Happy Valentine's Day 2013

oh man, i made the cutest Valentines for Bear. I used to make really cute ones for Connor too but now he just wants the grocery store box of valentines that come with fun dip. fun dip. whatever, it's yummy i get it.

 

i determined that i've likely only got a couple more years until bear detours this way as well, so i'm making the most of it. i found the cutest idea on pinterest (obvi) and because of the cute to creepy ratio of the cards, decided they'd be perfect for bear.  this is how they turned out.

 

adorable right? they were a HIT.

Isn't it crazy how they look all 3D?? they aren't. everyone loved them and wanted to know how they were done. the most difficult part was getting bear to take the photo. you have to get his hand out in front of him but not covering his face...and not too much in the middle or the sucker will cover him up...and not too far off to the side or the effect will be lost. you see my issue. plus, it's bear. here's a summary of some of our attempts.

 

Please note that the actual cards are in a completely different shirt than all the attempts. I eventually gave up and did more photos on another day. this kid is a trip.

 

Connor's class had their Valentine's Friendship Breakfast on the 14th and I joined them. it was really cute. the kids made jam and they had fruit, waffles, juice and maybe some other stuff. I love how excited Connor gets when I show up at his classroom. It's rare since i'm one of those working moms :) so I think he likes it even more since I'm not there every week (or every month...).

As for Jeffrey and I, we don't really 'do' Valentine's day since it's smack between my bday and our wedding anniversary. The boys did however surprise me with cards and pretty flowers. Jeff & I had a special dinner of leftover meatloaf. magic.

Hope you had an extra special Valentine's Day!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday - Halloween Edition

Halloween throw-back edition today. The boys have had some cute costumes, until this year. This year we dropped the ball. I blame Disneyland. They will be trick-or-treating in soccer uniforms.

both boys on their first Halloween. Connor, left in 2007 and Noah, right in 2010.

Halloween 2008 - Clark Kent

 

Halloween 2009 - Baseball Player. This was the first year we let him choose his costume

2010 - Tigger & Handy Manny

2011 - Charlie Brown & Buzz Lightyear

 

Mickey better prepare himself

I feel like we can actually start our countdown to vacation now!!  We only have 30 days until we head to California on a giant family vacation.

We've never taken the boys to Disneyland.  I know lots of people take their kids when they are really little but we just didnt see the point.  It's crazy pricey to do Disney and when one was too young to ride most rides and the other was too little/short...we just didn't want to spend a gajillion dollars to walk around and gaze upon $60 tshirts.  We decided that we'd go when Connor was 5.  He'd be tall enough for most of the rides and those he didn't meet...he'd likely be a bit afraid to attempt anyway.  Bear would only be 2 but he'd be free to get in so it would work ok.  Plus, Noah will be able to ride on some things as well.

I plan on walking around enough to burn off all the junk food I plan on eating.  Also, I'll take some pictures.

Also, we're driving. That will be nutso since being in the car for more than 45 minutes tends to make me stir crazy. When we drove to San Diego last summer, I was snarky before we left the 602 area code. Fortunately, it resulted in funny fb posts. I make no promises this time as I never know if my snark will result in hilarity or the silent treatment. I shoot for a nice balance of both. Except that kids don't give the silent treatment - they scream. Also, they throw things.

Anyway, Jeff's family LOVES Disney. Who doesn't?  But they really love it.  I'm thrilled that everyone is able to come along when we take the boys to Disneyland for the first time.

It's going to be crazy fun, mostly because of how many family members are coming. It would take a white board with a full blown chart to explain it all so I'll just say that my dad and Corliss are coming, Jeff's parents and two of his three sisters as well. One of those sisters has four kids and of course her husband is coming. His brothers have families of their own as well and his parents too. Did you get all that? All in all we're thinking between 20-25 people...I think 10 of those will be kids...ranging from itty bitty baby to teen. That's three sets of grandparents too so we'll be fortunate to be able to have adult time for a dinner or drinks here and there as well.

Other great news...Jeff's parents have a timeshare and our branch of the fam will be staying there so we're fortunate enough to skip paying for a hotel.  This is great as we'll likely be there a full week.

I only half jokingly suggested that we have shirts made up for all of us.  We could do baseball style raglan shirts with each branch wearing a different color.  Fun right?  No one was interested which surprised me because I got this email from my youngest sister Megan yesterday :)

Ok... So, the Barnes family is definitely full of nerds. We sort of unofficially decided that on Saturday we are going to wear shirts that are of traditional Disney characters (i.e. Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, etc.) and we don't want you guys to be left out. Steph and I have Minnie shirts that we got from the last trip. The girls both have Minnie shirts as well. Kaden has a Goofy shirt and Ryan and Jacob have these cartoon strip shirts with Mickey and Goofy on them. Also, the Birch Blum family has other little theme days;
Sunday - Girls are wearing Alice in Wonderland (only because Bella and Olivia are coincidently wearing the same exact shirts as Maddie and Lanie)
Tuesday - Bambi/Dumbo characters (not sure if the boys will participate in this day either because not sure that they will care about either movies, but could fit Peter Pan in there also)
Wednesday - Phineas and Ferb (the entire Birch Blum clan will be wearing Perry the Platypus shirts)
So, that is it for my nerdiness.

Love you,
Megan

I bought my first Disney shirt in preparation of this trip.  I'm not really a character shirt kind of gal. Not for my kids either.  I prefer my kids' clothing to have a pattern, not an animal.  I don't always win that battle.  It's nothing crazy, my shirt.  It has a mickey head, that's it.  Maybe it's Minnie. I'm really not positive honestly. Our branch is all wearing Mickey shirts on day one. Update: I took a pic of my shirt. It's bedazzled of course. Also, signed by the mouse. I'll pause for your gasp.

Our friend, Megan of Megan J Photography lives in California and will be doing photos of our branch of the family as a gift from Corliss. Can't wait.  I think it will be so fun to have family pics in Disneyland. Megan is amazing. She did our family pics in 2010 that we did at ASU. Here and Here. Last years pics were a shit show, so this year has got to be better. As amazing as Megan is, I'm anticipating a lot of pics like these:

oh awkward family photos, i adore you.

We'll spend 4 days in Disneyland and are considering squeezing in another Sea World trip maybe or the beach - though it will be freezing in October.  I don't care.  Jeff's not an ocean/beach fan but I love it and dammit I want a picture of the boys on the beach. So, that's happening. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the trip.

I'm also open to suggestions on what to call this trip. The Great Barnes/Blum/VanHook/Ditton Extravaganza is a bit wordy for a hat. And I'd really like a hat.

Nails, Pinning things and why I've clearly lost my mind

Guess what?  I'm blogging about my nails again. That's right readers (all 7 of you), another thrilling post ahead.  I'll wait while you collect yourself. 

Today I received this pic/text from my hilarious friend Erin:

"Just read your blogpost! I got fancy and painted an accent nail. So daring of me!"

This whole ring finger a different color is about 5 steps beyond my comfort zone but I figured, hey if I can do a dark neutral beige why the hell can't I go all the way to have two different colors on my nails?

After mocking her for being many degrees cooler than myself I remembered that I'd pinned a few different ridiculous nail ideas for...wait for it...our family Disneyland trip this fall. That's right. I selected nail art for a trip to see costumed characters.  Here are the leaders in the contest for how crazy I've become:

Yup, that just happened. I think #4 is just too much so I'm leaning to #1 or #2. Anyone like to vote on their favorite?  Please do.

My Pinterest for our family Disneyland Trip if you'd like to check out any of the other ideas I've considered to suck all the fun out of a vacation by focussing on silly details and planning. I'll surely be posting on this more over the next two months. Now that we're past both boys' birthdays, Chi Omega's Convention (still have to blog about this), my dad's surprise 70th bday party (yup...this too) and Kinder starting (done sucka!) our Disneyland trip is the next really big thing coming up!!

We have adorable countdown blocks at home that we remember to change about 50% of the time. I think we're down to 58 days or something very close to that.

A Baseball Birthday for Connor

My baby turned 5 last week.  sigh.  5 is a huge milestone I think.  

Kindergarten is a huge deal and Connor starts in the fall.  August 6th actually.  Everyone keeps telling me how sad I'll be when he goes to school which is kinda jerky of them.  Anyway, I think we'll handle it ok.  I mean, sure we'll be all emotional about our first-born starting something so big and exciting, but come on now...the kid has been in daycare since he was 6 weeks old.  Not really anticipating any separation anxiety but we'll see how starved for attention I am at that time. Fast forward to seeing myself holding on to his leg not allowing him to enter his classroom.  Be a friend and try to avoid the 'i told you so' urge that day.

Since 5 is a big deal we celebrated big this year. Connor loves sports - growing up with our family how could he not, right?  On April 18th - his actual birthday - we surprised him with an entire day at the ballpark. Jeff dropped off Bear at school and then told Connor "guess who isn't going to school today?!?" They drove to Jeff's office (aka the ballpark) and Connor's day was already made when Jeff told him that he got to play his DS all morning while Jeff got some work done. I met them at the game at noon. Jeff arranged for some amazing seats - we are very fortunate and always get good seats...but these were amazing. right behind the batter, just a few rows up. My requirement is that if we're sitting that close, there has to be a net. Jeffrey likes to think that if it got tipped back, he'd catch it before it was able to crack a skull. He's wrong. My two years of softball on the "no cuts" team and Jeff's few years of baseball aren't gonna get the job done.

Jeff also arranged for Connor to be in the hotdog race!! OMG this is amazing. Do you know what the hotdog race is? Every Dbacks game, three little kids get selected from the stands to go out on the field, dress up in these hotdog costumes and race. Not around the field - though that would be ah-mazing. The kids race in place and animated ketchup, mustard and relish race on the jumbotron around downtown phoenix. You never know who is going to win, but we had it on pretty good authority that ketchup had a great chance. Yes, you interpreted that correctly, Connor was a ringer. The race was fixed. (insert evil laugh here). We wanted it to be a surprise so we didn't tell Connor until we were heading to our seats before the game. Jeff's coworker who handles the hotdog derby told him that you never know how a kid will react to being filmed and out on the field. He'd seen 4 y.o kids do great and 8 y.o. kids freak the f out so it was a risk. Connor seemed kinda freaked when we first told him so we started acting over the top excited about it. I told everyone I came into contact with in the stands to root for ketchup and it got him really pumped when people were asking him about it.

In the 2nd inning we went to the hotdog meeting place and Connor got into costume. We took the tunnel to the field and got ready. He was pretty excited but clearly nervous too. The other kids were much older, like 8 and 11 so they immediately disregarded ketchup. silly fools. He killed it. Ketchup won. obviously.

Then of course we had to have his name put up on the screen. He loved that. I think Jeff's coworker really hooked us up becuase it seemed like it was up there forever.

Here are a ton more pics from the day.

this is where the kids find out if they are ketchup, mustard or relish - clearly the shirts are one size fits all :( and clearly Connor's will fit him for the next 12 years

walking through the tunnel that leads to the dugout

getting in costume!

ADORABLE

out on the field being introduced by the girl on the far right. this is where they announce the section each hotdog is racing for. the winning hotdog's section get free hotdogs for everyone in that section.

He won a Dbacks backpack with a waterbottle

enjoying a hotdog after the race...just felt odd

what's a birthday without a giant ice cream

chatting it up with Baxter

Baxter signed his shirt and wrote "Only the fastest kids are ketchup!" He also signed his forehead!

It was a loooong day. Jeff and I both worked in the morning and then enjoyed the entire game with Connor. After the game we all went and picked up Bear and went to Connor's soccer practice where he bragged to all of his teammates about his day :) It was amazing to give him such a great birthday. We have a tradition that the birthday boy gets to pick where they go to dinner on their special day and after soccer, Connor picked the Vine. So appropriate that our child would select a sports bar. We were thrilled with his choice. 

Up Next...Connor's actual birthday party!

Spoiler Alert: Dead Cat

So we came home from Thanksgiving with the Barnes family and decided to get going on the Christmas tree. That's the fun news. The bad news came in the form of a very unwanted visitor.

We keep our Christmas decorations, tree and all other junk out in a backyard shed. Jeff went out there and brought all the stuff into the house. We got the tree set up just fine and then I looked out on the back porch and saw a huge black cat sleeping right up against our back door. We don't have pets at all so neighborhood pets are often lounging in our yard since they never have other animals to bother them. We kept spreading out the branches of our fake tree and I noticed the cat was still there. Jeff tapped on our glass door it was laying against. Nothing. Awesome, dead cat. The boys noticed the cat at this point and we of course said she was sleeping. They soon lost interest in trying to wake the cat by banging on the door.

In a moment when they were completely distracted by decorating the tree, Jeff opened the door and poked at the cat with our swiffer mop thing. Still dead, and now we have to throw away our mop. Pretty sure I don't want dead cat spread all over my tile.

While Jeff decorated with the boys, I got online and tried to find out if there was anyone who would come to our house and take away dead cat. The city apparently only picks up dead animals that are on the road, which I obv understand. Still disappointing.

After the boys were in bed we went outside to assess the situation and come up with a game plan for dead cat removal. Actually Jeff did that. I tried to come up with names for the whole thing. Operation Dead Cat. Operation Kit Kat. Operation Party Crasher. You get the idea.

Also, it smelled rancid. And there were maggots. Not sure how that translates to timeframe but we're thinking a few days. I find it hilarious that Jeff walked past dead cat several times bringing in the Christmas stuff without even seeing it. Dead cat was huge!

I'll spare you most of the details but fortunately/unfortunately the cat was laying on a long doormat so we were able to roll it up and put the rug and dead cat in a triple bagged garbage bag. Considering the smell and infestation going on, neither of us wanted to put it in our car to drive to a garbage can. (No way we would put it in ours since it would be a good 5 days before pickup.) Our house backs up to a grocery store and there's a little green retention area a few doors down that you can cut through. Jeff decided he'd just haul the bag through the retention area and toss it in the grocery store garbage.

He came back home 10 minutes later looking pissed. Aparently, the cat's out of the bag. Literally. Dead cat fell into the retention ditch. I'm guessing the rug tore through the bags. So gross. I said, "well, we tried. let's go to bed". Jeffrey, being the better person, disagreed. He grabbed a couple empty boxes and a shovel and walked back down the street looking like a cheesey horror movie character. I'm positive our neighbors love us. I'm not sure how the collection process went down, but he came back several minutes later and took a loooong shower.

I poured an entire bottle of bleach over the patio just in case.

The next morning, Connor went looking for the cat. He understoodwhen we told him that the cat must have just been visiting and was already home with her people by that time.  Clearly, this is how we explain death. Looking back, this could have been a learning opportunity, but we wasted it.

As you can imagine, the whole thing really crapped on our festive moods. Here's hoping your Christmas decorating traditions were far less eventful.                                                                  

This Just Happened

The boys come running (and waddling) out of Connor's room tonight with Connor screaming and Noah laughing.

Connor: Mama, my nose!
Noah: mamamama
Mama: What happened?!
C: I hit my nose.
M: On what??
C: Noah's face.

His nose was kinda discolored but there's a bag of peas on there currently so I'm hoping it looks better when we're done with that. He's telling me that it doesn't hurt anymore, but that's likely so he can lose the bag of peas.
Noah is still laughing.

Life is like an ice-cream cone, you have to lick it one day at a time. -Charles M. Schultz

Connor's afternoon teacher gives the kids one piece of candy when they go home if they were good that day. Only kids who were on their "best behavior" get a piece of candy so it's a pretty big deal :)

Yesterday Connor told me when we were leaving the school that he forgot to get his candy. I told him that he could have a piece of candy when we got home. Then the tooth stuff happened and candy dropped down low on our list of important stuff.

Today when I picked him up, Connor told his teacher that he was due TWO pieces of candy from yesterday and today. I told his teacher that it was ok as long as it wasn't chewy - because of his tooth. The teacher told Connor that all he had were tootsie rolls (what???) and that he'd bring him something tomorrow.

4 year olds can only be put off so long with rewards so I told Connor that we would get an ice cream cone on our way home. He was THRILLED but after about 30 seconds of sincere celebration, he asked me if he could have ice cream too. I was confused but then realized that he thought i literally meant he could have a CONE. I love this kid. I told him I supposed so and there was lots more celebration. He told everyone we passed picking up Noah that he was getting an ice cream cone AND some ice cream. :)

When we pulled up to the McD drive thru I ordered one vanilla cone and this voice shouts out from the backseat, "and ice cream in it please!". Shouts it. After I straightened out the order taker we got Connor's cone and ice cream and he was thrilled.

BTW - Day One...tooth still attached. Yay.

What's the tooth fairy's going rate??

my children have aged me about 10 years in the mere 4 years they have been in my life. Yesterday didn't help.

I picked the boys up at school around 4 and as we were driving home Connor announced that he hurt his tooth while playing baseball that day. I didn't think too much of it, as the boy comes home with bruises, scrapes and general dirtiness every day. That's his job as a 4 year old boy. I asked if it hurt and how it happened. He told me it did hurt and that he dove for a ball and his tooth his the ground...? ok. He wasn't overly worried about it and played with bear in the backseat so I figured it would wait until we got home.

About 15 minutes later and I got out after pulling in the garage and looked at his mouth. I didn't see any bruising on his face or cuts to his tongue or gums fortunately. The tooth looked ok but was very loose. Not like hanging on by a thread loose, but wiggly loose. Ugh. I didn't think we'd have to deal with losing teeth, tooth fairy absurdity and this stuff for a while ;(

I called the boys dentist and started driving that way while I talked to the staff. Luckily they are just about 5 mintues away as they asked us to come in and do Xrays so they could make sure everything was ok. Our dentist is great to get us in at the very last minute before they closed for the day.

the boys at the dentist office. Noah looking less than concerned. Hopefully this isn't the last pic of Connor with both of his front teeth.

Waiting for the dentist to check him out

Connor did amazing during Xrays which I was dreading - lugging bear around so that he didn't pull cords, rip papers on walls and trying to comfort Connor during Xrays was something I dreaded the entire time in the waiting room. The last couple times at the dentist, he was a train wreck during Xrays so I was gleefully surprised that this time he was super chill. Maybe it's the buildup of knowing he has a pending appt that has wrecked him in the past and next time we'll just suddenly roll up to the appointment like a super fun surprise.

Also, I love that kids know precisely the bribery that awaits them at the end of their appointment. When I told Connor we were headed to the dentist after we left our house he immediately said, I'll get a sticker and a bouncy ball when I'm done. He can tell you that you get to pick something from the treasure chest after Noah's ear appointment (ENT) and that you get a sticker at normal doctor appointments unless you get shots, because in that case you get a sticker AND something from the toy box. It's hilarious to me the things that kids remember.

We'd been told at his last appointment that Connor's roots in his two front teeth had already been dissolving. Likely from an injury to his mouth. Since we didn't remember any sort of injury to his mouth, the dentist told us that it could have been several little incidents and that can be enough to get the cause the roots to start to dissolve. At that point, they'd told us that he'd likely loose his baby teeth before the new ones started to come in. Because of that, his fall yesterday didn't necessarily have to be too hard to cause the tooth to loosen up. :( The dentist showed us the Xray and you can see his big boy teeth up above the little ones which was pretty cool. You could also see the injured tooth had lots of space around it near the gumline. She told us that sometimes the gum can tighten up around the tooth but in Connor's case it's unlikely. The dentist guessed that the tooth would make its great escape within the month.

If I'm being honest, I'm crushed for vanity reasons. The dentist told us that big teeth typically come in around 7 or 8 and so that means we'll have 3-4 years of a missing front tooth. While the pics I see of other kids missing a front tooth are cute enough, I'm not thrilled with this for MY kid. Oh well though. We're begging Connor to leave the tooth alone and not mess with it. He swears it doesn't hurt but who knows. We're just going to have to be a bit careful about what he eats (no apples, no chewy candy, etc) to try and keep the tooth in there for as long as possible but its just a waiting game at this point. It's days are numbered, clearly. We haven't mentioned the Tooth Fairy yet and I'm not sure why. Maybe because I don't want him trying to get the tooth out to get a few bucks. Maybe we can tell him about the Tooth Fairy but leave out the cash money part...at least until it's determined how much money she's passing out currently.

San Diego - Day One

We don't do a lot of vacations, we really don't do any. We don't make the time and my job doesn't allow for much time away. Jeffrey is fortunate to have a ton of vacation time so we decided to go for it this summer and go somewhere fun for the boys. Disneyland is next year (yay!) so we decided to head to San Diego.

I'd always rather fly but with two little kids it's usually easier to drive since they come with so much baggage - double stroller, two large carseats, pack and play/crib, diaper bag, tons of diapers, etc. etc. etc. etc. So we drove. The trip there deserves it's own bit of attention because driving with family is horrible. absolutely horrible. That's not fair - sometimes it was mediocre, but mostly horrible.

I facebooked our way there so that I could complain in real time. The posts got a lot of feedback so I figured I'd let them narrate the pics of our vacay here along with a few other captions.

have learned a few things at this point being 4 hour into our trip. 1. i
always say i want to live in a small rural town...gila bend is not that town.
neither is tacna. 2. being stuck in a car with screaming children brings out the
WORST in everyone 3. no matter how many varieties of crackers you bring you
failed to bring the ones they want.

the boys in the truck right before we left the house. This was Noah's first time in a forward facing carseat. I have a pretty large SUV but it was full - all three rows and the back too!

Noah playing hide & seek

each of the boys had a backpack within their reach with toys, books, movies, snacks and other fun to keep them happy...or at least occupied

This is an ant pile. The ants were huge. We had to pull over along the 8 or the 85 or something. Noah was screaming and we had to get something for him that we couldn't reach. I stepped right out of the truck and into this. Sweet. I think it was at this point - one hour into the trip - that Jeff said the vacation was a mistake. #alwaystheoptimist

Noah selecting his snack of choice in Tacna.

#5. gas stations in Yuma clearly do not specialize in names like Noah and Connor.

#6. i got bored since the last stop when jeffrey took over driving. the result is an intense amount of eyeshadow for 12 noon. (I have no photo of this one to show)

#7. i have discovered that i thoroughly doubt jeffrey reads signs so i find myself reading them out loud. "strong winds ahead. use caution" "be prepared to stop". i dont think i am fooling him that this narrative is for my own benefit.

#8. am sick of jeffrey's answer to his poor driving decisions being "it's California".

#9. connor just asked us when our vacation starts. #subtledisappointmentstillstin​gs

boys love trains and we saw several on our way to and from CA

i dont tend to be in too many of the pictures because i'm taking them so i have to shoot a few of these...please note noah passed out in the back :)

the windmills

‎4. border control is far too chill in their questioning.
"where you traveling from?"
"chandler."
"bye."

getting some work done in the car

grabbing dinner in downtown San Diego

so good when it hits your lips

noah likes to scream for an hour before passing out. sorry san diego, did we not mention that?

When we were booking a hotel for the trip I was really insistent on getting a suite - not for snooty reasons but because I didn't want to go to bed every night at 8pm. Being in a hotel room with kids is tough because every move you make they hear you and everytime they pee you hear them. It's as amazing as it sounds. So the suite was necessary and we'll have to do that from this point forward. The kids have their space and we have ours - this is one of my top 5 recommendations when traveling with kids. I don't know my other top 4 recs - snacks, portable dvd player, being flexible but still planning ahead and bringing a nanny.

We decided the week before our trip that we'd stop at a Costco mid-way and grab fruit, veggies and one of those sandwich platters to eat all week. That way we'd cut down on all the pricey food spending and we'd be able to grab lunch while driving on Monday. It worked out well. We love Costco.

So that was most of Day One. Our 6 hour drive took around 9 hours but included two gas station stops and one Costco stop. We landed at the hotel, thoroughly exhausted but decided to head back out and wander around downtown San Diego a bit and find something to eat. Tomorrow...SeaWorld!!