Oh well, at least he makes good money!

Tonight I stumbled upon a hilarious scene. Andy was in Samantha's room reading her a bedtime story.....but this was no ordinary bedtime story. This was My Little Pony. Andy couldn't read about Rainbow Dash and Sparkleworks trying to find "the coolest place in Ponyville" without a little help from his, ahem, shall we say, feminine voice. The problem was he did the voice a little TOO well. Samantha was cracking up! I don't think she's ever heard her dad like that before and she'll never forget it I'm sure. I sure won't.

Boys are Stinky!

Potty training Alex is proving much harder than I had anticipated. I know that Samantha was ridiculously easy to potty train and I was prepared for Alex to be a normal kid, but man this is frustrating!! He's had more accidents in the past 2 weeks than Samantha has had in over a year. He does have many victories and I have been proud of him a lot but when he does so well only to suddenly have a big poop sitting in his underwear, it gets frustrating. I know the poor kid is trying his best and I know that yelling doesn't help with this kind of thing so I am just trying to be patient. And may the gods of clean underwear smile down on us in the near future!!

These pictures are a little far away but you can still sense the absolute adorableness of Samantha at her dance recital! Her recital was Friday night at the local Jr. High and it was almost too cute for words. In the duck outfit she is 3rd from the left, in case you couldn't tell. In the purple outfit she is 2nd from the right being extremely sassy!! Which I appreciate in dance, NOT so much with me at home when I'm trying to discipline her. Both sets of grandparents were able to attend which trilled Samantha. We got video as well but have yet to figure out how to get it off the camera and onto the computer! It's my sister's camera, so we'll have to have her figure it out for us. Anywho, enjoy the sweet pictures!!

Another Flashback

What Samantha is thinking : "I'm giving you cancer with my mind!!!!"

What Alex is thinking :

Scrumptious

Don't even try to tell me you don't want to eat this face right up!!!
Or this one....

Makes me a tiny bit sad they are growing up.....
But mostly I think "Hot diggity I've got cute kids". Samantha with her little elf ears and Alex's massive blue eyes.......sigh, and oh so innocent!

Just cuz I'm a stinker!

One of Andy's pet-peeves is having the sheets tucked in all the way up to his pillow.

One of my favorite past-times is to tuck Andy's sheet in all the way up to his pillow. It's just good clean fun!

A few thoughts on Cinderella.

As I was watching Cinderella for the zillionth time today a few things popped into my head.

1. I feel like Cinderella (only not as skinny and I have toes). I mean this is what the little mice said before singing... "Every time she find a minute, that's the minute they beginnith." AMEN little mouse man!! Every time I find a minute to do anything not serving my two little masters, that's when they decide they need me. Instead of "Cinderella!!!" being screamed at me it's constantly "Momma". Not that I'm complaining or anything. I wouldn't do anything of the sort!

2. I wish all the little critters in real life looked like the ones in the Disney shows. I mean, how cute are the little birdies that wake up Cinderella? They have coats and hats on! I tried dressing up my cat and put earrings in his ears. He didn't like it. I don't think real animals would stand for that yet in Cinderella even the mice have shoes on! And bugs too. Like in A Bug's Life. I wouldn't kill every bug I saw if they actually looked like Pixar makes them look. Maybe in my own world someday I'll make cute bugs. You'll all have to come and check them out.

3. I really don't want to watch Cinderella any more.

Must resist calling them panties!

Alex is on his third day of wearing big boy underwear and he's doing a great job! He hasn't had any accidents yet (cross your fingers!) and has been so good about telling us when he needs to go potty. We still check in with him about every hour and ask him if he needs to go, but it's working like a charm! I still put a diaper on him for naps and bedtime but I know that is normal. Samantha was the exception to the rule and once she was potty trained during the day she also was trained at night and never had to wear diapers at night. That girl can hold it for hours, just like her momma! (I once held my pee for over 24 hours when I was camping with some friends. I have a very shy bladder and can't "hover" to pee.)
Well, I feel that I have filled your heads with a sufficient amount of unnecessary information and may go about my day now!

Here are the kids after bath with their pajamas on their heads, Alex in his blue camo underwear, dancing to old-school Michael Jackson. Yup, we're raising them up right!

Oh, what a nap can do!

Samantha just woke up from a nap.....FINALLY!! She hasn't napped for about a week and a half and it's amazing how one nap can lift the spirits.....of ME that is! Yes, yes, she is happy as well and the nap did her good, but let's focus on me for a second. The health and well-being and happiness of this family really does rest upon me and my mood. I remember it was the same with the home I grew up in and my mom. If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!! It's true! When Samantha doesn't nap she is difficult during the day and wakes up numerous times during the night. This directly affects my attitude in a MAJOR way. Which, in turn, affects Andy's attitude and the children's attitudes as well. It's a sad, sad truth. But just having Samantha nap today (Alex is still asleep...woo hoo!) makes me feel so much lighter and happier. I think I might be able to make it through the day now!

Oh, this video was taken a couple of weeks ago at 8:30 in the morning! Yes, they are still in their pajamas and yes, I did let them run through the sprinklers when it was only 60 degrees outside. And YES, they did have a great time!! Call me a bad parent if you must, I just call myself a genius for buying 30 minutes of happiness.

Tomatoes

I planted my tomatoes and herbs this morning. I love my garden. I got my green thumb from my mom. She got it from her mom. We all especially love to plant tomatoes. My aunt, my mom's oldest sister, passed away on Monday and we went to her funeral today. Almost all of her children commented on their mother's love of gardening and growing things and how she enjoyed watching birds feed at the many bird feeders around her house. All of my mom's sisters are like this and now I see myself and my sisters with houses full of plants and bird feeders and flowers. It makes me proud that I am like my mom and my aunts and my grandma in this way. I like the fact that we can all sit around and talk about gardening and the little birdies that visit our feeders. I remember watching out my grandma's window at the birds and her telling me which birds were mean and which were funny and which ate the most. My aunts all do the same. I see my mom pointing out the birdies to my kids when we visit her house, and it makes me happy.
I think this summer as my tomatoes grow (hopefully 7 feet tall like last year) I will think of my aunt Kay.

Update

In case you're wondering, we finally settled on watching Enchanted.......AGAIN! It has a princess in it and Alex thinks it's silly (thilly in his words), so it works all around. Not to mention I find it mildly entertaining as well!

Conversation that JUST took place.

Samantha: I want to watch a Princess.

Alex: I want to watch Monsters.

Me: We need to find a show that we can both agree on or I will pick the show.

Samantha: Well, I said a Princess, so that's what we're going to watch.

Yes, we are SO screwed with this little girl. She's not yet 4 and is already acting 13. I am amazed everyday at how much easier boys are than girls. Alex has his rough times (he is 2 after all) but usually he shrugs things off 100 times easier than Samantha. Which makes my life so much more pleasant. My sister Kami wants a little girl so badly with her next baby but I hope she knows if she gets her wish, she's in for a rude awakening!!

What is strategy?

So I'm reading this article titled "What is strategy?" for my, you guessed it, Competing through Strategy class. Let me share a choice morsel of wisdom with you.

"The most viable positions are those whose activity systems are incompatible because of tradeoffs. Strategic positioning sets the trade-off rules that define how individual activities will be configured and integrated. Seeing strategy in terms of activity systems only makes it clearer why organizational structure, systems, and processes need to be strategy-specific. Tailoring organization to strategy, in turn, makes complementarities more achievable and contributes to sustainability."

The guy that wrote this teaches at Harvard. I can't express to you how glad I am that I don't go to Harvard right now. I swear, if the guy had used the word "synergy" even once in that paragraph, I would have dropped out.

Why we have the perfect family.....

Because Andy has one lap. I have one lap. Samantha fits perfectly on Andy's lap. Alex fits perfectly on my lap. And we can fit perfectly on one couch and watch Lambert the Sheepish Lion together before bedtime.

I miss Bob Barker

You know those people who sit on their couch and watch The Price is Right and scream the answers at the TV? Yeah, that's me.

Schmoopy!

I woke up this morning suddenly hit with the memory of a poem Andy wrote me when we had been dating only a month. I'm not sure what prompted this memory but I dug through my drawers until I found the print out of the email containing the poem. I think it may be the only copy I have of the poem so I am always so careful with it and someday I'll figure out a better way to preserve it. Andy wrote the poem while he was on his way to San Francisco for Thanksgiving in 2001. I won't share the poem here because I think that would embarrass Andy terribly. Which, oddly enough, was also my same reasoning for sharing the poem! But don't worry Andy, I won't do it. Let's just say it's the most wonderful poem I've ever read! It's so elegant and beautiful and the fact that it was written about me makes it even better! After all of these years together I still get butterflies when I read it. I guess I just wanted to say what a great husband Andy is and how much I appreciate him. Hence the title of this blog.......schmoopy!! I love you Andy!

I never even made it through the book!

Take the Quiz here!

You are Elizabeth Bennet of Pride & Prejudice! You are intelligent, witty, and tremendously attractive. You have a good head on your shoulders, and oftentimes find yourself the lone beacon of reason in a sea of ridiculousness. You take great pleasure in many things. You are proficient in nearly all of them, though you will never own it. Lest you seem too perfect, you have a tendency toward prejudgement that serves you very ill indeed.

I tried so hard to make it through Pride and Prejudice, but never could. The description sounds pretty fair though. Except the tremendously attractive part. I'm just plain ol' HOT!!!!

Things Andy loves

So we've got our computer hooked up to our TV. This is cool because Vista has a built in Media Center, which essentially means that we've got a Super Tivo. Lest you think that this is a total nerd-fest, Kristi actually asked me to do this because a couple of the guys at work have them, and they convinced her that putting all of the kids' DVDs onto a hard drive is a much better way to go instead of fumbling with the disks. That's right, we go into a folder called Disney, and pull up Cinderella, or Monsters, Inc., or Enchanted in about 5 seconds. No fumbling with discs, or cases, or anything. It's awesome.
So the reason I'm showing Microsoft all of this love, is because having our TV hooked up to the internet means I can watch things like this from the couch. Let's see who remembers this one.....



Bump, Bump

That's one of my all-time favorites. I plan to wander through YouTube one of these nights that I'm putting off homework and gather all of the old classics. So far I've gotten Lambert the Sheepish Lion and Paul Bunyan, a couple of my favorites from the old Sunday night Disney stuff they used to have on TV. Have to make sure the kids keep up on the classics. And just to make sure that they don't disappear off of YouTube, I go to www.vixy.net, and that site will download and convert the files into something I can watch in my Media Center. So we'll have a big folder full of the classics for me, er the kids, to watch. If I find some really good ones, I'll post those on here from time to time.

Waaaay too much time on their hands

Kickin' it old school Nintendo style.

krandy.etsy.com

Well, I FINALLY got my first duvet cover listed on www.etsy.com for purchase. I now have a link on my blog here below my pictures that you can click on and jump right to my shop. Kind of fun! We'll see if it sells, but at least it's keeping me busy while Andy does homework! I have started on a second one and have a third one in mind but I think I might see what the response is like for this one before I go too crazy and spend a ton of money on fabric. My sister Kami is also setting up shop on etsy under the name VersaJewel. She has some great jewelry on there so I highly recommend taking a look at her shop as well. But look at mine first! ;-)