School day school day...

Alissa found Daddy's giant screwdriver and thought it was the neatest thing ever. Had to get a picture.. :)
Alissa told me to get a picture of this.. poor dog :)

So tomorrow is Alissa's first day of school. Which explains why it is midnight and I still can't sleep, so figured why not blog. Hehe.. She bought a new backpack today and picked a toy for show and tell tomorrow because every Thursday will be show and tell. She wanted to bring her pegasis horse she got for her birthday. I will be sure and take pictures tomorrow of her ready for school. She will be going to school every Tuesday and Thursday from 9 - 11:30. I don't know what I am going to do with myself!! My plan is to dig the old jogging stroller out of the garage -- it hasn't seen any action since having Jonathan because we switched to the ol' Sit N Stand double stroller... and I am going to take Jon and Zena to the park for a walk if it isn't too miserable outside. It has been cold and snowy the last week. We shall see.

I better try and get some sleep!! I have some great pics from today but haven't gotten them off of my camera yet. Soon I promise!! :)

Four.

Alissa had an awesome 4th birthday party!! It was soo much fun! Before I get to the party, here is Alissa before leaving for the swimming pool:

She is wearing the outfit GG sent her for her birthday -- she LOVES the Birthday Princess button. Perfect! And Jonathan wasn't left out -- he got a gift from GG too.. again, how fitting!!

So we headed out to Dallas Aquatic Center at 5 for some swimming. This is when we just got to the pool.. Alissa and Sasha sitting together very eager to get wet!!

This is my favorite picture of the night. Is that a happy girl or what?! I was so glad her wet suit still fits her.. she loves it! Oh, story of the wet suit.. we went to a garage sale last summer with GG and found this. I think I paid under $10 for it.. can't remember but it was real cheap. Awesome.

Here is Alissa after swimming for awhile and eating some cake -- she was getting pretty tired.

And here she is opening some presents. Lots of fun.
I didn't get a lot of pictures at the party because I was swimming with the kiddos and gave my mom my camera -- she was kind enough to get a couple shots for me. She got a ton of pics with her fancy camera -- I haven't seen these yet. I love this video!! Had to share..

The kids ended up swimming until 9pm when they closed the pool. They didn't want to get out of the water even then. Alissa stayed awake for the drive home - barely. When we got home both kids went right to sleep.. Alissa wanted me to take a picture of her "pretending" to sleep:

And then I snuck in a got one of her (about 1 minute later) REALLY asleep!! Hehe.. All and all it was a great day. The best part for me was that it was a very low maintenance party -- I didn't have to do any activities to amuse the kids, they just went swimming. Perfect.

Three.

I thought this was a fitting video on this last day of Alissa being three years old. She is so big and has a wonderful singing voice :) I am looking forward to the four year old journey.. she starts preschool Tuesday at Judson Baptist.. I thought I was going to wait until next year, but she keeps asking to go to school and she is ready so we are going for it. I will post more later..

Ahh the Theater

First off -- Dr Laura was AWESOME!! I am still in a daze. The craziest thing -- we didn't know where our seats were, the tickets were kind of confusing and we had never been to the Newmark Theater before.. well.. we were in the middle of the SECOND ROW! Seriously people, I could have reached out and touched her we were so ridiculously close. It was so crazy because she made eye contact with us (my mom and I) a LOT during the show. She truly is my hero and to be that close.. I'm just speechless. It was perfect.

The day after Dr. Laura I got to see Peter Pan the Broadway production with Alissa and Bethany. It was great!! Very well done performance. Funny story though.. it was the first Act and probably the best part of the play -- when Peter is teaching Wendy and the boys to fly.. and Alissa starts to wiggle around.. oook.. then she says "Mommy, I need to go potty." Umm.. a few problems with this #1 THIS IS A VERY COOL PART OF THE PLAY!! We don't want to miss THIS!! #2 The theater is dark #3 we are in the middle of the row, not the end.. and the Elsinore theater is not known for its leg room (think movie theater and then take away 6 inches of leg room).. Ok, so she says she needs to go.. I play it cool and say, "Ok honey intermission is coming soon can you hold it for just a little bit?" No response.. more wiggling.. then, "Mommy I really need to go potty NOW".. oh boy.. so I get up, hold Alissa up over people and proceed to plow my way to the isle.. stepping on people, climbing over people.. shamelessly making my way to the potty. So she goes.. great.. now we reenter the theater and truthfully I was too mortified to go back to our seats (yeah right lets walk all over these poor people again) so we sat in the isle and waited for intermission. When we finally returned to our seats I made sure to apologize to all of the people we trampled on our way out.. sigh.. motherhood. Besides that the play was great and Alissa's favorite was the tick-tocking alligator.. I know I know.. you are all shocked. :) We were a little bummed in the end that the cast didn't sign autographs, but we got over it..

On the Monday!! Monday we sent off a second care package to our new soldier buddy (funny to think that as we send that one off he is just receiving the first). This time Alissa wanted to give him a "lucky rock".. so we did with a little note explaining the pretty little shiny rock. Hheehe.. mostly the package was filled with snacks of various kinds, a magazine, the Sunday comics and sports page.. just odds and ends and of course a letter telling him more about our family. I am curious is he will ever write back.. I haven't asked him to.. and part of me hopes he won't -- what if we don't like him?! LOL.. Anyways, this has been a fun project for our family.

Tuesday was ASL class. Alissa has been going to the preschool ASL class and just having a great time. She is fascinated with the fact that some people are deaf and some aren't. My class was great too, lots of info. The neat thing is my mom is in the same class with me this time -- how cool is that?!

Today was a lazy day... Papa came over and hung out with us.. oh, and we went cake shopping for Alissa's party Saturday. I decided I am not going to spend $30 on a cake.. instead I am going to make my own! Woohoo! I have a few ideas floating around in my head.. I am basically going to try and make a 3D castle cake. Wish me luck!! By the way, I just heard on the news that is could snow Saturday.. GREAT.. that would be perfect.. sigh.. I really hope it holds off until Sunday so I don't have to cancel her party. Last year for her 3rd b-day she got REALLY sick and I had to cancel her party and reschedule. Not fun. As much as I love snow I really don't want to have to reschedule!!!! We shall see.

Now for my video. This was the cutest thing ever. Jonathan has a thing with dancing when he is excited. When Matt comes home or Papa comes over, or when we are heading out to Grandma's house. I finally caught one on film!! I missed the first part of the dance where he was frantically signing "Grandma, Grandma" but you can see the rest.

By the time he finished with his little spinning show he fell over he was so dizzy!! I love it. This is definitely in the top 10 of my favorite videos.

Tonight is the night!

I am sooo excited! Going to see Dr. Laura tonight in Portland. YIPPEE! :)

There has been a lot happening since my last post.. One interesting event.. Matt and I went to a surprise birthday party a couple days ago for a friend of his.. it was a lot of fun! UNTIL.. the birthday boy (turned 30) passed out and was rushed to the hospital. (That is the very short version of the nights events). It was an abrupt end to the party.. he is since out of the hospital and doing OK the cause was some sort of chemical imbalance. Weird. I must say it was the first party I have been to where the paramedics were called. The interesting thing was half the people there were cops and the other half fire fighters so at least everyone was well prepared.



The kids continue to grow and change every day. Alissa practises writing her letters every day now and is getting very good at it. Jonathan just started giving kisses. It is soo cute because he pokes you on the cheek a few times before plopping a great big kiss on you.



Matt is working day shift and we are LOVING it.. seems like he is here a lot more.. must be something psychological because technically he is here the same amount of time, but the fact that he sleeps at night with us is so much better.



We spent a couple of his days off on a little family project we have been working on. I'll tell ou about that later.

On the the pictures!! Here is Jonathan signing "POOP" and Alissa's oh so perfect reaction. LOL
And Alissa with her favorite stuffed animal, "Black Beauty" She looks way too old in the picture. Sigh.

And finally, Alissa and I. Wanted you to see how quickly "semi-permanent" color fades!! Hehe.. hair is getting back to natural quick.

Soldier

So the news of today -- we adopted a soldier!! :) I have been wanting to do this for awhile, and a friend of mine has a brother-in-law in Iraq and passed on a few names of men who never receive mail. On of the guys had the last name Davis!! Talk about meant to be. So today Alissa and I shopped (yeah Jon helped a bit too) for goodies for "our soldier" and Alissa made some drawings for him. We packaged it all up and hopefully he receives it soon!! Very good way to support the troops, and Alissa can be an active participant. She knows that soldiers "are like policemen who go far away to get bad guys". Awesome.

Here is Jonathan feeding Daddy goodies yesterday:

And this morning we woke up and guess what?! SNOW!! Not a bunch but we were all happy. The kids were so eager to get out and play in it we just put on coats and boots over our pjs and went outside. You can see Jon just woke up with his sleep-swollen eyes :) Here he is pointing to the snow, just in case you didn't see it!! ;)

And Alissa running around having a blast. I love the snow.

Oh! Before I forget, the tattoo blog is updated if you'd like to see pics.

There is so much more to discuss, but alas I am exhausted. I'll update more later.

Still around..

Busy busy.. just popping in to say I am still alive. A bunch to update but I am wiped out. Been running around like crazy getting ready for Alissa's birthday party. It is the long awaited "princess" party!! WOOHOO!! Last year she wanted Spiderman so this is big progress for her!! :) We are going to have a pool party in Dallas at the Aquatic Center... really looking forward to it!! I decided to do "Evites" this time to save stamps plus it sends automatic reminders -- perfect!! I can't believe my baby will be four.. sigh. I'm sure I will write more on that subject later ;)

Matt had his tattoo treatment on the 11th -- I will update the tattoo sight tomorrow with pictures. Ouch.

Let's see.. latest Jonathan development: Now he refused to go to sleep unless mommy AND daddy lay down with him!! LOL.. I'm so glad Matt is off graveyard for awhile!! Speaking of.. found out he doesn't start his new job until March which is GREAT news for us because we can accumulate more overtime and stash some money away to get us by.

Alissa continues to grow and develop socially -- she makes friends wherever we go. She is probably going to be that "popular" girl in high school I always wished I could be. I'm so proud of her and her confidence.

I will load some pictures off my camera tomorrow so this blog doesn't look too plain ;) Until then.. still alive.. barely.

Take care.

Date Night

I have to tell you that last night Matt and I had the best date night ever. His mom was kind enough to watch the kids short notice and we headed to Spirit Mountain Casino for seafood buffet night. It took us about 45 minutes to get there and we only had to wait in line about 5 minutes to get seated and start in on chow. It was awesome! It cost 17.95/each and was worth every penny to watch Matt indulge in more seafood choices then I have seen in one place.. maybe ever?

After dinner we went to play the slots.. we like the penny slots, lasts longer :) We wasted some money there and then played a community slot.. where if someone hit bonus all players got to play monopoly and the everyone got a prize. It was really fun. Matt won $35 and said we should try something crazy with it. Soo.. first we tried our hand at blackjack and lost terribly. I ended up with $4.50 and he has $6.. guess I should mention we brought $100 of Christmas money to use and that was it. So we were getting pretty broke. So I told Matt to get me a $5 chip and I went to the roulette table where I promptly lost the $5 on black.. oops.

This is where our night gets real interesting and fun. We broke our own budget rule and I told Matt to give me the $20 I knew he had hidden away in his wallet :) With a "trust me babe" lol.. with it I went back to the roulette table and played the numbers.. I played kids b-days and birth weight and guess what?????? I walked away from the table with $140!! WOOHOO!! :) I gave Matt $20 to replenish that which I stole.. then let him blow $20 on a high stakes slot pull.. so all in all we left the casino with the exact same $100 we walked in with!! Free dinner and entertainment, does it get any better than that?!?!?!

It was fun. Lots and lots of fun. We don't get a whole lot of alone time and we enjoyed every second. Poor kids, we didn't get back to pick them up until 10:30 -- they were pooped but had a great time at grandma's house.

Here is the promised video :) Jonathan dancing and watching Grover.

Alissa is growing up..

Wow.. I am so ridiculously proud of Alissa right now. First off, let me explain that I have not worked with Alissa at all on writing letters.. we have been learning what letters say and reading for awhile.. but it didn't occur to me that she would be old enough to write. Well.. today she grabs a crayon and out of the blue goes to Jon's highchair and doodles this on it:

She grabs my arm and says, "Look Mommy!! I wrote MOM!!".. umm.. I was floored.. apparently she was letting me know she is more then ready to start writing.. underneath MOM notice the ALI in the left corner. Sheesh.. this is her first try I guess I'm lagging. So we sat down and practiced writing more letters and she is doing just awesome. She wrote a "letter" for Daddy the said, "DADDY ALISSA" lol.. she was sooo proud of this and gave it to him right away when he got home.. to say the least he was surprised. It's funny, they say kids will learn despite you.. how right they are. So I have come to the conclusion that she is ready for preschool and I will have her in next year (or sooner if there is an opening at the preschool I want). Poor Ali is my guinea pig child -- I will know better with Jon and start writing sooner.. I mean, her artwork has always been terrific (staying in the lines and such) but I didn't even think.. anyhow, you get the point.

Moving on! Jonathan is really starting to be more verbal, and his signing is out of control. If I sign something one time he has it down. Amazing. Funny thing is that Alissa is the only one who can get him to repeat any word. It is so cute, she says "Jon say___" and he does!! I try, forget it mom. His new favorite word is"Chai" hehe.. I gave him a sip of my Chai tea.. you've never seen little eyes brighten up so quick! Umm.. guess I need to get some decaf chai to splash into his milk, maybe then he will drink regular milk? Sigh.. who knows. I would like to stop nursing him sometime before he is 3 :)

Pancakes anyone?

Let me start by backing up a bit... as always I wait too long to post and I have to catch up!! :)

This past week has been fun, we got to hang out a lot with my good friend Colleen because she had the week off of work.. of course Colleen's daughter Sasha is Ali's best bud so everyone was happy. We spent time at the indoor park and library with them.

Speaking of the library, every week Alissa gets to check out a backpack from the library. They have toddler and preschool backpacks and each one contains three books, a toy, a movie, and a music cd and they are all themed. Last week Ali picked spiders (I know, big surprise) and there was a move (Anasazi or something like that), a cute cd with a ton of fun songs (one being "There's a spider on the floor"), a spider puppet, and three books about spiders. Tooo fun. Anyhow.. all week Bethany has been in the hospital with pancreatitis (I don't feel so bad, even spel checker doesn't know how to fix this one) and I thought it was cute that Alissa chose the hospital themed backpack. It has the usual 3 books and cd, and it is a Curious George movie when Curious George goes to the hospital. I just love that the library offers these.. not only is it easy to grab your books and go, but the kids LOVE that they an wear the backpacks. Ok.. I'm babbling.. sorry.

So Alissa got yet another package from her GG.. it was funny because two things happened different this time.. #1: We saw the package by the front dolor when we pulled up and Alissa started yelling "I GOT SOMETHING FROM GG" over and over.. lol.. she was so excited I was really hoping it was for her!! Hehe.. luckily it was. :) #2: She snatched up the package ran into the house and said, "Mommy, hurry, get your camera so I can open it!!" I about died laughing.. I guess I am a little camera obsessed. Judging from the look on her face, think she liked it??

I don't understand where she gets her love of creepy crawlies, lizards, all those things.. but hey.. go with what works right? She had lots of kisses for the lizard!! :)

Let me fast forward to today. We woke up this morning and Alissa decided she wanted to make breakfast for everyone. Okie dokie.. so she put on her apron and went to work making blueberry pancakes.. yumm..
And when all was done here is the proud chef holding her milk and a pancake.
Of course, I couldn't partake in the pancakes thanks to this silly no carb diet.. but oh well, they looked terrific! You know.. Jonathan gave me a look that really summed up my feelings on skipping all the yummy carbs today.. here it is:

Yep.. that about says it.

Mr. Trouble in action..

I am much too tired to blog tonight :) So here is a quick video. This is Jonathan's new trick.. He can get incredibly resourceful. The monkey.