My weekend

2C3 originals Heather, Jenny, Sonia, Sarah, Vern & Me!

I spent a long weekend with my college roomies at a Cape house.  It was wonderful.  It went much better than any of us had anticipated.  The most surprising realization of the weekend is that I can still hang!! No lie, I was up past 2 a.m. every night and it wasn't with a kid that couldn't sleep! It was amazing!! I can't wait to do it again.  Here are some pictures from the trip:

The first night.

Big Girl movie night!

Picture of all the minis except Charlie & Than who were in bed! :(
Sienna, Addi, Sara, Avery, Ellie, Emme, Maya, Luke, Natalie

Some of the minis - Sienna, Maya, Luke, Than & Avery

The prettiest princesses ever!

Westfield family dinner

Avery getting lots of love from the biggies.

Ellie with her buddies Natalie & Emerson

more of the minis

We made good time and I think it took us a little less than 8 hours to get home.  I couldn't wait to run in the house and use the bathroom.  Bad idea.  While we were away our service line broke and was replaced.  Nobody left us a note.  I flushed the toilet, turned on the washing machine and played with the kitchen sink.  It sounded like we had rocks in our water pipes.  How could that be?  Oh it can be and it was.

After calling our landlord the water company sent a plumber out.  We are now on day 3 post trip and the plumber is still here.  We have all new faucets, had the hot water heater flushed, and who knows what else.  The only good thing is that we don't have to pay for any of it because the water company didn't let us know to run the outside water line because they had done work.  I should have the water test back in a few hours to know if our water is safe to drink or not.

I've spent the last 2 1/2 days sitting on my bottom catching up on my DVR and reading books to the kids.  The laundry is piled high and as soon as this guy leaves I've got to get to it.

I felt sort of pukey on the way home from our trip.  I dozed on and off not being much of a travel companion for Chris. I thought maybe my liver was shutting down in protest.  Ellie got sick the night we were home with a stomach bug and threw up from 9:30 that night until 3:30 the next morning.  She had a slight fever the next morning and spent the day asleep on the couch.  Today she is much better. I kept her home from school because she didn't eat anything the day before and I figured she'd be cranky.  I feel better today after thinking I was getting worse last night.  The boys seem to be doing fine, thankfully!

No idea who won, but Dan & I didn't make it past the first round. Stupid tipped cup rule!

I miss them already :(

Than is doing great picking up new words here and there.  He has quite the personality and is such a lovable kid.  This morning Chris woke up to Charlie screaming to Than from his crib.  "Hi, Than. I love you. Hi, Than. I love you" over and over.  Our boys certainly seem to be best buddies.

We are just working the daily grind for the next two weeks until I head back north with the kids for another long weekend.  What have you been up to?

So sad

Hubs got me the perfect valentine's gift... my Hunters boots! He even got me some grizzly socks to go with them.  They arrived today and I was so excited to open the box and put them on.  I was content to just walk around the house since there is neither slush nor rain outside.  

But alas, I am too damn short for them... or at least the lower part of my leg is.  The height makes them too uncomfortable to walk in and when I sit they jab into the back of my leg.(Which they are doing at this very moment because I have yet to take them off.) Not pleasant.  I am so sad.  

They have a short version at Nordstrom's at the mall that I am going to go check out. Maybe tonight if Hubby is game.  He has to return his v-day present too and is going to pick out some new running sneakers instead.  As you can see, I am awesome at gift giving, which is why we normally don't bother.

The kids were totally excited by theirs though.  They each got a new book for the Tag Reading system.  Well not Than, he got a package of dairy free fig newman's. The books are to keep them busy during our 6+ hour drive we have coming soon to spend a long weekend with my 2C3 hotgirls! All of us and our hubbbys and our 11 children for four days on the cape in a beautiful rental! Woo hoo!!!

I feel like every post should start with...

we're still here.

Ellie created this while I was typing my post and she was watching Black Beauty. She's getting good, right?

We moved last weekend. The move went well. We hired two guys to come help with the heavy stuff.  Hubby started taking stuff over on Thursday night.  He spent all day Friday going back and forth with boxes in the van.  On Saturday we rented a UHaul and Chris, his boss, and the two hired hands got the rest of the stuff.  Ellie spent the day with her BFF. I spent the time driving the boys around in the car shopping and napping before heading to the new house to hang out in the play room for two hours while the guys moved things in.  The day went well and everything fell together a lot easier than Hubby or I had anticipated.

It's weird. This house is so calming. I don't know if it's the wall to wall carpeting or what, but all five of us are so relaxed.  It's quiet. I haven't yelled in three days, but that's another story (thanks Super Nanny). We all settled in well right away.  We love it.  I'm glad we decided on this place, because in our past house hunting missions we always said we'd never consider a split level.  Let me tell ya, it's awesome. It will be even better a year from now when we don't need baby gates!

We've already had our first company over (Hi, Amanda!) for a little pre-game play-date.  Our pictures are up and most of our belongings have found a home.  I think the fact that we decorated right away helped with the kids. No transition issues. At all!

The only thing I miss about the old house is all the closet space.  We had some serious closet space.

E is sick with a fever again. No school for her today or tomorrow. She's sad, but not fighting me on it like usual.  Thanny and Char are still getting over their head colds.  The doc said it would be 10-14 days and I think we're on day 12.  I'm hoping whatever E has stays away from the boys, but I'm sure that is just wishful thinking.  Thankfully, my preschool Mommy friends aren't afraid of germs since our kids pass things to one another in school constantly.  If Ellie feels better by Wednesday I can still go to our weekly preschool play-date, which at this point I'm pretty sure is more for me then it is for her.

Char had his EI screening this morning.  He was borderline in his expressive language, but on target with everything else.  Being borderline doesn't qualify so we fudged his evaluation a tiny bit just by leaving out "he says more than 20 words."  Leaving out that little sentence helped him qualify.  We have a meeting in early March to set goals and come up with a game plan.  Everyone said he'd be fine without it, but I don't want him to get to school and then have problems. I'd rather work with him now and know we're doing everything we can to help him along.

I've been going back and forth about going vegan again.  I lost my way after Thanny stopped nursing.  I'm thinking about being an "at-home-vegan".  Do you like the sound of that? I made it up, I think?  Basically, I'll be vegan at home and do my best when I'm outside of the home, but if you invite me to your house I will eat whatever you make me... how does that sound?

Wow, long post.  I'll leave it at that.