Yay...pictures!

Well my laptop is officially dead. It won't even boot up correctly. However, I managed to save my pictures...specifically the ones from the month of September that were waiting to be uploaded to winkflash. BTW, my digital friends...$.06 digital print sale until October 3rd...use coupon code: ONLY6CENTS.

So here are some pictures from Jackson's 5th birthday party at Pump It Up on September 13th. He officially turned 5 on September 16th. He had his well child checkup on September 19 and was 36 pounds and 42 inches tall. Now in Nana and Papa's car, Jackson can sit in his own booster seat. He is such a big boy now!

The birthday Prince sits on his birthday throne

Our party crew! About 30 kids (pictured) and their parents (not pictured)

The Pusch Ridge Preschool Boys from the Stingray classroom

Some of Jackson's classmates from Pre-K at Immaculate Heart were in attendance
"The boys"

"The girls"

Aunt TJ and Taylor have some fun together

Taylor couldn't get Grandma to take her on the slide but a picture is okay too.

Even I got in on some fun

Papa made it out to celebrate

Anthony is a bit tuckered out after running and jumping for an hour and a half

The party room we had cake and ice cream cups, soda, chips, and candy

Soccer cake for my soccer star

The birthday Prince and the King.

We gave the kids balloons in their goody bags...who needs jumping?

Night Night Taylor

Taylor has been going through many milestones this month. She's doing GREAT at potty training. Staying dry about 95% of the time at night and about 70% of the time during the day. Yes there is a lot of "parent/teacher training" involved since she doesn't tell us all the time that she's got to go. But at least she isn't resistent to trying in many different places (yet). Some children have aversions to public restrooms, some will only go on their potty seat, some only in 1 specific bathroom at home, etc. Not Tay. She's an equal opportunity potty girl. :-) I'm hoping at least by the middle of October we'll get her wearing her big girl undies during the school day. She seems very excited about them as we picked up a package of Princess ones, Arial ones and Minnie Mouse ones. They have been washed and are ready for her use...next month (keep your fingers crossed)!

The second major hurdle is to get her OUT of OUR bed! I know we've been really lax and it hasn't helped that Nana and Papa co-sleep with the kids when they stay over there with them. I guess you pick and choose your battles. She'll sleep in her big girl bed reluctantly waiting for us to finish in the kitchen or office but then we have to move her with us to our bed or she'll wake up at 2am and come find us SCREAMING! Not something we really want at that hour when we have to wake up 3 hours later. I know...we're lazy! However, by this time we would have pushed a LOT harder because I normally would be pregnant around this age with the next one. Obviously, that is not the case here. No bun in the oven.

So tonight we made Taylor go into her own bed...as you can tell I'm trying to stay up as late as possible so she'll at least get a few hours in her own bed. But the girl kept coming out and checking up on me. Every time she did this big bro Ant-on-ney would come out of the boy's room and check up on her. So sweet bro Ant-on-ney gave her his Carter to sleep with and would be her "tucker inner". AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! So sweet, but the poor boy looked so sad for her too. I thought he was going to shed a few tears for her when she was crying in my office pleading with me to "slweep wit me momma!" After about 3 tuck ins by Ant-on-ney, I suspect she's finally off to dream land. Every so often though, I hear the rattle of Carter's internal rattle so we'll see when I head back in there in about 30 minutes to take her back to "your own bed" (Momma's bed). Where's Jackson in all of this??? SLEEPING!

My laptop is dying a slloooooooooooooowwww death!

Well I think it's official...I'm the killer of laptops. Shhhhhhhh, don't tell my Oracle counterparts. :-) My lovely 5 year old blue Toshiba Satellite laptop is on it's last leg. For the past month I've had physical memory dumps, swaps, crashes, bad reboots, etc. So last night I burned my important files off the hard drive onto cd-rom. I'm in the process of moving the pictures stored there onto the media card and then I have to work on my iTunes stuff. After that, it's time to say bye bye to my technology buddy. Granted this is the second laptop I've had in 10 years and the first one died because of the bad battery problems...yes...the laptop heated up so much it almost burned through a TV tray stand. Fortunately, it didn't catch on fire like I've seen in some pictures from the Toshiba lawsuit a few years back. I personally think it's the internal cooling fan that is going because anytime I hear it kick in to blow it also makes a grinding noise and then I get some sort of dump of memory or crash occur of all my applications.

So I guess it's time to save my money to purchase myself another laptop, especially after I get my pictures and iTunes library off of it. In addition to the new hardware and software, I'll have to get an external hard drive so I can backup all my pictures and files to it. :-) Granted I have http://www.winkflash.com to use for our pictures, but it's always a good idea to have another backup if you don't have the hard copies...which I don't. No money = no pictures = no up to date scrapbooks. :-( OH Well!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACKSON!!!

Today, 5 years ago, my baby son was born. He came into this world weighing 6 lbs. 1 1/2 oz. Now...he's (I don't know, will have to update those stats after Friday)...a big boy. He had a birthday party over the weekend at Pump It Up and had a blast with all of his friends. Pictures to come later!

Countdown to...

Walking with Dinosaurs, Jackson's birthday party and Anthonys friend's slumber party.

We have so many activities planned this weekend. On Friday after the boy's karate pictures we are headed up to Phoenix to see the show Walking with Dinosaurs. OMG it's amazing, life size to scale robotic dinosaurs. Everyone is excited about it even Taylor! We saw the videos of it online last night and of course Tony and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get tickets. We will be sitting in row 5 of the US Airways Arena in Phoenix. It's going to be a late night but Tony and I think it's going to be well worth the money and trip. We showed the kids the You Tube video of it and they were so excited about it. Jackson kept yelling out the names of the dinosaurs. Hmmmm, our very own Paleontologist!

Saturday morning is soccer for Tony and Jackson and then Jackson's birthday party at Pump It Up! My little boy is turning 5 (officially on the 16th)! It was supposed to be Transformer themed but apparently Transformers are "out" and so there's very limited Transformer items. I can't even find a darned Transformer cake. So I had to go with the next best thing...a soccer cake! This will be the largest party any of the kids have had. Picture this...30 kids jumping and making noise for an hour and half, then stuffing themselves with chips, cake, ice cream, soda and candy. I call that fun! I don't have to setup or clean up! SOOOOO AWESOME!

Then we drop Anthony off at a friend's house for a slumber party. It'll be the first time Anthony has slept away from home w/o us and w/o being at a family member's house. Tomorrow we have to get him a sleeping bag. There will be swimming, pizza, cake, Star Wars movies, popcorn, soda. I'm going to get my kiddo back exhausted!!! Anthony was one of 4 boys invited to this party. I think that's so great. The friend whose having the party is really nice. His mom is a very nice lady. We've done lunch recess together.

Sunday I'm working BUT Tony may be going to the Cardinals v. Miami game. We'll see if Aunt TJ and Albert are going instead. Then we are back to the weekly grind.

Update on Rock Incident

Jackson is fine now. He did have a bump on the top of his head. Good thing he has a hard head! So what had happened is that there is a big play structure that the kid was on. It has a brige connecting both sides of the structure. The "kid" was on the bridge. Jackson was playing in the sand below the bridge and the kid dropped the rock down off the bridge and it landed on top of Jackson's head. It was a pretty large river rock stone and it landed to the right where Jackson's soft spot was as a baby.

So the following day, I went and talked to the aide who was monitoring daycare and went to conference with the Pre-K teacher. The aide didn't see the incident occur but did tell the "kid's" mother about what happened. The teacher did speak with the "kid" after Pre-K as the kids were being let out to go home HOWEVER, not once did this "kid" apologize to Jackson.

I had to ask what their aggression tolerance was in the classroom due to what I saw the day prior on the recess playground and what had happened with the rock. The teacher said that right now it's a LOT of verbal reminders. Most children in that classroom have not been away from their parents or with other children in Daycare or Preschool so they don't know their boundries with one another yet. Then as we progress into the school year, it's verbal warning, followed by 5-10 minutes sit out time at recess, then full sit out time at recess, then note home to parent, then conference with parent and then finally to the Principal of the school if behavior doesn't change.

So what have we learned here...
1. That talking to the teacher does help...some.
2. That this "kid" can be mean and not have to apologize for his actions.
3. That Jackson has the hardest head in the world...although I already knew this. :-)
4. That this "kid" is on my radar and I will be doing morning recess monitoring A LOT to show my presence so this "kid" knows better than to mess with my son again.
5. That the teachers have been alerted to this "kid's" bad behavior.
6. That Jackson has learned a lesson about who to play with and who to avoid on the playground.

Tomorrow starts a new week, hopefully things will perk up and this will be the last incident for the remainder of this semester!

Wild Kids

What is it about other children who feel compelled to pick on others? Is it parenting? Is it non-parenting, no discipline at home, reacting to stress from broken families?

Today my mom called me and told me that at daycare right after pre-k, Jackson got hit in the back of the head with a rock. We don't know what size rock it was but the kid who did this is on MY radar! Yesterday, I went to Pre-K to volunteer for morning recess and 3 times, I had to correct this particular rock throwing child about his behavior. 2 times it was for going up the slide the wrong way. Well that's not my rule, that's a school rule and in the Kindergarten and 1st grade yard this child would get 1 warning and then sat on the wall. And on the last offense, this kid decided it was ok to push Jackson down while standing on the bridge of the slide and then proceed to try and kick him in the privates. Yah...NOT COOL WHEN MOMMA BEAR IS AROUND! So of course I said something to him and made him feel bad! He knows I'm watching him. And now today with the rock incident...what a brat! So I told my mom to go to the office and get Jackson an ice pack for the bump on his head so they would know that there's problems with the kids in daycare and someone is not playing safely.

Grrr, this makes me so mad when my kids get hurt by others who should know better. But of course my mom said that when you look at this kid and look at his eyes there's something that doesn't seem right with him. Hmmmm, wonder if he's an angry child and there's problems at home. Even so, there is NO EXCUSE for hurting someone else by throwing rocks!!!

~WOW~

Last night I watched the replay of Sarah Palin's speech at the RNC. I'm not "that" into politics but goodness I was glued to the TV. For very selfish reasons I'm a Republican. In years past, I never picked a side, in fact I never voted, but when my husband's job depends partially on which party is in the White House...I start to pay attention. Expecially, when the decision will have a small affect on our standard of living and ultimately will impact my kids's lives...I pay attention.

Lately, on XMRadio and other news talk shows I've heard commentary on whether they support or disapprove of John McCain's decision and Sarah Palin's acceptance of the VP nod. Wow, there are some very passionate people out there and some people out there with opinions I agree and disagree with. But ultimately what is being said is just an opinion. I believe we have to take these candidates and layout the resumes and pick the best qualified person for the job. If that means taking away the names and genders and faces of the candidates and making the picks without knowing whose resume belongs to whom, then so be it. Ultimately the best candidates should be obvious, Democrat or Republican. I fully belive that this year's election is more exciting than the election 4 years ago and years previous to that. For me this election may be one of the ones I will remember for years and years to come. I'm getting excited to cast my vote in November and to watch the outcome from that fateful Tuesday night. :-)

First Day of School Pictures

I promised the pictures from the first day of school. Here they are...Enjoy!


Anthony and Jackson were good sports for camera happy mommy!


Momma and her Pre-K'er. Jackson's first day at Immaculate Heart Academy.


Daddy had to get into the photo action with all the kiddos!


Anthony is so ready to head back to school this year.

Working Boys

This week and last we have been trying to de-weed and work in the yard. Even 20 minutes at a time helps clear out our weeds. I have been trying to do this at least 1 day a week before I start work. Lately, the boys have been super good sports and have helped Tony out when he heads outside to work in the yard. The boys, suit up just like Tony wearing long pants, hat and work shoes. They WANT to work in the yard! I think it gives them a great sense of accomplishment plus they do get paid for their work...$.25 each, each time. Hahaha, we are cheap!


Daddy taking a break to smile for the camera woman.


Anthony works so hard to handpick the weeds.

Jackson has to show me to prove he's working and helping.