The Places I Can Go

Trevor was on a roll this morning. Every time I turned around he was some place else so I decided to start taking pictures of everywhere he went. You'll notice that most of the places are areas where he probably should not have been. Go figure. But he was content rummaging around the house and for that I was thankful!

The boys are amazed with the new play place in the house -- Kelty's kennel. It's been in our kitchen area since the "events" of my last post. It's time to take it down, but they are having so much fun with it that I figured I'd leave it up a bit longer.

Enjoy the tour of "Where I Can Go..." by Trevor Heck

The Garbage (our new found thing...) The Pantry (we know the snacks are in there...) Kelty's kennel (it's all in fun... no punishment going on) The cupboard (with Tupperware bowls and pitchers...emptied at least 5x/day) Table Obstacle Course (made complete with the kicking feet of big brother)

Alfalfa and a Dog’s Digestive System

…. DON’T mix. Sorry about the topic and pictures of this post, but I just had to share what my day started out like. This morning, around 8am, I was thinking of what I need to get done for today and what type of fun activities the boys and I were going to do. Those thoughts included NOTHING about cleaning up dog puke and yelling at my kids to stay out of the living room while I tried to get the dog outside and the chunky stuff picked up. UGH!! (and of course, I had to stop and take pictures to share with you all.)

As I was wondering what made Kelty so sick I remembered that she got into the bag of alfalfa from the neighbor’s bunny yesterday. She didn’t get a lot of it, but obviously it was enough to make her system flip out and then flop onto my living room carpet in two HUGE spots! Then I put her outside and she proceeded to plop from the other end.... Thank God she was outside for that! The thought of that almost makes me want to toss my cookies as I’m sitting here writing about it.

So, what do I do?? Rick is at work, the dog is sick from both ends and wants to come in the house. I put her outside immediately and after 5 minutes she is barking to come in, but I’m not letting her since I don’t have a safe place to put her at the moment. The neighbors are probably loving that – 8:30am and the dog is barking every ten seconds at the back door. Sorry Neighbors! On top of that, the kids are wanting Mom and Trevor is crying. I think I upset them with my “yelling” to stay away from me while I was trying to clean up. Oops.

First things first, I can contain one of them, if I can find where Rick put the dog kennel. I call Rick at work – no answer. I email him, “Call me ASAP” – no answer. So I become the pesty wife and call him AGAIN. Thank goodness he answered. We found the kennel and Kelty is now contained. Second, let’s get more of the stain out of the carpet. Tried the “solutions” I had here, but they didn’t work completely. So, I got onto the handy Internet and looked up how to remove pet vomit stains. SALT! Pour salt over it, let it sit for a couple hours and whaa-laaa it should vacuum right up. (And my sister says it works wonders for wine stains, too). To pass some time without having to constantly say, "Ethan/Trevor stay away from that!" and "Don't Touch!", I went to the swimming pool with Ethan and Trevor - passing the time while the salt supposedly soaked up the stain. Got back home and.... nope - that didn't work.

Next try - baking soda. Currently (2pm) that's soaking in and hopefully it'll work. If not, you'll hear more about my troubled living room carpet shortly.

Family Fun

As mentioned in the previous post, we were going to Lagoon Amusement Park over the weekend. We did -- and we had a lot of fun!!

This is going to be the drive through version since both boys are "bugging" each other while I'm trying to write this....

We left the house after an early lunch so that Mom's master plan would take effect. We eat lunch, it's almost nap time so the kids will fall asleep on the way to get a partial nap in, then they'll be good for the rest of the day. It worked - but not quite as well as I'd hoped. Trevor fell asleep soon after leaving; however, Ethan only got about a 20 minute nap in. But it worked out ok - he was a tooper all day and had a blast going on the rides.

We got there about 12:30pm and the Schreiber lunch started at 2:30pm so we had some time to go on rides and see the park before lunch...GREAT! Ethan was a bit scared to go on the first couple rides and would get up to the front but then quickly turn around to avoid going on. Oh great, isn't this going to be a fun day was our first thought. Ethan WON'T go on the rides, Trevor's TOO LITTLE to go on the rides, and Rick and I CAN'T go on the rides because we have the kids along. But we kept our patience and finally Ethan saw a ride that drew him in enough that we went on it... AIRPLANES!! After that he was set and wanted to go on almost everything. He even wanted to go on the kiddie rollercoaster with Dad. They were both all smiles on it, but on the last time around, Ethan's look was a bit more scared than happy. We went on a few more rides and then ventured to lunch. After lunch we were going to hit the waterpark. YEAH.

Lunch was nice... the kids ate well and we were ready to go when all the lights in the pavillion went out. UGH. As we started walking around we noticed that EVERYTHING was out...rides, waterpark, everything! So, we decided to do what A LOT of other folks were doing - go play mini-golf. It was busy, but Ethan still absolutely loved playing it and did amazingly well waiting for his turn. Trevor and I walked along, but Trevor tried to get in on the action every now and then.

The power eventually came back on, but by then it was just too late to get all dressed for the water park. We decided to get a snack, let Ethan and Trevor go on some more rides and then head for home. It was a wonderful day and the boys had a blast. Everyone was pooped at the end of the day and the last couple pictures on the slideshow are proof that a "Mom never rests"... it's always the boys that get to sleep on the way home!

Can We Go Swimming?

This weekend we are heading to Lagoon, an amusement/water park near Salt Lake City, for Schreiber's summer company party. Due to the weather FINALLY being nice, I needed to find Ethan and Trevor some "swim shirts" so that they don't have to walk around in wet cotton shirts all day long. Since I had Trevor with me when shopping I knew that his shirt fit; however, I needed to make sure Ethan's stuff fit before Saturday. Yesterday it was cold here... a good day to try stuff on since there was no way Ethan could wear it outside. Or so I thought! He put the new outfit on and wanted to wear it all day! He was so excited about his new swim shorts and shirt. He told me that his shirt felt nice.

I explained to Ethan that we would be going to the water park on Saturday and showed him on the calendar how many days until then. He was OK with that -- for a whole 5 minutes. He has been asking nonstop if we are going to the water park. Are we going when I wake up? Are we going if I eat a good dinner? Are we going when it's sunny out? Just a couple more days and we'll go...hopefully I can last that long with his continual asking.

I LOVE WAFFLES (and syrup)

It was such a good morning. Mom made me a waffle for breakfast and I ate it all up! Then we had to take Efan (that's how I say Ethan) to school and then it was just Mom and me driving around town. She took me to some carpet place for like the 60th time, but she always leaves without doing anything (she said that the person she needed to talk to wasn't there AGAIN). We got to go to Daddy's work to buy some tickets for the water park next week and then it was off to the grocery store!

Usually it's just groceries, but today she let me play with a cool toy that she said wasn't for me! What's up with that... how can you put a toy in my cart and tell me that it's not for me? Who else is deserving of such cool toys?? She took a long time shopping today, but at the end she bought some MORE waffles and that made me hungry. I asked for one from the moment she put it in the cart until we got home and finally, while she was unloading all the bags from the van she gave me another waffle... 2 in one day! Between you and me, I think she just wanted me to stay in one place and not ask to be picked up so she decided to give me what I wanted. I sat at the table nice and quiet as I ate my waffle (and I even gave Kelty a couple pieces, but shhhh... Mama doesn't know that!) My waffle was gone and she was still busy so I decided to play peek-a-boo with the birdies outside on the deck by using my paper plate. The waffles were all gone and the stuff that was on it didn't fall off when I tipped the plate. It was amazing to see... I tipped it and it didn't come off. I tipped it again, and it moved a little, but it didn't fall off! How cool! So, my peek-a-boo game could continue...

Mama wasn't so happy when she came to get me out of my chair. She wiped off my hands like normal, but then said "Oh, Trevor! What did you do??" She noticed that the stuff that used to be on my plate was all over my face and hair from when I was playing peek-a-boo. She wasn't as excited about it as I was. She told me... "It's bath time for you, Little Man!" Yeah-hoo... a bath in the middle of the day! How much better can this day get... 2 waffles AND a bath!

(You see me in the bathtub in this pictures - but my hair wasn't even wet yet... that's the "neat stuff" that didn't fall off my plate when I tipped it!!)

Grumpy Dwarf versus Happy Dwarf

There are days when our boys are so much alike and other days when they couldn't be any more different. In regards to taking pictures, today was one of those couldn't be more different days. Rick and I had to take the plunge and buy a new camera this week since our was slowly loosing any life that it might still have. It started acting goofy over a year ago - the screen would sometimes look like a TV channel that was having technical difficulties; however, all we had to do was give it a little "love tap" on the bottom and it would work itself out. As the months passed, that love tap has become a doosy of a wallop (I'm not even sure that is a word, but hopefully you get what I'm talking about -- we really had to smack the camera, sometimes several times!) before it would go back to a normal, clear screen. People probably looked at us a bit weird if we were hitting our camera in public, but it still takes good pictures so we could deal with the occasional tap (even though it was a bit of a pain sometimes.)

But, you see, our little angel of a child (a bit of sarcasm included here), Trevor, decided that he likes cameras, too. Any time it was left on a surface that he could reach which is a lot more now that he is standing and walking EVERYWHERE, he would grab it and start playing with it. At first, it was just the buttons - no big deal since the camera was always turned off. Given a little time to explore this new found toy, he realized that the lens cover moved when he pushed it with his little fingers. NOT SO GOOD! This playing when Mom and Dad didn't catch him soon enough eventually led to half of the lens cover popping off when I went to turn the camera on one day. The spring popped off and fell somewhere, unknown to me, in the carpeting and if there are no parts to put together, there is no fixing the thing that is broken. Namely, our camera. It still took pictures, however, I was now reminded EVERY time I looked at it that it was time for a new one. Before, it was just every once in awhile when the screen when screwy, now it was pretty much EVERY DAY, several times a day that I could see it was not quite right.

So that brings us to today... Apologies for my sidetrack story, but I now get you back to the original one... I have been playing with the new camera the last couple of days and taking a ton more pictures just to get the feel for it and figure it all out. Today, the boys were playing and I decided to take pictures of them. As you can see, Ethan was not so thrilled about having his picture taken and decided to continually show me his GRUMPY face. Trevor, on the other hand, was all about the camera today and wanted to show me his HAPPY face by saying, "Cheese!" over and over and over! Hopefully the next picture day will be better for Ethan... he's not going to make very many friends if he shows this face all the time.