A wonderful day!

This picture captures a little bit of one of (if not THE) greatest moment of my life! I love the joys of motherhood. Thanks to Doug who made the day extra special and cooked delicious food (eggs, bacon, and strawberry & raspberry crapes for breakfast and yummy Mexican meat burritos with heavenly guacamole for dinner!!!) and kept the kitchen spic and span on top of it!

I love singing "Sou um Filho de Deus" before Cal goes to bed. I love helping him learn how to pedal his new tricycle (a trade in for the nap time Binky). I love helping him learn his shapes and colors (except for when he is oh so proud of his blue circles he drew all over the walls). I love snuggling together and reading his favorite books. And I guess I even love him when I find him covered in Vaseline or hiding under the stairs dumping box after box of my food storage out (it's okay, it was just macaroni & cheese, we'll live w/out it.)

We REALLY love our "cinda" mothers (LaCinda and Precinda, aka Cindy) with all our hearts! Happy Mothers Day!

Troubles

Where to start...so why do people complain about living in Seattle.  Let's talk about rain folks.  It RAINS, I mean really rains in Houston.  Check out this map if you don't believe me. (You have to change it to look at the rainfall for the past 30 days.) Where we live received around 15 inches the past couple of weeks.  Do you know that Seattle only around 35 inches a year?  If you click on the past 365 days in Houston, you will see numbers like 75 inches, 90 inches, 101 inches.  

I love rain.  It is really not a problem for me (I don't mean to sound like I am complaining.)  We had several days last week where Cal and I would lay on the couch next to the windows, with the lights off (sometimes by choice, usually by consequence of the storm) and watch the storm.  He learned some new exciting words like thunder and lightning.  I told him how much his Papa loves to watch storms.  How he would wake me up as a little girl, just to go sit and watch the storms.  We watched the water fill up the street and then start to creep closer and closer up our drive way.  (This was the day we got 8 inches all at once.) While we were watching the front, we forgot about the back.  As a result, trouble #1 happened!  Doug has spent most of this weekend redoing the floor (wood laminate from IKEA).   Trouble #2 would be that my camera has been dead and the cord to charge it has vanished to Mars or something.  So no pictures of our floorless floor.  

On to troubles #3-6.  Almost-two-year-olds get into everything!  This week alone I have walked down stairs on difference occasions to find an empty spaghetti box, spaghetti all over the floor, an empty cereal box, cereal all over the floor, an empty jelly beans bag, not too many jelly beans left all over the floor, and upstairs an empty Comet can, green powder all over everything (beds, clean pile of clothes, carpet, rungs, toys, books, etc.)  Again, no picture to document the proof, but I am sure you can imagine it! (You might ask what are Doug & I always doing?  The answer is always house projects, new gutters, taring off the last bathrooms wallpapers, talking to the tile man, insulation man, handy man about their respective projects, and my latest skill: recaulking the bathrooms!) 

Doug finished block 5 on Wednesday!  It was so fun to have him around...and to help.  We stopped working long enough Saturday morning to go to Surfside beach (about 45 min. away).We planned to go Friday, but trouble #7 came and our car had to go see the car doctor and rack up a nice bill.  We had a wonderful time!  Callin was not so sure about the waves after he got knocked down in the first minute of his brave exploration.  But the sand, buckets, shovel experience was a success.  Good times cannot last forever. Trouble #8 happened when Doug and Callin took a walk down the beach while I tried to read for a few minutes.  Callin stepped on a wood board and ended up with 2 nail "bites" in his feet.  Sand and cuts don't really mix, so we packed up a little early.  (Don't worry, Cal recently got his 2nd Dtap vaccine, that includes tetanus. Those who know me, know this is a big step!) 

All in all, we know these troubles are nothing to complain about.  We are staying busy, grateful for all our many blessings and having a great time! 

Letter Z

After rhyming away to 'Ziggity, Zaggity, Zotch, the Zebra wore a watch..." for a couple of days, we were ready to head off to the ZOO! My preschool had a fun day at the Houston Zoo to celebrate letter Z. I have a lot of fun with these 6 GREAT kidos.

They were quite the cute little scientist walking around with their clipboards.

If anyone is looking for a preschool in Pearland, TX for next year, let me know!

New Phase: dinner conversations

Today it really hit, me. Children really do grow up. Not only do I not have a baby any more, I don't even have a toddler. Just a wonderful, full fledged boy! I played "pretend" with Cal for the first time today. He thought it was the coolest game. And all it entailed was some horses and rhino's eating grass and drinking milk.

Then tonight, we had this high quality dinner conversation at the table:

Cal: Eww.
Me: It's not yucky, it's soy chicken.
Cal: Eww. Chicken poo poo.

With a little bit of encouragement (and a lot of cool whip-and-strawberries-for-dessert-bribing, Cal ate all of his green beans and most of his chicken poo poo!)



P.S. We have "fixed" the climbing out of the crib problem by turning the crib into a big boy bed!! All I have left is potty training and then my job is done...right!?

Longing for Grammie!

I promised my mom on the phone yesterday that I would tell Callin that she loved and missed him. After he woke up from his nap, I took him over to her picture and gave him the message. Several minutes later I came back into the room and he had not moved and was still studying the picture. This is a little proof for my mom that the love is mutual! (And I have to add he really loves Papa too!)


(Not to mention that he LOVES his blankie and lion a LOT which are both from his Grammie.)

PARABÉNS MAMÃE! We hope you have a lovely birthday!

Shake-a shake-a shake

In Callin's nursery class, his teacher brings plastic eggs filled w/ beans each week to jam to during music time. Naturally, this is the only thing Callin thinks eggs are for. He has been in heaven this week with all the plastic eggs floating around! (And they have to have something in them or he brings it to me and says, "Shake-a-shake?") I have sung every children's song I know to the beat, or usually off beat, of the egg shaker.

Other than making music, we enjoyed a picnic at the park with some friends (with a little Bocce ball), finding eggs in the backyard (Cal insisted on carrying the eggs, not putting them in his basket), and finding our Easter Baskets. (Shout out to the Easter Bunny for putting the Twilight movie in my basket!) :)

Annie the Nanny

Cal and I had a fun 10 days in El Dorado Hills, CA. My sis & her hubby went off to Australia and I somehow managed to hold down the fort with out any MAJOR incident. (Many smalls ones include: discovering on day 5 that Jonas has a unbuckling problem and the 2 car seats have been unbuckled for who knows how long, being too busy that at 10pm I realize that I have forgotten to eat dinner, trying to take 4 boys swimming, forgetting to make lunches until we are all in the car, forgetting to pick up Silas from school, and getting threatened to have CPS called on me by a 'friendly' neighbor who saw the kids out riding bikes without helmets...)

Cal LOVED pretending he had 3 older brothers.

It was worth the trip getting to hear Jojo talk about his favorite 'Bounceopolis.'

The blankie boys. Cal learned the art of blanket attachment from Jojo. His blankie turned from sky blue to dirt brown in days.

He also learned a little bit more how to be a boy.

The big haircut!

The new Do

General Conference entertainment

It was fun to be with my cute nephews! (But I do have a new appreciation for my beautiful sister Ali! I really earned my sleep each night!) I also LOVED my day visit w/ my old roomie Kat who drove the 2 hour drive from San Fransisco to visit us with her 2 darling kids. I'm bummed I forgot to get pictures of them!