Mommathon

Sean has taught Liam how to play checkers and Liam loves it!

The box started its life as a box that had Discovery Toys in it. It then took on numerous other lives...

The box as an airplane...notice the propeller

The box as Santa's sleigh...with lots of toys in it

The box as a hang glider

This book was okay. It wasn't a page turner, but it was good enough that I wanted to finish it. The story was about a woman whose parents are divorced and how she comes to terms with their divorce and second marriages through her writing. She also ends up realizing that she is older, more mature and "not a kid anymore" when someone (I won't tell you who in case you read the book) ends up living with her (possibly) in the end.

I got brave today and decided to make homemade pretzels with the boys. They love the big, soft cinnamon-sugar pretzels they have at Sam's, so we decided to make our own and they turned out YUMMERS!

Mixing

Kneading

Rolling

Eating

The finished product

1) Go to Wikipedia

2) In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.

3) List three events that happened on your birthday

4) List two important birthdays and one death

5) One holiday or observance (if any)


Here is my info:
3 Events:

1)1864- President Abraham Lincoln establishes the Secret Service to combat counterfeiting

2)1946- The bikini was introduced

3)1989-Seinfeld is aired for the first time


2 Important Birthdays
1) 1675 - Mary Walcott, American accuser at the Salem witch trials
2) 1996 Dolly the Sheep

1 Death:
1) 2002 Ted Williams, baseball player

1 Holiday or Observance: Independence Day in Venezuela

We started out the day at Maria's house where she always sets a beautiful table.

We didn't get to eat there though, we just hung out and socialized and the boys played.

We then went home so the boys could get a nap and then went to my mom and Jim's house. There we had turkey, stuffing, green beans, pumpkin pie, apple pie, apple salad, quiche and sweet potatoes.

After dinner the boys put puzzles together and roughhoused with Grandad.

Liam spent part of his afternoon reading to Butch. He read The Hat by Jan Brett, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat and To Market To Market, among others. The cat tolerated it.

Liam's school had their Thanksgiving lunch today and we got to sit with Chloe and her mom and brother. I am so glad that Liam and Chloe are such good friends since they are classmates and neighbors. (I think Colm has a little crush on Chloe as well.) :) We were also lucky that Nanny was able to eat with us, too. Liam's class made some very creative placemats for our dinner that had fall leaves on them and on each leaf was something they were thankful for. Liam was thankful for: Uncle Patrick and Aunt Kate, Claire, Erin, Mommy, Daddy, Colm, Nanny, when I take him to the park, stuffed animals and daddy's piggyback rides.

Every morning Colm has a waffle with honey or syrup and butter. The problem is that he wants to be able to visibly see that there is butter on every bite of his waffle, but the butter keeps melting. So I have to put butter on this waffle and then about two minutes later I have to reapply the butter on each individual bite. (He will let you know if you missed a spot.) Needless to say, we are running out of butter and quick!

I am not ready to let Liam start seeing PG movies quite yet, especially when I don't know why they are PG. He has seen one PG movie(Madagascar), but Happy Feet came out this week and he wants to see it. Well, I don't have time to go see it first and then decide if I think he should see it, but if you go to http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ they pick apart movies and tell you things that are in the movie that you would want to know about as a parent. A great timesaver!

I have strep-again! How is that possible!?! Sean says I am the only person he knows who can give themselves strep. I went to the doctor on Friday to get another strep test because my throat was hurting. The test came back negative which really made me mad because that means they aren't going to give me any meds. So, I took quite a few Tylenol this weekend for the pain and by today I was feeling pretty good. My throat hurts a little, but not too much. Then after dinner tonight I get a call from the dr's office saying they cultured my strep test and I DO have strep! I knew it! So now I have to go to the pharmacy tomorrow to pick up the meds that I really needed three days ago.

Too funny...we were running errands yesterday when we saw an old, broken down, woodpaneled, rusty, olive green station wagon next to us and Liam (with all the enthusiam of a four-year old who is seeing something exciting) says, "Mom! Look! It's a limosine!" I hate to laugh at my children...but I had to laugh. THAT was definintely NOT a limosine.

We were at our church's holiday bazaar today when a lady asked Liam if he was getting ready for Santa. His reply? "No, I am getting ready for Thanksgiving." I could not have been prouder. It absolutely drives me batty when people decorate for Christmas before they've even eaten their Thanksgiving turkey. I guess Liam feels the same way. :)

Colm using his favorite...markers.


Liam was inspired to draw this airplane while we were watching a video of my father-in-law flying in a cool airplane. Liam did a whole series of airplanes in a variety of colors. This one was my favorite.

This is SUCH a good book, not a happy book, but definitely good! I love the cover on this one, too. It is so perfect! Anyways, the book is about a man, Jonah, and his search for his half-brother and how he hopes that finding his half-brother will help him find himself.

My hubby and I went out on a date tonight. We went out to a movie-together. Honestly, I can't tell you the last time we went to see a movie together. I think it may have been when I was pregnant with Liam...that would be about five years ago. Anyways, we went to see Stanger than Fiction. What a good movie! Highly recommend it.

Happy birthday to my hubby...who knows more about computers and programming and such than I ever hope or care to know, who works his tail off to provide for our family, who loves his family probably more than we know, who trains and runs more than I ever will (or ever want to), who loves to read and watch anything science fiction and who would love to get me to read one of those books...not gonna happen sweety! Love you and happy birthday!

Against my better judgement, we went to Chuck E. Cheese today. I think Colm ate about 5 bites of pizza and Liam ate zero bites of pizza. I did manage to get him to eat a few grapes though. The kids did have fun though and I am glad it wasn't too crowded. I had a hard time keeping an eye on Liam and Colm since they wanted to go in different directions and they both needed my help on certain rides/games at various times and sometimes at the same time..sorry, guys, there is only one of me. Liam wanted to ride all the rides. It was so funny, at one point he was riding a helicopter and it started to go up (and I will say in Liam's defense that it did go up pretty high, higher than I expected) and he kind of freaked out a little bit. Upon seeing Liam freaking out, Colm absolutely had to ride it that very second...two kids who are very different. Anyways, it was time to go and we didn't have enough tickets to buy anything. Now that Liam understands the whole turning in the tickets for goods thing, I am sure the next time we go we will spend our entire trip trying to collect as many tickets as possible. Then we went home and had lunch, again, since they didn't really eat anything at Chuck E. Cheese.

I was outside playing with the boys today when my neighbor, who is pregnant, went rollerblading past us. Doesn't that seem a little odd to you? Should you really be rollerblading when you are pregnant? This is the same woman who was still running when she was seven months pregnant with her first child. Let's face it, the woman likes to exercise.

Check out this cool kid site to make your own snowflakes. Hint: You might want to try it first before doing it with your kiddo. It's a little tricky at first, but the results are fun!

http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/

It has been forever since we have had someone over to play, so my kids were very excited when Chloe and Clayton came over for a little while today while their mom was at the dentist.
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We played with Play-Doh for a while.


Then we had a dance party.


Then we had a jam session on the piano. Yes, all four of them are playing at once.

Colm has been doing the funniest thing lately. If he hears you cough, sneeze, clear your throat, snort, sniffle or make any other noise that he deems "blessworthy" he will say, "Bless you". The funniest thing is he seems to have bionic ears. No matter where you are compared to where he is, he will whisper or yell (whichever one is appropriate) "Bless you." You may think he is sleeping peacefully in his bed, but if he hears you make any of the aforementioned sounds, he will bless you from his room...and you better acknowledge him, especially is he is far away. He will keep saying bless you until his good manners have been ackowledged. It is starting to bother Liam, however. Liam informed me today that Colm needs a lesson on when he should say bless you. (Liam had been getting blessed a lot lately since he has the sniffles and he is really started to get annoyed because he isn't sneezing, only sniffling.)

Why? Because cookie season has officially begun. I am sure the little girl who came to my door today thought I was a little weird I was so excited to see her. I restrained myself and only ordered two boxes-one box of Lemonade cookies, they are new this year and then a box of Thanks-a-Lot cookies, they are shortbread cookies with chocolate. Yum!

Sit down. I am going to vent. This is what Colm has had to eat in the past 24 hours...

Dinner last night-We went to Chik-fil-a and all he ate was french fries.

Breakfast-Yogurt and some juice

Lunch-We went to On the Border and he ate french fries and some chips and salsa.

Dinner-I warmed up the leftovers from lunch and still all he ate was french fries. He also had a HUGE cookie that they give you for free at the grocery store about 30 minutes before dinner that I DID NOT give to him.

That's it! I have had it!!! We try to make sure our kids have the best of everything and yet they are eating CRAP! Why did I breastfeed? Why did we buy jars and jars of organic baby food and then turn around and let them eat garbage? They only eat what we give them and I am tired of it. We are going to have a serious diet makeover for the littlest members of our household and I mean soon!!! I am not going to expect them to eat sprouts every night, but there are not going to be any trips to McDonald's anytime soon and there will definitely not be any french fries anytime in the near future.

I don't mind giving my kids treats...as a matter of fact, I love giving them treats, but treats aren't treats when they eat them all the time. I love that we can go downstairs after Mass and have donuts and socialize; I think that's great. I just don't like feeding them junk like that all the time.

We did an experiment when I was in 5th grade. We had two rats. One we fed fruits and veggies, the other we fed donuts. The donut rat almost died until we started giving him the fruits and veggies again. I know what kind of rat I want my kids to be. :)

I knew it the moment I woke up this morning. I couldn't and still can't swallow without cringing. I am hungry because I can't eat anything of substance...I am eating all of Liam's string cheese. I went to the dr. so now I have some meds so I will be back at the dinner table in no time flat.

Don't judge a book by its cover...or maybe you should. I love the title of this book and the photograph on the cover is perfect. This book is about three women and how their lives overlap. Rachel is a professor of poetry whose mother is very ill. Ella is one of her students who also happens to work at a women's clinic and Georgia is a teenage girl who frequents the women's clinic. This isn't one of my favorite books, but I did enjoy most of the storyline. Also, it is not a happy book, but unfortunately mirrors the lives that a lot of women are leading.