Pictures, Parties and Pits

More pictures of the kiddies. By the way - this is Rose, not baby William. Though she is wearing blue plastic pants and looks just like him, it is Rose in these pictures. I put her on the floor to eat sweet potatoes and she got a hold of the spoon and bowl, making a huge mess of herself and the floor. When I gave her a bath afterwords, the water turned orange.


William is my pro tricycle rider. Here he is in his p.j.s, waiting for the bus with Claire. He is wearing the shorts that his best friend Zach handed down to him, which William reminds me of every time he wears them. "MOM! Dees are Zach's pants. He give dem to me!"

I was not around when this happened. I think it must have been one of the rare evenings I was gone somewhere. Poor thing, it's amazing what babies can do when they're tired enough.

William assembled this little birthday party. I like the mixed company of My Little Ponies, a tiny stuffed dog and Lightning McQueen. Check out his party hat.

I went a friend's home for lunch yesterday and she is currently having a new septic system put in. Let me just say, her back yard looked like a giant muddy, destroyed, construction zone. That's what we're in for. I thought about that as I was mowing my swampy leach-field this morning. Eventually, that side of my yard will look like my friend's back yard. At least it will cut my mowing time by half! And isn't that a good thing?

I love you, but I loath you

Anyone have a love-hate relationship with various things in their life? For instance, I love getting a new magazine in the mail - particularly Better Homes and Gardens; the pictures are beautiful. But then sure enough, those same pictures taunt me with their perfectionism. The magazine should be called Better than Your Home and Garden. I know I've lost it when I start yelling at my magazine "For crying out loud - can they please feature a kitchen that doesn't look like all of the kitchens they feature every month! I mean come on! How many white cabinets, cup-pull handle hardware, island painted a different color with turn-table legs, massive hoods over a professional stove, subway tile back splash can they put in here? I swear it's the same kitchen every month from a different angle. " Yet I'm hooked.

Then there's the water filter. In my dream kitchen (that may or may not have a subway tile back splash) I will have a fridge with the water/ice dispenser in the door. Until then, we have a giant Brita tank in the fridge. We love it, but here's where the hate comes in: I HATE filling it back up once it's empty. The ultimate form of disrespect in our marriage is when the other person uses all of the delicious cold water and neglects to fill it back up for the next thirsty soul. Empty toilet roll; we can deal with that. Taking all of the hot water: workable. Leaving the water filter empty: heads will roll.

The last one I will mention here is our digital converter box. Thanks to it, we get more channels. But nothing can get us angrier than when we're in the middle of an important part of Masterpiece Theater and the signal gives out and starts breaking up into those cursed little boxes. Quoting Ryan "Why? WHY does it do that every time there's something important happening? How does it know?" My only consolation is "At least we're not paying fifty bucks for the signal, unlike when we had Charter cable and it did that". Now that was mostly a hate relationship with a tiny bit of love.

Mmm...sweet potatoes

Favorites

I have never been 'tagged', at least I don't think so. So, for journalistic purposes, I'm going to list some of my favorites here. So if you're not interested in learning about me, stop reading...NOW.

Susan's List of Favorites (not all inclusive).

• CD: Ablsolution by Muse
• Song: Blackout by Muse
• Food item: precooked bacon - that stuff rocks!
• Hobby: reading - I could read all day if some people let me...
• Name I would give myself because "Susan" just doesn't cut it for me (sorry Mom): Rosamund - I almost named Rose this, but chickened out
• Day of the week: Friday
  
• Date food: a good steak
• Movie: Pride & Prejudice (the A&E version, though I like the new one too)
• Author: Jane Austen
• Best invention ever: jeans
• Choice of Clothing: jeans and whatever shirt is clean
• Current favs: Curl Booster hair product, headbands, the internet, my iPod, Dr. Pepper, thrift stores, the AC in my car, Collette's spaghetti, Old Navy tank tops (they go under everything!), Twilight movie.

That's all I can think of right now. I have too many favorite books to list here. Sorry to those of you who this was a big disappointment. I never promised any greatness on here.

Battery Drain

OK. So I do have a good excuse for not posting anything lately. The batteries in our camera are dead. To buy new batteries would involve something like $10 for two AA and going to a store other than Shop N Save or ALDI. So until I have a reason to go to Target other than to buy two overly priced batteries, we are camera-less.

So until then, here are some pictures of William from our library.

William at age 2 1/2 months - I'm telling you, the kid was a beast.

At 6-months - Rose's age

And a little older

Random Halloween pictures of the kids - Violet and Jack-Jack

Riding the elevator in our apartment building downtown to do some Trick-or-Treating

There you go; total randomness. Maybe I'll make a trip to Target tomorrow...

Pics of Rosie

No. No pictures here; but if you want to see some amazing pictures of Rose taken by my good friend the oh-so-amazing Amy, click here.

Mother Dear

A highly-drugged new mom and baby Claire.
"What? Taking a picture? I'm smiling, right?"

Ah, Mother's Day. I had three requests this year: chocolate, a nap and no dishes. Ryan went above and beyond by making me breakfast (in bed, and though he had to wake me up for it, it was very nice of him), making lunch/dinner, and then making cookies for the kids.

During Sacrament meeting, the Primary sang a mother song for us. When it was time to go up, Ryan and Claire went up, but William was hesitant to leave me. So at the last minute, he ran up there with his blanket, but by that time, there was no room for him. So he stood behind the sacrament table, his little head poking up, sucking on his lip and scowling because he couldn't stand with the other kids. When he came back after the song, I told him he did a good job singing to which he replied in his typical loud William voice for everyone to hear, "No. I didn't sing!"

It was my best mother's day yet - the kids and Ryan were great. Too bad I forgot to do anything for my mom and mother-in-law. Sorry ladies, mommy-brain strikes again.

Rosie Videos

Now I know some of you aren't into my kids as much as I am, therefore I might be the only ones who finds these two videos of Rose entertaining. So these are mostly for those of you who are related to me and don't get to see my kids very often or who have never met the girl. For the rest of you, if you want to see the cutest baby ever do some cute things - watch the videos - they're both very short.

Playing on the keyboard - check out that wrist action!


Rose will hold her hands in front of her face, look at them and sing in this breathy voice. Here she is, singing for a cookie - hence the towel on the couch to catch the dribbles. It's such a funny sound and she's done it for months.

Little Ones and Sleepy Ones

My kids crack me up. For instance, right before Claire was expected home yesterday, William decided to scare his sister when she got off the bus, hence this picture:


Everyone of the bus started screaming when they saw him and the bus driving was laughing pretty hard. Funny kid.

Then this morning, my good friend Amy came over to take some photos of Rose (see Amy's blog and AMAZING photography at chocolate air - link on the right of this post - I'm too lazy to make a link here, so you're on your own) and Rose was very cooperative, for the most part. Besides peeing on Amy's quilt and sucking her thumb the whole time, Rose was an angel. She was so tired by the time we were done that when I came back inside from seeing Amy off, I found this:


Her morning of glamor was apparently exhausting. It's once again a rainy, dark day; very conducive to taking a nap, but I'm not that lucky. I'll have to settle for the 10 minutes of half-consciousness on the floor next to a playing baby and a boy insistent on playing with the loudest toy we own 2-feet from my tired head. I was too tired to protest, so I gave up and tried to wake up by finishing off the box vanilla wafers I bought for the kids. It's days like these when I really wish I were a coffee drinker; but I'll have to settle for little pep-talks in my head (come on Susan, wake up and do some laundry for crying out loud!) and eating cheap cookies.

Pictures and Projects

I am really at a loss of blog-worthy information. I hadn't talked to my mom in a week or more and when she called, I really couldn't think of anything to tell her. Lately our lives have been busy, but ordinary; which isn't a bad thing. The only things I could think of was the exciting event of getting our septic tank pumped and the planting of some bamboo to hide the monstrosity that is my neighbor's house from our back door/window. The septic tank people said they wouldn't be able to come until the following week, but of course, they called the next day and they were on their way. I quickly hung up with my sister who was on my cell, put on my dirty shoes, and started digging three feet down for the lid to the tank. It was a messy, goopy, hard job. I made it to the lid, but the guys had to finish the job for me since I couldn't get the last of the dirt out. A wrist injury and 200+ dollars later, it was over.

The bamboo was Ryan's project that I went along with and encourage from afar - the best way to handle Ryan and his projects, from my experience. I gave him the money I had saved from our budget over the past two weeks and let him do as he pleased, as long as he stayed within budget. He did a great job of finding a local bamboo guy who was trying to clear off some of his property. We got probably over $200 worth of bamboo for $40. Ryan planted it and to our delight, it does a fantastic job of hiding our neighbor's house from our view - and it's growing like crazy. Almost two feet in one week!

William's birthday party for his Fisher Price people on our front porch

The bamboo - another clump is growing in the bare spot that will cover the view of those horrid cars

Septic tank pile - the frog head is covering the hole

Nothing exciting - even I'm bored by this post. Oh well, they can't all be entertaining, witty, clever or cute.