  He gets to put a sticker on the calendar.  I have also had him wear his watch to school so he can look and check to see when we will pick him up.  red hand 2, yellow hand 12!

We will see how it goes!

Cole's first day of Kindergarten

Cole's first day of kindergarten was great!  He seemed a little nervous but loved being in the class room.  He is getting used to his British teachers accent but I think he will learn to understand it soon.  :-)

Siena's first official day of Pre K

Even though we started Siena out in preschool back in January, Cole was still apart of it and it was just more of a day care / socialization for her.  Now she has officially started her 2 year program!  She loves it there and even has a little buddy named Ariel.


Her first day as told by the 3 1/2 year old herself:

First we played and then we go outside to the playground and play with the play ground.  Then we eat a snak on the big table.  We ate nola bars and waado (granola bar and water).  Then we put this hand in the paint and put it on paper and then on this hand. Rub it rub it all around.  Then I wash my hands.  Then we eat lunch outside.  And we got water outside.  We read an apple tree and coconut tree book.  Then we play a game and a other game but I don't know those gameses.  There is an animal game and a number game.

Hi mom. It's me.

That's exactly what I heard with I woke up this morning.  Siena crawled in to bed next to me and said "hi mom, it's me"  That was probably the cutest wake up I have ever had.  :-)

Gymnastics

With the London Olympics on, little miss Siena has fallen in LOVE with gymnastics.  What is stuck to the wall behind this cute sleeping girl is a picture she requested my mom cut out of the newspaper.  It's a photo of a local girl and Auburn gymnastics on the balance beam.  She asked my mom to cut it out and put it on the wall in her bedroom.  Siena is obsessed.  :-)  It's adorable.

Kids

I love them to death but I swear they do this on purpose.

Pinterest - Father's Day

For Father's Day I wanted something for the kids to do that was simple and didn't require a ton of effort on my part since it is peek wedding season.  I saw this little book idea on Pinterest and thought it was perfect!  I printed up two sets of 4x6 from my favorite photo printer and then helped the kids out with it!

http://pinterest.com/pin/15692298672118600/

http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2012/05/free-download-book-for-dad.html


Here is Siena's book.  Please excuse my handwriting.  They both kept bumping in to me. The grammer may not be the best either.  I wrote it just as they told me too.

Here is Cole's' book.

Mike and Cole sinking in water

Pinterest - eggs

Pinterest.  It's a love/hate relationship for me.  I LOVE the idea, concept, basically everything about it.  I HATE that I can't spend as much time on it as I would like.  HAHA.  ok that's really not a bad thing, right?  So we all spend our days on there pinning, wishing, but never really doing any of it.  So I figured I might as well try some of these things and I will blog when I do!

So the first pin I will blog about is nothing spectacular.  It's more of a "does it really work, or not"

Hard boiled eggs - add baking soda to water and the shell peels off with no problems.

http://pinterest.com/pin/82612974385115712/

This worked!  The kids are obsessed with hard boiled eggs.  I am not so much enjoying the time it takes with the shell breaking apart.  Now the kids can peel the eggs on their own!  Awesome!

Fishing

Both kids have recently become obsessed with fishing after spending last week at a fishing derby in Meadow Vista with Mike while I was in Phoenix.

Yesterday while I was eating dinner at my wedding I got this sweet little photo texted to me from Mike.  Shortly after this, Siena slipped causing Cole to fall in the water.

Last day of preschool for Cole

Today was Cole's official last day of pre school at Kinder Ready Kids.   The poor guy was sick yesterday and spent the day coughing and sleeping so I wasn't sure if he was going to make it to school today.  But sure enough this morning he woke up and  and I asked him how he felt and he popped up out of bed all bright eyed and bushy tailed exclaiming that it was the last day of school before he graduated and he had to be at school today!

He kills me!

ER for me

I arrived home from Phoenix yesterday morning and even though I was tired, I thought the day had gone really well.  I felt pretty good considering I had been traveling over a 36 hour period.  But at 2 am today I woke up to the room spinning and totally nauseated.  I had never experienced something like that before.  I was able to crawl to the bathroom and I dry heaved for close to an hour (or so it felt like).  At 6am I was awake again and still spinning.  I had Mike take me to the ER because I assumed I was dehydrated.  They gave me 2 liters of IV fluids and medication for nausea and the vertigo.  I hope that I never have to experience vertigo again.  That was awful.  I slept most of Monday which felt wonderful.  Hopefully I will be back on track soon.

Phoenix

I flew out to Phoenix on Friday to photograph the wedding of one of my ACRO partners from back in the day!  Trizza and I hopped on Southwest and made our way to the Southwest.  :-)

We got to stay at the JW Marriott Resort which was stunning.  I would go back there again in a heartbeat!

The wedding venue was at a little place (haha) called Boojum Tree.  Amazing venue!!

My very expensive gin and tonic

The lazy river

The amazing wedding cake

updating the blog

I am sure a bunch of random out of dates posts will be coming up in your google reader or you may just see a new post come up.  I'm trying to play catch up with the blog so it's gonna be a lot of random for a while.  By random I mean over the last year in and a half.  Yup!  It's gonna be fun, not!!!!!

Cole's tooth extraction

I took Cole to the oral surgeon this morning.  We had explained to him what was going to happen over the weekend so he wasn't caught off gard.  Cole's biggest concern this morning was the needle that was going to put him to sleep.  Poor guy was so concerned about the needle and kept asking over and over to see it.  They handled his questions pretty well which is good because he asks a million of them.  Cole was pretty upset once they started the IV into his arm but he was out pretty quickly.  I was in the waiting room for about 20 minutes or so before I was able to go back in with Cole.  He had a little bit of anesthesia amnesia so he was asking the same questions over and over but the one thing he didn't forget was that he was going to get a lego (or three) from Target.

Ok, so I went a little bit overboard.

Yosemite

Today we made a quick day trip to Yosemite to photograph a wedding.  Mike took the day off to drive us down since that's a drive I don't want to do in one day.  It was gorgeous as usual!

Lisa came with me as my assistant to shoot her first wedding!

Dentist

The kids went in for their 6 month check up and cleaning at the dentist.  Cole was due up for x-rays  and it turns out that the tooth I struggled so hard to save 6 months ago with his root canal and composit filling so he wouldn't have to have a silver tooth, had all the bone gone underneath it.  The tooth has to be extracted.  Dang it!  This kid has once expensive mouth.  The extraction is set up for next Tuesday with the oral surgeon.  

Kindergarten Round Up

Today was the kindergarten round up for Cole's school.  It is basically just the parents turning in paperwork and the kids in another room listening to books.  Cole of course enjoyed himself very much and is looking forward to the day kindergarten!

The Community Easter Egg Hunt

While I was second shooting a wedding, Mike took the kids to the first community Easter egg hunt.  Cole found out about the hunt about a week before and he has been counting down the days until the egg hunt would be here!  He set up mock egg hunts all week all for practice for the big day.  From what I heard, Cole was out of control fast in picking up those eggs.  Siena was happy with her one egg.

77/366

We took the kids hot tubbing in the snow.  This is afterwards and had to collect some snow before we went back in side.

76/366

I see a lot of under water fun in the pool this summer!

75/366

I am an AUNTIE!!!!!!!!

Welcome Annabelle Grace Fredy

3-15-12

7#4oz  19"

74/366

Obsessed with Trader Joes Salt Water Taffy. Red Licorice is the best!