Tuesday, August 30, 2011

When in Rome . . .

. . or rather Omaha, Nebraska. Yep, back again. And do you know what I realized this trip? Although I've been coming to Omaha on business for 7 years I've never really been beyond a 3 or 4 mile radius into the city. My version of Omaha consists of the Hilton hotel, Union Pacific headquarters, the Old Market, and those blocks in between. How sad is that? And the UP train rides, while fantastic due to the vintage passenger cars, don't count. A track is a track is a track. If you've seen one then you've seen them all.


The problem is I don't have time to sightsee. Matter of fact, I'm only assuming there are sights to see since I never get out of my little comfort zone! My routine is always the same: meetings starting at breakfast and ending past dinner. A dinner which usually consists of Omaha steaks, cause what else are you going to eat in Omaha, followed by a guilt induced trip to the gym. And I usually still feel terrible after the gym, all sluggish and yucky because I'm not normally a steak eater. Stupid peer pressure and expectations that steak is the only acceptable food while visiting!!


And I miss my little family. According to Jeremy, Emma misses me as well. Especially at bedtime. But when I call today to talk to her she won't come to the phone because she's watching Spongebob Squarepants. Burn. Bested by a yellow sponge with pants. Awesome. Luckily I'm flying home tomorrow and can reclaim my advantage over Spongebob. Bribery may be necessary, but I'm willing to shell out for a new Barbie if it puts me back at the top of the list!

Monday, August 22, 2011

New and Noteworthy

My child is a climbing genius. Seriously.

This scene is not unusual at our house. I can literally leave the room for 10 seconds to potty and when I come back See-man has pushed a chair or something over to a counter or table and will just be chillin' on top of it. He even climbed into his own high chair this morning! Can everyone see my hair turning gray?!

And apparently hell froze over. How do I know you ask? Easy- my hubs got a Facebook profile. Something he swore he would never ever EVER do. And now he's turned it into a friend competition. (Because we're not the least bit competitive . . .) Particularly among those people who work at the railroad. Jeremy likes to joke that he's not there anymore but still has more railroad friends than I do. Well duh! The hubs actually worked with them, I'm just another "white hat" in the office. (White hat is the term used for managers by the train service guys-our hard hats are white.) Although out of all the managers I am the nicest to them and always stop to talk and ask about their families. But, at the end of the day I'm still seen as a white hat and there's the whole office politics and invisible line that inevitably shows up between managers and hourly employees. I told Jeremy to stop trying to get me some pity "adds" from his friends. I have my own friends thankyouverymuch.


This sweet little LAMB crossover has become my new best friend. February through August are my busy travel months at work. As a matter of fact I'll be leaving for my second trip, in the past 30 days, to Omaha next week. I hate lugging my laptop bag and normal ginormous handbag through airports so I decided I needed a small little crossover that would allow me to have the bare essentials but keep my hands free. Since I'm not a huge fan of small bags I decided to splurge on this LAMB; If I'm going to carry a tiny bag it needs to be something I love that way I'll force myself to use it often in order to amortize the cost. Brilliant and logical right?!


Emma has finally decided on a theme for her birthday:


This is a fairly new cartoon on Disney and she loves it. We've gone back and forth over the past few months on what kind of theme she wanted but she finally picked this one. And now its a done deal because I've already started ordering decorations and goodies for the treat bags. Yay for Halloween and all the handy pirate stuff!!


I signed up for my BFF Mollie's Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure team. It's been a few years since I've attended this event but it was always fun. This will be the first year that Mollie has had a team and I think there will be a lot of fun girls going. We'll see if I actually run the 5K or just walk, it will depend on what the majority of the team wants to do. I've been prepping to run just in case. My poor body is so confused; it doesn't seem to remember that 10 years ago I could run a 5K easy as pie. So far I've been able to make it up to 2 miles without killing myself, so hopefully by October I'll be at 3.2 miles in time for the race. It's a lot harder to fit working out into my routine with two little ones. Right now I have to squeeze my trips to the gym into my lunch break at work (when I can get one) and then sneak out of the house early on Saturday mornings to run before the kids wake up. :)



Friday, August 19, 2011

Word of the Week

This week's word is ORGANIZED. As in Emma's room is so totally not ORGANIZED. And it was driving me insane!!

It doesn't help that my child has more toys than our house can comfortably hold. And since a new house is not really in the budget at this time (thanks super outrageous preschool prices!) it was either get organized or slowly lose my grip on sanity.

Previously all of Emma's toys were thrown into storage bins. Which meant that anytime she wanted a specific Barbie, or God forbid a lost Barbie shoe, everything in the bins would wind up in the floor. And I really think she forgot about some of her toys simply b/c they were buried at the bottom. So, in comes this little baby:

And in order to maximize on play space this bad boy is taking up residence in her closet. Right now we're in the process of replacing all the interior doors in our house and I've got to admit that I kind of like the open concept of Emma's closet. And since there's no way to install doors and still have good access to this lovely and organized new toy storage device, I'm going to install a curtain rod and just hang curtains over the closet. For now.


This was my $10 solution to our hairbow dilemma. The ballerina plaque was 1/2 off at my favorite store in the world, Hobby Lobby. Add a little ribbon to the bottom and you have yourself a brand new bow holder. Now if I can just find the rest of the missing bows . . . .


This is Emma's dress up corner. The little plaque reads "Once upon a time" and is super cute. Now Emma can display her favorite dresses. I'm still trying to locate a good chest for the rest of her massive dress up collection, but the cute basket will work for now.

One room down, an entire house to go . . .ugh. I'm cringing at the mere thought of trying to organize Jeremy's side of the master bedroom. There may or may not be live organisms growing under his piles of junk . . .


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

1st day of School

The big news in our house this week was school starting. Of course, the kiddos have been still going to preschool during the summer but the schedule has been a little different. They've spent two days of every week at one of the grandma's houses and the preschool schedule has been a little different as well; water days, etc. Now we're back to hard core preschool where learning is the first priority. :)

As typical my kiddos wouldn't cooperate for first day of school pictures. This is the best I could get. Sigh.


(Don't judge my filthy car. It was clean before I had kids promise. Now I swear there is something growing between the seats and console. I think its living on the french fries that have found their way down there. I do plan to address this soon. Hopefully.)

I was a little worried about how yesterday was going to go. Seeley was moving up to the 1 year old class. Big changes included sleeping on a cot versus a crib. Miss Cassie said he did terrific though. And my anxiety was definitely reduced because Miss Cassie also happens to be a friend and I knew she would look after my little man cause she adores him. All the ladies love Seeley. :)

Emma was moving to a new class as well. For 3 of the 4 years she's been in daycare/preschool she has had the same teacher, Ms. Lisa. We love Ms. Lisa. The running joke is that she is Emma's school mommy, but it is so true in many ways. This year she has a new teacher and I think Ms. Lisa and I took it harder than she did. Her new teacher said that Emma got sad a few times during the day but she was able to distract her with a new project that cheered her up. Em is a little shy when it comes to new situations but at the end of the day her teacher said she did fantastic. All the ladies love Emma too. :)

One way I helped Emma get excited about her new class and teacher was by really treating it like a first day of school. She got new shoes (light up Skechers that she had been dying for), got to wear a skirt (very rarely do I allow this-it's just not conducive to playgrounds), and a brand new backpack from my BFF Mollie at Personally Stitched.

She thought she was hot stuff. I had to laugh on Monday morning because she was concerned that her friends wouldn't like her shoes. How funny is that? And isn't she a little young to be worried about that already? She packed her backpack herself the night before. And of course I repacked it on Monday morning with the stuff she would actually need instead of the 5 Barbies and other toys she had thrown in. Ha! She looks so grown up carrying it that I was definitely a little sad.

As it turns out her friends loved her shoes and her backpack so all was right in the world of my big girl. Seeley had a glowing report and lots of snuggle time from Miss Cassie. Not a bad first day of school!



Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Par-Tay!

I was complaining about the fact that I didn't have a good reason to dress up for Halloween any longer and the hubs said "Why don't we just have a Halloween party?"


Excuse me? Do my ears deceive me?


Did my extremely anti-social hubs just volunteer to let a ton of people come over to our house? Knowing full well that I tend to get a little crazy and overachieving when it comes to parties?


The only catch to his benevolence; he absolutely refuses to match costumes with me. No way will he be "the Ken to my Barbie" as he put it.


I can live with that.


And just to make sure he can't back out I've already started spreading the word informally and had an invitation made up yesterday from a lovely etsy seller.




So dear friends- start planning your costumes now and save the date. Your invitation will be in the mail!

Monday, August 1, 2011

Lovely little weekend

The newest member of the zoo officially has a name now: Pancho!! There is a long story and joke behind this name, but at least its better than Emma's recommendation, Retard. :) And in case you're wondering where she learned such foul language you can blame me. I may occasionally call Bella a retard when she does something unbelievably stupid or annoying. Oops. A long discussion about name calling followed, along with Mommy's promise to stop as well.


Seeley likes to sit in Emma's chair and push her out of it. Sibling rivalry begins.




Nap time! Bella is a sucker for nap time. The fact that I woke her up taking pictures earned me her annoyed look.


Following nap time we had dress up time. Emma has a mountain of dress up clothes and accessories. I believe this particular look was called "Special Princess". I didn't quite understand her explanation of the differences between just a regular princess and a special princess, but she clearly knew.





Seeley even got in on the action by wearing some of Emma's shoes. He's obsessed with these because they light up. It's a little hard to tell but they are clear with rhinestone butterflies on the straps. Very manly and macho!



Climbing is See's favorite new trick. He will climb anything! I returned to the kitchen from a 30 second bathroom break and found him on top of the counter. Lovely! He learned very quickly how to push things over to stand on top of and then climb; nothing is safe any longer.



His first "crash". He did a nose dive at Nanny's house right into the dirt and gravel while playing in the backyard. The new joke is that Nanny beats him. Or just pushes him down. She has been devastated that this occurred under her watch! :)




Look at my little man! He is just getting too big too quick. He doesn't even look like a baby anymore, but he still gives the best snuggles. He is definitely a Mama's boy. When Daddy tries to get in on our snuggle time he'll give Daddy a quick hug and then shove him away like "Ok, that's all you get big guy. Mommy is all mine!" And if Daddy and Mommy try to sneak in a hug Seeley will come and push us apart then grab onto me and hug me tight.




Hubs and I actually went on a date Saturday night. Wow right?! The last time we went on a date was last November. 2010. Yikes! I tried to take a picture but hubs was having none of it.


Sunday we had a dirty day. :) We decided to skip church and just sat around playing and being lazy in our pajamas all day. Before you call DHS the kids were not actually dirty, they had baths Saturday afternoon. We just let them keep their bed hair all day Sunday, which Emma absolutely loves. :) Teeth brushing is still mandatory.