Happy Birthday Lauren

Lauren turned 2 today and I think she actually knew it was her birthday. Both Dave and I worked because we have missed a few days lately and we are going to attempt to get together with family on Saturday to have her party.

We had a great night filled with Runza including lots of ranch dip and chocolate milk. I bought special cupcakes for our little party. Lauren wanted the frog (which was cuter before she grabbed it's head) and Emma had this adorable chicken. Luckily they didn't eat much of them because grandma stopped over to say hi and to bring Lauren a little gift....(Tigger slippers) We "got stuck" watching The Cat in the Hat and they didn't go to bed until 8:30, but oh well!!

Thanks to grandpa too for stopping over to say hi. Lauren was thrilled to see you!

Here are just a few pics from tonight and can I just say that obviously I haven't dealt with this horrible camera issue yet. UGH!!!

Yeah for "the A"

Yesterday we found out that Dave actually had the "influenza A" and not the dreaded "B"!! Thus, us "tough" girls had a little help from our vaccinations this year on fighting the germs off that were floating around our home. I am kind of a "freak" about the flu shots every year and thus am happy that they worked this year when tested. Dave and I are both back to work and a "normal" routine. Thanks for all the prayers.....we are 100% and challenge the rest of our relatives to be too. :)
Anyway, enough whining about germs.

Yes uncle Mel, I do like "Melia" or "Malia" or "Mia" although we are hoping for the other sex but are blessed either way. I still like some of my "original" boy names that I picked before Emma was born but Dave has remembered he didn't like them then and apparently nothing has changed in 6 years. :(

We just got back from a 20 minute walk around the neighborhood (if you can call it that without a whole lot of neighbors) and it was significantly colder than it looked coming home from picking up Emma. It was great just to get out of the house though. Of course we battled over who pushes the stroller......some things never change.

Tonight is another "Idol' night and luckily Emma's homework was completed last night. SERIOUSLY....she had 8 pages of homework this week!! Whew, I hate to imagine what the years to come will bring. We are totally pleased with her school and the fact that she is challenged and is learning tons, BUT 8 pages.? And, 2 of them were the cut out, color, and glue stuff kind. Yikes!! Where is grandma when you need her.?

Emma is just beside herself that we aren't having a big party tomorrow for Lauren's birthday. Luckily, Lauren has no idea that it's her birthday and really doesn't know the difference. Both Dave and I have to work so maybe the girls and I will dine on a fabulous birthday dinner of McDonalds to celebrate. We are entertaining the idea of having something this weekend barring anymore germs. Her favorite sayings are: "I can I want to" and "I thought I told you..." gee, where did she hear those from.?

Anyway, it's about time to think about dinner, or if we were still at mom and dad's we would be cleaning up the dishes. :) That early stuff makes for a long night after.

Could it be?

Is there anyway that us "tough girls" are going to beat this flu virus. I feel like I'm jinxing this right now as I write this but so far so good which I think is absolutely amazing.

Thanks for the prayers!!

Dave is MUCH better today and even wandered upstairs a few times today. SO, of course that meant that I scrubbed everything three times today. :)

The girls were wild again tonight and our house is finally peaceful except for the rediculous wind. Lauren is SO busy lately, getting into everything!!

Dave and I had a "baby name" discussion the other night and of course I offered like 15 names of which maybe he liked 2. Tonight he offered me 1......."Miles" UH, NO!! The battle will continue into July I'm afraid.

Emma saw me looking at the girl names today and she wanted to know why I wasn't looking at the boy ones. I told her that we don't know yet what it is going to be and she told me that it's going to be a boy because God told her the other night in her bed.........I suppose that's possible. :)

The girls decided to have "dress up time" at our house today so since the snow was flying and it was miserable out, they thought it would be a good idea to put on some swimming suits for the heck of it.

AND, here's another, hopefully better picture of the monster's cute little eye. :)

Where are you spring?

Apparently not here yet....although the girls and I are determined to go for a walk today around our dirty, gravelly, muddy neighborhood :)

I may even open the windows just a tiny bit.

I have been busy this morning, instead of taking the girls to church, I have been scrubbing everything that can be scrubbed. Dave has been quarantined (sp) to the basement since yesterday. He has the dreaded "influenza B". We around here atleast are treating it like the measles or worse. :) Anyway, I get to pick up my Tamiflu here in a couple hours eventhough who knows if that will help if I "get it." The girls are good still and know that they can't go downstairs to see daddy!

It will be a miracle if none of us get it but we are praying none the less!! Emma just about freaked out last week when she missed ONE day of school....I can't even imagine dealing with her missing more than one.

Anyway, Emma came home Thursday from school with the cutest little black eye. I should have taken a picture of it two days ago when it was prettier but oh well....we've got other things going. I asked her what happened and she said there was "this boy" who was doing hopscotch and she wanted it to be her turn. So, she tried to do it too and they collided heads. Who knew that hopscotch was a contact sport? She says he did it "on purpose" so we had a little discussion about how it probably was an accident. It was swollen and pretty bruised that day so I asked her if she cried and she said, "well, I turned a little red but I didn't cry" wow, good for you! She didn't tell the teacher cause that would have meant she would have had to go to the nurse's office and she was scared that she would be sent home. :) This picture isn't good but you can kind of see the fading bruise. :) (it seems to just "go" with her personality and maybe that's why I find it cute.)

Other than the battle against the germs we are all good. Emma just came in and grabbed the Lysol spray and wipes. I've never seen a kid so excited to get to "clean" by herself. I guess it's the joy of spraying stuff. Whatever works I guess.

We are definately planning to be healthy by the first week of March to see Kelly, Maggie and hopefully Grandma!

Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren will be 2 on the 28th and she is doing her best to keep up with the average onery 2 year old, but still is VERY sweet!

She LOVES to:

throw things..........EVERYTHING including:

her chunk of chicken out of her chicken noodle soup today at Emma

the remote control in the kitchen sink

her Ernie out of her car seat then beg for me to hand it back to her

her diapers all over her room

her stroller down the huge flight of stairs in our house

the "tupperware" all over the kitchen

AND, she loves to throw things in the trash which isn't good cause some of the things aren't trash

Apparently she decided today to paint her face with a marker while I was picking up the disasterous toy room

Emma came running in telling me that "Lauren is going to be in big trouble" (with a smile on her face)

I truly do think Emma was an accessory to the whole thing cause Lauren sure had a lot accomplished by the time Emma came to get me. :)

Anyway, it was VERY hard not to laugh and unfortunately my Mary Kay eye makeup remover didn't quite do the trick. I told Emma she would probably have it on her face until she was 12. Emma's face was priceless and I got a good laugh from it.

Here is my darling almost 2 year old.

Another "crumb stealer"

As my wonderful husband would say, we are going to be adding another "crumb stealer" to our family.
Yes, I'm talking about another baby. :)
This seems like a real strange way to announce this exciting news but what the heck.

We have been desperately trying to get together with family for a month now and certain people (who's names will remain anonymous) :) have been sick which has made it just not feasable which is ok. There are worse things but it was kind of disappointing today to announce it to just about everyone over the telephone.

ANYWAY, we have known for quite some time and I have successfully hid my "gut" in hopes that when I announced it to my "work people" that I wouldn't get "booted" temporarily to investigate gasoline thefts again. :( Well, my strategy paid off this time. I finally told work yesterday and actually I get to stay where I'm at which is a huge thing. The reason I was so worried is that there are already two pregnant gals that I work with and if I would have announced it when I first found out, I would have been "out" forsure. :) Sneaky huh. These two girls have been begging me for two months to "hurry up and get pregnant." Little did they know I already was, but keeping it to myself, (and Dave of course. ) :) I told them that Dave and I were going to wait till we got settled in our new house to really try. Yeah, yeah, yeah, "it" happened at mom and dad's. Laugh.....and blog all you want my dear sis!!

We just told the girls yesterday because we knew once we told Emma, the world would know. She couldn't hardly wait 1 day to share the news with family, so I let her do all of the "notifications." She says that she wants a brother but knows that God is in charge and we are blessed already. Of course a little boy would be great but how cool would it be for the girls to have three sisters to grow up with. (scary thought)

Anyway, I will be 17 weeks on Monday and my tentative date of delivery will be July 22nd. We will definitely be finding out the sex in three weeks.
Of course we are thrilled and a little overwhelmed with the thought of another child to add to the mix but we are undoubtedly blessed AND I am blessed with such a wonderful husband who "thought" we were done after Lauren but "gave in" to me because he knew how important to me this was. We are definitely done after this one though which I think is just perfect!!
Well, I have rambled enough and have written a very disorganized entry BUT oh well, it's late.

One last thing.....please say a prayer for my very good friend/work partner Tom who's father was very ill and passed away last night!!
Thanks and good night.

Lots of odds and ends

This blog will most certainly be full of odds and ends and random thoughts.......but aren't all of mine kind of random? :)

I am sorry I am a total slacker on the blogger thing. Yes, we have been busy and yes, we have all been sick BUT that's really not an excuse to take the 20 minutes or whatever to quickly "type some stuff."

Today Emma and I went to "Thunder Alley"....it's a new bowling alley/restaurant/arcade in Elkhorn and it is unbelieveable! We went with her little "friend" Colin and his mom. She called yesterday to inquire about the prices etc. which by the way are a little high. Anyway, they didn't bother to tell her that today there was no open bowling until 5:30. So, we got stuck playing games and winning tickets in the arcade. (Definitely one of my least favorite activities.) We waited in line for the go carts for over an hour and I don't know how the kids were so patient. The line wasn't that bad but they had TWO double carts for all of the people.

The kids wanted to play laser tag but they were a little young. Emma enjoyed herself playing many many games of skeeball (sp?) Anyway, she "won" one of those hand shaking buzzers and hopes to shock all of our relatives at a certain point. So, note to relatives....be shocked when you shake her hand next time you see her.

Colin is so sweet, he is more calm than Emma which is not that surprising. He looked right at me today and said,
"you're pretty." Wow, I haven't heard that from a 6 year old boy, let alone any boy for a long time. :)

Emma talks about him constantly and even told me on Friday that Colin had invited her over to spend the night at his house. She said that it would work great because he has bunkbeds and nobody sleeps on the top, so she could sleep there and he could be on the bottom. (How innocent and cute is that?) Dave and I had to laugh about it and politely explained to her that boys and girls don't have sleepovers together. She was ok with that.

Lauren has a bad cold again but seems to be on the mend. I located our humidifier in the garage and have had it running in her room the past couple of nights. Dave has a cold/cough too but really isn't that bad. We can't wait for spring even though we don't have any grass outside. Emma and I "got out of the house" yesterday for a few hours and got some fresh air. We helped mom spend some money at Gordmans. She bought some really cool things for her house and of course I ended up buying a few things that I didn't need. Emma got all her Valentines all filled out for her classmates and her plastic Easter "Resurrection Eggs" ready to go to school.

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and my birthday. Dave and I had a FABULOUS fried fish dinner ALONE at Red Lobster. YUM!! Mom and Dad watched the girls at their house. We realized that that was the first time we had been back to mom and dad's since we moved. It didn't confuse Lauren thankfully and she didn't argue when we left to come home...(or as she calls this place "house".) Patrick and Cecilia gave me each a pretty pink rose and Dave had a dozen chocolate chip cookies delivered to my office. I had a great birthday......especially when I was changing Lauren's diaper after her nap and all of a sudden her eyes lit up and she said, "happy birthday momma."

Work has been very busy lately. Lots of big cases and very strange people which make for very interesting cases. I can't really share anything over this blog since this is a family blog, but the next get together I'll have to remember my latest "special" victim. :) Dad has continued to save our butts from me getting off late and Dave getting to work on time. He is so good about picking up Emma from school and getting Lauren up from her nap. He even fed them dinner last week here. Pretty amazing!! Thank You Dad!!!

I think that's it for now. That's enough scattered thoughts anyway for now.

Here are some random pictures to go with the scattered thoughts. (The coloring isn't good on the house one)