Mighty Mason

The last week Mason has really started to spread his wings. He still does his army crawl most of the time but he is always up on all fours trying to figure out how to make his little body work the way he wants it too. Then just a few days ago he succeed in making two real crawl steps. He was so proud!

Then I guess that he figured if he could do that he could do other things. He has started to pull him self up to his knees at the coffee table, getting from him tummy to a sitting position and back down again and then just this past weekend pulled himself all the way up in front of the TV after pulling open the draw for a little bit of help. He is growing so much so fast!

He just turned 11 months old on Monday and has decided that he likes to feed himself so he gets bottles during the day. In a way it is great for me and in others it is kind of sad that Mason and I only get our bonding time at night now and that even that will soon end a few weeks from now. I will not be nursing him past 1 year. I really need to get back on my med's and he needs to find more Independence.

Ethan and Holly are getting really excited for school and I am excited about only having one child for a few hours twice a week. I think it will give Mason and I a new kind of bonding time with just the two of us.

Oh, by the way we are having Mason's first Birthday party on Saturday, August 30th. I don't have a time yet but those that are within driving distance will be getting your invitations in the mail here in the next couple of weeks. So mark it on your calendars.

Privilege not a Punishment

Okay I'm a few days behind in my posts, but I look at it this way at least it gets on there, right?

Ryan likes mowing the lawn on Fridays and Saturdays. Friday nights after the sun has gone behind the house and it won't be so hot and Saturday mornings for the same reason. Well the kids have decided that Dad is not the only one to have any fun, because "Mowing the Lawn is a Privilege not an Punishment" - Hank Hill.

Since we have a self propelled mower Ryan has been letting each of the kids take turns "helping" him with his mowing. They fight over who gets to help first and then Ethan gets his little toy mower out and follows his Dad in the attempt at getting the places that, "Dad missed".

I hope this attitude will stay around through their teenage years. Wishful thinking right?

When Good Kitty's Go Bad

Okay so Ethan and Toofer had a little run in this past week-end. Ethan had gotten up after he was to be in bed with the reasoning that he couldn't sleep without a drink. So he had his drink and was milking the excuse for needing to be up when he saw Toofer under the end table in our living room. Ethan went over and scooped him up and in doing so knocked over Ryan's very full can of Pepsi, which fell and exploded. I then screamed, "Ethan!" Between the Pepsi exploding and me screaming, it scared poor Toofer to death. He puffed up and tried to get away from the scene as fast as he could, the only problem being that Ethan was holding him rather tight. So being a cat and all Toofer used his only defences...his claws, and too bad for Ethan for being in the way. As you can see from the pictures this little cat did a lot of damage. We were just really lucky that Ethan closed his eyes or he would have lost the eye. He now just has a black and blue eye lid, thank goodness.

Ethan was really mad at Toofer and we had to explain to him what had happened from Toofer perspective in words he could understand. That helped him to calm down and they have made up and are friends again, but now Ethan is careful not to go near the cats when they are upset, not that it would have helped in this case. Holly on the other hand is afraid that she is going to get scratched up when ever Toofer gets near her. I think she will get over it once Ethan is healed up. So for now Toofer is the good kitty that went bad.

Better

Okay, I am feeling a little better because I guess that I am just so tired of feeling, tired and crappy that I have made a really effort to just be happy. It has worked for the most part but I'm still tired. I guess that is just part of being a Mom, at least I have kids to make me tired, right?

I'm also giving up on trying to make Ryan happy. I know he is not happy at work and doesn't feel like he is getting paid enough for what he does, which he isn't but he has a job and he has a lot of freedom. But it is up to him to be happy and make the best of it until something better comes along and if he choose not to than he is the one to suffer.

Ryan did have fun with the kids last night though. I was at a HOA meeting and while I was gone he taught the kids the song "John Jacob Jingle Hymmer Schmidt",which they thought was the funniest song they had ever heard. I guess all of them, even Mason was laughing really hard and when Ryan put them to bed he could hear Holly and Ethan singing the song back and forth to each other until Holly fell asleep.

I think I will look into starting Weight Watchers. I've gained weight while I pregnant with each of my kids and have never lost it. I've just kept adding it up and I am really feeling it. I think that is one reason I feel run down and tired. So it is time to make some changes. I just hope I can do it because have got into a bad habit of snacking after the kids go to bed. That is the only time I don't have to share!!

Has anyone joined Weight Watchers lately? I was wondering if I could go to a few meeting and get all the stuff and then do it on my own from there. I am not into going to meetings every week and if I join on line I'm afraid of not having access to the resources without having to keeping paying every week for forever. If someone could enlighten me I would appreciate it greatly.

You take the Good, You take the Bad...

The past week or so has not been that fun. Ryan's bummed because of work and he keeps saying that his Masters degree was a waste of time, even though I keep telling him that it will pay off in the long run. He just says "ya right". Does it drive anyone else crazy when you get dismissed like that, it does me BIG TIME. Anyway for some reason Ryan's mood affect me more than than should, I'm working on the problem, but it's hard.

Also, Ethan and Mason have come down with yet another case of Pink Eye. Where this is all coming from I don't know. So I have had to keep them inside with no friends. They are getting really stir crazy and driving me NUTS!!! Ethan and Holly have gotten really used to playing outside with their friends and Mason is always wanting to be with his big brother and sister. So I can't win either way. I don't think that my and Ryan's mood has helped them to be happy either.

Mason has gotten pretty good at his army crawl and we have had to start closing doors so that he doesn't get into things. He also likes to lock himself in the room it self. He has also discovered screaming at Mom in protest. It's kind of like, "yuahg.... yuahg.....haa.......", at the top of his lungs and just the past couple of days he has been getting his whole body into it. Like that helps get his point across.

Holly has been really emotional lately, and here I thought that didn't start until she was 12 or 13. So needless to say I am not looking forward to that part of her teenage years if she is already this bad at 3. One cute thing that made me laugh was when I caught her "feeding" her baby. You can see in the picture that she has a stuffed pink moose under her shirt. She has been watching Mommy nurse her baby brother for almost a year now so she figured that is the way she needed to feed her babies. Our kids watch everything we do, don't they? Oh boy am I in trouble then.

Anyway, I think we need to just need to laugh more. I used to sit and tickle the kids until they got into a better mood. Maybe I should do that to Ryan...

Well I need to get back on track because I have a lot to do over the next little while. I always have the accounting for two condo associations to do each month, I have an Emergency Preparedness Super Saturday to plan and put together for Relief Society which has turned into a bigger nightmare as it is to include our ward pulse too others, and the kids start school in 6 weeks so we need to start getting ready for that.

Life goes on, doesn't it. We just have to figure out how to be happy in spite of it, eh?

Around the House - Tag

Okay I am going to submit to this now that both Rami and Katie have done this. I have not cheated! So here it goes...

1. SELF PORTRAIT- Since I don't have a camera to show off I just took this the old fashioned "Granquist" way. Note I have yet to take a shower today as I found that I was out of certain underthings this morning and have had to stop and do laundry before I can shower. Ryan is in charge of the laundry in our house, yes Ryan and he has not gotten to the whites yet.

2. MY CLOSET - Boring!!

3. MY LAUNDRY ROOM - As you can see we are doing laundry today, and it also doubles as the utility room, cat box room, and an escape route. One of our back doors is behind the hanging rack, because we never use it.
4. MY FAVORITE ROOM - My Great Room. One of the reasons we bought this house was because we loved this room. It's great for having people over with the kitchen, dinning room and living room all together. It is so fun, bright and open. I love it!
5.KITCHEN SINK - Just a couple of breakfast dishes, Thank goodness!! If I would have waited to take the pictures the sink would be full. I always wait until all the kids are in bed before doing my daily dishes because I just have too many "helpful" hands otherwise. 6. MY FRIDGE - I have blessed you with the picture of my freezer too. I was so excited to get this fridge with the house but soon found out it doesn't hold a whole lot. Big disappointment!
7. MY FAVORITE SHOES - I just got these a couple of weeks ago when we all got our pedicures. Cute, comfy, and cool. 8. BATHROOM - One room my kids haven't totally destroyed today.

9. WHAT MY KIDS ARE DOING RIGHT NOW - Destroying my house!! As you can see they like to bring everything into this room. One draw back to the wonderful Great Room, it gets destroyed so easily.

Now if you have not done this I DARE YOU!!!!! It totally exposes you to the world so who has the guts to do it. Remember you can NOT clean up or do anything to your house, just take the pictures. TAG Your IT!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July everyone! We had a quite day and got take out for dinner. The kids all took naps so they could stay up and watch Dads fireworks display. Patrick, his sister Lauranne and his Mom Holly, came over and we visited on the front lawn while Ryan set off the fireworks.

We also could see the Syracuse, Sunset, and Clearfield fireworks from our house. We live in the best spot for all kinds of things. Clinton will have their fireworks next week for Clinton Heritage Days, and then we get fireworks again for Pioneer Day. Yeah!!

We all had fun visiting (getting the neighbourhood scoop), sparklers and snacks. Mason even liked the fireworks. We all came in around 10:30pm and all the kids went to bed. Mason went right to sleep but the other two couldn't get to sleep until midnight. It didn't help that one of our neighbour was lighting bottle rockets until almost 1 am and I didn't want to call the police and be the party pooper of the neighbourhood. I'm sure that Ryan's family would be calling me Verla Sperry, a lady that lives across the street from his parents and always called the police on them.

Anyway we had fun and hope everyone had a great 4th!

Sleepover

Last night was Ethan's first sleepover. Patrick, his friend from across the street and Ethan have been wanting to have a sleep over for awhile but there just hasn't been the right time. Finally I gave in and called Patrick's Mom and we planned a time for the big event. Well last night it came.

We dragged both Holly and Ethan's mattresses into our playroom where they all hunkering in for the night. We popped pop corn, made some chocolate milk and put on Shrek the Third. This lasted until 11:30 pm and then I had to put on a video to help get them to sleep. The Baby Einsteins Video's are great for this, even better is the "Lullaby Time" Baby Einsteins Video. It put Patrick right to sleep, Ethan followed the second time through but Holly, well she didn't fall asleep until around 1 am and would not go to sleep without the video on. I finally got to turn it off at 4 am without her waking up.

So I figured that they would all sleep in a little bit, at least until 9:30 am or so but NO! All three where up at 7:45 am. So I got up and I made waffles and sausages for breakfast and we made Root beer floats around 10:30 am and now we are getting ready for Lunch.

Patrick's Mom works so I told her we would keep him today so he could play and so he wouldn't have to go to his sitters early. We have him all day until around 5:30 - 6 pm.

Ethan has had such a great time. I am so happy that his first sleep over has gone so well for him.

WOW - I'm so tired, I hope I get through the day.

Oh Canada!

Just a quick note to say "Happy Canada Day!" to all my fellow Canadians.

It is hard to celebrate here in the states because everyone is waiting for the 4th. I say the more holidays the better! Anyway hope everyone sang "Oh Canada" at least once today, and "God Save the Queen".