Experimenting

Since I got an iPhone I have to admit that's how I take most of my pictures now.  At least for day to day kind of stuff.  A great advantage of doing this is that there are lots of fun apps that make your pictures look better with just a touch.  I'm experimenting with a new one so I thought I'd put them here.

 This was my last image of the kids as I was walking out of the house this morning.  Mateo was coloring and Elise was just happy as a clam.  A huge relief as I had a pretty hard night with her last night and didn't know what was wrong exactly (the problem of having a 20 month old just learning to talk).  I ended up putting her to bed at 6:30 and she woke up at 8:30 the next morning.  I guess that was it....just super tired!

 Here are a couple of pictures I snapped as I picked up Mateo from school yesterday.  When I got there they were on the playground and Mateo had a hand held broom and was sweeping up wood chips and putting them in a dump truck.  His teacher informed me he had been doing this quite a while.  Hmm, obsessive compulsive cleaner.  Wonder where he gets that from?

Rain rain go away!

I think I complain a lot (Matt would agree).  I'm hungry.  I'm tired.  I wish I had a bigger house.  But hey, these things are true.  One complaint that is quite common around here is: I want this rain to go away.  We live in Oregon.  We have lots of trees.  It's pretty.  Yada yada, but we sure pay the price with a lot of rain.  My background is in psychology, so I should be able to supply myself with enough positive self talk to make these long winters (and falls and springs) more manageable.  Like, I'm glad it's not snowing, and I am so lucky I didn't have to scrape my car this morning, and I have my health, two gorgeous, smart, and healthy children, and I have a fiance who loves me and is interested enough in our wedding to have special requests (like last night, "Can I have a crunk cup at the wedding?"  No, Matt, you may not.)  Anyway, it rains here.  So, we went on a wet walk after I got home from work last night.  Mateo likes the rain.  He can use his Thomas umbrella.  He's not complaining.

Miscellaneous

You might be able to tell that I'm running out of steam.  No, not that really, but when day to day life is happening, I struggle with finding fun things to post.  Maybe it's just a bad attitude.  The day to day IS the fun stuff!  Right!  I need to repeat that.  Over.  And over.

We did not do much over the weekend.  But I did go for a walk with Elise and she fell in love with these neighborhood cats, a pure white and black one.  They were super friendly and Elise probably spent 20 minutes following them around.  And them following her.  She called them both "Bebe," the name of our cat. :)

 Here is Mateo who was very proud of his coloring job.  Elise thought she did something good too.

 And then there was some fun with this orange tube, aka Mateo's rocket ship.  See, I told you I didn't have much!

Mommy & Mateo Day

I officially declared this day to be mommy and Mateo day.  And I am so glad I did.  It was another snow day for Mateo's school, but Elise's was open.  So I did what any mom would do: took full advantage of my hard earned pay going toward super high day care costs and stuck that girl in school!  But also, the thought of quality time with Mateo was a nice thought, and I couldn't remember the last time I really had any without my attention being split.  So, we started the afternoon off by shoveling snow!  Ha ha, now before you think I'm pro-child labor, this kind of work is what Mateo dreams of!  We cleared off our front deck, then we threw more snowballs....

We made a bigger and better snowman, and then launched snowballs in the newly created pond (aka totally flooded gutter).  This, Mateo later told me, was his favorite part of the day.  Then we headed to Dutch Bros. for hot chocolate (with his fave whipped cream straw).

Then we headed to Target where we pretended to be a rock star.

And the fun continued as we got in a couple of games of bowling.  He was pretty darn good!

Then we went to Barnes and Noble, where Mateo played at the train table (Heaven to him) and I flipped through wedding magazines (Heaven for me).  Then it was only fair to let Elise in on the fun.   We picked her up and headed for Papa's pizza where they played...

(Elise clinging for dear life.)

And we ate pizza.  Why is Mateo standing on his chair at dinner?  The question is more like, when is he not?  It was such a fun day, it reminded me of how I need to do this more with my little guy.

First day of spring??!!

Wow, you'd NEVER know by looking outside right now, but it was indeed the first day of spring. And we started the season off with our first snow day of the year.  We woke up to 6+ inches of snow, schools closed, and a very excited 4 year old who has been waiting for this for a while now.  After breakfast we bundled up and headed outside for snowballs, snowmen, snow angels, and...freezing hands!  We warmed up with hot chocolate afterward, then a loooong rest of the day inside.  It sure was pretty, and we are supposed to get one more night of it. 

 This guy was skiing down our street.  That is a first.

 I knew I was in trouble when I thought to myself, "only 5 more hours until bedtime...what can we do?"  Mateo and I made applesauce.  It was very nice mommy/son time and Mateo was so helpful!

 Here we enjoy the fruit of our labor!

Mellow weekend

I didn't blog yesterday.  My reasons: seriously, not a whole lot was going on, I felt uninspired, and this is a part of my personal happiness goals, so if it's going to create burden to blog for the sake of blogging, then it's counterproductive, right?  I was trying to think today if we even did anything this weekend.  I guess it's pretty bad if I have to really pause and think about it!  It was cold, and I wonder: is there a limit to the amount of pictures people see with us in our little house, or eating.  Cause that's all it seems like we do sometimes!  Okay, enough of that.  I love the picture above.  We get diapers shipped from Amazon once a month and it's like Mateo's favorite day when a big box comes and he gets to haul out his dump truck to move the load to Elise's room.  But this time we added much more excitement and included our Costco amount of paper towels.  Mateo was SO excited that he finally found a way to trap Elise...if only for a minute.  He then turned the barrier into a monster truck arena.  Of course.

Elise is SUPER into books right now.  Her favorite activity is to carry as many books as she can to us, throw them on us, then plop herself down on our laps to look at them.  It's a bit of relief, because up until now whenever I tried opening a book with her she'd knock it down and find something else to do.  The only trick now is to keep the excitement level high when you have to read Elmo Loves Babies like 20 times a day.

 Look at this face.  Classic.

On Friday I made the kids spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and ChocoTacos for dessert.  Yes, I said ChocoTacos.  Sometimes I'm not the best kind of mom, but gosh darn it, sometimes it's fun.

St. Patty's Day

If you are no longer young(ish), or a male in college, or don't have the hankering for green beer, St. Patrick's Day is pretty much for the kids.  Mateo's just getting around to learning what holidays are, besides the big ones like Christmas and birthdays (which to him just means lots of excitement and gifts) so it's fun letting him know a special day is coming up and exposing him to silly traditions.  We had a very mild St. Patty's celebration, by wearing green (of course), eating green mint chocolate chip cookies that I baked last night, and playing a game I found called "Don't Eat Lucky," which he found to be down right hilarious!

They don't look very green here.  But they are.  Really.

You play Don't Eat Lucky by putting some kind of treat on each of these boxes (I used mini m&ms).  Then you secretly choose a box that is "lucky."  Then Mateo picks a box.  If it wasn't "lucky" he got to eat the treat.  He was pretty darn good at his guessing.  He cleared the entire board twice!  At bedtime I usually ask him what his favorite part of the day was.  Tonight he said playing the game and seeing Auntie.

This week's random cuteness

Sometimes there are just random photos that are too cute to pass up.  Overall, we had a pretty good, mellow week.  Daddy took the kids to the library, Costco, and then the normal routine.  Lots of rain and hence, indoor play.  Wishing everyone a great weekend, don't forget to wear your green! :)