When Is Summer????

It's been a long month. That's not to say it hasn't been good, but it's been long. Spring Break has come and gone, which is sad. Bobbi and Ed were here for the week and we did a lot of things that we never do on our own.

We visited the World War I monument and museum...the only one of it's kind in the country. We all enjoyed that one. The only problem was that there were so many challenges to my fear of heights.

Of course, the kids wanted to go up to the top of this. Okay. I've been up in the Arch. How bad could this be? Ummm...it's open at the top. AAAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKK!!!!!! But, I went up and even looked over the side. However, I did think I was going to be sick the entire time and the kids told me I was a buzzkill. Oh well.
















Here's the view of downtown Kansas City from the top.















Oh, and when you walk in, there's this.
















Pretty, right? Each poppy represents 1,000 soldiers that lost their lives in the war. Of course, that's covered with Plexiglas and you have to walk over it to get to the actual museum. And, it's fairly high up. Like a story up. *sigh* Is it sad that Hannah held my hand as I walked, eyes closed, over it? Oh well.

We also went to Kaleidoscope (a children's craft type thing by Hallmark) and Crown Center. It was neat to see the Hallmark Visitor's Center...we got to see them actually make a card. Jacob really liked that.

Interestingly, it snowed 10 inches at the end of the weekend. This weather never ceases to amaze me.

Jacob has started baseball and he loves it. His coach says that Jacob's already the most improved player on the team. His first outdoor practice (they've just been doing batting practice) is tomorrow. I guess it's a good sign that Jacob keeps asking to go to the batting cages. The last time he played, he wanted nothing to do with any of it.

Hannah started soccer again tonight. She just loves soccer. Half of her team from the fall left but there are still 12 girls playing. I have a feeling they'll be back in the fall. I think many of them are playing softball.

Daniel bought himself a pair of roller blades with his birthday money and I swear that's the best $30 I've ever seen anyone spend. That boy is constantly on them. He took them with us to Hannah's soccer practice tonight and skated around the playground for the entire hour. He's getting really good. He and many of his friends play street hockey after school, so he's been begging for a hockey stick. The trouble is, I can't find one. And I'm not spending a fortune on one at the hockey store at the ice rink. Someone suggested Toys R Us...eventually I'll get there.

Jacob crossed over to Boy Scouts last week. I cried the entire meeting. They had some boys from the Order of the Arrow come and help with the Arrow of Light ceremony, which was awesome.
Jacob with his Arrow of Light Award
Our former pack leader asks Jacob which Boy Scout troop he'd like to join
Crossing over
His new troop is there to welcome him. They outfitted them with their new neckerchiefs.

We also celebrated Hannah's 7th birthday on Sunday. I don't know where the time has gone. How is it that she's already 7? I think I'm being punked. I haven't uploaded the photos yet but I will soon.

Also, Happy Passover to all of my Jewish friends and family.

Happy Birthday!

Today is Hannah's 6th Birthday. Where in the world has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday she was born and now she's walking, talking and reading.

Happy Birthday Bear!

Another Happy Birthday!!!

Okay, so it's two Happy Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law, Jeff and my niece, Mary Rose!!! Enjoy your day!!!

Happy New Year and Happy Birthday!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEBBIE!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

We had a nice New Year's Eve. We went to Stephen and Roxanne's house and ate fondue and drank. The kids love going over there since they have two boys Jacob and Daniel's age too. Anyway, it was such a long evening for the kids that they slept until after 11 this morning. Getting back on the school schedule is going to be hard.

Jett, Daniel and Jacob play their DS games together
This picture cracks me up. I do love my Asti...I gave up the glass and drank straight from the bottle. I had a big straw but it's not in this picture.
This picture of Hannah is awesome. She'd never had sparkling grape juice before and this was her reaction. She loved it!
Mike and Stephen chat over champagne
The kids started making crafts about halfway through
Hannah and Roxanne show off the big eyes

Happy Birthday To Me...Yadda, Yadda, Yadda...

I love birthdays, but I hate getting older. I suppose it's inevitable, though. I had a very nice birthday. My friend, Val, took me out for a pedicure yesterday. I'd never had one before and I think I'm already addicted. I've always been afraid of them because I'm so ticklish and because my toes are so strange. Amazingly, I didn't laugh once and my toes look awesome.

Some of you may remember my friend, Kirsten (from Columbia and PHS). We've reconnected recently on Facebook (have I mentioned how much I love Facebook lately?)She just had triplets on Saturday. There's a picture of them on her blog. She actually made it to 34 weeks and wasn't even in the hospital for that long. Pretty awesome.

Birthday Wishes

Happy birthday to my father-in-law, Ed and my niece, Rachel! Hope it's a good one!!

Jacob's Birthday and Broken Washers

Jacob proclaimed this year his best birthday ever. He got to go on a playdate with his friend Matthew and they went swimming for about 2 1/2 hours. We then went to dinner at Cracker Barrel and then saw The Dark Knight. I didn't think it was all that great a movie, but the boys loved it. We got home pretty late but still managed to sneak in cake and a round of Happy Birthday. I'm glad he enjoyed his day.

Jacob wanted to have a sleepover birthday party this year. I thought that was a nice idea since Daniel's turned out so well. We've often had problems with Jacob's parties because kids are on summer vacation and the attendance isn't so good. We decided to invite 10 boys and hope that half could come.

I was a little discouraged for Jacob when the first 2 responses came back no. Then, to my shock and horror, all of the rest of the responses have come back yes. Crap. So, we'll have 8 little boys plus my 3 here on Friday night. Where the heck am I going to put them all!?! I am freaking out a little, but I think it'll be okay since Jacob hangs with a good group of boys. I guess we'll see how I feel at 9am on Saturday morning when all of the boys have left.

Mike did some laundry last night and I noticed that there was water coming out of the bottom of the washer. Ugh. I hate calling people to come fix stuff. I texted Roxanne to see if she knew any good repair guys and she said that they do a lot of that stuff themselves. Ugh again. I randomly called people in the phone book and got someone that could come over today. Cool. He came in and quickly diagnosed the problem. Broken pump. He quoted me a price and went out to his van to get the part. He came back and told me that ours has the super deluxe extra special pump in it that's more than double what he quoted me, but he'll do it for what he said. Nice. He was in and out in about 40 minutes.

The best part is that he fixed the problem of the washer not spinning unless you lift the lid for no charge! Awesome.

Happy Birthday to my Little Man!!!

Today is Jacob's 9th Birthday. How in the world did that happen? It seems like just yesterday he would only sleep in his car carrier and only for 10 minutes at a time. He's turned into such a nice boy with a good head on his shoulders. I don't think I could be any more proud.

Happy Birthday Jacob!!!!

Happy Birthday Mike!!!

Just wanted to wish Mike a big

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!

We love you!

Happy Birthday, Bear!!!

My baby girl is five years old today. Where has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday she was rolling her little self down a flight of stairs. Now, she's getting ready to head to kindergarten. It's amazing to watch her...beginning to assert herself, finding activities and interests that don't involve the boys and just becoming a little lady.

I hope the next five years don't go by as quickly.

Happy Easter Photo Fest!

Happy Easter everyone! Easter is one of my favorite holidays. Luckily, this Easter seems to be going a lot better than the one we had last year...although Easter itself was not bad...just everything surrounding it was. What's even stranger is that the kids have no idea just how bad last Easter was and that there was almost no Easter for them at all (remember my purse was stolen?). We must have played that one off really well.

Anyway, yesterday was Hannah's birthday party. It was a week earlier than her actual birthday but she really wanted it at her gymnastics place and they're having an invitational there next week so they're not holding parties that weekend. So, it was either the week before or the week after...the week after is TKD testing so there you go. One of my neighbors has proclaimed it Party Season and I like that term so much that I'm going to use it. Hannah and Daniel were each invited to parties last week, Jacob had one the week before, Hannah's was yesterday, the boys also went to a party yesterday (a different party) and Hannah is invited to yet another in the next week or so. It's too bad my kids are lacking social skills. LOL!

Here are some photos from her party...

Kids in the foam pit! I've always wondered how deep this pit is...it's 8 feet deep with foam with a trampoline at the very bottom to make it that much bouncier. Just in case you were wondering.
The party gang.
I love this picture...Hannah's holding hands with Mia on her left and Katie on her right. So cute.
Her Littlest Pet Shop cake. Can you believe she's going to be five!?!

Hannah wanted to pass out balloons. Of course, she let almost every one go. Good thing they had long tails!


After a little break from the parties, we colored eggs. Our eggs were so cheap this year that everyone got to color 11 eggs. Hannah zipped right through her eggs, while Jacob and Daniel took their time and colored 11 eggs in a little over an hour.

I don't know why Jacob loves to pose for photos like this...oh well.

It's only taken us 8 years to figure out that the best way to protect the table from egg dye is to cover it with a plastic tablecloth. LOL! Actually, I can't take credit for that. We happened to have it left over from Hannah's party.
Daniel colored this one egg for about 30 minutes. It was brown by the time it was done.

The kids couldn't wait to find the hidden eggs this morning. Hannah's egg-finding skills have improved over the past year and she actually got more than Daniel did.
Daniel shows off an egg he found
Jacob on the prowl.

The Weekend's Here!

And, we're only three school days from Spring Break. Ahhh...a glorious 1 1/2 weeks of nothing (except TKD). Awesome.

Back in December, Jacob bought a tadpole habitat with his holiday money. He was so excited and we ordered two little tadpoles almost immediately. Well, they finally came last week. They are only guaranteed to arrive alive, so I was happy to see that they were, indeed, alive. We plopped them in their little habitat and sat in awe as they got a little bigger everyday. Okay, for three days. Then, they died. Poof. Just like that. I surprised Jacob, yesterday, by going to Petsmart and getting him a fire-bellied toad for the habitat. They only get to be about 3 inches long and he has the sweetest face. The guy there was awesome. He gave me 20 crickets (the only sucky part of the toad) for the price of 14 and also gave me some of the water crystals to put in with them. Getting the crickets from their container and into the habitat has been somewhat interesting, but that little toad just loves them. So cool to watch. Jacob's named the toad Volcano because of how his tummy looks. I wonder how fast we can kill this thing off. At least he came with a 14 day guarantee! LOL!

I set up Hannah's birthday party this week. My goodness that girl has a lot of friends. Luckily, we don't pay by the person because we invited 14 kids (not including Jacob, Daniel and Hannah) and she wanted to invite about 7 more but I had to cut her off somewhere. We only invited one little boy from MOPS and she was not happy about that because she wanted more. I'm so going to be in trouble once she actually starts school. LOL! I think I'm going to do cupcakes instead of a cake but I'm not sure. Cupcakes are so much easier.

I got an e-mail from Jacob's baseball coach this afternoon. I was a little disappointed to see that he is not on Jett's team, but it's okay because he is on his school's third grade team, so he knows everyone. I had to send our contact info to the coach since he didn't have it and, surprisingly, I got a phone call about 15 minutes later. Nice guy...wanted to know if Jacob's a pitcher, or is interested in pitching. No, Jacob's not a pitcher, yes, he desperately wants to try to pitch. Awesome! He says, because it's kid-pitch this year. Ugh. I thought we had more time with the machine, but okay.

We had Boy's/Girl's Night Out this evening. Hannah and I went to Applebee's and then to bowling and the boys met Jim and Peter for pizza and the Spiderwick Chronicles. Hannah and I had a blast bowling and I hear that the movie was great. I love doing these nights because it makes the kids feel so special. They just love it.

Happy Birthday Daniel and TKD Tournament

Last night Daniel had his birthday sleepover. Three little boys showed up (one was sick and couldn't make it). I was amazed at how well behaved everyone was. Aside from going to sleep around 1:30am, they were great kids. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my camera (I finally did this morning) so I didn't get many pictures, but I did get this one...(l-r)Josh, Michael, Daniel and Ryan. It's hard to believe he's 7! Where has the time gone?

After the kids left this morning, we headed to the TKD tournament. It was just a small one, mostly for the kids in our school. It was cute. They got different medals for each event. Hannah went straight 3rd places, Jacob had 4 second places and a first and Daniel had 2 first, 2 seconds and 1 third place. They really enjoyed the board breaking, especially since they've never done it before and they're going to have to for their (the boys) next testing. Jacob was the only one in the first round to break his board...even Jett (almost a black belt) struggled to break his and didn't do so until the second round. He was pretty shocked about it.

Waiting to compete...Daniel, Quinn, Jacob, Brandon, Jett and Hannah


Master Johnson decided to surprise Daniel for his birthday. He took him in the back room to try to wake him up (he was sleepwalking through the first few events) and everyone met him at the door and sang Happy Birthday to him.

Daniel was very surprised. And he loved it.


Hannah does her musical form.

Daniel's musical form

Jacob's musical form.

Daniel tries to break the board.

Jacob gets last minute advice from Master Johnson (standing in the back on left) before actually breaking his board.

Master Johnson holds the board for Hannah while Stephen talks her through it.

Mike (after already breaking a board with his hand), tries to break through two boards with his foot.

He makes it through both.

Posing for one big picture

Master Johnson writes on the board Jacob broke

And on Daniel's

And on Hannah's (hers says, "I may be a yellow belt now, but I will break you!!"

Tonight, we're going out to dinner with Stephen, Roxanne, Jett and Quinn to celebrate Daniel and Quinn's birthdays. Hopefully we can all stay awake through it!

Quite The Week

Between all of the birthdays (Happy belated birthday to Donna and Happy 16th Birthday today to my niece Megan!), federal holidays, trips, anniversaries and just general goings-on this week, I did not need a sick child. I got a call from the school nurse yesterday telling me that Jacob had an earache. I picked him up early (but not as early as I would have liked since he desperately wanted to shop the book fair at school) but didn't take him to the doctor like I probably should have. I figured that I'd wait and see how he was feeling today.

When I got up this morning, he was already up and camped out on the couch. Apparently, he'd been up for several hours (like around 5am) but didn't want to wake anyone. He looked terrible. I decided to keep him home and made an appointment for him after Hannah's gymnastics class.

We get to the doctor and all he wants to do is lay on the exam table. The doctor comes in and tells me that his ear looks really bad and that it's normal if we see any blood or puss leaking out of his ear ("just wipe it away," she tells me). What the heck? She goes on to tell me that it looks like Jacob's eardrum burst sometime last night...he tells her that he did feel stuff coming out of his ear and onto his shirt in the middle of the night, he thought it was normal. Seriously? You thought that crap pouring out of your ear is normal? Anyway, she said that it would help with the healing and the pressure and that he should be good in a couple of days. Aack!

He's currently napping on the couch...that's a good thing since I don't think he got much sleep last night. Poor kid.

Happy New Year 2008!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my big sister, Debbie!

I have to say that I'm thrilled to have 2007 behind me. Here's hoping that 2008 is a better year for everyone!

Birthdays Don't Have to Suck

Okay, so I'm 32 now. When did that happen? LOL!

I've gotten to the point where I just don't look forward to my birthday anymore. Out of the past several years, there have been a couple that I've had to spend alone, and, aside from some phone calls and a visit from a florist, they hadn't been very special. So, I try not to build myself up and that way I'm not disappointed.

This year, I actually had a really nice birthday.

Mike had called during the day to wish me a happy birthday, as did Dad. I also got to hear the sonic boom from the Space Shuttle as it crossed overhead on its way to Florida. I didn't see it, but the boom was cool enough. And, Daniel wished me a "happy 24th birthday" which got him some huge hugs and kisses. Of course, the high from being called a 24 year old wore away quickly when Jacob told Daniel that I wasn't 24, but more like 45. LOL! I also managed to get the house all cleaned, which took a lot of stress off of me. Why is it that a dirty house just adds to stress?

After picking up the boys from school, we headed over to TKD for Hannah's class. Mike told Master Dave that it was my birthday, and he wished me well. As we were getting ready to leave Hannah's class, Roxanne and her boys walked in and she wished me a happy birthday too (she remembered from a few days ago). It was just nice to hear others (that aren't family) wishing me a happy birthday since that hasn't happened in a while. Quinn, the youngest of Roxanne's two boys, starts to give Daniel a "tattoo" and Jacob waits in line. Roxanne and I laugh and say that Quinn needs a show called Overland Park Ink. I really didn't notice Mike rushing out and then rushing back in but I had to laugh when I saw what he had behind his back.

Mike announces that he wanted to give these to me when Stephen was there but he would do it anyway since he had other witnesses. He pulls a vase of flowers out and hands them to me.

Me: They're very nice, but don't think that these count as "no reason" flowers.
Mike: Can't I give my wife flowers for no reason even on her birthday?
Me: No.
Roxanne: They are very lovely flowers. They look like something Stephen would have picked out. He'll be here in a minute.
Me: Yes they are very nice, but they don't count.
Mike: I need a black belt ruling. Master Dave, can you give your wife flowers for no reason on her birthday?
Master Dave: (thinking for a minute) Yes.
Mike: See!
Me: They don't count. (to Master Dave) Do you know what's riding on these flowers?
Master D: No
Me: When Mike gives me unexpected flowers, I have to join TKD
Master D: Oh. (laughs)
Mike: (says something like) Stephen ruined everything for me! (laughs)
Me: (laughing) I've waited for 9 years for you to turn into a romantic and it's just not happening.
Mike: (to Roxanne) Can you give Stephen one of the flowers as proof for me? (starts to pull a flower from my bouquet but stops)
Roxanne: (hearing Stephen's car pull in) If you wait a minute, I think he just pulled in.

We say goodbye and head to our cars, where we meet Stephen in the parking lot. Mike walks up to him, holding the flowers.

Mike: I wanted you to see the flowers I got for my wife.
Stephen: Those are nice. I would have gotten something like that for Roxanne.
Me: They don't count!
Mike: I asked Dave for a black belt opinion and he said they do count!
Stephen: Hey, at least it's a start. (in my opinion, he was agreeing with me that they don't count!)

The flowers Mike gave me


And then, for some reason that I missed, Mike gave Stephen one of my flowers. LOL! We then headed over to Cheesecake Factory for my birthday dinner.

Mike had the kids make me cards and he gave me a gift certificate for a massage and a manicure. He said that he was going to just schedule the appointment for me but thought that I may want to pick something else. I think I'm going to get a massage and a pedicure since I've never had one before. I think it was one of the most thoughtful gifts. He also told the waitress that it was my birthday so my cheesecake came out with a candle and a plate that said, "Happy Birthday Barb!" Mike and the kids sang Happy Birthday and that was the end of a very, very nice birthday. Thanks, Mike, for making my birthday very special!

Happy Birthday Jacob!!!!

Today is my little man's birthday. Can you believe he's 8? His party was a hit. Lots and lots of Pokemon from his friends. He's proclaimed this the best birthday and can't wait to have home made macaroni and cheese with spinach cakes for dinner tonight (his favorite). Here are some photos...

Jacob holds the bowling pin that all of his friends signed for him

Jacob walks back after his turn

All of the party kids

Jacob blows out the candles while his best friend, Zephan, watches

We broke down and bought Jacob a Nintendo DS for his birthday...he sits on Paige's (our babysitter but apparently, our newly adopted daughter) lap while everyone watches.