STAY AWAY!!

If you come near our house you may want to be wearing one of these:


Greg threw up Friday night. Joel threw up A TON on Monday and has had no appetite but lingering diarrhea. Ethan threw up NINE TIMES last night, which my SO WONDERFUL husband stayed up and took care of. And Gabe threw up this morning, and being the oh so sweet boy that he is, managed to make it into our garbage can! So that leaves Sam and I to go. Hopefully we will dodge this one. Pray for us, I HATE THE PUKIES!

Another Good Kid Video

I have been shocked that a few of my girlfriends had not had the pleasure of enjoying the Wiggles with their kiddos. I remembered earlier that we even own Wiggle Underwear, I'm shocked that the rest of the nation is not quite so engrossed in Wigglemania!

In light of this recent enlightenment I thought I would share another little known fantastic childrens DVD series. First let me say, when my boys are little, before they can talk, I teach them to sign. It has been a very effective tool in our house and has "virtually elimanated tantrums". When Sam and Ethan were little we started to watch Signing Time. They are awesome videos, and by the time they were two they knew a plethora of a signs. Check them out, they are well worth the money:

Now go watch some Wiggles on YouTube! I've heard they are quite a hit at the Lodmell House!

I can't believe I'm saying this.....I miss the Wiggles!!

The Wiggles can be annoying, but they are actually kind of fun to watch. I've heard of desperate housewives having crushes on Greg or Jeff, while not one to have a crush I do kind of miss their sing songy voices in my house.

When Ethan was a toddler he could not get enough of the Wiggles. We personally own, a Wiggles Guitar, a Wiggles Microphone, a Wiggles video or two and MOST importantly the Wiggles Feathersword, great for tickling unsuspecting little boys! Earlier in the week Gabe dug out our Wiggles Guitar and was wiggling his "booty" to the music. He ever so sweetly asked if we could please, please, watch our Wiggles video in the car (he spends a fair amount of time in the car seat ferrying his brothers around). How could I resist those Paul Newman baby blues. For the last two days we have been watching this on repeat:



Oh and heavens forbid you don't sing, you must sing at the top of your lungs or you will incur the wrath of a three year old: "SING MOMMY". Today he was even a little put out that Joel was singing, hey you can't have it all kid!!

Wordless Wednesday

At Last.....

Drum Roll Please.......!!!!!! At last the pictures of our new room. First let me say how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE our new room. Thank you Erika for giving us your time and your amazing talent. The only thing bad about having our bedroom redone is now the rest of my house looks so shabby, alas, I guess I will just now have to do other rooms! To think all of this started with me asking if I should paint me bed black!!

So here they are, my room BEFORE:

Our room AFTER:


BEFORE:

AFTER (I just noticed that the duvet got a little wonky on this side....oops):


Bedside Tables BEFORE:

AFTER (Greg took these pictures I guess he didn't notice the skirt was a little messed up):

Dresser BEFORE:


AFTER:

I still cannot believe how ugly my room was. It looked SO old lady. YUCK! In my defense I have had that stuff for almost seven years.

Now for what we did:

-First we painted our room, which actually made our old stuff look 1000x better but I wasn't stopping there (even though Greg had the nerve to suggest that).
-Erika actually advised us against painting the bed and helped us find fabulous bedding! Our sheets are Vera Wang from Kohl's. The coverlet is Target and the duvet is also from Kohl's both thanks to Erika. The bedskirt I made with fabric from Erika. The blueish green pillows and throw are from Target.
-We painted the dresser to match my beautiful desk and replaced all of the old hardware. Finding hardware was a royal pain, evidently hardware sizes have changed a lot in the last 50 years. We did finally find suitable hardware at Joe Ley's in Louisville. What an awesome place!
-The mirror above the dresser is the original mirror, painted a harmmered gold and hung sideways.
-The lamp is a Target/thrift store find, thanks to Erika. The shade is from Martha Stewart at Kmart.
-The little birdie on the dresser was $3.00 at Joe Ley's!!
-The hand for my jewelry is from ebay.
-The jewelry box is from ZGallery, what an incredible place.
-The bedside tables were made by my dad. The skirts were made by Erika's seamstress. The glass we had cut at a glass store here in town. They are so incredibly functional and I love them. Under the skirts are three shelves and they are full of all of our junk!
-The pictures above my bed are the old frames from before painted a hammered gold and the pictures are from IKEA.
-The curtains are Nate Burkus for Linen's and Things. The Roman Shade is from Target as is the curtain rod and rings.

I am so in love with this room. Isn't it beautiful. (Erika I know you mentioned taking pictures in natural light, but we don't have a lot of that in our bedroom so we did the best we could) Erika I cannot thank you enough. There is a small token of our appreciation in the mail!! You rock and I know you will be super successful and a household name one day!

100th Day of School

Today is the 100th day of School in Fairfax County. Evidently sometime between the time I left elementary and the time Sam started this has become a very big deal. This year, to celebrate this day, we had to start a collection, which would ultimately contain 100 items. The directions were very clear that these items could not all be the same. Thanks to Nancy, my faithful teacher friend, we came up with the idea of collecting lids. Big lids, small lids, white lids, black lids, you get the picture. All told we ended up with a TON of lids. The next step of the project was to sort them in to groups, display them creatively and write a word problem to show how your groups equal 100. This is what we came up with (click on it to get the full effect):

Sam painted the whole thing, glued on most of the lids with the hot glue gun and my help, and typed out his word equation all by himself. We took it in today and his teacher was very impressed. She also told me that he is doing really well in school this year and plans on putting his name in to the gifted and talented teacher to be evaluated for next year. Yeah! She says his math skills are impressive and his reading has taken off.

Sam and I are very proud of his "project". I have to say I dreamed all last night of what Ethan and I can do for his project when he's in 1st grade, YIKES, these projects could get a little overwhelming!!

Forget Wordless Wednesday!!!!

Okay, so I can't believe I'm saying this, we just had a DRIVE BY SHOOTING!!  I am totally not kidding.

At about 8:45ish I was sitting at the computer RIGHT BY MY BEDROOM WINDOW and I heard loud popping.  I immediately yelled down to Greg who was in the kitchen.  I was hopeful it was just fireworks and stupid kids, but I thought I would call 911.  By the time we got back downstairs a ton of neighbors were outside and the MP's were out front.

The "word on the street" is an Oldsmobile drove by and a kid hung out the window and shot in the air.  Once I heard that I immediately ran back in to check on all my babies (who thankfully are sleeping peacefully).  A couple of people witnessed the shooting and one guy followed them in his car.  At some point the MP's heard the car was on the main highway outside of post so a couple of them went after him.  A neighbor reported that their is a group of kids in the neighborhood across from ours that are trying to start a gang and so maybe it's related to tonight's incident, NICE!!!  Currently we have CSI out front complete with flashing lights and crime scene tape.  

I am still in total shock and pray this is an isolated event.  YIKES!!!!

Wordless Wednesday