7 things

Since I was tagged by Erin, here are 7 weird or random facts about me...

1. I, too, am a big klutz. But my klutziness seems to go in cycles. For a while it was spilling drinks. For a while it was Lucille Ball/Carol Burnett style pratfalls (maybe it's the red hair?). But right now it seems to be getting things on myself... my drinks, my food, the kids' drinks, the kids' food, all manner of baby yuckiness, dog slobber, dog hair. Bleh. Just add it to the laundry pile!

2. Word misuse bugs me. Specifically: there/their/they're; its/it's; lose/loose; you're/your

3. It pains me to pay retail for anything.

4. I dislike white condiments: ranch dressing, mayonnaise, sour cream, cottage cheese. Double bleh. But I will eat them sparingly when made into something else.

5. I fancy myself a champion Scrabble & Backgammon player. I would never admit that Wayne (usually) beats me.

6. I shouldn't ever buy Tagalongs because I will eat the box in one sitting. Every time. But I was the top seller in my troop in junior high (sigh, yes junior high girl scouts) for 3 years running. We went to Disney World.

7. After our first visit to Disney World (before the GS trip), my cousin Tiffany and I pinky swore to each other that one day we would work in the Haunted Mansion together. Sadly, that dream was never fulfilled. (if you go to the HM link, I had the "Chilling Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House" record and loved it.)

wasn't that fun? Now I'm tagging Tiffany, Jennifer, Paula, Jessica, Lenda, Brandi (to make her blog again), & Heather.

Audrey hates peaches

A little funny stuff from the weekend... Audrey really didn't like dinner last night!

A few days late

I think I'm finally rested enough to tackle a blog about last weekend. Our big exciting fun was that Tiffany, Lee & Ellie came to visit us for the weekend. Tiffany is my cousin and Lee is Wayne's friend from college. They were both in our wedding and Wayne made sure they met. The rest (as Tiffany says) is history. Friday night we took the kids with us to La Paz/Chez Guevara, which has become very family friendly in the wake of the state smoking ban. Then after the kids were in bed another of Wayne's college friends, Hunter, stopped by. We had a lot of fun catching up and made good use of the chalkboard surface on the new kitchen table.

Saturday was game day and I'm sooooo glad we had lots of friends over to distract each other from that terrible "game" being played at Neyland. Tiffany got to meet Erin & her family in person after getting to know each other over blogs. And all of our kids - ages 7 months, 1, 2 & 3 - got to play. Lots of fun, you can check out more pictures here and read more on Erin's & Tiffany's blogs.

Sunday we all wound down with a delicious brunch at Amerigo (another kid-friendly place) before bidding farewell to our guests. We had so much fun seeing the Brights and hope it won't be too long until we all get to visit again. Audrey can't wait until she can truly play with Ellie, although Miles may not be too happy when that day finally arrives - overrun by 2 younger girls!!

We realized Sunday afternoon that Audrey was cutting tooth #2, the other bottom-center tooth. We had a couple of nights with her waking a bit, but last night she slept from 6:30pm to 7:30am, only waking at 5:30 to eat. I can handle that sleep pattern!

Cutie patooties

I'll take a break from Facebook cleaning for our guests to post a little fun. Audrey had her 6 month checkup today and was quite the charmer. She's grown a bit, but isn't as high on the percentiles as she was... she's 15lbs 2oz. and 25.5". She's about to cut her 2nd tooth, it's rightthere under the gum. And she's become such a chatterbox! I think we can count as her first word: "Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!" which is usually screamed when she's waiting to be fed. She also piped in with a really cute "Hi! Hi!" when trying to get your attention. I swear I heard "My!" yesterday, which of course means she knows her brother's name already. Such a smart girl. Hee-Hee. She's not working on crawling yet, but the girl can roll anywhere. She flip-flops all around, grabbing for toys, dogs, pacifiers, my hair, whatever. I just went to get her from her nap and she was turned, head where feet had been, on her belly playing with a stuffed giraffe in the corner. Silly girl.


Miles had his last swim lesson yesterday. He still can't swim (I know, what was the point?) but he is much more comfortable in water and will willingly get his head wet now, so that's a plus. I'm not sure if the guy is doing anymore classes after this, so we may head up to the Y next summer for lessons. I think next year he'll be ready for the classes without mom there, yay! He was so excited after swimming when we got home and the prizes I won from Goodyblog were here. The backpack had a dump truck on it and the lunchbox has dinosaurs. Of course I'm enjoying the other goodies that were included. These are some of my favorites. He was so excited to take them to school today, even though the backpack is totally unnecessary.

Anyway, we have a big weekend planned, so check back Monday!!

Where to begin?

Wayne took his laptop and the place had WiFi, but I just couldn't bring myself to blog during the week. I'm starting to regret that, as now there is SO much I want to write and remember that I could be here all week. {sigh}. Oh well. Let see if I can get the best highlights.The trip started with Miles melting down while we were packing because he wanted to play with the Thomas stuff that was already packed. Great. Got him distracted through that one and he was fine. SO excited. All week long when I'd say "we need to go..." he would cut off my "to the grocery" with "to the BEACH!!!" So once we got on the road he was fine. Even said "This is FUN!" all the way to Newport. But then he switched to "Are we still going to the beach?" and "Are we at the beach yet?" for the next 7 hours. We listened to a bunch of Curious George stories on CD and then broke out the big surprise... we got a DVD player and a new movie for him. WOW. Of course the power cord didn't fit in our car outlet, so tears were inevitable. Many thanks to Kyle who called his friend in Columbia, SC, and found us a convenient Best Buy, then we were set.

Our friends Rob & Yen joined us this again this year and we were happy to learn that Yen is expecting. So they got lots of exposure to handling kids, hopefully it didn't scare them too much! We were blessed with gorgeous weather, all Hanna seemed to do was wash millions of shells onto the shore. We spent lots of time on the beach this year, building sandcastles for Godzilla and splashing in the surf.

We dipped Audrey's toes in but she wasn't really into it. So she & I mostly hung out on the porch with only a few trips to the sand. I took a shade tent that was easy to set up for a day on the beach. You know that's how the Casper family rolls at the beach: no evidence of sun whatsoever!But seriously, it was relaxing to sit there and just listen to waves crashing. We all napped everyday, which was required since Miles woke up every day at 5am. Yes. On vacation. Thanks, kiddo! I don't know if it was the strange room, bed or what, but he would not go back to sleep. We made him "sleep" in our bed until 6:30 when Wayne got up with him. We feel so bad for Robb & Yen because I know Miles's stomping around woke them up. Sorry!! But Audrey was a fantastic sleeper. She's converted to a belly sleeper now, rolling over almost as soon as we set her in bed. She also gave up her night feeding during the week, so I got some solid nights of sleep for the first time in months.

Oh and Miles slept in big boy underpants! So we're finally fully potty trained!! YAY!!! So far no accidents... but I've got a pad on his bed just in case.
Completely random thing... Miles doesn't like the smell of shellfish cooking. We did a shrimp boil at home one night and hit the All-You-Can-Eat seafood buffet once, and both times he held his hands over his face saying it tickled his nose and was stinky.

By Saturday we were all ready to be back home. Miles watched a little of his video and then fell asleep with 2 hours to go. He woke up when we turned on our street and exclaimed "We're home!!!!" Yes, and it was good to be there.

Just wanted to say...

Hi, we're home!

We had a GREAT vacation...

More about it when mommy gets some rest.

Happy Half Birthday and a BIG first!!

I should heed the optimistic, glass-half-full spirit of the blog title and not let the bad things of yesterday weigh too much. In fact, today Karma said "snap out of it!!" and threw some nice stuff our way.

The biggest great thing... Audrey cut her first tooth! We saw it tonight when getting her jammies on. It's her bottom left central incisor (I just downloaded a tooth chart). Sure, she's miserable righ now trying to go to sleep, but now I know why she was attacking the frozen banana I gave her last night! Yay Audrey! We gave her a little tylenol to hopefully help her (and us!) get some sleep.

Have you ever clicked on the "goodyblog" button down on the sidebar of the blog? It's a blog by the Parents magazine editors about all things kid. They run a variety of give-away contests and I won! I won the Back-to-School gear, too bad none of us are officially in school. But it will still be a lot of fun stuff to play with. And Miles will get the backpack he's been asking for all year! Hopefully we don't get the one with hearts and flowers all over it.

"They" now have Hanna going a bit north of us, which still means rain for the start of our vacation, but hopefully not a full on evacuation. But on the bad side, it would be hitting closer to OBX where dad & Brenda are sailing right now and where some friends' parents live. Not so good. Maybe Hanna will just stay at sea!! Oh but then there's Ike, bearing down a similar path... DUM DUM DA DUUUUM.

And what a difference a week makes. Today at the pool Miles was telling me to go "way over there" when he was going to jump in and swim to me. Such confidence. But he was all about it, smiling and laughing the whole time. We're working on him being able to kick and paddle with his arms, but he's still not calming down enough to float. Hates the back float! But has NO problem getting his head under at all. Yay Miles!!

the trifecta

They say bad news comes in threes. Here are mine for today....

.: Let's just all mutually acknowledge the travesty that occurred in Pasadena Monday night and move on.

.: We just spent our second afternoon within a week at the pediatrician's office, this time for Audrey. Not for her 6 month check-up, that will be in a couple of weeks. No, this was for this rashy stuff that's been spreading across her belly and it seems to be eczema. Yuck. Basically no specific thing causes it, but lots of stuff can exacerbate it. There's hope she will outgrow it, but for now we have to keep her lotioned up and not itching. If anybody out there has dealt with it, I'd love some more insight!

.: And our vacation starting this weekend is being threatened by that mean ol' Miss Hannigan... I mean Hurricane Hanna. There are lots of varying opinions as to what strength, path, duration etc Hanna will take (yes, I've been researching it A LOT) but most options have us dealing with lots of rain to start our vacation. If we get to start it at all... some predictions have Hanna arriving in the Grand Strand right about the time we're due to check in. Oh joy.

On a good note (don't we always end on a positive?) Miles has greatly improved in the pool. On Saturday he started off screaming quite a bit, then Mr. Ed used him as the demonstrator. Being the center of attention and garnering applause gave him the confidence to jump in feet first... quite literally. We head back tomorrow and he's excited, so we'll see how it goes.