My kids never did that.

The other day a friend of mine was telling me about how her child wrote all over their bedroom wall with markers. I remember thinking how funny it was because my kids never really did that. Caleb wrote on his wall with crayons once when he was about 2 1/2 but after I made him help me clean it off he never did again. I was thinking that Caden never did things like that either until I remembered these incidents.

Here is Caden at about 2 1/2 playing nicely with some of her dolls one morning.

Now, here she is with those same dolls just a few hours later.

Yep - that is baby powder.

Caden never wrote on walls, she preferred herself. Here she is about a week before she turned 2.

(Please excuse the nasty carpet, that is our office/guest room/ebay room that is always crazy.)


Now my favorite mess of hers is from about a month before she turned 2. She dumped a bowl of pancake batter on herself and on the floor. That in itself isn't funny, but the pictures crack me up.

Poor thing!! She was so upset at what she had done and is pointing to her mess. However I thought it was so funny how it is dripping off her face. I just had to to take a picture of it before I cleaned up my little girl!

Cali's First Invisible Guitar

I know she is just in the process of falling backwards, but it looks like she is jammin' out to an invisible guitar.

Last Friday we felt her first tooth coming in. We were surprised to see it because my kids get their teeth late. Caleb was 10 months and Caden was 14 months. So Cali is 2 months ahead of her brother. She thinks she is a big girl now because within a few minutes after I found her tooth she decided to can stand up for up to 5 seconds without falling.

My baby is 5

Caden turned 5 yesterday and everyone at Chick-Filet yesterday for lunch new about it. She asked every little kid she saw how old they were and then preceded to tell them that she was older. Over and over again I heard "hi my name is Caden and I am 5." It got old really fast and 2 little boys were tired of it too and told her to quit saying it.


Caden is my little princess and I have really enjoyed these past 5 years with her. She is so sweet and kind to everyone (except occasionally with her brother). God has truly blessed me with such a happy and VERY HEALTHY child. These past 5 years have flown by.

Here she is just a few hours old.

Here is yesterday. She is so proud to be holding up 5 fingers.

It looks like she has flowers growing out of her fingers. I think it is funny.

I was going to go back and find a bunch of my favorite pictures of her, but then reality set in and I don't have the time for that. So here is a few.

Here is 4 months.

Here is 8 months, it is not the best picture but I included it since this is the age that Cali is now.

Here are a few from her 3 year pictures. She had so much fun taking these pictures that I got so many great shots.

I am so proud of the sweet little girl she has become. 5 seems like the magic number when I can't call her my little baby anymore.

It could have been worse!!

This morning was headed for greatness. I had all 4 of us all ready to go by 8:15 this morning. That is 45 BEFORE school even starts. I had time to take some first day of school pictures in front of our unfinished landscaping.

I had planned for a stress free day until I loaded us in the car and it WONT START because the battery is DEAD. Keep in mind that Chris is still in Spokane Washington (as he has been for over a week). I almost started to freak out but then called the next door neighbors. Becca took Caleb with them since she is going there anyway with her kiddos. I had wanted to take him for his first day, but Caleb hasn't let me near the front door (on the first day) of school since he was in 1st grade so it doesn't matter anyway.

Back to the van. . . Eric tells me just to put it in neutral and let it roll down the driveway and then he will jump it. Apparently these newer vans wont go into neutral without the car being on. Maybe it is an anti-theft device, who knows. So he pulls his car into my driveway and then attaches 2 sets of jumper cables to each other so they are long enough to reach his car. So it all worked out but it was not my ideal first day of school, but it really could have been worse.

Caden is in afternoon Pre-K because they had too many enrolled in Kindergarten so they had to have the Pre-K teacher teach a morning K class. I know it has only been one day, but I HATE afternoon Pre-K, it totally messes up my day. However she was so excited to finally be at Caleb's school.

Here she is outside the school with her teacher Ms Stuchlik. Yep Caden's eyes are closed and I didn't notice until now.

Here she is with her class while the teacher was talking and going over attendance. She doesn't know anyone in the class but that wont bother her too much. I know she is going to have a great day!

There were two people crying in her class. I am so glad I wasn't one of them. I came close, but I held it together as to not embarrass my child or make her cry.

Now the only one who is going to be sad about the kids going to school is this little stinker. I think she is going to miss Caleb the most.

Who are these babies?

If your child is in these don't give it away.

This is how 9 year old boys watch a baby.

I was doing laundry (like almost every other stinkin' day of my life) and I asked Caleb and his friend to watch Cali for a little while. I came back to this.

Apparently she kept messing with their video games and they were tired of chasing her down the hallway.

Happy 13th Anniversary

I better enjoy it now, he wants to trade me in before I turn 50.

Yesterday was our 13th wedding anniversary. We spent an awesome day lounging on the beach and drinking fruity drinks. Well at least that is what I was doing in my head while I was at home doing laundry, dishes and cleaning up poop off the floor.

We went on a cruise for our ten year anniversary and we will do something big for our 15th as well. So apparently these little non important anniversaries just get a dinner. However I am sure having a nursing 7 month old has something to do with our lack of planning.

Here we are the summer of 1995. Just a few months before we got married.

Here we are 13 years later.

Last night we just had a nice quiet dinner at PF Changs. While we were praying over our yummy appetizers of crab wontons and peking dumplings, Chris said something to the effect of "thank you God for the last 13 years and hope for another 13 years." Ummm, why not hope for another 40 or 50, why only 13?


After dinner he dropped me off back at the house and went to Auto Zone and then spent the rest of the night (NOT KIDDING) in the garage working on his car. Back off girls, he's mine!

FREE CANDY!!!

This afternoon as we were putting away groceries we decided that we had too much crap in our pantry/cabinet. We start finding stuff that I know I haven't bought in A LONG TIME. Chris starts throwing stuff away and he found a package of cookies with a March 2007 date on them. They were actually still good. He also found several bags of chips with a 2006 date on them.


Then he opened up a cabinet and found this box.

This 11 lb box (yes we weighed it) is FILLED with all sorts of candy. Look closely at the date on the tin.

OH MY!!! Can you believe it? We have had this tin filled with M&M's 2 years longer than we have had Caleb.

So like morons we decide to open up some of the candy and see what it tastes like. Some of it had been opened before and some were still sealed. So if we start getting sick tomorrow you will know why.

Also in the box we found these 2 baggies filled with candy. Notice one says DeeDee and the other says Chris.

Ok now this just really makes me laugh. When Caleb was really little we would take him trick or treating at Halloween, put him to bed when we got home, and then dump out all the candy and divide it between the two of us. So this candy is at least 8 years old. We joked about saving it and giving it away for this Halloween.