Happy...to you

That's what Aliza was singing all day today. Today was my birthday. I don't think Aliza really knew it was my birthday and not hers, but that's ok. I just pretended that she was singing to me. Jeremy's parents are visiting us and Matt and Chrissy joined us at my parents for lunch. Mom makes a birthday meal for each of her children. We always have the option to choose our meal, but at this point in my life I choose what I eat every night so I have turned that privilege over to her and for one day I don't have to worry about what I will cook!

For all you scrapbooking fans, Jeremy got me a Cricut. I will quickly add that he got it off ebay! I won't have to worry about gift ideas for him for awhile....just a new cartridge for the Cricut. It will arrive later this week so I will be carving out some scrapping time for sure.

There was another gift that got quite a reaction from those watching me open gifts. My parents gave me a trash can. It is a very nice trash can. In the picture below I placed the old and new trash cans together. The white trash can is the one we have used for the last 7 years. I put a Wal-Mart grocery bag in it and I thought it was fairly dirty, but quite functional. The spring had broken so the gray lever no longer worked. You had to press on the back of the lid for it to open. A little annoying, but ok. Well, I opened up this new trash can and people practically cheered. They proceeded to talk about how horrible our trash can was and you would have thought my in-laws were ready to disown me for having such a lowly trash can!!! Anyway, I have now entered the world of highly functional trash cans and it will now be worthy of being moved into the new kitchen! Thanks for the trash can Mom!

Grocery Shopping

I guess one could assume that there is nothing more interesting in my life to talk about besides grocery shopping, but today wasn't any ordinary grocery shopping trip. This was the first time I went grocery shopping alone with two children. I'm not sure what possessed me to attempt this today. I had dinner with a friend last night and had a good night's sleep so I was ready to face the challenge. Actually it went really well. I'll do it again soon. I put Josiah in the front pack facing out and Aliza was in the back of the cart as usual. I guess having Josiah facing out looked funny to shoppers because we got a lot of attention. And it wasn't "cute baby" attention it was looks at me like I had lost my mind! Looks that said "boy you have your hands full." The great thing was I had my hands full, but my kids were great. Aliza behaved and Josiah was quiet. I had everything under control.

Aliza was a little squished when I put the bags in the back of the cart with her. The bag of corn beside her was a little tipsy so I told her to sit down and hold the corn. Next thing I know she is holding the bag of frozen corn saying "ok Mommy." I guess I didn't specify what corn. But how did she find that frozen corn so fast?

Josiah--4 months

Josiah is 4 months old today. He is so close to rolling over. He had night time sleeping boot camp this week. He had consistently waking up once during the night and then had started waking up 2 times. So his Mommy decided that it was time for him to learn to sleep through the night. The first night he woke up twice and cried 20 minutes the first time and 45 minutes the second time. The next next he slept until 5:30am and the third night until 7am. A pretty quick learner, I'd say. In retrospect I should have done that a long time ago, but he'll survive and so will we.

Vacation Bible School

The little Methodist Church around the corner from our house hosts a Vacation Bible School every year. They have a class for under 4 so I decided to take Aliza this year. She had so much fun. There were five children in her class. Three of them were 2, one was 3, and one was 19 months. Every child had a parent stay with them and all the parents were in the same boat of chasing their child and trying to get them participate in some semblence of the structured activity. So tonight was their closing program and Aliza's class sang the song they learned. Aliza had no problem with being social. During the party tonight she was over with the big kids who were playing with the parachute and drinking her box drink.

Family Ritual

This is our most recent scrap challenge--to document a family ritual. Almost every day we walk down the road to see the horses. Aliza chatters the whole way, helps push Josiah in the stroller and anxiously looks for the black dog to chase and pet. When we get to the farm she climbs up on the fence to look for the horses. Often the horses are in the barn or in the back field where she can't see them, but it doesn't matter to her. When she is ready she usually sprints home. The road is perfect since it is a dead end road with almost no traffic and those who do live on the road are very familiar with our little family ritual. If they haven't seen us, they have probably heard us! (Too bad you can barely see her little ponytail in the picture!)

Janell's Bridal Shower

Janell's bridal shower was a tea party. There were 11 of us altogether. I was the planner and visionary and my sisters and sister-in-law made it happen. Everyone played a special role and it wouldn't have been a success without their help.

The table. The favors were tealights and teabags.

This is a sampling of the food we had. The menu is too long to write. We counted 13 different foods that we prepared that morning. Highlights included orange chocolate chip scones with clotted cream, white chocolate mousse, and cucumber sandwiches.

PRESENTS!

My sisters and I.
Laura, Carla, Janell, Linda

The sisters and sister-in-law. Yay for Meghan! Meghan is such a good sport even though she detests living on the Eastern Shore. I only have one brother so she will be my only sister-in-law. How would you like to marry into a family of 4 sisters!??

Too bad my eyes are closed. Mom and her girls.


Mom and I

Uncle, Cousin and Rice Cereal

We had some fun with Brian, Meghan and Caleb tonight. Aliza did super well sharing her toys. And Caleb showed a little cousin interest in Josiah. Caleb is a speedy little crawler so we were keeping him away from electrical outlets while Aliza was dangerously swinging around her new broom. Four adults for three kiddos....that was about right!

Josiah had his first meal of rice cereal. Jeremy must be tired of getting up at night to feed Josiah because he very patiently worked with him until he had eaten a whole serving of cereal. It was obvious that Josiah's tummy was very full! Now we'll see how the night goes.