Matt and Stephanie's Blog

A little Honesty

stephanie — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:58:13 +0000

There seems to be a rash of honesty spreading through mommy blogland and I thought I would jump on the bandwagon. When we blog or post facebook updates we are usually just presenting the neat and pretty parts of our lives. Unfortunately this can lead to people thinking we live the perfect life. They think we are like Caillou’s mommy and never lose our temper, always remain calm, and our house is neat and tidy. So I thought I would share of few of my imperfections. This is not a complete list, I screw up all the time and don’t remember every thing I do wrong.

My house is usually a mess. It’s never 100% clean. A random visitor is my worst nightmare.

There are almost always dishes in the sink, it is rare that all the dishes are clean and put away. Yep I like to cook, but not clean up my mess.

Our table can sometimes go the whole day without getting wiped down. Do you know how messy young children are when they eat?

My floor is never so clean you could eat off it, but my boys regularly do eat off it. No I don’t feed them on the floor, but if they or I drop something, it still gets eaten.

I snap, I don’t always use the kindest of words with my kids. I do yell, I hate it and would love to stop and work on using more grace each and every day.

I am slow in the mornings. I would say I hardly ever get dressed before 10 and some days not at all.

My kids watch more tv then I ever thought I would allow.

I’m addicted to facebook.

I hardly ever make my bed. (I’m actually working on this one, Matt really likes the bed made, and it is a small way I can make him happy.)

My kids play outside in their socks and I don’t care. As long as they are happy, I’m happy. If a pair of socks gets stained, so what? The insides of their shoes don’t care.

My kids are loud at the grocery store. Happy loud, so I don’t shush them. I keep it at the level I can tolerate. Reminding them every so often when I know the whole store can hear their shrieks of delight that they do indeed have inside voices.

Apparently one time when I made sweet potatoes for baby food a blob ended up on our kitchen wall. The thing is it matched the paint perfectly, so by the time I noticed it was hard and stuck on, then it took time to remember to tell Matt. He looked at it and said if he scraped it off we would have to touch up the paint. Yep it is still on the wall, dare you to find it.

Our home office floors are currently cement and have been since Septemberish. Really crappy looking cement. Home improvement gone wrong and too lazy to fix.

Okay enough sharing for now, also there are probably typos in this post, but I am not the best proofreader.

Taking a walk

stephanie — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:45:53 +0000

One of my goals this year is to spend more time with the boys without any other distractions (for me, let’s face it almost anything is a distraction to a 3 year old). I decided to start taking a walk around the block with them every day, the walk can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. I don’t use my phone or having anything else to distract me, it’s just me and them. We’ve all enjoyed this so far. There are lots of rocks, dirt, trees, flowers, cars, and even a train or two to see! Yesterday the boys noticed someone had littered, “he made a mess, we need to clean it up.” I told them that we could take a bag next time we walked and clean up. We remembered our bag today and picked up some litter. They loved it. I did use my phone today to snap a few pictures.

Noah at 3

stephanie — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:23:17 +0000

Noah is serious and shy, but also fun loving. Ezra is the only one that can get a true belly laugh out of him. He loves everything to be done correctly and perfectly. He is strong willed and persistent. He is also loving, kind, and thoughtful. He takes very good care of his brother and loves to take care of mommy. He loves learning, drawing, and music.

Color: red
Sport: T-Ball
Animal: Bugs
Food: mac and cheese
Book: Green Eggs and Ham
Season: Anytime we can play outside

Restaurant: One where he can get a dessert
Holiday: Christmas, Halloween
Weather: Rainy (I’m just putting this because they get so excited when they see rain)
Cereal: Oatmeal (poor kid doesn’t know anything else)
TV Shows: Super Why, Thomas, Yo Gabba Gabba
Movie: Cars (okay this is the only movie they’ve actually watched)
Candy: Chocolate

Subject: Alphabet (he knows the letters and is working on the sounds)
Toy: Trains
Thing to do: Play trains with Ezra
Place have been: Arizona, Colorado, California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia
Place to be: beach
Place I want to go: Gamma’s house

Person: Mommy
Hero: Daddy
Time of Day: When daddy’s home
Song: If you’re happy and you know it
Drink: apple juice
Treat: Marshmallow
Vacation: Disneyland

Ezra at 3

stephanie — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:23:15 +0000

Ezra acts shy at first, but once he knows you he is a ham! He loves to be silly and is free spirited. He likes to do things “outside the box.” He really likes to help mommy and daddy. Tormenting his brother is one of his favorite things to do. Don’t worry he also loves making Noah laugh too. He loves music, music, and learning. (yea I know I put music twice, he really loves it.)

Color: green, blue, orange
Sport: He just loves to play
Animal: Cats, dogs
Food: muffins
Book: The Bike Lesson
Season: Anytime we can play outside

Restaurant: Anyone with french fries
Holiday: Christmas, Halloween
Weather: Rainy (I’m just putting this because they get so excited when they see rain)
Cereal: Oatmeal (poor kid doesn’t know anything else)
TV Shows: Super Why, Thomas, Yo Gabba Gabba
Movie: Cars (okay this is the only movie they’ve actually watched)
Candy: Chocolate

Subject: PE
Toy: Trains
Thing to do: Play trains with Noah
Place have been: Arizona, Colorado, California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia
Place to be: beach
Place I want to go: beach (seriously he asks several times a week)

Person: Mommy
Hero: Daddy
Time of Day: When daddy’s home
Song: Going on a Train Ride (ygg) he sings it all the time
Drink: milk
Treat: Marshmallow
Vacation: Disneyland

Ringing in the New Year

stephanie — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 02:39:58 +0000

Our New Year did not start the way we wanted. New years eve started with Noah getting sick, just mommy and Ez getting to go to Abby’s party, then mommy ringing in the new year in Noah’s bed because he was feverish and just couldn’t stay comfy. Meanwhile daddy was starting to have fevers all on his own. By Monday all three boys were really sick and getting worse by Tuesday, so we finally went to the doctor. They all had strep throat, poor guys. Mommy only ended up with a mild case of bronchitis. Everyone was given antibiotics and we are finally on our way to enjoying the new year. It was one rough week to start it off though!

Christmas 2011

matt — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:22:20 +0000

Great christmas and a two very excited boys. Noah & Ezra have really been very excited in a genuine way this season. Not about presents, but about the presence of it all. Its very refreshing to see their joy and outlook on the season.

As always. we took a ton of photos. Here are some of our favorites. Click to enlarge. No comments for now, just too many fun moments.

Advent: 22 and 23

stephanie — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:25:41 +0000

On the 22 we played and sang some Christmas carols. Nothing like trying to play the piano with a squirmy toddler on each side and a cat in your lap. We had fun though, even if Noah kept turn the pages of my music book in the middle of the song.

On the 23 we drove around and looked at lights. The boys had decided to skip nap and were out cold by 6:50 pm. They were a little upset when we got home and were unloading them out of the car, but they were right back out when we tucked them into bed. Bonus they slept all the way until 8 am!

Advent: 19, 20, and 21

stephanie — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:13:08 +0000

We’ve still been doing our advent calendar, just don’t have pictures of monday or tuesday. Monday we went to the local frozen yogurt shop and tried the holiday flavored yogurt. It was eggnog and we put a little crushed candy cane on top. It was yummy! We had friends join us which was a lot of fun and then we took some to daddy at work. On Tuesday we read The Road to Bethlehem. It is an Ethiopian version of the nativity that I happened to buy before the boys came home (seeing the crazy prices now I’m glad I grabbed it up at a much more reasonable cost!) Wednesday we went on a family picnic at the park. It was nice to have lunch with daddy for once.

Advent:18

stephanie — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:54:03 +0000

On this cold and gloomy day we let the boys have hot cocoa with marshmallows. They enjoyed it a lot. Noah’s main goal was just to get the marshmallows though and he ended up a little messy.

Advent:17

stephanie — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:50:33 +0000

We went to watch our church’s living nativity Saturday night. The best part of any living nativity is the animals of course! This year there were three baby goats! The boys loved them, and the donkey, Ezra always loves the donkeys.

First Dentist Appointment

stephanie — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:09:35 +0000

The boys had their first dentist appointment last month. It went really well. Daddy walked them through the process the night before, and they were excited to meet Dr. Karen. She showed them how to brush their teeth, did a quick exam and cleaning. Ezra seemed to enjoy the whole process. Noah was a little apprehensive when it was his turn to get in the chair, but he did it and no tears! They were super excited about their new light-up tooth brushes and that they got to pick out a treasure when they were all done.

Thanksgiving 2011

stephanie — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:54:27 +0000

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving this year. We hosted for the first time and everything turned out great. We had lots of fun with Papa, Gamma, and Great Aunt Sherri.

The boys made pine cone turkeys the day before and when they saw me cooking the turkey, they went and cooked their pine cone turkeys in their kitchen.

Advent:16

stephanie — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 15:03:17 +0000

We watched the Polar Express and nibbled on this yummy White Chocolate Peppermint popcorn bark. (Okay the boys watched about the first 45 minutes before the sugar kicked in and proceeded to run around spinning and jumping like crazy.)

Advent 15 – Zoo lights

matt — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:49:34 +0000

We spent todays advent enjoying some zoo lights.

Funny Quotes – IV

stephanie — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:13:37 +0000

Wow it has been a long time without a post about the silly things the boys say! Hope this brings a smile to your face.

There is a key that doesn’t work on the piano. Ezra, “Daddy needs change batteries.”

“More shopping and then Death.” – Ezra (halloween display featuring Death at the grocery store)

Ezra just walked around the corner, “I’m special. Ezra special.”

Matt was talking to me and said “maybe I can take them to the p-a-r-k.”. Noah, “I want to play park.” Guess we have spelled that one enough!

Ezra has been emphatically saying ocean all day, except it sounds like “oh sh*t.”

Told Ezra he couldn’t watch tv because he didn’t have a good attitude. His response, “I don’t want a good attitude.”

We were eating salmon cakes for dinner and Noah just asked for “more cat please” ummm we don’t eat those here buddy.

Matt asked Ezra if he was going to be Thomas for Halloween, “no I’m Ezra!”

We were singing songs before nap-time and Ezra pounds on his chest and says, “I’m a man.”

‎”Let’s chase the pretty girl!” – Ezra (oh my it begins)

The boys were watching a tv show: little boy “Hi my name is Noah …” Ezra, “You’re not Noah! You’re not Noah!”

“Bug don’t eat my ogurt, okay BUG. Don’t eat my ogurt.” – Ezra

The boys were getting ready to leave with daddy to go get pizza – Noah, “I’ve got to go to work, bye.”

Was just told in a very serious tone, “Lightening McQueen wants to talk to you.”

We were explaining to the boys they start swim lessons on Saturday and Ezra says, “and its cold … And there’s sand!” Think he likes the beach much?
you say “potato” Ezra says “tomato” ehhh it’s all the same right?

Me: we’re going to Starbucks mommy needs caffeine. Ezra: cat food! He also refers to cashews as cat shoes.

I was telling the boys they are so smart. Noah, “I’m smart!” Ezra, “I’m smarter!”

‎”mommy and daddy make me feel happy.” heart melt, way to turn the morning around Ez.

Ezra calls caterpillars “caterpickles” took me a bit to figure out how pickles turned to butterflies.

‎”Daddy play sweet potatoes pleeease.” “Sweet potatoes arm falling off!” quotes from Ez re Mr. Potato Head.

‎”mommy twobutt, look mommy twobutt!”. Finally figured out he was trying to say tuba.

The boys’ observations on 347 this morning, “mommy cars are racing, mommy police car are racing!”

Ezra was calling muffins as they baked, “That one is Ezra’s, that one is Ezra’s, that one is Ezra’s.”

Noah from the back seat of the car, “there’s rain, there’s some more rain, and more rain!”

The other day the windshield wipers were annoying Ezra so I explained it was so I could see the road. The next day I turned them on again, Noah, “There’s the road, There’s the road…” (yep every time they wiped.)

Ezra, “daddy is a papa, mommy is a gamma, Michelle is a Jason, Jason is a maybe Thomas. Jason is a James.” (Just so you know thomas and james are trains)

Ezra “I want to ride a school bus” me “you have to go to school to get to ride” a little while later we see another school bus, Ezra “we get to go to school!”

Me “two minutes till nap time.” Ezra, “NO!” Me, “but we can’t go do something fun tonight if you don’t nap.” Noah very matter-of-fact, “Oh yeah, that’s right.”