Little Dude' s Little Sister

This morning, I was getting breakfast on the table for the kids-JR sitting and EXCITED to eat, while Little Dude was still in the bathroom doing his morning routine of saying "good morning" to all his toys.

The routine usually finishes-about the time I place breakfast on the table-with Little Dude running out to hop in his chair. This morning though, we had an extra mouth to feed.

Little Dude stumbled upon a little stuffed frog (that has not ever been played with) and promptly named it Little Sister.

We had to get her a plate and a drink at breakfast, though at lunch she had to nap and missed out on our sandwiches. Dinner? Little Sister thought it was SO YUMMY.

And it was fun hearing Little Dude telling his baby: good job! clean your toys up! time for a nap! go in the corner! let's read a story! are you thirsty?

And Little Dude (apparently at Little Sister's request) even tried to get some candy out of the parenting gig by insisting that she had been REALLY good and deserved some. I tried the pretend stuff, but that didn't fly.

Right now, Little Dude is curled up with Little Sister in bed, and was telling her all about Thomas the Train when I tucked him in. It was so cute to watch him, and I was really surprised he kept with the pretend play all day long. This three year old stage is super fun!

It will be interesting to see if he remembers the little frog toy in the morning.

I Gotta Feeling

Today is gross. All rainy, kinda cold, and I have no idea how I'm going to entertain the kids; so far this morning I haven't done such a great job of it and the house has turned into a disaster zone.

I can't help but smile when I watch this though:



But really I think the day turns out the way your attitude expects it to.

Today is a good day because I get to meet up with an old high school friend and her daughter for lunch.

I've got a job that allows me to be at home and work on my time.

And best of all?

Today is an awesome day, because my two little nephews made it into the world last night at 33 weeks, and they are doing fantastic.

I'm An Aunt Again!

My sister in law, Leigh Anne, and brother in law, Fab, had their twin boys a few minutes ago!!

I am so excited to be an Aunt 7 times now! Especially since they live so close, (my other nephews and nieces live in other states), our boys will get to grow up with cousins as close friends! Oh the fun we will have; I just can't wait.

If Fab and Leigh Anne say it is OK, I'll put pictures up as soon as I get to see the little guys, but if not, then you'll just have to be satisfied with me gushing about how cute they are. I've already seen some pics thanks to technology, and trust me, they are CUTE.

Football Games

Having sons makes going to NC State football games all the more fun. JR is starting to get into it just like his big brother and there is nothing cuter than two little kids cheering. They make even losing a game fun.




This picture is from a few weeks ago, but we went to the game this past weekend and had a great time with our neighbors. 4 kids 4 and under at a football game might equal disaster and headache to some, but to Me, Sean and Caroline? A challenge! The kids actually did great the whole time, especially since Cole and Keeley had never been to a game. I'll get the photos off the camera at some point; they were all super cute in their Wolfpack gear.

In The Quiet

Garner has a new park, and it is SO COOL. The one of the playgrounds looks like it was made out of tree logs and the other one has the NEATEST balance, climbing, and spinning toys. Super fun! There are great walking trails and fun classes in the nature center, too. I'm excited for some of those to start and I am hoping Garner has some Winter kid classes coming soon; I'd love to get Little Dude involved in some kind of activity without spending a lot of money.

The weather has been so lovely, so we have been spending tons of time outside, just playing and having fun. Being outside has been great for keeping the house clean, too.

I think one of the hardest parts of being a "single mom", while Bill is working in AL still, is keeping up with everything. The kids, my job, inside house cleaning, outside house cleaning, oh my goodness! So much to do and just never ever enough time.

And at times, I find myself just wanting to sit in the quiet and not do anything, though that only gets me more behind.

Halloween Photos

Thomas the Tank Engine and a Lovely Rainbow helped pass out candy.
Mickey Mouse was armed and ready to get candy.
Snow White and her Hockey Player
A lovely fairy and Mr Gilly, the trash man, checked each other out.

Shopping Therapy

Sometimes it is nice to get away from the family. Two weeks of just me and the kids lead to me really wishing for some ME time once Bill got here and my sweet husband was amazing and said I could go do some "shopping therapy".

So, with my super sweet shopping master (and fellow mom), Andrea in tow, we hit up Crabtree Valley Mall this past Saturday, before we needed to be back home for Halloween fun.


*Warning, shopping recap below; skip if you find that stuff boring*

And OH was shopping with her fun! Mostly we window browsed and ooh and ahhed over the way-too-expensive-for-us jewelry at Belk. Seriously, I really liked a big ring I saw, but was thinking it would be a fun thing to wear around the house, with my Halloween costume, or just when I felt like adding sparkle to a boring mom outfit.I really had thought it would be $5 dollars, tops, since it was just out on a hanging rack. Oh no, make that more like $100.00-whoa. I quickly put it back before I could break it....

We did splurge and get ourselves some perfume. I so rarely wear perfume (I'm really lucky if I have time for makeup now, let alone perfume) BUT this D&G perfume smelled so amazing and the rep for the company was there giving tons of it away if you bought one bottle of the new scent, so I did.

And all the perfume from D&G can be mixed and layered to create new scents-oooohhhh I have been having fun with that!

Though I have to admit, I had thought I was getting large bottles of all the scents, but instead it was one large bottle of the new one, then a TON of half ounce sizes of the other 5 scents-but for the price I should have known better, we really paid a cheap price for the ton of perfume we got. I think all together I ended up with 3 oz each of the other scents, plus my huge bottle, plus two more huge bottles of other scents, PLUS matching lotions-so I am super happy!

AND I got all the other D&G perfumes and lotions for free. (Light Blue? I dunno, Andrea is my perfume/makeup/shopping Sensai and she was going crazy over what a great deal it was, so I went with her judgment).

*Shopping story over*

Anyways, that was SO FUN to get some girl time, chat about everything and anything (and mostly NOT talk about kid stuff) and on top of it, now I smell SO GOOD!

Halloween was A BLAST-the kids had so much fun and we had a great time over at the neighbor's drinking wine while the kids played. Little Dude was SO cute as a trash man and scored some great candy for us, er, him. Beth and Emily came over, too and Emily was the loveliest fairy ever. My sister was a rainbow and her friend, Ed, was Thomas the Tank Engine (he did that since Little Dude and JR both love Thomas-amazing guy, eh?) Ed was so great with the kids. He and Lisa passed out candy while the rest of us did our trick or treating; then they headed off to another friend's party.

Alright, I must go, this is getting way too long; photos will come tomorrow.