Christmas Chicken Chair Update #2

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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.