4/19/2012

This is also more of a follow up to my most recent posts.  Jacob is now regular crawling.  Army crawling days are over.  He started to do this at Easter.  He would still revert to the army crawling every now and then, but now I don't see him revert to it at all anymore.  He is trying to stand a lot more, so I know will be any day when he will be standing up on his own w/o holding onto something for support.  He also is cutting his 7th tooth.  It is on the bottom - to the left of the middle two.  Emily had a great birthday party.  Some of the people that RSVPd didn't show, but thats ok.  She still had a great day.  Princess Belle came by to wish her a happy birthday and stayed for an hour.  She sang songs with the girls, did a craft (they made little magic wants - will post a pic), played a game (she would hide a rose taken from her hair and the girls would have to ask each other if they had the rose).  They had a good time with the game, but Emily kept trying to cheat.  She tried to keep peeking.  She was supposed to be keeping her eyes closed.  Belle also helped with the cake, then did a little ceremony and made all the little girls princesses.  After Belle left Emily asked if all the princessess' are coming to her party.  I told her no, just Belle.  She was a little disapointed in that, but she got over it quickly.  She thought she was so cool that Belle came to her party.  It was pretty cute.  Almost had a cake fiasco though.  I had a lady that decorates cakes as a hobby making Emily's cake.  I wanted a princess castle and I just knew I wouldn't have enough time to get it done on top of everything else I needed to do for the party.  So that is why I outsourced it.  Well, the cake lady called me at noon on Saturday to tell me that her son has been in the ER all morning due to a very high fever and that she was sorry but had no way to finish up the cake.  So, there we were 2 hours till the party with no cake!   Luckily, I had just recently found a cupcake bakery (signed up Pretson to do a cupcake decorating class there).  So, I called these people.  I explained to them my delimna.  They were awesome!  Was told everything would be ready in an hour.  All the girls and all the parents that ate a cupcake loved them!  So, it all worked out ok.  Wasn't the cake I originally had planned but still worked out great!  Dean has so far been pulled from the deployment list - yeah!!!  So, unless things change - he will not be deploying!  He is a little sad about this, but I think he will be ok!  Preston is doing super great at school.  He is getting green almost every day.  (On a scale of green = best, yellow = need to do better, red = unacceptable behaviour, and black = you are being so bad you are not even on the chart).  I hope the days of red and black are completely behind us.  Don't like getting a phone call from the teacher to tell me how bad he is being in class.  Not a good call.  But, he seems to have gotten past all that and is doing such a great job.  He has already been rewarded with Chuck E Cheese once for getting green two weeks in a row.  He is trying to get his next two weeks in a row, so he can go again.   This weekend is a carnival on the base.  So, he is really excited about that.  Emily just wants to ride the pony.  She loves horses so much.  So, will leave Jacob with Dean and take Preston and Emily to the carnival this weekend.  Dean has no interest in going - that is why am leaving him with Jacob.  Preston might just be tall enough to ride all the rides.  If he isn't yet, he should get there pretty soon. He is getting so big.    He still thinks fart sounds are the funniest things in the world!  I think it is annoying, but I also will be sad when the day comes that he doesn't think they are that funny anymore.  I hope I still have a few more years with his laugh!   It will be a sad day when his voice starts to change and his laugh changes with it.

04/12/2012

A few Easter pics and some from Emily's 4th Birthday.  The last pics are what she woke up to the 10th.  I had put the balloons in her room when she fell asleep so they would be the first thing she saw when she woke up on her birthday.  She was so excited about them.  She came in and got me out of the shower just to show me.  It was really cute.  Her party isn't until Saturday, so will have more then.  Will be having a huge surprise for her - "Princess Belle" will be making an appearance.  I hope Emily will be super excited! 

04/07/2012

Mainly a picture bomb for this post.  I know its been a while, but have a lot to do still in prep for Emily's party next weekend.  I can't believe my baby girl is almost 4!!  Got our Easter bunny pics taken today.  Not sure how they turned out, will be emailed them later.  Got them on base, so that is how they do it to keep it Free.  I don't mind.  Free is much better than having to wait in line and pay to get them and only get to take one shot.  This guy let us take 3, so hopefully one of them turned out ok.  Will see though.  Going to do an Easter scavenger hunt for the kids tomorrow.  Going to give the kids hints about where the eggs are hiding and have them go find them.  They should have a lot of fun, but just means more work for me today.  So - better get to it.  Will post again soon.

3/26/2012

Well, it finally happened.  I caved!  We are now the proud owners of a White Lab Mix.  Other than his barking at night in his cage he really isn't to bad of a dog.  He does his business outside no problem, which is huge in my book!  He also lets Jacob pull his hair and just sits there and takes it.  Just wish could get the barking in the crate under control.   That is so annoying!!!  In fact he is doing it right now downstairs.  Augh!!  The kids really love him though.  They have finally decided on a name for him.  His name is Chewy (short for Chewbacca).  Of coarse that was Preston's idea.  It took some convincing from Preston to get Emily on board with the name.  She wanted to name him Jack Jack, then she wanted Buddy, then she wanted Budha.  But, Preston was able to convince her Chewy was the best name in the end.  So, Chewy it is - well at least until they change it again. 

Preston was so goofy when we got home today, while I was getting everyone out of the car he hopped into the drivers seat and told me he was going to "Take this baby for a spin".  I have no idea where in the world he learned that - I have never once ever said that.  Crazy kid.  Emily feels like the popular kid in school now that her party is coming up.  That is all I ever hear her talking about with her friends at school.  "I am having a party at my house".  Just hope I can live up to all her hype!  No pressure though.  Can't wait for her acutal Birthday though - I am going to stay up and blow up tons of balloons and put them in her floor for her to wake up with a balloon covered floor on her actual birthday.  I think she will be so excited about it.  No walking from Jacob yet.  But he is standing up a lot.  Still holding onto stuff to stand, so he just isn't ready to start walking yet.  And that is ok with me.  He can stay my baby for as long as he wants to.  He does try to be big too though.  He will come and stand at the coffee table when Preston and Emily are playing a game on it.   He wants to play too, they are usually so sweet to him about it too.  They both wrote him some birthday cards today.  I was listening to them while they were drawing them.  They both were talking about how they love him so much and how he is the best baby brother.  It was really cute.  Ok, better do something about the dog before he wakes up the kids.  Will post again soon.

Corrected Emily Invite

Ok, here is the corrected invite with the correct year!

Emily's 4th Birthday Invite

Had to make sure it was done by tonight so can get printed in the AM for it to be passed out to all the little girls in her class.  So tired now - going to bed!

Ok, so obviously I was tired - I don't even have the year right!!  The year is 2012!! 

3/19/2012

Has been a busy week.  Picked up my mom and Brandon at the airport on Tuesday.  Wednesday we prepped (more my mom - I had to work most of the day), for Jacob's party the next day.  Thursday we had Jacob's party.   I think he had a good time, except for the presents time.  He was so tired by that time that he was just upset over everything.  But he did like the presents he played with them all the next morning.  Friday took the boys (Preston and Brandon) to a pottery kids night out.  They had a good time.  They got to have a pizza party there and got to paint a plate with bubbles.  Preston had a good time - he talked a lot about it when we picked them up, Brandon didn't talk about it to much, so I wasn't sure if he had fun or not.  While the boys were at the pottery place, my mom and I took Emily to have a birthday dinner with just the girls.  Dean and Jacob had a night out together at home.  Took Emily to her fav place - Chili's!  (She gives the food thumbs up!)  She had a good time, we went to a different one than the one I took her to before, so the service was a bit slower and not as attentive, but she still had a good time.  On the way home I stopped and rented a movie for the kids to watch for movie night.  Rented Tales of Devereaux (some mouse movie).  Emily liked it a lot.  The boys kept trying to sneak and play video games in Preston's room.  I had Dean take away the remotes, so they had no choice, they had to be social with Emily.  My mom and I watched The Help - great movie by the way - and Dean watched some movie he rented earlier in the day. Can't even remember the name of it, just know I wasn't interested in watching it.  Then on Saturday we drove to Columbia, SC and went to the zoo there.  A lot of people here have said it was worth the drive.  It was ok.  If you don't know any better.  The Dallas Zoo with all their recent updates was much better.  The only cool thing about this place in comparison to The Dallas Zoo was that the animals are a lot closer.  Their enclosures aren't as big, so they don't have as much place to hide as they do in The Dallas Zoo, so we were able to see most of the animals from fairly close by.  Emily got really tired when we were ready to go - as you can see from the pic above she is away from everyone else.  She was just so cranky by then and didn't want anything to do with anyone at that point.  It was a chore just getting her in the picture!  When we got back home we had a small birthday party for Emily.  Basically, it was just singing happy Birthday to her and slicing up a cake my mom had made for her.  The next day Dean had to leave early in the AM for training and I had to take my mom back to the Atlanta Airport for her flight.   After dropping off my mom took the kids to McDonald's for lunch.  They of coarse loved it.  Jacob was a little leary of the food there, but once he tried the nuggets and fries he liked them.  The rest of Sunday we spent pretty much being lazy around the house since we were all really tired.