May - Where did it go?

Hey all! All right, so I realize that I tend to blog in spurts. I've kept up reading everyone else's blogs regularly, but not so much on the writing. Let's see...this month we wrapped up soccer and school for Maxwell - both of which he had a lot of fun with this year.

Last weekend we flew to PA for Mike (Andrew's brother) and Caitlin's wedding. Both of the boys were junior groomsmen. The whole trip, they were a little sleep deprived (getting up earlier on eastern time and getting short to no naps), so on the day of the wedding, we wanted to make sure they got an opportunity for a good nap so as to minimize the likelihood of terrorist-like behavior at the wedding. Well, you know what happens to the best-laid plans. On the day of the wedding, the boys bounced off the walls of the hotel room for about 3 hours, getting absolutely zero nap. By the time the wedding rolled around, Ben was just downright surly. When the florist pinned his boutonniere on, he immediately ripped the head off the rose and threw it on the ground. Ahhh well, we did the best we could. Max hung in there fine and was brave enough to walk down the aisle like he was supposed to. Ben and I just hung out at the back of the courtyard. I consider it a victory that he didn't scream or cry during the ceremony. (You'll notice in some of the pictures that we had to put Ben in his more comfy tennies as soon as the ceremony was over.) The wedding was lovely - held at Washington Crossing Historic Inn right along the Delaware River. The weather was as perfect as we've had back there...mid-seventies, sunny, and low humidity. We also had a couple of days to let the kids play together at their cousins' house in their awesome new pool. It was fun to have the whole Shier side of the family together and catch up.

The boys were excellent little travellers - now we are home and I think the boys have been catching up on their sleep all week...they're taking loooooong naps (which is why I'm blogging right now :) ).

Other tidbits:

We got our sod rolled out and are nursing it along with lots of water on our little backyard project.

We're headed to Mt. Rushmore for the 4th of July! We reserved a camp-site at one of the KOAs there that has a water-park and all kinds of fun stuff. We decided it'd be tons of fun to buy a pop-up tent trailer. Some of my most vivid memories ("I'll run the heater just enough to take the chill off;" that awesome thunderstorm in the middle of the night camping in Corpus Christi; being a bonafide Jr. Park Ranger at Custer State Park) are from camping trips and I can't wait to take my own kids! So we've been researching and shopping pop-ups - probably going to buy one this weekend.

And here are some other pics from earlier this month:

Worker-bees

Look at the dudes working away this afternoon! We had a walkway running from the driveway to the patio that was this awful messy, red rock-dust. It was a walkway you couldn't walk on because it was so dirty and messy or muddy if it rained, snowed, or the sprinklers turned on. The boys certainly loved digging in it, and were frequently covered from head to toe in red muck, but that's about the only positive. So making the red rock disappear was landscaping task numero uno. On Tuesday, we got our new walkway poured! Awww... However, I only had them concrete to the edge of the sod. We all worked to haul the red rock stuff out of the rest of the length of the walkway and we plan to lay sod on that part. We cleared out the rest of the walkway in about two hours this afternoon; we'd thought it would take a lot longer, so we were pleasantly surprised to finish that task today without a ton of effort!

Other things since the last post...

Andrew had a birthday. I baked blueberry pies.

Aspen tore her ACL (again).

My husband surprised me with a fancy shmancy diamond anniversary ring for our upcoming 10th anniversary!

Good book I read: Angry Housewives Eating Bon-bons (ignore the stupid sounding title)

Good movie I saw: Sicko (don't even get me started)

Reason #392 why I love craigslist: Less than 24 hours after listing 2 car seats that Max outgrew, I sold 'em today!

That's all for now...

American Idol

I LOVED David Cook tonight!!

I even voted.

Weekend recap

We started off with MORE SOCCER! It was fun, but goodness gracious, there was something in the air this weekend - the kids were unbelievably weepy! It was just comical to see all the kids crying along the sidelines. And it wasn't just limited to our team; all of the teams seemed to be afflicted with crying this Saturday. You gotta expect that sometimes with 3 & 4 year olds though - or any age on a bad day.

Later that afternoon, we surprised my friend Maranda with a baby shower. She'll be joining the "Mom of 2 boys club" in May. She was 45 minutes late, so we were all kind of drumming our fingers for a while - part of the risk of having a surprise shower. She said "well if I knew you were throwing me a baby shower, I would've left Home Depot earlier." They were in the midst of a ceiling fan crisis. Oh well, it was a fun afternoon.

Then some friends and their 2-year old daughter came over for dinner Saturday night.

Sunday was a day spent relaxing at home after church. Andrew watched the race and I got to laze on the couch and read. I finished Marley and Me. Such a good book about why we love our dogs - even the ones that drive us crazy (Aspen, anyone? Yes, we love her.) - and why we open our hearts to these creatures even knowing from the outset that with life spans shorter than ours we will eventually have to go through the sadness of their deaths. Andrew is reading the book now...it's made us both laugh out loud almost every other page, and of course I cried too.

Grandma/Mom and Grandpa/Dad joined us for pizza and pinochle Sunday evening, and that's about it. Enjoy your week, everyone!

Awesome!

If you look closely, you'll see that Ben is wearing shin guards AND cowboy boots - and don't forget the Lightning McQueen patches peeking out...

Too Good to Not Share

I just had to put a link to this post: http://boomama.net/?p=2253

Hmmmmm

Came across this list today:

Top 10 Useless Body Parts
By The Science Channel

When you're sick you may feel that certain body parts are more trouble than they're worth. And in some cases, you'd be right. While the human body has evolved and adapted significantly since the caveman days, a few biological traces of our prehistoric ancestors still remain with us in the form of freeloading body parts we lug around with us, but have no use for. Take a gander at the top offenders!

10. Plica semilunaris
You may not know it, but you have a third eyelid. Pull open the two more noticeable eyelids and take a look -- it's located right in the corner by the tear duct. This small third eyelid is left over from what's known as a "nictitating membrane," which is still present in full form in some animals including chickens, lizards and sharks.

9. Body hair
No doubt we were once hairier. Up until about 3 million years ago, we were covered with body hair. But by the time Homo erectus arrived, the ability to sweat meant we could shed our woolly ways.

8. Sinuses
Doctors don't really know much about sinuses -- only that we have a lot of them. Possibilities for their function range from insulating our eyes to changing the pitch and tone of our voice.

7. Adenoids
Adenoids trap bacteria, but they're also prone to swelling and infection. Just ask any 7-year-old. Luckily, our adenoids shrink with age and are often removed, along with ...

6. Tonsils
Also prone to swelling and infection. If you still have them when you reach your 30s, it's almost an accomplishment.

5. Coccyx
More useful as a game-winning Scrabble word than as part of the anatomy, the coccyx or tailbone, is made up of several fused vertebrae left over from the olden days when we had tails.

4. Arrector pili
When we were hairier (see No. 9), the arrector pili made the hairs stand on end when we needed to appear bigger and scarier. Now, it just gives us goose bumps.

3. Wisdom teeth
Back in the day, when we ate mammoth meat off the bone and didn't floss afterward, our teeth tended to fall out. Therefore, when those reserve molars, aka "wisdom teeth," came in, they were welcomed. Nowadays, fluoride and dental plans have made them just a huge pain.

2. Appendix
Darwin claimed the appendix was useful for digestion during our early plant-eating years; it's dwindled down to little since we started eating more digestible foods.

1. Male nipples
Because, why?

Soccer!!

I'd Like to Thank the Academy

and my mom, and my mother-in-law, and my grandparents, and the helpful guy at Walgreens. I've been collecting pictures over the last few months of our parents, grandparents, etc in their younger days, and after some scanning and resizing and framing and whatnot, here's the wall in our dining room.

Who Authorized This?

So I don't know about all the big boy stuff going on this week:

• Max outgrew his convertible carseat. Or, more accurately, I noticed that he's outgrown his carseat. He's OK on weight, but he's 2 inches too tall! So after spending some time researching on-line (seriously, how did we ever buy anything before we could research things on-line?), he's got a new big-boy carseat that should be his last. After he outgrows the carseat component, it converts to a high-back booster & then to a backless booster. I think there are some small adults that should be riding in his carseat.

• The boys are discovering the joys of neighbor kids with this nice weather. At least the nice weather earlier this week; it's turned on us today. Our backyards have fences that are only waist-high, so they can clearly see all of the other kids in their backyards. Anyways, the boys came in asking "can we go play in the neighbors' backyard?" And then I watched them out the kitchen window, playing with the neighbor kids. I don't know why this seems so big boy, but it's the kids making the play arrangements, not the grown-ups setting up a playdate. And, while adults were watching out the windows, there wasn't a grown-up just sitting out there with them. And then I heard them picking teams for some game (one of the neighbor boys is in 1st grade, so he was directing this part). Yes, PICKING TEAMS, such an emotionally fraught part of childhood...what if I get picked last; cool, I got picked first; OK, I wasn't first, but I wasn't last...such big boys!

• Max has his first soccer game this weekend! I got his little pee-wee shin-guards - so cute! Most of his team-mates are in his playgroup. I look forward to bunch-ball.

Oh my gosh, just too much for a mama sometimes!

Such a Mom...

Look at these fun patches! After the boys saw these on their previously holey-kneed-jeans, they wanted me to put patches on clothes that didn't even have any holes (yet). (Found the patches at Hobby Lobby. Not in the fabric section w/the plain patches. No, that'd make too much sense. They're back by the bedazzling and other applique stuff.) I guess it's nice that the boys are actually wearing their clothes out as opposed to growing out of them every 3 months.

Easter

Happy Easter!!

Some pics from this morning:The Easter bunny was kind enough to leave this awesome barn for the boys, keeping a farm theme going with the pygmy goats. Ben didn't quite know what to do with himself, he kept finding eggs around the house filled with, oh my gosh, candy!! Talk about the best morning ever!

All ready for church:
I love the great Easter hymns...Jesus Christ is Risen Today, Lift High the Cross...

On tap for dinner later: ham, sweet potato casserole, pretzel salad, baby asparagus spears with homemade hollandaise sauce & rolls. Mmmmm!! It'll be just the four of us for dinner, but I still think it's fun to have a nice Easter dinner...just more leftovers.

Here's the Easter egg tree the boys decorated:

Christ the Lord is risen today, alleluia!

My latest favorite...

...snack! I can't get enough of this: seedless, raspberry jam on a Ritz topped with Cougar Gold cheese. It is amazing!

Splishin' and a-splashin'

What the heck?

What's the deal with Easter being next week already & March Madness still hasn't even started? Why are these events reversed on the calendar this year?

Eureka!

We e-mailed ourselves our Word & Excel docs & transferred pictures with a zip drive! I'm sure there's a faster way to transfer stuff, but this worked too - yeah! I was most worried about the pictures, so I am very happy with the zip drive!

You are not hallucinating, I actually have some new posts

Meet the Easter Goats

Sorry, but Easter Goats are much lower maintenance pets than Easter Bunnies (and cuter and more fun too). So the boys got little pygmy Easter Goats from Grandma and Grandpa. The goats will live at Grandma & Grandpa's (I know you were thinking I had lost my mind for a second there). They are 2 weeks old in these cute pics. They will stay with their mama until they're about 8 weeks old, then they'll make the move to Grandma and Grandpa's. Max's goat is the black one; Ben's is the white one. Names to be determined.

How cool am I????

Attention, the Shiers now have a laptop for our family computer. Let that sink in a moment.

Ahhhhhh.

Yes, I am typing from my kitchen...how cool!!! Our 5-year old computer had a broken CD-RW drive, needed more memory and sounded like a small diesel engine when we fired it up. It was time. Plus, Andrew's new job has him working out of our home office when he's not on the road & we found ourselves tripping over each other from time to time.

So I've been setting up the new computer (remember, first laptop (for me, Andrew's used one for work for years), just using the little screen & buttons instead of a mouse took a little practice), & I am now working on tranferring stuff from the old computer to the new one so we can do away with the old one altogether.

This is a slow process for me.

After some trial and error, I got the music figured out. I thought I had the iTunes figured out - I'd just set my iPod to manual mode & transfer away. (I got a cute little purple shuffle for my birthday, which just clips on and replaces the older, bigger shuffle that bounces everywhere when I work out.) Turns out all iPods can be put into manual mode EXCEPT THE SHUFFLE. HAHAHAHAHA. Good one, guys. But I did eventually figure out how to use my shuffle & the music is being tranferred successfully.

I'm not sure about the pictures though. Remember, the CD-RW drive is broken on the old computer, so I can't just burn discs. I do like a challenge. I uploaded pictures to ofoto.com, but when I save them from ofoto to the new computer, the pictures are not as clear. Any suggestions?

About the only other things that need transferred are documents in Word & Excel. This kind of cracked me up...our new computer DOES NOT EVEN HAVE A DRIVE for those little floppy disks we used to use to transfer documents from one computer to another. Andrew & I were laughing about how fast stuff changes. We graduated from college barely 10 years ago & then NO ONE used laptops in class. We all had spiral notebooks and pens and highlighters. Wow. It amazes me how much more computers continue to be able to do & how much smaller the machines are. So anyways, that's the excitement around here.

Another year to celebrate

Whitney posted some fun pics from my birthday on March 1st on her blog. Jody & I are only 2 days (and 4 years) apart, so we had a joint family celebration. 32, not bad, not bad at all!

Carpe-ing the diem

We've had some warm days sprinkled in here and there and we try to get outside everyday that it's not too chilly. Here are the boys last week in the driveway. (Notice Max's Avs shirt...Becca handed this down to Max. Apparently she wore this shirt in high school?!? My guess is it was a little more of a "fitted" shirt for Aunt Becca. Either way, Max loves wearing it!)Last Tuesday, Max's preschool was cancelled due to some flooding in the building (I think it was an issue with the pipes of another business in the building - definitely not due to rain or snow flooding), so we took the opportunity to go to the zoo on what turned out to be the nicest day of the week. It was such a fun day! The boys amaze me with how much they're learning & how much more interactive they are on these excursions since neither is really a "baby" anymore. They both walked almost the entire time. Taking turns pulling the wagon is as much a part of the fun for them as seeing the animals. We rode the little zoo train. Riding trains is for my boys what getting 2 scoops of Ol' Roy is for Aspen. They are absolutely delirious with excitement standing in line...so fun!

Don't jump on the furniture! Jump on the trampoline!

I think the pictures say it all...

Here are the boys and their Valentine's Day present (a day early).
(And Jordan, the weight limit is 80 lbs, so you can't box the boys out of this present.)

Catching up...

Well, it seems as if we're either too busy or too tired or I have too much to say or I have nothing to say, so I haven't posted much lately.

Here's a quick recap, I guess:

Andrew had another week in Detroit for training, so it was just me and the men on the homefront this week. He flew out on Superbowl Sunday, but he caught the first and fourth quarters of the game. The fourth quarter was really the best...what an exciting game!! Even if you didn't really care who won, like me, it was a phenomenally entertaining end to the game! On the homefront, we had the usual...preschool, playgroup, and our Lenten study group (we're studying The Jesus Priorities, 8 Essential Habits by Christopher Maricle) started Wednesday night. Our usual playgroup was livened up (not so sure on the word choice here) by one of the kids barfing (not mine). That particular day, we met at Chick-fil-a because it's been so cold and they have a great indoor playground there, (plus on Tuesday nights, they give you two free kids' meals with each adult combo - what a deal!), so it was a humiliating, barf-in-public episode for our friend. Anyways, Andrew returned home late Friday night, and then Max was sick Saturday & a little Sunday morning. By late morning Sunday, he was back to his normal self...thank God for 24-hour bugs. He had a fever around a hundred, no energy and he threw up three times. Thankfully, not that bad, but no fun just the same.

Here are the boys this morning decorating boxes for valentines. They're mastering the cheesy little kid "smile." Mr. "I-do-it"-Ben lodged a formal complaint filled with tears and drama when it was time to hand over the glue-stick. Guess that's his way of saying "thanks Mom, that was a fun project."

Also, look at the fun silverware they got from Grandma Jill & Grandpa Jim for Valentine's Day. Like the fork-lift? Grandma and Grandpa brought them over, along with delicious fajitas and red velvet cupcakes last night, since they're going out of town on Thursday.

What else? Hmmm, I read Coal Miner's Daughter by Loretta Lynn last week. Talk about pure country...married at 13, 4 babies by 18...what a life!

I also love following the political races going on. They had this thing where they matched people up that pledged the same amount of money on the Obama campaign. I actually made my first monetary contribution to a political campaign & I received an e-mail shortly thereafter with my match...a teacher that teaches at the high school Barack attended - kind of neat.

OK, I'm back. The doorbell just rang and I had to pay the girl scouts for our cookies...yeah! Gotta go!

Need a new post!

OK, I am sick of looking at the van-wreck post. Here are some random snippets from the last couple weeks. BTW, the van is all fixed, no problem.

While the van was still in the shop, Andrew was out of town, so I was driving the big Dodge truck. To park the truck, I pull into the garage very slowly and gently bump the front of the garage, and then I know I'm in far enough. One of the times, I gently bumped Andrew's bike, and Ben immediately started yelling "tow truck, tow truck" from his car-seat. At least he knows the procedure for when Mom rear-ends things now.

Ben has gone through some interesting speech patterns recently. We had about a 2-week period where he stuttered at the end of his words..."I want-t-t-t-t-t-t it," etc. Then that stopped. Now, Aunt Whitney would be proud...he's gone Southern. It's most obvious on his most common word "Maaaa-yax" as he's chasing or running from his brother. (Sorry, but I don't know how to spell Southern.) Just take "Max" and make the vowel about 3 syllables long. You also hear it on "Da-a-ad."

Today, Max wrote his name all by himself at preschool!! Normally, they kind of trace their letters, but today he did it by himself!

Aunt Becca stopped in while she was up visiting from Texas. It was lovely to see her!

I guess that's about it for now.

#$%@&*@@#!!

Andrew's been in Detroit all this week; he gets home tonight. So yesterday when I picked up Max from preschool I said, "Hey guys, how about a special treat lunch at Chick-fil-a?" What a great mom!

But sometimes, no good deed goes unpunished. On our way there, I rear-ended someone.

#@**#(^*#&!!!! Yes, this is ultimately my fault, as I rear-ended them. BUT, in my defense, we were turning right from Parker Rd onto Crown Crest Blvd, which has a continuous lane to drive into. We were of course going really slowly around the corner and it seemed like the driver ahead of me had paused, looked and started going, so I did the quick glance over the left shoulder to make sure no one was coming into our lane, and suddenly I was in the guy's bumper! He'd stopped for no reason!! And it wasn't a continuous lane where you had to merge over in about 10 feet, it was a continuooooooooooooous lane. The good news I guess is that I have the luxury of griping about the annoyance of it all because no one was hurt at all. And if this had to happen, it was the best possible scenario for it to happen. See, the car ahead of me was caravanning with the car behind me for lunch. After we crunched, we continued onto the Chick-fil-a parking lot and the other two moms immediately jumped out of their cars and started helping w/the boys while the dad and I sorted the stuff out. After we dealt with the police, thank you very much for the ticket officer, I ended up eating lunch inside w/the other ladies - weird.

Sidenote: as we were going through our info, the dad pulled out his driver's license - from Utah. Turns out, they live in the next suburb over from South Jordan. They lived in Colorado Springs for two years, then took a job transfer to SLC and have been there for 2 years, and jumped at the chance to move back to Colorado. They too are gentiles that survived Utah. They are here in Parker making an offer on a house. Too weird!!! They turned out to be really nice people (so far, hopefully they don't get a crazy hair and sue me or anything). We just met under crappy circumstances. Also, him not being from here explains why they jumped over into the right lane of Parker Rd at the last minute for Chick-fil-a and then came to a complete stop at an intersection they should've kept going in. Sucks for me.

And I have to say, hats off to Progressive (so far - let's see how much they jack my rates later). I called in the accident about 1:30 and by 4:00 I had talked to two Progressive reps, they had dispatched a tow truck (the van was leaking antifreeze), and the tow truck was taking the van to a "network provider" that will do all the paperwork...I just pay the deductible and don't have to mess with getting estimates, submitting paperwork for approval, etc. The boys thought the tow truck was pretty cool. Max will tell you that the van was crying because of its owies. He says that once it gets fixed up at the shop, its windshield wipers will wipe away its tears.And huge thanks to Mom and Dad for showing up with dinner and a car for me to drive (so I don't have to rent anything). This crisis was a lot easier to manage from Parker than the crises from South Jordan (of which there were several) with their immediate support.

I guess this is one of those life lessons where I learn about forgiving my own imperfections. Fortunately there aren't many. HA!

Still, so maddening!!!!