Crew Cuts Vol. 8

Here are some tidbits from the past few weeks...

HP and Peanut.  Although they prefer the princess gear, if none is available, they will gladly dress up as superhero's!

Dunky-Doo making one of his leave-me-alone-Ms-Rikki faces!  

Here is one of our new additions.  Her name is Teensy and I think she is just the sweetest thing!  She only comes a few days a week but is adjusting nicely.  

Yes.  This is what the playroom looks like in the middle of a normal day.  Luckily, the kids are as good at cleaning up as they are at making a mess. ;)

Sissy is almost big enough to fit in to the princess dresses.  Until then the tu-tu and some princess shoes will have to do.  She looks happy enough!

Peanut, Dunky-Doo and HP chowing down at our Valentines party.

The party in full swing.  Don't you just love our banner? :)

HP and The Dude at nap time.  They have been moving their cots side-by-side when they nap.  A couple of times I have caught them holding hands while they are sawing logs.  I think it is pretty cute that they obviously love each other so much. 

Wordless Wednesday

Snowman Carnage

I promised you all the video that accompanies the post from earlier today.  

I want to just throw out there, that I do not encourage violence among the children.  We do a lot of hugging and kissing and make every effort to play nicely together.  

But every once in a while, when I am busy fiddling with my camera, mayhem rears its little head.  So turn up the volume on your computer and enjoy 30 seconds of crazy...

Snowy Big Rock

We got a little snow this weekend and since it was mild enough outside this morning, the bigger kids and I decided to venture to Big Rock.  It was Dunk's first time and all of the other kids acted like expert tour guides.  We had a blast making a snowman and having snowball fights!  Here are some pics from our winter fun...

OT- HP went to the eye doctor last Monday.  Her alignment is looking great unfortunately her vision in her right eye is getting worse.  We have to patch her left eye 6 hours a day for the next two months.  She is being a trooper about the whole thing.  I found these fun felt patches on the Internet and they are great.  She especially likes the "fairy" one!

The Dude.  I registered him for kindergarten yesterday. *sniff*  I am enjoying every day with him knowing he will be starting a new chapter of his little life soon.  It is SO bitter sweet.

Here is The Crew with the snowman that we built.  It was made entirely from stuff we found around big rock.  It took about 20 minutes to build.  Tomorrow I will post a video of the kids demolishing the snowman in 20 seconds.  It was pure carnage.

Dunk finally figured out how to climb up big rock only to catapult himself off a few seconds later!

All of the kids (including The Dude here) loved gobbling up the snow.  I made sure they ate only the nice white stuff! ;)

Peanut was cracking up as she chucked snowballs at the other kids sitting on the rock!  

Miss. Thang showing off her pine cones.  Her face is total rock-and-roll!

Happy V Day!

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American Idol

My Wednesday nights have been pretty tame lately.  

While flipping through the channels a few weeks ago I came across American Idol.  

I have to admit, I rolled my eyes and didn't think that I would stay on the channel for more than a few minutes.  Then something really weird happened.  This Ryan Seacrest fella started telling back stories on all of these wanna-be singers.  They were heart-wrenching.  People that were homeless...their parents were dead...parents were in jail...they had 5 kids and no baby daddy!  The list went on and on.  Each one of these underdog stories had me rooting for them and hoping that they could actually sing.  

The cool thing about the auditions, is that you get to see a wide variety of talent.  I felt for the people that could probably sing, but were so nervous in front of Paula, Randy, Simon and The New Girl, that they came out sounding more like a goat in heat (or what I imagine that to sound like).

A few times I laughed right along with the judges when someone thought they had talent, but were apparently tone deaf and didn't realize they sounded awful.  It was weird to watch people huff away telling the cameras that the judges had made a mistake by not giving them a pass to Hollywood.  Yeah right.

This past week the contestants have been at Hollywood and they have whittled the prospective singers down to 36.  

I am hooked.  

Although I can't watch Tuesday (Biggest Loser trumps American Idol), I will be tuning in on Wednesday nights to see if these average people can actually make their dreams come true.  

Wordless Wednesday

HP...one in a million.

Being HP's mom, I am sure that I have a skewed vision of what she is like.  That said, I think she is one of the most unique people I have ever met.  She is FULL of spunkiness, she definitely beats to her own drum and she is very independent for a three year old.  I took some random pictures of her this weekend that kind of showcase her personality.

Here is HP after just getting up from her nap.  She is ticked off at Starchy and I, and is hiding in our closet.  I know she doesn't mean it, but as I was snapping this picture she told me "Your the worst mom I ever have'd".  Too bad for her I am the only (and I ain't going anywhere)!  Little Sass Monkey!

Here is HP with Starchy.  She is wearing a swim suit in the middles of winter, her hair looks like a baby ostrich and she is giving her best "fish face" impression.  
I took this picture, looked at HP and thought to myself "that hat makes her look like a friggin' cone head".  Cute, but a cone head nonetheless.

Here is a rare shot of HP without her glasses.  Although her eyes have improved since her surgery last year, you can still see slight crossing when she doesn't wear her glasses.  We have been using the patch (on her eye, not the nicotine one!) once a day so hopefully we will continue to see improvement.  

Blogger's Block

I think I am suffering from Bloggers Block.  Not sure if that is a real ailment, but you get the gist.  So in order to force myself out of this funk, I am just going to ramble.  

- My friend Bethany (college roommate and teammate) had triplets last week.  They were born at almost 29 weeks.  So far all are doing well despite being born teeny-tiny.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to have three children at one time.  Its funny too, because she was probably the LAST person I would have imagined becoming a mother of three.  I have no doubt that she will rise to the occasion and be a damn good mommy to those little ones.  Olivia, Samuel and George are VERY lucky.  Congrats B (if you ever get time to read this...doubtful). :)

- I have been doing a little daycare reflection lately.  It has been almost a year since I was "terminated" (doesn't that sound like I was murdered or something?) from my old job and decided to watch children out of my home.  I am SO lucky.  Not only do I have a wonderful batch of kids, but they all have fantastic parents.  Not trying to be sappy or seem like I am blowing smoke, but I really like the parents of the children I care for.  They are thoughtful, they are attentive (and believe-you-me at my old job I witnessed some terribly inattentive parents) and they in-turn have great kids.

- I miss my mom and dad.

- I recently went bridesmaid dress shopping.  I shaved my legs (at least the bottom half) and everything.  I ended up with a flowy little number.  I think it will work nicely for the Cayman Islands.  Now I just have to work on my pasty white skin.  You can't be pale and wear aqua-green...can you?

- Starchy's birthday was this past weekend.  Old man is now 31.  His mom invited us over for brunch on Sunday.  I made lemon poppy seed mini-muffins.  They were nasty.  I think I baked them too long because they were hard as a rock.  Luckily my mother-in-law made some hot curried fruit that went over "like a fart in church" and her disaster made mine pale in comparison.  

- I am obsessed with blue cheese.  I went as far as put it on a baked potato along with some bar-b-que sauce.  It was surprisingly good.  Look out Pioneer Woman (yeah right)!

-  We are going to Minneapolis this weekend.  Our good friend Mike is turning 30 so we are going to celebrate with him.  The kids are staying with Yamma and Pappa so it should be a fun grown-up's weekend.  Although, whenever we get together with college friends grown-ups is the LAST thing we resemble.

I guess that's all the purging I have for now.  If you have made it to the end of this post I commend you.  Hopefully all of this writing will get me back in the action again.  If you have any ideas or topics you would like to see in upcoming posts please do share!

Peace out!

Rikki