Easter Pics

Easter Sunday was a serious miracle - as it should be. I actually got all my kids to church dressed in their Easter outfits throw-up free. And all this after moving into a new house the day before. I know, I know, I'm pretty amazing.

Our sweet friends Harriet and Garrett Putman had us over for lunch after church and it was so great to be in someone's home for Easter lunch. We had great Southern fare - Honey Baked Ham, yeast rolls, fruit salad and cheese grits. Quote from Maggie, "Boy, these are some good grits, mom." And how. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to be with friends, to drink sweet tea, and to not have to cook a bit! Not that I could have cooked if I had wanted to...my dishes were all in boxes and everything in my fridge was at the old house. Crazy. So thankful for friends in Jacksonville who are loving us and taking care of us.

Must keep blogging!

Howdy blogettes, from my new abode! It's a friggin zoo over here, but my mother in law and her sister have been visiting and they are getting after it! The girls rooms all look better than they did at my old house, frankly. Everything has a place and all that stuff. It's very un-Buffy-like to have things put away and I have to say I truly love it.



Our new house is so great and so perfect. I usually have a really hard time with transition, but this one has been a breeze. The house is back in a great neighborhood with TONS of kids and families. Our house backs up to the most peaceful pond frequented by numerous birds every morning when the fog is over the water. It's really nice to have a peaceful setting outside since it's 24/7 chaos inside these walls. I do feel so blessed.



On Saturday we had some GREAT friends help us cart things back and forth, as well as watch my princesses the entire time. The girls were supposed to go to my mom and dad's, but my grandmother is really ill and had to go to the hospital so it didn't seem right to dump my kids with mom while she's spending virtually every second with Nana. We have gotten some fun stuff, like new rugs, pillows for the couch, bed stuff for us and Mag. It's been fun to do all that. Ian, however, hasn't been nearly as excited as I have been about the fru fru stuff. He just kept dropping not-so-sublte hints about getting a humongous hdtv. We would laugh and say, "that'll be the day." Well, I finally decided to give him the thumbs up on the TV and put off some of the other stuff I want (like living room furniture or a fence for the backyard death trap, you know...crazy stuff like that). So I told him this on Monday night after work and he said, "Thanks honey, but I know there's a lot of stuff we need. I want to think about it and take a look at things and see. I just don't know." Well, Tuesday afternoon at 5:00 I called to see what time he was coming home from work. He told me he left work early and was headed to Costco...to buy the tv! Hilarious. Needless to say, last night was spent hooking up the most humongous, incredibly clear television I have ever seen. It really is a beauty.

Just think, now we can watch Tyler Hansborough and the Heels win the National Championship on the big screen! Every pore, every drop of sweat will be right there for us to see.

I must say that "Dancing with the Stars" in HD was really cool - especially the Jonas Brothers...they are so dreamy. Maggie had me tape it so she could see them.

That's about the extent of it. I'll post some Easter pics when I can. So cute. I'm off to watch Sports Center in HD...

Lord have mercy...

So it's 10:34pm the night before we move into the new casa. As I type my brother, David, and Ian are moving a mattress out of the babies' room...which means the babies are now awake, which means I've gotta run. More later... ugh.

Question for the day...

Have you ever had the pleasure of pushing a Target shopping cart, carrying a 10 month old, into a bathroom stall while holding another (albeit small) 10 month old on your person in the Baby Bjorn so that you can go poopy? Keep in mind that the Bjorn is occupied for the duration of the visit.

I just laugh at my life sometimes.

Wonder Woman

Sorry - just had to post this because it continues to crack me up. Wonder Woman cracking Tori up with "Under my Umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh" in the background. We are moving to our new house in four days and so far all I've done this morning is take care of kids, make videos, and eat a Big Mac combo...all before 11:00 am. How'm I doin?

It's a bird...it's a plane...it's....

Definitely not SuperMom. Yesterday was a series of mommy blunders - and it all happened before 9:00 in the morning.

First of all, I was feeling so good about myself because the night before I had spent a good hour or so planning the next morning so it would go smoothly. So Tuesday night I packed Maggie's lunch, made the girls' bottles, packed BOTH of their diaper bags because Zoe was staying with Beth while I took Tori to the cardiologist. I even put Maggie's pictures for her teacher in an obvious place so she and Ian wouldn't forget to take them to school. I went to bed exhausted, but prepared.

Wednesday morning rolls around and I jump up and get after it. It all goes well...both twins are fed their bottles, Zoe's in the jumpy thing and Tori's chillin' on the bed while Maggie and Ian are in the room. I am running around getting clothes for everyone and trying to get myself presentable when Ian and Maggie head downstairs to go to school and work. I walk back into my room to see my sweet Tori on her back and half hanging off the bed. "Ahhhh!," I scream, which scares Tori to death and she does a complete back flip and lands flat on her face on the floor (carpeted, thank God). She's screaming, I'm freaked out, Maggie starts crying because her sister is hurt. It wasn't pretty, but Tori was totally fine after about 30 seconds. SuperMom incident #1.

So I've barely recovered from the bed fiasco when I kiss Maggie and Ian goodbye and send them off for the day. For some reason, though, something is hanging in the back of my mind that I need to do. Can't think for the life of me what it is, so I continue on my way. About 10 minutes later I'm loading the twins in the car and I grab a granola bar to snarf down on the way to our new house. Then I remember...Maggie had NO BREAKFAST! I sent her to school with no breakfast whatsoever. SuperMom incident #2. Also come to find out that I forgot to put her "field trip shirt" on her that morning because they were going to see "Cat in the Hat" - without me...pretty much the only mom not there (could be SuperMom incident #3, but I'm over it. I know those ladies at preschool know I'm losing my mind so I'm sure they're not surprised my girl is not decked out in her lime green "Mandarin Preschool" shirt.)

What a morning. It does make me feel a little better to remember the blunders that my own sweet mom encountered during her 25 years of having kids at home. More than once she bought her groceries, went to get the car to pull it up and have them load the car, and ended up in our garage at home without ever THINKING to pull up to get the groceries. She would open the back hatch of the mammoth station wagon and realize that there were no groceries to be had. There are other instances too, but I don't want to throw her under the bus any more than I already have. I'll save those stories for when I have another one of these days. I'm sure there will be many.

Sorry I haven't written much lately. I never really get around to it on the weekends - I always think I'll have more time then, but I really don't. This weekend, though, Ian and I got a special treat. Our friends Beth and Kurt kept all three kids for 6 hours so we could pack up some boxes for our move. Only a mother of three young children would think that packing up your house in silence is a treat. But it totally was - I could actually hear myself think and it was glorious. Ian and I had complete conversations and laughed together at each other, not at the kids. It was fun. Then we went to look at furniture, which was fun too.

I can't believe we move in two weeks! Easter weekend the kids are going to my mom and dad's so we can get after it and I am so grateful for that. I think Sandy, Ian's mom, is either coming here to help or going to help my parents with the kids. We really can't wait to move - the house is great and the neighborhood is awesome. We went out to the neighborhood yesterday for their "spring fling" and it was a hoot. I have never seen so many young families in one neighborhood in my life. Cool. Afterward we drove over to our house and looked in the windows since we still can't get in. Maggie and I ran around our yard and it just made me so excited to have a place for the kids to run, a neighborhood to walk around, a pool to go to in the sweltering summer. Just can't wait.

OK, I don't really have anything witty or interesting to share today. Got too much rattling around in my brain to be thinking about amusing myself on the blog. There are bags to pack and babies to deal with. Sorry for the boring post.

One really exciting thing, though...Zoe pulled up this weekend! She is getting so big - she is such a fast crawler and she's into everything. As much of a pain as that stage can be, it's really fun to see her changing right before my very eyes.

"Mom, from now on I'd like for you to call me Cinderella"

This is what Maggie said to me today when I called her name to ask her a question. So funny. If only it were that easy to transport to princess world and become royalty. It's definitely been a Calgon kind of week around here. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I gotta say that by 4:00 in the afternoon I'm covered in graham crackers (at best), living in a virtual pig sty, listening to Sharpay and Ryan sing the same song 5 times while Maggie perfects her HSM moves, thinking that it's 5:00 somewhere, and waiting for the key to turn in the door and for my Prince Charming to come home to remind me of who I really am.

So from now on, blogettes, I'd like for you to call me Princess! (Especially since the physical therapist that came to the house today met me and when I told her my name was Buffy she said, "Oh, that's cute!" - like it's just a precious little pet name. Ugh.)

By the way, this is a pic of Maggie when she was 3 - she lived in that Cinderella costume.

Beach pictures

More pictures

As if you haven't had enough photos of my kids...

The past couple weeks have been so fun, though, that I just wanted to include some pics. Two weeks ago for Maggie's birthday we took cupcakes to her preschool and afterward everyone somehow surrounded Sandy (Ian's mom) and wanted her to read them a book. As you can see, TOri was in the middle of the action. Ian was there too, but he was half asleep because he took the red eye from Portland the night before. I dragged him out of bed and to school - what a good hubby and daddy!

The next week we were at the beach with my parents and various siblings and their kids. I think I already told you about that. The boys in the pics are Watts, Nate and Sam (in that order) and they are Jeannie's kids. Maggie has such a blast with Watts and Nate - it's really a trip. It was also great for me because I actually got to go to the grocery store a couple times by myself! Mom and Dad watched all six kids one morning so Jeannie and I could ride bikes for some exercise. Of course, we ended up gorging on a breakfast buffet at the restaurant up the street, but at least we didn't drive there, right?