Snow! Snow! Snow!

I love it, love it, love it! Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE snow. I get so disappointed every year because we really don't get a lot around here. I was so excited when it finally snowed and I couldn't wait to get the kids out in it--and me.

It was so cute getting them all bundled up. It was much easier in the snow this year. Last year I had to pull Brooke and Nate around in a wagon. That would not be happening this year. First of all, I am not going to do that. And second, they wouldn't let me anyway.


They played for a while as I was shoveling the driveway. Yes, you did read that right. I was so proud and I was glad that a few neighbors saw me do it so that I had proof for Dominic. Otherwise, he never would have believed me. I don't think I've ever done that before.

As I was finishing the driveway, our neighbor down the street drove by and asked if we would be out for a little while. She was going to bring her son Luca by so that the kids could play together. They came back and the kids had fun riding the sled down our big hill in the front yard. I only got a good picture of Brooke on it. She was so funny because she really wanted to ride it and then she had this silly look on her face while she was on the sled.


When we were finished Lenny and I decided that we would go inside and make some hot chocolate. Lenny was so excited. Well, that didn't happen because we had lost power in our house. Our entire street was without power from about 3:30 to 5:30. Lenny was so disappointed about the hot chocolate. It was getting very cold by the time the power came back on. We could see the power company outside down the street working on it. Dominic was home before it came on and we all gave a big cheer when the lights came on in the house.

I'm still hoping for a huge snow storm that gives us a lot of snow! I remember when I was in the 6th grade our teacher, Mrs. Dixon, would tell us all to do a snow dance and maybe we wouldn't have school the next day. We would all get excited and act silly. I still remember that. We always got lots of snow where I grew up but we didn't always get out of school for it like they do around here.

I'll be doing my snow dance!


Still Crazy About Rock Band

The love of music and all things Rock Band certainly runs in the family.


It's funny too because when Dominic and I play Rock Band, Lenny grabs the microphone and starts singing. Lenny asked us why the band players on TV always look mad. He walks around just like they do and makes the same face when he sings.


On my next post, I'll update you on all the birthday parties that Lenny has been to lately. Also, I want to add something about Nathan and Lenny being so much alike. It's cute to see Nathan following in Lenny's footsteps with some things.

A Very Productive Weekend

This past weekend was wonderful! My mom came to watch the kids here at the house all weekend while I went through drawers to get rid of clothes that no longer fit and toys that are no longer played with. I got a lot of organizing done which was really awesome! It's impossible to do it with the kids running around. The kids had a great time with Meemaw and was able to show her all kinds of tricks and stunts that they do. Mom didn't know what she was in for.

While Mom was here watching the kids for me, Dominic took care of the meals. He usually does cook alot on the weekends and sometimes during the week which is really awesome. Breakfast is usually his specialty. For dinner Saturday we had shrimp and crabcakes, Sunday we had barbecue ribs, and Monday we had stuffed shells. Yummy.

Thank you mom and Dominic for taking care of things so that I can get some clutter off of my mind. Clothes are always my biggest enemy in this house. We are overloaded with clothes and at least the kids are now at the age where they don't grow out of them quite as fast as before. I ended up with seven bags full of clothes to donate along with some toys and other things. They picked them up today. Plus I have two bags full of clothes, a ton of shoes, and some toys to give away to a friend. I am so happy to be getting all of this stuff out of the house. Although it is difficult for me to look at the clothes and remember the kids wearing them. It really reminds me that they all have grown up so much.


Mommy Excitement

As I was typing this the doorbell rang and I got a package in the mail. I am so very excited about this package. As I'm sure you know, Lenny loves monster trucks. His birthday is coming up on February 28 and he has been saying for a long time that he wants a monster truck party. There is one particular monster truck that he has been talking about wanting ever since he saw it at our friend's house on the 4th of July.

Dale and Michele's son Tyler has tons of monster trucks. Lenny was so excited to see all of them when we were there. Tyler has one that is called Great Bite. I didn't see it but Lenny told me about it and has not stopped talking about it since then. Every time we watch them on TV he says that he must just miss it when Great Bite races. I found out that it no longer races and they haven't even made a toy for it since 2002. I have looked and looked for that thing for a long time.

Well, I found one on ebay and bought it for Lenny! He will be so excited. I'm going to put it on his cake. Lenny asked me what was in the package that we got in the mail and I said that it was something for me and not very exciting. I had to fib a little! It's so much fun to do something for your kids that you KNOW they are going to love. Michele, if you still read my blog, I want you to know that Lenny still talks about his friend Tyler and all of his monster trucks.


Here are a few pictures of the kids from the past week.

I think Nathan is a little confused about how to play with his basketball hoop.


Static girl. Check out her hair.


Lenny's new Webkinz friend--Freckle Frog. I keep forgetting to mention that we had a new member of the family for three days in November. Lenny has a frog habitat and we ordered a tadpole for it. We loved that little tadpole and named him Squiggy. He was so darn cute. He only lasted for three days though. Lenny was sad and said that he wanted to watch Squiggy turn into a frog. I think Squiggy just wasn't eating. Lenny loves frogs so we may either try that again or just get a frog.


All of them watching a movie while I was listening to all of the information on Inauguration Day. Lenny did watch the actual swearing in with me while Brooke and Nate took naps.



From the Mouth of A Four Year Old

I haven't had one of these for a while so I thought I would post one.

Shortly after Brooke and Nathan went down for their nap, Lenny and I were downstairs and he was playing with his Thomas engines. For anyone who knows Lenny, you know that he never stops talking. I don't know how he can find so much to say but he doesn't stop. He decided to get his Thomas cards out. The ones that come with the engines when you buy them--Lenny calls them the playcards. It is very important to Lenny that he keeps all of the playcards for his engines. Uncle Chip learned that the hard way when he accidently threw one away after Nunny bought a new one for Lenny. He still mentions that all the time. Ever since Lenny was two years old we had to read the cards to him, he knew them by heart and he would even finish the sentences for us. It was really amazing.

Anyway, he was pretending that the engines were sending him letters (the playcards). He kept coming in to me with them and letting me know what they say. After a few times he came in again and I politely said, "Lenny, I love you but can you please go in the other room and not talk to mommy for a little while." Then Lenny showed me the picture of the playcard for Diesel that he had in his hand. He said, "Mommy, is this what you are feeling right now?" He pointed to Diesel and Diesel had a frown on his face. I had to laugh and give Lenny a hug. He's so silly. He did stop talking to me for a couple of minutes though.

Top Seven Reasons

Here are the top seven reasons that I have gotten behind on my blogging. Well, I guess I should say the top seven reasons that I'm too tired at the end of the day to blog. I was getting too stressed thinking of all of the reasons so I decided to just stop at seven. I probably could have made it to twenty easily.

1. Brooke is a very sneaky girl.

Here's an example of that. Yesterday while Lenny was at school, Nathan and Brooke were in the family room watching a movie. I took this opportunity to vacuum the playroom. As soon as I turned the vacuum cleaner off, I heard drum sticks pounding on something. I peeked in the family room to find Brooke quickly placing the drum sticks back in the drawer all the while looking from side to side to see if I was coming. She then closed the door and quickly ran to the window and acted like she was looking at something outside. That girly knew that I would come in there after I turned off the vacuum cleaner so she was hiding the evidence and then pretended to be looking out the window. That's just one of many examples. Sneaky sneaky!

2. Nathan is an escape artist.

Nathan has decided to start getting out of his bed when he is supposed to be sleeping at night or for nap time. He comes out of the room, goes to the top of the stairs and yells, "Mom!". Anyone who has heard him do that knows that it sounds like a yell at me instead of a calling for me. Anyway, I ended up putting one of those child safety knobs on his door handle. Please note that I do have a video monitor on him so I can still see him in his room--just not at the door. Well, one day after putting that on the knob, he was in his room and the next thing I knew, I heard "Mom!" at the top of the stairs. That little escape artist has figured out how to open the door with the child safety knob on it. Some adults have a difficult time opening a door with those. Nothing keeps that kid where he doesn't want to be. There's no reason for us to keep that on his door anymore.

3. Lenny is a computer hog.

Okay, it's not like he is on the computer all the time but it seems like every time I get ready to sit down to do some work on the computer, he is already on it. He does have to get permission before he gets on the computer and he is very good about doing that. He is so very good at using the computer. He even shows me how to do things sometimes. And I can't really complain because all of the websites that he visits are educational and he learns alot from them.

4. Brooke and Nathan are climbers.

They will climb on anything and they are not afraid of heights at all. Months ago I had to start storing their (restaurant style) high chairs in the closet because they would use them as ladders. I would leave the room for a second and come back to find Brooke sitting in the kitchen sink. They think they are acrobats and crawl from one chair to the other while they are supposed to be eating. They are getting a little better about it though.

Just tonight I was making dinner and the kids were playing in the playroom. All of the sudden I heard two little voices saying "Mommy! Mom!" I went to the playroom and this is what I found.

Yes, it is dinner time and they are still in their pajamas. It was just one of those days. They did get a bath after dinner and put on clean pajamas for bed.

5. I feel like I dress six kids every morning.

Brooke and Nathan both love to take their clothes and diapers off. They are very proud and think it is hilarious. Nathan proudly walks in the room all naked and throws his clothes in front of us and runs away. Brooke just takes hers off and then walks in the room with a huge ornery smile on her face. Seriously, this happens several times before we ever get out the door to go somewhere in the morning. I tried waiting until right before we leave but that doesn't make much of a difference because some days they won't strip and other days they will. They like to keep me guessing and keep me on my toes.

6. Clean one room as another one gets trashed.

I know all parents go through this. Please tell me they do. It's so frustrating to clean house with them around. I start on one room and as I'm leaving it and smiling about how nice it looks, I notice that the kids have completely trashed another room. How in the world can they get every toy that they own out in a matter of seconds! And I don't understand how they can move 50 Thomas engines to another room in a few minutes and it takes me forever to get them all back to where they belong. I must say though that a lot of the time they are pretty good at helping me clean up. They are not allowed to leave the upstairs without cleaning up their toys first. We don't have such a rule for downstairs though. I need to work on that.

7. Cleaning up the kitchen.

My most dreaded chore of the day. It's a never ending process. Make breakfast, clean the kitchen, have a snack, clean the kitchen, make lunch, clean the kitchen, eat a snack, clean the kitchen, make dinner---this is where it gets really nice--Dominic cleans the kitchen after dinner. Wahoo!

Speaking of cleaning the kitchen, I had to pull out the manual for the dishwasher today to find out how to use the child lock so that they would stop turning on and off the dishwasher. I never had to worry about that with Lenny. They do like to help me by pushing the buttons but then they think they can always do it on their own later.


So those are the reasons that I'm so completely exhausted by the end of the day that I just want to do nothing at all except for maybe play Rock Band. Okay Gloria, you're right!

Here are a few pictures of my little sweeties! They are really good kids and are so sweet and loving that I feel bad for all that I wrote about above. :-)

Just seconds after taking the picture above, Nathan tried to get out of the basket and he tripped as he was getting out. He fell right on his head. It didn't even phase him at all, he got up and kept going. Dominic, Lenny and I started laughing. Then Lenny said, "I'm sure glad he had that helmet on his head."

Lenny is a very good big brother to Brooke and Nathan. He loves to teach them things and help them learn new words to say. Which by the way, they are doing great with their speech. Brooke has really amazed me lately and Nathan now puts two words together occasionally.

Anyway, this morning Lenny got out Brooke and Nathan's flash cards. He was showing them the card and then asking them to repeat after him. He would say "These are keys. Can you say keys." Well, Brooke and Nathan just love it when Lenny does that and they pay real close attention to him. They repeat after him. And then Lenny reads the back of the cards to them to ask them questions. He amazed me at how well he did at reading the cards. I was very surprised and he didn't need help from me at all. They love their big brother and it just makes me want to cry when I see them doing something like that together.

Lenny enjoyed that green donut that Nunny got for him.



I love my kids very much! They might wear me out everyday but I still wouldn't trade this time with them for anything. They also make me laugh an awful lot every day.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year! We had a great Christmas and are still having a blast playing with all of our new toys, which is why it has taken me so long to update the blog. I feel like such a kid this year!

We got an early present on Christmas eve that came from Dominic's parents via courier. Dominic was so happy to walk in the door from work to find a 52 inch Sony Bravia LCD TV sitting in the playroom.


Being the electronic buff that he is, Dominic has been having a lot of fun hooking up the new TV. We had to have DirecTV come out and upgrade our dish to the HD dish. They couldn't come until this past Saturday and Dominic couldn't hardly wait. The guy that installed it for us was quite impressed with Dominic's surround sound system. He was even more impressed to find out that Dominic put them in himself and there are no wires to be seen anywhere--they are all in the walls.

Back to Christmas.

On Christmas eve, we could only pull Dominic away from the TV by going to his favorite restaurant--Outback. After getting home from dinner, the kids opened one present which is always a new pair of pajamas to wear to bed that night. I can't believe that I didn't get a picture of Lenny opening his pajamas.


As in the past, our wonderful neighbors Bob and Joanne came over on Christmas eve. And they always have perfect timing, they usually show up after the kids open their present and have their new pajamas on. They came over with presents for the kids and a huge (and I mean huge) beautiful basket full of food and snacks for the family. We are still eating from that basket.

We then put out the cookies for Santa and sugar for the reindeer. Lenny and I made some reindeer cookies for Santa before we went out for dinner.


Before going to bed, Daddy read The Night Before Christmas to the kids.


It was so easy to get Lenny to go to bed that night. I couldn't believe it. He was very excited for what was to come in the morning.

Dominic and I took a few pictures after Santa left. Dominic and I had to remind Santa that if he got any Thomas engines or Monster trucks for Lenny that he should leave them in the packaging. Lenny is a little silly when it comes to that. He wants to see it in the boxes before he opens it.


Believe it or not, I didn't get a lot of pictures of the kids on Christmas morning. I only took pictures of them looking through their stockings. I was having fun watching them open presents. But rest assured, Dominic video taped the entire thing and took lots of pictures on his video camera.




After opening presents and eating our Monkey bread for breakfast, we headed to church. We came home, played with some toys, the kids took a nap, and then we headed to Dominic's brother's house for more presents and food. We had a great time and the kids loved playing with their cousins.

The next day was my birthday. Funny how I try to forget that day anymore but others remind me about it. We headed to my mom's house to have Christmas with my family. More presents for everyone.

Lenny helped me wrap everyone else's presents a few days before Christmas. I think he was just as excited to give presents as he was to get them. I love that part too. It's so exciting to see others opening what you got for them.

We all really made out this year with lots of fun stuff. Lenny got a Leapster 2 and games, lots of Thomas toys and sets, several Wii games, lots of clothes and much more. Brookie got lots of dolls, doll clothes, doll equipment like a stroller and bassinet, clothes and much more. Nathan got a huge basketball hoop, monster trucks, airplanes, clothes and much more.

Dominic and I got Rock Band for our Wii. We absolutely love it. Dominic plays the drums, I play the guitar and we have already been out on tour. We started out playing in the basement, we then got a sponsor and a van, then we started making enough money for gas, we moved up to be the headliner and we traded our van for a limo. It's hard to tell where we'll be after tonight. We have a blast playing and crack up watching each other. I even like to sing on it which I wasn't so sure about.

I also got the Wii Fit which I love. Dominic got quite a kick out of watching me dodge the soccor balls and then get hit in the head with a shoe while playing. Don't worry, I laughed almost as hard when he tried it and got hit in the head with a shoe too.

We all got so many nice things that I just can't list everything and who got them from us but we are so grateful for it all.

Here are a few pictures that I've taken since Christmas.

My sister was able to find a doll for Brooke that came with a little cow. How perfect for Brookie. Here she is pushing it around in her new stroller that Meemaw got her.


Brooke loves to watch Lenny play his Leapster 2. Nathan wasn't too interested in watching Lenny because he was watching his favorite movie--Madagascar. He loves that movie.


Here they all are playing with some new play dough sets that they got for Christmas.

"No, I haven't been eating play dough. Why would you ask that?"

After Brooke's little incident, she wasn't allowed to play with it for a little while. Okay, it was only five minutes but she stopped eating it.

These last two pictures are from yesterday. Denny, Gloria, and Uncle Chip came to check out the new TV. Brooke and Nate just looked so cute that I had to take their pictures.


The kids are in bed so it's time for Dominic and I to go out on tour. I forgot to mention the name of our rock band--Klepic'Halen. Do you think Dominic is the one that came up with that name? Yes, he did.

Since Christmas I have used up the kid's nap time and bed time with playing the Wii. Nap time is for Wii Fit and bed time is for Rock Band. I feel like such a kid but it's a lot of fun!

Hopefully I'll be posting again soon!