holidays & occassions

Mother’s Day was sure one for the memory books.

It all started on Saturday evening when I prepared Ken one of the “best meals I’ve made in a long time!” He said it was a keeper and he wanted me to make both things again. I made Pigs in the Blanket (stuffed cabbage rolls) and I tried out a copycat recipe for PF Changs Lettuce Wraps. (recipes will come in separate post)

I was busy cleaning up from dinner and as always I started stuffing the uneaten food down the garbage disposal. As soon as I stuffed the rice noodles down the drain… the chaos started.

We spent the next 24 hours snaking pipes, draining, pipes, cleaning disgusting goop out of pipes and the only thing we managed to do was make a complete mess and stink up our house. My Mother’s Day was spent dealing with pipes and stressing out over how we were going to be able to fix this mess and get our house back to normal. So much yuck was being flung around I had to wear safety glasses. No matter what we did we could not get the kitchen sink to properly drain. Finally after so many hours of attempting to fix the pipes ourselves we wiped our hands clean of the mess (literally) and called a plumber Monday morning.

Sure enough the plumber came out and with his super powered electric snake that is 3 times as thick as the one we were using and he got the blockage out within 20 minutes and 89 dollars later. Somehow we were just pushing our small snake through the blockage and not loosening it up enough. OMG. If I would have know that is all it would have taken I wouldn’t have wasted my time trying to fix it ourselves. Lesson learned. Also, I will no longer be putting as much food down my drain. Most importantly: No rice noodles and no eggs shells. The amount of egg shells we found in the pipes was insane.

I had so many towels to wash and I washed them several times because just the thought of that goop from inside the pipes being on them just grosses me out. After I took them out of the dryer I heard Blake yell, “There is a frog in the dryer!” That darn thing must have buried himself in the pile of towels that I had set outside before I washed them. He got a nice bath and blowout, but didn’t live to tell about it.

With all the chaos, I ended up not getting any photos on Mother’s Day, except for this pic of Andrew driving us home from a cookout at my brother in laws house. It was the first time he has driven with the kids in the car and they were all acting dramatic…saying “We’re gonna die!!” He drives pretty well, but I have to pretend I am not nervous, which is not easy.

The kids got me a charm for my Pandora bracelet. It has pink stones set in gold and the rest of the charm is sterling silver and spells out M-O-M. I love it!

The Easter Bunny hid the baskets extra hard this year because we are really running out of spots to hide them…so he had to get creative! Like literally burying them under a basket of hats and gloves and such. It’s tradition in our house for the Easter Bunny to leave candy along with at least one other gift/toy depending on the cost.

Chase found his right away however…his was the easiest. He got a Pokemon game for his DS…that Andrew has spent several hours playing already today. Hmmm…maybe we should have bought Andrew one!

Andrew found Karli’s…but kept quiet and she eventually found it. She wanted a Lalaloopsy doll for Christmas and didn’t get one so the Easter bunny came through for her. She also got some bracelets and rings.

Blake found his last and it wasn’t even hidden that hard…it was in the bathroom vanity way in the back! He got a basketball PS3 game that Mrs. Easter Bunny said should have been the Lego Stars Wars 3 game, but Mr Easter Bunny said no…get the basketball one- sports are better! Sure enough Blake hasn’t stopped asking to take his money to go buy the Lego Star Wars game.

Andrew’s basket was buried in a small basket of swimsuits that is in our laundry room and it took him awhile to find it. The week before Easter he had asked for a cross necklace. Not sure why he thinks I communicate with the Easter bunny but okay… LOL! The Easter bunny did splurge quite a bit on Andrew’s gift, but hopefully it will be something he will have for many many years and it will have a lot of meaning to him. After all we are about to trust him with a car, I would hope he can be responsible enough about a necklace.

We had a super fun day…went to church, then out to lunch afterward. When we came home my Aunt & Uncle were here to pick up their Yorkie that I had watched for them since Tuesday. Our doggies sure won’t miss her! Shaggy constantly growled at her when she walked near him and Tori was just real sad the whole time. Their dog did bond with me pretty well, much to Tori’s dismay. This week the house is back to normal and the kids are on Spring Break! Unfortunately we aren’t going anywhere because Andrew has baseball games this week. The weather isn’t going to be that great either…bummer. Only 6 and half more weeks of school until summer vacation!! WOW!

A couple of weekends ago we celebrated my niece Emma’s 7th Birthday. Isn’t she gorgeous?! There are a few more pictures here as well.

Better late than never right!! I haven’t been spending that much time on my computer other than when I am working. Which ironically I am supposed to be working right now. I figured I better get our Christmas photos posted before the month of January is here and gone.

You can look through our Christmas photo album here at Flickr.

Let’s see what I can remember from our Christmas festivities… This year Andrew was with us on Christmas Eve so Santa came to visit our house a night early. Isn’t it amazing how Santa knows to come early every other year? This was the very first year the kids had actually questioned Santa’s ability to know that he needs to drop off their presents a day early. Chase was very concerned that Santa might not realize he needs to drop off ALL their presents a day early, not just Andrew’s. (Andrew spends every other Xmas day with his dad.) Christmas Eve morning Ken and I woke up at 8:30 and we had to wake the kids up! Lazy kids! This year the kids didn’t have too much on their Christmas lists. Andrew wanted the Dr. Dre Beatbox which sounds amazing by the way. Blake isn’t into a whole lot right now so we got him the Playstation Move with some games and a bunch of other stuff he probably didn’t want. Chase is big into Pokemon cards and Beyblades right now so he was easy to shop for. They both got remote control cars from Santa to take down to the park where they have a pretty neat track set up. Karli is the easiest to buy for…I could spend so much on her, but Ken keeps me under control. She got a guitar from Santa, the Calico Critters house with a bunch of accessories, Squinkies, Zoobles, Furry Frenzies.

At our house we always have one big present from Santa and then everything else is from Ken and I. How do you do it at your house? I hear a lot of people have pretty much everything is from Santa and then just things like clothes, socks, etc…from Mom and Dad. Heck, all the work involved…I want more credit than that!

Once again we DIDN’T get to take a vacation when I wanted to. We had several discussions with the kids about taking a vacation the day after Christmas through New Years. We talked about Cancun again, but the kids kept complaining that they would be bored just hanging out at a hotel all day. I would get online and show them all the different hotels with activities for kids, snorkeling, water slides, etc… and they would just roll their eyes. Ken and I kept thinking, why spend the money if they really don’t want to go?? Finally we decided to give the kids one last chance to take a vacation by offering them the option of going somewhere tropical or getting a hot tub for our backyard. Without hesitation they all voted for a hot tub. So the day after Thanksgiving we had our hot tub delivered. You didn’t have to tell Ken and I twice that they wanted the hot tub instead. It’s crazy, but when we had the patio concrete poured back in 2001, we had a thicker slab poured in one spot for the intentions of getting a hot tub someday. Here we are almost a decade later, we finally got it! We use it all the time and it has been the best decision we’ve made. We trek right through the snow to get to the hot tub if we have to. My favorite time to go in is at night. I’ll put my iPad in a Ziploc bag just so I can read while relaxing!

Guess what? I FINALLY have pictures of my kitchen to share. Can you believe it’s been a year since we started this project? I wanted to wait until we had every last detail complete before sharing the pictures. We finally ordered our blinds, which was the last and final touch. I’ll get those posted next!