How To Know If Your Kid Thinks Your Ugly

Tonight Parker was showing me all the scrapes on his legs that he thought needed band-aids.  I showed him one on my arm that was noticeably worse than his pin-head sized scabs and said "Look this doesn't even need one."  Then being funny Rob pointed to his own face (with nothing wrong with it) and said "Look I don't even have a band-aid on this!"  Parker just looked at him and in his most sympathetic voice said "Ouch.  That has to hurt."  We had a pretty good chuckle... 

Hallelujah!!!

I am EXTREMELY happy! Today I was getting ready to go and just turned my camera on and it actually turned on... and worked! So, no more flash back blogging for me for a bit.

Then we went to Kelly's house and went slip n' sliding. Watching Parker try to slip n' slide will put a smile on anyone's face. This is one of the less painful attempts.

Usually he looked like a plane crash about 5 feet before he got to the slide. I finally had to just lay him down on his belly and push him down the slide. But check out this cute kid...
Plus, while I was there Kelly told me how to make this chicken, which will be my very first food blog... which is fitting, because it's my very first grown up meal to make as well...

Stuffed Chicken

First, pick ANYTHING you have to stuff it with. I happen to have broccoli and cheese...


Pound the meat until nice and big and flat (sorry, I guess I didn't take a pic of that.) Put stuffing's and seasonings (I just used salt & pepper) on top...



Roll up and tie or use tooth pic's. (I've heard you pliers might be involved if you use tooth pic's, so we just tied them.)

Brown them on the stove and then pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes.... Walla. Stuffed Chicken.

Freaking good stuff. Even the boys ate it. Next time I might try pineapple and ham.

Thanks Kelly for the adult meal... Rob even said thanks for cooking out loud.

The Final Act

This is the final broadcast I recovered from that fateful day when my camera was pushed into a coma, way before it's time to go. This is the last thing it saw before it became incapacitated.

No, I'm not crying... just grieving.

Ode to Rob

Well, since I won't have any new photos until I can get my camera fixed... and it will be a while, I figured it might be a good time to catch up on the stuff I haven't done.  So, if you don't want a trip down memory lane and curious thoughts with me, you might want to tune out for a month or so.  

So, it's not Rob's birthday or anything, but I don't think I tell him enough how lucky I am to have him.  He's better than Edward.  (That's a REALLY good thing, Rob.)  He is really good at what he does too.  I never really thought of Rob as the creative type before, but this is evidence that I had just not seen him in his element before.  After all, he made this

from this, even better, these rocks weren't really there before either, so really he made it from a big pile of dirt.  I have to say I'm impressed.

Not to mention how sexy he is... and willing to humiliate himself on my behalf.  I love you.

The Post That Got Skipped

So, before my camera was so rudely broken I was going to post this.   It took a while for me to calm down enough to even down load my last set of photo's.  At least I have them.

A Month of Reunion's

This month has been a great month for dinners with long lost friends.   Sunday we had dinner with Matt & Nichole and their little girl Maddison.   She's so cute, see...

I haven't really seen Cole forever.  It was really nice to talk.  If there is one thing I want to change about myself it is that I don't want to go through life wishing I spent more time with the people I love.  It's one of those things that you don't really know how much you miss it until it's gone.  Having all of these get together's has really shown me how much I'm missing in my life when I don't make the time to be with the people I love.   Sometimes I feel like it's more trouble than it's worth to load up the kids and make an event of something.  I am always rewarded more than my effort, but I am so quick to forget. I can't wait until Rob is done with school and I don't have that excuse anymore.  Anyway, we really had fun and it was the best hamburger I've had in a long time.  I don't know what Matt put in it, but good job Matt.  

Rob was totally smitten by this tree.  It's half varigated and half not.  Pretty cool huh?

AAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

I am sick to my stomach right now.  Riley asked to use my camera and I told him no.  (He wanted to pretend it was a news camera.)  He snuck it anyway and when he put it down Jackson brought it in to me.  I asked Jackson to give it to me and he freaked out and threw it onto the tile floor.  Now when I try to turn it on it just says 'lens error'.   I really want to hurt someone.

Little Miracles...

So, today was Parker's birthday.  Since Rob had to go straight to school from work we let Parker open almost all of his presents at breakfast.  It was nice for him to be able to play with them all day while Riley was at school... hard to get Riley to go to school though.  His favorite present was his 'Indiana Jones Sound Effects Whip'.  And that is exactly what he calls it every time he talks about it.  It reminds me of A Christmas Story.  So cute and so dramatic. 

We weren't planning any kind of birthday stuff tonight because tomorrow we are going to the Mayan to celebrate.  However, last night as he was going to sleep he told me he was dreaming of his cake.  It was an Army cake.  How could I deny him that?  So here it is.  Or at least this is how it started... 

The plain camo looked pretty cool, but I just couldn't leave it at that.  So I had to set up a fight scene.  And add dirt.

I didn't count on the camo being quite so good at hiding the army guys from the top view, but I guess that's kind of what it does.

When I turned around I found Jackson eating out of the frosting bowl with the bridge from Indiana Jones Life as his spoon.  I wish I had taken a photo of him in action, but I sacrificed the photo op for the game so this is all I got.

The boys were really wound up after cake and playing all afternoon, so I tried something a little different.  I think I hypnotized them.  I told them they were on the plane with Indy in Temple of Doom and Indy had just put the hat over his face and fallen to sleep and so they did the same.  While they were asleep they went digging with Indy and he started to bury them with sand, starting with their toes and working his way up.  By the time I got to the belly button Riley said 'Mom, I really can't move my legs.' Which is when I had to tell them that if he didn't close his mouth Indy might put sand in it so he wouldn't talk... it kind of killed the mood from all the giggling, but it was worth it.  The were still asleep within 5 minutes and I don't think they have moved a muscle in the past 3 hours.  It was a fun day with the boys.  My favorite gift that Parker got today was actually from Riley.  It's not the Lego Indiana Jones Set either.  Riley did this one all on his own with NO parental prompting involved.  He trated him like a great big brother should... he opened doors for him, let him go first, he didn't fight with him at all and he shared like a champ.  He even showed him how to strap the whip onto Parker's pants instead of his own.  I hope Riley saw how much love was in Parkers face today for him.  He looks up to him so much and I'm glad that today Riley gave him a reason to.  Today, he was the best big brother you could ask for.  I hope Riley understood how proud I was of him today when I told him.  I guess some things really are priceless.