Weekly Review: February 28 - March 6

Before we left Grandma and Grandpa's house, Brian (aka: a future American Idol) couldn't resist the urge to sing one more number on Grandpa's guitar.





We started out trip home on Saturday and went as far as LaCrosse Wisconsin which is a little over half way. The boys probably could have gone further but frankly - Mommy couldn't! We got on the road in time to be home on Sunday in time to join the birthday party that was going on at our house. We were celebrating Krista's 10th birthday last Wednesday and Grandpa's birthday Sunday!




Keeping with the frosting theme - the boys girlfriend Elizabeth turned 16 Wednesday of this week! They took turns calling her cell phone to each sing happy birthday to her and wish her well on her special day!

Weekly Review: February 21 - 27

Our Sunday morning this week turned out to be a little different than most other Sundays. That's because Mommy and Daddy made a very last minutes decision that while he stayed home and got a lot of office work done, she and the boys would take a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house in South Dakota. As we made our drive, Brian frequently asked the question "Mommy, are we to South Dakota yet?" When we finally got to the boarder the conversation in the RSV (red sport vehicle) went a little like this:

Mommy: (as we approached the Welcome to South Dakota sign) "Brian, do you see that big white sign with the four faces on it?"

Brian: (having now driven past the sign) "What sign?"

Mommy: "That sign said that we are in South Dakota!"

Brian: (looking around) "Where"

Mommy: "Well, we already drove by the sign, but what the sign said is that we are now in South Dakota - we made it!"

Brian: (still looking around) "But I can't see it."

Mommy: (realising that he isn't talking about the sign anymore - he can't see "South Dakota") "Honey, it's all around us right now - everywhere you look - that's South Dakota!"

We drove as far as Sioux Falls and spent the night at Mommy's good friend Jannelle's house. When we got to Huron we got to have Grandma all to ourselves because Grandpa was at work. (More about that later in this post). One of the great things about going to Grandma and Grandpa's house is the added bonus of also being able to go visit Great Grandma! She lives just a few blocks right down the street - how cool is that!?!? One our fist visit to Great Grandma we had the added surprise of getting to see someone else. Great Aunt Maxine was also in town for a visit! We weren't able to see here over the Christmas holiday due to all the snow storms so this was a wonderful treat!







Where was Grandpa you ask? He was in Pierre doing his work as a South Dakota Senator. Part of our reason for making this trip to SD at this particular time was to go to the capital while the legislature was still in session. We wanted to make sure we were there bright and early on Thursday so Grandma, Mommy and the boys drove to Pierre Wednesday afternoon. Before bedtime, there was time to play some games though! Granted, you can't see much of him in this particular picture but if you ever play a game with Brian, watch him close because he has been known to cheat!

After going to one of the committee meetings that Grandpa sits on, we toured the building, road the elevators enough to ensure that they were all working properly and investigated Grandpa's desk on the Senate floor. Grandpa introduced us to a few people on our way - one of which was a very nice woman who had a bowl of chocolate on her desk. That's what Brian is munching on in this picture!

We were tickled to sit in the gallery of the Senate and listen as Grandpa introduced us to everyone! It was very cool! Before we could leave the capital, there was one more thing we needed to do. We have made this trip to the capital every year since both boys were born. During each of these trips, the Governor has had his picture taken with them. Once he heard that Brian and Spencer were here, once again, he asked if he could have his picture taken with them. Governor Rounds is a very nice man and since this would be the lost opportunity for him to have a picture taken with the boys (term limits, nothing like might happen in Illinois!), we wanted to make sure it happened!

You know your son needs a hair cut when he says to you "Mommy, I need a hair cut."

It takes an observant boy to recognize this fact so we blew in a call to Grandma's good friend Ann. Fortunately, she was able to fit Brian, Spencer and Mommy into an appt before we needed to head back to Illinois! Thank you again to Grandma and Grandpa for switching a few things around on their calendars in order to make this last minute trip of ours possible! We are looking forward to seeing them again soon......hopefully for Easter!

Weekly Review: February 14 - 20

Grandma and Grandpa came over this evening to join us for a Valentines dinner. It was yummy and all but we all managed to save some room for a little "zert" afterwords. Mommy melted some chocolate and we have a variety of fruits that we dipped into it. Brian was particularly fond of the chocolate dipped bananas!

When Mommy woke up Valentines morning, Daddy took her to the window and had her take a look out into the back yard. Yup, that's a big ol heart with our initials in it. Women reading this - feel free to be jealous over the fact that I am married to such a romantic thoughtful guy. Men reading this - feel free to hate him for coming up with such a clever little thing that his wife was just tickled about!

This week in school, Brian's class was talking about Doctors. By the end of the week, you would have thought that he had just graduated from med school! The band aid on his finger is also something they made in class. it's like a mini cast - how funny is that!?!?

Weekly Review: February 7 - 13

Monday night was a school "McDonald's Night". The Parent Teacher Organization does a few fund raising events, one of which is done at a local McDonald's. For a two hour period, the restaurant gives the school a percentage of all sales made at that particular restaurant. Families from the school are encouraged to come since their are also some raffle prizes available that only school families can try to win. The boys had their eye on one of the raffle prizes that was a basket full of fun stuff. And, what do you know........Brian won the basket!!!!!! We wont get into the details of how many raffle tickets Daddy purchased to make that happen, we won and lets just leave it at that!


On Tuesday morning, Mommy got a phone call from the Mommy of one of Brian's classmates. Alita was wondering if Brian would like to come over for a play date. Wow......a play date, Mommy didn't see this coming so soon but, what the heck! We were on our way to run some errands so Brian went to Alita's house to play while Spencer and Mommy went shopping. Alita's Mommy said that they had a wonderful time together and as it turns out, we live fairly close to each other. We are already looking forward to having Alita over to play at our house in the near future!

On Friday, the kids had their school Valentines Day party. Mommy put on her "room parent" hat and joined Brian and his class at 10am for the preschoolers party. One of the other students Mommy came to lend a hand as well and we had a great time! The kids made a couple crafts - including decorating their own cookie like Brian is doing in this picture. We played some games, exchanged our Valentines and left with a LOT of sugar rushing through our veins!

Weekly Review: January 31 - 6

We have been anticipating Grandma D going to the hospital for a few weeks now. She was scheduled, and then rescheduled to have rotator cuff surgery. This week turned out to be the week that it actually happened, so on Friday morning, she and Grandpa headed for the hospital. The surgery went very well and we anticipate her to be back on her feet very soon! The boys were too young to go visit her at the hospital so we waited for her to get back home before they popped over to say hi. Hospitals, rotator cuffs and pain medication mean very little to the boys. Finding out that Uncle Corey was going to be coming for a few days in order to help out with the nursing duties though - YEAH! We love it when Uncle Corey comes for a visit and this trip was no exception!

As you will recall, a few weeks ago Brian's cousin Haley had a bowling party for her birthday. With the help of Uncle Corey and YouTube, Mommy was able to get a little video of Brian's bowling adventure posted here. Mommy started out recording Haley as she bowled but just as she was finishing up, Brian was ready to take his turn on the next lane. This video clip is about 2 minutes long so.......enjoy the show!

Weekly Review: January 24 - 30

When we moved into our new house last summer, our intention was that we would gut and remodel the kitchen - our tentative time frame for this being this spring. In the meantime, the L shaped mud room that surrounds our current kitchen serves as a wonderful playroom! There is one little problem though, it gets really cold out there!

We were disappointed at the thought of loosing this great play area over the winter months. Even thought it probably wouldn't make a big difference, Daddy decided to make a couple small changes. We put down an extra area rug, Daddy added some weather stripping to the back door and we hooked up a small space heater in the room. The results from these small changes ended up being nothing short of amazing! The boys now have a nice cozy little play area which they use a lot! Now that the cold weather has limited our outside play time, its great having this little spot available for the kids to just do their thing while confining the bulk of their toys to one area.

Just because we haven't posted any of Brian's "Tool of the Day" posts while Mommy has been playing catch up on the blog, don't think for a minute that Brian hasn't been hard at work! Last week Daddy wanted to install the wood thresh hold in our bathroom. Fortunately Brian was able to pry himself away from playing fireman long enough to show Daddy how to properly measure before cutting. As Brian always says: "measure twice, cut once!"

Mommy and Daddy had an appointment Thursday evening with Brian's teacher. That's right, their first parent/teach conference! When the first thing you hear is "Brian is a very intelligent little boy", you almost feel like you should be waiting for the other shoe to drop! Fortunately that was not the case! She confirmed some things that we already knew (ie: he knows his letter, colors, shapes and numbers, oh......and that he is left handed). She said that while his attention span can be short, that's very normal for a 3 year old! Since he knows all his letters, she would now like to see him working at learning to write them. All in all, she said she is very happy with how well he is doing. Hearing this was music to Mommy and Daddy's ears! Brian spent his Saturday evening winding down with some Lawrence Welk. Yes, we still tune in to Public TV most Saturday and Sunday evenings to listen to the musical magic of Lawrence and the gang! Tonight Brian got interactive and with the help of a couple bowling pins, was directing the orchestra right along with Mr. Welk!

Weekly Review: January 17 - 23

The boys got a Mickey Mouse bowling game for Christmas. There has been a lot of bowling going on at our house lately and they are really having a good time with it. Little did we know that and as it turns out, this little game has turned into a good training tool for Brian! We mentioned earlier that the boys cousin Haley turned 5 years old earlier this month. What we didn't say is that she is having a birthday party for a few friends today and it is a BOWLING PARTY!!!!!

Mommy and Daddy made the managerial decision that Spencer isn't quite ready for a trip to the bowling alley yet so he stayed home and watched football with Grandpa. Brian however, was BEYOND excited! He picked out his ball (6 lb balls were the lightest ones available) and he handled it pretty well.

There were a total of 7 bowlers in attendance. They were split into two groups and used two alleys. Brian was a maniac and even though he wanted to completely explode from pure excitement, he did a great job of waiting his turn. Every now and then we had to steer him back to the alley he was suppose to be using but other than that, he didn't want much assistance. Mommy shot a few short videos of the bowling frenzy and she is trying to figure out if it is possible for them to be loaded onto the blog.

Every so often Brian's school has a theme that they encourage all the kids to dress for. This Friday the theme was "Cool School Day" so all the kids could dress in styles from the 50's or 60's. With the aid of some hair gel, here's the little greaser that went to school this morning!

Earlier this week, Grandma started having a lot of leg/hip/back pain. Haley was planning to go play at her house for a while on Friday but since Grandma was not feeling up to her ol' self yet Haley suggested that she hang out with us! She came along with us when we went to pick "Cool Brian" up from school and the boys LOVED getting to play with her when we got home!

Weekly Review: January 10 - 16

Daddy has been hard at work remodeling the kitchen of a very nice family. The boys have been extremely anxious for Daddy to install their new cabinets because as you may know, cabinets come in really cool boxes! You guessed it.......we just got some great new toys to play with!!!!!

Now that Brian is in school, he takes his role as the educated big brother very seriously.

Half the fun of bedtime is getting to pick out what books you would like Mommy or Daddy to read to you! Sometimes the books come from Spencer's bookshelf in his room, and sometimes they come from Brian's.

Weekly Review: January 3 - 9

Since this past December was our South Dakota Christmas year, now that we are home we are having our Illinois family Christmas celebrations! There were stockings to open.

There were also some new friends to hug! Uncle Corey gave both boys "Al", the Wells Fargo pony. Anyone want to take a guess as to where Uncle Corey works???? :-)

Grandma has a tradition that each Christmas Eve, the grand kids open a package that contains a pair of her hand crafted jammies! We thought last years were cute but this years are even more adorable!!! Thank you Grandma!!!!!!

Before the tree and all of the Christmas decorations are packed up and put away, here is one more official "holiday shot" of the boys!

This week started and ended with birthdays! So, Happy Birthday to Aunt Ann on Sunday the 3rd and to cousin Haley who turned 5 years old Saturday the 9th!

Weekly Review: December 27 - January 2, 2010

Our original plan was to have started for home yesterday (Saturday the 26th) and to be home by today (Sunday the 27th). The 16+ inches of fluffy white snow outside has slightly altered those plans. What would you do if you were snowbound at Grandma and Grandpa's house? Easy question........make home made ice cream! Spencer helped Grandma get all the ingredients mixed together. Brian helped Grandpa get the salt poured into the ice cream machine and...........






EVERYONE enjoyed the yummy results!!!!!

Just because we didn't want to be out driving in it didn't mean we didn't want to be out PLAYING in it! Daddy dug out a little snow fort area for the boys to play in.

Now, about that addition that Grandma and Grandpa put onto their house! Here's a picture of the front of the house. Yup, the garage and unsided portion of the house is all new! Amazing huh?




This picture was taken standing by the bay window at one end of the addition and looking into the sun room at the other end. With all of this new additional space to race around in, I think at the end of the day, the boys were actually more tired than they normally are!




Even though we got to stay a little longer than we anticipated, eventually the roads cleared up enough for us to start for home. Thank you for everything Grandma and Grandpa! We love you both and we love what you have been able to do to your house! Absolutely amazing!!!




We drove through a lot of drifting snow (like this picture) for the first hour or so but once we got onto the Interstate, things went very smoothly. We still saw a variety of vehicles in the ditch but for the most part, our roads were pretty clear. Up to this point we have always made the trip to and from South Dakota in two days. However, since the roads were okay and since Daddy was anxious to get back to the job he was working on prior to Christmas, we decided to try out luck at making the trip home in one day. We had lunch in Sioux Falls with Mommy's good friend Jannelle and didn't stop again until we had dinner just outside of LaCrosse Wisconsin.







The McDonalds we like to go to has one of the best playlands on the planet so after they had their dinner, we gave the boys a little extra time to stretch their legs and have some fun before we needed to got back on the road. The boys were fabulous little travelers, especially considering they were strapped into their car seats for well over 12 hours!





Once we were home, it was time to start planning the final details for our New Years Eve party! The group of friends/family that we go on our annual zoo outing with are the same group of family/friends that we spend New Years with each year. Kids and adults - eating, playing games, talking and lots of laughing. We have fun every year and this year was no exception. When the kids started playing Wii (an interactive video game played on the tv), Brian was front and center in the action! It was the bowling game in particular that he couldn't seem to get enough of and it was completely hysterical watching!



We wish all the very best in 2010......Happy New Year everyone!!!!!

Our first birthday greetings for 2010 go out to the boys cousin Lauren who turns two years old on January 1st! Happy Birthday Lauren!!!!!!!