Happy St Patrick's Day!

Ben is out of town is out of town so we wont be having any super Irish inspired meals around here tonight. Not that we ever really have Irish inspired dishes on St Pat's Day in our house... I guess if I was a "fun and creative" mom I might make the kids milk green. But knowing my luck they would freak out and refuse to drink the "gross green milk". HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY to y'all!!! Its not really something we get into around here even though I'm pretty sure Ben and I are Irish descendants. But it was never really a big deal growing up in TX and so its never really been a big deal around here. So when Carolina got up this morning telling everyone that if they didn't wear green today she was going to pinch them, I was a bit surprised. Not that I wasn't prepared with green outfits for all of them, but a bit taken aback that she knew what day it was. It looked like it was a pretty nice day out so I thought we would go down to the park and feed some duck before lunch. Unfortunately, when we got there the beach part of the park was closed and the playground was covered in water. Not to mention that it was like 10 degrees colder there then it was at our house. We ended up at McDonald's again. I wasn't going to go there, but of course as soon as I said that we couldn't stay and play George had a "potty emergency"! Sneaky little stinkers!

Random Husband Picture Day!!!

I've decided today is random picture of your husband day! I thought y'all might get a kick out of the time Ben decided to grow a mustache when he was on a six month deployment on the USS Hampton. Thankfully he can only do that kinda stuff when he's out to sea, so he never has one at home. Its kinda like kissing a toothbrush!

Oh... what will the neighbors think?

Laney is a creature of habit. She knows that everynight after you put on your jammies you get a vitamin and dont you try to forget about said vitamin. She knows where they are, how to get them and I 'm sure with a little alone time she could most likely figure out how to open the jar. She never asks for more then one a night, but she never ever lets you get away with skipping that part. So after we get her in nice clean jammies with a nice clean face, in goes the vitamin and out comes the drool. I know what your thinking. Just give it to your before you change her. Well that would probably be possible if the only card that we hold to get her to actually change into jammies without a huge scene in that vitamin. Besides, she is the third child... whats a little drool on her jammies? So we have been having a lot of naked nights around here. As soon as the kids are down from the dinner table its off with their clothes. Then they just proceed to run crazy thru the house until we tell them its time to get ready for bed. Well George has decided that he likes sleeping au naturale these days ( he is a little hot box when he sleeps) and is refusing to wear any jammies. Oh, well I guess there are more important things to argue over. So off to bed he has gone for the last two nights in his pink pull-up. Yes thats right, I am making George wear all of Carolina's left over pull-ups. I had hoped at first that the thought of having to wear pink pull-ups would be enough to make him want to wear underwear to bed, thus leaving us with a completely potty trained child. But no, he has no qualms about wearing Dora pull-ups and truth be told the only one it really does bug is Ben. Carolina and Laney join in on the naked time everynight too, but tonight Carolina was in trouble for hitting her brother (who has gotten very good at letting us know when she hits him) and so had to go to bed right after dinner. Thankfully by the time I took this picture I had been able to wrestle (seriously I mean wrestle) little Laney down to get a clean diaper and some jammies on her. She doesn't really mind putting on clothes, but for some reason she HATES HATES HATES to have to lay down to put a diaper on. You would think that would mean that she was ready to potty train, but no actually it just means that she would rather run around in a super full diaper then have to take 3 minutes out of her day to get it changed. I have no idea where she gets this "I have to do things my way" attitude. It really bugs me and gets in the way of the I want to do things!!! Stinkin kid!

Its a pink tutu world around here!!!

Laney is loving this thing. I bought her and Carolina matching tutus and had no idea how much Laney was going to love hers. She sleeps in it, eats in it and even tried to get in the bathtub with it on the other night! Carolina has always been a lover of anything foofy, but Laney is a bit less concerned with anything girly. Well that was until the pink tutu showed up, okay so its only the pink tutu that she is into. She couldn't care less about dresses or dress shoes. Actually she did get her first pair of rainboots the other day (its a big deal around here to get your first pair) and she loves them. She wears them almost as much as the tutu and thats only because we wont let her wear them in bed. The first thing she says in the morning is "shoes shoes shoes" and continues that rant until the closet door is open and she has them securely on her feet. You can actually see them in a couple of the pictures and in the video!

Gifts from a far...

So after spending a very long year in Afghanistan my mom has made it safely back to the states. She spent the last twelve months living in a plywood hut and talking to us over the internet.  We are so very happy to have her back stateside and the kids are even happier to have gifts from her. The kids each got a stuffed animal in camo with their names on the hats, which stayed dressed for all of about ten minutes. So thanks for the super cute outfits mom, they were cool while they lasted. The animals had beautiful handmade bracelets on them that Carolina hoarded almost as soon as the other two weren't looking. As you can see from the pictures there were even a few unexpected "gifts" in the box too. Ben got a really cool antique lock that looks like one of the dolphin fish from his submarine pin and I got handmade ruby earrings and a matching pendent. Everything was beautiful, thank you mom we loved it all and welcome home!!!! 

Mom also send each of the kids some handmade bracelets. 

Carolina believes that you can make an outfit out of just about anything, including the bag that one of the gifts came in...

For some reason the paper towel was a huge hit. The paper towel that one of the gifts was wrapped in... Weird kids!

Its been a while...

Okay, so I have been wondering all day if this story is to private to share on here. But as I'm sure most of you are thinking right now "What something to private for Mandi to share! Is there such a thing???" Here it is:

Carolina is reading these days, alot. So when she sees a word that she recognized she lets you know right away. So this morning she was very excited to let me know that she could read the word love. Actually her exact words were "Mom! It says love on your butt! I can read love on your butt... Mom, why does it say love on your underware?" What can I say... I'm so happy she is learning to read. Okay, most of the time.

Waterpaints are always a big hit around here. Well, I'm guessing they're a big hit in most houses. Each of our kids have their own approach to it. Carolina is the budding artist in our home so she doesnt mess around to much when its arts and crafts time around here. George is a bit of a mess when it comes to artwork. I dont know if he even really likes doing the stuff, he's much more into cars. Where Lina could spend all day with a marker and a pad of paper, George could spend all day moving matchbox cars around the floor. So painting for him usually ends with him spilling his water, getting paint all over his clothes and then moving on. All in the span of about 15 minutes. Laney is just getting into the whole creative thing. She really just does what everyone else does, but everything ends up in Laney's month though. If you ask her if she put (whatever it was) in her mouth she will deny deny deny! 

Valentine's Day (give or take a week or two)

So for Valentines Day this year Ben bought us tickets to the Brad Paisley concert in Tacoma. We had to wait a couple of weeks to celebrate since it wasnt until the 28th. We had so much fun. First we had a really nice dinner and then we parked really far away from the Tacoma Dome. We really didnt have much of a choice in the matter. People were already parking when we drove by at 5pm and the show didnt start till 7:30pm. The good news was that we couldnt find the number on our parking space, so parking was free! (dont judge us! nobody could figure it out! lol) Ben got us good seats, but we were still pretty far away. I went down at one point to see if I could get a picture of Dierks Bentley and found it so easy to get down there I hung out for a couple of songs. Then I went back to tell Ben how easy it was to get down there and so when Brad came on we both went down there and watched the whole performance from the second row! It was so awesome! I felt kinda bad at first for sneaking up there, but then Ben told me that the tickets were almost the same price (ours were pretty pricey), there just werent any left. So it was a great night and I got some pretty good pictures. No great pictures, for some reason my camera was not corperating that night. I didnt even get a go picture of the two of us... It was so awesome to be so close to the stage!