The World's Most Awesome Toy

His name is Squakers McCaw. Fun name, brightly colored feathers. He gets you, doesn't he? You walk past him and you can't resist his charming little dance. So you decide he would be the perfect gift for your 5-year-old's birthday. Let me just tell you... this guy delivers. The girls haven't put him down for the past month. He plays a game where he repeats everything you say. The best part is that he remembers everything you teach him and he'll shout it out at random (in a higher pitched, parrot-like voice). Khursten and Allie are currently in the basement teaching the bird to scream at the top of it's lungs. Fun, huh? (And yes... I did banish poor little Squakers to the basement.) I'm looking forward to Squakers repeating their screams 3 octaves higher. My favorite part is when we forget to turn him off at night and he starts talking at 2:00 am and we think there are burglars in the house. Good fun. So... if you judge a toy by how much fun a kid has playing with it - Squakers is a 10.0 for sure. But, if you judge it by how much mom and dad love it....

My Shout-Out to DSM & the Wonderful World of Digital Scrapbooking

A couple of my goals for this year were 1.) Start journaling (hence the blog) 2.) Actually keeping up with my scrapbooking. I took my easter pictures and then just looked at them for the past few weeks. I couldn't get inspired to do my pages. But... luckily for me I have been introduced to the wonderful world of Digital Scrapbook Memories. My sister's sister-in-law April runs the company and she teaches free classes for anyone interested. On Saturday she taught a class and offered free drop-in type templates for everyone who attended. Wahoo!! I never knew I could love pre-made scrapbook templates so much. Took the thought right out of it. I got back on my scrapbooking horse and went to town. Below are the pages I made with April's templates. So for anyone interested in the world of digital scrapbooking here's my shout-out to DSM. It's so great. Go to http://www.digitalscrapbookmemories.com/ and join in on the fun. I lurked for a year on the forum before finally diving and posting. Now that I have, I'm having so much fun. The girls are so nice and they have been answering all my questions (scrapbook and non-scrapbook alike). So for all you stay-at-home moms who get a little lonely during the day, discover the fun of posting on the DSM forum. I know... I'm a dork... but it's fun and I'm making new friends. It's also a little addicting because if you post one of your pages on the forum you'll get like 10 people telling you how cute it is and what a great job you're doing. Keeps me motivated for sure. Thanks to the girls on the forum and great job to me for keeping up on my scrapbooking!

Thank Goodness For Close Family

It's week 3 (and 1/2) of being off-track. We're doing well, but we've gotten to the point where we just need something to break up our day. That's where my sister comes in handy. Thank goodness for Jill. She's always just a phone call away and more than willing to let my girls come tear up her house (sorry about that by the way). She's so low key that dropping by is always an option, and inviting yourself over isn't frowned upon. We have so much fun over there. The kids get to watch movies they've never seen before and play with toys that are new and exciting. The plan was that Jill was going to teach me everything she knows about Nikon cameras, but it turned out that our cameras were just different enough that I'm going to actually have break down and read the manual instead of just racking her brain. Darn it! We ended up having a dang lot of fun though. We spent over an hour just snapping pictures of whatever (or whoever) happened to be in the room. We got some pretty choice ones of ourselves too. By the end we were cracking ourselves up. Jill, if I post some pictures of you are you going to post yours of me?. Yikes!!! That could be scary. I guess it's not worth the risk. (Jill - please note that if any pictures of me from today show up on your blog, I'm posting the cross-eyed ones of you) Thanks for helping me kill a good chunk of the morning. I'm so glad I have my great family close by.

Today Was The Day!

Today was the day I got my new camera. Yay! I hummed and hawed for the past week as to what kind of camera I should get. I really thought I wanted to get a digital SLR, but I was afraid I was biting off more than I could chew. After a nice chat with the salesman (sales-boy) at Inkleys, I decided to be brave and go with an SLR. He talked me into the Nikon D40 and assured me that it was geared toward beginners so I shouldn't get too overwhelmed. I still don't know how to do anything more than turn it on and push the button to take a picture, but it was so fun to use. Ryan and I took the girls to the park this afternoon and we tested the new camera out. In less than half an hour we had taken 314 pictures. This wouldn't have even been possible with our old camera since our memory card was only 16MB (for real) and our battery only lasted for about half that. Here are a few of my favorite shots that we got of the girls. I posted more pictures in the recent pictures slideshow on the side. I know I still have so much more to learn about serious digital photography, but I'm so happy!!!

The Mean Lady Who Ruined My Workout!

I crapped out today and I feel like a loser. Have you ever had one of those days? I went to aerobics today and the teacher decided to "try something fun". This is never a good thing. We were doing step aerobics and she arranged them in groups of 4. I guess it's called 4 square. Anyway... we were rotating from step to step on top of doing choreography and it was kind of a disaster. I was following my lead person and I swear I was doing it right, but one girl in my group kept yelling at me and telling me I was doing it backwards. SHE WAS DOING IT BACKWARDS!!! I tried to point out to her that I was following the teacher and she was supposed to be following the left lead person and it was no bueno. We kept bumping into each other. She actually got so frustrated with me that she went to another group. Women are not supposed to end up fighting in aerobics class, are they? Even after this woman switched to another group, she kept yelling out to us, "You guys are doing it wrong. You're backwards. You need to turn around." Who cares if we were backwards? After 45 minutes of this (and several crusty-eyed stares), I got so frazzled by this women that I could feel myself getting really tense. I didn't want to burst out in tears and I thought I might. (Yes... I'm a little emotional and hormonal today. I have those days.) The only thing I could think to do was leave. I picked up my step and I put it away and I headed out the door. The teacher stopped me on my way out and asked me if she drove me out of class with the 4 square. I quickly made up some lie about having to take my daughter someplace. I'm so lame. Why did I lie for no reason? Why did I let this lady get to me? I got stopped 3 more times on my way out the door by 'concerned' friends wanting to know why I was leaving. Three more lies before I hit the door. Why didn't I just say, "That mean lady made me sad so I'm leaving." Once I got to my car and calmed down I realized what a dork I was for leaving early, but it was too late. Why do women do these crazy things? Was it really worth the tension she caused? So what if we were bumping into each other. Weren't we there to have fun?

Some Serious Orthodontics

Our family dentist recommended we take Khursten to see an orthodontist. I was surprised that she would need to be seen at such a young age. All he would say to me was that there was a lot of preventative work that we could do to help prevent some major orthodontics in the future. I took Khursten in to see the orthodontist today. I included a picture of her x-ray (in case anyone reading this happens to be a proficient x-ray reader). He kept shaking his head and he told me that basically everything that could go wrong has. Poor Khursten. She has major crowding (This is from my side of the family for sure) She has a problem with her fraenum (?). It runs between her two front teeth and will cause a gap unless it is surgically snipped. (something she inherited from her poppa) She also has what appears to be an extra tooth on top which is preventing her permanent teeth from growing in. (Something she gets from me) On the 17th we have an appointment to have 7 of her baby teeth extracted to make room for this crazy extra tooth to come down so that her permanent teeth can come in. In eight months they're going to see if all her teeth can come down in the space they make. If they all can't then they're going to have to go in and surgically extract the extra tooth. Also her lower jaw is set too far back and it's off by a "full tooth's alignment". (Something both myself and my sister had to have corrected) Ryan and I had better get started saving for this. It sounds like it's going to cost us a pretty penny. This poor girl. I hope she can forgive us for the bad genes.

Audrey-isms

I totally stole this idea from my friend's blog, but I thought it was so cute that I had to copy it. This is also my second post in a row about Audrey. I am aware of that fact, and I promise there's no favoritism.

Audrey has a vocabulary all her own. She recently had tubes put in her ears and during the surgery the doctor discovered there was a large amount of blockage causing dampened hearing. As soon as Audrey began to hear, she really took off. She started learning how to speak so much better and developed quite a cute little vocabulary. It changes every day, so I wanted to write it down before I forget. Here are a few of my favorites.

bum bum kuka chain-it - My diaper is messy. Please change it for me.
I dess - Please get me dressed.
boke! - Read to me right now before I freak out...please!
Mik - I think it started out as 'milk' but has become the universal word for all drinks.
Aaah-yee - Allie (this is usually screamed with joy)
Terten - Khursten
Moomie - I'd really like to watch TV
Mooket - Her most favorite blanket
uh-oh poo-poo - I don't actually need to go potty, but I want to trick you into taking me into the bathroom so I can play with the toilet paper.
Appo - Apple (or any other fruit)
Teeees - I want to brush my teeth (for the 14th time today)
I duck - I'm stuck.
Ho-see - Horsie
Teet Teet - Bird
Air Go? - Where did it go?
I hep fas - Hurry up mom! I'm going to help you with the laundry and I'm going to pull the clothes out of the dryer faster than you can possibly hang them up.
I no ni hi - You can put me in my room, but there's no way I'm sleeping!

Audrey is such a sweet little girl and I hope she never stops following me around and being my little friend.