Team Shier

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Welcome to the family, little miracle

We are a family that goes through vacuums. With an inside dog that sheds like crazy and 4 people in the household, we are just hard on vacuums. After buying expensive vacuums and having no better luck than the $50 special, I made peace with knowing that my carpets were cleaned OK, but not great, when I vacuumed. At least the amount of dog hair was lessened for a few days & then I'd just vacuum again. Then I saw an ad on TV for this one - the Bissell Pet Hair Eraser. I rushed into the office and pulled up Target.com & read the reviews - people love it AND it's less than $150! Andrew ran out to Target & within the hour, we had our very own Pet Hair Eraser. We've run the vacuum over our floors that were only vacuumed 2 days ago. As one other reviewer said, "ewwww, gross, but comforting too." We've filled & emptied the canister several times already, so I am one part grossed out by the gunk that was still on our floors, but one part glad to see it getting sucked out. And I didn't even have to vacuum dog hair off the back of the vacuum when I finished. Hopefully this little baby holds up!

WATCH THIS VIDEO

I'm not technologically savvy enough to know how to put this video on the blog, but cut & paste the link if you have to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT56YizyR2o

Sunday, November 25, 2007

A Modern Christmas Story

Bet you didn't know the holy family had a cement mixer and dump truck in the stable.

Gobble gobble, etc

We had a fun-filled Thanksgiving day at Jody & Whitney's. Thanks guys for hosting! Whitney has some pics from the day on her blog.

Friday, we went to Maggiano's for a delicious dinner with Lloyd & Barbara & their cousins (which I guess makes them our cousins too since Barbara is Andrew's 2nd cousin) from Missouri that came for Turkey day. Max & Ben were fantastic through a 5-course dinner that lasted nearly 2 hours.

And Friday morning and afternoon we decorated the inside of the house for Christmas. The tree has been decorated and redecorated about a dozen times already. I keep finding ornaments in the most random places. I'm getting pretty proficient at identifying tree decorations from their sound - example: "Oh there goes Ben dragging the string of shiny red beads through the kitchen again." I'm sure the tree will continue to be redecorated many more times. It's really a work in progress :).

And as Jody aptly described the game Friday, "who cares versus who cares," you're welcome Sonny Lubick for WYO giving you a parting gift of yet another Border War victory.

Meet the Griswolds

The past three Saturday mornings, I have opened Ben's curtains somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30, only to see Clark Griswold across the street already on his roof, working on his holiday extravaganza.

Here's the breakdown:
6 deer
2 polar bears
2 blue Christmas trees
7 Santas
1 carousel
1 North Pole sign
1 tin soldier
1 snow globe
1 penguin on an igloo
1 Frosty the Snowman
1 chimney with an elf peeking out

That's 24 pieces of lawn decor. (And yes, I stood in Ben's darkened bedroom window last night and counted, why do you ask?)

Just the way I like my holidays, simple and understated.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Birthdays Galore!

With Max turning 4 last Thursday & Ben turning 2 next Tuesday (I can hardly believe it!), we had a family birthday dinner last night with Grandpa Jim, Grandma Jill, Aunt Whitney & Uncle Jody where we all gorged ourselves on pizza, cake & ice cream. Here are some pics:

It was a struggle to keep Ben's hands out of the cake long enough to snap a picture.

Future Cowboy

Here is how I found Ben the other day.

Early November

For about 10 days in early November, Grandpa Mo stayed with us.

Sue had some family things to take care of back in Pennsylvania, so Mo stayed with us while she traveled. The boys had a hoot of a time. Lloyd & Barbara came over for dinner one night.

On the return home, Sue stayed overnight with us for one night to pick up Mo & then continue on their journey home. Here are the boys opening birthday presents with Grandma Sue.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween!!

The boys are out trick-or-treating right now. I am manning the door. Here they are before they left: Max is James the train (as in Maxwell James), and Ben is Thomas (as in they don't make a Benjamin or George train costume). Happy Halloween!!

Preschool party

Some pics from Max's preschool party yesterday. Ben got to tag along & Grandma Jill is on fall break, so she went along too to check out Max's preschool.

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon...

OK, so last weekend I spent some time shopping for birthday and Christmas presents for the boys. They spend hours digging and moving rocks in the backyard, so I thought I'd get them construction vehicles. They have dumptrucks, so I thought I'd get some backhoes, bulldozers, etc. I went to Target, Toys R Us, and looked on-line. It seems the toys I have in mind, which I thought were standard issue Tonkas, are now collector's items (with a ridiculous pricetag if you can even find them new from a merchant). I was flabbergasted to find that the big construction vehicles in the stores were all RADIO CONTROLLED!! Does anyone else see something inherently wrong with radio controlled play-in-the-dirt toys???? Has it really come to this, where we have to virtually play in the dirt with video-game-like controls? No, I want my kids to actually play in the dirt, for real, dirt and all, not sit on the patio and work excavators with remote controls. For that matter, they also actually pedal bikes and scoot scooters - with their legs - gasp! No annoying motorized whines as my kids zip around in their pint-sized Escalades & motorized scooters. I can't be the last parent who thinks kids should actually play and use their bodies instead of some new technology-driven version of playing....

BTW, I am watching some non-remote controlled Tonka backhoes on ebay and I have some other sources (like John Deere dealers) if the internet doesn't work out.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Home Improvements

Even in a house that's by and large ready to go, we still had several projects that needed handled. So here are some pictures of the projects we've finished.

The living room & dining room window coverings:

These windows are in the same large room, but previously had mismatched window coverings. The dining room had horizontal blinds & the living room had vertical blinds. Yes, you read that right, vertical blinds in the living room window! Which I don't understand because I think the previous owners had great taste in pretty much everything else in the house, why would they stick vertical blinds in the living room window?? Oh well, just be grateful that the rest of the decor is already pretty great...And personally, we prefer curtains instead of blinds in rooms like these that don't require a lot of privacy. So we redid both of them with these curtains & curtain rods. I love the leather detailing on the finials; it has the same leather and stitching on the holdbacks too.

And two gallons of primer & one gallon of paint later, bye-bye Boston Red Sox room in the basement. I'm sure the navy blue & red paint with Sox wallpaper border was fabulous for their son, but it's not exactly what I had in mind for our guest room. Plus, it just seemed like bad mojo to have any team besides the Rockies, let alone our competition in the World Series, adorning the walls of any room in our house. So Max, Ben & I peeled the wallpaper last week (they had a blast!) & I took care of the rest this weekend. It is now a lovely shade of khaki, the same shade as the interior of our Utah house, courtesy of one gallon of paint being leftover from us finishing the basement there.

And this is the workbench that Andrew built. He of course painted the entire garage & put epoxy on the floor (like he does at every house), but then he built this awesome workbench too. It's the first time we've felt like we were going to live somewhere long enough to make building a workbench worthwhile. He is very excited and feels very manly about his project.

Just a couple of pics of the kitchen & family room, where we spend most of our time. We didn't have any projects in these rooms. (Does the rug look familiar, Tiff? I told you I loved your rug!)

And I repainted both boys' rooms in boy-approved bippidi-boppidi-blue. They were very nicely painted too, but clearly previously occupied by girls. Max's room used to be pink with purple bouquets of flowers blooming all over the walls.

And Ben's was lavender.

We also added the curtains in both boys' rooms for additional room darkening since they face east & we prefer it when they sleep past the crack of dawn.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

First snow of the season

Some pics from the first snow of the season today:

Brotherly Love

Our church has a paging system. When you drop off your kids in the nursery, you are given a pager that will buzz if you need to retrieve your child. This morning we got buzzed for the first time that either of our boys have been in the nursery. Andrew went to the nursery, to find Benjamin red-eyed and sobbing.

The nursery ladies asked "Who's Matt? He keeps asking for Matt."

Andrew responded, "Ohhhhhh, that would be Max."

"So who's Max?"

"His brother. He's in Sunday school."

So poor Ben was utterly inconsolable at being separated from his brother this morning. I thought that was kind of sweet. I don't know what it says about us as parents that he doesn't cry "mama" or "dada," but at least he misses his brother! :) Anyways, Andrew got him calmed down and he was able to last in the nursery until the end of the service.