overwhelming urge to write

I've neglected this blog for quite some time now.  It's not that I don't have the time, I think it's more overwhelming than anything else.  I want it to be great and my expectations are set high, which in turn intimidates me and I don't even get on here.  Then, I get behind and discouraged and can't play catch up.  Maybe I'm too anal, I don't know.  But, I am making a New Years resolution to blog regularly.  And, I actually think it's one I can stick with.

So, I had this urge tonight to write because I  feel so blessed.  I feel at peace with the life I created for my(our)self, even if for just a night.  Jon was home today and we got to hang out as a family.  I sure do miss those days because it seems like they don't happen often enough.  Life is always so busy in our house (as I am sure it is in most homes) and we don't seem to truly enjoy life often enough.

Just in the course of the last week, I have seen:
1.) a family whose house burned down (a blog I read once and awhile) at 4:30am a couple of days before Christmas.  Everyone made it out alive and well.  While awful and a nightmare to say the least, I was touched by what I read... the mom and dad couldn't get to the kids and the oldest daughter got her siblings downstairs and out safely, and even made them breathe into pillows.  The girl truly is a hero.

2.) a family who lost their mother, but also got to meet their 10 week early little brother (through one of my stickies).  It appears the other driving may have been texting and this innocent mother lost her life.  It's tragic and incredibly sad to think about, but how great that they were able to deliver her baby, and he's doing well.

3.)  I watched the AT and T 10 minute documentary about texting and driving.  I admire the courage many of the people in it have to be involved in the making of this short documentary, and I will not be texting and driving anymore.

4.) I saw my friend Carrie today at the bouncy house place.  It's so funny that I saw her there in February too.  She looked amazing, definitely not how you would picture a cancer patient looking.  Yesterday she had a bunch of scans done and tomorrow she will get the results in the last 4 months of chemo have helped.  I get chills thinking about it.  She is such an inspiration to me.  I pray she gets good news tomorrow.


Why do I write about this all?  Because everything listed has changed me, for the better.  I hug and kiss the people I love tighter and more often.  I will think before text to be a safer person.  I will back up my pictures and store them in our firesafe box, videotape my entire house and take other fire precautions.  And, on a positive note, my cousin had her twins yesterday and our good friends had a baby girl today.

Tonight we danced, to music from the kids Escalade, with just diapers and underware on (well, the kids, hence the reason for no pictures).  They loved it!  Why don't we do this more?  There were smiles and laughs all around and both kids were tired after which meant they went right to sleep.

Cole has been climbing out of his crib and we've been working hard on keeping him in.  This includes nicolette not screaming for me every 2 seconds (which happends a minimum of 3 times a night).  Tonight I went in her room to fix her blankets 2 times, look at something once, get her a glass of water once and open her door once (we let her play with her Scribble and Write tonight and I said the door had to be closed), which I forgot to do in the midst of getting her water.  I was beyond frustrated and yelled at her.  I instantly felt bad because she just wanted me to open her door  because she was done playing and wanted to go to sleep.  She's getting so grown up and is starting to make good conscience choices all on her own.  I was taken aback and felt horrible, just thinking it was another silly thing she needed because she is so anal.  I love her!

No pictures tonight... I'm too tired to upload.

See you tomorrow! :-)

card 2011

Could we have gotten a nicer card from Shutterfly??  They rock!!

Oh What Fun Christmas Card

Shop Shutterfly for elegant custom Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

shutterfly, oh my!

I love shutterfly!  I love their books and I love the fact that they love their customers.  This is not the first time I have seen a promo from them.  There are so many things to choose from  at Shutterfly.  They have Christmas cards, wall calendars and holiday address labels.  I will definitely be getting some Christmas gifts there, as well as my holiday cards.

As I was browsing through ALL the holiday photo cards, I found a few that I fell in love with.  One of my favorites is Starlight Snowflakes.  The snowflakes are what I love the most!  I also like Oh What Fun.  I love the trafitional, yet nontraditional colors in this one.  And, I really love the two girls in teh picture they show.  It's a black and white picture and it looks awesome... so awesome that I wil be using a black and white picture of the kids in our yearly holiday card.  Both the ones I like have snowflakes... hmmmm!  There is something about them that is so peaceful... so unlike my kids that will go on them!

This is one of my favorite times of the year.  I have a "photoshoot" every year to get a good picture.  This year we did a fall theme.  It's so hard to choose though.  I was also thinking about doing a winter pajamas theme or all bundled up in the snow.  I don't want to wait till it snows though!

nature walk

We needed something new to do today and it was such a beautiful day! Last year we got pictures done in the woods behind Wetzel Road School and it was the best fall background- lots of pretty fall colors. Unfortunately the leaves hadn't turned yet, but it was still a perfect place for our nature walk.

I laugh when I say nature walk because Cole wanted nothing to do with this so called nature walk.  He only wanted to hold my hand.  I am actually not sure what triggered it, but he was done after a few minutes.  So, his 2 minute attention span and whatever upset him, did not make for easy picture taking (mommy's goal, of course).

We started off happy, with our buckets to collect nature things...

We set off to collect twigs, and leaves and other fun things. We hoped we would see animals too! I think our best find is lots of big pine cones!

After our nature walk we went to the playground.  I think we'll go there again because the school is no longer open and there are few people that go there.  While we were in the woods we heard the marching band playing and the kids were very intrigued.  Once we got to the playground, Nicolette played. 

Cole did not want to play on the playground at all.  He just wanted to watch the marching band and color guard. 

On our way back to the car, we stopped and took some pictures against the brick wall.   



I loved the picture taking opportunites there.  I think we will be back!

pumpkin picking

We went pumpkin picking today at this little farm called Katie's.  The pumpkins are only $2 each and they are all really nice sized.  We went last year at the end of the season and got some odd shaped ones.  We made sure to get there early this year. 

It was a beautiful day for October in CNY- in the 70's.  The kids didn't even need jackets!  I actually forgot Jon didn't have coaching practice so we took off from my mom's and hurried over there before it got dark and cold.  I totally forgot how beautiful the sun is at that time of the day.  It made for some really awesome pictures.

 

What a fun afternoon with my 3 favorite people!

do you have cole?, do you have cole?

It's fall here!  I've been dying to do some fall things, but every weekend we have something going on, and we've been waiting for our friends Adam and Carolyn to come visit.  It turns out they can't make it this year for our annual fall weekend, so we took the kids today.  I called my parents and knew my mom would want to come.  I was surprised when we got there and my dad was getting ready too. 

We went to Abbott's Farm, which is literally about 2 miles away from us.  We used to drive all the way out to LaFayette to Beak and Skiff, but Abbott's is closer and better!  We could have easily spent the entire day there, but Cole was tired and needed his nap.  We were there for almost 3 hours though!

We started off with some apple cider, pressed right there.  I know we could have watched the process, but my sleepy guy was well, sleepy before we got to it.  Included in our price was some animal food, so we fed the goats and sheep.  We said hello to the chickens, turkeys and bunnies.  Cole loved to browse the animals, but refused to touch them or feed them.  Nicolette was a little more daring and actually fed them.  Crazy- I totally thought they'd be the opposite!



 After that we took the hayride out to the corn maze.  I have to tell you, I don't know if I was deprived as a child or what, but I was really looking forward to this.  Something about trying to find your way out of a giant maze sounds so fun, and let me tell you, if you had a good couple of hours, it would have been.  Except, I didn't have a couple of hours, instead I had a little boy who wanted to run in damp mud, and little girl who didn't quite get the concept.  We thought we we so good at the maze, making it to this bridge with a kid sitting there.  Little did we know that we had just found the start of the maze.  That should have been a sign.









So we tried it on our own for .2 seconds, then my mom opened the stapled paper of clues and a map.  That didn't even help us.  We were so over the maze so tried to backtrack our steps to make it back to the beginning.  From there, we left, and it felt so good.  Who  knew a corn maze could make you feel crazy.  I couldn't get out of there fast enough.







From the corn maze we went to the pumpking patch.  We didn't pick any pumpkins there though because there is a pumpkin patch that sells them for $1 each.  The kids had fun sitting on the pumpkins until the tractor came back to get us.






Next on the agenda was apple picking.  I spent most of this time trying to get my (almost) 2 year old to go pick apples.  He was just being defiant, not sure why.  Ummmm, not fun.  Once I got him to where the family was, he was fine, happy eating his apple.  Ugh.  Little boys.  He's not 3 yet, so why is he starting the "terrible 3's" already?  Yes, I know the saying is terrible twos, but three is much more challenging, in our experience. 









We picked empire and two other kinds.  I wasn't there long enough to know... haha!  We got plenty of apples to make pie, apple crisp and eat.  We'll need to get more apples to make apple butter and applesauce.  Doing all that picking made us hungry for some lunch.  The line was pretty long, so my mom and I took the kids to get their face painted.  We ended up with two blue nosed kitties.  So cute! 







After lunch was some bouncy house time. 


We wanted to do the giant slide, but there just wasn't enough time.  Next time! 







The last thing we did was buy two little pumpkins for the kids. 



They got to pick their own out.  I wondered what pumpkin qualities they were looking for.  The both picked out nice ones though.  After Nicolette picked her pumpkin out, she asked me to carry her.  Jon and my mom were ahead of me and my dad was behind me.  I assumed he had cole so I went inside with Nicolette, Jon and my mom.  A minute later, I saw my dad inside, but no Cole.  I asked him if he had Cole and he said no.  At first I didn't believe him- who had Cole if he didn't?  It clicked that he was serious and I darted outside to find him.  I scanned the area where we were and didn't see him.  Then I saw the little bridge and there he was, just looking around, playing.  I ran to him, acting all normal, like I didn't just lose my own kid.  Thank goodness.

I've never been in a panic quite like that before and I was surprised how I reacted.  I totally expected to freak out, but I was surprisingly calm, yet paniced, if that makes sense.  All sorts of things were going through my head though.  What if someone took him, what if he was hurt, what if he was scared...

We called it a day when Cole refused to come with us and threw his little pumpkin into the little pond.  He had quite the audience, including one of my students.  Classy, I know. 

Apple pie baking to come.  And chili.  I'm looking forward to the smells that will fill my house tomorrow!