A big fat thanks

Big thanks to all of you who pointed out my math was incorrect in my previous post about the batteries. I received correction from many of you by e-mail, blog comment, and just in general conversation. I will try to keep math out of the blog from now on.

On a more positive note, Ella and Luke have started "earning" the new phone batteries by doing good deeds around the house. Each of them needs to earn 30 stars by doing things like putting their shoes away when they come in the door, putting their coat in the closet, picking up toys, and taking their plates to the kitchen sink when they are done eating.

Soon they will be enjoying their cell phones once again.

Have I missed my calling in crime?

Remember my almost crime in Philly? Looky no touchy


My Mom and I were scheduled to work at our church food pantry this past Saturday. We were supposed to get there by 8:45 or so because people were scheduled to start coming at 9 to get things. My Mom was there in a timely fashion (good job, Mom) and I was about 5 minutes late. We got there and the church was locked and the pastor wasn't there to let us in. I tried calling the pastor at home and on her cell with no answer. She ended up getting there at about 9:15. Once she got parked and was getting out of her car, she realized she didn't have her keys to the church. It was very cold standing outside so I decided to take matters into my own hands. So, I picked the lock with my AAA card and my blood donor card. It felt less like I was breaking into a church if I picked the lock with those two cards for some reason.

For those of you who are long time blog readers, you may remember my brushes with the law in the past...
The Hounds of Baskerville

Ranger Rick

Fear not, my friends. From now on, I will stay on the straight and narrow path.

4 enthusiastic thumbs up from the kids...4 thumbs down from the parents

These phones were gifts from my friend, Tori (thanks, T!) about a year ago or so. The kids love them and use them all the time. The time has come, though, that both phones have run out of battery power. I went to Radio Shack the other day to get a new supply of batteries for them. Since this was the first time I needed to change the batteries, I wasn't really sure what I needed so I just took the entire phone with me. The guy at Rad Shack opened up the back of the phone and said it looked like we needed (3) 1.5v batteries at 5 bucks each. 3 batteries times 5 bucks each times 2? $60 for batteries for toy phones?????

I just couldn't do it. I couldn't spend $60 on batteries for phones for the kids. The kids were disappointed and are currently accepting donations for new batteries.

Blatant product promotion with no financial gain for us

Look at the happiness on this kid's face!

This little baby right here is hands down the most popular food item in our house. The kids even choose to eat this over eating candy. We discovered them a couple years ago and have bought quite a few (read into that hundreds of them) of these little guys for us to eat. They come in a variety of flavors and each of them are one serving of fruit. They call them fruit leathers and they are just dried fruit pressed into a strip.



Link to these tasties right here. I have let many friends try them and they now swear by them as well.

Is it just me or does he have Aron's eyes?

She's such an interesting mix of characteristics

The hand towel with a little something extra...

Ella and her Baby Annabelle

I find Ella fascinating. Yes, I know she's my kid and I'm supposed to love her to bits (and I do) but sometimes I just find her interesting. She's sweet as the day is long and very insightful. A couple weeks ago, Aron put the kids in bed. Ella asked him to send me up to tuck her in and he said he would. He came downstairs and said "hey, go tuck Ella in because she wants to say goodnight again." I said ok. Now, I have skills in many areas but I do not have a lot of ability when it comes to retaining things to do. Ask me to read something and recite it to you verbatim and I can do it. Ask me to pick up a gallon of milk at the store and I couldn't remember to do if I tried. About an hour later, I hear Ella calling gently from upstairs "Mommy...did you forget something?" Of course, once I heard her voice I remembered that she had wanted tucked in and of course, I felt a pang of guilt that I had forgotten her tucking. I ran upstairs and told her that I was sorry that I didn't come upstairs right away. She looked at me, gave me a little kiss, gestured toward her head with her hands and said (no I'm not making this up) "That's ok, Mommy, sometimes you have a hard time holding things in your mind." I think she just politely told me that I am absent minded.

Most understanding kid ever!

Nothing much to report...

We haven't been doing very many exciting things lately so there hasn't been much to blog about.

Will blog more when there's something to report but here are a couple pix to tide you over...

Livin' La Vida Luke-uh

Yes, Jeanne, that is mint chocolate chip ice cream
I also could have labeled this post "Teeth are for eating, not biting."


Well, it's official. Luke's a biter. The weird part is that he doesn't bite someone when he's angry like you would expect him to. Instead, he bites people mostly when he's really crazy excited about something. Poor Ella is usually the victim but he's also got Grammie and Lindy with a bite. We've tried sitting him down to explain to him why he shouldn't do it, tried time out but nothing seems to get through to him that it hurts and it's not nice.

Now, if you talk to my Mom about it she'll go on (and on and on and on) about how I was a biter when I was little. It's a little different than that, though. I bit my brother because he was mean to me and was so much bigger than me physically (he's four years older and would sit on me just to be a jerk) that I had no other way to defend myself. The biting that Luke does isn't out of spite and it isn't because he's angry, he just goes into overload when he's happy and just chomps down on your arm, leg, or whatever it handy.

Anybody got any ideas on what to do?

Ella's world dominance/world beautification continues into 2008

There's no reason why something can't be pretty AND functional.

Grammie's shirt--man, that's a whole lotta bling

That's right, my friends. Ella has returned to the world of interior design/world beautification/putting bows, ribbons, and whatever else onto the things in our house in an attempt to make the world a prettier place (Seriously, whose kid is she??)




I bought a shirt for my Mom a couple weeks ago. Anyone who knows my Mom knows that she only wears two types of shirts: 1.) Something in a plaid (preferably a blue plaid) or 2.) Something with embroidery on it (again, preferably in a blue). I mock her all the time because of it so I don't feel bad about poking fun of her in blog form. I was walking along in the store the other day and came across a shirt that was perfect for her--it was blue (surprise!) and it had embroidered snowmen along the bottom (double surprise!!). When I got home, I tossed the shirt on the back of the couch and went to go upstairs to change my clothes. Once done, I came back down to find Ella had "beautified" the shirt by hanging it on my vacuum cleaner then decorating it with a furry shawl (Christmas present from Granny Lindy), putting a hat on it (her own), and hanging a snowman ornament on the shawl. Then she took 5 lip gloss rings with the Disney princesses on them (I think courtesy of Aunt Annie for Christmas) and put them in a pink scarf so that they looked like a necklace.



This morning before story hour, Ella decided to make Luke's little truck a little prettier. I have to give her credit, though. If you l look closely at the pig, you'll notice that one of the ribbons goes over his shoulder. Ella told me she was worried about the pig because he wasn't wearing his seat belt so she made him a little one out of the blue ribbon.

Seriously, people! Whose kid is she??

What a cute trio!

She cracks me up

Ella cracks me up. She's come out with some really funny stuff lately...not on purpose but it's funny nonetheless. She has recently learned how to cross her eyes. I'm not sure where/when she picked this up...maybe she figured it out on her own...who knows? Anyway, she looked at me the other day then crossed her eyes and said "Look, Mommmy, now there are two of you!" I almost fell over laughing.

She picked out The Jungle Book video the other day at the library. We brought it home and must have watched it at least 45 times in 3 days. She started singing the Bear Necessities song. Come on...you know you know it! "Bear necessities the simple bear necessities. Forget about your worries and your strife!" Something, something "Bear necessities the simple bear necessities...the simple bear necessities of life!"

Because she's four, you know she's not going to get all the words right so here's her version:

"Bear assessities, simple bear assessities. Forget about your worry and your stripes!" Something, something "Bear assessities the simple bear assessities...the simple bear assessities, that's right!"

P.S. Hey, Paula, that's the sweater Aron and I bought Ella in PA. Worth every penny, right? : )

Random leftover cute pix