Lincoln Turned 2

It's really been too long my dear blog buddies. My parents have been griping at me to "post some pictures of our grandkids! We miss seeing them!" (Bonus points if you used a pretend mom-voice when you read that!) Blogger barely recognizes my log-in. And my picture file is nearly bursting at the seems. BUT! In the midst of this crazy month, my precious baby boy celebrated his second birthday and is making his making his debut as a terrific 2 year old.

With an early May birthday (May 7) I'm pretty sure that Lincoln's birthday will likely collide on a Mother's Day weekend more often than not. My in-laws were kind enough to host Lincoln's birthday party at their house this year, which just happened to go hand in hand with celebrating Mother's day as well.

The weather was perfect, the food excellent and the company couldn't be matched. Lincoln's second birthday party was a success.

Here are some of the highlights of our day:

My birthday boy waiting for the party to begin!


Great-Grandma W. and Elaina look summery fresh in their coincidental red and white gingham.

Elaina just "happened" to get a new princess dress to replace her tattered blue Cinderella dress.

Aunt Cindy thought of everything and supplied the bounce house to help counteract the affects of the cake and ice cream on my rascally children.

This is the truck that did my boy in. It was attached to the top of a gift and once Lincoln got his hands on his new wheels, as far as he was concerned, his birthday was complete. It was only present #2. No more were necessary or even remembered.

Along with Elaina's generous help, she and I had to finish unwrapping Lincoln's gifts and tried to entice him into noticing something more than just his truck. Hello one-track-mind

-child! Lincoln's cake theme ended up being Sesame Street this year. Aside from cars, trucks and everything else with wheels, letters and numbers seem to fascinate my little guy and he does seem to enjoy the show as a whole. Let me not fail to mention that little boy party themed decor is minimal at best.

The cake was the only thing that distracted him from his new truck. Gotta love a kid who's willing to take the first taste for his guests, right?

Happy Birthday my sweet son. I'm so excited to see what age 2 has in store for us. I love you Lincoln Todd.

And my list keeps growing...

I just knew that May would be like this. To say that I've been busy would be an understatement. May is kicking my butt and we're only halfway through the month!

The worst part is that I don't even foresee a break for (serious) blogging until the end of the month and there's so much to catch up on. This past weekend we celebrated Lincoln's 2nd birthday and Mother's Day together. Not to be out done, Elaina got her ears pierced. I still need to post pictures of the kids' cute new bathroom. And there is just no time. NO TIME!!

As I'm stealing away some time here to whine, I should be preparing for my weekend trip (alone) to Florida to be in my friend's wedding. I should be googling something about what to say at the reception as it is my job to give a toast to the new bride and groom. At some point I should be confirming my flight itinerary. It would be a really good idea to figure out what summer dresses fit me AND that I like from last year because other than my peony colored bridesmaid dress, I'm clueless about what I'm going to wear. And shoes! Aack! Shoes!! And since I'm leaving Eric to run the show around here, it would be nice if I could at least make sure that he's not left with mountains of laundry. (READ: ME being stuck with EVEN MORE laundry when I get home) and my baskets of laundry could use a little ironing by now. My head is hurting with anxiety and I feel like my allergies are acting up with this crazy weather. OH! And I really didn't mean to take all this time just to complain, but there's more. Really. The weekend after I get home, is Memorial Day and we're hosting our friends (family of 5) for the entire weekend and there is CLEANING to do. With 9 people moving about the house for 3 days straight, it surely helps when things are in order and the dust bunnies and cobwebs are history.

So. WOW. That's my month. Maybe you can stop back when the crazy lady is no longer behind the keyboard and not complaining. I promise that there will be a flood of pictures one day soon and stories upon stories of what May was all about. Until then, I think I need to go dust off the suitcase.

Behold!

I've likely mentioned before what great friends and neighbors we have in this little town of ours. And being friendly in return, we just couldn't expect our neighbors to drop their plans on a whim, on the most beautiful days that this year has brought to us and expect for them to work on our swingset in the hot sun on their days off. And so we waited. And waited. Patiently as you can see. This is how our driveway looked for an entire week until Eric was able to pull together some help to get this mammoth secured in our yard.

Judging from the pictures, our 80 degree days have dropped by about 15 degrees and given way to overcast skies, but still nothing to keep our kids from enjoying THIS!!!

Although it's a little hard to tell from the picture, there is a rope ladder to the right platform and an opening to the left which accommodates a slide. The unfortunate part is that the slide is just a little too big for our yard to contain. It slides the kids right onto the the driveway. oops. But how about that for a FREE swingset!!??? We're going to look into buying a curved slide to attach on but in the meantime, Eric is going to have to do a little detail work on fencing or blocking off the unused openings. It seems that a certain fearless boy child is very much into learning to jump right now which doesn't bode well for this nervous mother or his barely 3 foot structure versus the 6 foot drop to the ground.

Let summertime resume!

Monkey Business

Okay, really? It seems like I was just here writing a little something last night and a whole week has passed already.

I'm here to report the highlight of this past week is that we got a whale of a deal on a PLAY SET for the kids!! Woot! I had been secretly wanting one for the kids but I thought Eric would veto my idea since our backyard space is minimal to say the least. What do you expect when you live in a (very) small town on a main street? A smallish yard, that's what. When Eric presented the idea of a play set, well I had to bite my tongue to not seem overly eager in letting him know that I had thought of that first and of course, it was a great idea!!

We slowly began pricing swing set/ play structures to learn that $600 affords you a rather modest one. We're not asking for an Olympic sized play set, but we wanted more than a set of swings attached to a couple rungs of wood. While neither of us were particularly eager to dump a cool $600, I began to ask around and talk to some people at work. Within a weeks time, a friend of mine came up with a friend of a friend whose kids had outgrown theirs and just wanted it GONE from their backyard. My friend jumped on the case, brought us pictures, Eric checked it out and as of yesterday, we're the proud new owners of an enormous backyard play set!! The best part of all? FREE!!! Oh YES!! Free is a beautiful thing when it comes to saving $600! And it's awesome! So, what if it does eat up MOST of our backyard? So what if the kids can climb to the upper lever fort and peek into our neighbors yards and windows? It's a pretty cool structure and recycling at it's best. Hello and Happy Earth Week!

As for pictures? Well, Eric had anticipated having a couple buddies over today to help, but when a fire call interrupted his afternoon and the temperature peaked at a stiffling 85 degrees; well, let's just say that no one was coming knocking on our door, just asking to help in the sweltering sun. The weather forecast isn't looking quite so intense for the remainder of this week and a completed play set may just be in our future, sooner than later. That will put an end to Elaina asking 76 times a day if her new "tree fort" is ready for her to go swing yet. The bad part is that I am nearly as giddy as her to see this new behemoth all set up and ready for it's new life with our kids!

Sunday Chronicles

It seems like my blogging pattern has been unimpressive to say the least. As a happy medium, I've decided that until I can reach full capacity of blogging or our life slows down even a little bit, I'm going to settle with a commitment to reserving enough time each Sunday night to wrap up our week and posting. If by chance I get a light week night, well, consider that "bonus" blogging.

The fortunate part of this past week has been that there is just not too much going on. That's good. No, that's great! It's not to say that we haven't been busy, it's just that Eric has been home early every night, we've had no evening commitments and our week has run pretty smoothly. Typical week. Good week!

So, while I'm not sure about everyone else's "typical" week, but let me tell you a little bit about our evenings in our typical week.

As far as I'm concerned, the evening starts when the work day ends and everyone is at home. Eric generally picks up the kids at 4:00 and I get home from work at 5. I change my clothes as fast as I can to begin dinner so we can eat promptly at 6:00 before a certain little boy loses touch with himself and his stomach begins to eat at his backbone. At least to hear him yelling as he's trying to climb into his highchair, one might suspect is the case.

Dinner and clean up can sometimes take up to an hour and Eric and I work together to get things cleared as quickly as possible to get on with our night. During our clean up time, the kids get about 20 minutes of "free roam." This is generally their time to wind down, watch tv, play with toys or play games on the computer. Every other night is bath night and they are still a fine age that they can bathe together without incident. Once they get jammied up and their hair dry, we've taken to hosting a dance party in our bedroom for the kids to romp around. Eric pulls a few favorite songs from the "music on demand" channels and Elaina and Lincoln hold hands and dance and swing each other around. And yes, it IS pretty much the cutest thing ever! After a few songs, we rotate nights to put each kid to bed and after 2 books per kid, it is down time. Our bedtime routine is pretty consistent each night and the kids know what to expect. The only setback to the whole game plan is that Elaina still likes for someone to lay with her for "just 3 minutes, pleeeassse." And I'll be darned if that innocent request of 3 minutes hasn't lasted an hour or more before I peel myself off of her covers. And so goes our typical evening.

Easter: In all of it's glory

Let me just begin by saying that this Easter weekend was fun, exciting, happy, full, busy and great. In a nutshell, perfect.

For the past few years, Eric and I have decided that hosting Easter for our family (anyone who is able) is something we enjoy doing and hope to make a tradition. Part of having a big house is wanting to have the people you love the most come to fill it up. And this weekend was proof that we did just that. My parents, Eric's parents and Greg, Kate and Colin came to town for the weekend to celebrate Easter together and also a belated celebration of "Kate's" birthday.

When our weekend was all said and done and our guests parted ways, we were left with a fridge full of delicious leftovers, a floor full of Easter grass and a camera loaded with happy memories. So many great pictures in fact, I've taken it upon myself to dole them out here for you with prestigious award captions attached to each. Without further ado, here is our weekend in pictures:

Prettiest Birthday Girl: "Kate"Best Use of Air Quotes: Kate (just read the writing on her "cake") Most Apt to Initiate a Cavity from Abundant Sweetness: Lincoln wins over a double helping of spice cake and ice cream

Perseverance Award: Kate in her most notable performance as a willing artist, held hostage in my bathroom with constant interruptions and people of all sizes looking over her shoulder. We have all learned that the kids' bathroom maximum people capacity is approximately 8, provided they are all standing. The great reveal of this room will be noted in a future post once all accessories have been put in place.

Most Notable Quote of the Weekend: Kate with: "Colin, I never knew who would teach you about guns, but I never would have thought it would be your cousin, Elaina with her pink gun."

Endurance Award: Lincoln; this veteran driver of almost 2 seasons withstands driving conditions in almost any climate. It looks the driver in the other lane has completely lost sight of her car, but Lincoln is going strong and continued his race long after his captive audience left the stands. Only his dedicated race team of Grandma and Grandpa W. stayed with him to help avoid racer's rage leaving the track. Most Team Unity: Greg and Colin; they worked together collecting the great loot that the Easter Bunny left out for them, while carefully avoiding the land mines in the grass left by the Easter dogs. Best Disguise: I don't even know who that is but she deserves an award for looking cute and producing three of her secret agents to conspire with her.

Child in Most Need of a Shopping Cart: Elaina; this Lightweight Champion enjoyed collecting her treasures so much that she didn't want to put them down for even a second. You never know when that sneaky Easter Bunny could come back and snatch all of her great finds. (I'm such a proud mom!) Most Daring Attempt: Colin; take note of this adolescent Brown's fan (by default of his parents) touching the holy grail of Steelers collectibles and not growing athletic talent on the spot.

Best Pose: Elaina; as I asked her to turn and show me her Easter basket, she pivoted, popped her elbow back and showed me her stuff! Oh how this girl makes me laugh!

Most Likely to Melt his Mother's Heart: Lincoln; after our family left and Elaina, Lincoln and I shared some quality nap time, Lincoln pulled out his new Car book and began to read to himself.

And with that, our awards ceremony must come to a close. An honorable mention should also go to Kate for posting a great recap of our weekend on over at her blog as she shares more details on how our Easter egg hunt almost didn't happen and how "Kate" came to be. Here's hoping everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend while remembering the reason for the season.

twitch-twitch

If you're reading this, you know that Easter is 3 days in the past and Monday has already come and gone and judging from this entry, there are no cute pictures as promised and no whimsical recap of our Easter weekend. In fact, all that you have before you is a sorry post about my internet being down last night. Aack. Nevermind my slight twitching from being disconnected from the blogosphere and facebook for an entire evening and a sporadic weekend of internet usage. Hello, my name is Laura and I think I may have a slight addiction to the "wwwdot."

Eric was on the phone first thing this morning with the cable company and is trying to resolve the issue of our disconnect. Until then, I'm accessing the web from work in a super-sleuth fashion while drinking my cappuccino and trying to keep the cute and funny stories of our weekend locked up in a file in my mind until I can roll them out onto my blog later on this evening. The silver lining of no internet access is that my bedtime last night was closer to 10:00 versus the standard-too-late bedtime of midnight, so I am feeling very rested, if not even punchy today. I hope this stays with me until tonight and that we're connected by the time I come home from work. Stay tuned.