Waiting for Mimi

They were very excited the day Mimi was arriving! It was hard for them to understand that she would arrive after they went to bed. Listen for Ben saying Canada, it is socute!


They were still watching for her later in the day, not sure what happened to the clothes by then!

Being silly

I have often said that Ben is our "Trouble Maker". Here is an example of why. I was sitting at the computer when he came in and started messing around with the light. Yep, that's my little trouble maker. My problem is that with his devilish little laugh and the twinkle in his eye it is often very difficult not to laugh along with him!



This is also an example of one of the battles I choose not to fight. If they want to run around without clothes on, I don't really care. They do it often and well, simply means less laundry for me! LOL win-win!

Happy Birthday Daddy

What do you do when your hubby is turning 39 and you have a number 3 candle but you don't have a number nine candle? Simple, just put the number 3 on the left and a bunch of other candles that all add up to nine on the right. Light the candles and see how long it takes him to figure out what you did. LOL it took awhile!


Happy Birthday Honey I Love You!

Goodbye diaper pail!

I was so very tired of the diaper pail!!! It was a nice diaper pail and it did a good job, but seriously, after putting nearly 20,000 diapers and pullups into it in less than 4 years it just needed to go away!! And so after months hubby of bugging me to learn to shoot I finally decided it was time. My target - the diaper pail.

I did not know just how satisfying it would be to blow it into a million peices! We shot at it with little guns and with big guns. The big guns nearly knocked me on my butt but they really did a nice job of blowing it into smithereens! HAHAHA it was delightful!




Even Sam came and took a few shots. I took this picture giggling, saying that it was his first kill shot!

Goodbye diaper pail, I will NOT miss you. The only sad part of the day was realizing just how many diapers we went through!

Ben & Carlee are 3!!

Wow time flies! It still amazes me that it has already been three years since our lives were so dramatically changed. Here are the photos from the day of Ben & Carlee's birthday.

In the days leading up to their birthday we had a lot of discussions about what happens on somebody's birthday. We decided that there was supposed to be balloons, presents, cake, candy, and a birthday adventure. They are at the age when it is still difficult to understand terms like three more days, so it was a bit exhausting explaining it a bazillion times!

Somehow though the day snuck up on me and the night before I suddenly realized I had not baked them their cakes or even bought birthday cards! I felt like a horrible mother and immediately grabbed a Betty Crocker mix, put hubby in charge of baking the cakes and blowing up the balloons. I rushed to a 24-hr drug store to get the birthday cards and ice cream!

In the morning they were greeted with balloons all over, so as soon as they came down the stairs they were very excited! I truly hope they are always this excited when they see balloons for their birthday!


I imagine it must be pretty difficult for Sam to understand that it is not his birthday too! But we explained it as best as we could and hoped that he would still have a fun day.

After the balloon fights had calmed down a bit we had Ben & Carlee exchange their gifts to each other. This was so cute that I had to include it! And yes, it made me teary to see that my kids are using manners and gratitude without me coaxing them to!



After a yummy breakfast we headed out to a local fall festival. We started by picking out little pumpkins to paint.


No surprises here. Sam is painting with red, Carlee is painting with pink, and Ben picked up two brushes! I love the look on Carlee's face - looks like she is thinking that she cannot believe he is doing that!! And I love the look on Ben's even more, just like he was meant to be painting with two brushes, maybe he was trying to get green!

The boys completed the hay bale maze.


Then we went to walk part of the 5 acre corn maze. We let the kids take turns leading the way. We soon found ourselves hopelessly lost!


At one point, after being lost for some time, I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to get back out. I casually asked "How are we going to get out of here?" Sam's reply was, "Just a minute, let me check my GPS!" Now that was funny and I nearly lost it!

It didn't take long before Carlee was close to a meltdown so this became her mode of travel for awhile. Sure changed her attitude in a hurry! Thankfully all the time Daddy spent in the jungle seemed to pay off and he managed to lead us out of the maze!




After escaping the maze we stopped in at the petting farm. I love the look on Sam's face in this photo. He was saying "Don't worry Baby Cow, your Mama will come back soon and let you out of jail" Haha I had a lot of laughs that day!


Ben & Sam figured out how to work the hand pumps quickly, Carlee not so much.


The highlight of Ben's day was riding behind a real John Deere tractor during our hayride!


Sam was the only one brave enough for a pony ride.


The last stop was at the SoyBean pit, the kids sure had fun. I did have to strip them down when we got to the van to empty all the beans out of everywhere!

After a really fun birthday adventure at the fall festival we headed home for cake and more presents. I did feel really bad about not making them a special cake, but once I saw how much fun they had putting on their own icing I felt much better! Carlee wanted purple icing, so I started with blue food coloring but when I went to put in the red she nearly had a fit! Something about red being Sam's favorite color. She seemed to be happy with the blue icing that was more a shade of gray!

Happy Birthday Ben & Carlee!

This was right before she stuck her hand right into the cake!

Ben enjoying his cake! It was a truly great day!

A new job?

Although I am writing this at the end of December, I am posting it as of the beginning of October. This is when I decided to embark on a new adventure. I had been looking for birthday presents for Ben and Carlee and remembered Discovery Toys. A friend had given us some as gifts when Ben & Carlee were born. At that time I had looked at the website and noticed that it was a direct sales company. I had previously sold PartyLite and enjoyed it but never had the time or resources to make it successful.

Anyway, I debated for awhile about starting a Discovery Toys business. Of course needed hubby to be supportive because it would mean he would be here with the kids anytime I needed to be out doing shows. He was supportive and the final decision was made when I realized that the worst case scenario was that if I couldn't make it work I would still end up with some great toys at a reasonable price.

I joined Discovery Toys early in October and have been quite busy with it ever since.
I have been really enjoying it and obviously love the toys. My new goal in life is to never buy battery operated toys for my kids again! Unfortunately I had already purchased the boys some toys with batteries for Christmas, but those are the last!

I have learned so much about the educational aspects of Discovery Toys and how they encourage learning. I have decided that a kid's job is to play, so they should be learning while they play. It is so cool that Discovery Toys are designed for exactly that purpose. My hope and prayer is that my new focus is setting my kids up for future educational success!

The best part about being a Discovery Toys consultant is that I am being paid to play!! Unfortunately there are some silly cross-border rules that state I cannot sell into Canada. But I hope that all my Canadian friends and family will find a DT consultant that can help them become as passionate about these toys as I am becoming!!!

The time I spent setting up my business and doing shows obviously has cut into my blogging time. But I hope that now that I have things set up and running fairly smoothly I can now get back to blogging! I miss blogging and I miss being able to share our lives and our kids with those that we love who are far away. I am trying to balance everything so that I can do all of it, it certainly is a struggle! So, now that I have blogged about my Discovery Toys business, I will leave you with my DT website and say no more about it on here! Well unless it is really important and has something to do with the kids!

Here the link to my website www.discoverytoyslink.com/chicks