2 Years

Monday is the 2 year anniversary of Jesse's open heart surgery to repair his tricuspid valve.

This evening we had a lovely BBQ with family, did some laundry, gave the boys hair cuts, did the dishes, played cards, watched reruns of a favorite sitcom, and will soon curl up and fall asleep with the knowledge that tomorrow morning we will wake up, go to work, play with our kids, Jesse will go to rehearsal, the boys have a baseball game...a normal, average, what some might consider boring day and life.

And we could not possibly ask for anything more.

Life is good.

Love to all.

PS In this photo Anna is 9 weeks old and Jesse is a few days out of surgery.

Whee!

Jesse has finally received his long awaited Wii. I refused to buy one of the over priced bundles that force you to purchase games you might not really want, so I have been holding out to purchase the basic package without a huge mark up. With a little help from Mary in TN, Jesse is now the proud owner of a Nintendo Wii. It really is fun, and I am not usually much for video games. As you can see from the pictures, the kids LOVE it. Even Anna begs to play.

I hope all the father's out there had a great father's day!

An Isaac funny: During his baseball game on Saturday he discovered that his beloved cap had gone missing while they queued up at bat. Outraged, he marched out of the lineup, located Jesse and I and stated with utter disdain (when you read this, add the most outraged tone you possibly can), "That's a bit odd! My hat is gone!"

Mary: At precisely 9:45 pm Sunday evening, as I was rocking Anna to sleep, she popped her eyes open, looked directly at me and stated firmly, "Sammy make noise! He go home now!" FYI: There was no noise being made in our house...what was Sammy doing at 9:45 pm?

Love to all!

Happy Father's Day!

There is no possible way I could ever express or explain what kind of a father Jesse is nor how much he means to this family, so I am not even going to try. Truly, there are times when attempting to apply words to thoughts or emotion serves only to inflict artificial limits on how we really feel. So this time I am keeping it simple.

We love you honey!

Happy Father's Day!

PS If you are planning to attend Jesse's gig on the 24th MAKE A RESERVATION. It is going to be PACKED. Make sure you are there by 7 pm or they will give your table away.

A Day

Really, it has not been all that bad of a day. I am just at the tail end of a wicked, rear kicking, virus and am still feeling rather weak, sleepy and pathetic.

But today I determined that I would, nay MUST, rally myself to the tasks of laundry, carpet cleaning, etc. I despise the feeling that a herd of antelope reside in my home as opposed to a family of somewhat civilized humans.

I was doing an EXCELLENT job of reclaiming my tidy abode when lunch time rolled around. I expertly prepared the kids a lovely lunch of ravioli and raspberries (no really, they LOVE it) when Nathan requested chocolate soy milk. And how he knew it was soy milk I have NO idea. We never told them we were making the switch, we just did it.

Feeling satisfied with my domestic accomplishments of the day thus far and secure in my ability to complete a task as simple as serving milk to my offspring, I secured the chocolate soy milk and gave it a vigorous shaking to ensure the proper mixture for my children's' waiting palates.

It was about 3 seconds later, whilst standing in a sticky brown puddle, dripping wet and watching sticky brown ooze dribble down my walls, drip from my ceiling and otherwise completely cover my recently cleaned kitchen that I discovered a new life lesson.

And since I love you all SO very much, I have decided that it is only right that I share this particular lesson with you.

Little Life Lessons from the S House: Before shaking a carton of chocolate soy milk, make sure to double check that there is actually a cap ON the chocolate soy milk and thus you will avoid great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I have revised my list of goals for the day and now believe that a nap is very much in order. After all, I AM recovering from an illness.

Love to all!

S Brothers on Theology and Meteorology

It has been a while since our last observation of the S brothers thoughts on theology. The discussion below touches on a little meteorology as well; My boys certainly have a well rounded liberal arts education in the works.

Isaac: NOTHING can ever kill God Nathan.

Nathan: There is one thing that can kill God Isaac. A TORNADO can kill God.

Isaac (exasperated): Nathan, God MAKES tornadoes and nothing He makes is going to kill Him.

Nathan (more insistently): TORNADOES CAN kill God Isaac!

Isaac: God only got killed once but he rolled that big rock out of the way and was alive anyway. Mr. Bill told you about it, remember?

(Mr. Bill is Nathan's Sunday School teacher.)

Nathan: Oh yeah! And then he threw the rock and it got stuck in the tornado!

I am not entirely sure where Nathan's obsession with tornadoes has come from. True there have been tornadoes aplenty around the country and even more true, his room looks as if it has been ravaged by one, but even so he seems unusually interested in them lately.

Love to all!

Nothing...

After arriving home from work and hopping directly into another car in order to travel to the boys' Little League game, Jesse asked me what I did today.

"Nothing." I replied.

Puzzled, he tilted his head to the side and said, "Nothing?"

"Well, I did make breakfast, did 2 loads of dishes, washed, dried and put away no fewer than 4 loads of laundry, took all three kids to the post office and waited in a 20 minute line, took them out to lunch, to the fountain, home again for a story and rest time, watered all of my plants in the back yard, straightened up the kitchen, disposed of two nasty spiders, packed the car for the t-ball game, arranged for our nanny to watch 2 additional kids on Wed in order to help out a friend, broke and cleaned up a large Pyrex pie plate, swept all of the hard wood in the house, cleaned up numerous toy messes, assembled various snacks, refereed numerous disagreements, delivered several articulate speeches on manners, empathy and personal responsibility, cleaned the pomegranate colored popsicle that melted all over Anna off Anna, soaked the now pomegranate stained clothing in stain remover, cleaned the pomegranate stains out of the carpet on each stair leading to our second floor because Nathan felt it necessary to march the pomegranate popsicle stained Anna up the stairs in order to demonstrate what a mess she had made despite the strict "popsicles and popsicle related messes are to remain outside" house rule and made three beds. I guess when I said nothing I meant that I didn't do any actual income related work. So you know, nothing."

There you have my typical daily nothing. What's yours?

Opening Day

I must ask your forgiveness before you read a single word of this post. We have enrolled our boys in Little League and while I positively refuse to go down the typical stage parent path, I have been rendered a gushing, teary eyed, slobbering, could not possibly be any more proud mom of two utterly darling pint size ball players.

Seriously, do they not look absolutely ADORABLE in their uniforms?

We are VERY proud of the way our boys have taken to team sports. They are working hard, have GREAT attitudes and are having TONS of fun.

15 games plus practices throughout the summer plus their swimming lessons....

I have the eerie feeling this is the start of a new phase in my life and I am having odd dreams about taxis.

Hmmmmmm.......

Anyhoo, pics below. Nathan is suited up as catcher in the first pic. It's tough to get good shots when they are constantly in motion but I will keep trying. Isaac is number 13 and Nathan is number 5.

Love to all!

Happy Weekend!

This weekend, the very first work free weekend we have had in MONTHS, the S Family has decided to go a bit underground and play tourist in our own state.

It might sound lame, but we are having a blast. Our area has TONS of fun, kid oriented attractions that we don't often take advantage of.

Today we toured a cave and had a wonderful time, despite my claustrophobia and the boys' disappointment over the fact that there were no bats residing in this particular cave. Little boys love caves, it's just one of those simple facts of life.

We also visited a local dinosaur research institute. Little boys also love dinosaurs, another irrefutable fact of life. From the boys' perspective today was without question the most perfect day in history. Isaac has announced that his future career plans have changed from simply being a race car driver to being a race car driver AND a paleontologist. He thought all that digging in the dirt for old bones looked like LOADS of fun.

At this point, Anna loves pretty much anything her big brothers love so her day was perfect to.

We finished up with a swim in our subdivisions recently opened pool.

Mini vacation day 1: SUCCESS!!! No injuries, no ER visits, no illness, no accidents...AMAZING!

Coming soon: Vacation Day 2: Prince Caspian and an evening BBQ with our good friends.

Love to all! We hope your weekend is as pleasant and relaxing as ours!

PS I have recently been terribly saddened by the loss of the FABULOUS video camera Jesse gave me for Christmas. Hence the lack of video on the blog. Our adventures this weekend and an upcoming deadline requiring the use of a digital video camera motivated me to launch a hard target search of every diaper bag, purse, jacket or coat pocket, junk drawer and typical electronic device location in a 500 foot radius around our house. To my great disappointment, the search yielded nary a digital video camera. Discouraged, I resigned myself to the loss, got in the waiting car, opened my camera bag in order to check the battery supply for my digital camera and discovered the video camera, right where anyone else but me would assume they should find a video camera. I wonder how often I loose things by storing them where they actually should be kept?

Summer Fun

Technically we are a month away from the official start of summer, but when the temps soar to 75 or 80 degrees by 11 am it is summer in our book!

Dear God, Can we talk?

Dear God,

I love being a mom, I truly do. I love every single detail about the children that you have sent me, including Isaac's super sensitivity, Nathan's dare devil tendencies and Anna's utterly rebellious 2 year old phase.

However, is it REALLY necessary to keep dropping infant animals in my lap RIGHT in front of the super sensitive little boy that you have blessed me with?

Really, it is not so much that I minded climbing a ladder and wandering around on a neighbor's roof bare foot while wearing a skirt to try and locate the nest of the baby bird the neighbor I was chatting with discovered in the pile of clothing she was selling at her garage sale.

I did not even mind when I finally DID locate the nest in a next to impossible location and was forced to attempt to maneuver the tiny, fragile creature between the jagged hole in the screen in order to get it back into the nest.

I was ok after all that effort when the baby bird fell right back out of the hole that it must have originally come from and I was still ok when I repeated the effort of maneuvering it through the jagged whole in the screen in a second attempt to get it back in its nest, after plugging up the whole from which it has fallen.

Honestly, it is not so much that I mind these activities. I would very willingly mother the entire world if it would let me, but I do have to wonder at Your reasoning, considering that
You have also given me a super sensitive little boy who suffers far more than I think these little creatures do, every time we cannot save one.

I mean, the baby mouse DID die, but at least it died warm and safe and well fed. Isaac, on the other hand, grieves hopelessly each time one of these little critters does not make it. Thus far I have been asked at least 234 times if the baby bird will be ok after I put it back in its nest. I don't really think so and I hate to lie to my 6 year old, but the truth will break his heart again all over.

So I have to ask You, did I miss my calling? Is this an indication that I should pursue a career change? Or is this an effort on Your part to teach Isaac about the circle of life and should I, in that case, just follow suit?

I could use a sign before I contract some awful parasite from one of these creatures.

Oh yes, and for future reference, I draw the line at roaches. I don't care how little or helpless, I will NOT make any effort to save the life of one of those vile things.

Another First

Before




















After

Happy Mother's Day!

My more than fabulous and a sucker for any chance to spoil me husband has treated me to an absolutely lovely day.

Honestly, Mother's Day is one of those days when I am reminded of what an honor it is to have such a title associated with ME. I love being a mom. Even when Jesse suggested, in front of my super sensitive little Isaac, that the baby mouse I caught and was on the way to a field to release would surely die if I did so and why didn't we just keep him as a pet? after which point the mom in me KNEW the only way to spare my 6 year old a week of agony was to agree to keeping said baby mouse as a pet...I still love being a mom. And oh my goodness I cannot tell you how many hugs and sincere thank yous I have received because I let him keep that darn mouse.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms and moms to be out there! May you all know the joy, the humility and the honor of being a mom.

Monster Socks

Aunt Mary was recently in town for a visit and she came with gifts.

Owie

This past Saturday we attended a birthday party at a friend's house. This friend lives in the mountains, quite a drive from us, and we don't visit all that often. Anna was very excited to run, play and check everything out. Unfortunately, they have a wood burning stove in the center of their family room and before I had any idea what she was about to do, Anna unknowingly placed her hand on the stove. sigh

Poor baby. She screamed for the solid hour it took us to drive home. I don't know the words to describe the state of my nerves by the time we arrived home.

She has a well baby appointment on Tuesday anyway and I am fairly certain that these are nothing worse than 1st degree burns so we will have her hand checked at that time. The burns are across her palm and on the tip of each of her little fingers. OW! It still hurts her a bit on and off, but not nearly as much as it did on Sat. She is a little trooper!

The parenting gig....some days....

We hope you are all well! Nathan had a super fun birthday and is now sound asleep. I will share pics later this week.

Love to all!

Happy Birthday Nathan!

April is a big month for birthdays in the S house. Today my sweet little Nathan turns 5. I get all choked up just thinking about it. Our Nathan started life as a premature, very sick little guy. He spent a few weeks on a ventilator in the NICU before coming home.

When I look at him now, it is tough to connect the memories of that fragile little baby with the live on the edge, no fear, if it can be climbed it will nay MUST be climbed little boy he has grown into.

Nathan is our joy. He is our carefree, athletic, easy going, light up the world with his sunshine smile spirit.

Happy birthday sweet boy! I promise I will try to remember that you don't want to be called baby, but I hope it's ok if I still think of you that way.

I can't believe you are five years old.

Birthday Girl Pictures

Anna had a lovely birthday and we have the pictures to prove it! We met daddy for a very late breakfast, went to the zoo, took a nap and then went out to dinner with extended family. What could be better? I have assembled a few pictures for your viewing pleasure. Anna is wearing another creation from Nana's Boutique. Mom, I have to tell you, this is BY FAR my absolute favorite dress you have ever made. I love, love, LOVE it! Anna loves it too. The twirl factor is through the roof!

The dress was washed and dried during nap time so that she could wear it do dinner even after her birthday trip to the zoo birthday ice cream.

Note the birthday giraffe, also acquired during the birthday trip to the zoo.

The boys used their Easy Bake Oven to make her the DARLING Scooby Doo cake you see in one of the pictures.

We took her to the grocery store to pick out a little cake for her dinner party tonight. Thinking we know our little princess well, we directed her to cakes decorated with lacy patterns, pink frosting etc. Our little princess dismissed all of these options in favor of, "Da monter tate!" Translation: The monster cake! I did not get a very good picture of it, but you get the idea. That's our princess!

Apologies for the stream of pictures without captions.

Love to all!

Happy Birthday Anna!

Our littlest deduction turns 2 on April 15th. I'll let you use your imagination as to how she earned that nick name.

TWO YEARS OLD!

Where does the time go?

I have assembled some of my favorite, recent Anna pictures into a slide show for your viewing pleasure.

Happy birthday baby girl! Your sunny smile and shouts of "Lo!(Hello)" and "Yook! (Look)" light up the lives of everyone you meet. We love you to pieces and wish you many, many more happy bithdays, even if it does mean you are growing up.

Great Grandma Eva

It has been a difficult week. We lost Jesse's grandmother a week ago last Tuesday. She was a dear, sweet, wonderful woman; the quintessential grandmother. She will be greatly missed.

I have been searching frantically for the pictures I took of Isaac, Nathan and Anna with grandma Eva this past Christmas and have found, to my complete dismay, that they appear to have been eaten by my rotten computer. I so wish I could post a picture with this post.

Isaac and Nathan are very sad and tell us often how much they will miss her. We are trying to gentle them through this and help them understand that death is real and permanent while balancing the fear and sadness by explaining that grandma Eva is now with Jesus and she is very happy.

This is one of those parenting moments that I just did not sign up for. I hope we do a good job.

Anna asked me today while I was rocking her down for her nap if she could see grandma Eva later in the evening.

In truth, I have almost as limited experience with loosing a loved one to death as my children do. This has been a learning experience for everyone in the S house.

We said goodbye today and will now attempt to move on. We are a little bit sadder, a little bit wiser and a lot more appreciative for each moment we have with those we love.

Love to you all.

For now...

Back to work.

Lots of work.

Lots and LOTS of work.

Which inevitably means a lack of posts. And I have so many fun pics from vacation to share!

For now, here is a pic of the kids on Easter. Anna's darling dress was, of course, lovingly made by Nana.

Honestly, I did NOT pose this pic. I told the boys to stand next to Anna. And this is what they did all on their own. Little charmers. I am in SO much trouble.

Love to all!

PS Anna used the potty today! I am not holding my breath nor getting my hopes up for potty training anytime soon BUT, she was quite pleased with herself and anxious to go again later in the day. YES!

Gruesome, but could be worse.