Lazy Blogging

Sorry, people, just not feeling up to blogging lately.  We haven't been doing much of anything, just trying to get outside every day, dreaming of what we'll do when it's summer.  I have big ideas of raised garden beds, a patio with a fire pit, and a bright red door!  We'll see how much of that actually happens though, I guess!

 We had Easter at Brendan's parent's house.  The kids were excited to find the Easter eggs I hid.  Ingrid asked all excitedly "I wonder what's in them?!" even though she helped me fill them (jelly beans and pennies!)

 Brendan's aunt and uncle were in town, we haven't seen them since our wedding seven years ago!  Which means they'd never met the kids.  They brought them presents, it was so sweet of them!  Otis took to the blue doll and has been toting it around with him everywhere, along with the little bottle.  It was pretty adorable, as he was falling asleep he'd hold his baby, and every once in awhile he'd hold the bottle up and say "eat, baby, shhh."  Be still my heart!

Other than that, not much going on.  Just living life, enjoying April!

A Look Back

Totally stealing this from Bron's blog--what a great way to remember all we've been through this year!

JANUARY
Otis was getting to be more mobile and getting into EVERYTHING!

FEBRUARY
Otis learned how to walk!  And we enjoyed being back in Milwaukee, where we belong.

MARCH
We started, and finished, our house hunting.  It was so fast, and almost a year later we could not be more happy with the house we ended up with!!  Our neighborhood is amazing, our house is cozy, and we love to be homeowners!

APRIL
Busy month of going to the cottage for the first time of the year, our first baseball game of the season, and packing up our old house.

MAY
We moved into our new house!  Ingrid turned four! 

JUNE
We took our annual camping trip to Door County. Aunt Corie came to visit.  It was HOT.

JULY
It was still hot.  We spent lots of time outside and enjoyed our air conditioning while inside.  I had a craft fair and we harvested lots of zucchinis.  LOTS.

AUGUST
The kids and I visited my mom in Michigan!

SEPTEMBER
Ingrid started school and we went to see Obama on a dreary rainy day.  (Thank god it's not election season anymore, that got old.)

OCTOBER
Ingrid and Otis were cowboys for Halloween.

NOVEMBER
We had some great family pictures taken and we visited my sister in Michigan.  All of us, even Brendan!

DECEMBER
Otis turned TWO!  Hard to believe he's such a spunky little dude.  He talks as much as his sister and has a personality of his own, for sure. 

We have just had such a great year, I feel really lucky. 

This next year I hope to see Ingrid continuing to love school, I want to work more on our house projects, like painting the rooms colors that don't make me want to barf, and hopefully getting a patioo built in our backyard.  I hope the winter isn't too cold, the summer isn't too hot, and we continue to be happy and somewhat healthy (as I cough and sneeze all over the computer, ha!)  Happy New Year, everyone!

A Black and White Christmas

None of our pictures turned out very well from Christmas--there wasn't enough light and then I turned on the flash and got red eye.  So thank god for black and white photos, they look so much better!

 Our Christmas eve was very mellow, we just got Chinese food and the kids hadn't taken naps so they were in bed pretty early.  Brendan and I put Christmas presents under the tree, filled stockings, and watched TV.  I was in bed by ten. 

The next morning we slept in until 7!!  Brendan and I were actually up before the kids were, which NEVER happens.  Ingrid was all excited to see presents from Santa, even though they were wrapped in our wrapping paper and she watched me put them under the tree.  That girl WANTS to believe!  She opened her stocking and was like "Santa has our same wrapping paper!  Cool!"  Even though I've told her many times that Santa's not real, this year she has chosen to believe.  There is apparently nothing I can do about it.

The kids played with their toys and we ate cinammon rolls and lounged the morning away.  I cleaned, getting ready for our family to come.  It was definitely the last party we will have until Ingrid's birthday in May.  We had three big get togethers the past month, which was just too much!  I was pretty glad when everyone left, I just sighed a huge sigh, poured a huge glass of wine, and said hooray for Christmas being over.

We took down our tree the next day.

Now we are back to normal, except both kids have pink eye.  We generously gave it to our neighbor's kids, too, so at least they can come over and play without us worrying too much about spreading it around.  We have another long weekend and then back to for real normal on Wednesday when Brendan goes back to work and Ingrid is back in school.  Ahhhh, new year!  What will it bring?

Christmas Getaway

First of all, IT SNOWED!!  I was thinking it probably would never snow around here, we always seem to be just out of the range of wherever it is snowing...But it snowed the other day, and Ingrid was so excited!  We had to go out and play in it while Otis slept.

When Otis woke up, he wanted to join in the fun, so we made a snowman.  I have no idea why Otis is pouting here, though!

Anyway, the snow was the perfect backdrop for our Christmas getaway.  Brendan had some vacation time left so we got a suite at a hotel about an hour north of here.  It was awesome!  They have a waterpark so we got to go swimming and the kids went down little water slides.  The place was all decked out for the holidays,  it was gorgeous!

 Our room had a little bunk house for the kids, with bunk beds and a boat-shaped bed.  They loved it!  I loved the fireplace!  We had such a good time, it was really relaxing and fun.  We went to the local children's museum one day and had the place to ourselves.  It was super fun, so much to explore and play with!  Ingrid loved the grocery store and the doctor's office, which always makes me laugh.  "Come play store with me, Mama."  Uh, no thanks, I actually have to do real grocery shopping every damn week--it's not that fun.  They had a cool net thing to walk out over the whole first floor.  Ingrid was a scaredy cat but Otis ran full speed onto it!

 We stayed for two nights and it was perfect.  Just enough time to go swimming, eat out a couple times, and best of all, the last night we were there, guess who showed up??

Ingrid was beyond excited.  The cool thing was they had a group of carolers on the balcony singing holiday songs for awhile before Santa showed up.  We just sat in the lobby dancing to music, then went up to put pjs on and when we came back down, there he was!  Otis was more into Mrs. Claus, the little flirt!

We had a great time, this is definitely going to have to become one of our holiday traditions!

 

Shows, Trees and Cookies: Our Traditions

Last weekend was full of Christmasy things.  Saturday I had a show at the local Waldorf school.  It was a HUGE difference from my country club show a couple weeks ago!  The people were all pretty much hippies and actually buying for other people, not gaudy baubles for themselves.  I did really well and had so much fun, I will definitely be doing it again next year!

The day was so fun in part because I was with my friend Melanie.  She has helped at shows before, and I love to spend the day, sans kids, with her!  She is a great salesperson and always helps so much!  Another thing that made it fun was the music that was playing on the stage behind us.  A couple ren-faire looking guys were playing strange Turkish instruments and there was a belly dancer.  Again, completely different than my experience at the country club, lol! 

Sunday Brendan went out and got our Christmas tree.  I was upstairs napping with the kids, and I heard some commotion but didn't think too much about it.  When I came downstairs, there it was, our wet and cold tree!  After letting it dry, we started decorating.  The kids were in heaven, they just thought it was so cool to hang the ornaments!

 I had to laugh because the tree looks like it's about to burst through our ceiling.  It was a bit taller than Brendan had expected, so he had to cut off the top and now it looks jammed in there.  There are also some nice streaks on the ceiling from the branches scraping!  It wouldn't be a real tree without a little bit of sawing and cutting to make it fit in the room, right?

 After the tree was trimmed, we sat down (at our new dining room table found at the thrifts!!) to decorate our cookies.  This year I went the easy route and bought a bag of sugar cookie mix and a can of frosting.  Usually I do things from scratch but after seeing how well they turned out, I think I am going to be a mix cookie gal from now on!  I let the kids have two cookies at a time, gave them a hunk of frosting and a knife, and then we had sprinkles and colored icing to finish them off.  Otis just wanted to eat everything, and Ingrid was very meticulous with her sprinkles. 

 And now we have a couple more exciting weeks ahead!  My mom comes in on Thursday for Otis' birthday, which we will have a party for on Saturday.  Then next week we are headed off to a resort an hour up north.  They were having a "Santa Special" where all their suites were super cheap, and they have an indoor water park, too!  So we get to put the kids in bunk beds in a separate room and enjoy the fireplace after having fun at the waterpark.  I think this will also turn into another holiday tradition for us!

The Mice in Our Garage

The other night I drove Brendan's car, which we park in our garage.  I never ever go in our garage since I never ever drive his car.  So I had no idea we had critters in the garage.  When I came home, the headlights showed me lots of little ones running and hiding.  I didn't really think too much about it, it's a garage.  Then Ingrid wanted to get the Christmas stuff out.

 

One box made it inside when we moved, but somehow one got left in the garage.  I opened it up and found a bunch of red fluff, which I couldn't figure out what it was.  It was everywhere!!  And then I saw the poo.  And then I saw the holes in the stockings.  Those little f'ers chewed through five stockings, a vintage tablecloth, and some tissue paper.  Ingrid was a bit upset she didn't have a stocking to hang up.  Luckily she knew we have time to get more.

 

Luckily she has a mom that sews stuff :) 

 

That night I set out to make some new stockings.  These are the ones I made when she was small.  These are the ones I made this week.

I like them so much I think I might make some to sell at the show I have next weekend!

 

Speaking of shows, the one I did this week was at a country club and it totally made me laugh to be there.  It was just kind of fancy and not really my style.  Oh well, I like how my table turned out and it's always good to get another show under my belt.

 Holidays are so busy, it's nice to keep doing things but I think I will like the chance to breathe after they are done!!

 

Traditions

Just a few pictures from Thanksgiving.  Not many, we didn't do much other than sit and eat.  Ingrid was all alone at the kids' table because Otis napped through dinner.  She looked sort of lonely but we honestly didn't have any room for her at the big table!  Cody kept her company, and was well rewarded for his service...

 The day after Thanksgiving was all about making the chain.  When I was growing up, the day after Thanksgiving meant my mom would sit us down with paper, scissors, and markers and we made our paper chain.  Each link represents one day until Christmas, and each morning we would take turns ripping off a link.  This year was the first year we did this with Ingrid and Otis and they seem to love the idea!  Ingrid helped me tape the paper together and both kids love to go and look at how many more days there are until Christmas!

 My brother sent me a nearly identical picture of his kids by their paper chain right after we made this!  I love traditions that last.

 

And what was Otis doing all this time?  Sitting around with a fever, snotting everywhere.  That poor kid just gets a cold and it gets worse and worse and just lingers.  Ingrid was sniffly for a few days and Otis has been full on sick for over a week.  Blah.  Poor kid.

 

 

Mr. Gobbler Day

Yesterday Ingrid drew a picture of a turkey and labeled it Mr. Gobbler.  (Actually it was Mr. Goobler but she had tried so hard to write her own letters I couldn't really tell her she'd misspelled it.)  So today, this day of Thanksgiving, shall be hereby named Mr. Gobbler day. 

We have a turkey in the oven, we had homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast, the kids are watching the Macy's parade with Brendan, and I am about to finish up some napkins that will adorn our table later today. 

Wanna see what the kids and I will look like come dinner time? 

Yep, just like that...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

4th of July

Too hot to be clever.  My brain is melting.

Yesterday we went to the cottage.  We melted there, too.  Went swimming.  Went boating.  Drank beer from a keg.  Ate ice cream sandwiches.  Played with cousins.  Sweat. 

Then we came home to sleep in air conditioning.  Ha!  Jokes on me, the A/C was broken.  I opened up the windows, turned on all the fans and tried to stay comfortable.  All night was horrible, just laying in bed made me sweat.  Otis woke up and was drenched.  He spent the night in my room and then proceeded to wake up all cheerful and ready to go at 4:30am.  Again. So we went outside and spent a lovely morning with our new neighbor friends while waiting for the repairman to come. 

Then I found a magical light switch that manually turns on and off the air conditioning.  It's about two feet off the floor, perfect for a little man to turn on and off.  Mainly, off.  Air conditioning not broken, just turned off!  Relief that I didn't have to shell out hundreds of dollars to get ours fixed, pissed that it was a simple fix I could've done LAST NIGHT.  Lesson learned!

The house was up to 96 degrees, it's taken a few hours but it's finally down to 80, which seems like the Arctic compared to what it had been!  Screw this heat, I'm done with it!

Happy Easter.

We are not religious, so Easter is a thing purely of bunnies and eggs and chocolate.  Which is all good in my book!  Although dying eggs is not fun, and then I'm left with colored hard boiled eggs that I end up leaving sitting out and having to throw away.  But Ingrid thinks it's cool, so we do it.

We had dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's, after which we had an egg hunt.  Ingrid was SO excited about this, she kept asking if the Easter bunny would know we were there and not at our house.  Oh, the young.  The stupid, believing young.  I am such a bad mom, I said "well he's not real, it's just a joke.  Like Santa!"  My mother in law was laughing at me.  I don't sugar coat it, huh?

She got her eggs, she ate her chocolate, and she didn't seem to care one way or another if the Easter bunny was real or not!!

New Year's Eve, Mom Style

We had such a great New Year's Eve this year, and we didn't leave our house!  The kids took naps until five pm, so they were ready to stay up and party.  I walked over to Walgreens to get snacks and came home with some noisemakers, carmel corn, Dots, Pringles, and chocolate covered peanuts.  Which we ate all of that night!  Ingrid thought it was so cool to be allowed to stay up, and she did so well, too.  Otis was in bed at the normal time, which gave us plenty of one on one time with the girl.  We had pjs on, sleeping bags and pillows all over the floor, and we just hung out.  Junk food, tv, games on the ipad, just hanging out together.  Much better than spending a ton of money at a bar getting drunk and then coming home to crash in your smelly clothes.  Seriously.