Three

This is my nephew. He's three. He acts like his mother (this is what he does when you are trying to pose him for the birthday picture).

Oh there's a glimpse of the handsome fellow. Hum now let's see if we can get one with his Mommy......

...after 12 shots, I got one that was okay. But can you see how pretty she is? What a handsome boy he is? Can you detect a bit of attitude still left in the young man? Yep, JUST like his mother.

Well, after this it was time to party.

Then apparently is was time to be Spidermen.(Brev in the black, Bean in the red)



Being three also means that you get to try and eat the candle if you want to.


Post birthday morphed into a continuation of Valentine's Day. Grandma and Lissa had gift bags of goodies for both kids and that was alright with both of them. I think the term is Hog Heaven.

Valentine's Weekend Re-Cap

It was a busy weekend her at the ranch. Friday night we had company- Aunt Jenny and her gang came over for dinner and games, there was Connect Four, Uno and Scene It. After they left , it was about midnight but it was still time to put up some surprise decorations for The Bean, so Leslie and I tucked her in and got to work. I had a bunch of paper heart doilies and red crepe paper so we attacked the living room,then I arranged her Valentine's Basket and then we wrapped Brevin's birthday gifts (party the next day) and THEN we went to bed.

Saturday morning, the Day Bean had been waiting for....She woke up and started down the stairs, when she got a glimpse of the decorations, her eyes lit up and she turned and said "oh I have a HUG for you Mama." And she hugged me with every ounce of her being , then she continued down and looked around but got a bit shy and it took a few moments for her to head over to her basket. The basket was a hit I think, it included a calculator of her very own, Andes Mints (because she is forever trying to scam an entire handful when we go to the Olive Garden), a heart full of fancy chocolates, 4 packs of bubble gum, a bag of cookies, a pink stuffed puppy (that she later named Little Drew) and three tiny pots to with some flower seeds to plant. After we sat around and had some late breakfast, it was time to get ready for Brev's party and get out the door. (more on that party later)

Again we got home late, and it was right to bed. Because..... Sunday was spent with the Aunt Jenny and Aunt Rae clans at the Art Museum and then to Aunt Jenny's for dinner and play time with cousins. Another late night.

Then it was up first thing on Monday for gymnastics and home for a nap....whew!

It was a fun weekend and I loved having Ev so busy that she practically collapsed every night as there was also no time for a nap- the entire weekend.

Pretty Pretty Princess

Discovering Dress Up

I have been stockpiling things for awhile now. Things like wigs and fairy wings and satin gloves. I wanted Bean to have a dress-up box. It's been ready to go for a few months now, she just wasn't ready to play like that. Then one day, she was sorting madly through her dresser and her closet. I asked her what she was doing and she said " I am looking for a dress for my wedding! hump! And I just don't have one that's, I don't know, like, for a wedding" I said to her "Well you might not have anything up here but I think that I saw some sparkly things in that green trunk in your basement playroom" She said " aggh no, I will just ... you know..." and then she turned and POOF! dissapeared on her way to the basement. Ever since that day she will go down and find something to wear. Thankfully, I did have a couple of great little dresses down there (thank you Salvation Army), and magical wands and tu-tu's and shoes. It has been alot of fun playing dress up with her.


I wonder why I always have to wear the witch hat though?

We Were Planning on Getting New Carpet Anyway

Leslie is home all this week, he took some leave after his recent travels. Since he is home for more than 2 days, we decided to tackle painting the hallway. This afternoon, he dashed out to Home Depot to buy some supplies. We HAD to paint the ceiling because the previous owners had it painted this horrible putty color that exactly matched the horrible putty colored wallpaper. No biggie. We move some stuff, he gets the roller going and I watch on as the ceiling is transformed into a regular ceiling that will actually refract some light as opposed to sucking it all in. Things were going well, the no-splatter ceiling paint was, indeed, no splatter as advertised. Eventually, I had to abandon him to his own devices and start dinner (chili chicken tacos with re-fried beans and home made guacamole, if you were wondering), this was okay with him because usually The Hacksaw (a.k.a. Butter Bean) and Billy Bones follow ME, so that would leave him with no distractions to finish up.


You can tell where this is going right? I mean, a member of this family up on a ladder, that's always good for a story....


So apparently he was rolling along and finished up.....In the kitchen, I was fielding a million questions from Bean and hopping around Billy Bones who decided that a nap in the geographic center of the kitchen was in order, getting the diner ready. I was standing at the counter with a knife in my hand, pitting the avocados when I heard " fumble, thumble, crash bang thump, bangitty bang!!!" I just KNEW that Leslie had fallen off of the ladder. I dropped the knife and avocado, I turned- and in slippery socks on a freshly mopped kitchen floor, take off running to Leslie. When I took off running, so did the other two creatures in the room. According to the laws of physics or whatever, we all three end up in the door way together and I am forced to pull a Buffy-esque, turn flip, jump, hop and stumble to keep on my way towards my husband whom I am imagining with a broken femur and a paint brush stuck in his ribs. Somehow I manage not to kill myself or the kid or the cat. I turn the corner into the living room where I can, at last hear vibrant, sailor worthy cussing so I know then that Les is fine, however gravity and momentum have their way and I scuttle into the hall stairs and tip forward a bit to see Leslie in a Sea of White. A. SEA. OF. WHITE.


According to Leslie here's what happened on his end..... He was up on the tall ladder about 8 feet into the air, he brushed the last brush of paint on, turned a bit, checked his work. He was pleased with said work, no splatter, no spills, no second coat needed. Then he continued to turn to step down. However in his musings , he actually forgot that he was on a ladder (yes he CAN forget something like that), so he turns and BOOM, down he goes. He goes down with a full canister of paint in his hands. Somehow, he just ended up with a small scrape on his hand.


The carpet in the hallway though? That didn't come out unscathed.


We just laughed and cleaned it up the best we could. Hell, the carpet is awful too and we really were planning on getting new. Really.

Valentine's Day Approaches

If she has said it once, she's said it a thousand times. Valentine's Day is her favorite. With this in mind, the bar has been set high for Saturday. At the beginning of this week, she and i went around the house, taking down Chinese New Year and putting up some V-day stuff. The most exciting part for Bean was putting up the gel type window clings- she just loves those things. She managed to get one single tiny red heart on every window in the house. After that we hung up some crochet heart garlands that I made last year.
The final piece was getting something on the mantle. I wasn't in the mood to go out shopping for new stuff, so I decided to see what I had at home. What I had was the same white lights that I had up there at Christmas and some left over tooling (okay I know that is NOT how you spell that but That's how I say it. It's that pretty net stuff) form some tu-tu's. This leftover stuff just happened to be in pinks and reds, so I threw that up there, added a Mylar garland and ...viola. Evelyn really likes it and i must say, it has a nice glow in the evenings.
Much to Leslie's dismay (not really), the downstairs is a pink hearts, red hearts, girlie mantle extravaganza-trust me there could have been ALOT more pictures. Ev is happy as can be.
I am working on getting her a V-day goodie basket gathered up now. I hope I don't disappoint.

Ode to a Burger

What you see pictured above is only the greatest cheeseburger known to man. And yes, I am actually doing a blog entry about burgers- they ARE that good. See the cheese ? See that wonderfully perfect bun? See the onions? This burger is from a little joint called Skyway. Now when my family lived in Akron while I was young, we would LIVE for the days that Dad snuck us off to Skyway to indulge in these burgers. You see, the people at Skyway have a "secret ingredient" that makes those burgers slightly sweet and then you get them with pickles and white onions and cheese and mustard and they come on the rolls that they bake right there (also a secret?)- well it all turns out to be a melody in your mouth. Luckily for me, Skyway opened up a second store and it happens to be right off of one of the exits between here and my Mom's house. Since Leslie has become a hard charging convert and Ev loves their chicken- this is where we stop for lunch on the way to Grandma's house- it's pretty much a given. Oh and we eat there on the way home too. When we stop, I usually try to order extras to take to my Mom, Dad and sister because for one of us to have a Skyway and not all of us to have a Skyway- that's betrayal in it's purest form. My mouth is watering as I type this and I am seriously wondering if Les and Ev want to drive about 40 minutes for lunch today. The problem is that if Les sees the pictures above- we probably will. And Lord help me if my sister reads this entry while at work and she cant get a one....
Truly these are great burgers. American cuisine at it's finest.