Weekends ...

Over the weekend, we decided to:

• Switch Sophie and Maddie's room (front of the house) with the playroom (back of the house)
• Re-paint both rooms
• get fancy with the painting
• Completely re-do Eliza's room

Each decision led to the next one. When all was said and done, the only room on that side of the house with no plans was the guest bath. And, I'm not entirely convinced we won't do something there, too.

Here's the delimma - they want a "princess" room. Now, I am all for letting the kids decide paint colors and expressing themselves (you've seen how my children dress), but for some reason I am drawing the line at a Disney princess room.

Since begging for advice always helps in this blog, this time I am asking for non-Disney princess decorating ideas. They already have a white full size bed and twin bed that can be bunked but we aren't doing that just yet. (My two-year-old is slightly accident prone. sigh)

They also have two quilts that have been pieced and are waiting to be quilted, so that's covered. The quilts have pinks, blues, purples, greens and a little yellow and orange. I really thought about going with a pale pink and pale orange (think strawberry ice-cream and orange sherbet) but that's as far as I got. And I guess that's not very princessy.

So, c'mon all you mothers of sons and tomboys out there! Now's your chance to help me decorate a very girly room! Go crazy!

Alright, sorry to anyone who is tired of all the Sophie quotes, but I want to remember these things.

• Seeing the chocolate cake I made - "Yum! It smells like a princess!" It goes without saying that smells like a princess is my new catch phrase.


• "Mommy. Your legs. Have thorns." you'll never guess what that means

One last Hurrah in the old playroom.

Goodbye crayon all over the walls. Maddie is showing off her giraffe-riding skillz.Goodbye funky paint and who-knows-what carpet stains. This one of Sophie (who's washing her car, "it's just filthy") is for Nana and Auntie to show off her new tangle free hair. Woo!And this one because it's sweet.

Confessions

A Few Friday Confessions:

1. I found cheerios in two separate wipes containers, today. Cheerios get very soggy in wipes containers.
2. Wayyyyyy too much facebooking this week.
3. I wish we had a trampoline.
4. I'm not sure if I am going to vote in the upcoming election.
5. I worked all day on Sophie's hair (now it looks so pretty! Thanks to all who offered me advice, I used a combination of your ideas. Could this be the beginning of a new era in the Ramsey household?)
6. I bribed Sophie to get her to be still while I worked on her tangles. I promised her a treat. Anything she wanted. She picked a sucker.
7. I need a haircut.
8. Don't even get me started on my eyebrows.
9. I did not read a single book to my children in the last 24 hours. :(
10. It's possible that I drank 2 Mountain Dews today.

Works for me Wednesday

Here's something that works for us Ramseys. Each of our girls have tired of baby food pretty quickly, mainly because they have no patience and wanted to do it themselves. So, we get canned mixed veggies and give that to them instead. Just drain them and spoon them out onto the high chair. Mm-mmm good! (As a screaming mime might say...)


I know it sounds yucky to give them room temp. canned veggies, but all 3 of our girls have gobbled them up. They are small enough that they won't get stuck in the windpipe, and just firm enough that they can be grabbed and stuffed into their little mouths. We tried frozen veggies, but they didn't like them cold and it was hard getting the temp just right.


It's pretty cheap, too. We just put the leftovers in those little Glad containers. (Each container is about one serving.)


Works for me!
(Disclaimer: the above was totally okayed by our pediatrician.)


Now, I need to find something that works for you. Sophie has horrid tangles. Curls + baby-fine hair = knots from elsewhere. My hair is straight. (Okay, it's funky. But it's not curly!) I don't know what to do with the knots. My sister in law has given me suggestions, but they don't seem to work on hair as fine as Sophie's. The hard part is - the tangles are at her crown, not on the ends. So, cutting it won't help. I guess I could shave it, but then the grandparents would probably stop talking to me. I could really use some help!!!!!! Thanks!!!!
This picture doesn't do it justice, at all. Seriously, it's bad.

10 Things Tuesday

10 Things Tuesday!

Today I am thankful for:

1. The little blow up baby pools. Cheap entertainment for the littlest Ramsey!



2. Speaking of cheap entertainment, those "6 for a dollar" water guns are absolutely priceless! (yes, I said guns. Don't go having any cows.)



3. And since we are talking about the water guns, I am thankful that the girls used them to clean the outside windows and back door today.



4. I am thankful that they used water and not detangling spray like last time....



5. We got to eat KFC last night! Sorry if that grosses out the majority of you.



6. Started Facebook last night. Don't know if that makes me feel old or young. It was fun finding people, though. (as I stayed up until midnight ... with a 5:30 a.m. run time the next day ...)



7. Super cheap (88 cents!) fingernail polish. My toenails are currently ocean blue. Makes me feel very peaceful.



8. We got a compliment at Wal-Mart today! In fact, it seemed as if every Wal-mart shopper was in a very mellow, tolerant-of-young-ones mood. We could have stayed all day.



9. I am thankful that Eliza loves to be outside. She doesn't have much of a choice, see.



10. No chemo this week!

Best Friends

I've mentioned before my eldest daughter's tendency to be very literal. She doesn't want to go too deep into anything and doesn't ask the typical "where's heaven?" and "what does God look like?" questions.

However, lately she has really latched onto the concept of best friends. She talks about them all the time and is constantly asking Jeff and I as to whom our best friends are. She even gets specific wanting to know who is our best friend at church, in our family, on our street, etc. (And you can never answer the same thing twice. Ok, except for Maddie who always answers "church".)

Yesterday, she was wondering what does best friend mean and how is someone your best friend. That made me pause a little bit, because I didn't really know the answer. I wanted to give her a good one, so maybe she will start asking more questions.

Here's what I came up with:

• someone you have fun with


• someone you can be happy with, even if you are just sitting quietly together


• someone you miss if they are not with you


• someone you always choose to play with

She sat there quiet for a long time thinking about what I had said. I was starting to feel good about my communication skills, an idea of being an advice columnist in Parenting magazine crossing my mind. Then she spoke.

"O-kay ... well I guess my best friend is skittles."

Oh, Honey. Lesson learned. Next time ask your dad.

Rite of Passage

Today was a special day.

First off, this morning I hear Jeff in the living room say,"Saved by the Bell! Oh, I love this episode!" For those of you who know my husband, you might be surprised by this declaration of love because

a) he's really not very enthusiastic; rarely does an exclamation point sneak into his speech and

b) it's Saved By the Bell.

However, if you really knew him, you would know that he harbors a dark secret. And that secret is ... he aspires to be Zach Morris, complete with enormous phone, closet full of "jamz", and band named Zach Attack. Oh, and let's not forget a certain girlfriend named Kelly Kapowski. (It's possible, although he denies it, that when we were first married I still might have come in second to her in his affections.)

Back to the episode, it was one of my personal favorites. The reasons are 2-fold:

1. It's the one where they do a hip-hop/rap version of Snow White. C'mon, that in itself is hilarious.
   
2. Jesse and Zach kiss. Remember that?

We decided that this was the perfect opportunity to share the Saved by the Bell experience with our girls. So, we did. All 4 of us in the living room (Eliza was asleep) watching some CLASSIC television.

What a special day.

p.s. the only one that was better? The "I'm so excited... I'm so scared!" episode. That was a doozy.

What Danna finds romantic

Allright, here's something I find incredibly romantic: I had a splinter today and Jeff got it out. Why is that romantic, you ask? I ask myself the same thing. Maybe it's because he took care to be gentle. Maybe it's because it was in the palm of my right hand and he knew that I couldn't get it out by myself. (Maybe it's because he knew I would do the BIG SIGH until it was out...)

That's really what I love about marriage. I've never been a "moonlight stroll" or "dozen roses" kind of girl. I love the little things like the removing of splinters.

This is something that had us enthralled for a while tonight. We are easily enthralled. And slightly nerdy.

13 Thursday

Stink! Our internet has been down, and 3 days, a couple of (non-helpful) trouble shooting phone calls, and one marathon computer-doctor house call later... we're back. Please excuse the strong language at the beginning of this post, but being without the world wide web made me fussy.



Here are 13 things I've wanted to say:

1. Hmmmm .... I love rotel dip. No explanation necessary, here.



2. The Health Department gives me the fits. Got there when it opened (for baby shots) and took a number (4). It took them an hour to call my number and then it was another hour until the shots. They won't take appointments for baby shots, either. :(



3. Reason for the health dept? Our ped. doesn't do the shots.



4. Side note: our ped. is the same age we are. I went to pre-school with him. Crazy.



5. Side note B: mom says said ped. was my little pre-school boyfriend. When I was 3. My, wasn't I the progressive one?



6. At her check-up, they told me that she was as tall as a 10 to 12 month old. I figured as much.


7. Funny thing was, they said she was only 50th percentile in weight.


8. If these are 50th percentile legs, please, please, show me some 90th percentile legs! As much fun as we have had with these, I know I would just laugh and laugh. :)


9. After 2 weeks of extreme laziness, I got up and ran today.


10. My sweet husband rearranged the furniture again. Maybe it's my ocd. Maybe it's my resistance to change. Whatever it is, I really don't like it when he does this. It's one of our "polar opposite" things. He'd rearrange every stinkin day if he didn't think I'd go nutso. I'm pretty sure about this.


11. I covet lap-tops.


12. It was only the second week of storytime at the library, and we already missed it. Bad momma.


13. I taped the book. Those of you who are local, know that I am now carrying around a belly full of guilt.

It's good to be back.

Happy Father's Day!

Sorry, I've been a little hap-hazard with the ol' blogging lately. We've been running here and there, to and fro, hither and yon. Lots going on.

Let's see ... we went to a Redbirds game (sorry no pictures) , watched my mom walk the "Survivor Walk" at relay for life (sorry no pictures) and traveled to Nana and Papa's house and back (sorry no pictures).

To sum up: bunches of running around, no photos of any of it.

Here's a sad story: on our way home from Mountain View tonight I was trying to tell my husband how great a father I truly think he is. Only problem? I'm not very good at the mushy. I would go so far as to say I am very bad at the mushy. (It's okay. It's something Jeff and I have in common.) I was so bad at the mushy tonight, he thought I was making a joke. I finally convince him that I was serious and not dissing his parenting abilities, but I might not be so fortunate the next time. It's something I need to work on. So here, I am going to practice: I think everyone who reads this blog is fantastic. I really mean that! (hope that came across as sincere.)

One last rant - so I was watching iCarly (did I just say that?) and the episode was about how they had this really obnoxious fan that they were trying to ditch the whole time. I kept waiting for the music to change and for us to find out that she was homeless or abused and they would stop talking bad about her and embrace her socially awkward self. DIDN'T HAPPEN! She stayed obnoxious and just found some other group to be a fan of. There were no lessons learned, people. Yeah, I know the old 80's sitcoms were cheesy, but come on! At least they pretended to do the right thing at the end of the 30 minutes. I guess this is the trend in tween t.v.... Scary.

Maddie mumblings

I quote Sophie fairly often, but my second daughter speaks, too. Here is an example of a "Maddie conversation".

Mads -"Mommy, I want the pink."

Me - "You want the pink what?"

Mads - "yes"

Me - "Maddie, you want the pink what?"

Mads - "I want the blue."

Me - "you want the blue what?"

Mads - "DADDY, I WANT THE BLUE WHAT!"

Exactly.

I'm it

Tagged by dear Elizabeth

What were you doing 5 years ago?

1. Getting way more sleep.

2. I had time to fix my hair.

3. My clothing budget was actually money budgeted for my clothing

4. I'd never heard of Laurie Berkner (or Doodlebops and thank goodness for that)

5. Blissfully unaware that I was about to spend the better part of the next 3 years pregnant.

What are 5 things on your To-Do list today?

1. Vacuum the living room

2. convince Maddie to go potty on the potty.

3. hem J's dresses

4. Buy diapers

5. get baths done before church

What are 5 snacks you enjoy?

1.gummy bears

2. Sonic cherry coke (that's a snack, right?)

3. Hershey kisses

4. Huge Fuji apples

5. Goldfish (original flavor or pizza)

What are 5 things you'd do if you were a Billionaire?

1. Lose the debt

2. Lose the Stokes and Ramsey debt

3. Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer

4. Raise CRA's teachers salaries to what the teachers deserve!

5. Own a hurricane-proof home at the beach

What are 5 of your bad habits?

1. procrastination

2. worry

3. not being a good housekeeper

4. forgetting to shave my legs (or, more often, shaving one and forgetting to do the other)

5. allowing too much Nick Jr./Disney Channel

What are 5 jobs that you've had?

1. Babysitter

2. Waitress

3. Teacher

4. Mommy

5. Seamstress! haha

Name 5 places where you have lived.

1. AR

Who are 5 people you want to tag?

1. Andria

2. Trisha

3. Michelle

4. Rebecca

5. Amy Barrett

10 Things Tuesday

Here it is again!

10 Things I am thankful for today:

1. Lemonade. Over ice. In my yellow cup. If summer were a beverage ...



2. Sunshine on my shoulders. (makes me happy - so says John Denver, so says me)



3. 3 little girls. Only the Lord knows how different I thought my life would turn out.



4. My husband. I love him. I could say this a million times over. He is much better to me than I fear I am to him. I certainly married up!



5. All the pregnancies, adoptions, and babies lately. I love it! However, this is not making my clock tick, don't worry.



6. Making a little money doing something I enjoy. This has been a fun week.



7. Having a sister that's 16 years my junior. Sometimes this is not-so-fun. This week it's a HUGE blessing!



8. Southwest's Sunday Fun-day! We had a blast and got a big old kick out of Maddie's interpretive dance to the devo songs. No, I didn't stop her. She was actually not trying to be funny, her little 2 year old self was really feeling it. It was beautiful.



9. Little Swimmers. Wish they weren't so expensive, but what can you do?



10. Each new milestone that Eliza hits. The big sisters are really enjoying cheering her on!

What we did today

A conversation:

Me - "After Eliza has her bottle, we'll go swimming." (in our little blow-up pool)

Sophie - (taking a deep breath) "While you feed her ... I'm just going to put on my bathing suit, not go outside, I'm just going to open the door, I'm just going to go outside not go to far, I'm just going to go stand by the pool and look at it, not get in it, I'm just going to stand in it. Okay, later tater."

Now, add about 5 hand-gestures for each word while saying it as fast as you can and you'll just about have it.

Here is Miss Eliza Belle. Can you tell what she is wearing? It's a skirtini! (minus the tini)

Here are the girls. I said, "smile! I'm going to take your picture!" So, evidently that's code for "hike your leg up to your nose."
Later they informed me that they were being "ballerina mermaids". Ah, yes. Of course. Duh.

Scary movies

A question I love - "you wanna hear something funny?"

A question I despise - "you wanna see something gross?"

Which leads me to this confession: I LOVE reading scary stuff, but CANNOT watch it. Not at all. I've read a ton of Stephen King books and been fine with them. (I know, he has a terrible potty mouth. I always thought that if you had to use profanity than that just meant you had a limited vocabulary. Of course, Mr. King knows lots of words so I don't know what his excuse is. Hmm, I've gotten off topic here...)

Okay, the point is I can read scary stuff and not have any problems sleeping. But, one wrong episode of the X Files or something and I have nightmares for a week. This is interesting to me. Is it because I have no imagination? That the pictures in my head when I read are boring and bland? Maybe it's because I don't like to watch movies. (or maybe this is why I don't like to watch movies. ooh, vicious circle!) Who knows, but here are movies that scared the phooey out of me:

• The Exorcist. I literally stayed up all night after seeing this movie. Not because of her head spinning around, but because of all the sacrilege. I just knew God was going to strike me down for watching it. I was young ...


• The Ring. I just about had an accident watching this. Didn't scare Jeff at all.


• Salem's Lot. Read the book, thought it was great. Saw the movie, hid behind my hands most of the time.


• The Lost Boys. Really liked it, but I'll be honest with you, I've never actually seen the whole thing. We had it on video and I would fast forward parts I thought might be scary.

Now comes the really embarrassing stuff. I got scared at least once in all 3 of the Star Wars movies. (I don't count those new ones.) I also got scared in all of the Indiana Jones movies. Those are action movies for pete's sake! It's the monsters, maybe. I'm afraid of monsters. There are several famous (classic) scary movies that I have never seen, and I guess, never will. I believe the old saying goes, some things can never be un-seen. So, better safe than sleepless.

And now, continuing with our theme of "things that give me nightmares", may I present to you my baby sister.

One more story:

yesterday, I was fixing lunch for myself while the girls were eating at the table. All of a sudden, Sophie starts hollering. What's wrong?! I say (thinking she had bitten her tongue).

"This grape pee-peed in my mouth!"

Now that's gross and funny.

13 Thursday

A lot of stuff gets mispronounced around here. We're no speech therapists! See if you can guess the meaning of the following 13 words:

1. blueberry
2. baby soup
3. bebbis
4. dodo
5. pickle
6. kess
7. tocket
8. free
9. dot dogs
10. popart
11. panpake
12. wafwaf
13. douche

Answers:

1. library
2. bathing suit
3. breakfast
4. Coco (our former dog)
5. Popsicle
6. kiss
7. chocolate
8. three
9. hot dogs
10. pop tart
11. pancake
12. waffle
13. juice

About half are Sophie's mispronunciations. All the food ones are Maddie's. :) We actually have tried to correct them, but about the only one that's changed is library. It really embarrassed Sophie when she realized she was saying it wrong. It didn't help that I laughed.

My blog as advertising :)

Okay, the time has come for me to promote my new little venture. Little Show-offs is open for business! I wanted to wait until after my vacation was over before I actually began. This is very exciting for me!

A few things I really want you to know:

• I have several different clothing patterns, but I am still working out some kinks. Therefore I am currently only selling bishops and sundresses. Sorry to all the boy moms out there!


• All dresses are hand-sewn, except for the seams. You may choose french seams or serged.


• These make wonderful gifts, especially when you choose the colors and smocking design yourself. Very personal. And everyone loves receiving them!


• I really struggled with the pricing. I asked around at local fabric stores and several girlfriends. What I am offering is about $20 less than what most are asking for the same amount of work.

I truly enjoy making things and can't wait to work with you to create something beautiful! Tell your friends!

Ten Things Tuesday

Mom starts back on chemo tomorrow, so that's what is on the old mind today. Here are 10 things to be thankful for during this illness:

1. Mom has a convenient excuse for all goofy or forgetful behavior - "chemo fog".


2. She has officially had the most consecutive "good hair days" our family has ever had.


3. I've learned some really big words.


4. Vanity goes and isn't really missed.


5. Empathy. I simply didn't get it before.


6. My mother realized how many people out there truly love her.


7. All the cards and phone calls. And food and flowers. And hugs and visits.


8. She has become a lot more vocal about her faith.


9. The blessing of intercessary prayer.


10. That our world and our bodies may fail us, but God never does.

101st post!

Have you ever been over to someone's house and they insist on showing you their vacation video or endless photos of scenery that you have already seen better pictures of in books? Yeah, this post is going to be something like that. In honor of Mr. 101st Post, I am going to give you 101 bits of Danna's vacation trivia.

1. Traveling at night, the only way to do it with a baby.




2. Except ... now we have some weird sort of jet-lag and we didn't even cross any time zones.




3. When we got to Ft. Walton Beach at around 9 a.m., we spent the entire day trying to entertain the girls and keep the baby from getting too cranky while we waited on our 4 o'clock check in time.




4. We found out at 3 o'clock that we could have checked in at any time.




5. Initially, I'll admit it, we were a tad disappointed that our condo was across the road, not right on the beach.




6. Little did we know, by having our condo facing the inlet, that it would give our girls hours of boat-watching fun. Seriously, they were fascinated. The first thing they did each morning was run out to the deck, pull up their chairs, and watch the boats.




7. Jeff and I were making a Wal-Mart run, to pick up all the forgotten things, and Sophie put in a request for green nail polish. For the beach, she says.




8. We pick lime green. When we get back she says, "I was thinking darker green, but this will work." What 4 yr old talks like that?




9. Next she insists that the little round UV protection sticker is supposed to be on her sunglasses and refuses to take it off.




10. Of course, the sunglasses were only worn inside the condo.




11. We went through 3 spray bottles of sunscreen plus who knows how much of the lotion variety.




12. I'm pretty sure there was a nice film in the pool after we left. We were a bit over-zealous. But no sunburns!




13. At the beach, you couldn't keep Sophie out of the water.




14. She liked "jumping the waves" and saying "boogie board".




15. (In our house, we call boogers - boogies.)




16. Mads was happy playing in the sand.




17. She really liked being buried in it by Uncle Danny.




18. Whom she kept calling Uncle Greg.




19. Eliza had her moments, but the beach wasn't really her thing.




20. I think because I made her wear a hat.




21. You know what was her thing? Sitting on my hip.




22. ALL THE TIME.




23. Yeah, Eliza is in the throws of separation anxiety.




24. I am talking about the THROWS. As in, I love you, Eliza Poops, but if you don't go to someone else soon, I am going to throw something. But not you, of course. I think.



25. Sophie wanted to go to the real Krispy Kreme and put donuts in her nose. Oh, that girl thinks she is hilarious.




26. My relationship with the skirtini has turned into love/hate.




27. I still love the way I could walk around and not be thinking about all that was hanging bulging and lumpy. (pretty gross. heh heh)




28. I hate that it might be a little matronly.




29. If you think I am going to post a photo of said swimsuit, you must be smoking crack.




30. Eliza decided that she had hair-envy, so mom generously provided her with some hair.




31. Speaking of hair, mom went without her wigs most of the time we were there.




32. I am very proud of her.



33. Here we are in front of our condo sign. Why am I so high above the rest of my family?




34. We tried to take the traditional wearing white at the beach pictures.




35. Evidently, we aren't the best at staging these photos. Note the lovely gap.




36. Again, why is Danna so far above the rest of her family?



37. I liked the candid shots much better. :)

Okay, so that wasn't 101 things, but cut me some slack. You didn't really want to read that many things, anyway. :)