hugs

Wanted to post a recent favorite picture of the boys. This one makes my heart happy. I love that Michael is such a loving boy. I love that he loves us as much as we love him.

I'm sure it makes Gary's neck hurt, but I don't think he minds at all.

valentine's projects

I wanted to share some cute Valentine's or Sweetest Day projects that some of my fave creative gal pals and I made. When you have all boys in the house, it's such a treat to break out the pinks and reds and girly fun stuff. Take a look at all this love!


Cardstock gift box:

Sweet treats - candy wrapper & bag o' candy (shhh, don't tell anyone I ate the candy bar that was inside the wrapper):

Personalized composition notebook:


Card (V-day, Sweetest Day, anniversary):

Most of the projects were made with Stampin' Up and Close To My Heart products.

Have a great Valentine's Day filled with lots of love!

what's up?

Not much going on here (except the flapping of our siding banging against our house from the wind storm last night).


Just thought I'd list some random things:

1. Michael lost a tooth last night. Upper left pointer (canine? dracula fang?) tooth. Are those baby teeth that are supposed to come out? I can't remember.
   
2. Having an "almost good" breakfast today. Usually, it's just the diet coke.


3. At Michael's doctor appointment yesterday, he weighed 50 pounds (slowly gaining the weight, the skinny beanpole that he is) and he was 50 inches tall. That means he grew 3 inches in less than 6 months...no wonder the clothes he had at the beginning of school "suddenly" didn't fit him after Christmas. That's some serious growing!


4. As I mentioned, the wind storm last night ripped off part of our siding. We have to cut the flappy, broken piece off and try to find a matching piece of siding at Lowe's or Home Depot to repair the damage. Not really enough damage to make an insurance claim, but enough that WE have to fix it ourselves. Boo!


5. Michael has been dry through the night for the last 4 out of 6 nights. Still wears diapers, but at least he's not peeing through like he usually does. Yea for him and yea for not having to change his sheets everyday.


6. I have to buy duct tape to repair the holes in the board the broken siding caused. I'll also check G's parents house for any damage. I'll probably grab something for lunch while I'm out.


7. I have to get 31 Valentine's Day cards ready for Michael to exchange at school tomorrow.


8. Hmmm, what to have for dinner tonight?? This sounds good. Yes, I think that's what we'll have.


9. Gotta go grab our trashcans before they blow too far down the street.

Guess that's all I've got for now. I'm glad that tomorrow is Friday. What's going on in your world right now?

six more weeks of THIS???

Stupid groundhog. I don't think our gutters can handle six more weeks of winter.

Well, one person in our family won't mind the additional weeks of winter weather (hint: it's not me or Gary)!

I was practicing using white balance, so most of the snow is 'blown'. It's good to practice, practice, practice...it's the only way to get better. At least I'm off of auto mode now. :)

A local photographer drove by while we were out playing and snapped a few pics of us. You can check 'em out here (the pictures are DSC0033-43...they're also copyrighted, so I won't post them directly).

Also wanted to send Happy Birthday wishes out to grandma Carole. We hope you enjoy a wonderfully warm and sunny birthday in Florida. We miss you...already! Today is our first Friday without Game Night in many, many months (more like 2 years).

hockey, hockey, hockey

We took Michael to his first hockey game on the 23rd at the Schott. It was OSU vs. Western Michigan. Michael doesn't usually do well with a lot of noise and screaming, so we weren't expecting to stay for the whole game.


Fortunately for us, the arena wasn't very crowded. With no one in the seats around us, Michael could explore and move around without bothering anyone. That helped keep the boy happy...which meant that we were happy.

Lots of lovin' from Gma Carole. She was just as excited as we were that Michael was doing so well.

He really enjoyed walking around during the intermissions and did almost 2 complete passes around the entire arena. We also helped him do the motions for O-H-I-O during the song "Hang On Sloopy". He thought that was fun!



Surprisingly, Michael made it to the very end of the game....which included the 3 periods, 1 overtime and then a shootout....and a WIN. What a fun night out!

cold...really cold

This is what the temperature reading was the other night (1/16)...after it had warmed up:



And that's without the windchill. The windchill brought it down to -27 degrees! That's just too cold to do anything outside. Luckily, school was closed for a teacher day on Friday and that Monday was a holiday, making it a planned extra long weekend. Area schools around us were closed due to the cold, but we lucked out and didn't have to use calamity days.



Okay...I'm ready for the spring thaw. Some of my evenings will now be spent checking skyauction for fab deals in sunny and warm locales, like this one, or this one...or even this one. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

snow time

I'm behind on blogging because of our computer breakdown, so I'm hoping to get a buttload of pics on here over the next couple of days to catch up.

Before it dropped to such frigid temps a couple weeks ago, we received a few inches of snow (about 8" or so) and we had to take the boy out to play....mostly because he was begging us. He kept signing "please, go" and "open" the door. He even handed us one of his snow boots. Much to his delight, we finally got the hint.

So we got Michael dressed in all his winter gear while he patiently cooperated (not!) and headed outside to let him hop around. And that's exactly what he did: he hopped all over the yard while Arty ran circles around him chasing his frisbee and the neighbor's new dog (doggie playdates anyone?).

The snow was still coming down...

Michael didn't seem to enjoy his sled rides as much as he did last year....guess we didn't pull him fast enough. All he really wanted to do was hop around and explore and cover himself up with the snow.He even tried to eat some of the snow off of his mittens...a first for him to do that willingly.

He could've played in the snow all day, but WE were done after 2 long hours. Here he is trying to escape me when I said it was time to go inside.


I love this one ("I want to hug you Daddy...and while you're at it, you can pick me up too").

It was nice coming out of hibernation to play and visit with the neighbors, even if it was for a short while.

technology is great...when it works

Approximately 10 days ago our computer stopped working. We only semi-freaked out because we had backed up our hard drive to an external hard drive...you know, just in case. The only thing was that our most recent back up was 3 months ago. So we knew there was a possibility we would lose the data from that 3 month time frame, but we knew we wouldn't lose EVERYTHING. If you have a PC, you know that fear.

Well it turns out the problem was this...


...the power supply.

Thankfully, that's a completely fixable situation, although it took longer and was more expensive than the 2 days and $100 the guy promised. But the great news: it didn't effect the computer data - we did not lose anything - yea! The first thing we did when we got our baby back home was turn it on, back up everything to the external drive, and breathe a sigh of relief.


It's good to be back.