1/31/2006

Reading and the girls

Picked up a book at my library the other day called “The ACLU vs. America, Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values” (Sears & Osten) I’m only through the first chapter, but it really steams me up. If you don’t know much about the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) agenda, read this book. Find out how they are twisting the Constitution (which was written by people who were deeply committed to their Judeo-Christian belief system) to fit into their own personal anti Judeo-Christian agenda. Burns me up. I don’t want to go into it.
Anyway. The girls have a new thing. They like to be lifted up to the ceiling fans, so their heads bump into the chains that hang down. They call it “bonk head” they both giggle every time we bonk their heads on the little chains. Go figure. They have their 2 year old check up today. I’ll let you know how it goes.

1/30/2006

Updates…

Right now:
Two girls, a blankie and a pen. In my lap. Fighting over the pen, both trying to write on the same piece of paper. Louisa wants to color on Annie’s hair. Annie’s sitting on Louisa’s blankie, and Louisa wants it back. Annie just sneezed all over the keyboard (and my hands). And yet, I keep typing. Now that’s determination for ya. Attempt to put one down – ha! Not going to happen, so I sit here trying to juggle the whole thing until Louisa has mercy on Mom and gets down. Meanwhile, Alex is yelling at me because I can’t get up to help him tie balloons to a high chair – something about ornaments on a Christmas tree. (I dunno what that means…)
Just an ordinary moment in my life.
So my weekend. I can’t remember. Friday I took the kids over to my parents house to visit with my grandmother who was in town for a few days. Saturday, was my normal errand running event. I discovered a new scrapbook store here in town, (so I had to stop in and check out the competition). It’s always nice to find some new goodies. I ate lunch with my dad, then was on to the normal less than fun errands. Sunday we woke up for church, came home, threw the kids in bed for a nap, so Jory and I could work on our scrapbooks a little. Sunday evening we met with Cathy and her parents for dinner at Applebee’s. It’s always good to get together with them… Then we took the kids over to Meijers to ride in the shopping carts (they’re a cheep date, what can I say). Annie was so excited. As we were walking in, we went past the big row of carts and her eyes got really big. “buggy mama? Please? Mama, buggy? My buggy?” Absolutely adorable. How could I say no…

1/26/2006

She’s an html monster.

Feeling quite proud of myself this morning. I figured out how to mix up some of the stuff in my sidebar. We’ve got some new pics of the munchkins, and some new content titles, (just for fun) and Jory taught me how to move my title down a little. Feeling pretty proud of myself for figuring everything out… How does it look? Next time I decide to transfer blog templates remind me to copy out all my customizing ok?? Also feeling pretty proud of myself because I can do something my dad can’t! ha!
Yes I realize I spend way too much time on this danged thing. But I think I’m done tweaking it for a while. (Only because I can’t figure out how to do the other customizing that I want!)
So I’ll babble about life for a little while just to make this post worth the read…
Kid’s are good. Louisa got her bangs trimmed yesterday. Other than that, it’s a typical morning in my house - they’re in the process of destroying everything in sight. Right now there’s a pile of little girl clothes about 2 ft high next to where I’m sitting. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t here when I sat down.
Alex keeps begging to play with the play doh. I won’t let him because I’m afraid he’ll get burnt out on it and there goes my ace in the hole.
Jory’s co-worker Phil was thrilled that he made a mention in our blog, so here’s another shout out to him, just to make his day – everyone say “hey Phil!”
Enough babbling, time to go be responsible.

1/25/2006

Ta da!!!!!!!

Look at my new banner thingy! I've been working on it all week long, and finally got it to work. The image needs some tweaking, but I got the image to show up, which was the hard part. The best part is that I figured it out without jory's help!!! He always has to help me with my codes (he's fluent in HTML) but not this time! Sorry babe, looks like you're out of a job...

1/24/2006

The best invention known to man…

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Hats off to Phil (Jory’s co-worker) who suggested getting our kids a play-doh set for the girls birthday. Yesterday the girls played with it for over an hour, and Alex for 2 ½ hours. (which would have been longer if I hadn’t made him clean up for dinner). Alex kept rolling the doh flat and then the mean alligator would came along and mess it all up. It was a vicious cycle I’m telling you.
Anyway, I have a couple of normal, everyday kidisms to share:
The girls current favorite saying: “No, No, No, STOP!” gee, wonder where they learned that one.
Lately Alex is in to building houses out of my kitchen chairs and blankets. Construction starts first thing in the morning, and I’m not allowed to tear it down until it’s time to eat. But if he throws a fit when it’s time to take it apart, he looses the right to build one the next day. Major bummer to an architecturally minded three year old.
The girls now can manipulate door handles. The can both turn the knob, and twist the lock button into place. So you can imagine how much fun I’m having springing the girls from their self imposed prisons. So far they’ve only locked me in the garage twice. Think they’re trying to tell me something??

1/23/2006

Birthday weekend

We did the birthday thing all weekend long. Friday we had our family party, with just the five of us. We had lasagna (a favorite in this house) and birthday cupcakes for dinner, and opened presents after dinner. The girls got a huge collection of play doh toys – they were a big hit.
On Saturday morning we took the kids on an outing. (which is a rare occasion in this house – too much of a hassle). We went to the library, and then to Meijers so that the girls could ride in a shopping cart. (which they love, and ask to do on a regular basis). Sadly Annie fell asleep before we got to the store, so she didn’t get to ride in the buggy. You better believe we heard about it when she woke up. “Buggy please???? Me buggy?” Poor thing.
We had our big family get together with my parents, my grandmother, and our friend Cathy. We had dinner at Bob Evans, and cake and ice cream for desert. The girls got some more fun toys… I think their favorite so far is the baby bed that (I think) my dad made, when we were little.

1/20/2006

Two turning two



Happy birthday to the cutest set of twins I know.

(I wanted to post this pic this morning but was distracted by some blog construction - bear with us)

1/18/2006

A little better… Maybe

So we’re doing a little better in our house today. I’m feeling quite a bit better, we all slept well last night, today is a new day.
I managed to get Louisa to pee on the potty yesterday, but she turned around and had an accident 5 minutes later. Ugh. I made the mistake of telling her she could have candy if she peed in the potty. Now she thinks she gets candy every time she sits there, and throws a fit when I don’t give it to her. Oh, and Alex insists on getting candy every time he pees on the potty (I don’t think so!) how do you explain to a 3 year old that you don’t get rewards for something you already know how to do. Who thought this reward system was a good idea anyway? He’s obviously never met the Petersons…
It snowed a little in the night, I might take the kids out to play in it… I need some good pics of the girls together (HA!!!) for their baby books. Then again maybe not. I swear these kids are going to send me to the loony bin. You don’t want to know. Really, you don’t.

1/17/2006

From bad to worse…

So I mentioned yesterday that we’re feeling a little under the weather… well my “under the weather” has turned into a full-blown sinus cold/headache. Blech! On top of that I have cramps this morning. Fun fun fun. The ol’ one-two punch of being a woman. Anyone else get sick around “that time of the month?”
Remember how I said the kids were sleeping well for me lately? Heh. Let me discuss my night with you. 10 pm just as I’m crawling into bed, Annie wakes up with a bad dream, and won’t settle back down. Jory brings her into sleep with us, which means that she flops around like a fish and keeps me awake until about 2 when she wakes up and starts crying because she doesn’t know where she is. I make Jory take her back to bed, and she goes back to sleep. At this point in the night I have a screaming headache and end up taking a handful of aspirin just to get back to sleep. At 4 am, the girls are both awake jumping around like maniacs in their beds and singing “mommyyyyyy” in their cutest “get me out of my bed” voice. Which I didn’t.
Louisa started potty training yesterday. Instead of doing both at the same time, I’m doing one then the other, because I don’t want to have to keep track of who went when. Plus I figured if I got one done, she’d convince her sister to join the big kid club. So far it’s going ok, no progress, but she’s not fighting me like Alex did. I’ll keep ya posted.
Last night Jory and I started planned our anniversary trip. It’ll be 5 years in June, so we thought we’d do something fun to celebrate. We’ve never taken a trip for our anniversary, so we thought we would this year. (yes, this is in addition to jory’s road trip on his motorcycle, and my 12 days of no children – lots of vacationing in the Peterson house this year) We’re looking at a 4 day trip to southern Kentucky. We’re looking at Cumberland falls state park and Kingdom Come State park. Anyone ever been to either? Both places look like they’ll have some great hiking trails…

1/16/2006

All the news that’s fit to print…

Happy Monday everyone! Our weekend was so typical it’s not funny. I ran errands on Saturday, went to church on Sunday.
Yesterday I spent most of my afternoon working on class ideas for my store. My April class is about mini books, and I was trying to come up with some different (easy) binding techniques for constructing books. I have one idea completely formulated, and another sketched out… if I can find hinges for a good price I might have a 3rd one set up, but we’ll see…
The girls and I are all feeling a little under the weather lately. They have runny noses, and I have a scratchy throat. The girls have been sleeping really well for me lately (Louisa fell asleep in the nursery at church that had about 10 kids screaming in it) so maybe they’ll be over their little bugs soon so that Alex and Jory can get it…
The girls birthday is on Friday, so I have a lot of stuff to do for them… Including buying more presents… (we have one, think they’ll agree to share it?? That’d be a NO!) I need to get my act together, I have no idea what needs to be done for their party. Ugh.

1/13/2006

Play

Yesterday was one of the nicest days we’ve had in a while. It was 50-ish and sunny. I had to take the kids out to run off some energy. To pass the time, I took some pics while they played. There were some really cute ones of Annie, some decent ones of Alex, but I didn’t get diddly of Louisa (who was mad because her siblings were hogging the “good toys”) So here’s one of Annie with the hat my dad got her for Christmas.
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1/12/2006

Random kid quirks

Alex and Louisa are suddenly pals. Alex is the bossy one (ahhhh those first born tendencies…) Louisa is the laid back one. They get along great. Annie is usually by herself, which suits her just fine. She’d rather hang out with Mom anyway.
Annie loves to sing lately. She’s always humming one little ditty or another. She loves when I sing “if your happy and you know it…”
Have I mentioned that the girls have learned the art of asking questions? Who’s that, what’s that, and a new one this morning, “are you ok?”
Oh and here’s a pic I took last week of Alex with his sunglasses, it made me laugh

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1/09/2006

Compromise? Maybe

We think we’ve reached a compromise on the vacation issue. Completely separate vacations. Jory goes off and does his 9 days on the motorcycle thing and I get four 3 day weekends off. As in I’m leaving the house. I don’t care where I go, but I’m leaving and I’m not taking any of the kids. So have I started planning my time off? You bet your buttons. At least one trip out to my parents lake house with shopping in Angola, a trip to Columbus (hopefully I can con my mother into going with me on this one) for more shopping. Haven’t decided where else yet, depends on who I can get to go with me. (Anyone up for a road trip?)
On to my other weekend news. On Saturday, Alex and I ran errands while Jory stayed home with the girls. We met my mom for lunch then he went to play at her house while I spent too much time at the scrapbook store. He and I took a quick stop at the library on the way home, nothing terribly exciting.
Sunday morning we went to church. I had a whopping 16 kids in my Sunday school class. (I’ve never had over 12 before). I was a little frantic, but things worked out fine. We had a nice lunch at Applebee’s before brought home my three whiney crabby kids who all refused to nap. I spent most of the afternoon working on a scrapbook layout and some birthday invitations for my girls birthday here in a few weeks.

1/06/2006

Negotiations round two

So after being called Gorbechev, my darling husband was more willing to discuss reasonable vacation plans last night. The idea of driving 2 vehicles across the country isn’t likely. If we can get Jake to haul one of the vehicles, there’s a chance we might do it, but we’re not relying on other people for our vacation. So here’s the current vacation plan: take a train somewhere, anywhere with scenery. We started looking at destinations last night. We are considering Glacier Nat’l Park in Montana (near where Jason and Vangie are currently living) or Provo Utah. I could be convinced to go to San Antonio, but that’s in distant 3rd right now. Anyone have any feedback? I imagine we’ll have another round of discussions here shortly.
I just have to say it… THE SUN IS SHINING! Seriously it’s been overcast here everyday for weeks, since Christmas at least. What a relief to look out the window and see blue skies again.
So the other day I talked a little about resolutions, as I look at what I wrote I think I gave a cop-out answer. It’s true that my life is busy, but there are always ways to improve life. So (in the words of the Christian band, The Supertones) TODAY I make my resolution. I thought of two last night.
1. Beef up on my knowledge of world history. I never took a world history course in school and I feel like I’m missing out. I don’t need to be an expert, I just want to know the difference between the Balts, the Normans, the Celts and all those other groups that I’m rather clueless about.
2. Be more disciplined. I can’t say which areas of my life need more discipline, they all need to be beefed up. Everything I do can be done better. For one thing I can drag myself out of bed before 9:00 am. I can exercise, I can learn to cook new things and still have time for my kids, scrapbooking and everything else that’s important to me.
So now that they’re in writing I’ll be more likely to do them right? That’s the theory anyway.

1/05/2006

Vacation negotiation and other news

Last night Jory and I sat down to discuss our vacation plans for the year. We have completely incompatible ideas on how we should spend our time off. Here’s Jory’s vacation agenda: take off in April on the motorcycle, drive down to see his brother in Missouri, then on to visit his parents in New Mexico, toodle around the state on his bike, come back through Texas and Kentucky – about 5 days on a motorcycle. Which leaves me at home alone on baby duty for 5 days strait while he plays. I don’t think so. So in order to be included on this little vacation, I can either learn to like motorcycles or drive separately in the van – neither of which sound like fun to me.
My vacation agenda: get rid of the kids for more than an hour or two (she says as she sits with two wiggly toddlers fighting in her lap while she tries to type) and spend some time WITH Jory, maybe do a little sight seeing. I don’t care where we go (except Boston!) and I don’t really care how long we’re gone.
So we’re in the middle of trying to find a compromise that may or may not include the motorcycle and me not being by myself for the entire vacation. There are still a lot of variables – such as weather, where we’re going, who’ll watch the kids, Jory’s work schedule and a few other unpredictable factors. We’re scheduled to have another round of talks this evening. Hopefully Gorbechev will bring a more acceptable package to the table…
Now on to the slightly more mundane news…
The other day we let Annie sit at the computer and push the buttons. She was being so good about being gentle and not pounding away, so we let her play. Well now she thinks she owns the thing. Every time I sit down here to type, she’s begging to get up and type some more. Ever try to type with a toddler helping? It’s not that much fun. Really, it’s not.
The girls vocabulary has just exploded lately. This morning I heard Louisa call from her bed “Mommy! Get up please!” That’s the longest sentence I think I’ve heard out of either of them yet. Communication is a good thing.

1/01/2006

Resolutions

A new year always comes with resolutions, right? So I’ve been trying to think of some good resolutions. Do this better, be a better that sorta stuff… My problem is that my life is so cram-packed full that when I say “I’m going to make more time for (resolution a)” that means that I have to take time away from another interest in my life. If I say I want a cleaner house that means that I have to take time away from my children, scrapbooking, social responsibilities and so forth to clean. I’m pretty careful about how I spend my time, and I don’t waste much, so maybe I’ll just say prioritizing my time better.
Last spring I made myself a long term to do list of things I want to accomplish over the next 10 years, and I’m happy to say that 4 of my things for this year were accomplished last year. Conversely, I have 3 things on my list from last year that never got finished, so I guess they’re moving to this years list. They’re mostly home related projects… (all of which include spending money - yuck!)

A general update

Life has been good in the Peterson household for the last few weeks. Gramma and Papa Peterson were here all week. They arrived Christmas night and left this morning around 4:00 am. The kiddos all loved having some extra people to play with, and it’s always a good thing around here when the adults outnumber the children.
Christmas was great. I think Alex’s favorite part was the Christmas dinner. I think he’s prepared us a Christmas dinner (in his kitchen) every day this week. Cherry soup – mmmmmm. The girls love the dolls that my mom got them, and the puppets that we gave them (yes, we managed to find some that didn’t make their own noises). Jory’s favorite gift was his rain suit (for riding in the rain on his motorcycle), and I think my favorite gift was the tripod my parents gave me.

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