brothers

i've said it before and i'm sure i'll say it again...i like my boys. :)



i love that both of them have their eyes closed in this one!

priorities

Caution: Rant starting now...

Lately I have been tired. REALLY REALLY TIRED. Part of it is obviously because we have 2 little boys. One that is really busy these days and one that is teething and cries the minute he is set down. I know that part of my tiredness comes from that. But I also feel like our life is just in a state of chaos. Our house is a mess, if you came over it would have the appearance of being clean, but it isn't the standard of clean that I like my house to be. I have so many people that I want to hang out with, I am dying to go to Joannes with Cindy, coffee with Rachel, and walking in the mornings with Liz, Jessica, and Sharon. Those are just the outings that are "pending" in my life right now, not even getting into the other friends that I want to spend time with but haven't made a "plan" with.

I have been wondering if part of this is just the life of ministry. We have so much going on in our lives. We have youth church, small group (it's now softball season, which replaces small group), a girls Bible study at our house, I am part of a Bible study at the church, our "mom's hang out time" once a week at our house, church, book club (probably my favorite thing I do!), and there is always at least one "event" type thing each week for youth stuff.

I feel like we don't have time for other things. Where do we have time to spend with family and friends? When we have activities that are set for tuesday, wednesday, and thursday nights every week it doesn't leave us much time for other things. We need time together just us. I feel like in the midst of our chaos we don't ever get to sit down with friends and just "be". It always feels like a agenda. Hang out with so and so this day - check, have this couple over for dinner - check, have "quality" time as a family - check. We are always wanting to have people over for dinner, we like to have people over and we like to spend time with friends, but where do we find the time? Sometimes I feel like sitting down with a list of people we want to have over and our calender and just filling it out. But it would feel so ridiculous to say "oh, we have a free night to have you over in 2 months, will that work for you?" I feel like that would be a insult to them that we can't find time before that.

I guess I don't know what my point is. I am so stuck in the chaos that I can't do anything, does that make any sense? I don't even know where to start. I can't keep my house clean because I am so overwhelmed. Fly lady would say start with a clean sink, right Shalisa? :) It feels really pathetic that I am a stay at home mom and I can't even keep my house clean.

I think I need some serious organization in my life.

clams

Yesterday we went to the farmers market. We got some yummy (and local) food. Last night we had clams, oysters (I say ick, but Justin and Judah say yum!), asparagus, and salad. It was Judah's first shellfish experience and he loved them!

my little piggy

He sure knows how to eat a dilly bar!
The second picture makes my laugh out loud every single time I look at it!

the finer things in life

Today I taught Judah something very important: how to dip graham crackers in frosting. Yummy!
Here is a short video of it. He likes looking at himself on the computer screen so he gets a little distracted at times!



Yes, it is 2:30 and he is still in his pj's, I am too if you must know. :) We have had a lazy day.

Now he is just scooping the frosting out with his hands...let me try to get a video of that.




It's homemade frosting and it's cream cheese, so it's perfectly healthy for him, right??? :)

happy birthday uncle dano (now a day late)

Today is my brother Danny's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!



I had a different picture up, but changed my mind...it's my favorite picture of Danny, but wasn't sure how he would feel about it!



This was originally to be posted yesterday, but I got interrupted and never got back to it...so here it is a day late. :(

how to comment

Dear family,

I know you all have been dying to leave comments on my blog, but none of you have been able to figure out how. I'm a little suspicious of that...but here it is for you.

How to post a comment.

1. At the bottom of each post you will see something that looks like this:
Posted by kristi at 12:04 PM 0 comments
If other people have commented then the 0 before comments could be a different number.
Notice that the "0 comments" is in blue, that is where you want to click.

2. Now you will be on a different page, on the right hand side will be a box. Above the box it says "leave your comment". Click in this box and type your comment. Be sure to leave your name at the end of it so I know it was you.

3. Most of you will have to click the little "anonymous" circle. If you have a gmail account there is a different way to do it, but for now just click "anonymous".

4. Click the orange button that says "post your comment".

5. That's it.


Let's practice:

Is this Judah or Cohen?




I am expecting to hear from ALL of you. :)

Grandma, grandpa, and mom - you will have to go to my actual blog, you can't comment from your reader/e-mail in-box.

Thank you,
Kristi

pepsi

There is a pretty good deal on Pepsi product 12 packs at Target. They are 5 for $15 and then you get a $5 gift card back. On A Full Cup they have $1 off of 2 Pepsi products.

My mom, grandparents, uncle, and aunt drink diet pepsi and I never have it at our house. They always bring their own. I have been wanting to have some on hand for when they come over, but I can't believe how expensive it is. I thought this was a good deal. I bought 3 diet pepsi's and 2 regular. We occasionally drink pepsi, no aspartame for us. :)

So I got 5 - 12 packs for $15 minus 2 - $1 off coupons, for a total of $13 and I got a $5 gift card. If you figure that in, then my total was $8 for 5 - 12 packs. Which comes out to 1.60 cents per 12 pack. They were regular price $4.99, so I think I did pretty good!

sunnyday

We sure enjoyed the sun today, I hope everyone else did too!

our littlest-big boy

Today Cohen had his 4 month checkup. He turned 4 months on the 28th of March, but we wanted to wait for dad to get home so he could come with us.

15 1/2 pounds and 26 1/2 inches






...and yes, Justin ended up on the couch at 2:30 last night. What happened to my good sleepers???

I'll take sleep please

I love sleep. Nothing is more frustrating to me than my sleep being interrupted. I am lucky to have kids that sleep through the night early on, Cohen hasn't been eating at night for over 2 months. He was sleeping through the night, with the occasional loss of Larry which is easy to pop back in and go back to sleep.

At the ocean the plan was for Cohen to sleep with me and Judah to sleep in the pack and play. All 3 nights Judah ended up in bed with me and Cohen. At the Great Wolf Lodge we had a rough night, you can read my other post to hear about that. So, I was really looking forward to sleeping in my bed last night. With Justin, and without any kids. Cohen refused to sleep in his bed. Justin ended up on the couch and Cohen slept with me. Both boys woke up at 6:30. I'm tired.

I'm not sure what to do about Cohen's sleeping. He sleeps really well if he falls asleep in his crib. If he falls asleep in someones arms and gets put in his bed then he usually wakes up often in the night, if not the moment he is laid down. I have done a modified cry it out with him. It has been effective, but it takes time and patience. Both of which I am often lacking by the end of the day. It's like Cohen just needs me. I don't want to be insensitive and a big meanie and force him to sleep by himself, he is just a little boy. I am really torn on it. I rocked Judah to sleep for a long time, almost up to a year old I think. And he outgrew that. But he also slept good once he got put in his bed. Cohen doesn't.

Tonight we have small group at our house which is always a interesting night for bedtime with the boys. Maybe tomorrow night we can start back into getting Cohen into his own bed.

I hope I don't sound really insensitive. I love my boys and I love spending time with them and cuddling them. I just need a break sometime and I look forward to sleeping as a time to refresh. I will gladly tend to their needs in the middle of the night, if there is something that they really need. But if they just won't sleep, or won't sleep in their bed for nights on end then that it what frustrates me.

home

Being home is nice.

We were going to stay tonight too, but Judah had another case of the runny poo so we decided to come home. He is still acting normal, maybe a little tired but there is a reason for that I will write about in a minute. I really don't think he is sick, I am not sure what the problem is.

Last night was rough. It looked like it was going to be great, but it went quickly downhill. I fell asleep around 10 or so and Justin stayed up on his computer. He got up to sit at the table at some point so he could plug his computer in. Judah woke up at 11:30 and I think would have fallen back asleep if he hadn't seen Justin. I'm just going to make a long story short, Judah didn't fall back asleep until 2 and I had to sleep with Cohen in one bed while Justin slept in another. I am tired. I am usually a very patient person with my kids, but middle of the night times like that frustrate me a lot. He didn't want to lay with me, but he didn't want to lay in the crib either. Eventually he decided he wanted to go "night-night" in the crib. He sure does have a mind of his own.

Today was fun. We took both boys swimming again. Judah went down the slides again. At breakfast he saw the slides through the window and kept saying "wee!" I think that confirmed that he had fun on the slides. :) He went down a bigger slide (still a definite kiddie slide), Justin stood at the top to help him down and I stood at the bottom to catch him. Justin gave him a big push and somehow on the way down Judah got turned the wrong way and came down on his back, head first. He went under the water pretty good, but didn't have as much of a melt-down as I thought he would. He just said "no-no" when we tried to get him to go again.

My quick comments about the experience as a whole are:

~Check in sucks. There has to be a better way for them to do it.

~The elevators are really slow. Too many people and too few elevators I think. Luckily we were only on the 4th floor so we took the stairs a lot.

~ I was surprised by the unfinishedness of some things. There was a guy doing sheet rocking (or something like that) in the stairway, unfinished electrical work in most hallways, unfinished landscaping, and some of the areas looked like they hadn't been decorated yet. None of these things bothered me or hindered our time there, but it just seemed strange to me. It seems like they would have finished those things before they opened. They are charging a lot of money to stay there and they have a reputation to uphold, so it just really surprised me to see those things. Definitely not what I expected.

~ I was surprised by the niceness of all the employees. I can't emphasize this enough. They had a lot of employees and I was impressed with all of them that we encountered.

~ They catered to kids very well. Obviously this is their target audience, and I thought they did a good job of being kid friendly. We had the buffet for breakfast and then had a lot of options for kids. Pop tarts, french toast sticks, little hashbrown circle things, etc. I was very impressed.


Make sure you read Justins blog for a full review. :)

great wolf lodge

We are currently at Great Wolf Lodge. Grandma Cindy was supposed to be here with us, but wasn't able to come to Washington. :( But she still sent us here, thank you Grandma Cindy! We miss you and wish you were here. We are looking forward to seeing you later this month.

I have to say the check in process was one of the worst hours of my life. No, I am not exaggerating, it really was that bad for me. First of all it looks like there isn't enough parking for all the cars. Cars are parked EVERYWHERE. It is so chaotic just looking at the parking lot that you begin to get nervous about what you will find inside. There is more parking around the back and it wasn't very full, so I am not sure why people were parking in the places they were.

They have you pull up to the front door to check in like most places do. There were probably 10 other cars already parked there. Justin just went in because there were signs saying "no parking, do not leave car unattended". There was a really long line inside and it took an hour from the time he left the car until he came back. Within that time Cohen spit up (or threw up) on me twice. There was a lot of it involved. All over him, my coat, my jeans, and the seat. (he was on my lap by this point, he doesn't last long in his car seat in a stopped car) Then I heard Judah rumbling from the back seat. And then I smelled him. I knew it was going to be a bad one so I figured I better tend to it soon so it didn't overflow. Too late. It is tough to change a diaper in the car when he has poo all over his pants, shirt, socks, and dripping down his legs. Yuck.

Let me just stop here and say that from those incidents it would appear my kids are sick. They are both acting completely normal, so I really don't think they are. Just my lucky day I guess.

On top of all that, for some reason the car alarm, which we don't even have a alarm so I'm not sure what was happening, but every time I would open the door when the doors were locked (which was twice) the horn would start honking.

There were of course more little things within that hour that tried my patience, but I think you get the general idea of my time.

We are having fun now though. Cohen went swimming for the first time ever. He didn't cry so I assume he liked it! Judah is doing great in the water. He was even going down one of the kiddie slides by himself. He isn't sure about the spraying water, and there is a lot of spraying water!

We're looking forward to more swimming tomorrow. For now Judah is asleep in the pack and play, Cohen is asleep on the bed next to us, and Justin and I are both on our computers.

Heres a few pictures. I'm not very happy with the quality of them. Hopefully I'll get some better ones tomorrow. I had my camera on the wrong setting part of the time, so a lot of my pictures were blurry.

more ocean pictures

Our last full day at the beach. Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Jo came down to see us today.

We miss our dada/husband. :(