Little brothers love their big brothers

Even when Connor was just ten days old and couldn't be bothered to spend much time looking at much of anything or anyone, he'd look at JARED!


And when Jared was cold and wanted a snuggle, Connor was there to help out, because Jared's his buddy!


Big brothers love their little brothers, too.


Look how proud Jared is to be sitting by his baby!


Sometimes little brothers just BEG to wear the same outfit as their older brothers




Sometimes little brothers aren't very nice to their big brothers








And sometimes little brothers want to do EVERYTHING their big brothers do




Little brothers love their big brothers

Uncle Corey

My kids LOVE their Uncle Corey (their dad's middle brother). They don't see him very often as he lives about five hours away, but when they DO see him, WATCH OUT! The wild fun begins! My camera battery was charging for the first part of his visit, or I would have pictures to share of him flying Emily and Jared through the house (one at a time!!), and I probably would have taken a short video clip to share the hysterical giggles erupting from the kids at the time... And I'd have pictures to share of them dog-piling him in the playroom... And probably several of the noogies, head-butts, and pillow fights, too...

What I DO have, are pictures of Uncle Corey and Emily playing "I Spy" (which they did for about ten minutes together) on the front porch:


And I have pictures of the squirt fun fight they had outside:

(But first, I'll introduce the players)
Meet Uncle Corey: He wasn't thrilled with getting his picture taken, but tolerated my attempts, at least


Meet Emily: Quick-thinking; fulls of tricks


Meet Jared: Little and Mighty!


And last, but not least, Meet Daddy: He REALLY dislikes getting his picture taken, so I'm lucky to have found him rather cooperative (I think it's because he couldn't let his little brother show him up, maybe?)


And now the battle pictures:

Emily was a WILD woman with the old fire extinguisher! She got her daddy pretty darn good on his way down the driveway...


And she got her brother pretty darn good as well. He was supposed to be shooting back at her, but forgot Plan A, and went straight to Plan B, which, apparently, was to scream bloody murder until she stopped, and THEN blast her a good one to the chest. LOL!


Yeah, they got as good as they gave:


The tiny water guns in the hands of big men struck me as rather hilarious...


Jared got a turn with the old fire extinguisher, too. And if you thought EMILY was wild... Jared clamped down on the trigger and sprayed everythign in sight, myself included. And the inside of the garage, the front of the van, the riding lawn mower, and well, just about everything else that happened to be in the garage at the time...




He's not enjoying himself, is he? LOL


Emily was so soaked she was forming puddles at her feet!


And I couldn't figure out just WHY anyone would want to use the "raindrop" effect on their pictures, and yet, when I tested it out on THIS picture, I could kind of understand...


My kids LOVE their Uncle Corey. And I think it's pretty clear he loves them, too!

The Rhyming Game

Dan plays the Rhyming Game with Emily in the car on the way to the grocery store, and occasionally around the house. They'll take turns choosing a word, and then take turns rhyming that word until they can't come up with any more, then the game continues with the next word. Jared was being a major pill and Dan called him a sour puss to try and harrass him a little bit. When asked what rhymes with sour puss, Jared refused to answer, but Emily piped up with "Octupus!" YOU may not be impressed, but before hearing what SHE came up with, I couldn't come up with anything that rhymes with sour puss!

Hurray! The sleeping pills worked!

JUST KIDDING! I DID NOT put sleeping pills in my child's food... LOL I did however, bust my tail rushing to make the screaming child some lunch, only to have him head bobbing through the entire meal. He literally slumped over asleep after the last bite was swallowed. Gotta love the fact his hand is still in the bowl!! I guess that's what you call "not being sure if you're hungry or tired" !!!

I took this first picture just because I thought he looked silly:


And then he moved a bit and I just KNEW I'd get something funny out this, so took another picture:


And then (did you guess?), he moved again! (and the bowl moved, too!):






And yes, I did quit harrassing the poor child at this point, cleaned the bits of mandarin orange of his sticky chest and hands, and deposited him into bed...

New layout

I've changed the layout of the blog, which allows me to show the entire width of my side-to-side pictures in the size I like to share them. The "blog archive" and "My favorite sites" can now be found ALLLLL way the at the bottom of the page. I'm not sure I like them down there, but until I can figure what else to do, this is the layout I'm going with!

Life's Little Tidbits

When I have lots of random things to say, I've decided I'll label them "Life's Little Tidbits" and add them into one post... That phrase popped into my head as I was writing my Why I've decided to blog post, and I liked it so much, I've been hoping for the chance to use it again, and here it is!

THE INJUSTICE

I'm now rather well-acquainted with the inside of our HUGE recycle bin out in the garage. Dan was a sweetheart and decided to surprise me while I was gone by going through and cleaning up some of my paper clutter (I ADMIT IT, I'M THE PAPER CLUTTER QUEEN!!). However, he recycled plenty of things that were being saved for a reason. For one, the scrap of paper containing the coding my dear friend Martha gave me, despite dealing with community sewer water rushing through her backyard, a water leak, AND celebrating two birthdays that day... In my hunt through the recycle bin for THAT piece of paper, I came across a picture Emily drew for the neighbor girl for the rings she gave Emily and Jared "just because" the other day (it had SOMETHING dribbled on it from the bin, so we'll be drawing another one now...); I came across some stickers from the doctor's office, some instruction manuals for toys and gadgets around the house (maybe I'm weird, but I like to keep those things on hand!), etc. And after finding all THAT stuff, I still hadn't found the paper with the code on it, so I headed back inside and low and behold, he's stuffed it onto a pile of stuff on my craft desk, which is a disaster because I had pulled it all out to make a card for a wedding Dan went to tonight, and to work on some things for my mother for her Bunko group. SO, I actually see SEVERAL injustices here, but the worst is that I literally went through every single piece of paper in the recycle bin and what I was looking for wasn't in there in the first place! UGH! At least it wasn't right where I'd left it... Now THAT would have been an injustice! LOL

The scrap of paper I was hunting for!


THE SWEET

My little Emily draws me pictures all the time. Usually on very small pieces of paper from her little princess notebooks in her room. Most, I will admit, get saved for a day or two and then find their way into the recycle bin (gasp!) but I've quickly found I just can't keep EVERYTHING and so I keep my favorites. Some make their way to the art center (I'll have to remember to make a post about that!), and some she displays totally on her own. There was one in my master bathroom for quite a long time after I returned home from my appendectomy. Another one is currently hanging on the hallway side of my bedroom door. I think it will stay there for a long time...


THE HIGHS AND LOWS

of sugar... Here's Jared with his cotton candy colored tongue at the ball game last night:


And here he is on his way to getting extra sticky and extra wound up:


And here he is in the 11th inning of the game (LONG GAME, ended at 11pm and our team ended up losing...) after the sugar has long since worn off:


THE HILARIOUSLY EMBARRASSING

I have no clue just quite how this happened to me, but tonight I was chasing Connor through the house so I could get the little monkey into his pajamas and ready for bed (okay, so he's not all that fast, but he had a head start! LOL); I took two steps into my room bent down to grab Connor up and turned around as I was standing back up and I suddenly found myself well and truly TRAPPED. My belt loop had hooked itself around the decorative loop of the doorknob and I couldn't get myself loose! I couldn't turn around to see just what was looped through (there are two belt loops side by side on the pants I was wearing and the one loop hooked all the way around, and the other loop hooked partially around, and I couldn't figure out by feel just which part needed to go where to get myself unstuck). Honestly, this really happened! I had to have Emily come unhook me, and I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face. Emily was giggling right along with me, Jared kept doing his LOUD fake laugh he's rather fond of doing lately, and the baby was off getting into all sorts of trouble, I'm sure... Upon my release, I ran for the camera to take a picture of the offensive doorknob (had I been slightly more sane at the time, I'd have had Emily run and take a picture as proof, but I didn't think about it). Anyway, here's the doorknob: (LOL!)


MULTIPLE JOBS

Have I ever mentioned what Emily wants to be when she grows up? A ballerina ice skater during the week and a rock and roll girl on the weekends! And have I ever told you that she came up with that idea all by herself? And did you know she doesn't even take ice skating lessons? The ballet part I can understand, as she's loved the idea of ballet pretty much since she could talk. She was well and truly obsessed BY age two when she recieved her first tutu on her birthday:


She's still a little obsessed with ballet (and having her hair done, and wearing frilly froo froo stuff):






And I can understand the rock and roll part, because her dad sings her rock and roll songs at bedtime. She can easily sing along with Ozzy's "Mama I'm comin' home", ACDC's "TNT", Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive", Guns N Roses "Patience" (excuse me if I have artists or song names messed up, rock and roll isn't as much MY thing!) and several others. Yeah, the rock and roll part I can understand:


It's the ice skating bit I'm still a little clueless over...

Forgot to mention...

Forgot to mention that at breakfast the next morning, Connor FLIPPED OUT when I put Cheerios on his tray. Screamed, kicked his feet, took one big swipe at the Cheerios and sent them flying all over the diningroom... I thought, at first, that maybe he'd just had his fill the night before (though he truthfully didn't end up with all that many), but then it became rather apparent he wanted to serve himself. Once I pulled the bag out, tipped it just far enough that the cheerios were right at the opening, he was the happiest baby in town reaching in and grabbing out a few handfuls to put on his highchair tray HIMSELF. Isn't he too young to be feeling entitled to some independence?!? aughhhh! (and in case you don't speak "mommy," that, in this case, means, "I'M LOSING MY MIND! I CAN'T STAY ONE STEP AHEAD OF MY KIDS NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRY! WILL I SURVIVE THIS EXPERIENCE WITH MY SANITY INTACT?" and then probably something about "AND NOW I HAVE TO CRAWL AROUND PICKING UP DISCARDED CHEERIOS...UGH!")