On Sunday, Ryan and Cole were invited to a bowling birthday party.  It was the first time they had ever been bowling, and the were oh-so excited to go.

Ryan thought it was great, he got to put on the ever-popular bowling shoes.  Cole wanted a pair too, but they didn’t have a pair small enough, so the lady said he could wear his Crocs.

Cole gave it his best shot, but I think he is still a little too young to get the whole concept.  One of the workers brought out a ramp, where Cole could just roll the ball down.  He liked that-but he liked moving the levers back and forth on it more than bowling.  He did slow down long enough for me to capture him with his goofy smile:

The first time Ryan was up, he placed the ball down, and then kicked it with the sole of his foot- good thing it wasn’t with his toe!  He quickly caught on, and he had a little warm up move, and one he did afterwards.  I was happy for him, that he usually knocked down several pins- he was really into it!

 The warm up

 Watching

 Doing the post-move

For some reason when it was my turn to bowl, the automated bumpers stayed up.  I haven’t bowled in such a long time, I was happy the bumper was up.  But as a testament to my awful bowling, Ryan beat me!  He’s a 4.5 year old, who had never bowled, getting a higher score than his ol’ mom- even with the bumpers up!  Guess I need to work on my bowling game-in my spare time. 

The birthday boy’s mom, mentioned to us the alley we were at, had night bowling where they turn off the lights, and light up the lanes, and all of that.  Ryan heard that, and has been asking everynight when we get to go night bowling.  We are hoping we can take him soon.

I wonder if I can have them leave the bumpers up for me.  At least it will be dark, and no one will actually see my bowling ball hit the bumper.  On the other hand, maybe I’ll have them take the bumpers down for Ryan, and leave them up for me. Then we will have an even match up.   :-) 

It is so fun to see your child enjoy something, and just have 100% fun.   Even if I am an awful bowler, it was still the best time I ever had bowling.

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

I wish I had a brilliant or at least somewhat exciting update for you, but I don’t. 

We’ve been working on the house, and trying to get everything else done in daily life that must get done, like work, errands, parent, spend time with the boys, etc.  I still haven’t started packing yet, but that is soon to change.  Joe started bringing home boxes the other day, so now that fun chore is on my plate.

I really don’t mind, but there is always way more stuff you realize you have.  I am hoping we can donate or just get rid of the stuff we haven’t used in years, and be done with it.  Like the extra microwave that has been sitting the pantry now, for eight years.  If our microwave ever broke, we had a spare.  Except it hasn’t and we have had a microwave sitting in the pantry for eight years.

I usually blog at night- but I have been so tired physically and mentally, I think I have blogger’s block.  If you don’t see very many posts here in the upcoming weeks, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth.  But with moving, fixing up the house, and the upcoming holiday season, I’m not sure how much time or motivation I will have to blog.  Please continue to check in- I know I’ll get my blogging mojo back eventually.  :-)  You can find me on Twitter, and I seem to be able to post 140 character items, much easier and regularly than actual blog posts these days.

I pinkie swear I will post pictures of the new house and the progress we have made.  Joe finished painting the boys’ rooms today, and he’s going to start on our bedroom tomorrow.  I placed the carpet order last week, and that should be installed right after Thanksgiving.  We are ordering our engineered hardwood flooring tomorrow.  We have decided on a honey hickory color which is a golden brown- not too dark or light.  We should have it around Thanksgiving.  It has to cure at room temperature for a week, so Joe should be able to install the floor, the beginning of December.

The brand we are getting has a locking system, so there is no need to glue or nail the pieces together.  Joe is optimistic he can install it in a few days, rather than a few weeks.  So it appears we are on schedule to move into the house by the end of December.  Not sure where we will end up having Christmas- in the old house, or the new one, but Ryan is already wondering about the tree this year, and how Santa will find us.  :-)  Cole has just been talking up a storm and telling us he wants Santa to bring him a dump truck.

I’m also trying to plan Ryan’s fifth birthday party, which always sneaks up on me, since it is just two weeks after Christmas.  I booked the venue this year in JULY- so that is set.  Now I just have to get save the dates out to people, and hope I’m not over the number of guests we are allowed to have.  Guess I had better double check on that.  Ryan of course, is just thrilled to be turning five.  I’m wondering where the time went, and how did my ‘baby’ become a little boy, who is just weeks away from being five years-old?

My mom is coming out for a visit the week of Christmas and will be able to spend an entire evening, and the next day with us.  I’m excited for that, and to be able to show her our new house.  Ryan and Cole are excited to bake cookies for Santa with Nana. 

So that is all we have been up to.  Stay tuned for another exciting update in the near future. 

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

I have been up to the same old, same old.  Working on the house, or watching the boys so Joe can get some tasks completed.

Trying to work at the house with the boys should be a new reality show-how much you can get done while trying to keep the boys from undoing everything you just did, or keeping them from making more work.

Over the weekend, Joe was painting the boys’ bedrooms.  Ryan just had to help, so Joe gave him a paint brush and let him paint the closet floor (which will soon have carpet).  Later, Joe had to run to the store, and I was working in our bedroom cleaning the walls, and bathroom.  I knew Ryan was upstairs, but didn’t really think to check on what he was doing.  Big mistake. 

When Joe got back from the store, he had discovered that Ryan had taken it upon himself to empty about half the container of primer on the floor in the closet.  The primer was a few inches thick!  Joe had to scrape it all out.  After we talked to Ryan about not painting unless we were in the room with him, we figured we had solved that problem.

Shortly afterwards, Cole woke up from his nap, and Joe had moved on to another bedroom.  I thought Joe knew Cole had gone upstairs, and Joe had thought I was looking after Cole.  Uh, no.  Big mistake. 

When I found Cole, he was in the closet with a big paint brush, covered from head to toe with primer.  It was all on his new fleece jacket and jeans.  His lime green Crocs were now snow white.  There was another few inches of primer down on the closet floor-again.

Imagine my joy in having to go tell Joe that he had to scrape up all the primer again from the closet floor.  Let’s just say at this point, we were not happy.  It was time for me to give up on trying to get the master bed/bath done, and take the boys home.

On Sunday, Joe’s wonderful parents watched the boys for us all day.  We really made some progress.  I got the master bath/bed cleaned and the doors polished.  I tested out some paint samples for the room, which I am having an awful time trying to match.  Joe got the first two coats of paint applied in both Ryan and Cole’s rooms. 

The professional painter came yesterday and painted the living/entry/hallways, and dining room.  They turned out wonderful.  They finished it all in one day.  It would have taken Joe probably a week at the minimum to get it done, assuming he didn’t have any kiddie interruptions.

I decided I did not like the green and beige color scheme for our bedroom.  I found a light blue/gray color I like, but can’t seem to find an accent color.  Still working on that.  We will have to figure it out by this weekend, because Joe should be able to finish up the bedrooms and start on ours. He won’t let me paint.  He says I am as good of a painter as the boys’ are.  I don’t agree, but if he wants to do all the painting by himself, that is fine with me. 

I have to clean the entire kitchen next, and clean the stair railing and banister. They are oak, and don’t look like they have been cleaned for several years.  The doors looked the same way, and after cleaning them and using Orange Glo, they brightened up beautifully.  I am excited to do the banister and kitchen cabinets with it, and really see them perk up.  Orange Glow is a wonderful product.

I have been taking lots of pictures, and promise to post some soon.  The rooms just don’t look right without flooring yet, so as soon as we get the hardwood floor and carpeting in, I’ll have some pictures of what we have accomplished so far.

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

Joe was out of town this week- he came home a day early, so that was nice, but it has been an exhausting week. 

Since we would like to move into our new house, before next spring, I had grand plans this week to remove all of the ugly wallpaper border, and clean the walls, in the three bedrooms in our new house, so they would be ready for Joe to paint this weekend.  

We have decided to hire a professional painter to paint our living room, entry way, and dining room.  The living room has what I think is a 16-foot ceiling, but no, we haven’t measured.  There are some interesting angles in the room as well. 

Furthermore, the previous owners were hunters (no they were not related to Sarah Palin- a little shot of humor- I need it these days, ) and on these tall walls, they had a lot of their catches stuffed, (I believe taxidermy is the correct phrase for this), and mounted on the walls.  Evidently, it takes a lot of nails to hold up stuffed wild game.   I can’t count how many thick nails are in the walls, at various heights, and how many nail holes are in the walls. Did I mention, there is animal hair stuck the one of the walls, oh, about ten-feet up?

Joe is a great painter.  He is meticulous, but you have to have time to be that precise.  Even if he had the time, the nails, holes, and heights of the walls would take sometime to paint.   We found our painter, savior, who will remove all the nails, patch the holes, clean the walls (animal hair included for no extra charge), and then apply two coats of paint.  He has a crew, so it should just be a three or four day project. 

We have to get this area done because we are having hardwood floors installed by none other than Joe.  (We really are lucky he knows how to do all of these projects!)  But we don’t want to install the floor until the walls are painted.  In the master bedroom, and the boys’ rooms, we are having carpet installed, and again, we don’t want to paint with brand new carpet down.

So I thought I’d spend all day Tuesday removing wallpaper border. The border was glued, super-glued, three quarters of the way up on all the walls.  I had forgotten how much I HATE wallpaper.  After five hours, I only had three walls done in the master bedroom.  I didn’t have the right tools either, and I had the duct cleaner there as well..

Ryan had an injury from earlier in the morning, (trust me- you don’t want to know-let’s just say it was in the worst place ever for a little boy, and the teeth of his two year old brother were involved), so he was cranky (but who could blame him?)  and trying to work on a ladder removing wallpaper that is ten years old, with a cranky four-year old, and a curious two-year old who keeps trying to climb up the ladder-is not the formula to get much accomplished.  

After five and a half hours, we headed home.  I had to go to work for half-day on Wednesday, and after I picked up Ryan from school, we went back to the house, and I was able to finish the last wall in our bedroom.  I inspected the wallpaper in the other two rooms, and it was stuck on more firmly than the stuff I had just gotten off. 

After work today, and the nice surprise that Joe was home early, we went to Home Depot, to get a wallpaper scorer and some paint.  Fortunately, Joe has tomorrow off so he can get started in the master bedroom, and after the boys’ music class, I’ll start me vs. the wallpaper-Round 2.

It is a lot of work, and a bit stressful, but it will be worth it.  I can picture the rooms in the colors we picked out- the soft yellows against the wood floors and I get really excited.  The work makes me tired, but I still enjoy it.  

As the boys and I were sitting on a blanket on the floor in the living room, which is just sub-flooring right now, having a picnic on Tuesday, I knew someday when the room had been done for years, and has seen more of its fair share of living, I would always remember sitting there eating PB&J sandwiches with Ryan and Cole. We ate with badly-in need of paint-holes-in-the-walls, with animal hair stuck on them.  Not the most glamorous lunch, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

I do plan to post pictures, but I want to post before and after pictures at the same time.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you the paint colors of the rooms a paint consultant helped us pick out, since we are so awful at picking colors:

Colors for the entry way, living room, and dining room:

Yellow Freeze  &    Man on the Moon

Colors for the master bedroom:

 Baja Dunes &       Jade Tint

Boys’ Room: (they both wanted blue)

      Marguerite Blue

(color swatches from myperfectcolor.com)

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

Ryan cleaning out his pumpkin

Fireman Cole at our town’s Halloween Parade

 Superman & the Fireman

If you want to see more pictures, head over to Wordless Wednesday.

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

On Saturday, we went to a farm where we could pick as many vegetables as we wanted, and where there were a lot of fun things for the boys.

There was a real fire engine, and the boys had fun playing on it,  Next up were barrel rides pulled by a tractor:

Next we headed for the hayride to take us to the fields, and we spent the next three hours in the fields picking produce.  We picked corn:

and the boys dug for potatoes:

 We also got a ton of onions- red, white, and yellow onions, Indian corn, chili peppers, butternut squash, and pumpkins.  Cole was so tired from all the picking, he crashed out in my arms:

After we were back from the fields, and Cole had woken up, the boys played on the fire engine again, and Ryan went to play in the huge bouncy castle, while I took Cole and let him play on the various farm equipment:

We finally left late afternoon, as it started to get cloudy and cool.  When I asked the boys what they liked best, they said picking the vegetables.  I think it is important for kids to realize where their food comes from.

We are lucky this great farm is so close where the boys can learn about farming, see the food, participate in harvesting it, and have fun-all at the same time.

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

(Those are Ryan’s feet in the background)

Head over to Wordless Wednesday to see more pictures.

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

My sister wrote a blog post about a parenting mistake that she had recently made with her 17-month old daughter.  My sister was trying to get her to eat, and she wouldn’t.  She started throwing a fit, so they put her in time-out.  Turns out, my little niece was only throwing the fit because she didn’t like the tuna fish, my sister was trying to get her to eat.

My sister is a first-time mom, and of course, we all make mistakes like this.  I’ll even let you in on a little secret, little sister…we keep making mistakes even with our second and subsequent children too.

My parenting mistake was on Tuesday night.  I was having a hard time falling asleep, and I had to be up before dawn- like at six for work on Wednesday.  The last time I looked at the clock before falling asleep, it was 2am. 

I woke up at 4:30am, and heard Cole crying a bit.  Sometimes he does this in his sleep, and I usually wait a minute or so, and nine times out of ten, he just goes back to sleep.  Since I had only been sleeping about two and a half hours, I was sooo tired.  I tuned out his cry, and figured he would be back asleep in a minute or so.

As I felt myself falling back to sleep, I could still hear him fussing around.  The next time I woke up, it was a full half-an-hour later, and now Cole was crying out, “Mommy, Mommy!” He was really loud, and upset.  He had not gone back to sleep, and I really resented having to get up to see what the problem was.

When I got to his room, he was standing up in his crib, just sobbing, and saying, “Mommy, Mommy,”  It broke my heart.  I thought he had, had a bad dream.  I picked him up, and he was SOAKED.  He was wet from the top of his shirt, to the bottom of his pants.

Clearly he had, had a bed wetting accident.  To top that off, it was a bit cool in the room, and his blanket was wet too.  I felt awful.  My little boy was soaked from top to bottom in pee, and I couldn’t be bothered to get up to check on him.

I cleaned him up, changed his sheets, and he was eager to get back to sleep.  Before I put him back in his bed, he put his arms around my neck, kissed me and said, “Love me Mommy.”  He says ‘love me’ instead of ‘love you,’ but that just made me feel worse.  He wasn’t trying to interrupt my sleep- he just wanted out of his wet pajamas.

Parenting is like driving to someplace without a map.  Sometimes you nail it right on, and sometimes you hit a bump or two, or three, or more, along the way.  Sometimes you just end up, flat-out lost.  I think about episodes like this, and wonder if this will seem like child’s play, when my boys are teenagers, and we are dealing with very complex issues.

Eventually, even if you are lost for a while, you figure it out, and get going again- ready for the next trip down the parenting road.

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

Today it was in the mid-80’s, and after Ryan and Cole had been playing outside for most of the morning, they were hot.  They asked if they could play with their sprinkler ring.  Since days like this are fading fast, I thought it would be one last time this year they could play in the sprinkler.  I’ll let you decide if they had fun:

(You can click on the first two pictures to see them larger).  Now go to Wordless Wednesday, to see all the other pictures.

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!

Today is Grandparent’s Day, and Joe and I’s sixth wedding anniversary.  If you want to read the post I wrote last year about our anniversary, you can click here.  I was going to write a new post for our anniversary, but nothing has changed since last year-and that is a good thing.  The only thing that has changed is it seems like our wedding day is getting harder and harder to remember. 

I can remember bits and pieces, but not all the details.  I must dig our pictures out of storage soon, and transfer our wedding tape to DVD.  We have actually never even transferred it from the camcorder tape, and we have never watched it.  Friends and family are shocked by this, but now I am kind of glad…it will be a whole new experience when we finally do watch it, and will bring back those memories and details I have forgotten. 

Moving on to Grandparent’s Day.  I wrote a post about it last year too, and you can read that here. I think that post says it all again- and all I can do is thank Ryan and Cole’s grandparents, and great grandparents for always being so loving, kind, and a part of their lives.  It means more to me than you will ever know, and can express. 

If you have clicked to last year’s post, than you will have already read this, but I just love this quote on grandparents:

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do.  Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.  ~Alex Haley

Thank you again to our children’s wonderful grandparents- we couldn’t do this parenting thing without you!

Subscribe to A Mama’s Blog's RSS feed so you never miss a post!