Vegas, Baby!

A few months ago, Ryan told me that he was planning a secret trip for the two of us.  He told me he didn't plan on telling me the date until he absolutely had to, so when a potential client emailed me with an early May due date I had to get the date of our trip out of Ryan!  April 20-23.  I tried to get hints out of him regarding the location, but he wouldn't budge!  Then, one day, we were talking about a concert and Ryan accidentally spilled the beans.  He was so angry at himself but I was psyched- Las Vegas!  We went to Las Vegas nearly 7 years ago for our honeymoon as a last minute trip- we were supposed to go to Mexico but a last-minute hurricane in the Gulf changed our plans.  But, this time we were staying on the strip!  He didn't let anything else slip, and I didn't even know where we were staying until our cab drove up to the hotel.

We left early Friday morning to catch a morning flight, and we both prepared for the trip by bringing long books for the 3 hour flight- I read the final book in the Hunger Games series and Ryan read the first book.  We weren't much fun on the flight, each reading our books the entire time!

When we got to Vegas, we caught a cab and took the quick trip to our hotel.  The Monte Carlo!  Ryan's trip for us revolved around a conference he was attending, the same conference he attended in 2010 when we went to Miami together.  His conference was Monday and Tuesday, and we had most of the day on Friday through Sunday to spend together, and my flight came home early Monday morning.  He and I stayed on the 27th floor with a view of the strip, and once we checked in, we did what all parents probably do on the first day of vacation- we took a nap!  A real, honest-to-goodness nap!

Just arrived!  Ready for vacation to begin!

Pantry Redo

Ryan and I have been working on our pantry redo for about a month now, it's been a stop and start project!  Our pantry was still the old nasty flat yellowish paint that dominated our entire home and I wanted to put cabinets in and make it "girly."  Hey, it's my laundry room and pantry, and I wanted one little super-girly room in the house!  It's not done yet because I am being pretty picky about what I want to finish it off with, but I have some ideas!

So to start things off, I didn't get a picture before we started to work, I remembered after I had removed the first wire shelf and most of the contents of the top shelf.  These shelves were (mostly) functional but definitely not pretty.  They had to go.  You can also see the beautiful paint color.

  

Next we have the opposite side of the room.  This is mostly our school stuff, games, craft supplies, puzzles, and other random kid's stuff.  The top shelf is my liquor cabinet. :-)

Ahh, much better, everything removed. We took off the hideous light fixture too, complete with dead bugs, which added more light to the window-less room.  I hope to get a mini-chandelier, if I can find one for a great price!

Brothers

This is what happens when brothers play nicely and quietly together while Mommy is doing her hair in the other room.  They get dog food from the container, throw it all over the playroom floor, scoop it up with their play cups, and pour it into an empty prune juice bottle.  At least they were playing nicely and quietly.

Easter Pics

 I got some pictures of the kids after mass on Divine Mercy Sunday, last weekend.  They were more than willing to oblige after I promised donuts to all!  I think this may be the best photo I have of them from at least the past several months, I love it!  Don't they all look so grown up?  I wish Ryan and I could have jumped in the photo with them but Ryan was at a ministry fair so we will have to try it again some other time!

Easter Egg Hunt

 Easter is a season lasting 50 days so we have plenty of time to do the activities we avoided didn't get around to doing before Easter Sunday!  A few days ago we had an Easter egg hunt with some plastic eggs.  No goodies were inside but they didn't care, they had so much fun finding them and then taking turns hiding them for each other!  Jack figured it out after a few minutes and had a fun time cracking his eggs open.

Happy Easter!

 Alleluia!  Happy Easter!  Our family had a busy one as usual, hosting a few guests and attending our annual crawfish boil on Saturday.  Beth and I attended alone this year as Luke and Jack are still pretty spotted.  I don't think they're contagious anymore (with the chicken pox) but they are still a little on the grumpy side, though not really itchy (thank goodness!).  We didn't want to take any chances and bring them, so Ryan was a mighty fine man and offered to stay home with them while Beth and I went to the party.  Today, for Easter Sunday, Ryan went to the 7 am mass and I went with Beth and our family at the 9 am mass, once again because we didn't think it'd be a good idea to bring the boys out!  They didn't get to wear their Easter shirts and we didn't get a good family Easter picture!  I think I'll plan out another Sunday for us to all wear our Easter clothes again and try to get a good family picture.

Easter baskets full of books, coloring books, crayons or markers, sidewalk chalk, and gummy bears!  No chocolate this year because I didn't get my act together in time to find some!  I think this marks the first Easter in my life to not have a chocolate bunny!

Three exicted babies to dig into their baskets!

Checking out their loot!

Luke

Luke is almost 3.5.  Wha wha whaaat?  He has gone through and recently come out of a growth spurt... I say "come out of a growth spurt" because it's like he was a tea kettle, slowly simmering.  For months he was simmering... he discovered how to test my every boundary and push every limit I've ever placed on him.  It wasn't a great time for him and me, I've realized that he and I are a LOT alike in some ways and it's made it very difficult for me to discipline him when he can get into my head!  It's like he knows what I'm going to say and he knows exactly how to ignore me while annoying the heck out of me!  It's kind of crazy that over the past month, the steam from his tea kettle has been released and he's now functioning very well at a new level.  He and I are both functioning well together.

How do I know that he's over this growth spurt?  For one, his physical body has grown.  His foot grew about a size and a half and his body has thinned out and looks more like a big kid and less like a toddler.  In fact, I was wondering if Jack had gained some weight or something because their body builds are very different right now!

Chicken Pox!

Bethie G. got the chicken pox!  She started with a fever on Monday, March 19 and broke out with her spots on the next day.  She was seriously itchy for only a couple of days and then after that it's been pretty easy for her.  I found the best "medicine" was distraction, luckily we had some beautiful weather so we spent a lot of time outside riding bikes and we kept on going with her schoolwork because she wanted to.  She really felt fine the entire time which sort of surprised me!  I also used pure lavender oil to stop the itching and gave her some watered-down lavender oil in a spray bottle for her to use whenever she wanted.  She took lots of showers and had a few oatmeal baths (gluten-free oatmeal steeped in a pillow case!).  I also gave her some children's Claritin for her first two nights because she wasn't able to sleep, but other than that we just let it run its course.  I am happy she will have a natural immunity to it because contracting chicken pox as an older teen/woman can potentially cause fertility issues and I don't want her to have to deal with that.  Right now she has a few scabs left (today marks three weeks since her fever) but I'm certain this is the end of it.  The boys haven't gotten sick yet but I don't see how they won't get it! Hopefully their cases will be as easy as Beth's was!

Bluebonnet Photos

Last Sunday we traveled out of town!  My parents left the country to Italy and on a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate their anniversary, so to help out we stayed with my two youngest brothers for a few days until they got back.  We had a fun time while we were there, Ryan came with us so we made a vacation out of it!  On our way there we passed a huge field full of bluebonnets so we pulled over to get our annual photos.  The sun was way too bright and the kids were sleepy, but it was the best we could do this year!  Here are some of the best ones, unfortunately I'm not thrilled with any of them...I plan to play with these in photoshop and clean them up a bit and maybe that will help.