Cheaper than a trip to the movies...

Seriously!! For $10/person we were able to see the World Champion Phillies play the Brewers in Milwaukee. AND....the $10 included a hot dog and drink!! Who knew?!?! We need to spend more time in Milwaukee!!!

According to Jack, we had "awesome seats"!! I don't know if I would have used "awesome" to describe them, but for $10....

Yes, that screen behind us does indicate that we were sitting in the very last row of seats.

I guess, Jack must have decided that a view of right field isn't that important... ...as long as you have a great view of the goofy Brewer mascot guy sliding down the slide when Milwaukee hit a home run and we did have an un-obstrcted view of the home run fireworks. We also had a great view of the stadium's roof as it was closing because it was going to rain. That was cool!

And we did manage to spend a bit more than $10/person because of course we *had* to get the ice cream in a helmet.

We all had a great time. :)

The longest red light in the history of the world...

While we were driving home tonight, this is the conversation in my van while waiting for a green light. And, to get the full effect, realize that is conversation was not just spoken, it was YELLED across my whole van.

Jack: "Mom, what's for dinner?"

Drew and Ben: ***just making lots of noise***

Me: "we are having pizza"

Ben: "what kind?"

Jack: "WHAT?"

Me: "We are having pizza"

Charlie: "I WANT raisins"

Ben: "what kind?"

Drew: "what did Jack say?"

Me: "one pizza is sausage and one is pepperoni"

Charlie: "I wan 'a go wimmin' (swimming)!!"

Ben: "What?"

Jack: "Is Charlie going to have sausage or pepperoni?"

Drew: "Charlie, are you a Bears fan or an Eagles fan??"

Jack: "Charlie say Bears Fan"

Ben: "Charlie say EAGLES!!"

Jack: "No, No, No, Say BEARS!!"

Drew: "Jack, wait, wait, wait if Charlie says Eagles, then there is more sausage pizza for us"

Jack: "Oh yeah, Charlie say Eagles"

Ben: "No, No, No say Bears!!"

Charlie: "BUT, I WAN 'A GO WIMMIN'!!!"

Drew: "When is daddy coming home??"

Me: "tomorrow"

Jack: "awwwweeehhhh"

Ben: "wait, what did Drew say?"

Me: "ask Drew."

Ben: "Drew, what did you say?"

Drew: "I don't remember"

Ben: "Mom, Drew doesn't remember what he said."

Jack: "Mom, what did you say we are having for dinner tonight?"

Me: "PIZZA!!!"

Ben: "Wait, what did Jack say?"

Me: "GET ME OUT OF THIS CAR!!!"

Drew, Ben, Jack: "Why???"

Charlie: "But, I WAN 'A GO WIMMIN'!!"

Anybody want to go on for a "joyride" with us???

Regrets...

A few weeks ago, a few hours after the boys went to bed, we heard crying coming from their room. 50% of the time crying in the middle of the night means that someone is getting sick. Grrr. The other 50% of the time means that someone is about to provide me with something to blog about.

Thankfully, on this particular occasion, nobody was sick. Yay!! That also means that I have another "I couldn't make this stuff up" blog post. Double Yay!!

So, here is my story.

Spencer and I were still awake when we heard the crying so, we went upstairs to find out what was going on. It turned out that on that particular night, it was Drew that was crying and he was quite upset. We brought him into the bathroom and got him a drink and were really trying to get to the bottom of what was making him so upset. Drew doesn't get that upset very often, but when he does, there is always a reason.

After a few minutes, he finally calmed down enough to try to explain.

He said "I'm just so sad"

Me: "Awww.....What are you so sad about??"

Drew, in between sobs: "I'm just so sad because.... I just feel like I wasted my whole summer playing with Charlie when I should have.....

I should have....

I should have .....

(you won't believe this!)

I should have been playing Wii!!!"

OMG!! Seriously, I never would have figured that out and I'm relatively certain that this particular "problem" is not covered in any parenting books. I guess we're on our own.

Well, the boys had played quite a bit of Mario Cart that day and I figured that Drew's big "regret" was the result of being upset about always getting "12th place".

I tried to explain to him that playing with Charlie was so much better than playing Wii....and what a great big brother he is.....and how much Charlie loves him and enjoys playing with him......and, seriously, if he worked on holding the Mario Cart steering wheel in front of him, instead of OVER HIS HEAD, or BEHIND HIS HEAD, he would improve pretty quickly at the game too because NOBODY DRIVES LIKE THAT!

Problem solved....good night!

Brothers are way better than Wii!!!

Football season has started...

While I was out Sunday afternoon, the "men" of the house decided to have their own football game. The boys told me all about it when I got home.

It was the Eagles....

...against the "Nakeds".

Yes, that is what they said..."Mom, we played football while you were gone, Charlie and Daddy were the Eagles and we were the Nakeds". Fabulous....please Lord, grant them the wisdom to not write that in their journals at school today...school just started a month ago and the teachers don't know us good enough to know that we are not FREAKS that play naked football with our kids!

Here are a couple of more pictures of the "Nakeds"...everyone wanted a turn holding the football for the picture.

And then, they were nice enough to play another game since I missed the first one.

It was very cool...just like a real football game.

There were huddles....

and the players lined up, got in the ready position and waited to hear "hike".

The "Nakeds" had some bad defensive plays...

...and some good defensive plays.

And, apparently, the Eagles recently signed a new, young running back that seems to have a lot of potential.

In the end, everyone had a good time.

The Top 10 Reasons that I've haven't Blogged in a Week...

10. Fifty ba-gillion loads of laundry

9. Farkle, Bubble Bursters and BeJeweled...and NO! I'm not "addicted" to Facebook. It just really bugs me to not beat my "friends". Then again, at least I'm not in charge of the Mafia, or a Farmtown. ;)

8. Second grade spelling words like "crocodile", "crispy", "whiskers" and "porcupine". Oye!!

7. School pick-up and drop-off lines!!

6. 1/2 price wine and martini night at Paulie's with some second grade moms. (I never said that all of my "reasons" were "bad reasons".)

5. I've been spending an in-ordinate amount of time sanitizing my house with a can of Comet....thanks to the first cold of the school year, some weird stomach bug making its way through our house and the fact that Charlie is "mostly potty trained"....as in, he gets MOST of it in the toilet. Yuck!!

4. Google...I must have up to date information about the Duggars, the Gosselins, Jaycee Dugard, the Health Care Debate, Bonnie Hunt vs. Blago, the H1N1 vaccine, the weather and other people's blogs.

3. "Mommy play trains" Charlie definitely misses his brothers while they are at school!!

2. I think that I've over-booked our kids' extra-curricular schedule this fall. Maybe I'll get it right next year.

1. U2..... BABY!!!

Have a great week. I promise to do MUCH better blogging this week!!!

Summer 2009 - Sports Pictures

I have all of the boys' sports pictures in piles in our guest room....just waiting for me to do something with them. Just in case I don't get around to doing something "cool" with them, I'll share them on my blog.

Enjoy....

C'mon Get Happy!!!

Look at the back window of my new car....isn't it cool
?!?!



Charlie likes it a lot!! He keeps saying "Daddy Penguin", "Mommy Penguin", "Ben Penguin", "Jack Penguin", "Drew Penguin" and then he says "IT'S CHA'YIE PENGUIN!!!. Too cute!!

The only down side is that I haven't been able to get the Partridge Family song out of my head all afternoon. I didn't even think of that when I ordered my cute, little penguin family, but after I stuck the penguins on the window, and before I put up the words, "C'mon get Happy" was all I could think of. Whoops.

Potty Training Update...

I've never cleaned up so much poop in my entire life!! Ugh!

Honestly, Charlie has done really, really well with potty training....with the key word being POTTY! After spending a day following his bare bottom, he was pretty much pee trained. He has been wearing underwear and has had only a couple pee accidents. He even has been waking up dry in the morning...Woo Hoo!!

The poop training, on the other hand, has been a NIGHTMARE!

I'll just say that a newly potty trained kid combined with a week long stomach bug (icky, smelly, runny, messy diarreah) is just not good. Yup, definitely not good. :(

I have forgotten how annoying the side aspects of potty training are. My bathrooms are much dirtier these days and Clorox Wipes are my new best friend. I have also been spending my time on "pulling your own shorts up and down" training, "hold your own pee-pee down" training, "wash your hands really, really good" training, and "flushing is not scary" training.

It feels great to be almost done, but it is so hard to believe that our baby has gotten to be such a big boy!!

Wasn't this just yesterday???

Sharing a funny....

This is an email going around that I thought was pretty funny and so much of it was true!! I'm looking out for you and edited out the ones that I didn't think were as good.

Enjoy!

Random Thoughts From People Our Age-

I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.-

More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I canthink about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.-

Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you'regoing in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.-

I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.-

Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?- ***or, I assume that I'm showing up on their FB as a 'person that they may know' and they didn't want to be-friend me...and, if they don't want to be friends with me, I don't want to be friends with them...how's that for maturity. :)

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.-

There is a great need for sarcasm font.-

How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?-

I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.-

I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clearyour computer history if you die.-

The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying tofinish a text.- ****that is so me on July 31, 2010 when I get my I-PHONE!!!

LOL has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".****not me!!! If I say LOL, I really did laugh.-

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.-

Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.-

Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart",all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".-

How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?- ***That doesn't work with Charlie...he will keep repeating it until I figure out what the heck he's saying.

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!-

Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in'examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a completeidiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney andsaid "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"-

While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road andinstinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.- ***That is FUNNY!!!

MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.-

Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.- TOTALLY...I'm way too nosey I guess.

I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in theshower first and THEN turn on the water.-

Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty,and you can wear them forever.-

Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that theirprofile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!- I've done that and got some major "scoop" on a friend's ex....way more fun than it should have been. :)

Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?-

Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to goaround and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....-

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything else productive for the rest of the day.-

Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don'twant to have to restart my collection.-

I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.-

"Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.-

I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of peoplewatching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but willthey judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren'twatching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up andleave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'- ***Totally Me...I can't handle the pressure!!

I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello?Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times andgoes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?-

I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then notseeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.-

When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something shehasn't already told me but that I have learned from some lightinternet stalking.-***I'm ok with that...if you read my blog, feel free to tell me.

Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and stillnot know what time it is.-

Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what do to with it.-

My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what wouldhappen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?-

It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com andthe link takes me to a video instead of text.-*** I HATE that...Charlie always runs when he hears the audio to find out what he's missing...I have the same problem with blogs that have music...computer time is over for me when that happens...must go play with trains now!!! :(

I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone theydrive behind obeys the speed limit.-

I think the freezer deserves a light as well.-

The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words,someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.