J's Saturday

Today I had a pretty fun day. I woke mommy up and I had toast for breakfast. Then I played with my toys for a little while. My favorite toy is the remote control and the telephone because they have cool lights and the phone makes neat noises when I push the buttons. I play with it until mommy takes it away from me. Then I cry.

Then I got to go outside and watch daddy and Marcus pull weeds and clean up the front yard.

I love to be outside.

Later mommy pushed me in my swing that grandma bought me for my birthday. I love my swing. Sometimes it makes me real sleepy. After swinging it was nap time.


After my nap I played in my special clubhouse. Every time I come in here there is always so much stuff in the way.


I am getting pretty good at getting it all out though.

After dinner mom let me have a little bit of brownie that was so good I made sure to eat it real fast. Mom always tries to feed me but I am a big boy and like to do it all by myself. After dessert I was a giant mess so I had a bath. I like to chew on my ducks and stand up in the bath tub.

I was so tired after my busy day that all I wanted was a night night bottle and to go to bed. Today was fun.

Just been holding down the fort

We are still chugging along to our April 3rd closing date. Yesterday we had our home inspection which went really really well. The biggest issue that was found was some corrosion on a drain pipe of the bathroom sink. No big deal. We have spent a great deal of our hours lately on craigs list, looking for absurdly cheap kitchen appliances. We are planning on picking up our $30 oven on Saturday.

I have also been nursing a sick little boy back to health. Marcus has been sick since Wednesday poor little guy. He had a fever of 101 and just laid in my bed all day yesterday. I hope he is feeling better today. He is going to float away if he continues this diet of Club crackers and Sprite up for much longer!

I also learned this week that our dryer is semi out of order. It takes about three hours to dry one load of clothes. Woohoo! I've always dreamed of stretching laundry day into laundry weekend.

I was also a mean mom yesterday and forced Nathan to sit at the table and do homework for five hours last night. He is a procrastinator and every month at school he has a report due at the end of the month. He decided to start it yesterday. That's my boy!

Sack Racing

Leave it to the boys to take an innocent game and make it dangerous. I mean what is wrong with just playing old sack racing? The boys made up their own version that I really don't understand.

A sack on the bottom and a sack on the top. That sure makes things exciting. While the anticipation of hopping at full speed and not knowing just where you are hopping to or what you may run into sounds like so much fun, I don't think I like this game.

I mean seriously, they don't even know who won!

Joining the Ranks

The time has officially come for James to follow in his brother's footsteps and get his first signature family buzz cut. His feathery wisps were just not all that cute anymore. I was sort of scared to do it. My friend from work just gave her son who is the same age as James a hair cut and it took a small army to accomplish.


We strapped him down in his high chair and crossed our fingers while dad administered the clippers. He loved it! He would smile and laugh when they would touch and vibrate on his head. Not what I expected but a wonderful surprise.


The only problem was he kept trying to look at the clippers which made it impossible to get the back of his head. After the top was all done and he ate all his cracker I held him so dad could get the back. His hair is so feathery fine it was real hard to cut so it took a while. I think there are still a few spots that aren't as short as the others but we won't tell him.


He kept shutting his eyes. I don't know if it was because of the vibration or because some of the hair was falling on him. After his haircut, we both needed a shower since we both looked like wilderbeasts.

Here is his after picture! He looks so much older and mature doesn't he? I'm not sure why he sort of looks purple-ish, weird bathroom lighting I guess. I had to make sure his hair was still long enough to style and a mini hawk is still possible. Whew! He sort of claimed my toothbrush for the second half of his haircut. Whatever it takes to get the job done right?

Exploring the new House

This weekend we got to take the boys to go see the new house. We were all very excited. Mike and I couldn't wait to show the boys our future digs. Like our jungle of a front yard? Really the front yard is tiny, but they managed to jam two trees and at least six bushes in it. We will be having lots of fun landscaping this summer.


As soon as we opened the door the boys bolted in three different directions. One went upstairs, one went out back, and I found Marcus exploring the closet under the stairs. I'm sure he is already planning an awesome fort.

The room straight ahead is our future den/ guest room so for all of you that want to come out for a visit, there is your room!

Everyone checking out the view from the master bedroom window.

We will have to add baby gates to our list of stuff to buy. James already showed us how he can crawl all the way up the stairs all by himself. Jason, Nathan, and Marcus learned that stairs can be a great way to see just how high up you can be and still jump to the bottom in one piece. I don't know why but I don't really like that game.

Next they decided to pick out their bedrooms. Super exciting!! I can hardly believe it, they actually all agreed on their rooms. It must be an omen. Marcus had his room picked out pretty fast but then saw a dead bug on the window sill and didn't want that room anymore. He decided he wanted the master bedroom instead. Ha! Fat chance buddy. We promised him the bug wouldn't be there when we moved in.

Note to self: Remove bug

This is Jason in the room he picked. He is looking out his bedroom window checking out the view.

Dad checking out our new kitchen and taking inventory of all the stuff we are going to need. We counted, and will need to get eleven doorknobs, eight light fixtures, one kitchen faucet, window treatments for eleven windows, appliances, and would eventually like to get rid of the linoleum flooring.

I predict many hours spent at Home Depot in our near future.

No that is not grass, it's weeds. At least it's green right? The boys were fine with the small backyard once they saw the huge park.

I'm glad they got to see the house and they love it too. Right now we are in the process of getting all the inspections and financing taken care of. As of today we are scheduled to close on April 3rd!

Breakdancing

We listen to a lot of music in our house. Our taste is VERY diverse, ranging from Mariah Carey and Kanye West to Guns n Roses and Queen. We listen to it all, the clean versions of course. Last night I decided to find out if I could still do a cartwheel. I have to check every couple of years to judge how old I am getting. Once I can't do a cartwheel anymore, I will know I am old.

Good news! I can still do cartwheels!

After my cartwheel Nathan had to show me up and do a hand stand (can't do those anymore). That's when Janet Jackson's song Nasty came on and we all started break dancing.


Nathan got crazy doing the Harlem shake! I don't know where he learned it but he is pretty darn good at it!


I started to tell them to do random dances and they would see who could do them the best. This is Jason's robot dance.

This is how you know you are getting old:

If you ask your nine year old to do the moonwalk and he doesn't try to slide smoothly backward. Instead he starts walking/jumping like he is weightless and actually walking on the moon, you know you are getting up there.


Marcus is awesome at doing the worm. I tried but ended up just knocking the wind out of myself. I'll stick to cart wheels. At about this time I noticed we were breakdancing to the song Black Betty. Not very good for hip hop dancing so we changed it to Apple Bottom Jeans, much better.


Mr Uni Sock getting wild. I can just see him in a few years trying out for So you think you can Dance. If you look close you can see Hippie Boy's hair sneaking into the picture. He needs a haircut in the worst way.

Eventually we had to stop our dancing event and go pick up dad from work. Maybe later we can talk him into showing us how to krump.

Offer Accepted!!!

We just got the word today that our offer was accepted and we are officially going to be home owners!! We are going to buy a six bedroom house! I can't believe it! We can paint our walls blue if we want, we don't have to sneak in pets to avoid pet deposits, we don't have to move the boys to new schools every year. We will be home owners and that is an incredible feeling. Tomorrow we go to sign the papers officially putting us in escrow. If all goes as planned we will be moving for the last time in a long long time sometime in mid April!

Here is a picture of OUR house with our very own tree in the front.

This is OUR kitchen which at the moment has no appliances or faucet and has not so pretty counters, but it's ours and I love it!


And our back yard which is the tiniest thing in the world but with six bedrooms and a park right behind us who the heck cares! Oh and look, there is our other tree.

I can picture us here. Making breakfast in the morning, doing laundry, playing Tripoly at the table, watching movies on Friday night, birthday parties, dancing around the house while we clean, the boys wrestling, I can see it all. This is the house my boys can call home. We are taking them to go see it this weekend and I can't wait to show them. I can hardly wait until they get home from school to tell them we got it!

Mike and I now have new pet names for each other. As he was leaving I told him "Goodbye, I love you home owner" to which he replied "I love you too home owner" which made me feel all giddy inside all over again. We are big dorks.

Fresh Air

After the boys got home from school today we decided to get out of the house (and away from the fridge) for a little while. Since the scooter isn't working at the moment Mike has been taking the van to work which leaves me at home all day. Lately I have been going stir crazy. Fresh air was definitely needed.

They each chose a different mode of transportation for the walk. Nathan chose his skateboard that he got for Christmas. He is getting pretty good at it now and is super motivated to learn since a lot of his friends ride them.

Marcus chose what he always chooses, his bike. He always leaves us in the dust but knows to wait for us to catch up before crossing the street.

Jason wore his skates. He loves them but they are officially too small for him. It took him 10 minutes to finally get his foot smooshed into them.


Once we got to the park the boys enjoyed some freedom. They played basketball which was far away from mom. I stayed with James in the sand pit and kept my distance.


Nathan found a couple fellow skateboard buddies to hang out with.


Even Marcus found someone to play with. Audrey is his friend who just happens to be a girl from school. Don't you dare call her a girlfriend or you will feel his wrath. Actually, there are quite a few girls at school that are sweet on Marcus. At the playground in the morning they always make sure they say hi to him.

Today was the first time I actually let James play in the sand. Normally we hang out in the grass but he has never really tried to eat it so I thought I would let him check it out. He loved it! He sat there for twenty minutes just picking it up and sprinkling it around. Not even once did he try to taste it.


Once he was done with sand sprinkling he spent the rest of the time playing with the soccer ball. James is obsessed with balls. He loves to throw them, roll them, chew on them, and anything else you can do to them.


We need to hang out here more often. The only thing that could have made our park visit better would be if Dad could have come too. Maybe this weekend we will invite him to go with us.

House Update III

We officially put in an offer on our six bedroom dream house on Friday. Can I just say I think I may have ulcers? I have quickly learned over the past couple of days that I really hate to haggle. Well I guess that's not exactly true. I like to haggle over meaningless things like cheap trinkets in Hawaii or baby clothes from the second hand store. I don't like to haggle over houses. Specifically, our (hopefully) house.

Yesterday they came back with a counter offer which I immediately wanted to accept. Mike talked some sense into me and explained why that would not work, we really need the seller to pay all of our closing costs and they were only offering to pay up to 3%. So reluctantly I agreed to put in a counter offer making a couple concessions but firm on the closing costs. It has been over thirty hours and we still haven't heard a response! I am going insane over here! It feels like torture just sitting here and waiting for the phone to ring.

Our realtor told us the seller (Freddie Mac) is usually a big stickler when it comes to the 3% and usually don't allow people to adjust the sale price up and pay the rest of closing for them. We also found out that there are now a couple more offers on the house too. Lucky for us, our offer is exclusive so the bank (the seller) can't even review or even know about the other offers until we reach an agreement or agree to disagree which is sort of comforting to know.

So right now we are just waiting. And eating. I hope they call soon because I can't stop eating! I think it's a nervous thing. I have demolished two sleeves of honey mustard Pringles, and a whole bag of Chex Mix by myself in the past 24 hours. Pretty soon my pants aren't going to zip and I will have a wardrobe consisting of sweat pants in every color imagineable.

I know it was a while ago but...

When Mickey and Ernie were out visiting earlier this month, one of the few things the boys sort of insisted on doing was go fishing. We have fishing poles and even live in a lakeside community but unfortunately for them neither me or Mike are really into the whole fishing thing. For me it is more fear than disinterest. Even though I grew up with the most outdoorsy dad in the whole world I never really got over my fear of touching a fish. I don't even feel comfortable holding worms. Now that I think about it, I don't even like those little squishy red balls they use for trout bait. Ridiculous I know but true. For Mike, I think it is more of a disinterest in fishing. Either way, the boys don't get to fish very often.

Grandpa Ernie loves to fish and has all the patience in the world when it comes to dealing with three little boys fishing lines, bait, and fish removal. We didn't need much equipment as you can see no chairs were necessary, just poles, a tackle box, and grilled hot dogs (the secret weapon).

Before they could even get all their lines in the water the fish were already biting! It was so much fun just to sit back and watch their faces when they were reeling the fish in. They were so excited and proud of themselves. Each time they caught a fish they had to have their picture taken with it.

Some of the fish were so strong I thought they were going to snap the fishing poles in half! It was always so disappointing when the fish got off before they had a chance to reel it in all the way. Nathan actually caught the same fish twice in a row! Not a very smart fish.

Jason had a few issues with his fishing pole but still caught quite a few fish. Of course the biggest one of the day was caught when the camera wasn't available. Good thing there were plenty of witnesses present to see it.

Marcus is definitely the most patient of the three. He is a true fisherman and would be happy to fish all day even if he never got a bite.

This is how I would stand if I were forced to hold a pole with a fish on it. Away from the body at all times until someone came to rescue me.

James came too but didn't have as much fun. He enjoyed the swings for a while and riding on Grandma's head but pretty soon he decided he was done and just wanted to go home.

Once the sun started heading too far down the horizon it was time to go. I'm sure the boys can't wait to go back to the lake, especially now that we know how much the fish love grilled hotdogs.