Wild and Crazy.

Bianca woke up from her nap with the most amazingly punky afro-ish hair. I LOVE IT! She has got such a jazzy personality (just like her Momma) and this hair totally fits it.

Care to re-create this look?

1) Simply feed your kid a home-made oreo cookie (with mint frosting-thank you Kaitlyn!) for dessert at lunch time.

2) Turn your back for two seconds giving your child just enough time to take the fudgy sandwich and rub it all in her hair.

3) Rinse the child's hair under the sink faucet to get all the crumbs and gunk out. But don't use soap because you are too rushed for time with getting the load of laundry done that has said child's blankie for nap time.

4) Lightly towel dry and put child down for their nap

.

et voilá

Who knew mint frosting was such a fabulous hair product? AND it makes your hair smell so yummy!

Mom! Take a picture of ME!! Both my poor little babes are sick (with Momma being in hot pursuit). We have been home for two days just laying low. The nights have been pretty long with one or the other waking up.

Even when they are sick, they are such sweet girls. My heart has been so full with how thoughtfully they have been towards each other. Comforting each other, giving hugs, playing gently. When Bianca starts coughing a lot then Olivia will just run and get her blankie and give it to her to make her feel better.

.

I have been starting to feel crappier and crappier all day and even though they have been so sweet today, I am definitely looking forward to bed time!

Never take me anywhere. Seriously.

So I am a pretty loud and ruckus person. There aren't a lot of things that embarrass me, so when I tell you that the events that happened today embarrassed me, they REALLY embarrassed me.
.
Never take me anywhere.
.
So the girls were whoopin' it up with magical Aunt Helen and I was having a magical day of retail therapy with my friends (Kaitlyn and Sarah). I had been looking forward to it all week and to say I was excited would be a GROSS understatement.
.
We stop at the first store and I score some sweet workout pants (the others I had got a rip in the bum, a different embarrassing story for a different time...). We are waltzing to our next store and I am just amped up on life. So excited, having so much fun and all of a sudden having to go pee real bad.
.
Perfection! We come upon the outlet mall bathrooms and Kaitlyn joins me (well not in my exact stall, to go to her own stall to pee. We are on the same pee schedules, her and I). Someone was just finishing up washing their hands as we walk in and Kaitlyn and I each take stalls one and two.
.
We are quietly going about our business when I hear it. A real loud, ripply and wet sounding fart. Like big time. Like think of that one scene in Dumb and Dumber. Assuming that it is Kaitlyn, and feeling wild and crazy with my freedom from kids, I yell (at the top of my lungs).
.
WOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!!
.
Like I was a cowgirl. Thinking I am so clever and funny with my bathroom humor I await Kaitlyn's laughter at my perfect timing to what (I was assuming) was her boisterous fart.
.
S.I.L.E.N.C.E.
.
Hmmmmmmmm. Maybe she isn't feeling in a jokster mood about farts today...
.
Walk out of the stall to wash my hands. Out walks Kaitlyn. She mimes to me "THAT WAS NOT ME!! Are you CRAZY?"
.
I Die.
.
Cue bathroom flush of lady in stall number three.
.
Cue Vashti running out the bathroom and down the hall into the next store. Leaving all her friends behind.
.
Like I said in the beginning. NEVER. TAKE. ME. ANYWHERE.

Classic Konks.

Bianca rolled down the hall looking like this and Darrol said "Now that is picture worthy. Classic Konks style".

So I ran and got my camera. One shoe on (right foot thank you very much), only in her diaper, dragging along her sippy cup and sunglasses on her tractor.

The photo session ended when we smelled something grodie brewing in someone's diaper. I seriously have had to open windows to clear out stench.

Red Envelopes.

A few days ago we got home to find three red envelopes waiting for us. Sweet little cards from my Marcus. Each of them had special messages for us. Bianca was so excited to be able open mail WITH permission. She keeps toting her little card around the house, so proud that it is hers.


Olivia's had a surprise inside. Some pretty rad Thomas the tank engine stickers. They were super thick and shiny and sparkly... I mean spawkwie. When she opened her card, she exclaimed "Oh Mom! Daddy sent me stickers. I LOVE IT!".
.
We used those fancy stickers to make a special creation for Daddy. He should be getting his special surprise in the mail on Monday.

My card has proven to be a little bit harder for me to read. Anyone know Korean??

Standing Room only.

Things are still going great living over at the in-laws. I try to cook dinner three times a week (at the least) with the schedule that I have right now. I am working a little side job that takes up my evenings 2-3 times a week
.
(Need a really great Insurance Agent?? I know a great one here... He also happens to be the fella I am working for! Click the link and you can see who it is!)
.
Anyway I plan on cranking out more meals here when my side job ends. Cooking the meals takes place in the teeny tiny kitchen. We keep joking about how it is a one man kitchen. Anytime someone is preparing a meal, one of us other non-meal-preparers will try to go in to help and end up just standing there awkwardly because there is really only room for one person.
.
Darrol and I are often preparing breakfast at the same time in the mornings and there is a lot of "oops, 'scuse me", or "Just gonna sneak in there for a sec", or "oh I just gotta grab that one thing". I feel like that sequence needs to be in a sitcom or something!

99.9 % of the meals that I have been making have been cranked out of this bad boy of Teri's.

Tonight is sweet and sour pork steaks! I also never knew that you could make your own sweet and sour sauce. It is so easy and all the ingredients are things that I have in my pantry normally. I used to always buy bottled sweet and sour sauce which was kind of a pain and I hate buying a specialized thing I only use in a certain circumstance. Plus it tastes amazing! I love it when I learn something new!

Entranced.

I don't know what rock I have been living under, or how I ever let this slip past my grip until now.... but as of this weekend I have NEVER EVER read or watched Ann(with an E) of Green Gables. I have been dying!
.
It is so magically perfect and amazingly exquisite! I watched the first movie (both sides) last night and was laughing and then bawling my brains out. I just started the second movie during Bianca's nap and can't wait to finish the rest.
.
I feel like I am kindred spirits with Anne. I definitely have a flair for the dramatic, although I don't have her temper, I know I have stopped and exclaimed on the beauty and the wonder of certain events or places. To an embarrassing degree (like the first time I had a crab leg dinner over Christmas I literally cried over how good the food was and the beauty of eating such a scrumptious dinner with the ones you love).
.
Plus I am determined that I will go to Prince Edward Island at some point during my life to walk those fields and stroll along those beaches. OH! And Gilbert!! He is so cute and sweet. He looks at Anne with such love in his eyes (yes I am aware that these are actors playing these parts, but I am choosing to pretend it is all really happening right before my eyes). SWOON.
.
Now I am getting off this blog so I can Green Gable my brains out!

Skwippery one shoed bandits.

Olivia has the most fabulous ways of saying things with her lisps and L's souding like W's. She stumbled a little and turned around to tell me "Mom, be CAWFUW.... it is weawy skwippery!".
.
Or when she wants some of my smokehouse roasted almonds. "Mom, can I hab some of yours spawkwie (sparkly...because of the flavor dusting and salt) snacks?"
.
"Mom, I wost my dwagon. Hab you seen it?". The dragon being a stow away from a play date.
Bianca can always be found with one shoe on her foot. Always the right foot. At any given time I can find a smattering of shoes throughout the house that she has walked around in and then discarded to find an even better shoe option. My shoe, Olivia's shoe, Grandpa's shoe... she wears them all.
.
Her only form of communication is head nods. Yes or No. So unless you ask her a yes or no question you are hooped. Sometimes I think she is just doing it to do it and not really listening to my questions, so I will throw in a crazy one like "Mom is the best ever, right?". And she will turn to me and give me a look like "get real mom" and shake her head no and then we will both start laughing.
.
I really adore my skwippery one shoed bandit children.

Oh, the things that might have been.

So my magical day with cousin Vienna ended up being a mash of tons of little things all going wrong. The kids played good and had fun, it was just all the variables of the day that went wonky.
.
Konks (see above picture) started off our day by crying the night before at midnight, 2 am, 5:30... you get the picture. I am a cry it out type of person and she wasn't crying continuously or for a long time so I just left her in there. All the while getting more and more frustrated as to why she was all of a sudden up all night only to discover when changing her morning diaper that she had pooped in the diaper at midnight and it was dried and caked to her bum all night. (I had checked on her but did not notice the tell tale stink that was clearly there when I picked her up in the morning).
.
So I start off my day feeling like Mom of the year. We get to Candice's and when she is leaving for work notices that the front tire of my car was almost flat (well technically Teri's car as I was borrowing hers for the day).
.
So we leave Candice's to head to a play date and forget the sippy cups and have to turn around. Leaving for real this time and stop to inflate the tire with air and then get gas. Pay at the pump wasn't working and had to go inside to give them my card and it was slammed so I had to wait inside.
.
Finally get going to the play date and all goes well. We leave and Konks passes out in the car, dead to the world from being up so much at night and I didn't have the heart to try and wake her up (as her being so tired was my fault after all) which in turn messed up her afternoon nap.
Then my dinner ended up being a huge flop. I slowly sauteed my glorious portabello mushrooms, cooked the noodles, roasted the chicken. Then added the chicken and mushrooms to the alfredo sauce. The whole time I am dealing with the chicken, something in the back of my head is telling me that there is something wrong. It isn't until I add everything together and taste it that I realize the chicken is freezer burned.... BAD. I wasn't about to waste the sauce so I picked out all the yucky chicken (freezer burn is so nasty, I will never make the same mistake again!).

At this point to salvage it and still have protein I add canned chicken but it wasn't the same. It was still eatable and decent but I just felt like my tender, precious mushrooms were just wasted on it.

And then the girls didn't even touch it. Any of them!

.

Olivia ended up being up until 10:30 that night because she snuck some of my diet dr pepper and it kept her wired.

.

The funny thing is that it didn't really stress me out because after the flat tire/gas station shenanigans I just told myself that probably other things were going to go wrong and that helped me to just laugh all the other things off.

.

But I am pretty sure that freezer burned chicken has scarred me for a little bit!

Playing with Cousin

This morning we picked up cousin Vienna and have been having fun playing with her all day. We played a little at Vienna's house and then headed to a play date I had already scheduled and then came back to Mema's for lunch.
.
All kids took naps, with Bianca still napping right now. The big girls are watching a show and eating snacks. The love seat the girls are sitting in is the place to be if you are in the living room. They are rocking recliners with cup holders and the middle part has a secret compartment to put all your remotes and such in.
.
Vienna is sitting in "Mema's chair" and Olivia is sitting in "Grandpa's chair". The couch on the other side of the room has recliners on either end, but for some reason it just isn't as cool as the rocking ones. Either the girls are in them, Mema and Papa are in them or both!
.
Now I just need to start organizing dinner.... I am thinking chicken and mushroom creamy pasta. I have some portabella mushrooms that are begging to be cooked up into something!