Mommy is Tired

Daner turned 10 mos old a few days ago. To honor this big event I thought it would be fun to document what a day with Dane is like. Since he became mobile, he has become extremely busy. He never seems to stop, even when I beg him to please just stop for one minute so Mommy can rest/eat/pee. Below are some shots of him being a very helpful little guy.

Emptying the dishwasher

Vacuuming (we have a serious love affair with the vacuum)

Checking to make sure the dog has water.

Putting his shoes away with the skillets.

My favorite is putting his shoes under the stove. He was very persistent about doing that most of the afternoon. Every time I turned around he had a shoe in his hand and he was crawling to the kitchen as fast as little legs would take him. On my list for the weekend; something to lock that drawer! It's exhausting and sometimes frustrating but I still love every second I have with him at home. I would just love it all a little more if I could sit down and take a break!

First Day of Kindergarten

Yesterday was a big day around here. Drew started Kindergarten! So being the enthusiastic mom that I am; I documented the whole morning as best as I could. He was not all that excited about the camera going off every ten minutes but he tolerated it for me.

Eating waffles.

Getting handsome for the day.


Finally he's ready!

The best part of the morning was when we got to the school. Brian was waiting for us so that he could be there to walk Drew in on his big day. It was a huge surprise and it made him so happy. I'm really glad I got this moment on film.

Special Morning

Drew has really done an amazing job adjusting to having a new baby in the house. He had 5 wonderful years of being the only child and I really expected him to struggle with the new dynamic of having two kids in the house. But he really has been great. This is why back in July, I surprised Drew with a special early morning adventure for just the two of us. Balloons over Bend is an annual event around here that I have always wanted to go to. But in order to really appreciate the beauty of the hot air balloon festival you have to be a very early riser. This year I decided it was worth losing some shut eye if I could get Drew up-close and personal wtih some hot air balloons.

Enjoying the beauty.

I woke Drew up at an ungodly hour and told him we were going to see hot air balloons. He was groggy but he seemed excited once he understood what we were doing. We hopped in the car in our pajamas; made a pit stop at Starbucks and headed out. When we got there it was a little breezy so only one balloon was actually inflated. But it was beautiful and he was able to get as close as he wanted. While it would have been so much more exciting for him to see twenty balloon shovering in the sky; he still had a great time. And I promised we would do it again next year.

Beach Weekend

At the end of June we had our first annual LAM family weekend. LAM is a really embarassing ancronym that my friends and I came up with ions ago in college and that is all I'm going to divulge. As I said it's embarassing. We headed to Seaside to spend a weekend with our very good friends the Tax's and the Dunn's. This weekend was especially meaningful for me. Angie and Leah are two of the most important women in my life and since college we have all gone in different directions. We have still remained close and even managed to have girls weekends on a pretty regular basis. This year we decided it was time to include our families in these get togethers. So we threw everybody into one house together for 3 days and it couldn't have gone better. Everyone had an amazing time and we all agreed this trip has to be an annual thing. It will be so amazing to watch our children grow up together and be friends.

Dane and Jensen chilling on the beach.




The whole gang in front of our beach house.

We ate too much, we drank too much, we played in the ocean. And we did it all with amazing friends. We can't wait until next year!

Catching Up

I seriously think I was living in LaLa Land when I started this blog. I had visions of myself plopping down in front the computer every couple of days to record all the great things that I was doing as a new stay at home mom. Well reality has come calling and I now consider myself lucky if I get to spend 10 minutes online reading emails. Then there is the stress of finding another 10 minutes to respond to said emails. I don't know why I thought I would also have the time to write some amazing blog full of entertaining anecdotes.

I shouldn't make it sound as though I literally don't have 10 minutes to spare. Because I do find myself with that extra 10 minutes here and there but I have so many things to choose from that the blog never seems to make it to the top of the list. My favorite thing to do when I have a free moment is absolutely nothing. It's not all that productive but it feels so good!

I really do want this blog to be a place to record special moments with my family. I want them to be able to come here and read about the things we have done together. I am vowing to stop thinking about the things I'll put in blog and actually start writing them.

So in order to get caught up a little bit; the next few posts will be about things we have done in the last few months that I really want to make sure get written down. Whew! I have some writing to do!

"When I Was a New Kid"

We hear the sentence "When I was a new kid" about a hundred times a day around here. It is how Drew starts about 90 percent of his stories, and he tells a lot of stories. All day long we hear about the experiences he had when he was a new kid. According to him he lived in Africa, had 21 brothers and sisters and a mom who was very different from me. If you believe in such things I guess you could say he is remembering his previous life/lives. I don't really fly that way though. I have another more practical theory. He is constantly bombarded with new information from the adults in his life. Along wtih the new info he receives he also hears a lot about things that happened when he was a baby or before he was born etc. I think his New Kid stories are his way of having his own stories to tell and getting to feed us new information the way we feed it to him. It's his way of feeling like one of the grown-ups.



Most of the time I listen very intently and ask questions and try to let his creative juices flow when he tells me a story. I know that he is creating a world that is all his own where he gets to decide what happens and I respect that. But there are days when I really hate his "other" mom. She is apparently way cooler than I am. For instance she used to be a super hero. I have no powers to speak of other than my power to make him do things he just doesn't want to. She also took him to the beach a lot more often than I do. I actually find myself resenting this way cooler mom that he sometimes enjoys a lot more than he does me. How ridiculous is it for me to have resentment toward an imaginary mom? Is this a sign of some serious insecurity on my part? Or maybe I'm just tired of hearing the "New Kid" stories over and over and over again. Either way its one of those little quirks about Drew that I know we will miss when he is older. I will continue to listen to him talk about his other mom as enthusiastically as possible because you know what? He's talking to me, and he loves it and I don't want that to EVER go away.

The House of Brotherly Love

No words necessary. Just images of the love that is oozing around this house. Who knew they would dig each other so much? Brotherly love abounds around here!