Calling All Gamers!!!

Eric and I LOVE to play board games and we are searching for people to play games with. We have your standard games, but we also have a lot of not so well known games and would love to introduce you to some of them and would love to be introduced to some of your favorites. Here is a short list of some of the games that we have:

• Catan Board games (Original, Seafarers, Cities and Knights and the Catan card game)
• Saint Petersburg
• Puerto Rico
• San Juan
• Ticket to Ride
• Citadels
• Acquire
• Standard ones- Monopoly, Taboo, Risk, card games, etc.

So all you bloggers out there we are looking for people to come and play with us. We would love to play anytime, anywhere. We can travel... All we need is to bring our Pack'n Play for Alex and a dark room if any of you want to play at night. If you love to game or know someone that loves to play games, let us know. If any of you have played these games let us know what are your favorites. We look forward to playing with you.

Car Keys are Not Toys

Here is a note of advice that I have learned recently. Do NOT give your car keys to your kids to play with. (Especially if they have the car clicker on them.) I learned the hard way.

Here is how my story goes:
One day last week I took Alex and Trenton to the mall to play and as we were getting in the car to go home, I did a dumb thing. Something that you probably would never think twice about doing, but now I know from experience, so learn from me.
I got the boys in the car, gave Alex my keys to appease him while I was putting the stroller in the back. I shut the door and was walking to the back of the car to open it up to get the stroller inside. Before I did that, I heard the locking of the car with the boys and my keys on the inside. Alex had pushed the lock button on the clicker while he was playing with them. I kept peering into the window to try and get him to push the unlock button, but it was not working. Thankfully someone next to me let me borrow their cellphone to make an emergency call to Eric. I didn't get a hold of him, so I tried to reach my friend to bring me my spare keys to unlock the door. Thankfully it was not a hot day, so the boys were fine. It just felt like an eternity before they were able to come and rescue me.
Eric had received my message and left straight from work to rescue me, but my friend got there first. I am so grateful for wonderful family and friends to come to my aid. So learn from me, don't let your kids play with your keys, especially around your car.

Removing the "Garden"

Last month we have been getting letters from our HOA about weeding our flower beds. So we kept weeding the front beds, because those are the only real flower beds in our yard, but we kept getting letters. Then finally one day I was talking to Eric and said maybe it is our "Garden" that needs to be weeded. This whole " garden" project began a few years ago very enthusiastically, but as the ants moved into the garden I very quickly decided to abandon the project. Naturally, because I wasn't weeding and taking care of it regularly, the toads, ants, wasps, mice, and fence-high weeds found it an oasis. Could this be the possible problem with our yard?
It was time to begin the project of ripping it out and going back to grass. Much like Jana, I kept repeating "I am a brave girl" every few minutes to keep my spirits up. I was only in danger of having a heart attack once or twice as a toad jumped out of a hole in the bricks straight at my face. It took many hours of hard work and perspiration to get the job done, but it was worth it. It is not a garden now, only a little patch of dirt, but at least it is something that I can manage.
For right now, I will just be having a container garden.