After brief negotiations I finally sold my Passat to a girl in her early 20’s.  It was sad to watch her “old lady it” out of the drive way. I thought she was going to crash it before I mailed off the title to the DMV.  Since I know what area of town she lives in I find myself scanning intersections in her area for my car hoping to get another glimpse of it.  When in actuality if I saw her driving it I’d probably cringe with sadness.

But on to new and hopefully better cars.  Which brings me to…The Van.

Luke and I have a hard time window shopping for cars.  I sold my car on a Friday and we were out “looking” the next day and came home a few hours later driving a 2005 Honda Odyssey.  It’s a boring silver color, I’m partial to black or white, but it has a nice charcoal grey interior with leather seats…and more importantly it has heated seats.  It doesn’t have anything else fancy except for the automatic sliding doors.  I miss my digital display screens and my temperature gauge…and the little ding that tells me I’m almost out of gas…no dings or whistles on this car.  Okay well actually the other day it did whistle at me, but I think I didn’t have the sun roof closed.  Oh yes, it has a sun roof.  But when I tried to use it today the sun came blasting down right into the eyes of my sleepy children, so it may be best to use it on cloudy days…you know every other day around here. lol

My friend Melissa (Melissa 1 – for those of you who need clarification) asked me to send pictures to make it more “real.”  :)  Sooo here are some pictures of my kid’s exploring our car.

Here is Alyssa demonstrating how the button’s on the 6 disk CD changer work.

With maximum effort and willpower, Evan can get in all by himself.

The back seats can be folded backwards so that they become a flat space for hauling. When the seats are up it’s quite a deep pocket of space.

This blog is dedicated to Melissa and Stepfanie, two of my friends who are more excited about my van than I am. lol Well I must say that even if I’m not excited, I am at least grateful we could afford something that looks decent and fits our family plus some. :)

I asked Alyssa what she wanted for lunch today.  Not that she usually gives me an answer I can actually use, but I can always expect something interesting.  It’s usually something random like “Spaghetti!” or “Pepsi please!” But today’s answer was extra special…with cheese on top.

Me: Alyssa, what do you want for lunch?

Alyssa: Uh, lunch meat, no onions, no bread, pickles, no onions, cheese stick, no onions……and it went on and on for several minutes.  Also picture her with her pointer finger listing these things on her other hand! 

She said no onions so many times because I was cracking up laughing when she would say it.  She repeats to please me. :)

Let’s just say I think we’ve gone through the “Old MacDonald’s” (as she calls it) drive thru WAY to many times this month!

Food Related

In other food news.  Since Sunday afternoon, when Alyssa is eating gold fish or Teddy Graham crackers she says, “WATCH THIS MOMMY!” Then proceeds to bite the head off and then say, “I TOOK IT’S HEAD OFF!” and laughs.

Ann & Kevin Yen – What exactly was the Sunday School lesson on this last week?!!!

Evan’s Food Related Achievements

Evan made his first sign phrase today.  “More + Food”  Luke and I thought it was pretty cool AND Evan was pretty proud of himself especially since we made such a big fuss over it.

AND he eats with a spoon now and is pretty good at it too.  Here are some funny pictures I took of him eating from a “real” plate which makes the pictures extra cute.

Yep, I can get the food to my mouth! (most of the time)

 

Mmm, scouting out my next scoop.

That’s right, I’m eating from a pink spoon and loving it, at least I have a blue bib and a green cup, that doesn’t happen everyday.

And I shovel in as much as possible, because I just like it better that way.

 

Figured

We just got back from taking the kids to their very first dentist appointment.  It went exactly as I thought it would go.

Evan was 1st up in the chair and had a great time.  He even let the dentist clean his teeth all the while laughing and smiling as it vibrated and tickled his teeth.

Alyssa was 2nd up in the chair and was off to a great start smiling and laughing at the dentist.  Then she read my mind (It’s weird she’s not crying) and then was like ‘oh yeah I think I’m supposed to cry now’ and released the drama tears.  Thankfully her teeth were in excellent condition and a cleaning wasn’t necessary so it was a relatively quick trip in the purple dentist chair.  And then of course she was super excited that she was allowed to pick a prize from the toy box despite the crying drama act.

So that said…I was thinking this new baby we’re expecting might be a girl and now I’m hoping I’m wrong and it’s a boy! hehe  I guess we’ll find out for sure in a couple of weeks.

Hmm Moment

I wasn’t expecting to learn anything new at this dentist appointment, but I did.  The dentist suggests using Infant/Children’s Motrin instead of Tylenol for teething pain. because he doesn’t feel that Tylenol does very much to help teething pain.  I pretty much fell the same way, but then he told me something I hadn’t heard before.

He said that Infant Tylenol is so extremely concentrated that a child can be easily overdosed if given 4 times the correct amount by mistake causing damage to the liver.  Then he said, however, that to overdose on Motrin you would have to give your child 100 times over the correct amount and then it would cause damage to a kidney which would be better than the liver since you have 2 of them.  Not that I plan on overdosing my kids with either, but I thought it was pretty interesting information.  I’m not saying out dentist is an expert on children’s medication or anything, but I think until I hear differently I’m going to only stock Motrin…especially with my adventurous 2 year old who has now learned how to push chairs up to the counters and can get into pretty much ANYTHING she wants to.

Seems since Thanksgiving I’ve been in a whilrl wind of holiday’s + sick kids = tired me!  So I feel I need to back up and share what’s been going on with us. 

Here is the video we sent to my family on Thanksgiving Day.

 

And here is the Christmas Card we sent out this year…for those who didn’t get one…oopsies, I’m sure we’ll catch you next year. :)

The green “button,” as Luke calls it, says “New Arrival Coming July 2010.”  It was my turn to create the card this year so it’s on the girly cutesie side, but Luke technically “created” the card so kudos to him for helping me plagiarize a card I saw on online somewhere…although I created the little dots at the bottom and the dots of the wreath, I’m pretty proud of them. :)

So yes, according the the world wide web I’m due July 27th and my medical peps concur with the date which makes me 11 weeks along.  Which means…yes you guessed it we have to get a new car.  Normally I’d be excited to get a new car, but seeing as how I ~LOVE~ my current car I am trying to prepare myself to be disappointed with the acquisition of some sort of mini-van.  Well so there you have it, lots of new adventures await us in 2010…some exciting and some not so much.

I would love to be a thrifty shopper, but it’s just not in my jeans. (not a typo). I have however finally found something that I think is going to help me!

One of my Northwest mom friends (at heart) just set me a link to an awesome blog.  It’s titled thrifty NW mom and this is the mission: Bargains, coupons and money-saving tips for the Northwest and beyond!

I’ve got to say I come across pretty neat bargains sometimes, but this lady has them all!  She seems to be the first in the know and so I’ve become a follower so I can glean these many wonderful shopping bargains.  :)  I already feel like I’ve saved lots of money and I’ve only used 2 of the deals.

Here are the deals I just got:

FREE Veggie Tales DVD (well almost free, it’s 2.99 for shipping)

$15 credit at the Kodak Gallery…I got a really cute photo ornament for $2.99 (shipping).

Well I just thought you all should know about my savings…let’s see…

Regular price Veggie Tales DVD $15.00 minus $3.00 shipping = $12.00

$15 credit minus $3.00 shipping = $12.00

So I saved $24.00 today….or as Luke would put it I spent $6.00 I might not have otherwise spent today…BUT did I mention I saved $24.00?!

I think I did good.  AND did I mention I didn’t have to leave my house in the rain to get these deals?  What do you think baby Alyssa?  Yes, we did good shopping from home today!

it’s a quarter to two, you brush your teeth, chch a chch, chch a chch, you bruch your teeth…AND then you then carve your pumpkins! (you have to be a mom to get that joke/song-sorry it’s corny)

 

We hadn’t gotten around to carving pumpkins yet so I decided that I better get it done TODAY (Halloween) because the Trick or Treater’s needed some welcoming decorations on our porch.

Evan woke up with a fever so while he took his 4 1/2 hour nap(!) Alyssa and I carved pumpkins. Apparently (from the expression on my face) it was serious business.

As you can tell from the look on her face she was not really into the whole messiness of the pumpkin carving. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She did eventually stick her hand almost in the pumpkin, but did not like the slimy texture when her hand hit the top of the pumpkin goo.

She was however pretty interested in my hand touching the pumpkin gooiness.

I attempted to make an Elmo face, but my pumpkin was damaged and not cooperative and so instead I made one that turned out looking a little like Evan and then I also attempted to make a butterfly…I’ll do better next year. :)

Later in the afternoon we took the kids downtown Duvall to Trick or Treat on Main Street.  Alyssa had lots of fun, but we mostly kept Evan in the stroller.  It was sort of sad to watch Alyssa see the “scary kids” dressed up in scary masks, etc.  She would just stare at them and at one point she grabbed onto my leg and said “Mommy! Scarry! Scarry!”  Uh, so sad I hated that part of it.  I tried for the most part to shield her from the scary costumes, but you can only do so much when they are all around you.  Here are a few cute pictures of us walking around downtown Duvall. 

 

We picked the perfect time to arrive downtown.  There was a short break in the rain for the EXACT time we arrived to Trick or Treat!  It was awesome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the stores gave out candy, but there were a couple of places that gave out more. The Duvall Bookstore gave out books! How awesome is that! And the Teressa's Bakery gave out apple fritters and brownies! Yumm!  Serendipity Photography, the local photographer, had the studio all dolled up for Halloween and took pictures of the kids in the studio!  We pick them up on Friday, I can’t wait to see them. There was even a lady that was dressed up in this huge apron with lots of tiny pockets.  She gave Evan a little stuffed animal toy, he was pretty stoked about that.

When we arrived home we took a few pictures…we had to bribe them with candy to smile.  I guess it was a fitting bribe for Halloween! 

The painted pumpkin below is from our outing to Luke’s work yesterday.  The kids dressed up to Trick or Treat at the different eateries in the Common’s and they also had a few fun activities for the kids to do, one which included painting a pumpkin.  We forgot to bring our camera! But my the other Microsoft couple we went with took their camera so I’ll have to get those pictures from my friend Stephanie.  They also had a professional photographer taking pictures and I’m excited to see that picture too. It has all for of us in it.  They actually were supposed to print the pictures and give them to you within an hour, but the printer ran out of ink, so they have to get us the picture on Monday…what’s up with that, ran out of ink?! Makes me laugh.

Alyssa’s Aunt Ashley made her Trick or Treat bag.  It’s really super cute.  It’s made of Minute Maid drink pouches!  She has made a bunch of different kinds (wallets and larger purses) and they are all super cute.  Most are lined with matching fabric, cute buttons & ribbon.  If you are interested in one let me know and I’ll give you her information. :)  Alyssa loves this purse and I’m really glad it’s made of plastic so I can wipe it all down when she has finished off her candy!  I went to move it earlier and it’s all sticky from her candy hands. gross.

As for costumes.  Alyssa received this frilly skirt, wings & hair bow for her birthday and although she is in love with Cinderella, we decided that since for now she does not even know that Cinderella costumes exist, we’d just have her wear what we already have and know she loves wearing!  I’m sure that everything will be different in picking out a costume next year.  Most people thought Evan was a frog, but nope, he was a turtle.  My sister allowed me to borrow it for Evan this year.  I’ll have to get a picture of him crawling in it, it’s really cute.  The costume also has cute feet slippers, but they kept falling off so we didn’t put them on because we didn’t want to loose them while we were out.

 

My how they have changed in just one year!

We didn’t really have any hard core rules about candy this year.  We let her have a reasonable amount AND she shared a reasonable amount with us- hehe.  Luke and Alyssa went through all the candy (that is, all that was not previously eaten during the course of today) and counted up 23 pieces. And I will admit that several times throughout this evening Luke and I looked at Alyssa and then at each other and laughed.  Yep, candy does really make kids hyper!  We have some of her Halloween candy craziness on video, it’s hilarious.  We’ll have to post it soon.

And like last year, the night ended with Alyssa on the kitchen floor, except this year she opted for candy over grapes!

 

Quote of the Day:

Scene: Luke is sitting at the table feeding himself and Alyssa a bowl of cereal meanwhile also holding Evan and feeding him raisins.  When he looks away to feed Evan a raisin Alyssa takes the discarded plastic milk tab from the newly opened milk carton and dipps it into the milk in Luke’s cereal.

Luke (annoyed): “Alyssa stop sticking stuff in my cereal!”

Sabrina sits across the table watching and laughing.

We’re coming up on the 1 year anniversary of my Island Living blog post.  I’m sure you won’t need to reference it as you have all my old blogs memorized. ;) 

Quick summary:

It rained

We found a cute little pond in our backyard

The pond came into our bedroom, not so cute anymore

New Carpet

Begun the adventures of LANDSCAPING

Thus bringing you current…we’re still on the landscaping part.  Here are some recap pictures. I’ll try to make it entertaining. ;)

Once upon a time in a far off place…I mean, it all began a long long time ago.

NOVEMBER 2008

Excavator…………………………..french drain……………………………Easter dirt hill

Boring pictures of the yard…humor me this is for my parents. It gets better…

Random man standing on 22 Tons of rock…wait is that my husband? Who’s that midget in the purple?  22Tons really? How much did that cost?  A Ton! lol, I crack myself up, I know Carrie is laughing at least, she likes “corny” jokes.

 

APRIL 2009

Excavator man (AKA our awesome neighbor!)

May 2009

Deer in our backyard (yes, I did have to include the deer)

On to Luke’s favorite part of the landscaping….Rock Raking!

He’s like, I hate rock raking…I wish Alyssa was older.

Take notice of the picture below it’s going to look so different in a a few scrolls…

Such cuties.  This is how girls rake rocks, with their leg tilted out and arm extended.

I have a rake!  It’s plastic and is absolutely useless, but it’s awesome!

 

SEPTEMBER 2009

This is Luke right before he made a “dirt angel” in that pile of mulch.  It was awesome.  I think we have it on video.

 

Luke attempting to make wheel barrowing rocks fun….good job honey, doing good.

 

 

Awwwww, look how nice that looks. :) Rakes and mulch can do wonders huh? :) lol

Okay here comes the grass…….

Day 7 after planting seed:

Day 8 - We were surprised how much it grew in just a couple of hours.

Day 15

 

 

OCTOBER 2009

Day 18…and we’re done. :)

There are a few holes, but we’ll patch them up with seed and they’ll be like new. :)

Thanks for sticking in there, good job, it wasn’t that boring was it?  Parents, see we can grow pretty children and pretty grass!  Same amount of effort, nice results. :)

I SO want a Kirby vacuum cleaner.  But sheesh, do they have to be so expensive?!

I heard through the Microsoft employee Duvall email list that the Kirby sales team was in town.  I was so excited!  Since I heard this news, it’s been about 2 months.  I was beginning to think they had skipped over our house…but then he arrived. And boy was it an experience.

My friend Stepfanie, a Kirby owner, happened to be over at my house hanging out when he arrived.  Stepfanie and I opened the door to the beginning of the sales pitch and when he said something about Kirby I interrupted with,

“OH! I’ve been waiting for you to arrive!  I totally want a Kirby, but I can’t get one right now.  But definitely come back in 2 years and then I think I can totally buy one from you!”

 

I’m not sure if it was my interruptive comment that freaked him out or the fact that Luke had just arrived home from work and given him the “Who is this man in my driveway” look. Luke said the guy had this surprised look in his eye when he realized the man who had just stared him down lived in the very house he was approaching with his sales pitch. I have to give him credit for still going ahead with his sales pitch.

But with all the commotion he started to stutter and my SLP radar went off. 

He started 3-4 times to tell me about this trip he was trying to earn and that this was his first day, yada, yada, yada.  I started to feel really bad, but with Luke home there was no way he would be allowed in to do a demonstration.  Sorry guy, you just chose the wrong time to come.  Husbands & Kirby’s don’t get along, it’s the whole small loan thing for a vacuum cleaner.  But give me a couple of years and I think I can save enough money to get one! I almost wanted to see if he would trade a few speech therapy sessions for one!  That would have been awesome.  If he had only come a half hour sooner, my friend and I would have been suckers for his demonstration! hehe

How much do you never want to hear those words come from a cashier making eye contact with you?!

I was at Old Navy returning something…yes Grandma, I know big surprise. haha

The cashier asked me if I would like my return in cash or back on my debit card.  I chose debit card because I didn’t need the cash.  He ran my card then looked straight into my eyes and said those frightful words, “I’m sorry your card has been declined.”  An earlier conversation popped into my head:

When I told Luke I was going shopping to buy a gift for $100 he said jokingly said, “Oh bummer, we only have $98 in our checking account.”  I smiled and said “I’ll just use our American Express card then.”  “Oh, bummer, we only have $98 left on our credit too.” 

So when this happened I was thinking?  Was he serious?!

Then reality hit me and although this was impossible for my card to be declined I gave the cashier a funny look, said “really?! for a return?  Is that possible?”  He shrugged and didn’t say much. I handed him my American Express card and asked him to put it on that card instead.  He swiped it and said “I’m sorry this card has also been declined.” 

Seriously?!  He just stood there looking at me straight in the face. 

I was trying to keep my cool, but there was another customer standing by and I’m pretty sure all he heard was that my card was being declined.  I took off my coat to cool my recent flash sweat that swept over me.  Then I asked him to get a manager.

The manager arrived and said, “Oh, this happened a few weeks ago too, just give her cash.”  What does that mean?! 

There was no remorse for embarrassing me or stating clearly that it was their machines that were messing up.  All the while my kids were in the cart making a ruckus so I just promptly took my cash and left.

 

I go home and tell my neighbor, Melissa 2, this story.  She responds with an equally crazy story.  It goes something like this.

She is out to dinner at a local sit down restaurant with her family and an older couple that they are acquaintances with. They get to the end of the meal and the waiter brings her card and the check back and says those frightful words, “I’m sorry your card has been declined.”  She is of course flabbergasted, but is also quick on her feet so she attempts to laugh it off and say that she’s sure she has another card that will work.  MEANWHILE this acquaintance couple offers to pay for their meal.  So now she is really feeling embarrassed.  A few more seconds go by and THEN the waiter hands her her check and card and says, “Oh, I was just kidding.”  WHAT?! Just kidding?  Seriously?  She said that they were so busy talking with that other couple that they hadn’t even made small talk with the waiter, so this joke was just out of the blue.  That is so not funny. 

 

Do you have a similar story?  Do share!