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...how WRONG is this?

We turned on our baby monitor to hear if Addison had woken up from his nap. Then we remembered we hadn't turned on the monitor in his room--duh--so at this point, we should just hear static...

But no, instead we heard a CRYSTAL CLEAR conversation of our neighbors 2 DOORS DOWN! 2 DOORS DOWN!! It was as clear as if they were upstairs in Addison's room.

They just had a baby last week, so this is a new thing for us...I hope they can't hear us!!

Back to reality

After walking up a thousand stairs and going down a hundred slides with signs reading "Pregnant Women should not ride this ride", at last it's time to come back to reality and end our winter of fun. But come on, Wisconsin Dells...3 times...in 3 months...What a life! Here are pics of our last galavanting at the water parks! This time we went with my Mom & Dad, my brother and his family (Shaun, Susan, Joseph, Nathan, and Jonathan). What a FUN group!

Bring Me Ye Best Matey

Who Makes the Best Pirate?

Nathan, Grandma, Shaun, Jonathan, Carter, Steve, or Kerri ?

First pics of the Where in the World was Carmen San Diego? photo series.

Me only True Love is the sea...and the putter

3D-Glow in the Dark mini golfing with pirates...does a vacation get better than this?

Best Advice

Looking to save money? I liked this advice.

Jog to the gym.

Touch the door.

Jog home.

Then call and cancel your gym membership.

Preschool Week

To combat the tantrums/boredoms that come along once in a while, last week was "Preschool Week", having at least one unique activity per day.

Day #1: Traced Carter's body on butcher paper, then decorated it for his clothes, face, hair, etc.

Day #2: Played in Pudding on the table--yogurt for Addison! (Carter even invented a "Pudding Plow" when his car would push a chopstick sideways)












Day #3: Made a zoo with our blocks and animals.

Day #4: Well, we all know about the Fire Engines by now...we also played learning games, like Making Felt PBJ sandwiches by matching the numbers (THANKS Susan!)

And Day #5 : Played hooky from "preschool" since temps were 60's-70's...We, of course, packed in all we could before the rains and floods and cold temps arrived again on Saturday.

• Rode bikes around the block and Carter carried EVERYONE'S bins--even the garbage can size ones--back to their houses. (Service Learning in Progress)

• Went on a 4 mile walk with our friends around the lake--including through some very deep puddles (I had already made it through with my double stroller, and couldn't resist the pic) And we tried to feed the geese. (Apparently, they're not fans of tortillas)
• Had a picnic on the patio (with 6 toddlers/babies, this proved to be more effective in theory than in realty)


• Drove an hour to the beach where I grew up so the kids could all play in the sand--Thanks for taking the pics Lindsay :)  You've got to be in them next time...and turns out my camera was in the car the whole time.

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• Pizza for dinner, baths at my parents house, and the kids having a blast swinging in the basement and dancing to the juke box...Yeah, we were all ready for bed when we got home.

It was a good week; and I have the greatest most adventurous friends of all time!

'Splain This...

I get it: My alarm clock automatically changed the time for Daylight Savings Time.

I don't get it: So did Carter's internal clock. He's woken up "right on time" the past two days...technically an hour earlier for his body...I was hoping I could fake out my kids for a couple days and have them sleeping in until 7:30 or 8. That's a no go.

...Tuesday's update:  Apparently he's still working on transferring DST to bedtime.  How unfortunate.

My post trumps your post

When the day started, I thought this was going to be the post of the day:

What do 80 and 104 look like? Well, it's a little if they are the amount of calories in a really yummy something. A lot if it involves the entertainment for 2 children while Mom is in the other room. Thank goodness for Gallon Storage Baggies that gathered up all the 80 wipes that Addison emptied out, and we got all 104 diapers back in the box.

But then, I had an event that TRUMPED that post...

When was the last time you had Fire Truck come to YOUR house? For us, it was Wednesday night at 7:45! We'd been wanting to take Carter to the fire station, but now they were coming to us!!! It was amazing!

We were telling Carter that the firefighters were going to come to our house with their truck and he was so excited! He ran to get his toy fire truck and waited with baited breath. As soon as he saw their lights coming towards our house, he immediately sounded his own siren and turned on his truck's lights. As the heroes entered our house, Carter invited them to see his truck and his firetruck blanket; he started searching for all his firetruck books, and he was wearing firetruck pajamas--so was Addison--we seemed like an obsessed family! One fireman offered Carter his coat (which smelled like REAL fire) but he turned it down...Out comes the 3 year old in Steve who didn't shy away at all to ask if he could wear it! Carter sure thought the walkie-talkie was cool! It was really working and he could hear dispatches the whole time!
Getting the fire dept to make a house visit isn't just for kicks and giggles of our kids. No, we actually did call 911 because as we were putting our kids to bed, Steve and I were smelling the most peculiar smell, like something was burning. We searched the house, all outlets unplugged, all light switches and walls felt cool, no clothes were over vents--esp since they are all on the ceiling--we were baffled, but the smell was getting stronger and stronger, and we could not ignore it. So, we enlisted the help of the professionals, and they determined it must be a probelm with our heater and the smell was traveling through the vents.
Later, Steve found this:No, it's not a dirty diaper. It's a diaper that must have fallen casualty as Carter and Addison were throwing 104 diapers over our balcony railing to the entryway below. So where I once thought my two posts were unrelated, as it turns out, they were both quite relevant to post!

P.S. Our heater is fine.