The honesty of a three year old....

This past weekend was the annual banquet for the local firehouse that Mike volunteers with. We decided to take the kids with us, and it ended up being a really good idea (I know! Go figure!). They ended up being the only children there (insert faux pas), but their behavior was phenomenal. We got so many compliments on how well-behaved they were -- Mike and I left with our parental heads just a smidge bigger. We were so proud of our little ones!

So..... while we were sitting at our dinner table with our children who were playing quietly while awards were being handed out, I noticed Mike trying to stifle some laughter. Of course I wanted in on what was going on, so he leaned over and proceeded to replay the following conversation for me:

Mike: "Catelyn, I just want to tell you that you look beautiful tonight."

Catelyn: "I just want to tell you that I tooted."

I then proceeded to pee my pants from laughter.

Happy Birthday, Caleb!!!

Can you believe it??!! Our little man is a year old! :) We celebrated this monumental milestone with friends and family and a sailboat birthday theme. His birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so we were lucky enough to have his party on his actual birthday. We went against tradition and hosted the party a little earlier than we have in the past -- we invited everyone to come over at 11 in the morning, instead of 2 or 3 in the afternoon. This allowed us plenty of time to enjoy our guests, but it also gave us time to get the house cleaned up well before dinner and get the kids down for a decent nap. My friend Corey turned us onto the new time slot and it worked out great (Thanks, Corey!).

Caleb received fantastic gifts and we were so impressed with the creativity of what our guests brought for him. Such fun things that little boy was presented with! He was a little overwhelmed at first with the gift-opening (he had a lot of "help" from the other little ones!), but he warmed up after a while and got in the spirit of paper ripping.

My best friend Jen (aka Auntijen) and her mom (aka Grandma Sally) made Caleb's birthday cake this year. It has been a tradition-of-sorts that these two talented ladies make my children's birthday cakes. And boy, did they deliver this year! They went nuts with the sailboat theme -- yummy blue "water" as the frosting, handmade edible sailboats (enough for every kid at the party), and even a "swirled" cake on the inside to represent the sand and water of the beach. I'm telling ya, those ladies just OOZE talent. Thanks, Amber gals!!

Caleb was pretty funny when it came time to have this masterpiece of a birthday cake. Catelyn helped him blow out his candle (her favorite part!) and we put it right in front of him to see what he would do. We were flat out ENCOURAGING the boy to dive into it!! But he just kind of poked at it, and played with the little bit of frosting that ended up on his finger. You see, Caleb really has never had sweets up until now and so I don't think he was really even sure what the big deal was. But we handed him his very own special "C" sailboat and he had that thing in his mouth faster than you could say "SUGAR." He loved it. Then we handed him a piece of birthday cake (you know, because he really didn't have enough sugar already) and that was all she wrote....

Happy birthday, my sweet little man! You have been such a blessing in your momma's, daddy's, and sister's lives this past year. You bring so much joy into this world! What fun and love we experience with you here now..... I love you, Caleb.

Professional Photos

I'm sorry I haven't been good about keeping up with the blog. You're not really all that surprised though, are you? :) Better late than never I always like to say!

Here is our most recent batch of "professional" photos, courtesy of Portrait Innovations. As always, they did a great job capturing the smiles of our children. Catelyn is three years old in these photos, and Caleb is nine months. Can you believe how big they are already??

(Note: These photos are the uneditted versions, so please keep in mind that the final prints were cropped appropriately.)

Christmas 2009 Photos

Here are the Christmas photos that we had taken at Portrait Innovations....


(Did you see the HUMONGOUS grin on that little boy right up there? Man, are we in trouble!)

Butterflies, Breakdowns, and Bites (bites of food, that is)

My friend Jen (aka Auntijen) has been wanting to go to the Smithsonian's

Butterflies Exhibit (http://www.butterflies.si.edu/index.htm) for a while now.

She didn't think she should ask me to go with her since I went last year with my fam (http://thejonesfamily2002.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html) and had already experienced the fluttering beauties, but boy was she ever wrong. I snatched that adventure with her up in a heartbeat!

So with tickets in hand, we drove up to Clarendon, parked the car, snuggled the kids up in my brand-spanking-new double jogging stroller (I am in LOOOOVE) and we headed for the metro. Catelyn had a blast on the "train" and eagerly watched as people walked on, and people walked off. She LOVES the metro.

We finally made it to our destination, and with snacks in hand, we made the walk to the museum. We walked right in, oohed and aahed over the massive elephant that greets you at the main entrance, and made our way up to see the butterflies. We weren't even two steps into the pavilion and I hear "No, momma, no." Uh-oh. I was feeling a bit of deja-vu because that is exactly how Catelyn felt about the butterflies last year. I did my best to encourage her and show her how pretty and cool the winged creatures were, but she wouldn't have anything to do with it. She wanted out. NOW. I felt awful for her and didn't want her to be scared (nor did I want to disrupt the other visitors' experience) , so with Caleb in my arms and Catelyn holding my hand, we left Jen to take some gorgeous photos (http://onewandering.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/a-fluttery-friday-in-dc/) while we waited for her outside. A necklace of Froot-Loops for Catelyn and a bowl of rice cereal for Caleb kept the kiddos content.

Jen emerged after her photo shoot and we made our way down to the dinosaurs, something that Catelyn had requested. After checking out the bones and listening as Catelyn explained to us that "the dinosaur had fallen down and was broken" (regarding the exhibit of bones still in the ground to show how archaeologists dig them up), we left the museum and headed back to the "train." We had a standing dinner date to make with my brother Will and his girlfriend Amy at the Cheesecake Factory. YUM.

So although the experience with the butterflies didn't go quite as expected, we really had a blast. The kids were EXCELLENT, the food was delicious, and the company was phenomenal. It is so nice to have such wonderful friends who not only love you, but love your family as well. I love you, Jen!

Empire Today SUCKS

Do not buy carpet from Empire Today. I repeat:

DO NOT BUY CARPET FROM EMPIRE TODAY.

I know this post has nothing to do with my kids, but I have to warn you all. I love you too much to let you make the colossal mistake that Mike and I did. We bought carpet from Empire Today. Don't do it.

Your carpet will shed, posing a choking hazard to your children, and possibly your pets. You will spend a year a half of your life -- did you read that correctly?? oh yes, A YEAR AND A HALF -- trying to get someone from their incompetent customer service staff to remedy the situation. That is if you can actually get someone on the phone. You will spend two years scraping the carpet with your vacuum attachments because that is the only way you can get the loose fibers up and out of the way of your six month old's eyes that are screaming ooooo-what-can-I-put-in-my-mouth-now-ooooo-how-about-a-CHUNK-of-carpet?!! Your back will hurt from being hunched over that stuff they call carpet because you have to SCRAPE it to get it to look even half decent. Then you'll walk on it and it will look like it's 37 years old again. You may even be "lucky" enough to get the Regional Manager on the phone and you'll try to tell him your woe-ful story and all he knows how to say is "I'm sorry you're not happy." Seriously? Seriously???

So the next time you have $1,700 that you want to flush down the toilet, may I suggest something? Actually flush it down the toilet. Seriously. Flush that moolah rather than hand it over to the appalling company that is Empire Today. Just ask the same poor people out there that are going through the same thing that I am....http://empire-today.pissedconsumer.com/fraudulent-sales-practices-shoddy-materials-terrible-customer-service-20090209145117.html It's really scary how many unhappy people are out there because of Empire Today.

So save yourself. Save others. Pass this on to anyone that you care about. Or don't care about.

...And a crawling he will go!

Let me just start off this post by informing you all that I don't have any pictures of the kiddos to share today... Not yet anyway :) I just have a recent story that I would like to pass along in hopes that your interest to know what is going on with the little ones will be quenched. I'm trying to be better about this whole blogging thing, remember?? :)

And now, drumroll please!...... Caleb is getting ready to crawl, y'all!!!! Yesterday morning, under Mike's watchful(and lucky) eyes, Caleb slowly shoved his plump little body across Catelyn's room. All by himself! I was working on making myself presentable (the kids and I had a standing date with our playgroup) and when I went to gather the kids up so we could go, Mike told me of Caleb's new "first." After I picked my jaw up off of the floor, I proceeded to plop right down next to Caleb, willing him to do it again. As if he knew what I was waiting for, he pulled his knees up under his tummy, then stood up on his toes with his arms stretched out in front of him. I think they call this a "downward facing dog" in yoga?? (Don't ask me how I know this...) So in his new stance he starts to rock back and forth a few times, trying to figure out how he was going to get his hands to move forward without falling face-first onto the ground. After a few seconds of this rocking, Caleb got frustrated and just belly-flopped onto the floor. But even though he was right back where he started, he looked up at me with a big ol' grin on his face.

Did he get very far?? No. Did his momma's and daddy's hearts swell with pride over their son's latest achievement? Absolutely.

Distance gained is all relative. I am so proud of my little man :)