It had been a loooong day, so imagine my happiness when Linda arrived for dinner prep with a big, chilled bottle of one of my favorite wines! Yay!
Category Archives: Grandparents
More grandparents!
My dad and stepmom are also in Florida for a few months—about six hours away. Since we couldn’t take enough time to stay with both sets of parents, my dad and Linda came over to stay for the week. After they arrived and came to our room, we decided to head down to the beach…
Katie building her castle. Yes, it’s just a bucket of sand, but to her it was a castle!
This is one of her favorite things to do—fling sand. 😐
Katie was so excited to see them coming she had to run to meet them!
Owen was a bit tired so he tried to rest. 🙂
Kidisms 6
Katie is watching Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and the dialogue says “He even has [chicken pox] in his butt crack.”
Katie, repeating: Butt crack. [Pause] I like butt crack. [Pause] It’s dirty and smelly.
Me: 😐
I thought I saw dried blood in Katie’s nose so wanted to take a closer look. After determining it was just a shadow:
Me: There’s nothing in your nose.
Katie: Yes there is!
Me: What?
Katie: Boogies!
Katie is SO excited about our upcoming beach vacation:
And I can’t wait for the sand and the water and the buckets and the shovels. And we’ll put our swimsuits on! I can’t wait to go to Florida!
Katie: She’s purring!
Grannie Lin makes really yummy seasoned oyster crackers that she calls Belly Buttons. I made something similar and told the kids they might not like them because they weren’t Grannie’s. They tried them and didn’t like them. Fast forward a few hours and Katie asked for a snack. She saw me reaching towards the counter where my crackers happened to be:
Katie, very worried: I don’t want grandma’s cracker bellies!
Me: Are you going to play with the dolls?
Katie: Yes. And the cups and plates and a knife and spoon and fork.
Tom: Owen, I’m going to eat your face.
Owen (completely seriously): I hope not.
Gramma Jean: Owen, how do you eat food without your front teeth?
Owen: I use my other teeth!
CHEEEESE!!!!
She loves saying cheese!
This is a new 4T outfit from Grannie Lin—the top fits perfect and the pants are too big (she’s swimming in the waste). But oh so cute!
Birthday dinner, cake, and presents!
Even though we went to Red Robin this past weekend to celebrate Owen’s birthday… AND I took him a Five Guys burger on his birthday at school… We still went out to eat for his birthday dinner! 🙂 (Yeah, we like going out to eat.) 🙂 We tried a new pizza place that’s close to us and it wasn’t too bad. I’m actually getting sick of pizza so I had a Stromboli which was pretty good. And Katie was introduced to the Parmesan shaker. 🙂
When we got home we Skyped with Grandma Marsha and Uncle Rob, sang happy birthday, ate cake, and opened presents.
Then I gave Owen his gift certificate for the Magic School Bus monthly experiments. Before he opened it I explained it was from mom and dad, Gramma Jean and Grandpa David, and Papa and Grannie—and I was sure he’d be over the moon!! And of course he couldn’t have cared less, LOL. He just couldn’t understand that it meant 12 new experiments (like the volcano he just did) and kept looking at the paper like Aaaand?! I kept trying to explain it and I think he finally started to get an idea…but he probably won’t fully get it until the packages start arriving (it should be mid-month).
Things never turn out as you expect when kids are involved. 🙂
Magformer hats and a wheel!
Just two of the projects we built today—thanks to the expander set Gramma Jean gave Owen for Christmas we can build bigger things now!
Sweatshirt Twins
It was chilly in the house this morning (daddy was back to work so there was no one to turn the heat on in the morning) so I put the kids in their new hoodies from Grannie Lin and Papa! They’re definitely big enough to grow into—for both of them!
Emmet, Benny, and the Minions
Owen picked these new PJ pieces to wear tonight! Thanks, Gramma Jean!
Interesting sticker placement.
Gramma Jean got Katie a Disney sticker book and she had zero interest in it when she opened it. However, today she got it out on her own and I saw her doing this: taking out a sticker, slapping it on her chest, taking another sticker, slapping it on her chest… There was a huge stack there!
A real ballerina!
Katie wasn’t too excited when she opened the real ballerina outfit from Gramma Jean because there was too much other stuff going on…but when things calmed down a bit, she had to wear it!
Opening presents via Skype, part 3!
Tonight was presents with Gramma Jean and Grandpa David!
The kids loved everything, but Katie really loved her Olaf hat and tea set (they’re having a tea party in the picture) and Owen picked the Magformers as his favorite! We ALL loved Owen’s MSU PJs and he was thrilled with his Lego Movie PJs, too!
Opening presents via Skype, part 2!
Today we opened presents from Grauntie Marge!
They got to see Katie dance around with her dolly in their new matching outfits (I didn’t get a picture of it because they were watching live and I can’t take pictures at the same time!).
And Katie loved her new Frozen sheets!
And Owen LOVED his Robot Turtles game. We watched some videos online about how to play, then we played, and after we put it away he kept running around the house playing a full-sized version. 🙂
Opening presents via Skype!
It’s at times like this that I love technology!
Reading with Grandma
Watching Frozen with Grandma
I had a few errands to run so Katie stayed home with Grandma and she wanted to watch Frozen. It was Grandma’s first time and probably Katie’s 25th time.
Christmas with Grandma Marsha and Uncle Rob!
We celebrated Christmas this morning because Owen was home from school…due to ongoing constipation issues (he had been heavily medicated but NOTHING was happening and I hadn’t wanted to send him to school just in case).
She LOVED her princess tutu, crown, and wand! After about 10 minutes, we were all tired of the wand because it lit up AND made noise! (The crown lights up, too, but thankfully doesn’t make noise!)
Uncle Rob helped Owen with the Legos after Owen got stuck and I tried and gave up. 🙂
Stockings from Grandma!
The kids were itching to open all the presents they saw Grandma and Uncle Rob bring in, but it was a little late in the evening…so we just let them open the stocking stuff.
Katie LOVES Yoda!
My ornament hanger!
Katie LOVES hanging ornaments on the tree! As it happens, we’ve actually received a few ornaments since we initially decorated the tree, so she’s gotten to hang a few. This one today came from Grannie Lin and Papa and she had to run right to the tree to hang it! She does a pretty good job, too!
And a closeup of the Michigan ornament. I think the UP has grown since we’ve last been there. 🙂
Love a Grandma!
Santa Visit (Fail) 2014
I didn’t want to wait in any long lines so after requesting advice from a local facebook group, we decided to visit the Santa at the new Gander Mountain. Both kids hadn’t been able to stop talking about seeing Santa and they were SUPER excited leading up to the day…until we actually saw him, at which point neither kid wanted ANYTHING to do with him. Owen hid in a clothes rack and Katie begrudgingly got carried up by daddy. (And this is precisely why I didn’t want to spend any amount of time waiting in a line.)
This was their best shot. Not too bad. It was actually neat—they took the picture with an iPad and then emailed it to you right then and there.
After Katie was done, Owen decided he wanted to try again…so we tried to get them both on Santa’s lap. Ha. Ha ha. This time, Owen was pretty good, but Katie was still being a poop. This is the best one they got.
This was the best one I managed to get. Good times!
Then they had a green screen photo shoot and this is the background Owen picked:
Then the girls headed out to Target while the boys went on their super special trip to Chuck E. Cheese!!
My three cookie monsters…and other family pics.
Waiting for Papa, Grannie, and daddy to bring Owee back from the bus stop (she slept in today!).
My three cookie monsters!
All smiles with the grandparents! It helped that Tom was behind me making faces! 🙂
A rare family pic (since I’m always behind the camera!).
We surprised Owen at lunch!
Six birthday celebration!
Any excuse for a cake, really…we celebrated all of our birthdays!
Papa was elected to blow out the candles since I was still sick, Tom and Grannie Lin were getting sick, and Owen and Katie would likely spit on the cake. 🙂
Having fun with the party horn/birthday whistles, which actually THANKFULLY didn’t make any actual noise. 🙂
Owen helping Grannie make apple pies!
Bullying Prevention Assembly
Today Owen’s school had a Bullying Prevention Assembly instead of the normal Friday morning program, so we got to see most of that (we came in after it started to see Owen’s class perform a poem). I recorded the poem but we were far away and it was hard to hear in person (and even moreso on the video) so here’s a screenshot:
Most of the student body of Owen’s school (I checked, and there are around 700 students in K-6):
Wheeeee!
Katie showing Papa the iPad
A Brave Grannie
It was Linda’s idea to make a Halloween cake and let the kids frost/decorate it.
Little Helper
Thatsa lotta sauce!
Since I had help, I made a triple batch of spaghetti sauce. This is what 9# of meat looks like at the beginning…
And this is before the simmer…
