loosely Controlled Chaos

Happy Easy-Way-Out Valentines Day!!

2012-02-12T12:23:00.002-05:00

I swore this year would be different, that I'd be THAT perfect Mom who does the homemade cute Valentines and adds little cute candies surprises (I'm looking at you, Mindy D). I even Pinned a whole bunch of super-cute ideas on Pinterest - I was SERIOUS this year.

And then, yup, about 7 or 8 days before Valentines Day, I took the easy way out and just ordered them again online. Choose template, upload photo, press "Order" and viola - instant Valentines (well, with 3-5 days shipping time). Four minutes tops.

But at least I DID update my blog background to Valentines! I'll take the small victories where I can get 'em. And really, these Valentines cards DID turn out pretty cute, right, even if they don't have candies on them?

To be honest, what turned the tide in favor of online printed cards versus making cute homemade ones was that I saw this one in an email from PearTree Greetings (love them!) and HAD to get it for Noah - I've referenced a couple times here on my blog how Noah fantasizes about being King Noah of all the Noahs of the world. It was too perfect, I had to order it NOW. And that was the slippery slope - one Valentine ordered, sheesh, I should just do them all online, shouldn't I? My cute homemade super-special Valentines Day 2012 slipped away....

Connor was dismayed to hear that in fourth grade, you still have to do Valentines cards. I finally got him to grumpily agree to this one:

Shelby wanted unicorn Valentines. Of course. She wants EVERYTHING in unicorns. Every day, all day long. Her favorite white unicorn stuffed animal is named "Magical Fairy." Connor and Noah are STILL concerned about her Halloween plans this year (it's her turn to pick our family theme) and wanting us all to be unicorns. But hey, if the princess deems it must be so, it must be so. Well, except for Valentines - Queen Mommy decreed that Princess Shelby must have these cute little flower Valentines this year.

Oh, and all those other cute Pinterest ideas I have pinned for Valentines Day? Let's just leave it at the fact that I still have my January star wreath on my door. No Valentines spirit anywhere to be seen. I didn't order matching Valentines shirts or pajamas for the kids this year. We're probably not even going to have cute pepperoni heart pizza or cinnamon rolls (unless Carrabbas serves them). And I'm secretly hoping the kids forget about our family tradition of our living room Valentines Day slumber party. Yup, I'm definitely losing out on Mommy of the Year 2012 so far.

Oh wait, I just remembered - I DID order a custom pillow-cover for Valentines Day this year! See, I haven't lost my Valentines spirit just yet! But, you ask (or rather, my Mom asks), is it on a pillow yet? Well, NO, but MAYBE I can get it on one by February 14.

Oh well, let's see if I can do better with my Easter Pinterest board!!

But hey, I'm not done with 2011 yet!

2012-01-13T19:56:00.002-05:00

We did some cool stuff in 2011 and my lazy tushie never blogged about it, so I'm gonna do it now. Besides, blogging is my only form of scrapbooking (despite boxes full of papers, photos, stickers, etc) so if I want to remember all this stuff, I gotta get it down here while I'm still young. Kind of. You know what I mean. NO jokes about my age, people.

Anyway, it's a long one. If you're really into us and want to read/look at all of us, go get yourself some popcorn and Diet Coke, and please enjoy!

~ January ~

January is our month of birthdays, with Connor and Shelby's birthdays only one week apart. Connor turned 8 years old in January 2011, and, as you can see, getting a computer was pretty much a hit!

I even did a custom desktop for him (at the time, the boys LOVED the DumDum statue in Night At the Museum - but then again, who doesn't??):

Connor also got to go to NYC and see the King Tut exhibit with Grandma and Daddy. COOLNESS. Of course, upon exiting the show, the usher said something like, "Well, little fellow, how did you like the show?" And Connor, in true Connor form (and having read and studied numerous books about hieroglyphics), replied, "Well, the hieroglyphic translations on the exhibit signs had several mistakes..." and went on to explain in great detail the corrections that needed to be made. That poor usher did NOT know who he was dealing with!

And, a week later, here we are with Shelby's 3rd birthday, getting a Shelby-sized horse she can sit on. Again, a birthday hit!

A hit, that is, only until Shelby named her new, beautiful horsie….NOAH. Yes, she named it Noah. Noah, her brother (not to be confused with Noah the horse), did NOT find this flattering and was completely irritated.

We celebrated Shelby's birthday with a trip to the fabulous Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, where, of course, the kids always do what they do at home…play the video games. UGH!

But I love this trick photo - check out Shelby's face as she and Connor cling to the side of the building! She looks more like she's velcro-ed on, rather than clinging on for her little life. And annoyed about it, to boot!

~ February ~

February marked the beginning of an era for Connor…discovering the Math for Dummies book series. We started with Algebra and Geometry, and now own every book and workbook in the series, including Trigonometry and Physics. Yes, these are Connor's FAVORITE, most treasured books.

~ March ~

March was kinda slow, with the exception of Connor starting Cub Scouts. Isn't he handsome? :)

~ April ~

The month of Noah and his birthday! I did get his birthday blogged about here: http://markandestelle.blogspot.com/2011/04/happy-birthday-cute-little-freckley.html.

And of course, an epic blog entry about Shelby - relive THAT fun (actually horrible - I still can't laugh about it yet) day here: http://markandestelle.blogspot.com/2011/04/she-who-shall-not-be-named.html.

~ May ~

Now we're warming up! To celebrate Mothers Day, I bought some custom T-shirts for my kid gang about how their little brother/sister rocks. Super cute, right?

Yep, this is what Mother's Day is all about:

And here we have one of my ALL-TIME FAVORITE photos of Shelby, one that will live on in Ritchie family infamy - the kind of photo that will make me laugh out loud every time I see it for the rest of my life:

In May, we also had a visit from Uncle Paul, which we celebrated with a family trip to one of our favorite restaurants, Koto. Oh yes, the boys love their kooky Uncle Paul!

~ June ~

MORE fabulous kid photos! We finally got the kids their passports, because you never know when we'll decide to jaunt off to the Bahamas. Probably NEVER! But anyway. I like to refer to this collection as "Photos that only a mother and grandmother could love." Shelby and Noah are okay, but CONNOR! Omgosh, that hair. And I was THERE! I can't even blame Mark for that photo that Connor will now have to live with for the next 5 years.

~ July ~

Now we're talking!!! We did our almost-pretty-much-annually summer pilgrimage to Idaho/Utah (Udaho) for the summer to stay with my parents at our house in the foothills of Cache Valley in Idaho on 7 acres. Seriously, check out this view from the deck. I never want to live in Utah again, but I SURE do loooove coming to visit!

But even better than THAT view, is going to all of my favorite restaurants around Utah (since Syracuse restaurants ARE PLAIN AWFUL)!!!! Here we are celebrating Mark and I's 19th anniversary at THE RED IGUANA!!!! - a little dive of a Mexican restaurant on the wrong side of Salt Lake City that has THE MOST fabulous food. Happy happy me!

While Grandma & Grandpa tended to the grandcherubs, Mark and I enjoyed a couple of kidless days in the Salt Lake area, staying at one of my favorite hotels, the gorgeous Grand America!

We also spent a day at Sundance, riding up and down the chairlifts and enjoying the scenery.

A side note: Don't wear flip flops on chair lifts.

Happy 19th, Markli! You're all right.

We looooooooove swimming at Bear Lake. Our Bear Lake days are the highlight of every summer!

Here's Grandpa with his new squirt toy, waiting for someone brave to come in close enough to battle:

And ummmm, we bought this inflatable for the kids, but Mark took a creepy liking to it.

The boys (Mark, Connor, Noah & Grandpa) did a trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons. Yes, they're wearing parts of pajamas. Remember, I said BOYS trip, meaning Mark dressed them. If you can call it that. Ugh.

Here's Shelby thrilled to be enjoying fireworks with her "big girl" cousins Marinda and Katrina, visiting from Colorado. Yay!

~ August ~

And since Grandma & Grandpa live in farm country, we stopped every day for Shelby to visit all of her favorite "horsie friends":

My pretty little girlie! I love the sweetness of this photo. We don't get too many of Shelby like this. She looks so innocent. Don't be fooled, though! She's a feisty little OCD crabpot!

Laaaaa. The Logan Temple. Where Ritchie Inc. started. And now look at us - here's our contributions to the world - three very misbehaving but I-love-em-anyway kidlets. Yeah, I guess having Mark in the pic would have been ideal, but oh well.

And I initially thought I'd snapped a perfect photo of Grandma with the kiddos. Until I saw Shelby holding up her shirt, showing off her belly button. Yep, thanks, Shelbs. That's special.

One of my VERY FAVORITE things about summer is my dad mowing a "field maze" on the property for the kids. Isn't that the COOLEST thing? AND, it keeps them busy for hours. Yessss! Here's Shelby venturing off:

And a new addition from Grandpa this year - BWA HA HA!!! LOVE this!!!

We finished off our summer with a lunch with our long-lost-Lentzs, meeting up at the Mayan (which was CLOSED for lunch. poop.). Hello hugs!

Here's the combined kid gang. Ummmm, and Mark. The weird old guy photobombing the kid picture.

And cute little Shelby and cute little Kiplyn:

On our way home, through Iowa, we discovered…..SHELBY! We've driven this route (NY-UT) at least 2 dozen times in the past 10 years and we never noticed Shelby, Iowa. Is it new? Do they still create new towns? Anyway, WooHoo from exciting Shelby, Iowa!!

~ September ~

Back home, we had Shelby starting her first day of preschool. SUCH a little diva. But a cute one. :)

She went in without looking back, little independent girl that she is, leaving her dithering, sobbing wreck of a mommy in the parking lot. *my last one...waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah*

~ October ~

Our first major kid injury! In 8 years, can you believe that? Anyway, Shelby was jumping around on the back of the couch with her bad big brothers, and she fell off and broke her wrist. It slowed her down for ….oh, about a DAY. She went right into dance lessons with her cute little red cast and did just fine.

To finish up October, of course, I always manage to document our Halloween shenanigans: http://markandestelle.blogspot.com/2011/11/all-ritchies-were-kung-fu-fighting.html.

~ November ~

Noah started losing teeth this year. I don't know if it was in November or not, but hey, here we are. You can't really see the missing teeth here:

But here, I'm pretty sure you can see. See, like EVERYTHING. Ewww, Noah!!!

And the beauty of losing a front tooth - extra straw access!!

~ December ~

I definitely got myself on the blogging wagon in December (4 entries, that may be a record!), so we're covered there. And whew, that's IT! 2011. Go Mommy!

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until.....

2012-01-02T13:03:00.002-05:00

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... the guests show up!
Yup, the right guests will get your party started off with smiles….because Angry Birds = Happy kids

But first, there MUST be eating!

We started off our family New Year's Party with dinner at Outback! Hurrah!

And we discovered a child discipline technique even more potent than the Wawa card - PICKLE BREATH !! Yup, threatening 'em with having to eat a pickle to keep 'em in line at dinner worked miracles. Jar of pickles = $1.89, child behavior modification effectiveness = Pricele$$!

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... there's shopping!

Well, shopping is always party-time for me, but this time it was borne of necessity. Since we were out in DeWitt anyway eating at Outback, I just had to make my bi-monthly visit to my future house in Manlius (I drive by it several times a year, and have been doing so for 2 1/2 years - but I don't like the new circular driveway the *temporary* owners just put in!! Grrr. Now we'll have to pay to remove it when we move in.).

My original photo from when I first discovered my future home back in 2009

….and the only way to keep the kids from complaining too much about not being able to go straight home and start partying, was to stop and get them new books at Barnes and Noble, which is something we do as a family every couple of months anyway. And yes, Connor DID pick the Trigonometry book all by himself, and YES this kid knows how to do trigonometry, and YES the cashier was aghast. But, we're getting quite used to dropped open mouths and speechlessness from adults when they're dealing with Connor.

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... there's mayhem and throwing stuff around!!
Back home and let the games begin!!! ANGRY BIRDS brought to life!

Our clever catapult contraption…

And of course our pets party with us! Yours should, too!

Chili soon figured out that this was NOT a good place to sit...

Rebuilding the structures was half the fun.

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until....people get drunk and disorderly
Of course it was only a matter of time before kids began throwing their Angry Birds at each other….timeout (since I didn't have pickles at home yet)! Connor refused to look at me, and I LOVE Noah's face here.

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... there's dancing!

Everybody's doing the Locomotion…

Connor's dancing on furniture…VERY un-Connor-like!!

Ritchie moves in action for ya...

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... furniture gets destroyed!!
Yup, Connor was dancing on our coffee table and during a particularly enthusiastic move to Shout (favorite Ritchie dance song), ummmmm, well, yeah, he literally BROKE the coffee table.

Ya know, we've had parties in our house with over 60 guests (including lots of kids) and never had ANYTHING broken or even a stain on the carpet. But, as I told Connor to cheer him up, it's AWESOME that he did this because now we'll FOR SURE forever "remember that party where Connor broke the coffee table??!!? BWA HA HA!!!!"

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... there's MORE eating!
Okay, Connor was still upset over the coffee table incident and Shelby was mad that her noise-maker-horn-thing didn't work. But after recovery of those traumas, there WAS more eating!!

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... people get tipsy and goofy
Shelby, pace yourself on the apple juice!!

And for Connor to wear a hat….DEFINITELY something in the apple juice!

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... there are extreme sports being played in the house
Since the coffee table was now broken and our Angry Birds catapult therefore out of commission, we took the party downstairs.

A little basketball…

Hockey time!

Shelby wanted to be the goalie.

But, in retrospect, putting Shelby in as hockey goalie was NOT such a good idea.

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... there are death-defying stunts being performed
When hockey ended badly, we then set up our little basement trampoline in front of our ball pit and let 'em rip…

And then when I snapped this shot and saw Connor's head TWO INCHES from the ceiling beams we promptly put a stop to the death-defying, incredible stunts. Crikeys!!! Bad idea, Mommy!

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... Dick Clark says Happy New Year!
We all finally plopped in front of the TV around 11pm to start watching Ghostbusters until 11:45 when we would check in with Dick Clark. HOWEVER, does anyone remember that Ghostbusters is actually SCARY!??? I saw a 4-year old birthday party with a Ghostbusters theme on Tori and Dean, and *bing bing*, I thought Ghostbusters for New Years will be perfect!!! Well, I hadn't seen Ghostbusters since it originally came out back in…. well, YES, I am THAT old. Anyway, we got only 5 minutes into it before Noah left the room crying about it being too scary. And it was. SHEESH!

So, he and Shelby went into another room to watch the TV in there and they wanted to watch……wait for it…….Scooby Doo's Ghoul School. Uhhh, right Noah. Scooby Doo definitely some scary stuff going on, but okay, whatever.

It's Not a Proper New Year's Eve Party Until ... the kids fall asleep early and miss the actual New Year which they will be VERY crabby about the next morning
I don't think Shelby or Noah made it 5 minutes into Scooby Doo before they crashed anyway.

And Connor, Mark and I barely made it to Dick Clark's rocking New Years Eve ball drop, gave a round of weary cheers, and everyone was in bed by 12:04am.

Whew. But HAPPY NEW YEAR!

~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, and here's a footnote - Ghostbusters evidently didn't traumatize Noah TOO much since he kept singing the Ghostbusters theme song during church the next morning. Shhhh Noah!!

And now THAT clever little segue can allow me to post these photos of Shelby's first day in Primary (in our church, Primary is for kids ages 4-12). Two for one blog entry! yeah!

And here's the whole little gang on the morning after the Big One, looking quite alert and happy after a long night of hard partying!

The Hits (and Misses) of Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T13:47:00.003-05:00

PRESENTING....THE HITS!

Yay! Lots of hits this Christmas! Let's do those first.

I love Christmas pajamas and Christmas shirts! Although Connor has deemed himself too mature to wear Christmas shirts OR pajamas, I DID talk him into at least putting on his Christmas pajama top (because, NO, Connor, even though your skull pajamas are red and white they do NOT count as Christmas pajamas!).

Having fondue is our loooooooong-standing Christmas tradition, going back to my childhood and my German mom making fabulous Swiss Cheese fondue on every Christmas Eve. However, in this photo, Mark looks like he DRANK the wine instead of using it in the fondue, and Noah is nursing a wounded hand from stabbing himself with his fondue fork. But the fondue was excellent, I was happy, and so I count this as a Christmas HIT! Cha-ching!

I love our yearly Christmas Eve tradition of Mark playing his guitar and singing by candle and tree light. Fortunately the dim light hides the RUDE fact that Connor is laying on the couch covering his ears. TURKEY! Also, how do you like our Fireplace DVD? Pretty spiffy, eh? Of course, only AFTER I bought it did I discover there's actually a free channel here playing fireplace scenes. And only AFTER I bought it did I realize it would cause fights among the kids getting to pick out which fireplace they wanted playing.

The cutest thing was Shelby and Noah, arm in arm, swaying to the sound of the music. I DID NOT fake this, people, I promise. I don't know what I did to deserve this special little Christmas treat, but I'm TAKING it!

I love taking photos of my little cherubs sleeping the night before Christmas - Shelby surrounded by 9 thousand horses and out of her covers as usual, Connor with his ever-present and beloved Birthday dolphin, and Noah actually looking quite normal (we have some, as we've dubbed them, "frat-boy" Noah sleeping photos that are pretty darn funny, here's the best!):

And, as promised earlier, from June this year: Noah the future frat-boy after a hard day of driving his teacher crazy at school and then coming home to torment Connor, and maybe conquering a couple of Wii game zombies or other bad guys.

Noah's Christmas gift last year was a bust (Bigfoot Robot was a SUCH a bust that I couldn't even blog about it), and was played with only once. Well, this year it looks like we got it right! Cheers for a new 3D DS! (of course, he decided he didn't like the 3D feature and turned it off. OF COURSE.)

Grandma also called it right for Noah, sending him this stuffed monkey. Welcome to the family, Dookie (Noah named it, obviously). You're stuffed animal number 234,934,342 to enter our household, but who's counting?

And oh look, it's another stuffed horse! You'd think from her face, it's Shelby's first stuffed horse ever. But no, this is stuffed animal 234,934,343 to enter our household.

Here's Daddy playing "Castle" with Shelby and her new castle set, definitely a hit! And some may think Shelby's plumber's bum would count as a Christmas miss, but I LOVE her little sweet cheeks. But yes, I think next year it's time for larger Christmas pajamas for her!

Connor FINALLY got a skateboard, which he's been begging for since he was about 4. The first photo was seriously taken one nanosecond before he hit the wall and wiped out.

He was then ordered to get dressed and take it outside (yes, that's Shelby following him - everywhere Connor skateboarded, Shelby followed).

I thought FOR SURE that getting Connor a skateboard, namely an OUTDOOR toy, would guarantee us a white Christmas (because our winter here is NONexistent and I am quite upset by it) because then he couldn't use his skateboard right away (aside from skateboarding in the kitchen into walls). But it DIDN'T WORK!!! Bah humbug. Oh well, a happy Connor is better than a crabby Mommy. Well, depending on who you ask. (Mark, do you want to comment on this one? Oh NO??? I didn't THINK so!!!!)

Yay for another fancy-pants pan for Chef Mark. We ALL benefit from gifts like this one! First food made in the Christmas saucepot - Country gravy for omelets! Yippee!

Of COURSE we always get presents for our pets - they're family members, too! Don't you wish YOU had received this fabulous bone? Tiki is very happy dog today with her Christmas bone.

I love this photo of Mark holding Shelby while I'm taking photos of our beautiful house on Christmas Eve. I'd love it more if there was at least a foot of snow (Shelby's wearing FLIPFLOPS!), BUT I already grouched about that, so I'll let it go this time.

Yay for Shelby's first Wii game (Nickelodeon Wii Dance)! Welcome to the big boy brothers club! She feels SOOOO big now. We even had to put real batteries in Shelby's little bejeweled remote (that we always kept battery-less so she could THINK she was playing with Connor & Noah, even though she wasn't). Noah, of course, hears the word "Wii" and is instantly on the scene.

I love Christmas decorations for cars! And you can't even see that the antlers are duct-taped on with at least a roll of tape each, after the unfortunate accident at the McDonalds drive-through a couple of weeks ago and having to backtrack my driving all the way back there only to find my antlers in the middle of a 4-lane road, run over and flattened (but still salvageable!).

And what would Christmas be without Merry Toes? And it's so fun having a girlie now to join me in this tradition!

And the BEST news? I loooooooooove my new Christmas camera. Yes, Mark bought me a new camera last Christmas but it was a terrible awful horrible no-good camera and it's been the topic of much blog complaining over the past year. Whatever will I complain about this year on my blog with my new fabulous camera and photos?? Anyway, look!, the Macro feature (totally broken on the last camera) works quite well!!!

Every Christmas morning Mark makes our fabulous Country Gravy omelets. (photo taken with the "Food Photos" setting on my new camera! Can't you just smell the fat and grease?! Mmmm mmmmm.) PARENT TIP HERE: Want sedate kids on Christmas? Heavy eggs + bacon + sausage + country gravy = comatose kids. It's true! Of course, these omelets also wipe out the grownups, too. As a matter of fact, as I write this, I begged Mark to go out and find me some caffeine-LOADED Diet Coke on Christmas Day because I swore I wouldn't survive today without it. NEXT year, we're going to add Diet Coke to the Country Gravy omelet tradition. It'll be a nice balance, yes?

And HUGE YAY for a new Ticket to Ride, my favorite game on Earth!!! After playing 7 million Euro & USA games, I am beyond excited for the new Asia expansion. Oh, and this is what I'll be doing for the rest of the vacation week. No callers, please. :) (Unless you want to play with me and give Mark a break!)

AND HERE COME THE MISSES!
Are you still with me? Here are the misses (but still entertaining) of our little Ritchie 2011 Christmas.

Noah stabbing himself with his fondue fork.

The Pink Panther Christmas toys that instantly became Ninja Panthers until Noah's Ninja Panther kicked Connor in the eye. (The Ninja Panthers also later invaded Shelby's fairy tale castle, that didn't go over well, either.)

"Castle" being invaded by a huge, brown monstrous creature with human-killing bad breath. (as if the Ninja Panthers weren't terrifying enough)

The glasses straws that I thought would be soooo cool but were sooooo disastrously UNcool (Connor's face says it ALL), not to mention made a complete mess. Epic FAIL there, Mommy.

I TOLD you that present was for the pets, Shelby!!!

Bad cats collecting ornaments under the tree! And look at Finneaus' face (orange cat on right) - caught red-handed with a poinsettia in her paws, and COMPLETELY unrepentant. All December we found ornaments all over the house and some even upstairs?!?

Flipflops and sunglasses on December 25. This is WRONG WRONG WRONG. You may think I live in California. Well, I most certainly do NOT, I proudly live in Syracuse, New York, the supposed #1 snowiest city (http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/12/27/snowiest-cities.html). I'm so grumpy right now about this. If we're not going to get snow, then I might as well live in California. Oh wait, I DO want to live in California again….

Okay, these last 2 tied for worst misses. In other words, I'm not sure which is keeping me laughing the loudest and longest.

WORST RITCHIE 2011 CHRISTMAS MISS CONTENDER ONE: Zombie reindeer!!!
Noah brought home this little treat a few days ago. Notice the "crazy eyes" and the teeth and protruding bones. And then YES, that is supposed to be blood streaks on the BACK of the reindeer.

WORST RITCHIE 2011 CHRISTMAS MISS CONTENDER TWO: Mark dancing!!!
Here's a glorious shot of Mark playing Shelby's new Nickelodeon Wii Dance game with Noah. You should click on it to enlarge it to appreciate it fully. Then again, maybe you shouldn't. It's not pretty. Mark, have you been drinking the fondue wine AGAIN??

Welp, we had many more hits than misses, so I believe our 2011 Christmas will go down as a good one! Hope yours does, too! xoxoxo

Our Christmas card....Deciphered. Explained. Discontinued.

2011-12-09T12:37:00.001-05:00

So, to those of you who received our Christmas card this year, perhaps you are wondering why we sent the insert printed in a tiny, indecipherable and mostly unrecognizable hieroglyphic text?

Can you read this??

Ummmm, well, that would be my mistake, resulting from my inability to edit myself when writing. Mark kept telling me it was too small, but I WOULD. NOT. EDIT. I had no idea it would be so small when I ordered the inserts. Ooopsie. I apologize! And yes, Mark, YOU were right (oh soooo painful to see that in print). But you were WRONG about the teal color. UGH.

DECIPHERED

Anyway, here is the translation for you, in plain and huge easy-to-read English:

2011 brought us our first broken bone - Shelby fell off a couch while goofing off with her bad example big brothers and broke her wrist!  Eeek!  But she weathered it like a trooper, showing off her bright red arm cast in her dance classes and preschool.  Shelby is a cute little girly girl who loves her "outfits" and nail polish but who also carries Hot Wheels cars and dinosaur toys in her fluffy pink purse.

Connor's 2011 big news was skipping to the 4th grade after only one month in 3rd grade!  He's a brainy happy camper, keeping busy with his newfound academic loves of physics and history and, as always, his beloved geometry, languages and hieroglyphics.  However, Connor tempers his "heavy studies" with an equal love for reading (over and over) the Diary of A Wimpy Kid book series with much "LOLing" and "ROFLing" (his words).

First-grader Noah is still working on his unique Noahness - regular trips to the school nurses office from wild recess antics, hiding his un-done homework from his teacher, taking gymnastics classes (after being politely requested to NOT return to karate, please), and continuing to entertain us all, especially with his dream of being the King Noah of the world, and of being famous among the "China people," for whom he has an affinity, even telling his classmates that he'd visited China this past summer.  Ummmm, which he did NOT!

Mark is still doing his SU Biology professor gig and getting his African carbon credit business nearing fruition (aka income!).  Hallelujah!  Maybe our 2012 Christmas card will bring you photos of us lounging on our new yacht in the Mediterrean.  Just kidding!  But maybe we'll finally be able to replace our 1996 TV!  :)

Estelle (me) continues to TRY to keep control of the chaos, which this year consisted of more kid room remodeling (monsters & Egyptians!), lots of time picking out (and photographing) matching family shirts - haha!, and organizing our annual family Halloween costumes and Trunk or Treat show. I document our shenanigans somewhat regularly at our family's online blog at http://markandestelle.blogspot.com.

Hmmmm. It just occurred to me that if you received the insert, which gave you the web address of our blog, that it would have been TOO small for you to actually see that we have a blog website. I didn't think this through entirely, did I?

EXPLAINED

Oh, and the tiny text is NOT where the problems with this year's batch of Christmas cards started. It started with even trying to get a decent photo (doesn't it always?). You see, the photo on the back of the insert was the very FIRST of over 150 failed Christmas photos, and it was just supposed to be a test shot with the kids holding their letters.

But it was the ONLY one that looked halfway decent. At least the living room was clean, except for Tiki's fugly dog toy by Connor's foot and the dirty spot on the camera lens. Observe our....attempts...., come on now, share in the joy with us, won't you?

Blinded by the sun. Or blinded by the sun coming OFF of Mark's head?

Naughty, face-making kids!

Moved inside, but still no JOY to be found in this photo.

Another day, trying out pajamas instead of uncomfortable church clothes.
But SHELBY!?!?!?!

Noah pulling Shelby's hair. And who plugged Connor in??

This one could have worked, but I like getting Christmas photos of the
GROWNUPS that I know, not just their kids that I probably DON'T know.

Our professional photographer was Grandma, who did the best she could with the amazingly UN-photogenic subjects she had. And no, I don't think hiring a real photographer would have better results. It would be the same results but then I'd actually be PAYING for this torture. NO way, uh uh.

Well anyway, THEN, it turned out these inserts were too big to fit in the envelopes that came with the actual card. DRAT again. So, I had to cut them all down to size, and that's why the edges are all raggedy and the text doesn't have enough space around it to look good. Did you notice that? Sooo embarrassed (says the graphic designer, to whom YES, enough surrounding space is a VERY big deal).

But HEY, to make up for it, I DID put little bows on the cards, which I was NOT going to do, since it was sooo tedious and time-consuming and cost an extra 20 cents in postage. But it wasn't so bad, given that I did it while watching the latest Tori & Dean episode. Ummmm, I mean while watching...The History Channel. Yep. And don't they look pretty? Albeit flattened once you received them, I imagine. (Does that nail polish make me look jaundiced? Or golden & festive?)

NEXT, I could NOT get my addresses to print on labels from my computer. I remember last year that I figured it out easily, and I distinctly remember thinking "Gosh, I should make a note of how I did this so I remember how to do it next year." But did I do that? NO. Because I also remember thinking, Well geez if it was so easy I'll surely be able to figure it out next year again. NOW here is where I present to you scientific proof that aging and kids RUIN your brain. In the past 12 months my brain has deteriorated at an alarming rate. I spent 3 hours trying to figure out this stupid label problem. Let's not forget that I possess a Bachelors degree in Information Systems (ie, I am *supposed* to be highly proficient in software operation). Of course, that was a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago. And obviously, since your card was addressed by HAND, I never did figure it out. You know how long it takes to hand-write addresses on envelopes? FOUR AND A HALF episodes of The Good Wife, that's how long (which fortunately I had stacked up on the DVR). And because my handwriting is so atrocious, some of you may never have even received our Christmas card since the Post Office couldn't read it!

And finally, I apologize for not including a personal note on the cards. Usually I find it a bit rude to get a "form letter" with no personal note (It makes me feel like you're just not that into me if you don't write me a personal note!) and I really hated having to do that myself this year, but I seriously could not hand write my name to save my life at this point. You wouldn't have been able to read my note anyway, and you were already still trying to read the unreadable printed insert. See, I did you a favor. I assure each of you, I really AM that into you. But alas, my crippled and cramping hand prevented me from expressing my personal love notes.

DISCONTINUED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

In summary, regarding the discontinuation of our Christmas card, I think next year it would perhaps be easier to just pack our family up, drive around to each individual potential Christmas card recipient (from Frankfurt, Germany to San Antonio to Seattle) and give you all a living Christmas card of our family in person, wishing you a Merry Christmas. Yes, that WOULD absolutely be easier than all of this photographing, and writing, and editing (or lack of), and ordering, and cutting, and tying, and hand addressing, and stamping and mailing, and then the subsequent translating and explaining and blogging.

Or maybe, if I'm really lucky, as Connor pointed out on the card itself, perhaps the Mayans were right and the world will end in December 2012, and goshdarnit, it won't matter anymore and I will mercifully have been put out of my annual Christmas card ordeal.

Holding on to my tushie, 2012 could be a bumpy ride.

And if anyone is reading this who did NOT receive our card, it was probably because I developed carpal tunnel syndrome from too much cutting and hand writing and bow tying and simply could NOT finish - I am sorry. And yet, thankfully, I am now miraculously recovered enough to type another blog novella.

Thankfulness-Inducing Bad Events

2011-12-09T11:00:00.001-05:00

So, my last blog entry was all happy and smiles, but we did have a couple of……events…..occur right around Thanksgiving, that made me REALLY appreciate my family's blessings.

THANKFULNESS-INDUCING EVENT NUMBER ONE.

You remember our fun Thanksgiving Annual Ritchie Family Retreat Getaway (or whatever the heck I called it) to the Roxbury, right? Well, what I didn't mention was that when we returned home, our basement had flooded. Flooded a LOT.

Our sump pump on/off switch was broken in that once it was on, it never turned off! And we hadn't gotten around to replacing the sump pump yet. So, at the time, we had it turned off, BUT forgot to turn it back on before we went on our trip. And, of course, it rained. Hence, FLOOD. Three inches of standing water everywhere, all over. So, our Thanksgiving evening was spent sloshing around the basement and up and down the stairs moving things into the garage to start the cleaning and drying process. However - and here's the weird part - Our family retreat must have done me an AMAZING amount of good because not ONCE was I irritated about any of this, NOR was I irritated at Mark for forgetting to turn the sump pump on, which would have prevented all of this. REPEAT, I did NOT get irritated (well, irritated is too gentle of a word, normally I would have been raging furious), but I did NOT. I still can't figure that out. I should add that Mark is probably extremely thankful for THAT.

Anyway, I am…

Thankful that with three prior basement floods in the past 9 years, we were (mostly) prepared, with everything off the floor or in plastic bins, and we keep virtually no wood items/products in our basement anymore at all.

Thankful that I still have intuition/the Spirit working within me - for about a month before this happened, I kept thinking (at least once a day) that I needed to get those recently-put-in-the-basement cardboard boxes of old family photos OFF of the basement floor and into a plastic bin. I did NOT do this, so one box of photos is pretty much ruined, but I'm still grateful that I was warned (by SOMETHING) and I have no one to blame but my lazy bum self.

Kinda thankful that one less box of family photos means less scrapbooking and work later. Is that bad??

Thankful for our dehumidifier (purchased after a previous flood) that works amazingly well and is keeping it from getting too stinky and moldy down there!

(I know, I know, but I needed a photo of SOMETHING up here.
All hail to the dehumidifier!)

Thankful that in the process of moving stuff up out of the basement and into the garage so we could clean, that we decided half of the stuff we could get rid of and give away. Yay! More simplification is always good.

Thankful to get rid of more towels - our upstairs linen closet is overflowing and I've been meaning to clean out the towels and give them away to a pet shelter, BUT our kitchen was a sloppy mess from our wet and muddy books and it was sooo nice to be able to use a few old towels, clean up the crud, and then toss 'em. MORE simplification. Yup, still always good.

THANKFUL that our basement floor is sooooooo clean! I still can't believe how clean it looks. We'd been meaning to clean up down there so we could put together our kids' winter playground (basketball, hockey, tricycle and scooter racing), but hadn't yet, so the flood kicked our tushies into gear and the basement is much cleaner that it would have been had there been NO flood. Weird how things work sometimes.

And finally, thankful that, for whatever strange reason, our sump pump has mysteriously begun to work again and we do NOT have to replace it just yet. Woohoo! I know that replacing a sump pump is, for most people, not a big deal, but for my woefully-impractical and woefully-unhandy husband (though brilliant) even changing a light bulb can become a big deal. I love you, Markli, but well, you know it's true.

THANKFULNESS-INDUCING EVENT NUMBER TWO.

Fast forward about 5 days AFTER the flood from which we were finally recovering, around 11:00pm our downstairs carbon monoxide detector alarmed. HOLY CRAPPIE! I am terrified of carbon monoxide gas, terrified that something so invisible is so deadly. I mean, dying by C02 poisoning certainly beats dying by shark attack (a great fear of mine. because I'm in the ocean so much, ya know), but anyway. We've had CO2 detectors as long as we've had houses and I test and replace them religiously. Anyway, Mark and I flurried around (we were still awake watching TV and catching up on Terra Nova and Castle) immediately finding owners manuals, opening windows, checking on kids. We weren't sure what to do, 911 seemed too extreme and we couldn't call a furnace repair guy until the morning. Mark thought we should just open windows and wait until morning. But I KNEW that even with every window open I would NOT get a wink of sleep that night, worrying obsessively about my kids (and about Mark, too, a little). So, we woke up all the kidlets and went to a hotel, everyone in their pajamas (including me).

My three kids were AMAZING. Of course, it probably helped that we were going to a hotel with a swimming pool. Because everyone with kids probably knows that the MOST FUN thing in life to do is going to a hotel to swim in the indoor pool and watch TV in bed, right? It was another vacation for them, two in one week! Woot woot! We kept them home from school the following day, letting them swim for 2 hours in the morning and then going to a family breakfast at Dennys. And THEN, because Connor and Noah were sooooo good at the hotel, I took them to Target and let them pick out new Wii games to play - since they had the day off from school, we turned it into a full-out kid goof-off day!

Anyway, I am…

Thankful that Mark was NOT in Africa. He'd been planning to go the previous Friday (day after Thanksgiving) but delayed until the following Wednesday. Usually all of the BAD stuff happens when he goes to Africa (I KID YOU NOT - record breaking snowstorms, air conditioner breaking, Shelby breaking her wrist, the furnace going out, our first super-bad basement flood - ALL when Mark was conveniently ON ANOTHER CONTINENT!), so having him around to help me deal with this latest little….adventure….was, as American Express says so eloquently, PRICELESS.

Thankful for CO2 detectors.

Thankful that we live in such a safe neighborhood that we could leave every window open and not lose one second of sleep worrying about intruders or burglars.

Thankful that our pets were healthy and safe.

Thankful that the weather was unusually mild enough that if the CO2 gas didn't get our pets, the usual freezing cold would have!, especially our poor little tropical lovebirds.

Thankful that we had enough money to be able to flee to a nearby hotel immediately and not have to worry about it impacting our budget too badly.

Thankful that the hotel night manager took pity on our little temporarily homeless family and upgraded us to a nice suite, free of charge.

Thankful that our swimming lessons bag is always packed and ready to go and it was easy to toss in the car quickly.

Thankful that Connor and Noah were soooooooooo amazing with Shelby in the pool (since Mark and I's swimsuits were NOT in our swimming lessons bag), each taking turns carrying her around. I love Shelby's little swimsuit wedgie here in this first photo. Hee hee!

Thankful for Connor and Noah's amazing water dancing skills. But yeah, Connor, keep up your plans to become a quantum physicist, okay? And Noah, even driving a garbage truck (Noah's current life ambition) will pay better than water dancing. Mmmkay?

Thankful for Dennys. Kind of. Why do kids like Dennys so much??? Eww.

Thankful for good friends (Gerri, Patricia, Angie, Tammy, Deutschmans) who offered their help to us upon finding out about our predicament (since I whined about it on Facebook).

Thankful for an efficient local Fire Department who arrived the next morning within mere minutes of our phone call. Sure, two fire trucks and a squad car, meaning 10 huge fire-uniformed men tromping around in my house, was probably overkill. But they took it absolutely seriously and even chided us for NOT calling them the previous night! As they pointed out, "We're open 24 hours, you know!"

Thankful that it was just a faulty C02 detector (it went off exactly in the pattern of a real CO2 leak and NOT the pattern of an error, which is why I basically freaked out) and NOT a faulty furnace! I don't even want to know how much replacing a furnace would cost, especially at Christmastime.

Thankful that I now know how to light the pilot light on our water heater (since the Fire Dept forgot to re-light it and I didn't know it was out until after Mark was gone to Africa) and it was easy. I need to learn more life skills like this!

Thankful that Connor is seemingly over his autism stage of going into full-alert meltdown with any sudden change to his schedule and/or life.

Thankful that Shelby and Noah are so easy-going and up for anything at any time! :)

Thankful that we're all (including our pet family members)
alive and healthy and happy and BLESSED.

(even though we take horrible Christmas family photos)

Thanksgiving, Ritchie Style!

2011-12-04T19:37:00.001-05:00

With the advent of Thanksgiving 2011, we started a new Ritchie family tradition - an annual quickie family getaway retreat. And where else would we do our first Ritchie Family Annual Quickie Thanksgiving Getaway Retreat (we'll have to think of a shorter name for that, eh?) but our FAVORITE regional hotel, the ROXBURY!!! I've documented a couple of our stays here before (see here and here), though we've been many more times than just these three. Anyway, it's a fabulous little hotel in the Catskills and each room is a theme from the '60s and '70s era of TV & movies, but not in a tacky way. Some of the rooms are definitely over the top (over the top AMAZINGNESS!!), but you won't find a cleaner or more luxuriously appointed hotel (in terms of textiles, bedding, bathroom amenities) anywhere. It's owned, operated and decorated by former Broadway set artists, so there ya go. Awesomeness.

Here's their new addition - isn't it great?

More cuteness. I could NOT love this limey-apple-green and black and white color combination MORE. As a matter of fact, I'm going to paint our front door this same color come spring, I love it so much. Fortunately, the rest of our house is already black and white. Yes!!

Gloriousness!

So, here we are in the Genie's Bottle room. Helloooooo color! (and Mark)

Other side of the front area (notice Shelby & Noah already on the couch waiting to watch TV - little junkies):

And look at this - flowers that Mark had ordered ahead of time to be waiting in the room for me. Cue the "awwwwwwwwwws" now. Yep, gotta be thankful for my Markli. :)

Bedroom one, invaded. (note to self: clean your camera lens!!! Sheesh!) Ordinarily I don't EVER stay in a hotel unless it has white bed covers (you know what stains hide on those colored ones, right??? ewwwwww), but the Roxbury is my ONLY exception because they're fabulous and I trust them to be clean.

Bedroom two, which is where the kids were transferred after I decided I wanted bedroom one. And here my little kid gang is, doing what they love most in hotels (aside from jumping on the beds, which they are NOT supposed to be doing) - watching TV in bed, the ultimate luxury, since we don't allow TVs in bedrooms.

Back to bedroom one, with ME enjoying watching TV in bed. Gosh, that IS a nice luxury. We'll need to rethink that no-TVs-in-bedrooms-rule, Mark.

The glorious bathroom, shaped round like you're INSIDE a bottle! (Genie's Bottle, remember?)

I must admit, this was my first encounter with a tub like this. Have you ever seen one of these?

ALERT! ALERT! A BLOG FIRST: Me in the bathtub!!!! Yessirree! See my hand in the mirror waving? So, I just sat perfectly upright in this strange little tub and read a book. I'm not sure what else to say, other than it was...different. And the kids refused to go near it, fearing it was too deep for them. Which, of course, it wasn't, but I suspect they just didn't want to waste their valuable and rare watching-TV-in-bed-in-a-hotel-time with something as mundane as a bath.

And here's the cool thing - the bathroom was a pass-through bathroom, connecting both bedrooms, so I could hang out in MY room but still keep an eye on the kid gang. VERY convenient.

This whole trip was Mark's idea (another FIRST!) and he wanted us to decide on three goals each (or as we called them in the Genie room, wishes) for 2012. Each of us had time in the "throne" seat while Mark wrote down our goals, since HE is supposed to keep track of them and make sure we're doing something about them in 2012. I'm not sure how that will turn out, so if you see Mark around, ASK HIM and REMIND him that he's supposed to be doing this!

Noah's turn:

Go to China (Noah is obsessed with China, we have no idea why)
Go to Africa (that's reasonable)
Play baseball (the first we've heard of this, it came out of left field. BWA HA HA, pun intended!!!)

Here's Connor usurping the throne from King Noah:

Now it's Connor's turn:

Learn French (because dabbling in 15 other languages isn't enough for him!)
Go to Seaworld (works for me)
Go to another country, even it's just Canada (again, works for me, especially if we can go to the rumored hotel made of ice in Toronto??)

Shelby's turn (photobombed by King Noah, hoping to return to his rule soon), even though she didn't have to specify any goals. Her only job is to be cute. :)

Queen Mommy (with assistance from Princess Shelby):

Get the house completely simplified and organized. (Hey, it *could* happen. But I'll have to go back on caffeine in a big way. And get a couple of nannies. And get a $5,000 gift card to The Container Store - my mother ship, my Mecca)
Get in shape and get healthy (yawn, I know)
Get a bigger vehicle (keep in mind we were fresh off a 3.5 hour drive with 3 kids smashed all together in the back seat of a small SUV - my main thoughts during that time were ^#^!&#@&^ WHY DIDN'T WE GET A @#@&#*($&*@(&$ BIGGER CAR??!?!??)

And of course, what fun would a Ritchie family getaway be without playing our favorite family game, The Adventurers! (sooo thankful my kids never liked Candyland)

Unfortunately, Noah's adventurer was smashed to death in the exit corridor by a rolling boulder. Here's how he took that news:

And after that he continued to tantrum, and hit his chin on the edge of the table, thereby necessitating a chin Angry Birds bandaid:

And here's Connor in timeout for laughing at Noah dying and then cutting open his chin. We found that doing timeouts outside in bare feet worked QUITE well - after all, no one likes cold, wet feet. (another note to self: Move time-out chair to our front porch in the winter)

We didn't do our actual Thanksgiving dinner at the Roxbury, but came back to have dinner at home. Here we are, and yes, we ARE still in our pajamas, thanks for noticing:

Oh, yes, you also noticed that our Thanksgiving table had no turkey, and are those…..chicken wings?!?!? What kind of Thanksgiving is THAT!??!? Well, a few years ago, Mark and I realized that no one really liked any of the traditional Thanksgiving foods (except Mark, who will eat anything except jalapenos), so why bother going to all that hassle? So, instead, everyone chooses one or two favorite dishes for which we are VERY thankful, and we eat and share those.

Here's thankful Mark with his pork ribs stew concoction (and he's thankful he didn't have to share because no one else wanted any of THAT!):

Connor is thankful for ravioli this year:

Shelby is thankful for macaroni and cheese (with a side of Honey Nut Cheerios) - AGAIN (same in 2010):

Noah is thankful for pizza (and has been every Thanksgiving of his life):

And it's no secret to anyone that knows me how thankful I am for Angie's famous hot wings! Mark complained that this was the third year in a row that I wanted these for Thanksgiving. He also has to make them for Mothers Day and my birthday. And a few times inbetween. But I really really love them and I am really and truly thankful for them. And I'm thankful that I do NOT have to eat turkey or cranberries or sweet potatoes or pie - none of which I like.

To finish off our Thanksgiving 2011, after dinner we went to Lights on the Lake, Syracuse's annual 2-mile drive along Onondaga Lake with…well, lots of Christmas lights! It's fabulous! And yup, we STILL didn't change out of our pajamas (I specifically told Mark I wanted a Pajama Thanksgiving, meaning we didn't go anywhere that required real clothes, and darnit, I made it happen!).

We always let the kids sit in the back of car, free to roam (and fight). That's Noah getting comfortable here.

As they get bigger, it's getting too crowded back there. YES, we definitely need a bigger car.

It didn't take long for the boys to remember our summer drives up the gravel roads to my parents house in the mountains of southern Idaho where I let them hang out the sunroof, and indeed, whaddya know - worked great for Lights on the Lake, too! Of course, it's also been unseasonably warm here this fall. Which I am EXTREMELY crabby about. I am NOT thankful for this CRUMMY WARM weather. Bah humbug!

Our Thanksgiving weekend grand finale was getting our tree up early (complete with bad cat on bottom who keeps batting ornaments off). Joy to the world! Something done EARLY. I'm thankful for that, for sure. (Unless we put it up TOO early and it starts drying out and dropping needles everywhere. Then I'll be grouchy about that, too, in addition to the lack of cold and snow.)

Footnote: I know you're all ogling my BEAUTIFUL red sideboard table next to the tree. As a matter of fact, if I saw it on YOUR blog I would immediately email you and ask where you bought it and/or BEG you to sell it to me. Anyway, I am the supremely and eternally THANKFUL owner of an original Vintage Charm piece by the uber-talented Darice. My sideboard's name is Olivia, and is she the very definition of *glorious* or what?? :)

All the Ritchies were Kung-Fu fighting…

2011-11-21T18:39:00.001-05:00

If there's one blog entry I always seem to get down, it's our annual Halloween shenanigans. We dig Halloween. Probably mostly it's me, but I seem to have rubbed off on my family, in a Halloween way. Woo-hoo! And I know this post is a couple of weeks late and everyone now has turkey on their minds (well, not us, but that's another blog entry), but since *I* still have vinyl decal bats still stuck all over my front door and garage door that I can't get off, we're still feeling Halloween here at our house.

Every year we do a family theme in which to go to parties and to our church's Trunk or Treat (where you hand out candy from your cars in the church's parking lot - which, when I write it down like that sounds awfully lame, eh?). Granted, we do a *leeeetle* more than most people do for Trunk or Treat, but it's actually a lot of fun. Read on for proof...

Anyway, this year our family theme was up to Noah and he wanted a Ninja family! ROCK ON, little No! Excellent choice! Our outfits weren't QUITE as ferociously Ninja as I'd envisioned, thinking that black clothes and Japanese-looking headbands would be quite enough. But at least Mark and Connor had their karate gi (yes, gi, it's a karate thing that I had to learn because Connor and his Kyoshi became upset every time I referred to it as an outfit), so those two look a little more officially Ninja. I think. Well, except if you look closely, you'll see that Connor's headband is actually his Halloween necktie.

Talkin' the talk, walkin' the walk…(and please ignore the spaghetti stain on Mark's outfit, I mean gi)

We don't plan it this way on purpose, but we get Grandma (my mom) out to visit us regularly almost every October, so we dress her up, too (at least we didn't dress you up as the Emperor from Star Wars this time, Mom!)! Here's Grandma Ninja with the ninja grandcherubs. (blow this photo up by clicking on it and check out Shelby's face looking at Noah - she is so NOT impressed with his Ninja-ness)

Okay, back to the Trunk or Treat (remember, the weird church thing where the kiddies trick or treat out of cars). As weird as Trunk or Treat may sound to some of you, I LOVE Trunk or Treat and am our family's architect/producer/puppeteer. And fortunately, I have an awesome husband with NO shyness (no shame??) who is always recruited to be my entertainment, doing things *I* would NEVER do. Ha ha!

Here's our tricked-out Ritchie crew, blocking the view of our awesomely tricked-out car (is it tricked-out or tripped-out? Do I sound completely ridiculous?):

We had "Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting" (of course, what else?) blaring from our speakers (over and over, apologies again to Jamie W sitting in the car next to ours, who will now forever hate that song), giving Mark a fabulous opportunity to show off his moves - VIDEO!!! (click to play) Who says university professors are boring old fuddy-duddies? MINE is pretty awesome, eh?

Here's a better view of our decorated trunk, along with Mark fighting off another family's ferocious and very tenacious Ninja. Mark had to defend his "Temple of Candy" against Joshua for pretty much the whole evening. It's a tough crew out Trunk or Treating, you know!

I know this next one is blurry, but this illustrates the perils of Trunk or Treating in late October in New York State - VERY COLD trick or treaters. Look at my little shivering Ninja Noah! And it was only after much whining that I finally let Shelby put on her coat - kids, we live in New York and we trick or treat so ya better toughen up!!! Of course, the cold didn't seem to be stopping Connor from eating all of his collected candy right then and there...

As much as I love Halloween and like to plan the stuff and the show and the decorations, I'm a little lazy with costumes and try to hobnob them together on the cheap. However, NOBODY does costumes like my beloved Rich & Angie Bailey:

Need I say more? These guys are my costume IDOLS. Seriously, guys, those outfits deserve their own party (because wearing them only once in front of a limited audience is cheating the WORLD of your awesomeness). I'm still figuring out how to plan a party for LDS folk (Mormons) and telling them the theme is PIMPIN'. When I figure that out, we'll PAR-TAY, my friends!

Back on the homefront, on the actual 31st of October, we finally relax and chill. Grandma and Shelby were the tag-team for answering our door this year. Mark was taking the bigger Ninjas around the block gathering more candy (since the Trunk or Treat candy from 2 days prior was long gone). As for me, I was relaxing and eating…..ummmm…….carrots!! Yeah, carrots. For sure.

Next year's 2012 Halloween theme is up to Shelby and as soon as the words "My Little Pony" and "Unicorns" were uttered from her mouth, Connor began screaming protests. Sooooooo, stay tuned next year to see what happens there, 'cause THAT should be VERY interesting…

' Tis the season...

2011-10-19T19:31:00.002-04:00

For monsters!!!!

VVVVVVelcome to the monster room! (Dracula accent included for you)

Actually, we finished this monster room for Noah a few months ago, but October seemed like a good month to post about it. Okay, fine, I'm just now getting around to it. Anyway, a couple of my sharp-eyed blog readers spotted a photo of the monster headboard in one of my past blog entries and wanted to know more. So, finally, here is MORE!

Noah wanted a "happy monster" room - nothing scary at all. Well, to be honest, at first he wanted a dinosaur room. Which was cool, but THEN I spotted that monster bedding at GarnetHill.com and immediately talked Noah into a monster room. LOOK at it! Isn't it cute?? I didn't have quite the same budget that I had for Connor's Egyptian room (http://markandestelle.blogspot.com/2010/02/sleepin-like-egyptian.html) but I think we did all right.

Of course, the WOW factor belongs to the headboard. The inspiration is from the monster duvet that started it all. It's just a piece of plywood cut and painted, and the arms are painted directly onto the wall. Is he a happy guy or what? I love looking at that cute little monster face every day (and Noah's face, too).

I'm not loving the car rug in there, BUT it's Shelby's favorite thing in the house to play with (she carries Hot Wheels cars in her girly pink Vera Bradley purse - toooooo cute!), and that rug simply could NOT go in her cute little pink and flowery girly room.

My mom was enlisted to help (isn't she always??) and even made Noah a cute little red monster to live on the bed, along with the purple monster body pillow. And NO, our fish tank is NOT that grody - it's just the green wall coming through the glass (I think). Eeeeep, but it DOES look awful. And don't even ask about the fish tank decor inside - it's a mix of contributions from every kid and it's quite ridiculous, hence the fish tank living in Noah's room and not somewhere more public.

You know, last time I sat down to write a blog entry, I wasn't really feelin' it, but I got going and had myself a good time. I assumed that would happen this time, but I am feeling completely uninspired. However, I am high on Dayquil thanks to a lovely rotten cold (and Mark is gone again, OF COURSE!!!!) and I'm feeling quite grody myself.

Closet doors. What can I say about this? *thinking of something clever, coming up totally blank*

I found this cool light that I thought looked like a 4-eyed googley-eyed monster, and painted it teal to match the headboard and curtain rod. I tried gluing on googley eyes to the light bulbs themselves to make the light look even cooler, but YEAH, epic fail there. They kept falling off when the lightbulbs got hot. Duh! Y'think, Estelle?? I wasn't high on Dayquil that day, so I have no good excuse for THAT. So then I colored them on with a permanent black marker but the heat burned off the marker, too! Anyway, it's now a pupil-less 4-eyed googley-eyed monster, okay?

Noah conveniently already had monster slippers from the past Christmas, so those came out of the closet, so to speak. And check out the cute little homemade drawer knobs.

And HERE is my favorite piece, The Striped Amelia! Is this not the most glorious thing you've ever seen? One thing you should know about me, is that I love whimsical art and I have a Firefox bookmark folder named "GLORIOUS Things to Buy" and I dream of owning a shop called "The Shop of Glorious Things" and even on Pinterest I have a "Glorious" category board. Anyway, equally glorious is ETSY!!! Where else could you find cool things like The Striped Amelia??

Ahhhh, yes, here we have Chicken Chair revisited - please review Chicken Chair's history here - http://markandestelle.blogspot.com/2010/03/christmas-chicken-chair-update-2.html. Anyway, for lack of a better place to keep Chicken Chair and because I REFUSE to get rid of it, I modified it into MONSTER CHICKEN CHAIR. He blends, right?? However, Noah did NOT care one little bit for it eating his other stuffed animal friends, and those victims have since been rescued from the grips of Chicken Chair.

*cue HGTV music * The Big Reveal! Noah's face says it all. *glee!*

Another satisfied customer...

And finally, the monster room actually in use, with Grandma and Noah doing a sleepover in the GLORIOUS and happy monster room! Noah's room doubles as our guest bedroom, aka Grandma's room - someday we'll have an extra bedroom to turn into an elegant guest retreat, but for now, Ritchie guests stay in unique style!

Our last summer hurrah!

2011-09-08T14:24:00.010-04:00

I have TONS of blogging to catch up on, but I'm going to start with what's most recent in my memory and then work backwards (yeah, like THAT will work, you may as well just assume that any other events of the past 4 months are never to be blogged about ).

Well, we finally did it. FINALLY. My little Connor was baptized. *wah* Not wah-ing that he was baptized, but that Connor is 8 years old (actually, he's been 8 since January, hence the "FINALLY" part). Wah. All I can say is that when I'm in charge of stuff (like making people and worlds, etc. - it's a religious thing, don't ask) kids are going to age at a MUCH slower rate. We only have 10 more years with him! WAH.

NOTE: Since many of our blog readers are NOT of the Latter-Day Saint religion, we baptize our kiddos at age 8 (as opposed to birth) since we believe that age 8 best represents an age of accountability. That's what the rulebook says, anyway. We gave Connor a "one-last-day-to-be-mean-to-your-little-brother" and explained that after he was baptized he'd have to be accountable for how he treated Noah and did he really want to repent EVERY SINGLE DAY??? Yeah well, that didn't work. Oh, the be-mean-to-Noah-day worked out just DANDY (for Connor, not Noah!), but Connor evidently feels no guilt about having to repent every single day.

Here's Connor's baptism program, so you can feel like you were there (yes, I designed it, gotta keep the creative juices flowing every once in a while). And because who doesn't want to sing "Follow the Prophet" and all its nine million verses, am I right?

But enough Mommy blubbering for now. Grandma & Grandpa Davis were able to fly in from Idaho for the big event - no wah-ing about that but cheers and hurrahs! And we crammed a lot of fun into our five short days with them - my mom visits 2-3 times a year, but my dad only makes it out here to the big bad NEW YORK (my dad still can't get over the fact that Hilary Clinton was our senator for a while) maybe once every other year.

After Connor's baptism was over, we realized that everyone had left and we didn't have any family photos together! But never fear, we were able to set up the camera on top of our car hood (supported by the only support I could find, Connor's "Sir Farts-A-Lot" book, which my mom thought was VERY inappropriate for church photos, but hey what can you do??) and get some oh-so-treasured family memories, like:

Gosh, I am SUCH a pro. I astound myself. Actually, I blame it on my camera. I hate my camera. I think it may also be to blame for our car's newest clunking sound. It's also surely to blame for the new, stinky cleanser they use at Carrabbas restaurant. And probably global warming, too.

Okay, this is better except for BAD Shelby!! At least you can see her cute dress.

Awwww, Grandma and Grandpa and my little boy sunshine.

Oh ho, Grandma! Your respectable and proper German exterior is cracked! Wait until I set you up on Facebook and make THIS your profile pic! You'll have to get technologically caught up in a hurry to change it! *sneaky heh heh heh noises*

And what celebration of Connor's wouldn't be complete with a meal at Koto? (Connor's favorite hibachi-style Japanese restaurant) Although this time, we had a VERY in-your-face performing chef and Connor very indignantly informed him, "I think you are too dangerous with that fire!!" Oy.

These are my only Koto photos. Again, I blame the camera. It should have reminded me to take photos! Shelby very UNsuccessfully trying her hand at chopsticks (I did NOT photograph the ensuing meltdown). And Noah's stuffed donkey getting sauce all over it. Ahhhh, memories….

During Grandpa & Grandma's trip here, we (sans Mark & Shelby) also took a VERY memorable trip down to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to see the Joseph production at the Sight & Sound Theatre. Now, I talked about this place briefly in Noah's birthday blog entry (click here for linky) but I'm going to blab about it again BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE NOT YET GONE HERE YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO. Hear me, people. When I have I ever led you astray?

Look at this astoundingly gorgeous theatre:

Look at the *astoundingly* attractive people who go to this theatre!:

I've seen at least a dozen shows on Broadway, and this stage is twice as BIG (and it uses the side walls and the ceiling and the aisles), and the sets and the singing are every bit as good as on Broadway. And it has live camels and horses and goats, oh my!

Look at these astoundingly amazing shots of the show & sets (clearly NOT my photos since they actually are really good):

Here's the website link: http://www.sight-sound.com. Go over there AFTER you finish reading my blog and trust me, you will THANK ME. I will accept cookies and tacos in lieu of money.

As always, Connor and Noah's fondest dreams revolve around a hotel with a swimming pool. There is no greater joy in their little boy lives than jumping across between hotel room beds (which is why we always have to request a ground floor, y'know, for when they miss the beds or push each other off - THUNK, waaaaaaaaa!):

Second ONLY to jumping across beds is swimming (and no, Connor is NOT, in fact, dead - I tried to take a photo of him doing a dive and doing a hand-stand on the bottom, but well, this is what my camera got - YES, it's the camera's fault):

Rest stop bonus! A downed tree from Hurricane Irene! Hours of fun for the kids! Yay! (well, not really hours, but at least this poor, deceased tree kept them AWAY from the dog poop area, so YAY!)

Has anyone seen or read Diary of a Wimpy Kid? Remember the cheese touch, the old moldy cheese on the playground that NO ONE can touch for fear of being made fun of and ostracized at school? Well, at this very rest stop we discovered an old piece of bread laying in the grass, and of course, the BREAD TOUCH was created. This dreaded affliction followed our family around for five days until at the very last moment possible, the bread touch was given to Grandma's tushie on her way through airport security - so people in Idaho, BEWARE! The bread touch has left Pennsylvania and New York and has entered Idaho!

Noah then very much needed a nap from his ranting and strenuous poses at the rest stop:

South of Lancaster by only a few miles is the cutest-of-all-cute towns called Strasburg, Pennsylvania. And THIS is why I ADORE the East Coast - colonial, 200-year old houses like these:

I die. (Yes, the new season of Rachel Zoe is FINALLY back on and I'm watching delightedly.) And yes, that IS my hand in the camera lens on the top left of the photo, thanks for noticing. Anyway, these kind of houses with this kind of character do not exist in the west. I could have taken photos of 50 more and posted them here. Want me to?? *loves loves loves*

And if the gorgeous old homes aren't cool enough, then check this out….an old cemetery dating back to the 1700's, simply tucked away behind a little church in Strasburg. I am NOT a history buff and could really care less about history (judge me, go ahead) but even *I* can appreciate this….

A GRAVESITE FOR A SOLDIER FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR!!!!

This cemetery wasn't on any tour maps or whatever, it just looked soooooo interesting (even to me) that I flipped a U-ie in the road and zoomed back to it. There was just something about it that reminded me of a horror movie set, so naturally that drew me in, but it was SO MUCH BETTER!

And look! A grave from a Civil War veteran! OMgosh.

Even after it was getting dark and even after my much-more-history-appreciating parents were done with the cemetery and went back to the car, I was still wandering around looking at gravestones. I could NOT get enough. It was WEIRD! Me?!??

And an extra-special graveyard moment - Noah pointed out this cross and asked me, "Didn't some guy die on one of those?" EEEEEEK. As Connor loves to say, "EPIC FAIL!" Not my proudest parenting moment. As a matter of fact, most of my not-so-proud-parenting moments involve Noah. Hmmmm. We gotta get that kid back to CHURCH, stat!

And….presenting the Grand Finale of our trip!   *~*~* WaWa!!!! *~*~*

So, on the way down to Pennsylvania, I missed a freeway exit and we had, oh…..a FREAKING 2-HOUR DETOUR….getting to Lancaster and the Sight & Sound Theatre.   Fortunately, we'd left with exactly 2 hours to spare.

Thank goodness we had time for a 7-minute lunch at Friendlys where my Dad was able to order his $9.22 fried clam strips!!!!   Only because clam strips were the fastest food they could make, in precisely 45 seconds. (I asked as soon as we got there, what is the fastest food you have?) It's a long story, but I had to include this because these ridiculous clam strips (the leftovers of which sat in my car during the 2.5 hour show performance, totally stinking it up!!) will be *legendary* in our future family tales and memories.

But the golden lining was that by having to take different roads, we discovered WaWa convenience stores!

Okay, so we drive by the first one and I point it out to my dad, "Look at that store! It's called WaWa!" which I pronounced "waugh waugh". Which sounded stupid and silly enough. I mean, it's a weird name, right? So we chuckled about it and kept driving, and then Connor piped up, "No, it's called Wawa!" pronouncing it "waaaaa-waaaa". Like crying baby waa-waa, you know what I mean?

Now, you have to understand, this was *THE* summer for Connor's infamous Aspergers meltdowns during which MUCH waaaa-waaaaing was heard all over the west clear back to New York and every state inbetween. For Connor to find a store called Waaaa Waaaa was absolutely hysterical to us. We laughed and joked and screeched with laughter for MANY many detoured miles and it even got us through a miserable traffic jam in Reading, Pennsylania in relatively good spirits. By the time we FINALLY reached Lancaster, I lamented the fact that I hadn't seen any other WaWa stores because I wanted to get a photo of Connor in front of one. But THEN, guess what? There IS one in Lancaster and of course, I had to do another U-ie in the road and flip back around and take a photo of a surprisingly good-natured Connor in front of the WaWa.

And THEN I decided that since we were there already and we had an extra MINUTE, I might as well fill up my car at the WaWa. And while I was doing that, my dad got out and walked around and to his great delight he found a WaWa gift card laying on the ground. SCORE!!! I didn't want to USE it (and besides, it had a $0 balance, yes I checked), but the phrase was hilarious - "Gotta hava Wawa"???? BWA HA HAH AHH HA HA!!! For the rest of our trip, the WaWa card was offered to anyone complaining:

"Connor, do you gotta hava Wawa?"
"Noah, YOU gotta hava Wawa!!"
"Grandma, do you need the Wawa card??"

And it's like the dreaded cheese touch from Diary of a Wimpy Kid - no one wanted the WaWa card and EVERY SINGLE TIME it stopped the kids from complaining further! Seriously! It was like a gift from the heavens, this discarded WaWa card. And even now, 10 days later, IT STILL WORKS!!!!

Was any of that WaWa stuff funny in the least? Or was this a "you-had-to-be-there" thing??? At any rate, I tell you, if our house catches fire, the first thing I rescue will be my magic WaWa card!

Conversations with Connor at the Cinema, Part Two

2011-05-25T17:13:00.002-04:00

Connor and I went on a Mommy-Connor date to see Pirates yesterday. And as always, Connor proved to be a most entertaining date.

Connor: Those pirates really need to learn how to share.

Mommy: Well, that's true, but that wouldn't be a very entertaining movie then, would it?

Connor: Doing the right thing is not always the popular thing!

Mommy: {speechless}

Connor (keenly interested in the voodoo doll segment): Why can't they make a nice voodoo doll?

Mommy: Ummmm, what would you do with a nice voodoo doll?

Connor: I'd be nice to the person's voodoo doll! I'd get it dressed and comb its hair and brush its teeth! That would be nice.

Mommy (VERY proud Mommy): It surely would, my goodhearted little son.

Connor: I know if they'd asked the mermaids nicely they wouldn't have behaved like that. All they have to do is say please!

Mommy (happy to hear that my harping on saying please for YEARS is really getting through to my kids): True that, my little Padawan.

Connor (after watching Captain Jack Sparrow jump off a cliff): Well, he's lucky he didn't have to jump off Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world, which is in Venezuela, measuring 3,212 feet.

Mommy: {speechless}

Mommy: Hey Connor, did you catch that cool booby trap where he grabbed the icicle-thing and the other dude died?

Connor: Mommy, that wasn't an icicle! It was a stalactite!

Mommy: {stuffs mouth with more popcorn, afraid to speak further}

As you can see, since my last documentation of an entertaining date with Connor (click here for that), our conversation....level?....quality?.....has changed drastically.

As my mom said when I relayed her grandcherub's comments, "Well, it's a good thing you have someone keeping you educated!" Indeed. I think, anyway. There's definitely nothing like realizing your 8-year old is smarter than you are.

She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named

2011-04-20T17:37:00.008-04:00

So, Tuesday, April 19, might have been my worst day as a parent ever. And it pretty much revolved all around my little darling….She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Actually, that WAS indeed what we called her yesterday. Today, I'm *almost* over it, and can go back to calling her Shelby. Besides, typing out She-Who-blablabla is way too much hassle.

Tuesday morning I found myself messing around on my computer (no surprises there). Connor was home because it was spring break, and he was messing around on his computer next to me. Shelby was upstairs, and to my knowledge, playing in Connor's room. I was looking forward to a very quiet and uneventful day, given that Noah was at Zoo Camp all day. You see, in our household, if there's a ruckus or argument or any kind of noise, Noah is involved. I had a friend recently express surprise when I told her that Noah was at the heart of most of our kid ruckuses. Yup, cute little, wide-eyed, usually smiling and joking Noah. He's trouble.

Anyway, back to my Noah-free, trouble-free morning. Shelby was VERY quiet upstairs. And I KNOW I KNOW! It's the first rule of parenting, right? When they're being quiet, it usually means they're up to no good. I called out to her every 15 minutes or so, and each time she'd answer me, "I'm okay, Mommy! I'm not done yet!" Yes, the "I'm not done yet" should have tipped me off. But it didn't. I even had a little conversation with Connor that went something like this, DURING THAT very time she was upstairs:

Mommy: You know, Connor, they always say when a kid is too quiet it means they're doing something bad.
Connor: *smiles*
Mommy: But I never had to worry about that with you. You were a great kid. So is Shelby.
Connor: Noah would get in trouble, though!
Mommy: Yup, true that. Are you sure Shelby is playing with your pyramid set?
Connor: Yeah. She's kind of making a mess, but that's okay.

Yes, that was Connor leading me down the garden path. No, I'm not blaming him. Not very much, anyway.

So, after about 90 minutes of quiet from upstairs and quiet computering between Connor and I, I finally decided I'd better go upstairs to check on Shelby.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

That's not really what I said. If I type what I really said, I think Blogger would flag my blog and delete it.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

There is cat litter. EVERYWHERE.

It's in the hallway.

It's all over the laundry room (where we keep the litter box).

It's all over Shelby's room.

It's in my master bathroom (clear on the other side of the top floor of our house), all over the floor and piled 3 inches high on the windowsill.

It's in Connor's room, all over the floor and a nice little pile on Connor's lower bed.

In each pile of litter is one of Shelby's stuffed animals, also covered in litter.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

The only place unscathed is Noah's bedroom. I can't figure that one out, other than the fact that he left his dinosaur set out and it was kind of blocking the door.

For her to have displaced as much litter as she did, she must have carried at least 50 scoops of litter OUT of the litter box in her little VERY BAD hands. It must have taken her….well…..about 90 MINUTES! 90 minutes of unsupervised time by a VERY BAD Mommy. No wonder she "wasn't done yet!" We do have a child-lock on the laundry room door. And still have baby gates at the top and bottom of our stairs. Of course, they don't do any good if THEY'RE NOT CLOSED!

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

From my perspective, the only break I caught with this was the fact that the cats had not yet done poopies in the letterbox that morning. Who knows where those would have ended up. *shudders* I can't even go there...

So, I snatch my VERY BAD little She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and wash her hands for at least 5 minutes and then stomp downstairs with her where I firmly plop her in front of the TV and tell her that SHE WILL NOT MOVE HER BODY WITHOUT MY SAYSO.

I then realize that I cannot reclaim my upstairs without a Diet Coke to sustain me. A HUGE one. Probably 2 of them. And besides, it's almost lunchtime. And if nothing else (can't claim to be a great hands-on Mom, can I??), I am a champion procrastinator (and justifier). I need nourishment and Diet Coke if I am to tackle what has happened to my house.

Thirty minutes later and we're back home from a Taco Bell run. I'm sitting on the living room couch eating my 7 Layer Burrito, and dousing each bite with lots of TB's Hot Sauce (which I LOVE). I'm also watching Tori & Dean's new wedding plan show. Told ya - I'm a champion procrastinator. What better time to catch up on the 3 DVR'd and unwatched episodes of Tori & Dean than NOW, when the upstairs of my house is virtually uninhabitable (for anything other than cats)? There's one particularly tender moment when the bride comes out and looks so very pretty and everybody starts crying, so naturally I start to shed tears. This blurs my vision, right in the middle of a douse of hot sauce on my burrito. My hot sauce MISSES my burrito and lands on my couch. THE VERY COUCH that just 4 weeks ago I took apart from top to bottom and spent an entire day cleaning and painting and fixing. ^@%$^^#&^&#!! The very couch that I FORBADE anyone to eat anywhere NEAR it.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

And yes, I blame that on She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I wouldn't have been eating a burrito to drown my frustrations if she hadn't done her litter box relocation projects!

Okay, hot sauce mess gets scrubbed out and I'm back on the couch watching my Tori & Dean marathon, trying not to sit in the wet spot. Shelby comes in and says (I thought), "My teeth hurt." She looked so sad that I momentarily forgot about how VERY BAD she'd been and I wrapped my arms around her to hug her and hold her.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

I feel squishy stuff on my arms before I catch the smell. THIS VERY BAD kid has just had the worst poopie blowout of her little life, with it going all the way up her back and up to her neck. And now it's all over my arms and shirt. I know if I ungrip her that it'll get on my AGAIN freshly cleaned couch. !@$%^&%$^&!$%&^!@%$&!! So, still stuck together WITH POOP as our glue, Shelby and I make it upstairs to the kid bathroom. I strip down to near nothingness and then I strip her down, although I just threw her shirt in the garbage. No way was I even going to try and get the huge globs of poop off of it. Besides, I just placed several kid clothes internet orders. She has plenty of shirts, dammit! I then open the toilet up so I can start wiping her down before I toss her in the bathtub.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

There is poop smeared all over the toilet! NOAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! @&*$%*&@#&*@#&!! Noah, who lately has been VERY BAD about wiping his bum BEFORE he slides off the toilet, has left a nice little surprise for me to find later, as if to leave me a memento of him while he's gone away from me at Zoo Camp. So, I have to hold Shelby with one hand so she touches NOTHING, and use my other hand to scrub down the toilet.

I clean the toilet. I clean Shelby. I clean myself. I clean the bathtub. I do 2 loads of laundry (despite the cat litter everywhere which I must walk through and which is sticking to my feet - and at this point I'm really wishing I'd cleaned up the ^#@^&$! litter BEFORE eating lunch). I sweep all non-carpet rooms of litter. I clean our master bathroom (which was hit particularly hard by litter, for whatever reason). I vacuum. And vacuum. And vacuum. I get a new vacuum bag out once it's full of litter. I do this TWO times. About 4:00 I'm finally done cleaning and I come downstairs, only to discover that there was POOPY on the chair Shelby was sitting in during her blowout.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

So I clean up MORE poop. Because it's what I do.

At this point, I call Mark and tell him to pick up Noah and then meet us at Twin Trees restaurant. Now, just that very morning, we'd agreed to curb our eating out at restaurants to save money for our many trips planned this spring and summer. Mark naturally begins to protest, at which point I say, " DO. NOT. QUESTION. ME. DO. NOT." Mark then wisely agrees to meet us there. I should explain that I've been researching "true New York pizza" since in our 8 years here we've never had a good pizza. I know, right?? Anyway, I've compiled a list of 5 supposedly must-try pizzerias in Syracuse, and Twin Trees is the closest. It's not the #1 choice but I seriously canNOT eat one more time at Chilis or Olive Garden without going postal with a fork. Seriously. Syracuse is renowned for bad food (as I've discovered in my pizza research, and after 8 years of my own dedicated research to this cause).

Unfortunately, Shelby wants to sit by me, shrieking "I WANT TO SIT BY MOMMY! I WANT TO SIT BY MOMMY!" Yup, a bond forged in poop (literally) is VERY STRONG. For the rest of the meal, Shelby behaves like an utter terror, so much so that we must have said her name so many times "SHELBY!!!" that one of the waitresses (who was NOT ours) notices one of Shelby's absences (Mark has her in time out) and says, "Oh! Where is Shelby?" BUT, She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is on Mark's clock now and all I have to do is pretend that I don't have any kids and that all I have to do is eat this fabulous pizza. And order 2 more Diet Cokes. Bliss achieved.

Happily, Twin Trees is very family friendly (meaning it's plenty loud so your kids can be loud, too), AND the pizza actually tastes kinda like my beloved, long-lost pizza from Fredricos in Logan, Utah! I'm pretty sure it's not genuine NY style pizza, but I'm happy.

HOLY FREAKING HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!

And today, with Noah at Zoo Camp again, actually DID turn out to be my quiet, relaxed nirvana day. 'Course, I DID buy Shelby a new DS game and let her play on Noah's DS all day long. And locked all of the baby gates.

And um, yeah, I did end up booking my road trip shopping spree for next week that I'd been delaying booking because I felt kind of guilty about it. Maybe by next week (when I'm 1000 miles away from her), I'll be thanking She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Happy birthday cute little freckley Noahdude!

2011-04-13T17:40:00.002-04:00

(Noah saw his name on my computer and asked me to insert "cute little freckley")

And I'm even blogging about it in the SAME month that it happened! Woohoo Mommy! Sorry, Shelby & Connor, that I haven't gotten around to your January birthdays yet. But I'm aging and I gotta go with what's fresh in my memory. It's tough being……29.

Anyhow, here's my happy little 6 year old Noahguy. Boy oh boy do I love this kid. I love his goofy personality and his little elf face and his huge blue eyes. I love that he's all boy and tells obnoxious poopie and toot and burp jokes. I always wanted boys and BOY OH BOY did I get lucky with my 2 fabulous boys!

Moving on, NO, this is not a photo for "Find the kid in all the mess, if you can!" But I think it's really fun when people put baby photos of their kids on their birthday blog entry. Unfortunately, I'm not that organized at the moment and all of our old photos are still on our old computer. However, I came across this gem, from when Noah was about 2. Obviously, he'd tipped over in his little toddler rocker and was too lazy to get up by himself (or stop drinking from his sippy cup). But you can tell he'd been crying about his predicament since his face is pretty red. Springing to action is SUPERMOMMY, always ready with the camera to first document the treasured and potentially embarrassing moment and only THEN offer assistance. So, that's that for the baby photo. I LOVE this photo!

Back to the morning of April 6, 2011 - marking the 6th birthday of NOAH! Here's Shelby and Noah running into the kitchen first thing in the morning to see what the birthday table looked like. I LOVE Shelby's face here (click to blow it up). Oh, and I take no responsibility for Noah's attire (or lack of). He likes to dress himself and on his birthday morning he deemed underwear and his Yankees cap Dressed Enough. Yes, Noah's little 6 year lifetime dream is to be able to live naked. We worry for his future sometimes. But at least he had on underwear, so we counted ourselves as blessed.

Speaking of worrying for the future, check out this shot of Mark and Connor. It's worth clicking on it to blow it up bigger. Are they exact replicas of each other or what? Ay yi yi. I don't know whether to laugh. Or weep?

Okay, a couple of notes here - 1) YES, this is still the camera from Christmas (oh wait, you didn't read about my new camera from Christmas that I don't know how to use because I haven't blogged about Christmas yet either! Crap!) that I don't know how to use and everything inside with a flash is always yellow. 2) YES, our family birthdays look the same every year. A few party store decorations around our kitchen table and balloons. You've seen this scene at least a dozen times here on our blog over the years, right? We seriously need to remodel. Or move. Or celebrate a birthday somewhere in some other way that is NOT in this room. Tell ya what, our next birthday celebration blog documentation will be in our laundry room. Or Tahiti. One of the two.

Back to Nakey Noah (one of his many nicknames, though this one was most apropro for today, no?), here's him working on his MarioKart cake. He looks so skinny! I think I caught him right on the inhale. Someone get that skinny kid some birthday cake!

Speaking of apropro, I saw this book and immediately thought of Noah. And yep, it was a hit.

What was NOT a hit were the 2 sets of nighttime goggles! Neither Connor nor Noah liked them. Yeah, Noah, using your goggles to look at the downstairs bathroom wall is NOT really what they were intended for. What the heck is wrong with these kids?

At least Shelby liked the goggles!

And no birthday would be complete for Noah without a video game gift...

Another birthday treat for Noah was being able to watch TV BEFORE school. This is a VERY. BIG. DEAL. And whaddya know? Spongebob is on at 8:00am. Happy birthday to Noah! (Notice Noah also wearing his favorite bright green argyle socks - aren't they magnificent?)

Unfortunately for him, having a birthday did not exempt Noah from school, so we brought the birthday to him at school with some MarioKart cupcakes that were a big hit in Kindergardenland. We also met Noah's intended, Adrianna. They've been engaged for about 3 months, as it turns out. Evidently EVERYONE in Kindergarden knew about it, including Noah's teacher. Welcome to the family, Adrianna? I guess?? I bet he hasn't told you about his dream to live nakey, has he??

We'd told Noah all morning that he had to wait to get his "big present" until after school. So, speeding out of Kindergarden, Noah and I headed for the mall and went to Build a Bear Workshop! Yup, Noah's dream (aside from being naked in public places) for the past few months has been to have a teddy bear. I ignored that request at Christmas, figuring he didn't really want a teddy bear - I mean, huh??!? Anyway, no wonder the stupid $99.00 Big Foot Robot he got for Christmas was played with only once and just taken to the Goodwill last week! *grouch grouch grouch* I guess he was serious about a teddy bear. Fortunately, Build a Bear was hit and Noah built his dream teddy bear.

So, Noah's dream teddy bear wears a Harley Davidson t-shirt, camouflage shorts, has a skateboard and skateboard helmet and related gear, features a Light Saber on his wrist and plays Star Wars music from his foot. Noah couldn't decide what macho theme his bear should have so he picked some of everything. Oh, and……..wait for it……..Noah named him…….CAREBEAR. Yes, Carebear. The Build a Bear clerk about choked on her drink when Noah told her the name of his macho-looking bear.

To follow up on how Carebear has adjusted to life, the bear itself costs $18. All the accessories and clothes and crap took our total up to $72!!! Carebear is now living Noah's dream for him by residing on his bed NAKED, with all the stupid clothes & crap lounging in a drawer. Yep, another $50 well spent. NOT!

Another birthday tradition for Noah is seeing a movie. And he always wants ME to take him (as opposed to Mark). I generally hate kids movies. BUT, I won't pass up an opportunity to drink a 64 oz fully-loaded Diet Coke, so lucky me got to see Hop with Noah.

And, another Noah birthday tradition, Noah wanted to leave the movie halfway through. Well, BELIEVE ME, so did I, BUT I hadn't yet finished my Diet Coke or popcorn, so I made Noah & Carebear stay for the whole glorious dumb movie.

Finishing up our birthday day, we celebrated in fine style at Dennys, Noah's favorite restaurant. There's not much I can say about this. It's Dennys and it leaves me completely uninspired and even a little nauseous. But hey, it's all about the kids, right? *plasters on fake smile*

Sadly, in the end, April 6, 2011, was a bittersweet day for Noah. It was the birth of naked and overpriced Carebear. But we also had a death that evening. Our Wii died. On Noah's birthday. Could that timing be any worse? Oh, I don't know, let's see how Noah handled that:

The weekend before Noah's birthday we did a little getaway trip. We went to see a production called "Joseph" (not the Technicolor Dreamcoat version, but it was still fabulous) down in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at a phenomenal theatre called Sight & Sound with a stage twice the size of any Broadway stage (plus they use the side walls, the ceiling and the aisles) and JUST as spectacular as any Broadway show I've seen. Seriously, New York peoples, get your tushies down there and go see a show at this theatre.

Naturally, despite the sensational show and even tooling around Hershey Pennsylvania for a bit (yes, HERSHEY as in chocolate - no the town does NOT smell like chocolate, but the Hershey-kiss shaped street lanterns ARE really cute), the highlight of the trip was staying in a hotel with a swimming pool. Oh, and watching TV from bed - the ultimate luxury:

I want to write more about Sight & Sound theatre, but I'm pooping out. I stayed up too late last night drinking caffeine and shopping online. Here's some more pics. They're pretty self-explanatory and you don't really need me to blab more, do you? You just lost another 20 minutes of your life listening to me blab. And yet look. I'm STILL blabbing! And you're still here! *evil laugh*

A few days AFTER Noah's birthday, Noah got a second birthday cake! Noah's church class teacher, Sister Theler, made him a cake! Aside from a naked (but camouflaged!) bear and a hotel with a swimming pool, getting a SECOND birthday cake was one of the most fabulous things to happen to Noah for his 6th birthday. Wowie!

Happy birthday to my little awesome Noahdude! (and yes, that is his DS, pretty much permanently attached to his arm)

Mourning...

2011-04-04T19:44:00.002-04:00

Last week we had dinner and a group Family Home Evening lesson with the Lentz family and most of the younger kids didn't know what "mourning" meant. Given our company for FHE, I immediately piped up with, "Mourning is what we're going to be doing when the Lentzs' move away."

*heavy sigh* Yes, one of our favorite families for which we have a supreme affinity (thanks, Mike - you say ice cream, I say YOUR FAMILY!), are moving 2000 miles away. I'm excited for them because they're moving back to be close to their families and I TOTALLY understand that. But goshdarnit if it doesn't just break our hearts. Because they are OUR family, too!

My first memory of the Lentzs was them attending one of our New Years parties and they immediately jumped into the party and had a great time doing karaoke for all. That's when I had inklings of their grooviness. But we hadn't yet become friends.

The next memory I have is a strong and significant one. We'd just returned home to New York from a year's sabbatical of living in southern California (5 years ago), and during that time one of our "best friend" families, the Birds, had moved away to Idaho in our absence. It took me weeks to not cry when I drove by their old house. Anyway, within a few weeks of returning to New York, I became severely ill. When I realized how sick I was, I knew that we were going to need help.

Here's the thing about non-Utah LDS wards (LDS is Latter Day Saint, aka Mormon). A ward is a geographical group of families that are LDS and wards attend church together and do other activities together. At least half of the families in our ward are what I call transplants, meaning we moved TO New York for jobs and we don't have family nearby. By my deduction, our family and the Lentzs were the unlucky members who were furthest away from any speck of family - 2000 miles (Pat Browne now wins that unfortunate honor with her family being in Chile). Anyway, in these situations, your ward becomes your family - in good times and in bad. You rely on each other *profoundly* and in so doing, become actually closer than in areas/wards with thick concentrations of LDS. My humble opinion anyway, don't flame me, Utah Mormons!

Back to me getting sick. When I knew how sick I was, I remember crying to Mark, "What are we going to do? The Birds moved away! Who can help us???" Now, I knew that at that time, we could have called ANYBODY in our ward and they would have helped us - LDS wards tend to be like that, and we really did have more friends than just the Bird family. But within in our ward boundaries, we lived on the outskirts of that boundary, with only a couple of LDS families nearby at all - the Birds were closest, followed by the Lentzs. But it's still hard to ask for help, ya know? Anyway, after I cried that to Mark, I distinctly remember him saying, "You know what? We're going to call the Lentzs because I have a feeling they are SOLID GOLD." Yep, Mark called them Solid Gold.

A few minutes later Eric Lentz was in our hallway, just having finished giving me a Priesthood blessing, when I did him the favor of puking all over the hallway and bathroom right in front of him. For all I know, it was on him, too. Like I said, REALLY sick. I then remember Connor or Noah coming into the hallway, very scared, and Eric immediately taking him away from the situation so they didn't have to see me bent over the porcelain throne making all manner of noises, not to mention making sure my little fellow didn't step in the mess already in the hallway. Eric then immediately took Noah and Connor to his house, and that's the last I saw of them for several days.

Over the next 5 days in the hospital, all I knew was that the Lentzs (with the help of another friend, Karen Walsh) were taking care of my family. My boys even slept over there at least a couple of times during that time. It's still strange to me to know that there were 5 days of their young lives that I have no idea what they did or ate or where they slept. But I knew I didn't have to worry about a thing. And friends with the Lentzs we became, forged in the grossness of pukery!

Is there a higher metal than gold, something more fabulous and more valuable and more treasured? The Lentzs were not just solid gold, but solid *PLATINUM*.

Connor ADORES the Lentzs. And what kid wouldn't? Their house is full of kids and toys and pets, and outside they have a swimming pool, a canoe pond, playground, trampoline, horses. HORSES!! Actually, my kids don't even care about the trampoline or playground or pool or horses - they care about just BEING with the Lentzs and all their positive energy and fun.

Connor has begged me several times over the past few years to have 6 siblings, "just like the Lentzs!"

A couple of years ago, we were car shopping. Connor pleaded with us to get a limousine so that "we could fit all the Lentzs and take them with us!"

Also, a while back, we needed Connor to get to church when we couldn't go. We called - wait for it - yes! The Lentzs! Connor was a little nervous at first to attend church without us, but after we told him he got to be "Connor Lentz" for the day, that sealed the deal! He was thrilled to be able to go to church with them and sit with their family and indeed was broken-hearted the next day when he asked us if he could still be Connor Lentz, and we had to inform him that no, actually, we wanted him back in our family as Connor Ritchie.

Jamie has been our only babysitter for nearly 5 years! I'm sure all parents everywhere understand the terror that goes with "Our babysitter is moving away!" Jamie, our kids adore you and the kids always cheered when they found out it was Mommy & Daddy date night because they knew they would see you. And I don't just think it's because they associate you coming with Little Caesars pizza. I think they love you anyway, Jamie, pizza or no pizza!

The Lentzs are, without a doubt, one of the BEST families we've ever had the privilege to know. As Mark and I were talking about their upcoming move, our conclusion was that their leaving is going to leave a huge HOLE in the Liverpool Ward. Not just for us, but everyone. Where are the Scouts going to do their winter camping? Where will we ice skate? Where will we spend our Thanksgivings (at least half of our Thanksgivings here over the years have been with the Lentzs)? Who will befriend those who need friends? One of the traits I most admire about Julie especially, is her ability to befriend everyone, with no regard to cliques or status and all that nonsense.

We just finished our Family Home Evening this evening, and it was kinda sad and lonely with just us, and no Lentzs. Noah even tried to make the joke that he wanted to sing Womanizer (an old joke amongst our families - we attended a FHE at the Lentzs house a year or so ago and when asked for song choices, Noah immediately piped up with "Womanizer!" Yup, a proud parenting moment for me.) - anyway, it wasn't the same without Mike & Jamie cackling about it again.

We love you, Eric & Julie & Jamie & Mike & Rachel & David & Megan & Daniel & Kiplyn. And Coco & Prancer, too - you've been part of our family on several occasions, too! Thank you for always being there for us no matter what, and for being such great friends and examples. Our only consolation is that at least you're moving to a state which we visit somewhat frequently, and we already can't wait for our Lava Hot Springs date with you this summer!

Crikeys people!!!!

2011-01-22T08:59:00.008-05:00

44 pageloads of my blog yesterday and not one of you lazy patooties can leave a comment?!? Pffft!! Was it the 4 paragraphs devoted to my cat in my last entry??? You could comment about that, too, ya know. Any semblance of even a PEEP would be appreciated!

Whooooooo is out there looking at us? Show yourselves and be proud! And even if you're not proud to admit you're reading our blog (though this makes NO sense whatsoever!), at least say SOMETHING. Please!

Just squeakin’ this one in!

2011-01-21T11:13:00.048-05:00

Okay, if I get our 2010 birthdays blogged about the DAY before our 2011 birthdays start, it still counts, right? Whew!

Connor turned 7 in January 2010 in grand Egyptian style!You may remember that last year was the year of Egypt and hieroglyphics studies for Connor and he even has his own Egypt room now – check out THIS coolness by clicking here. Okay, moving on, we celebrated with a fabulous pyramid cake, Egyptian masks, statues, jewelry, etc!!

Now we have the arrival of the grandest birthday present – lllaaaaaahhhhhh! - a Nintendo DS – Connor’s dream come true at last!! Egypt was quickly forgotten (although all the kids wore the jewelry pretty much all day, and Shelby still does!).

Here’s Connor showing the prized DS to Shelby and Noah.

And here’s the inevitable (you saw it coming, right?) screaming when Shelby and Noah discover that the DS is NOT for them.

But later all was quiet on the Ritchie front as the three kiddos were happily engrossed in their games – Connor on his DS and Shelby and Noah FINALLY content with playing on their old, nerdy and soooo uncool Leapster game units.

But hey, the good thing about the DS was that the kids were so engrossed in it that we did NOT have to go to Chuck E Cheeses later! Yessssss! Our evil plan worked!

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Moving on to Shelby’s 2nd birthday a week after Connor’s – it was all about Dora! Dora cups, Dora plates, Dora cake, Dora presents. Shelby is a cake-eating machine and outdoes her brothers (and previous cake-eating machine champion Grandpa) with ease. Here she is pointing at the cake.

Here she is pointing at her plate. Cake. Plate. Cake plate. CAKE ON PLATE, people!!!!!!

In addition to cake, Shelby REALLY likes those music-playing and talking cards. She was *very* irritated that the card from Grandma and Grandpa did NOT serenade or talk to her:

And here she is, Shelby now (well, then, but you know what I mean) AND I’m certain this is also a glimpse into her in 10 years. Here she is strutting her cute little stuff in her birthday pink tutu and her new birthday pink Vera Bradley purse, complete with pink phone, lipstick, credit card, etc – everything a girl could need! Yes, I *may* have gone a bit overboard.

This is one of my all-time favorite photos of Shelby with her purse, tutu, jewelry galore and talking on her phone, and yet I wonder, what am I creating??

As a matter of fact, just this morning Shelby "called" me on her pink Disney phone and said, "Hi Mommy! I'm a princess! Goodbye!" click. And speaking of what am I creating????, here’s Meatball dressed up for the occasion. It was all very undignified and embarrassing and I’m pretty sure he then hid upstairs for the next 3 days.

And finally, if I were writing the caption to this photo it would be: “Yeah yeah, you have to be nice to me, but it’s not like I got a DS or something cool like that.”

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I’m afraid that Noah’s fifth birthday wasn’t well documented. Mommy fail! Especially after his fourth birthday escapades were so memorable (click here to get some of THAT fun). But maybe after that traumatic birthday Noah needed a low-key birthday. So, this is all I’ve got for ya, folks.

Spiderman was our theme of the day. And YES, that’s Dora wrapping paper you spy on the presents for Noah. What? You didn’t know that Dora and Spiderman hooked up? Mmmm hmmmm, it was all very scandalous.

And once we realized how FABULOUS DSs are for entertaining kids (yes, I said it, everybody knows it and everybody does it so don’t act like you don’t), naturally we got one for Noah’s birthday! Peace was restored to the Universe at last. But only AFTER Connor complained for HOURS about how HE didn’t get his DS until he was 7 and why did Noah get to have one when he was only 5?!??!?

And since Shelby and Connor’s birthdays had fairly decent photographic representation, I feel compelled to put this photo in along with this equally scintillating description – On Noah’s birthday we went to Carousel Mall to ride the carousel. That’s my dad (aka Grandpa) with Noah.

That’s it, Noah’s birthday 2010 folder only had 5 pathetic photos in it – these 3 were the best. Yeah, I know. He was gypped, to be sure (although he DID get a DS two years earlier than Connor). I’ll do better this year.

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As many of you know, Mark had the BIG ONE this year, warranting its own extremely lengthy (but quite entertaining, if I do say so myself) blog entry – refresh and relive the memories by clicking here.

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And then there’s Mommy, last on the totem pole. Last birthday every year. Yup, you mommies out there know what I mean. Look at my birthday table. No Egyptian or Spiderman or Dora themes for me. Not even a birthday cake.

BUT in my family’s defense, I don’t even like cake (but I do LOVE those little mini Wegmans brownies) and the partyware WAS red, my favorite color. And I don’t even care much about Egypt or Spiderman or Dora. Mark evidently couldn’t bring himself to do me a Clive Owen-themed birthday party. Whatevs. At least he didn't put out 42....no wait, I mean.....29...birthday candles.

All was redeemed later when Mark blindfolded me and put us all in the car to venture out on a mystery trip. Well, it was a mystery for about 10 minutes anyway, until Noah piped up, “Hey, this is the way to Zoo Camp!”

I’m not a zoo person. I don’t like animals in captivity. I’d rather they be in their natural environment even if it means I never see them for myself. All the talk of conservation, bla bla bla. And yes yes yes I know most zoo animals are bred in captivity and can’t survive in the wild on their own, but I’ve never been to a zoo that didn’t make me feel horrible for the animals, not even the renowned San Diego zoo. HOWEVER, absolutely nothing is more important to me than teaching my kids the value and gift of animals and the meaning of stewardship. SO, go to the zoo we will until they make their own decisions and opinions about it. *insert Heath Ledger’s Joker face (RIP Heath – LOVED ya in Ten Things I Hate About You) here* Oooooo Estelle why so serious? Okay, enough of that.

Yep, little bigmouth Noah was right, we went to the Zoo, where I was unblindfolded and discovered that I had become an adoptive parent to the sandcats! Well, yay!! I LOVE the little sandcats!! They have a horrible environment, and every little bit of donation helps, I guess. I hope. Here’s Connor and Noah looking at my sandcats. It was a FABULOUS birthday present – ya did good this year, Mark!!! This seems an appropriate time and place to mention that Tahiti would be even better for next year. Just sayin'.

And finally, a new family member was added to our family for my birthday – say hello to FINNEAUS! BEST PRESENT EVER! Well, after getting LASIK eye surgery. And after getting my BMW. But….THIRD BEST PRESENT EVER!

Okay, three funny stories about Finneaus. Noah and I (Noah is my fellow animal-loving little fellow) were in Petco probably buying litter and pet food and whatnot when Noah sped over to the cat cages (organized by Syracuse’s fabulous CNY Cat Coalition). He completely ignored the funny, cute kittens playing and focused only on this sedate orange cat. Now, we already had 3 cats with no intention of getting a 4th, I mean we’re not CRAZY, ya know. Not too much, anyway. After Noah playing and talking about this orange cat for about 20 minutes, I finally had to appease him and told Noah, “Look I’m writing down his phone number, okay? Maybe we can call about him later.” And Noah then INSISTED that we leave the cat HIS phone number, too – TOO CUTE!!!

Anyway, I couldn’t get that cute little orange cat out of my mind (and neither could Noah). I told Mark about him and then….SURPRISE! New cat for Mommy’s birthday! YAY!

2nd funny story – I named my birthday cat Finnick (after one of my favorite characters in The Hunger Games book series). HOWEVER, upon finishing the series, it turns out that Finnick …ummmm..err….. doesn’t make it! So anyway, Finnick’s name quickly and quietly was changed to Finneaus. Cool enough, right?

3rd funny story – less than a month ago (meaning 5 months now that we’ve had Finneaus) I was reviewing my cat adoption paperwork and discovered that Finneaus is a GIRL!!!! Now SHE is a lovely (and strangely-named) Finny and I ADORE her. (seen here with Indiana – unseen are my two other little cat-loves Meatball and Pequop)

And, somewhat tragically and surely frustratingly, Connor has figured out my true age. For years I was able to tell him I was 29 and he believed me. Well, one year anyway. And when 29 didn’t change to a different number the next year, my then-too-smart-little-three-year-genius-son figured out something was amiss. And sometimes I keep funny Facebook conversations to put in my scrapbooks (which actually don’t exist yet, therefore I blog), such as this one on my birthday last year with my friend Betsy:

But at least all THIS year Connor was convinced that I was actually one year younger than I actually am. I’ll take it!

 Alrighty then, it's time for me to quit blabbering now and I'm certain you are thinking to yourself "Did I really just spend 20 minutes reading about Estelle's new cat?!?!??" I need to go prepare for Connor’s eighth birthday which is TOMORROW!!!Told ya I squeaked this entry in!

Mark! Don't You Wish You Were Here?!?

2010-12-06T19:17:00.026-05:00

A post dedicated to my absentee husband, who is in Africa. AGAIN. I don't even know what country he's in today. Tanzania? Kenya? Botswana? One of those. All I know for sure is that he's gone AGAIN for three stinkin' weeks, and of course it's during our first Nor'easter of the winter season.

Markli, here's all the snow you don't have to shovel (but gosh is it GORGEOUS or what):

(News story about our record-breaking snow event: http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=552153 )

Markli, here's the grubby kids that you don't have to clean (though I'd still smooch her):

Markli, here's the meatballs that you didn't have to dress up as faces to make Noah eat them:

Markli, here's the meltdowns about video games that you don't have to deal with:

Markli, here's the dog WHO NEVER STOPS BARKING despite every anti-barking device and measure known to mankind, and who GUESS WHAT?? LOVES the snow and will run around in circles for an hour barking non-stop, the dog that YOU don't have to chase around in a foot of snow to get to come back in the house. Miss him?? Next time he goes to Africa with you. I am amazed that Doug is snowblowing for us (4 times in the past 2 days already) given how much they must hate Rocky.

Truth be told, what I mostly miss about having Mark around is cleaning our 2 freakin' litter boxes 2 freakin' times a day (who the heck thought 4 cats was a good idea!??!), BUT don't worry, I won't post those pictures here.

Nahhhhh, my spoiled husband gets to truck around in exotic countries, stay in nice hotels (yes, there are some seriously swanky hotels in Africa), get his laundry done, get his meals fixed or purchased, talk to grownups all day, and get stalked by the occasional terrifying lion (yes, that really happened).

Yeah, I'm kinda bitter. So, I'm off to do some more online shopping. Take THAT, husband!! Hmmpff.

UPDATE ONE HOUR LATER:
Okay, so this post was a bit whiny and indulgent. Here's the good stuff that you're missing, Mark:

Would I trade being with these maddening yet absolutely magical little people in for 3 weeks of swanky hotels, prepared food, laundry done, exotic travel, and a lion encounter? No.

But I WOULD trade 'em in for one week of all that (sans lion)!! And I got my 9 millionth email offer today from the Bellagio. So, I'm booking my week for Vegas in January. Betsy, thanks for the tip, because THAT invoice total will probably DEFINITELY get Mark back here in a hurry!!

And Markli, here's what I know you miss most of all - me sitting in the front of the computer happily online shopping and planning my exotic Vegas vacation. But when did my nose get so wide??!?! Cheap stinkin' webcam making me look all bad for my husband. Hmmpff.

I love you anyway, Markli. And I really hope you don't become a lion's snack.

We gave up...

2010-12-02T09:27:00.017-05:00

...on trying to get a picture-perfect family Christmas photo and I'm just too lazy this season to fix 'em up with Photoshop, so we just let 'er rip with the goofy faces.

Obviously Mark and Noah were still in Halloween-mode with the psycho-Frankenstein faces. My only funny face consists of hanging my tongue out. I'll do better next year, I promise. Connor's chosen "look" was that of wearing his glasses as a mustache. And, as usual, Shelby refuses to lower her perfect princess self to her family's silliness level and is seen here wondering if there might be a more respectable family out there to adopt her?

I know, I know, what's with all the tongues? I dunno. We're weird and kinda creepy that way, I guess.

We DID get a cute one of the kids - this one's for you, Grandma & Grandpa:

So, here's our 2010 respectable, somewhat traditional, and even elegant card (and yeah, no, we're not sending out our family Christmas novel anymore - that's what our blog is for now! And we're proud tree-huggers. Or at least we try to be. Kinda.).

Annnnndddddddddd.....here's the winning photo - because we certainly don't want to be seen as TOO traditional and respectable, that's for darn sure! Nobody out there sees us as traditional and stodgy, do they? Perish the thought!!

And finally, of course, it wouldn't be Christmas for us without one of our favorite family traditions - JibJab videos! Wwoooohhhhhh raahhh rahhhh rahhhhh! Connor & Noah's favorite video was the JibJab "tooting" Christmas video (you know what tooting is a euphemism for, right?), but I opted to post the more "tasteful" rock star video instead - we'll keep the tooting video just for us and our "special" (i.e., taste-LESS) times. I did NOT use Mark and I in the tooting video (though I should have put Mark in there, he totally belongs), so I guess we're safe from future embarrassment, but anyway.....ROCK ON, peeps, and have a fabulous holiday season!

Lessons learned from Dunkin Donuts

2010-11-28T15:21:00.013-05:00

So here's what I'm talking about when I say that my kids are each totally different from the other, especially Connor and Noah. A recent outing to Dunkin Donuts provided a perfect opportunity for my little gang to showcase their funny differences (and to add a new word to my vocabulary).

Shelby: -no words- She just digs in and really doesn’t waste time with needless chatter. She loves sweets and nothing will stop her from savoring every bite.

Noah’s experience: “Oh boy! My doughnut looks just like a BRAIN!”

More from Noah, cackling LOUDLY: “Look! My brain has gooey stuff in the middle!!! I’m EATING my brain!!! HA HA HA HA!!”

Meanwhile, Connor's observation: “Wow! Look, the bag has a rebus on it!”

Mommy: “What the heck is a rebus?!?!?”

Connor: “Mommy! DUH! It’s when pictures are substituted for words to make a sentence or tell a story.”

Okay, don't sit there and pretend like YOU know what a rebus is. Mark claims that he knew what it meant. Whatevs.

Anyway, just another day in our household where Mark and I look at each other and shake our heads and wonder, how the heck are we going to keep up with Connor’s brain? I do take a little comfort in knowing that at least Connor still (inexplicably) finds humor in Noah's endless jokes and stories about poopies - rampaging poopies, talking poopies, singing poopies, etc.

Happy Halloween!!

2010-11-02T23:04:00.021-04:00

September 30 is one of the BEST days of the year! It’s the day our Halloween decorations come out! And Connor and Noah love it as much as I do – yay!!

Here’s Connor welcoming our beloved and favorite and first Halloween decoration, Ghosty, back and out of the box where he lives 11 months of the year (Ghosty, that is, NOT Connor!):

Noah giving his greetings hug to Ghosty. Cute, right? What you don’t see is in these photos was the boys later discovering Ghosty was an excellent karate punching and kicking bag! I had to wipe Ghosty down to remove the footprints from his stomach and backside.

Connor also contributed to our Halloween decorating efforts by making a diagram of where all of our decorations go, so we could remember for next year. He also added warning signs of “Boo” and “Beware.”

Noah drew…..uh…..a bunch of triangles.

***And, VOILA, we present to you the Ritchie 2010 Halloween house!***

It may appear that we are the only house on our street, but what you don’t see are our twenty-plus BORING neighbor houses.

We did add to our Halloween decorations this year (as we do every year) by adding a phantom ghost to our back yard. I thought a spooky figure in our back forest would be kinda cool and I really wanted a Frankenstein or something like that, but all that Lowes had left in mid-October was this phantom ghost. So, Phantom Ghosty came home with me and was set up. How awesome and creepy does he look in those trees ???

The kids refused to have their photo taken with Phantom Ghosty, unless they were “protected” by me, so here we are…..look at Noah & Shelby’s faces! Those were two very nervous little skeletons.

And now we need to take a solemn moment: Ghosty, whom you saw in the above photos (but who did NOT make it into the final photos – darn), died a sudden death on October 23, 2010. Whether it was the appearance of Phantom Ghosty in the backyard (who was NOT brought home to replace you, Ghosty – no one could do that!!) or the severe karate beatings he sustained from the boys, we will never know. Mark threw him unceremoniously in our trash can before an autopsy could be performed. Ghosty was our first Halloween decoration and the one that the kids LOVED to see come out every year. RIP beloved Ghosty. We will never forget you.

I just had to throw this photo in because it’s so stinkin’ cute – after a full afternoon and evening of Halloween decorating, the boys did a sleepover in Noah’s room and I caught ‘em like this:

I also usually decorate inside of our house, even moreso than the outside, but this year kept it just to the front foyer. It’s very tame (although half of these are talking devices and make a HECK of a lot of noise), but here ya go:

Another Halloween tradition of ours is to drive around and look at decorated Halloween houses. We’ve driven through nearly EVERY neighborhood in Syracuse and its suburbs, I KID YOU NOT, and ours is still probably the best, although this year the number of spectacular houses has noticeably dwindled. WHAT UP FUDDY DUDDY PEOPLE?!?!? Now, our Halloween tour takes us to only about 6-7 reliably decorated houses every year. And yes, the boys get to ride unleashed (as it were) in the back of the SUV with their stuffed animal friends. We’ve trained them to duck quickly and hide if a car comes up behind us and discovers our illegal child (and stuffed animal?) endangerment.

And no, the big huge car emergency kit separating them from touching each other does NOT last for more than 4 minutes or so. It never fails that someone’s head hits the roof or a leg gets caught in a blanket or some other equally horrible thing happens and one of them must finish the Halloween tour back in their seat with their seatbelt on, screaming about how unfair their life has become.

Moving on, I finally convinced Noah that he had the perfect forehead for tattoos. Hey, when I'm right, I'm right, am I right?

Call us nerds if you will (though keep in mind we teach our kids that being nerds means you’re cool and unique and smart and if you’re called a nerd it means people are actually jealous of you), we do a family theme every year. This year it was Connor’s turn to pick, and we ended up being an archaeology team. Mark, Connor and I were dressing like Indiana Jones, and Noah and Shelby were our amazing and stupendous fossil finds in their skeleton costumes. Shelby was tagged as "Humanus Pinkus" and Noah was tagged as "Skeletorus."

Editors note: I just re-read our Halloween 2009 entry and saw that Connor had wanted us to dress up in Greek costumes for this year - thank goodness he opted for archaeologists instead. You don't want to see us in togas in late October in New York. You really don't.

Shelby’s “costume” is actually pajamas (hey, SOMEtimes I can be thrifty), and she wore them for three straight days. When I finally peeled them off of her (indeed, they were nearly fossilized to her body) and tossed ‘em in the washing machine, she CRIED and wailed for her beloved pink “skellie” pajamas.

The larger fossil is now unmasked, and none too happy at his being discovered, even if it was by the notorious Indiana Jones:

And what can I say? Sometimes good fossils go bad and turn on their own kind….

Next year is Noah’s turn to pick our family theme, and he’s already decided we’ll all be ninjas! Whoopee! Can you imagine the fun we’ll have with that theme???!?! Of course, Noah will be only 6 next Halloween, and that means there’s a high probability we could actually be dressed next year as Mario and Luigi, or Scooby Doo, or whatever other video game characters dominate Noah’s goofy mind. But I’m gonna work on the ninja angle. I know I’ve only got a couple more years before they start rebelling against the nerdy family theme, so while I’m still bigger and bossier than them, I’ll work it!

Oh, and Connor informed me that our Halloween decorations are too childish. He says he’s ready for the scary stuff. OH YOU JUST WAIT LITTLE BOY. You just wait. I’ll give ya a scary Halloween smackdown. Tune in here next year - same time, same blogspot - for some of THAT action.

Surprise! Mark says ALOHA to another decade gone...

2010-09-16T16:07:00.018-04:00

*Editor’s Note: Yes, I’m a wordy blogger, but since I only blog every couple of months, I want our devoted readers to get their money’s worth, so pop yourself some popcorn, grab a Diet Coke (oh wait, that’s MY preferred snack, yes PLEASE get me some, too!), and prepare to sit and read for a while. And as an extra-special treat, I’ve also included a record-breaking number of amazing photos for your gawking pleasure.*

So, in August, Mark celebrated QUITE a landmark birthday – the BIG one, if you know what I mean. Out of consideration for Mark and the spry & youthful reputation he must maintain, I won’t name any incriminating and potentially embarrassing numbers.

I was able to successfully pull off a surprise luau party for Mark’s birthday this year, due to two VERY important factors – I happen to be a fantastic, poker-faced liar, and Mark happens to be extremely gullible and trusting. Oh yes, we make an excellent pair.

Our fellow party-loving friends, Rich and Angie, volunteered their crib for the festivities and we had it decked out with awesome tiki torches (that were later used by kids to toast their crackers – uhhhh, okay, yeah, that must have tasted good), Tiki bubble blowers and glowing lanterns, the world’s worst & cheapest piñata, and ALL manner of tacky Party Store Hawaiian decorations! Then we invited just a few close friend families to Mark, and okay, NOW it’s a party!

{Read this next part as a rhyme, prepare to be amazed at my talent}

Cake and kebabs and pineapples, oh my!

And the final treat – the kids banished outside to eat!

We had some serious limbo competitions going on. Wha??? Really? Okay, well, no, not really. But it was still pretty darn funny!

I think as Eric went under, the limbo-stick-holders lowered the limbo stick onto Eric’s throat thereby cutting off air circulation, resulting in this most hilarious photo (you’ll want to enlarge this one):

Angie came through the limbo gauntlet doing more of a cha-cha rather than a limbo? I dunno, you take and look and decide:

Though he put up a good fight and went through 2 or 3 rounds, eventually Alan succumbed to the worthy opponent of the limbo stick:

I didn’t include this next photo to show off Mark’s stellar limbo skills, since obviously he’s totally cheating (or else too old to limbo!!!) – look closely at this photo – what is Alan doing to his baby?? This cracks me up.

Patricia was quite the game limbo queen, only narrowly losing the adult champion title:

And our adult limbo champion title went tooooo….Melissa! That chica can BEND! Is that NORMAL? Goodness gracious.

Wait, what am I saying???!? That’s just freakin’ FREAKY! Melissa, you EARNED your Dora The Explorer bubble blower prize, that’s for sure!

Our youth limbo champion title was claimed by Nathan (thanks for the correct twin ID, Kelsey!). Indeed, he even dressed for success in a shirt with “AWESOME ends with ME” – how could he NOT win?

And amongst the festivities, a poignant photo of starcrossed love was captured. It goes like this….Shelby R. and Blake M. were born only 3 weeks apart . Their mothers, Estelle and Marci, are good friends and immediately arranged the future marriage of this cutest little girl and grooviest little boy. Over the past nearly 3 years, Shelby and Blake have been thrust together numerous times in order to foster their eternal partnership. Blake has been cooperative and even quite charming and knows that he must cough up some SERIOUS bling in order to win fair (and shallow and jewelry-obsessed) Shelby, but Shelby still has not accepted this future. Doesn’t this photo say it all? Look at Blakey gazing wistfully as Shelby tosses her hair and refuses to have her photo taken with him:

Shelby, you can play hard-to-get for only so long, because look - Brooke was willing to play hula hoops with Blake, and Brooke is awfully cute, too, and MUCH friendlier!

Oh well, if Shelby turns out half as gorgeous as her favorite babysitter, Jamie, she’ll be able to gracefully attend Blake and Brooke’s wedding with Justin Bieber on her arm (or some other kid celebrity, like that kid in the denim Huggies commercials) and grant B&B well and happy wishes.

Oh, but Blakey, look at Shelby’s hula moves!!! OMGoodness, is she a DOLL or what?!?!?? These photos make me melt.

And check out that grass skirt - Angie and I purchased different grass skirts at different times from different places, and these skirts were supposed to fit 14+ and “all sizes”. After we SPECTACULARLY unsuccessfully attempted to try these ridiculous skirts on (NO, there are no photos of this!), we (Rich and Angie and Jordan and I) decided to hang the stupid things on the wall (and around the toilet, in an inspired decorating moment for Rich) for decorations. (I likes me some parentheses, eh?)

Speaking of hula hoops, yeah yeah, I made our guests play that lame hula hoop game where you have to hold hands and get the hoop through and around everyone – needless to say when it was grownups vs. kids, the kids trounced us. HOWEVER, the silver lining….when I first saw this photo below and blew it up, I COULD. NOT. STOP. LAUGHING. Okay, go now, blow it up and look.!! LOOK at Angie and Alan (NOT Angie’s husband) holding hands and GUFFAWING, like they have an illicit secret, with sweet and unsuspecting Rich (Angie’s husband) in the foreground, totally clueless to Angie and Alan’s devious mocking of him. Is this hilarious or what? Is that what you see in this photo, too? Or it really just an innocent, stupid hula-hoop game? Or am I a raving X-rated, dirty-minded lunatic?

All good parties get crashed, right? This party was crashed in AWESOME style, quite literally. Thank you, Aiden, for the party-stopping and jaw-dropping run RIGHT. THROUGH. THE. SCREEN. DOOR. Toppling toddlers, spilling Tiki bubble blowers, crushing tomato plants…. (thankfully this was not MY screen door – VERY smart of me to do this party at someone else’s house, eh?)

Aiden, here comes your mom! Dude! You are SOOOO in trouble!!!

Okay, so you remember (3 hours ago and 10 pages ago) my mention of the world’s cheapest and worst piñata? The stupid thing kept coming detached from its hanging-thingy-thing. Here’s Eric trying to fix it, and look at his kids faces in the background (blow it up) – Rachel looks mad enough to......well, mad enough to beat the heck out of a stupid, cheap-a$$ piñata! Bwa ha ha!!

We finally had to poke the stupid piñata through its eye on a tree branch to get it to stay up!

Jordan put this sorry excuse for a piñata out of its misery by knocking not only the piñata, but ALSO the branch through its eye holding it up, right off the tree! Revenge (especially if it involves hitting something) is schweet.

Check this out, Rich can do quite the rockin’ Maori dance! Or maybe it was just the high derived from piñata candies that got into Rich? And uhhh, Connor was the nearest bystander…

Connor doesn’t know what’s more embarrassing – Rich’s moves or the fact that his mommy made him wear a grass skirt and then took photos to immortalize and preserve this future-therapy-inducing experience.

Happy large-number birthday Mark! And you’d better REMEMBER, for my next “landmark” birthday (yes, that would be 30), *I* do NOT like surprise parties (unless it’s a surprise party happening in Tahiti).

Peace out from the groovy and remarkably photogenic (and yes somewhat nerdy since I dressed us all up in matching Black Dog tie-dye shirts) Ritchie fam:

Introducing upstate New York's newest AMAZING water park!

2010-07-04T12:47:00.028-04:00

Introducing the newest waterpark in Upstate New York - RITCHIE RIDES! With a beautiful treed setting, fenced and safe, and featuring toddler AND bigger kid slides:

And both are conveniently located together, a perfect harmony! .....usually....

We have a smaller, cozy size so that you don't have to worry about losing your children (UNlike those other huge, impersonal water parks that we won't mention here because they simply can't compare to us. Unless you want to lose your kids for a while, in which case we have a handy, secret gate opening to the forested wetland behind our park):

Our water park boasts sophisticated, cutting-edge engineering of our water flow output by our resident professional water park engineer (you may need to enlarge this photo to fully see and appreciate the degree of sophistication we're talking about here):

Our swim area can also turn into a wave pool INSTANTLY! No more waiting and waiting for the designated times! Because at our park, EVERY time is the right time for a splash!

NO LINES! Our park is structured in such a way that no lines accumulate - everyone has a place at all times! (as long as there are only 3 people, anyway)

And to keep our NO-LINE promise to you, we have friendly on-site personnel to "encourage" park patrons to move along quickly:

Conveniently attached swings (attended by professional childcare park personnel) to entertain your child should he/she need a rest from our slides:

A lovely, shaded eating area where you can eat up and get energy FOR MORE FUN!

Complimentary sunscreen provided by our professional sunscreen applicator personnel!

We also allow double-dipping! Two can go down together! Now what other water park allows THAT, I ask you?!?!

Our park is THE hip place to catch sightings of all the latest in kid swimwear haute couture (Shelby is seen here sporting a suit from the exciting Hanna Andersson 2010 summer collection):

You may even catch a plumber's bum sighting! Woohoo! BONUS!!!

We have manicured grounds cared for by our resident professional landscape architect, with special emphasis on pooper scooping:

Our newest addition for EVEN MORE fun (does it ever stop with us??!? NO WAY!) - Our Rocket Sprinkler play area!

Because nothing says SUMMER FUN like having water sprayed up your bum appearing to make you float in mid-air (you'll DEFINITELY want to click to enlarge this photo), am I right or AM I RIGHT!?!??!? Holla! (This is a good time to mention that we have a professional resident photographer on staff as well, to capture these priceless family memories!)

Conveniently located Time-Out areas, right on the water park edge (which can also double as a nose excavation area - we're ALL about the convenience here at our park!):

Excellent professional childcare supervision, who can run faster than your kids in order to catch 'em and escort them to our Time-Out area:

Don't worry, folks, he IS a trained professional and is not hurting this child, we promise:

So water-loving peeps, come on by! We have plenty of room for all! Well, maybe one or two more.... If they're really small......

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!

Conversations With Connor At the Cinema

2010-06-10T10:17:00.005-04:00

During our recent Mommy-Connor date to see The Prince of Persia...

Mommy: Ooooo Connor, they found the beautiful princess! Do you think she's beautiful?
Connor: Yes!
Mommy: But you don't think she's more beautiful than your Queen Mommy, do you?
Connor: Yes!
Mommy: Whaaaat! You bad boy! See if I take YOU on any more dates!
Connor: But Mommy, she has jewels in her hair!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…..time to WIPEOUT!

2010-06-03T10:31:00.016-04:00

It’s our family summertime religion – WIPEOUT!

YYYYYAAAAAAYYYYYY!

WOOOOHOOOOO!

We LOVE this crazy TV show showing contestants attempting a huge, padded obstacle course over water. Here’s a screenshot of one of the BEST obstacles that garners that biggest laughs – the BIG balls!:

So, there’s nothing funnier to me (and lucky for me, my 2 little boys have my same sense of humor) than people running into doors or falling down (yes, I also liked America’s Funniest Home Videos and was/still am a huge Chris Farley fan, may he RIP). Yes, I have the sense of humor of a 12-year old boy, always have, always will. Speaking of which, I need a date for the new Adam Sandler movie in a few weeks (Mark is declining on the grounds of being an adult)….anyone? Anyone?

Here’s our Summer 2010 kickoff event, held in our very own living room complete with obstacle courses and our very own big balls! Preparations underway:

Wipeout's youngest contestant, I-Have-No-Fear-I-Have-2-Big-Brothers Shelby!

Connor is so awesome! I dig this kid. He's always up for anything (except averse weather and jalapenos).

Even Mark gets in the fray once in a while. By the way, I do NOT do Mark's sock upkeep. Hello Mark, meet Target - it's a groovy store where they sell new socks.

I love this photo with Noah's foot in the corner (you may remember from my previous posts that I am a fantastic photographer...who needs the whole kid when you have the foot?):

Every summer, Connor laments the fact that he's not old enough to do the actual Wipeout course in SoCal (not that you'd know it from this photo, but well, I had to say something and couldn't come up with anything else). But if he WERE old enough, we'd be SO there!!! *I* however, would not participate (other than burning 1000x of calories laughing my a** off), and Mark is too dignified (aka.....aged).

And hey parents, here’s another bonus – let your kids do a Wipeout activity and they’ll sleep for 11-12 hours straight! Here’s Noah, done like dinna! Bedtime, here he comes!

And, for those of you who live near us and have kids in Connor’s age group, here’s a big secret that I’ll let ya in on early – for Connor’s 8^th birthday party in January 2011, we’re going to throw him a huge Wipeout party. Can you believe he’s turning 8 and he’s never had a big birthday party – we’ve always done family parties and trips for birthdays. So, I’m feeling kinda guilty about that, and I’m going to surprise him with the BIG ONE! But don’t tell Connor, okay?! He thinks he’s going to Maui.

HA HA! Just kidding, of course a Wipeout party would NOT be cooler than going to Hawaii (or would it?!? Hmmm…), but the Hawaii trip is for Connor receiving his black belt in karate, and unfortunately (for our credit card) he’s getting to his black belt earlier than we thought….like, early by a YEAR! Yup, it looks some major events of Connor’s childhood are on a collision crash course destined to ALL arrive in early 2011 - his 8^th birthday Wipeout party, getting baptized, AND getting a Karate black belt with its subsequent Maui reward trip. Plan for your plane tickets now, Grandma & Grandpa! (and whoever else wants to show up – Texas Ritchies? Colorado Davises? – everyone’s invited for the fun!)

Christmas Chicken Chair Update #2

2010-03-03T09:29:00.003-05:00

If you aren't already, you may want to familiarize yourself with the ongoing saga of the Christmas Chicken Chair - click here for story #1 and click here for story #2.

Up to speed now? Okay. So, as per my usual getting-ready-to-vacuum procedure, I go around to all of the rooms and put stuff that usually lives on the floor (you know, stuff like ottomans, baskets, Chicken Chairs) up on tables and couches to get 'em off the floor for easier vacuuming.

In the playroom, I always put Christmas Chicken Chair up on the couch for vacuuming.

When I finally got around to vacuuming the playroom, I came in and found that Shelby had actually managed to PUSH the Christmas Chicken Chair OFF of the couch and onto the floor headfirst.

She dislikes it soooo much, this most-fabulous Christmas present ever, that she can't even bear to have it be sitting next to her?!?!?!?

Sa wat dee khraap? ROAD TRIP!!! Yahoooooooie!

2010-02-22T10:57:00.025-05:00

I LOVES ME some spontaneous road trips! Thursday morning I woke up around 7:30am and did my usual stuff. And by 9am we were planning a trip to Boston for the weekend!

As you can see, I'm not the only one who was giddy and excited! The boys were crazy excited and just plain nutty. But they were perfect travelers (thanks to video games and Pirate music) and we had a great time! We did have to stop in Liverpool for our first bathroom stop for Noah (for those of you who don't live here, Liverpool is approximately....4 miles from Cicero, our home). So yes, THAT was annoying! After that, drinks were kept to a minimum.

Remember my last post about Shelby being the only one in our family NOT a nerd? Well, see here, this is what I mean - her brothers were...well, you saw that photo above....meanwhile, here's Shelby in all her coolness. Basically, too cool for you. Uh-huh.

The weather was perfect, we had a waterfront hotel with fabulous views of the Harbor. I fear the housekeeping staff had their hands full after we left, cleaning the thousands of handprints off of all the windows.

Oh! Why did we go to Boston, you ask? Whoops! Well, Mark is starting an African Safari company to help fund Soils For the Future (a carbon offset project for Tanzania), and it just so happens there are a bunch of travel show conventions around the East coast during the next few weeks. Here's Mark manning the African Travel Association (ATA) booth:

I sure hope Save the Planet Safaris (click to go the website) makes money because the ATA had the most boring booth in the whole show, and I would absolutely LOVE to design a booth for next year's shows. It only costs $3,000 - $10,000! Yikes.

This would be a good time to mention that anyone who wants to go on a Safari with us who is reading this blog (all 3 of you - Mindy, Carrie & Jamie) can have a 30% Friends & Family discount! Here's our friendly staff, ready to take your call NOW!:

Here's Connor playing the steel drums at the Aruba setup. Yes, they sold me - I am soooo going to Aruba VERY SOON to meet the 90,000 friends I haven't met yet there.

Aruba had the coolest, funnest setup! But watch out Aruba, next year you'll be contending with me, and I'm no slouch when it comes to marketing and advertising displays! *wondering if I can borrow an elephant from the Boston Zoo?* Elephant rides trump steel drums, right?

The Busch Gardens and Seaworld setup was also fantastic and lots of fun, of course. Get a look at this baby kangaroo! Have you ever seen anything sweeter??? Actually, Shelby spent all of her time at these booths cooing at the female staffers and repeating over and over again, "Happy day! Happy day! Happy day!" They LOVED her! So, maybe Shelby was sweeter than the baby kangaroo.

Well, actually, obviously Connor wasn't interested in the animals. As a matter of fact, Connor had several meltdowns during the 2 days of the show. All these countries from all over the globe and all of their marketing materials were in ENGLISH?!??!?!? Connor's still fascinated with languages, and he was absolutely devastated not to see materials in different languages. He even introduced himself to the lady manning the India booth with, "Hi, I'm Connor. I'm a linguist. Do you have any materials printed in Hindi?" SERIOUSLY. The lady just blinked at him and then blinked at me. I just smiled.

We did make a fun discovery later while surfing language sites on the internet. To say "Hi, how are you?" in Thai, you say "Sa wat dee khraap?" Needless to say, Connor and Noah and I entertained ourselves for about an hour in the hotel room asking each other, Hey Connor, so what the crap!?!? Hey Noah, so what the crap??! Hey Mommy, so what the crap??! Much to Mark's chagrin, I have the sense of humor of a 12-year old boy (explaining my love for Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler movies), it's true.

Connor did have a LEEEETLE bit of fun at the travel show - at the kid area jumping gyms, Connor FINALLY lost his first tooth - he's 7 now and it was high time!

I had dreams of getting a family photo of us to document this momentous turning point in our lives, where we morph from being a boring, nerdy University professor family to a cool, globe-trotting entrepreneuring family. Connor wasn't having it, neither was Noah, and look at me with that strained, teeth-gritting fake smile and frazzled hair - that is a "take-the-freakin' picture-now-I've-been-with-these-psycho-kids-for-way-too-freakin'-long-and-I'm-about-to-KILL-somebody" expression. You're all moms, you all know exactly what I mean.

Yeah, well anyway, momentous occasion marked. *sigh* FAIL.

Back to happier times now - Shelby amused herself in the hotel room pushing her friends around in her stroller. I know it doesn't really go with the "vibe" of this blog post, but I just love this photo of her. She's my little sweetie-cheekie.

Like I said earlier, we drove all the way to Boston and back listening to pirate music (from our last Halloween's dressing up our SUV to look like a pirate ship for our pirate family - see that blog post by clicking here) and the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat soundtrack. We all agree on and love that music, too.

Gosh, that makes us sound so goody-goody, doesn't it? Well, before you give me the Mom 0f the Year award, we also know every word to Britney Spear's Womanizer and I'm afraid that Noah can sing along to most of Adam Lambert's naughty lyrics (Adam is my go-to preschool music).

But I digress. Here's a couple of sing-along videos for your enjoyment, with love from us to you:

Sorry about the unfortunate nose-picking incident there, but I'm too lazy to figure out how to edit the movie down, and besides that, I need some good stuff to show Connor's future girlfriends!

Happy trails!

Happy Valentines Day!

2010-02-14T14:13:00.015-05:00

I know there are a lot of folks out there who claim to hate Valentines because it's a holiday solely manufactured to make money or because it makes them feel lonely. HOWEVER, I love ANY excuse for a celebration, and so I take full advantage of Valentines Day, and we always celebrate it as a family holiday! We're all each other's Valentines.

This year we all got matching pajamas (yes, I married a nerd and it has rubbed off on me over the past 17 years and now I fear we're all nerds, except Shelby).

We did a weekend family slumber party in the living room, bringing down mattresses and spending 2 days and 2 nights just goofing off, watching TV, playing games, eating junk food - all the fun stuff in life, y'know?

In the end, we put Shelby up in her crib at night (to protect her from her wild brothers), but at all other times, she was right there in the fray with the rest of us!

A magical Wii moment, Connor & Noah playing together WITHOUT screaming and nunchuks being thrown at each others' heads:

I actually hate sleeping with my kids (but shhhh don't tell them that), so I retreated to a couch, but still couldn't get alone time!

Kids and dogs and underwear showing, oh my!

I think Mark took the brunt of the goofing off portion of our Valentine festivities:

But he was rewarded with this magnificent new tie! I thought giraffes were his favorite African animal, but it turns out it was really gazelles. Oh well.

And one more for the road, Happy Valentines from us to you out there in the cybersphere!

Sleepin' Like an Egyptian

2010-02-09T10:42:00.025-05:00

Greetings from the far-away mystical land of Egypt...now present in upstate New York!

I've fallen off the blogging wagon the past few weeks, but with good reason - January was crazy/busy with birthdays, family visits and REDECORATING! Yay! I love Januarys! The photos aren't the best, because I have a crappy camera (or maybe it's me that's crappy with the camera??). I prefer to blame the camera.

Connor turned a whopping 7 years old in January, at which point he informed me, "I've been living in the same room for SEVEN YEARS NOW *insert heavy, dramatic sigh here*and I want a new room!" Fortunately for this kid, he has me for a Mommy and I would never say no to a new, fun, and exciting decorating/remodeling project! Because he and Noah share a room, they had to agree, but also fortunately for Connor, Noah idolizes Connor and his interests, so they decided upon an EGYPT room! This came about largely because of Connor's obsession with languages and hieroglyphics, Connor's new booby-trapped Playmobil Pyramid toy he received for Christmas, AND their borrowed Scooby Doo Where's My Mummy DVD (Angie & boys, yes, we still have this and I promise we WILL get this back to you soon!) which has now been watched at least 1000 times.

Here's a sample of Connor's Egyptian hieroglyphics writing, to get ya in the mood:

ANYWAY, I knew doing an Egypt room would be a big job, so naturally I enlisted my Mom to help out, so she flew out from Idaho for a 2 1/2 week visit, and boy did we make Grandma work!

We hung wall murals and decals and new artwork and light fixtures.

We mod-podged (that's a verb, right?) the Eye of Horus onto drawer knobs.

We painted sand and beetles and put together booby traps.

We hung palm trees and organized a study desk for Connor, chock-full of books about languages, of course, and his beloved Menorah (no, we're not Jewish - we're Mormon, in fact, but open-minded!) that he received as a gift from his current-favorite-person-on-the-planet, Virginia Buffet.

We sewed new duvet covers with the most fabulous Egyptian patterns. (And yes, that IS a dolphin that you spy on Connor's bed, but Connor assured me that his beloved dolphin collection - he has dozens more than you see here - was also quite bored in their old room and would be very happy to live in an Egypt room and after all, Mommy, the Nile river DOES run through Egypt so dolphins could be quite happy there!)

We painted bedroom furniture from the ugly old gangrene-teal to a glossy black. (Major PITA! Remind me NEVER to buy painted furniture again, BUT repainting that furniture had been on my to-do list for 5 YEARS, so I'm a happy camper!)

We built a pyramid! Noah resides on top of the pyramid in the esteemed position of Ra, the Sun God and Connor has the private reading nook/bed/cave that we call the Sarcophagus.

On Connor's first night sleeping in his new Egyptian room, he commented about how happy he was to be sleeping just like real Egyptians do. He didn't believe me when I told him that 7-year old boys in Egypt probably have (or dream about having) Spiderman or Star Wars rooms or some other such "American" rooms.

I suspect that the best part of getting a brand new room remodel was getting to sleep in the playroom for 2 days (while furniture was drying and the carpets were cleaned) and watching movies at night in bed!

Now, to be clear, Connor did NOT have a boring room before - the boys had a beautiful ocean-themed room with elaborate painted waves and such. Here's a small pic of it, because I loved it so much, it was somewhat painful to watch it disappear and I feel compelled to pay homage to it once more (this is my traditional night-before-Christmas photo that I snapped of Connor on December 24, 2009):

But, I DO understand that after seven looooong years things might become boring. I know I'm bored with my whole entire house, so don't be surprised if more redecorating projects come up on my blog - next stop, my office is going to be transformed into......well, something exciting! I have too many ideas to settle on just one yet. Whaddya think of this one?

It's the Glamouroque room from the Roxbury - isn't it DIVINE?? Given that my office is supposed to be a formal dining room and we're going to sell our house in the next 1-2 years, do you think I could stage that to be a sellable Glamouroque dining room? Nah, probably not. Good thing I like to paint!

Christmas Chicken Chair Update

2010-01-06T10:08:00.006-05:00

For inquiring minds who want to know, the Christmas Chicken Chair (see previous blog post) still sits in the corner of the playroom, unused and unloved and completely neglected. Even the boys don't want to sit in it.

Here's Shelby sitting in the ugly, crummy, plastic, $2 Finding Nemo chair NEXT to the beautiful Chicken Chair (and I don't keep the ugly blue plastic chair easily accessible - she had to go behind a table and drag it back out to where it is now!):

When I encouraged Shelby to go sit in her beautiful Chicken Chair, she screamed "nooooooo!"

Okay, fine!, little girl, you wanna play that way? Your new pink Vera Bradley purse that I got for your birthday in 3 weeks is now MINE!! I would take the Chicken Chair for myself, too, but it's *alarmingly* not quite big enough to fit my tushie.

The Best and Worst Traditions of our Christmas

2009-12-26T17:11:00.021-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I'm a big believer in traditions.

* Let's start with the bad: *

If you've read my previous posts, you know that I consider myself to be quite the ....uhhhh... exceptional! .... photographer, and so I bring to you the Worst Christmas Card Photo Ever (you should double-click to enlarge it to get the full, glorious effect):

And if you think my photography skills are amazing, check out the Worst Christmas Video Ever (recorded by yours truly, of course):

Nose picking, dog barking, camera dropped, Mommy yelling AND singing (which was worse??). Let's see, did I leave anything out in putting together this memorable, one-of-a-kind video? And it cut off where it did because, well, we never DID get a verse of song actually sung successfully. Merry Christmas, Grandma & Grandpa.

Here's Noah trying on the cats' Christmas present (a crinkle-tube for you non-cat people). Not much to say here about this treasured moment, although I think I overheard Mark mutter "Not our proudest moment as parents."

And now may I present the Most Expensive Christmas Bomb present. In her short almost-two years of life, Shelby has always been ripped off present-wise because we figured she wouldn't know the difference. Well, this year I wanted to do right by her (and because she's old enough she might start remembering how unfairly treated she was by her parents when it came to gift-giving), and so her loving Mommy bought her the BIGGEST and the most EXPENSIVE Christmas gift this year - her very own special chicken bean bag chair (I know how ridiculous that sounds, but just look at the photo, okay? It's super-cute, am I right or what?!?!).

Well, she hates it and refused to sit in it after I took this first photo. So now it sits in the playroom in the corner, completely unused and neglected. And I'm not going to list how insanely stupidly expensive this present was, because of the sheer humiliation of it all, especially seeing as how I have a university minor in Accounting.

* And now let's move on to the BEST! *

What Christmas would be complete without my "Merry Toes" tradition?!? And this year I'm happy to announce that Shelby and Noah joined me in this festive feat! Bwa ha ha, get it?!?! Ha ha ha! Anyway, I'm still working on getting Mark and Connor to join in on this one, no luck yet.

I LOVE Christmas lights. And as you can see, I'm pretty much the only person on our street that does. Boy, do I love our house at Christmastime! *blissful sigh*

I know it's not one of those wild Christmas houses (but which I also love), because I like to keep our Christmas decorations respectful and elegant and spiritual, if you know what I mean. Hence the nativity family in the door wreath, the candles in windows (to signify lighting the path for the Holy Family) and an angel.

I also love to drive around and look at Christmas lights every chance I get. However, Connor and Noah are getting sick of looking at Christmas lights. So now I have to think of new ways to bribe them. This year I let them sit in the back of our SUV on big pillows with sippy cups full of hot chocolate and a box of Dunkin Donuts munchkin donuts to eat. It works, and as you can see, the sugar overload definitely puts them in a good mood! I should note that I only do this on nights that Mark is home to put them to bed. I'm extra-thoughtful like that, you know.

And bling-baby Shelby's favorite Christmas present was from Grandma Davis, a furry purse full of necklaces and hair bows. And every day since, Shelby has insisted on wearing ALL of the necklaces. All at the same time.

And, to put us in our best light with most of the worst carefully edited out, here is our annual Christmas letter for you download, if you'd like. And yes, I know it's long, but since I haven't gotten around to scrapbooking yet, this is pretty much my only documentation of the year and it's mostly for me! CLICK HERE to download the Christmas letter PDF file.

Now, it's time for one of my FAVORITE Christmas traditions - watching Christmas Vacation (I'm simply not a It's a Wonderful Life-type of person, sorry!) for the 9 millionth time - yippee!!

Happy holidays, and cheers to traditions, good and bad! *clink*

An Absolutely 100% Totally Completely Sweet Parenting Moment

2009-12-17T15:28:00.009-05:00

Today I took Shelby and Noah through the car wash. Shelby always cries and I feel bad, but in a Syracuse winter (yes, it FINALLY snowed here. FINALLY! Yay!) where your car gets dirty so fast with the road salt and the sunny days are few and far between, you have to take your car wash opportunities when you can get 'em! Even it means skidding into preschool 10 minutes late because you went to the car wash instead.

Anyway, Shelby cries EVERY time. And I feel terrible about it every time. But I also want a clean car.

Today, when the car wash started up, her eyes were huge and welling with tears. I looked back at her and said, "Shelby, it will be okay." She nodded her little head. A minute later, I looked back at her and said the same thing, "Shelby, it's okay." She still had tears in her eyes, but she wasn't crying yet, and she looked at me and nodded. I did this several more times during the car wash (unfortunately for Shelby, I always get the super-ultra-mega-deluxe looooong wash and dry, nothing but the best for my beloved Beemer), and she held her tears in her eyes, didn't cry once, and just looked at me with huge eyes and kept nodding every time I said she would be okay, though I could tell how scared she was.

Now to be 100% honest, I'm not usually very sappy about my kids - most of the time I'm tossing them around upside-down on beds, putting gags in the toilet for them to find, pinching them on the bum, giving them Melvins with their underwear. I even put a disco ball up in our car. But today, with my brave little Shelby totally counting on me and looking only to me, her Mommy, to keep her little world together and safe ... I was overwhelmed at the realization at how much these little people trust us and need us and it was just a magical parenting moment for me. And as we exited the car wash, *I* was the one crying.

Silly sappy me. Time to go give Noah a Melvin or blow a raspberry on Shelby's fat little belly.

All I Want for Christmas Is.....

2009-12-15T17:59:00.002-05:00

...for people to update their blogs!!!!! Is that too much to ask?!?!? I have the most pathetic blogroll - you scroll down it and all you see is "updated 4 months ago," "updated 1 year ago,", "updated 9 millenia ago," etc etc etc. Or else I'm going to have to find myself some new blogging friends!

Bah humbug!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

2009-12-09T14:32:00.010-05:00

Seasons greetings! For your viewing pleasure (we hope!), please allow us to present our 2009 family Christmas tree:

Connor and Noah picked it out, and did a very nice job selecting a nice, fat soft-bristled tree that smells divine! And then all three kiddos did the decorations pretty much by themselves, allowing me to lounge on my tushie with a hot chocolate, just enjoying the sights of my living room.

And the most astounding sight to see were all three of my little cherubs actually getting along, singing together, and decorating the tree (I think there was only one scuffle about the proper placement of an ornament and only one broken ornament). It surely IS the season of miracles!

I absolutely LOVE this photo of Noah - either he's squealing in glee about Christmas presents or he's shrieking about Connor grabbing him in an awkward spot. And Shelby is just rolling her eyes at them - as we keep telling her, "Shelby, for better or for worse, they're your brothers forever."

And finally, here's our Christmas Advent calendar - you know, where you open a new picture each day of December, but with a twist - chocolate on each day! My mom made this for my brother and I and it was always our most favorite holiday decoration and tradition, and it's SOOOOO much fun to be using the same one, now for my kids! They love it as much as I do/did. Well, almost. I remember that one year I took most of the candies off and ate them all at once, and then sneakily replaced them later - now that is true advent calendar devotion, my friends. When my kids start doing stuff like that, well....I'll be so proud of their ingeniousness!

Happy holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-28T15:28:00.009-05:00

So, this year we had our own little family Thanksgiving at home here in New York, just by ourselves. And since the only person who would eat much turkey is Mark, we thought cooking a turkey was kinda silly. So, we decided to make each of our favorite foods and share with each other.

We began our Thanksgiving feast by reviewing the Thanksgiving story, and explained to the kids about it being a holiday that celebrated the bountiful harvest from the land that the pilgrims and Indians shared. Here's our idea of a bountiful harvest....

Connor with his favorite food - Fettucine alfredo and an Edible Arrangement (and the ever-present-sixth-family-member-Spongebob):

Shelby with her favorite food - homemade French fries:

Noah with Spiderman macaroni:

Mark and his favorite food - pie:

And if you think I'm posting a pic of myself chowing down on my favorite food (Angie's wings) you have GOT to be kidding...you should be thanking me for NOT posting that lovely sight with wing sauce all over my face and hands.

As you can see, the closest thing to a bountiful harvest food were the potatoes used for Shelby's french fries, BEFORE they were french-fried.

We also did the common tradition of going around the table and sharing what we were all thankful for:

Connor: Was thankful for Shelby
Noah: Was thankful for his imaginary friend of about a year now, Yana (we don't know much about Yana except that she's a girl, she has black hair, and she was sick last week)
Shelby: Connor & Noah decided Shelby was most likely thankful for her amazing brothers
Mark: Was thankful for his wife (good answer, that might just get you another Christmas present, Markli!)
Estelle: Thankful for our warm, clean, spacious, gorgeous home in which to spend the holidays - we've had a lot of house issues lately, but a remark from a friend recently reminded me of how terrific our home really is and I've seen it in a whole new light and was reminded of how blessed we are to have this beautiful home - thank you, friend. However, IF it would EVER snow here, I would have been thankful for the snow, darnit!

And yes, you probably noticed that we're all still in our pajamas...we were all grateful to have no plans and therefore no need to get dressed, and we love our pajamas! We even went to Lights on the Lake on Thanksgiving evening, all of us in our pajamas and happy as can be.

Oh, and just a little funny photo to share...my pumpkins "helping" clean up our Halloween decorations a few weeks ago. Yes, in pajamas again. Do we ever get dressed, you wonder? Only if we have to! Oh, the boys thought they were SOOOOO funny (and truth be told, they were!)!:

Need a unique Christmas gift idea? Allow me...

2009-11-12T13:04:00.006-05:00

Did YOU know my husband's book is published?

The book he's been working on for about a decade?

Did YOU know? Because I did NOT. I...me...Estelle...his loving, gorgeous, supportive, thoughtful wife, did NOT know this rather important piece of information. So, how did measely insignificant ME find out it was published and out? I just overheard him talk about it in a phone conversation. "bla bla bla oh yeah, you should check out my new book...it's on Amazon now. bla bla bla"

NICE, huh?

So, I just found it on Amazon. It took me a few spelling errors but I finally got it right and found it (17 years later and I still really truly honestly have no idea what my husband does for a living, much less be able to spell it). Interestingly (or not), along the way, I found a book by Mark A. Ritchie called "God is the Pits." Anyway, here's Mark E. Ritchie's new book:

So yeah, if you're having trouble with your Christmas shopping, especially finding a unique gift for that person in your life who has everything, I guarantee you that they do NOT have this book (and I can also guarantee it will be more potent than Ambien in treating their insomnia problems - bwa ha ha!). Problem solved! Merry Christmas and peace to all!

(Oh, and all I can say for that husband of mine is that this is grounds for me DOUBLING the dollar amount that my new Christmas handbag had better be.)

*loosely* Controlled Chaos