Damon is Two!

Damon's second birthday was yesterday.  He had fun opening and playing with presents.  Poor kid didn't have a real exciting day because he had a pretty sick momma.  But we took him to the zoo today to make up for it.

Damon loved his Mickey Mouse blanket from Grandma and Grandpa Burgess.

He gave it a big hug when he got it out of the paper.

He also loved his singing Mickey Mouse card from Grandma and Grandpa Webb.  It sings the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse themesong.  He played with it for a long time.  I think from now on we might just buy all of our kids a singing card for their birthdays.  They seem to like them as much as any present.

He also got two Thomas trains, one from us and one from Grandma/pa Burgess.

We got Damon a trampoline for his birthday.  (Grandma and Grandpa Webb contributed as their present to him.)  This is not something we would normally buy for a birthday since it is a big purchase.  But ours died a while back and our kids have really missed it.  We have been intending to replace it.  We didn't really know what to get Damon for his birthday and he jumps on everything, so this seemed to be a great time to get one.  He was too small to ever enjoy the other one we had.  You can see that he was really excited.

Kelton wanted in on the camera action.  Such a cute little face.  :)

I had what I would call my first ever cake catastrophe.  First of all it is kind of hard to have a steady hand when you are sick and shaky.  But I can't blame it on that.  Everything was going just fine until I tried to put my frozen buttercream transfers on.  They would not work.  The "2" was really big and not in a nice solid piece (like the picture of Mickey) and I was afraid that was going to be a problem.  Actually it would have been fine, except that I think my frosting consistency was wrong.  I think it wasn't stiff enough.  It made it really easy to fill in the transfer, but made it really difficult for it to freeze hard enough to transfer to the cake.  It just melted too fast when I took it out of the freezer and I couldn't get it off the paper.  (My house being 82 degrees may have been a factor too.)  You can see that it got really messed up and I ended up freehanding on the whole bottom half of the "2."  I had the same issues with getting Mickey to come off.  Luckily it was just his legs and not his face so it ended up okay.  Oh, and I found the little Minnie figure at the 99 Cent only store and had to put it on because he loves Minnie Mouse.

Damon needed help blowing out his candles.  Actually, daddy needed some help too.  We won't mention that it took him about three tries to get the candles to go out.  I think he was starting to wonder if they were trick candles.  It was kind of funny to see the flames just keep bending over and not go out.

Happy Birthday to our sweet Damon!!!  He is just so sweet and cute and I'm glad he doesn't get sick of me squeezing and kissing on him... because I do it all the time.  He is just such a happy natured kid.  It's easy to get him to smile, even if he is crying.  We love having him around!

Mud

Maybe I am just tired, but I was laughing from the very beginning of this conversation...

(story setup--my 4 and 6 year olds are playing out back, which is all dirt.  Natalie comes inside...)

Natalie:  "Mom, we need mud.  So can we turn on the hose outside?"

She then protested after being told no by both parents and said  "But spit is just not enough water to make mud!"

(It is also interresting to notice that they are not jumping on the new trampoline out back, but are using it as shade to play under.  It is almost 100 degrees out there today.)

It's a...

...Baby!!!

I had an ultrasound today (16 weeks) and... the baby looks just fine. 

In the middle of the night last night, Kelton woke up throwing up.  My appointment for the ultrasound was early this morning.  We had arranged to take the boys over to a friend's house so we could go to the ultrasound.  However we didn't want to bring stomach flu to someone else's house, and children, so Nate ended up staying home with the boys and I went by myself.  That wasn't real fun for either of us.   It was a huge relief to find out that everything looks okay.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, Natalie screamed very loudly at the news that she was finally going to get a sister!  We are excited for this new baby girl!

Church attire

I wore a black dress to church today and I never changed out of if afterward.  As I was getting Kelton ready for bed tonight, he asked me, "why are you still wearing your temple pajamas?" 

Some Pictures

I realized that recently my blog has had a lot of words and not many pictures.  So, here are some from the past few days.

Easter.  The kids had a ton of fun finding their Easter eggs.  Natalie could hardly contain her excitement in the minutes leading up to her turn.  Nate and I were about to gag and duct tape her to the wall.  :)

The picture below has a story.  Damon dropped an egg into his basket and it opened, revealing a bunch of jelly beans, which he started eating.  However, the bag of jelly beans I bought were Lemonhead brand.  Each of the different colors was the same flavor as it's Lemonhead counterpart.  (they do have different flavors, if you didn't know.)  Damon started eating them and picked a yellow one.  And it contained all the sourness of a lemonhead.  Poor kid.  You can see it in his eyes that he is wondering what on earth is wrong with his candy.  As a random fact, Kelton is the only one (of the kids) who sees nothing wrong with the jelly beans. 

This is Natalie, finally being unleashed to the upstairs to find her eggs.

It was so nice outside today.  I went out front with the kids before dinner to let them ride their bikes/scooters.  I didn't get a picture of Natalie because she was off riding her scooter with the next door neighbor (a little girl who is pretty much exactly the same age).

Damon has to be the coolest kid in the whole neighborhood.

Kelton is a bit fearless on this bike.  I was impressed at how well, and fast, he rides especially since he has only been on it a few times.  Our other house was on much more of a hill and wasn't really conducive to bike riding.  So none of my kids can ride without training wheels because they haven't had much practice.  Kelton made me wonder today if he would be just fine without them.  I am going to have to add knee/elbow pads to my shopping list.  I was a bit worried about him crashing at the speeds he was going and scraping himself up nicely.

And yes, that's a girl's bike.  He either doesn't know or doesn't care.  With an older sister I think he is just used to everything looking girly.

In Dad's footsteps

I got a call from the school nurse today informing me that Natalie wasn't feeling well.  This has been a somewhat common occurence.  Natalie gets a headache and a bit of a fever to go with it.  When I found out that was what was going on today, I asked if we could just give her some Tylenol and send her back to class.  (The medicine always makes her better.)  The nurse said that was fine and asked if I wanted to talk to Natalie.  The conversation went something like this:

Me:  How are you doing?
Natalie:  Not very good.
Me:  Is it okay if we give you some of the chewable Tylenol that you like?  And then we will send you back to class?
Natalie: Yes.  I would agree with that.

??? Who was I talking to?  I did wonder for a second if this was my child.

Then the nurse (who doesn't know us at all) got back on the phone and was chuckling a little.  She said, "Sorry, I was just laughing at your daughter.  She sounds like a lawyer or something."

Then I started laughing.

The fight for the top spot

I will be honest.  I am not very good at knowing what will clean certain hard to clean places around the house.  But, I am learning.  Several years ago I was introduced to Magic Eraser.  Many of you are probably smiling.  This thing is A-Maze-ing.  Bathrooms, crayon on the walls, kitchen grease grime above the stove, refrigerator handle, etc, etc, etc... are now so much easier to clean.  I don't know how the world ever lived without Magic Eraser. 

A couple of years ago I was trying to figure out how to clean that blasted toilet ring.  I had tried so many things, so many different [expensive] cleaners.  Someone told me to use a pumice stone.  Huh?  Like I use on my feet?  Yes, they said.  I thought, no way.  That will scratch my toilet, are you kidding?  But one day I tried very gently, and yeah, didn't work.  Fast forward a few years and someone tells me about the pumice stone again and I relate my story.  That's when I found out that no, you don't use the kind intended for your feet, but a special cleaning pumice stone that costs all of $1.88 at Walmart.  When we were cleaning up our rental house, I decided to give it a try for the first time.  And.... it was totally amazing!  The stone kind of crumbles away as you rub it on and away goes the toilet ring.  I used it on some hard water spots around the edges of my bathtub, and same thing, it took them right off.  I was so excited.  Magic Eraser had failed me in these areas.  My top cleaning product was in serious danger of getting bumped from the top spot.

That brings us to today.  Natalie wanted her fingernails painted.  As we were sitting down and laying out newspaper, Natalie decided that she wanted to help by opening the fingernail polish.  I told her no, but not realizing she had already done it... I'm not sure exactly what happened, but the fingernail polish ended up getting spilled.  Some of it, about smudged dime size, ended up on my wood kitchen chair.  You can't use fingernail polish remover to clean up wood.  But, guess what?  Magic Eraser took it off!  I was amazed yet again.  So, for the day, Magic Eraser is back on top.  You know, the real winner would be the one that can take the fingernail polish off my $70 Gap jeans. 

*(I feel like I have to explain why I have such expensive jeans.  I generally buy really cheap clothes.  But after years of crappy jeans that don't fit right, I decided to try expensive ones.  And I love them.  And since I only buy 1-2 pairs every three or four years and they are the only pants I wear, I feel like the price is worth it.)