Lorenzo's 2nd Birthday Party!

Lorenzo and Kyle sharing a piece of cake.

2 cuties....They are 2 months and 23 days apart in age!

1st attempt at a picture! Boys wanted to play...not pose for a picture!

Next attempt at a picture...very tired and full of cake...not as wiggly!

We had fun at Lorenzo's GOLF party! He is 2 years old today!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Lorenzo (Ro-Ro to Kyle)!

SKATING!

Kyle, Charlie, Karlee and Chloe

Chloe and Karlee

Kamie and Karlee

Keira and Charlie

I took the kids skating today with a couple of Chloe's little school friends.

It was toddler time, and we were the only ones there most of the time! :)

This was the first time for all of them to go skating!  Kyle was not too crazy about the skates, so he just ran around the rink in his socks!  Chloe, Charlie and Karlee had fun!  After falling a few times, they all finally got the hang of it!

8 Things!

OK....Here goes! I was tagged by a blog friend who is also the mom of Chloe's little friend, Lily. Chloe and Lily were in the same class last year. Check out their blog! Kerry is a great blogger, and I often times find myself laughing out loud at her posts! Our kids are all close to the same age, and it is fun to read what similar things we go through with our kiddos.

8 things I'm looking forward to...

1. SUMMER! :)

2. Having all my evaluations finished for the year. I have 3 little students to test in the next couple of weeks. When May is over, I will have tested 56 students this year and had over 120 meetings with parents and teachers.

3. Teaching Kyle to swim this summer. We hope he catches on as quickly as Chloe did.

4. Chloe’s gymnastics meet at the end of May!

5. Catching up on some reading this summer. I have a few books I have reserved for whenever I find some free time, and hopefully, I will be able to spend my evenings this summer reading instead of writing reports!

6. Working out! We just reactivated our memberships this past week after not exercising for a year! I am very motivated to get in some kind of shape (good shape, that is!). After 2 kids, things just seem to shift around! :(

7. Eating cheesecake for the next few nights! We have some leftover after our get-together last night. I guess I’ll have to workout an extra hour each day this week!

8. Taking a nap after I finish writing this!

8 things I did yesterday:

1. I got up early and had 2 cups of coffee before the kids even woke up! Great start to the day!

2. 3 LOADS of Laundry! Cleaned, folded and put away! Woo-Hoo! I still have 2 more to do, and I am sure after those, then I’ll have 2 more to do. The dirty clothes never give me a break!

3. We went to look at Granite samples for the new countertops we hope to get installed soon! :)

4. I got my hair trimmed. I love that hour away to just myself!

5. Watched as the rain turned our pool into a swamp! We will be spending a lot of time cleaning it during the next few days, but it will be blue again soon!
6. Chloe and I made some brownies!

7. Prepared myself for Chloe’s sleepover...I didn’t know how it would go with 2 little girls who are both hard to sleep with and kick and move around in bed all night, but somehow they made it through the night together without moving much. They both slept all night!

8. We had 3 other couples over for drinks and dessert! There were 5 kids here, so it was kind of crazy until they all finally got situated and asleep. We (the adults) had fun until 12:30 am!

8 shows I enjoy...

1. The View

2. Dancing with the Stars
3. Oprah
4. The Apprentice
5. Desperate Housewives
6. Nancy Grace
7. 20/20
8. Saturday Night Live

These are the shows I TiVo, but I hardly ever get around to watching any of them! The one I always watch is Oprah. TiVo is great! We really never watch anything live anymore!

I tag everyone who reads this ! No pressure, though!

RAIN!

Wow...what a rain!  Since we live down a hill, we get  lots of water around here!

We had a little teaching moment with Chloe.  She heard us talking about lightning, and I thought she knew about lightning.  I showed her some lightning videos on the internet, and she got scared.  So, I turned that off, and as we walked up front, she got to see some real lightning for herself!  I don't think she will forget what it is now!

Here is some video of outside our front door.  We have a pond across the street, but you cannot tell where the pond is since it is so flooded outside!

There is also some video of our backyard.   There is so much dirt in the pool right now, but this has happened 3 or 4 other times in the past 6 years, and it always seems to be clean a few days later!

VIDEO

April 2009

All 3 watching for daddy to come home!

Chloe

Chloe is starting to follow along with the words in books we read to her, and she knows words in the stories. The TAG pen and TAG books that we got her have helped her recognize many words! We love the TAG!

Chloe loves to cut out shapes. She has me draw silly shapes, and she cuts them out. She does a great job!

She is learning so much in school. I love to hear all about it. She was even telling me about monarch butterflies the other day. I had her screened to be a peer model for one of the special education classes at the school I work in. She passed the screening, and I think she will be a great peer model to the students in that classroom. She will hopefully start that in the fall.

No naps anymore. She has quiet time that she spends doing "quiet" things since Kyle still takes a nap in the afternoon.

She loves board games and card games!

Kyle

Kyle started the month with an ear infection. He was miserable for a few days. I was up with him all night on April 1st. He kept saying "Mama, ow,ow!" On April 2nd, his ear drum ruptured. He is all better now!

He is completely potty-trained. It was hard at first for us to take him places, because I feared he would have to use the potty, but he has learned to hold it until we can find a potty or until we get home! :) He will even wake up in the middle of the night to go potty and then go back to sleep. He has had ZERO accidents this week!!  He goes on the big potty sitting backwards...no little potty anymore!

He sits at the big table or little kid table. He no longer sits in his booster seat. He doesn't eat as much now since he is able to get up and walk around.

Kyle loves to snuggle and have me rock him. He comes up to me and says "I wanna wok". This is one of my favorite times of the day.

He loves to give kisses. He calls them "tisses".

Kyle wakes up in the morning in a great mood, but he wakes from his afternoon nap in an awful mood! I sometimes have him skip his nap just so he stays in a good mood for the rest of the day!

He says "I uh you." (I love you.)

Us

Eating out is very rare unless we go by ourselves, which is also rare. Hopefully by next year, Kyle will do much better in restaurants and not want to go wander around the places. Chloe was 2 1/2-3 when she started being very good in restaurants, so we hope we get to that point very soon! I look forward to going out again as a family and being able to eat a whole meal without having to box it up and take it home to eat. For right now, we will continue to mostly order out on the weekends or go to very kid-friendly places to eat! :)

With a 2 and 4 year old, there is little time to get much done around the house. There is really no use cleaning during the day, because they get all their toys out again anyway! I love a clean house, but I have had to learn to just forget about it for awhile. I would rather spend my time playing with them than cleaning up after them.

VIDEO

Pre-school Open House/Performance

We attended Chloe's first Pre-school Program/Open House tonight. Chloe enjoyed showing us all her art projects!

We then watched a special program the children have been working on. They have been practicing songs and a Rainbow Fish play during class. They did a great job!

We ate some snacks and went on home in the pouring down rain!!

Chloe and Andrew dancing!

Chloe and Brooke

Chloe and Karlee

Cade, Ryan, Robbie, Chloe, Otto and Karlee

Cade, Chloe and Andrew

Chloe and Robbie

Mrs. Sigler....Chloe's AWESOME teacher!

VIDEO

Weekend Birthday Party

We helped Mallory and Samantha celebrate their 1st birthday today!

They were very cute as Thing 1 and Thing 2! They also had a yummy Cat in the Hat cake!

It was a windy day, but at least the rain stayed away since we were at the park! It was funny at one point when pieces of cake that people were eating started blowing away!

Happy Birthday!

VIDEO

Soccer

The kiddos are getting interested in soccer!

They are both kicking the ball very well! We hope to get them in Soccer Tots soon, so I will show some video of that whenever they start. For now, you get to see them playing in the yard!

Easter 2009

Kyle and Chloe posing for an Easter picture in the backyard!

Kyle having his snack on the way to church!

Kyle and Chloe posing for a picture outside church!

Kyle with a mouthful of M&Ms.

Chloe was so happy the Easter Bunny came to visit her!

Homer waiting and hoping for some candy to fall on the ground!

Chloe and Kyle helping decorate the bunny cake at Grandma and Grandpa's house!

I didn 't realize Kyle was licking the gumdrop until I saw this picture!

Grandpa and Kyle

Grandma and Chloe

Chloe and Kyle with Paw-Paw

Everett and Kyle with Tata

We spent Easter 2009 with both sides of the family!

We ate lunch with my family, and then we headed on over to Everett's brother's house for some more sweets and egg hunting!

Decorating Easter Eggs!

Chloe had a fun time decorating Easter Eggs!  Her favorite part was painting the glitter on the eggs at the end!

Poor Kyle fell asleep right before we started.  He is recovering from a rough week of an ear infection and a ruptured ear drum.  He feels so much better now, but he is still trying to catch up on his sleep.  Maybe he'll be able to join in the egg decorating fun next year!