A quick hello

I know I've been a big slacker lately with the blog. But sometimes I barely feel like I have 2 minutes to myself. I'm sure every mom knows this feeling.
We've had a super busy summer, with LOTS of time at the lake, Aunt Christi getting married and school starting.
Cole and Alexis have been up at the cabin just around 60 days each! That's a lot of fun in the sun! And this year we have had wonderful (wet) but warm weather.
Both of the kids love swimming, and can do quite well with their lifejackets on.

They also had a lot of fun at Christi and Oh Andy's wedding. Alexis as a mini bride and Cole the mini groom. I made Alexis's dress, and didn't even pull my hair out! I was finishing all the hand beading at the rehersal....but minor details.

I think they might have stolen the show. :)

It was back up to the cabin in August...and then SCHOOL!

Cole was at school for 1 whole day, then we headed out again for our last weekend up at the cabin. They've been big helpers up here, hauling wood and helping with the construction of the new additon and new roof.

But Tuesday it will be back to school for Cole and all day with mommy at home for Alexis (she told me on Thursday that she didn't want to be home all day with me, she wanted Cole to be home too. Guess she misses her big brother!).

Until then...

WE HAVE SUN!!!

We've been up at the cabin sine Saturday - and the weekend was OK, not warm but OK. But today - WE HAVE SUN. AND it's warm. Double Yea! The kids have been going a bit stir crazy with all the cold and rain, that it was well overdue.

We did get out yesterday for awhile and I did take some pictures. It wasn't great out, but at least it wasn't raining. :)

Alexis and Great Grandpa doing puzzles. She' getting quite good at them!

Cole and Grandma working on his sounds while playing Grandma's "cool" game.

This is the nice bug that Grandpa found in the washing machine outside. Not sure what he is - but he was big. Don't think I want to cross him in a dark alley.

Cole and Alexis fishing for shoes. They caught some big ones too!

Cole has also started watching Phineas & Ferb - which is actually very funny now that I've seen it with him. They have a pet Platypus named Perry.

So today during lunch Grandma was telling Cole he couldn't get the milk out and mixed up until it was time to eat. She had to tell him like 3 times then all of a sudden from no where he says "I'm a Platypus, I'm perry the Platypus". I was in the kitchen getting some cheese cut and just about lost it. It was so funny I had to really hold back my laughs.

It was just so random and out of no where. Got to love kids.....

Wild Child - or children...

Cole and Alexis have been a wee bit WILD this past week. I'm not sure if it's the weather - or the recent visit with all the Trochisnki family - or just the end of the school year. Maybe it's all of the above! Monday night/Tuesday morning the kids did not want to stay in their beds. I think they came up 3 different times. Cole told me he doesn't like being downstairs and so on. When I come out into the living room on Tuesday morning, I find Cole sleeping on the couch. He told me it was so comfy that he was going to sleep there EVERY night! Alexis pulled the same thing the next night, getting up 3 times and finally snuck into bed with mom and dad. Though they have been good in their beds now last night and hopefully again tonight. They forget that Mom's need sleep too!
They are both happy to have the warm weather back and have been back at riding bikes. Alexis decided she was going to wear her new winter boots riding bike. At least they matched. :)
Today we went for a walk with Julie, then they played in the little pool in the driveway for a bit. They also "Helped" mom and Jeanne with the doll project and managed to make a mess all over in the house. But that's really just a normal day.
Tonight at dinner the kids were getting silly (again) and Cole says to me "you can eat a dirty worm mom!" No idea where that came from but it got me laughing pretty hard. Just when you think the craziness of 2 kids, a husband, 3 dogs, a household and everything else may be too much - your adorable 5 year old tells you to go and eat dirty worms! Just makes you step back and remember that being together and laughing is what it's all about.

Some new pix and updates

Well it's been a crazy couple of weeks...then when isn't it? How did I ever work and do all this??

Thought it was time for some new photos of the kids.

Here's Cole flying a kite back in April. He can get the kite going all by himself! He starts on the side yard and runs down the hill to the back. He really got quite good at it.

Then Cole and Alexis made a farm with the Lincoln Logs. We had to make sure to get a picture of it for Papa (though Papa got to see it in person on a quick trip up for work). Cole LOVES building with the Lincoln logs with Papa. So every time he makes a house he has me take a picture of it so we can send it to Papa. Alexis didn't do much building, but she did find the pieces and helped with all the animals.

Cole also made some Alien's out of Legos. In his lego magazine, the challenge was to make an Alien. He made Ratchet and Clank (from one of the video games he and Eric play) and then a family of Ewoks. Why Ewoks, I'm not sure...especially since he hasn't even seen the movies with them in it. But I guess the one little Wicket figure I have in the house is his inspiration.

We lined up all the creations, took our picture and sent it in. Lets keep our fingers crossed he has a chance of making it in the magazine. :)

Alexis hasn't been without excitement. Though mostly it involves her injuring herself. She got into a fight with the sidewalk at the Post Office one day, and well...the sidewalk won. But she's tough. After 2-3 minutes of crying we headed to the library to finish our errands.

She also got this wonderful leotard with a Tutu on it...she thought it was so wonderful that she insisted on wearing it outside to ride her bike. Ok...I can see little girls might think this is super cool. Especially when there is a princess on the front - but when it's only 60 degs out!! BURRRRRRRR!! It didn't seem to faze her one bit though. She was riding up and down the sidewalk like she owned the whole town!

Once it did start to get warmer out and all the flowers were blooming we spend A LOT of time riding bikes. The kids were super excited to get new "big kid" bikes. Cole's is Yellow - of course and Alexis's bike is princess - Snow White to be exact.

Cole insisted on a nice photo of him out front by all the tulips & daffodils. They are only about 1/2 in bloom in this photo but still quite pretty.

Lastly, Miss Alexis got a new hat. I won this cute thing from Cotton Blossoms in a random drawing. We took some pictures to send to Kim, the owner and before we knew it Alexis is modeling for her site.

You can see this pix out on the website at:

http://cottonblossoms.com/item_116/ALOE-BREEZE.htm

So that is the latest and greatest updates on Cole and Alexis. They sure are keeping me busy! And with only 3 weeks left of school - I have NO idea what I'm going to do all summer! It will be over before I know it.

My mom passed along a great message from the Proverbs 31 blog from Friday May 7th. Ariel writes about the daily-ness of being a mother: "I remind myself that the days are long but the years are short."

This is so true, so very true.

Chicago!

This past weekend we headed to Chicago with Eric's entire family. This is no small feat when you are talking 11 adults and 3.2 kids. We headed out on Friday morning for the long drive. It seemed to take forever, especially with the 1 hr delay just trying to get into the city. But we finally made it and met up with the whole fam.
Dinner on Friday night was at Texas de Brazil. INCREDIBLE!! That's all I have to say! It was also Eric's birthday and you can see he got a tasty treat on the house. YUM! I think we all could have rolled ourselves out of there when we were done. Good thing we had to walk back to the hotel.
Saturday morning we hopped onto the city bus and headed over the field museum. The first thing you see is 'Sue', the big T-rex. The kids thought that was great. So much to see. We also enjoyed the baby mammoth, the diamond exhibit and all the dinosaurs. Both of the kids fit nicely into the big dino footprint. They tired like heck to fill up the whole space! They also had a fun time downstairs in the kids play area. They dug up bones, played music, picked corn and played with Dad.
After the ride back to up town we headed to the Lego store and American Girl store. Both of the kids scored pretty well on that deal. Alexis was sleeping (fell asleep on the bus) but managed to wake up in time to get all her goodies at the "baby store."
Dinner Saturday was Chicago style pizza. YUMMY! Again, soooo full! We did walk over to the bean to check it out. Cole refused to go to the bathroom before we left the restaurant and of course then had to go when we were walking around. He looked at Eric and said "I didn't know we were going to Bean Dad, or I would have gone." Like it's all the Bean's fault!
Sunday we went to the Shed and saw the dolphin show. It was ok. The kids thought it was great, so that's what really counts. It was so crowded that it was hard for us to really enjoy the whole aquarium.
We headed home around one and after many stops - the list is crazy! - we finally made it home. But it was a good time, and the kids had so much fun with the whole family. We are very blessed to be able to spend a vacation with all of us together at one time.

First Loose Tooth - Gone!

Ok, so when did this happen? My little boy is growing up so fast I can hardly believe it. This morning the 3 of us (Cole, Alexis and myself) went to the dentist for our routine cleaning and check up. Cole has been talking about his loose tooth forever, but until the check up when Sandy looked at it and said "I'll be surprised if he makes the day with that one!" it didn't really sink in that he would actually lose the tooth so soon. He wiggled on it all morning, then headed off to school. When he came home he had a little red envelope from his teacher that read
"Cole tried to pull his tooth at school so I bribed him to stop. This is a special tooth holder inside (he wanted to pull it so he could get one). It is loose!"
They must get this special little plastic tooth holder to put their tooth in if it falls out in during school. Ok, we then headed outside to play. He comes over when I am and says "Mom, look at this" and has his tooth all the way bent over. He REALLY wanted it out. So I told him to just grab hold of it and yank it out. AND HE DID!!! I couldn't believe it! I held on to it for him until we headed inside. Both the kids hopped in the tub, but before could would get in he climbed his naked little butt up on the stool to look at the "hole" in his mouth in the mirror. He was so amazed and proud of himself. He did the same thing after he got out of the tub, like he just couldn't get enough of that missing tooth!
So I had to get busy to make a pillow for his tooth for the tooth fairy. We looked on-line and found a cute pattern. It's a tooth shaped pillow with a little pocket on the back for the tooth. He's now sleeping with that pillow and his tooth under his bed. But also a note to the tooth fairy asking if he can keep his tooth just one more day. ( we think he wants to show his teacher )
Here's some pix of our monumental event.

Sunday

Today we had Ryan and his daughter Kennedy (we missed you Sarah and Kinley) and Jennifer, Graham & Autumn over for lunch. The kids had a blast playing together. Cole was so happy to have a boy to play with and Alexis was in heaven with two little girls to play princess & babies with. It was a lot of fun for everyone.

Yesterday I handed Alexis the hand me down Harley Jacket from Julie's girls. She put it on and I told her she was tough. Also that Papa had a Harley motorcycle, and that's the kind of jacket it was. She then said she wanted to ride on Papa's motorcycle. Think she'll have to wait a while on that one. But she did pose for me and have some pretty "tough girl" looks. I think she did a pretty good job looking tough - at least I don't think I'd be messing with her.

She even thought it was pretty cool that her shoes have black and orange on them so she matched (she's very concerned with that lately).

Also, last Friday was Pirate day at Cole's class. They built a big pirate ship (and I mean big!) out of cardboard. It's large enough that everyone can be "inside" the main part of the ship's deck. So on Friday they had their official pirate day to celebrate the ship being done. Cole dressed up like a pirate and didn't have to use any manners all day at school. Here's a picture of Cole giving me a good "arrrrrr"

He's pretty cute with his eye patch (thanks to Nana & Papa), his bones pirate outfit and a small tatoo on his cheek.

When he came home I asked him how his day was and he told me that he wouldn't tell me until dad came home. So I waited...then he said "it was fun". It's like pulling teeth to get him to talk about school! Luckily his teacher is great at taking lots of photos and sharing them!

New Dress for Alexis

So I had a crazy idea to make a dress for Alexis. It started when I saw this shirt at Wal-Mart for a buck. Loved the phone booth and numbers on it...but being it is a Milie Cyris shirt a women's small is really for a 10 year old. So I though "what can I make from this?"

I picked up the shirt and on my next trip to the fabric store found this faded looking super soft red knit that matched perfect! Best of all, it was only 1.95 per yard!!

So I took it home and let the ideas get started. I cut the dress from a jean jumper that I like the fit of. Took the sleeves off the original t-shirt and re-attached and trimmed them down on the new dress. I then made two very large ruffles and attached them to the bottom of the dress. A small band of the red around the neck (which I'm not totally happy with it flipping over) and I was done. No hemming since I re-used the existing hem on the sleeve and the bottom has the ruffle covering it. I even made a matching headband out of the extra fabric from the bottom of the T and the left over red fabric from trying to cut it straight. (man that fabric was cut SOOO crooked it was unbelievable!!)

All and all, I think it's pretty darn cute (especially on such a little cutie!). A totally custom dress for a whole 3 bucks! Can't beat that!

New Kit = New scrapbook layouts!

I haven't scrapbooked in FOREVER!! But saw this new kit on http://www.songbirdavenue.com/ and was inspired. They create kits to raise money for charity and this month they are working on relief efforts for Haiti. So I chipped in my share and in return received an awesome kit! The colors worked perfect for the photos of Alexis in her brown sweater that Grandma T knit for her for Christmas. It's so soft and warm! Then I saw this house and it totally reminded me of Dora - so the Dora dress pix came next. Alexis is not the easiest subject to photograph. Not only will she not listen, she isn't very photogenic. It's hard to get her just looking natural. But some of these shots weren't to shabby. So enjoy.

3 & 5 year old pictures

Cole and Alexis
5 & 3 yr pictures

Cole Cooking Hibachi

Eating at the Hibachi restaurant must have made quite the impression on Cole. Today I was invited to sit down so he could cook me a meal. It was so cute I had to get a video clip. He even is "tossing" aside all the "bad" stuff just like they do with the shrimp tails at the restaurant.

In case you were wondering, my meal was wonderful. Alexis even served me tea.