Heard Around Here Lately

I was in the middle of cooking dinner and I hear
the crash of at least a hundred crayons
falling to the floor in the dining room.

I walk into the dining room, look at the crayons on the floor, then up at Luke, and before I could say anything,
Luke exclaims, "Wuke(Luke) Sparks! What did I do?!".

Guess he's learning to reprimand himself,
that should make my job a whole lot easier!


I help out with Cubbies at church on Wednesday nights, so Daddy is in charge of bath and bedtime on Wednesdays.

The following is our conversation as
we were getting into bed last night:

Ryan: Did you check on the babies?

Me: I checked on Aubrey.

Ryan: Did you see what she's wearing?

Me: No, she was covered up.

Ryan: She didn't have any pajamas, so she's wearing
Luke's shirt and some tight pants.

Me: Tight pants? What do you mean tight pants?

Ryan: You know, the things she wears
under her dresses for church.

Me: Tights?!? You put her in tights to sleep in? Do you know how uncomfortable those things can be?
Would you want to wear tights to bed?

Ryan: Well, I couldn't find any pajamas for her.
I'll go take them off.

Ryan then proceeds to take off her tights and replace them with socks, all the while Aubrey is sound asleep.

Ryan claims he has the "magic touch" with Aubrey and I totally agree; if I went in there and even touched her, she would immediately wake up and start screaming.

While I wasn't able to get a picture of Aubrey last night
in Luke's undershirt & her tights,
this is what she looked like this morning.
Daddy likes to put an extra spike on the mohawk after bath time.


This morning Luke was playing with his cars, and he looks up at me and says, "cars need a spanking".

"Cars need go to Waundry (laundry) Room and get spanking" (that's our spanking room).

I asked him why they needed a spanking and he replied, "cars disobey mommy and daddy, dey(they) need spanking".

Well, at least I know that he understands
why spankings are given.

Just a Normal Thursday

Guess what we did this morning?

I took three kids under the age of 2 1/2 to Target, by myself, and there were no major catastrophes...
actually it was quite pleasant!

In other news, I thought the kids were feeling better, but Aubrey woke up in the middle of the night with a fever.

After a thorough check up from Dr. Luke

He reported that she was indeed sick again,
and prescribed some motrin, tylenol and
lots of rest and snuggle time with Mommy.

While we were up in the middle of the night getting Aubrey some medicine, Ryan decides to go check on Luke and what does he find, but a toddler who is clothed only
from the waist up and is sleeping in a wet, circle of pee.

This is the third time in 2 weeks that Luke has decided to take his pants & diaper off while in bed...guess we need
to get some duct tape or start potty training.

Wordless Wednesday

Luke & Aubrey both have had a terrible cold/eye infection and have been pretty sick for several days.

One day one of the cold, I had to take them out to get some milk, and Aubrey was evidently too sick or tired to hold her bottle, so Luke took the big brother initiative and helped her out with it.

When I saw this, my heart just melted.

Wordless Wednesday

Random pictures of the kids eating

Aubrey loves everything from Asparagus

to Ice Cream

to Cheerios...think she missed her mouth this time

Luke fell asleep in mid-snack

Girlfriends and Swings

It was too beautiful this weekend to not get outside and enjoy the weather, so Saturday we headed to the park.

The playground was one of Luke's favorite places
to go last summer.

From the time we would get to the park to the time
we had to drag him back to the car, he was
climbing, sliding, swinging, and exploring.

Well, something must have happened over the winter, because he didn't want to do anything but climb through a tunnel a few times and
play with a bouncy ball he found on the ground.
We did manage to get him in a swing one time,
but it was only for a few minutes

He did, however, manage to meet
a lady friend while we were there.

Aunt Kathleen and Luke were throwing the bouncy ball back and forth, and most of the time Luke had to chase the ball because he hasn't quite gotten the catching part yet.

As Luke was running after the ball a little girl came up
and took the ball before Luke reached it.

Kathleen told him that he might have found a new girlfriend.

Well, the word "girlfriend" must have sent sparks off in his eyes because he watched and occasionally followed that little girl the rest of the time we were at the park.

She came by the swings where we were and Luke excitedly said, "Look Mommy, there's a girlfriend!".

Then the girlfriend started squealing and throwing a little tantrum and Luke whispered, "Girlfriend's pooping".

While Luke was more interested in "girlfriend"
than the playground, we had high hopes
of Aubrey's first real trip to the playground.

Last summer all Aubrey did was snooze in her stroller
while we were at the playground.

First, we put her down in the grass,
so she could watch Luke play.
Evidently, she did not enjoy the texture of the grass.

So much so that she made this awful face,
refused to touch the grass with her hands
and tried very hard to lift her legs off the ground
I think we might have a princess in the making.

Since relaxing in the grass while watching Luke was out of the question, Aunt Kat suggested that we try the swings next.

Luke absolutely loved swinging at her age,
so I figured she would too.

Boy, was I WRONG!

This was her initial reaction

After the initial shock wore off, she was able to
put her arms down and just look at us in disgust.

This is the first time I have ever seen
an actual frown on her face

I'm glad you guys are so amused by my misfortune, but will you put the camera down and rescue me from this thing?!
After this we decided Aubrey would be much happier
being carried or strolled around.

Although it may look like no fun was had at the park Saturday, we did have a great time, there just wasn't much actual playing on the playground...
maybe we'll try again next weekend.

The Easter Olympics

We had a wonderful Easter celebrating our risen Savior!

After church we headed to our family lunch.

While most families have a traditional egg hunt after lunch, our family competes in an annual Easter Olympics.

Since there are only a few kids left who are of
Easter-egg-hunting age, my aunt came up with the idea
last year to hold an Easter Olympics, in which the
big kids (college & up) compete in various egg related relays
against the big kids at heart (middle aged & up).

We celebrated Easter with Ryan's family last year,
so this was our first year to experience
the Easter Olympics and BOY, was it an experience.

Teams were chosen and everyone lined up
to begin the first event, the Egg Relay Race.

There were several Big Kid teams...
I have eleven first cousins on this side of my family
The Big Kids at Heart team getting psyched up for the first event...my dad has 5 brothers, but one lives in New Jersey, so Ryan and my oldest cousin were recruited to their team.

My cousin, Jennifer, putting her game face on

We were all born with the competitive gene, but no team was more competitive than the Middle-Aged & Up team

Apparently carrying an egg from one end of the gym to the other is quite exhausting...time to take a breather.

Egg Toss was the second event at the Easter Olympics.

This relay requires...

Immense concentration

Soft hands

and Flexibility (or maybe I should say bendability)

The next event was Curling, with eggs and brooms.

I had never heard of the "sport" of Curling until this year's Winter Olympics, it quickly caught my attention because it was one of the most unique sports I think I've ever seen.

You should have seen our version of Curling,
it was quite hilarious

I guess the dinosaur toy was a good luck charm

Steal the Egg(akin to Steal the Bacon) was
the finale of our Easter Olympics
Since this was the last event,
the Old Guys had to give it all they had.

My dad has a knee injury and could barely walk the day before, but some how managed to dive after the egg
Ryan even got in on the diving action in order to make sure that gold was captured for the Old Guys

Luke, Aubrey and cousin Jacob cheered for their
crazy family...well, maybe they were just in awe
Don't worry, no children were harmed during any of the Easter relays, Jacob got the black eye at school.

What in the world are they doing, Mommy?!

When the last event ended my Aunt Debra, who was
the line judge, referee, and m.c., tallied the scores
and was ready to announce the medal winners

And the Gold Medal goes to...

The Old Guys
The Medal Ceremony
Flaunting their muscles and their medals
Uncle Tommy was so excited about his gold medal,
he had to show it off to Aubrey
Although the Big Kids didn't take the gold this year,
they were still very proud of their silver medals
Aft the closing ceremonies, we headed outside
for an egg hunt for the little kids.

This is the first year Luke understood
how to hunt eggs and he loved it!

Searching for candy
like last year
Unfortunately this year the eggs didn't have any M&Ms

Counting his eggs

Easter family photo

9 Months

No big news this month, just a few mini milestones.

Aubrey continues to love eating
and will pretty much try anything.

If I let her, she'd eat puffs and cheerios all day long.

Aubrey's been cheering on the Cats this month, unfortunately they came up one win short of the final four

She's working on crawling, and has actually crawled a few times this week, but nothing consistent yet.

After several weeks of trying to teach her to clap,
she finally figured it out

Aubrey loves "waving" to people, but it's not really a wave, she just raises her hand straight out almost as if
she were saluting Hitler. :)