I was more than happy to take the kids to the pool…because it meant NO SAND. 🙂
Category Archives: Owen
Cousins dining al fresco
The dining room table seats six so the kids all sat out on the balcony—and loved it!
Legos with Anna…again!
Owen brought a Lego set so he could do them with Anna like he did last year. He was so excited that within, I think, two minutes of walking in the front door of the condo, the box was already open! We did have him wait just a bit, and they started working after dinner. 🙂
LAST YEAR:
First trip to the beach with cousins!
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!
Green Eggs & Ham
With all the recent snow days, Owen’s class was behind on celebrating Dr. Seuss Week, so the making of Green Eggs & Ham was this week. The teacher had emailed asking for volunteers, but with Tom gone and me prepping for our vacation, I opted to skip it. Then. The teacher emailed me directly asking if I could come in because no one else had volunteered. Hoo boy. So I said of course.
We got there as they were reading the book. Owen was, as usual, super excited to see us and gave Katie a hug.
While the teacher explained what the groups would be doing today, kk played in the kitchen.
And then it was time for centers. And as I had imagined, it was pretty much a cluster. Thankfully another mom showed up—as normally we’d have three 15-minute sessions of 4 kids each but since they were trying to make up time, we had three sessions of eight kids each. Yeesh.
There was cracking of eggs (after the mess the first group created, we broke the eggs ourselves), stirring of the eggs with food coloring in two bowls, sharing turns stirring, then cooking the eggs in an electric skillet and cutting the ham, the kids crowding around us trying to cook and us trying to keep them from touching the pan and burning themselves, trying to rember who can’t have ham due to religious reasons, then serving the eggs and ham and trying to keep things cleaned up while cleaning up the utensils for the next batch. WHEW.
The first session was SO crazy that I never had a second to snap a picture. Thankfully Owen was in the second group and we were getting the routine perfected by then.
Giving me a thumbs up on the green eggs!
Thankfully Katie is pretty well-behaved because I couldn’t do the eggs and watch her at the same time. I did see her with the assistant most of the time, and she was at a table coloring another time. I apologized to the assistant and she said no worries, Katie was really very good. PHEW.
And then just like that, it was done. And even though it was crazy, it hadn’t been that bad. 🙂
Lap full of kids
I wanted Katie to come sit on my lap and she didn’t want to so Owen piped up that he would. Well, of course then Katie had to!
TACKLE!!
Shopping hugs
I never get tired of this.
Katie wouldn’t cuddle with me so Owen said he would.
He told her she missed out. 🙂 And of course I got a crazy face first. 🙂
Birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese
Tom usually has birthday party duty but since he’s gone it fell to me. And of course I had to take Katie as well—so it was her first trip to Chuck E. Cheese.
Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as crazy as I thought it would be. Of course it was Chuck E. Cheese so it was a little bit crazy but overall it wasn’t bad.
Katie’s skee ball style:
The Clifford ride it was super tame and she looked pretty bored…so the next one moved more and she quickly said “DONE. DONE!!”
Then it was time for lunch and the birthday show (Chuck E. Cheese comes out). Katie was EXCITED. She’s saying “CHUCK E. CHEEEEESE!” 🙂
Redeeming tickets!
And then it was time to head home. This is the toy Owen picked—a tiny blow up sword (which she said was his favorite thing about the whole day, LOL).
And a mustache tattoo he got in his gift bag:
And these were the cards we had printed! (I think these were the best deal of the whole place—one card for one token!)
Both kids had a great time!
Well, I wasn’t expecting THIS today!
He lost the other front tooth! I didn’t even know it was that loose until about an hour ago! It likely wouldn’t have come out today, but apparently he was using his teeth to get Legos apart. 🙂
Owen’s snow day homework
He had to draw a picture of what he did on the snow day.
He wrote that sentence completely by himself. (Emu meet is Emmet from The Lego Movie. The stuff on the right with the letters are the Xbox controls.)
Color me IMPRESSED.
Snow Day #10. Or maybe #11.
This is insane. I don’t think we ever got this many snow days in Michigan. Yeah yeah, it’s different down here. But still. Yeesh.
So, by morning (and after more drugs) I wasn’t quite as pissed about the snow and the kids wanted to go out…
But the novelty has still worn off—I only took about three pics and this was the best one. They were drinking from coconuts. 🙂
It was actually warm-ish and sunny so stuff was melting. But I still spent 45 or so minutes brushing off the car, shoveling the driveway (including the rest of the plowed-in entrance), clearing a path to the mailbox, and chipping ice off the sidewalk.
I’m so ready for winter to be over.
Bedtime story!
A picture for daddy!
Tom is away for work so we try to send lots of pics. 🙂
Lego ruined our night.
So every month, Lego offers a free mini build at their local stores. We saw it advertised on both a flyer and our Lego calendar so made plans to go. I made sure to check the website to see if there was anything else we needed to know. And there wasn’t. This is the entirety of the information about the event:
So let me just share with you what I wrote to Lego when we got home:
I am very upset and also have a very upset little boy right now. We received the monthly Lego calendar and saw the “free monthly build” advertised for tonight so we told him about it and made special plans to go (our first time ever!) and he was super excited. I happened to check the website to see if there were any special details I might need to know and didn’t see anything. So off we went. We arrive, wait in what I thought was the line for the free kit (which I expected to have to wait in line so no big deal), get to the front pretty quickly (I was actually impressed, but how long does it take to hand out a pack of Legos?), and was stopped dead in my tracks: “Oh, you don’t have a book? That’s the other line.” Which I then noticed out the other side of the store—and was, of course by then, way too long to even think about getting in and receiving the free kit before they ran out since the line was crazy long. So then I had an upset kid because he’d been looking forward to this for days. So a big fat thanks, Lego, for advertising the crap out of this free build but giving NO MENTION WHATSOEVER (even on the minibuild website!) that you need the special Lego “passbook” in order to get it. I’m extremely disappointed and would hope you can rectify this in some way.
Truth be told, I had seen a few kids carrying these blue passport-looking books around but didn’t think twice about it since I never saw any mention of it. I googled when I got home, and see that the passport is a fairly new thing—but technically it’s just for marking visits to Lego stores. There is a place to stamp that you were THERE for the mini-build, but I saw no mention of it being REQUIRED to get the mini-build. So now I’m wondering if this wasn’t a corporate decision, but a store-by-store decision. Regardless, I was pissed.
The next day I received this response:
Dear Jen,
Thanks for getting in touch with us.
We’re sorry to hear that you had such a disappointing experience when you visited one of our LEGO® stores! The LEGO Group is dedicated to providing excellent, consistent service in all of our stores. It is only with your honest comments that we are able to improve our services to better service the needs of our valued customers, so thank you very much for your email.
As a one time exception, I have sent out the parts you need to make the March Mini Build! Please allow 7-10 business days for delivery as they our sent from our warehouse in Denmark.
So I’m very happy they are sending us the kit, but still disappointed they didn’t even mention the passbook issue. I’ll definitely be asking at the Lego store the next time we go in.
Snow day Lego project!
This was Owen’s last new Lego project…The Research Institute:
I bought it for the super cool dinosaur, but since it was under 200 pieces it literally took him like 20 minutes to put together. 🙂
A jumping morning!
We were there a few minutes early and were able to skip the line because I’d bought tickets a few days earlier…so we had to wait a few minutes for the floor to open.
Look! BLOCKS!
Can you find Katie?
And mere seconds later after I stopped recording…some kids pushed it over and I got this shot:
I love the “flying” shots!
Meanwhile, in the non-toddler dodgeball section…our poser. 🙂
February pictures are online!
Our inaugural Saturday Night Spaghetti!
Some background…
I love having friends over for dinner. I like making new friends. So when I read this article last year—
Friday Night Meatballs: How to Change Your Life With Pasta (if you have the time to read it, please do!)—it hit a nerve and I immediately knew it was something I wanted to attempt. I promised myself that I would schedule something after the holiday season had settled down. Well, then life happens, and I didn’t actually get to schedule it until the end of January, with the dinner to be mid-February.
I posted the following invitation on Facebook and hoped for some responses:
[Photograph: Carina Romano]
Imagine my surprise when the RSVP slots were filled in less than 24 hours!! And lots more people LOVED the idea and promised future participation! 🙂
Unfortunately, the weather didn’t play nice and we had to postpone a week, but the original attendees were all still able to come! And everything went awesome! Six guests (plus kids) was just right. (This house is big, but for a dinner party, six guests is about the limit of dining space. I wish we had more room, or even a good place for another table!) Everyone got along and had a good time talking, the kids were all awesome (Owen had a new Lego buddy and Katie had a friend), and everyone stayed much later than I anticipated (they all left about 9:30). One couple said it was a great idea and they are thinking about starting something similar! Yay! During the event, I even stopped Tom and told him that I was very happy. He agreed it was a good night. 🙂 We both can’t wait to do it again!
Even though it wasn’t BUSY or lots of work, we were both kept busy visiting and prepping and whatnot, so I didn’t take pictures! The only one I took was of the kids’ table:
And this one was snapped by a guest (everyone liked the aquarium but the girls loved it!):
I hope all future dinners go as smoothly as this one did! 🙂
And then, even though it was WAY past the kids’ bedtimes, we let them stay up to watch one TV show to let them calm down. And this happened:
Kidisms 5
Katie: Mama! You have crazy hair! Up there on your head!
Me: Katie, can you fit in Maggie’s crate?
Katie: Of course!!
While watching photos on the TV…
Me: Oh! That’s Owee.
Katie: No, that’s me.
Me/Tom: No, that’s Owen!
Katie: Oh that’s right!
Owen let Maggie out to go potty.
Owen: Maggie’s tail is a door.
Me: What?
Owen: Her tail is like a door. It opens when she poops.
Me: 😐
Watching “The Wizard of Oz” for the first time with the kids.
When it turned to color:
Katie: “OOH! BEAUTIFUL!”
And when the munchkins came out:
“Ooh! Babies!”
🙂
Owen was shopping with Tom and there were Girl Scouts selling cookies outside the grocery store.
Owen: Ahhhh! Cookies!
Tom: Yes, but we don’t need any.
Owen: No, we don’t, but it’s nice they have them out.
Breaking boards at a birthday party!
Tom took Owen to a rescheduled-from-bad-weather-last-weekend birthday party today. They had a bounce house PLUS Owen got to break some more boards! He had a blast!
Reading from Katie’s chair
Owen’s Horsey!
Superhero Spirit Day!
Today was Superhero Spirit Day at Owen’s school! I had debated sending him in his complete Superman outfit but honestly worried about bathroom breaks… 🙂 So he wore his Super Owen cape and a mask! This was a picture posted to Facebook!
Post-snow sibling movie love
Snow day snowman!
Today marked the SEVENTH snow day this year (and the fourth in two weeks). Tom had a 2-hour delay but actually ended up working from home. Thankfully the kids weren’t ready to go outside until quite late in the morning. I think the major excitement of snow has worn off—though they still like it and want to go out and play in it, it’s not the very first thing they want to do!
Owen was pretending he was a ninja with his new scarf. He actually made me pull it up higher over his face. 🙂
The first thing I noticed was it was actually on the warm side—so I had a good feeling about the snow quality. One quick swipe of the snow on the car and yep—perfect snowman snow!! Time to make their very first snowman!!
The kids were excited…but weren’t much help. 🙂 Owen helped pack snow and find sticks and Katie wandered around.
It’s been probably 25-30 years since I made a snowman. It was hard with such a small yard and because we didn’t have that much snow—and what we had was on top of icy stuff—so it was a lot of scraping from all over. We could’ve tried the backyard but there’s a much higher chance of buried dog poop back there!
The kids LOVED him!
Then it was off to the backyard for more snow after they trampled everything in the front (it doesn’t take long).
But it was really wet and actually turning slushy so we went inside.
Owen LOVES his scarf…and looks quite dapper if I do say so myself. 🙂
100th Day of School
Owen came home with this 100 day project. Plus he’s excitedly wearing his new footie PJs. 🙂
And then he helped Katie eat some. 🙂
