Sweet Surprise!

Owen and I have come down with a case of the sickies this week = not fun! On Monday I started feeling a little under the weather, so I went to Starbucks to pick up a Chai Tea Latte (cause that ALWAYS makes me feel better!) and the girl there gave Owen and Jack chocolate cupcakes! I'm guessing she probably felt sorry for me :P Anyways, she wrapped them up in these cute little boxes and wrote cute little notes on them! It was definitely the highlight of our Monday :) The boys couldn't wait to dig in and it kept them occupied for about 10 minutes while I enjoyed my tea!

Aahhhh, bliss. I usually love to read the little messages on my cup. This one was a little confusing and depressing though. HOWEVER - I definitely plan to do exactly what it says on the sleeve. All week. :)

Hope you:

St. Patrick's Day Parade

We went to the St. Patrick's Day parade on Sunday! It was a gorgeous {but hot} day. Jack was in the parade, marching with his Martial Arts School and Granny and Grandpa were in it too, with their square dancing group, Whirl & Twirl. This wasn't Owen's first parade, but probably the first one he was really old enough to enjoy. He loved the horses and the fire trucks! He had a little meltdown towards the end, but it was quickly remedied with chocolate candy (his newest and favorite word at the moment = "chock-it caneeee"). Who wouldn't feel better after a little chocolate, right? ;)

Owen loved it!This is what I like to call "Parade Face" - just taking it all in. Looks like Chris has a bit of parade face in the second pic. too ;)

Check out the teeth on this horse! Owen LOVED the firetrucks!

Jack was in the parade with his "XMA" team

This is how he spent the last 15 minutes or so....

I tried to get Granny (Chris' mom) to take a nice little family pic. after the parade and these were the best we got:

decent of me, bad of everyone else.......

or........good (OK, better) of everyone else, TERRIBLE of me lol!

Sigh.....why is it SO hard to get a family picture where everyone is smiling????

It was a great day!

What did you do today?

here's what we did....







What can I say? We were bored, it was raining. We had a few too many sharpies laying around ;)

My Little Picasso

My father-in-law's 75th birthday is tomorrow and (as I mentioned in my previous post) Granny's friend Vivien is also in town for a visit. SO, I thought it would be nice for Owen to make them some little gifts (and crack open that finger paint Daddy bought!). As my fellow Floridians know, we've been having somewhat of a cool snap lately, so my original plan to let him paint in the buff was nixed (but how cute would that have been????) Instead I let him wear one of Jack's old tie-dyed t-shirts as a smock. He looked so cute, with his wild hair, paint on his face....he reminded me of one of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan (with whom ALL of my parents' grandchildren are currently obsessed!). Anyways, Owen wasn't thrilled with the paint at first, but I managed to get two or three pieces of "art" out of him before he realized that squishing the paint in his hands was just way more fun. The finger paint (Crayola brand) was really wierd, it was kind of a jelly-like consistency and not super easy to paint with. This is my second attempt at finger painting with Oboe and I just can't seem to find any that is just right. Any suggestions? Well, I leave you with some cute pictures of my little artist:

Boiled Eggs and Toast Soldiers

I am self-professed Anglophile, and so I LOVE that Chris' family hails from Merry England! Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely proud of my G.R.I.T.S. heritage, but I really love trying to incorporate some of their family traditions into our own. Granny Owen's childhood friend, Vivien, is in town, staying with my in-laws. So, to celebrate, I thought I would try to make Owen some boiled eggs and toast fingers for breakfast yesterday, since that was Daddy's favorite breakfast as a little laddy (and we have really cute little egg cups). Sadly, I do not know how to "soft" boil an egg, so when I went to "gently tap" the top of the eggshell off, all I heard was "thud". So, I ended up having to hack the top off of the egg with a knife, yep....it was solid through and through. So, we had HARD boiled eggs and toast fingers instead. But they were yummy! Oh well!

Yes, I know...

I am a complete nerd for putting Miley Cyrus' "The Climb" on my playlist :P
Rock on Hannah Montana! JK - I can't stand Hannah Montana, but I do like this song!

Bray's Alabama Charmer :)

That is Bama's "full name" aka - the name on his AKC registration. Oh, this dog, this dog, this dog. I really LOVE Bama, he is such a big, brown, drooly, loveable lump of sugar.

His very favorite thing to do is play "ball" in the back yard:

This - is "ball". Quite nasty.

At least to some people.

Such a big handsome boy (with a freakishly large tongue!) It's hard to believe that it was three years ago that Chris brought him home, looking like this:

He looked like a little chocolate kiss, so small and snuggly. And sadly, just what I needed after losing a pregnancy. Bama was there for me to love on and take care of, I had to wake up with him in the middle of the night, clean up his poop - he definitely helped fill the void I was feeling :) That's why he is so much more than just a dog to me, well our whole family really. We love him like a true member of our family, not just a pet. Now, don't get me wrong, his butt goes straight to his crate when he takes a big ole dump on my sisal rug (like this MORNING!!) but I wouldn't trade him for ANYTHING. He protects my babies (he used to sit outside Owen's door when he was first born) and me - for such a gentle giant, he packs a MEAN bark - I'm sure our mailman thinks we have a 200 lb. Rottweiler :) He's a playmate for Owen and Jack who's always ready to play, can take any amount of hitting, ear pulling, eye poking, etc. and a companion for me - he somehow always knows when I'm feeling down and comes and loves on me. He's a big dog, with a big heart (even though he convinced himself long ago that he's a tiny 100 lb. lap dog) who was and is the BEST Valentine's Day gift EVER!

Funny Face

It looked like we were going to have some rain this morning so I took Obe-Wan outside to play earlier than usual. Lucky for me, he just adores his "playground" of curb-side finds and craigslist treasures :) Our backyard is definitely starting to resemble some kind of hillbilly home daycare, but you know what - I don't care! I don't really remember having toys like these when I was little. My parents shelled out for this awesome wooden swingset with a playhouse and a sandbox (which I ALWAYS wanted) that was full of mulch (less messy than sand, i guess). So the kid in me occassionally likes to indulge in the silly things that I wasn't always allowed to have as a kid (velcro shoes, character undies) for my own kiddos (don't worry I don't currently own velcro shoes OR character undies). I know it probably won't be long until Owen outgrows these monstrous, neon, plastic blights on my patio, so I snapped a few shots of him this morning doing what he does best!

My Funny Face little boy

He Loves to swing!

He also loves his playhouse! He'll poke his head out the window and say "He-llloooo"!

About to go down the slide....

His "cozy coupe" circa 1970-ish

Apparently, his car broke down and he had to fix it. In two places. :)

Now THIS is a new, amazing trick that he' s just learned!

How sweet is this picture? I have one very similar that I took of Jack when he was about 7:

Okay, maybe their not THAT similar, but they both make me smile :)