Love from Germany pt. 2

LOTS of excitement at the treehouse on this rainy Saturday....
a box of love arrived all the way from GERMANY!
and I promised essie reaction shots from coley-oley-o.....
so, here goes...

Here is the "OOOO...beer gummies?!?" reaction.....

and the reaction we were all waiting for.....
look Coley figured out what the next gummies were shaped like...
and that is pretty hysterical when you're a nine year old boy... what kind of gummies could make my kids so giddy? and laugh so much?
PENIS gummies of course!
Very very funny the penI-gummI, or is it ...penis-gummis?
Yeah, it was a very happy discovery, and has fueled the boys desire to move to Germany next....
kiddie beer flavored gummies,
penis gummies,
Bayern Munchen gummies.....
(notice Coley was wearing a liverpool jersey, whilst eating bayern munchen gummies?!.....BUT we have a bayern munchen shirt, i swear it)
wine gummies for the momma,
and some crazy cool eyeballs... good stuff. oh and look, Jared was there too.....making this face every time I turned the camera his direction...isn't he cute?!
"HI PRESTON!" from the Jared btw....
So we our sending lots of love, hugs and thankyous to the Germany fun-house.
We wish wish wish that plans hadn't changed and we'd ended up neighbors in Deutschland. CRAZY mad beer drinking, brat and pretzel eating fun would have been had....
give us a few years, we are working on it.
In the meantime,
I am in LOVE with your 40th-birthday-CD-circle-journal.
Can't wait.
Although you should be very afraid of what I may put on a CD...
have you heard my playlist on the blog?
HELLO?! REM, Barlow Girl, DMB, Korn, Jewel and the Cure...
I don't really understand it myself...
Anyway,
I hope you eventually get on a plane, and avoid more pre-dawn wake up calls....
next year lets consider Hawaii though...
just a thought.
Travel safe, and call me from Gaia's house...
The treehouse LOVES you guys.

hmm....

not sure about any of this...
still tweeking the blog.
added some custom thing, and it made everything CRAZY!
so try and ignore until I figure it all out.....

KoolAid Banners of Joy

it's HOT and we miss this there, i said it....we miss Solon.
pigs have officially taken flight.

also.
pink lemonade kool-aid does not leave a moustache...so in an attempt to get a photo of sweaty dirty kool-aid moustached boy faces
instead of just sweaty dirty boy faces....
i will wait for cherry, or tropical punch kool-aid day.
they only get kool-aid in the summer. because of the amount of fluid they drink....
and the cost of juice.
it's a bad thing, but it's something they look forward to.
kool-aid = kiddie crack.
that's all i'm saying.
i was getting some the other day with coley...
who remarked "wow, you're getting a LOT of kool-aid"
(10 packets)
i said "well, it's 10 for a dollar"
WOW replied the middleman...."THAT is a GREAT deal"
yes, an excellent deal for artificially flavored, and colored what is it Col? citric acid? nastiness...
Liquid gold when you're little.

ok, on an unrelated note.
how does one make a blog banner? I've been so lucky to have Hanni and then Nisa make me mine....and now it's been over a year, and I'd like a new one...
and surely it must be within my abilities...?!?
although, maybe not...
maybe not wouldn't surprise me in the least.
email me if you have any knowledge of such things....
i'd love you forever.

documenting summer...

Little boy feet that scream summer....dirt, flip flop tan lines, scraps, bruises and cuts, bug bites, and oh my gosh the DIRT.....
Next up sweaty faces with kool-aid moustaches....

Alex's Run

If you're in the Milwaukee-Madison-Chicago area and want to support a good cause.

The race site has been updated.
The race is July 12th at 9am.
You can mail your registration in, or just register at 7:30 the day of the race.
It's a wonderful way to celebrate Alex's life, by honoring what she loved doing.

I wish I could say we'd be there this year, but unfortunately moving every year has put a damper on our funds, so we'll be praying for the race from home this year.

Much love to everyone that will be there....

In Jack's words...

"Because I'm going too fast and I push on my brakes but I'm still going, so I used my shoe to brake"

and
Why is it a bad idea to use your croc as an emergency brake while biking?...

"Because it ruins your shoe and gets a giant hole in it"...

Yes it does....

Put the snacks down ma'am, and nobody gets hurt.

I think they intentionally make you wait at the pharmacy for just an absurd amount of time,
so that you inevitably wander around the store and collect things.
Like it really takes 30minutes to place the prepackaged medicine into the bag?!
We left today with a snickers bar, a sprite, a Hershey's bar, some planter's nuts, some kashi golean roll bars, a vitamin water, some dark chocolate calcium supplements, some sharkies for kids, and...two inhalers. Wha?!? I don't get it.
So Jack might have asthma (got to love doctors when they clearly have no idea)
...he goes to the ear, nose and throat doctor Monday.
Until then, I believe we have a few snacks to tide us over....

And, can I just say I'm so excited about this premiere tonight....
I laughed so hard when they took Monkey to the vet last season...I cried.
Just a train wreck...
I can't wait.

Well, yesterday was nice...

Yesterday was lovely. Always nice to celebrate my husband...he's such a good daddy.
It's hard to believe he was only 19 when he became one... So, yesterday was spent playing FIFA on wii, and watching sports....
(boys really just get bigger, they don't change that much)
eating BBQ chicken, homemade potato salad, corn on the cob and sugar cream pie (yum)...
and giving little gifts of our love...

the boys and I made this super simple little album for his desk at work.
(we make one every year, next year he's getting a little basket for all his mini-albums)
Just had the boys list some things they love about their dad...
And I did a "top 10" with photos....
Then the boys wrote love notes on the back of each page....super simple, but sweet. That's how we roll...

So it's definitely Monday now, and I'd already like a do-over (please)...
this day has started off a little rough...(quite possibly the understatement of the day)
one boy is in time-out for an unspecified amount of time.
one is hovering a fine line and might find himself there shortly...
and one has a tonsil the size of a ping pong ball (no seriously, it's GROSS)
so I'm just sitting here waiting for the doctors office to call me back...
yelling "Not yet!" in reply to the constant "Can I come out now???" line of questioning coming from the other room....
hope your Monday is off to a better start.

eta: It's amazing what a little food and outdoor play will do to make everyone happier. whew.
The littles are out playing with the neighbor kids...
Jack has a dr appt tomorrow,
and things are looking bright.
Mondays...whew.

Random Thursday

So, I was going through some photos from Erin's wedding the other day to scrap,
and came across this one....
and had some observations.
Like...
1. Why does my hair look so dark?
2. Why in the world does that stupid dress not fit me?!? Come on now...
I really need to wear it saturday to a wedding....
3. My husband looks so cute.
4. Erin looks SO pretty...
5. I love August, we all have anniversaries. (Gabby too!)
6. And...I didn't notice one little detail until yesterday...

look closer... ignore my hair, that looks almost black....see it?
awww...Jack is holding my hand.
I didn't notice that before...but now that I do it's just the sweetest thing.
Clearly I didn't notice we were even doing it during the photo.
As you can tell, we're really a "formal" photo bunch, as my son is standing on top of a giant rock and all...
nice.
Anyway, that was my bit of cuteness today.

ETA: I got this dress today. It's a casual wedding, so I think it'll be ok? With fancy heels? Or is it not dressy enough?...
My thought process was if I have to get another dress I'd like to be able to wear it around w/ flipflops... and it's black. And that's always a good thing ...in my world anyway.
And in case you were curious Ann Taylor has some very cute dresses...

SharkBait says send Help

First of all, we can check slip-and-slide off the summer 25 list...
although it was a struggle.
The first slide we got broke the second we turned the water on...
Everything now has to be so "fancy", you can't just have the big giant yellow piece of plastic and and a sprinkler anymore,
like when I was a kid...
nooo, it's got to have a blow up pillow at the end and a "splashpool"....
and that's the basic one...
good. So this one will probably last another day or so...
It's hot though, so it's $10 well spent...
Hot. Arkansas is HOT.Completely unrelated to slipping and sliding.
Jack has been asking for a bonsai tree for a few years now. (I know, strange, huh?) I'm not really sure how he became so enamored with the little trees, but he definitely wanted one...
So Colin and I have looked on and off, at nurseries and garden centers, with no luck...
Until this weekend when we came across a bonsai forest by accident.

Meet Miyagi (if you ask Jack) or BingBong (if you ask Jared or Cole)
Isn't it just the cutest little thing? Sadly it doesn't really stand a chance with me taking care of it... Exhibit A: Meet Bob.
This is Bob before the move to AR....I was quite proud of Bob because it was the first plant I'd kept alive for more than a few months....
This is Bob today...

He's really suppose to be in the trash, but hasn't quite made it there yet. Very sad I know. I'm not sure why I can't manage to keep any living thing that's not a kid alive in this house, but it's a struggle for me.
In case there was any question why we don't have a dog...
Ask Shark Bait (the goldfish), he's the soul survivor of the goldfish trifecta (poor Foxy Cleopatra and Bikini Squid)....
This is clearly why my boys think that you're suppose to name plants. They don't know any better...
No pets,
No plants....
Sigh.
I'm reading up on bonsais, so hopefully little Miyagi will grow to be as big as the (still tiny) bigger bonsais that were older than me.....and so expensive I almost died.

While they read...

Jack drew.

I like the fact that he used a still life, and 2 sheets of paper.

Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica

Fact.
We are horrible parents.

We moved here the middle of March and the littles are still in a room that is.....
PURPLE.
Still purple June 2nd.
"Actually, it's lavender mom"
Great, huh?
Yeah, it's really nice. I especially like the fact that sometimes when they walk in their room Jack will say things like "It's starting to look more blue I think..."
Yep. Horrible. Parents. I wasn't kidding...

I know it's hard to see, but it's purple.
And no their room isn't normally that clean, or without wall hangings (aka photos/posters/drawings/art)...but we'd just moved in when I snapped that lovely photo.
Anyway, I felt the need to confess....but I swear we're painting it. Soon.

On to better ...
We took away tv and video games from the boys this week. Not because they did anything. Just because we're horrible parents (see the example above) and we felt like seeing what they can come up with without their number one go to. (the wii)
Today they played outside until they were exhausted,
then they read and played boardgames...
Now they're doing something they "can't tell me"...which concerns me slightly, but it involves paper and writing, so hopefully it's a good thing...

Coley, all sweaty and reading...
and Jack beside himself because his brothers are reading, and not playing with him...
These pictures crack me up because Colten was being so patient with Jack, when really I know he just wanted to tell him to leave him alone.
And that's all I've got this monday....