Radio Silence...

So, it's been brought to my attention that I've been a little quiet on the blog front... unfortunately, I knew this was true.  It's been two weeks since my last confession, er, I mean blog.  We have been CRAZY busy since school started.  I thought school starting would get us back into a routine and things would run smooth.  WHAT WAS I THINKING?  Things were never routine last year or smooth, so WHY would I think this year would be any different?  So.........  We have been up to the following.  SCHOOL.  School has started and the kids are enjoying it, but it's making one little fella EXHAUSTED.  He is a cranky mess most afternoons.  I feel bad for losing my patience with him at times because I know he's just tired... BUT, I still can't stand the constant whining!  He has gotten better this week, which I am (and I'm sure he is) extremely happy about!!  AND the night terrors have gotten few and very far between (insert choir of angels singing HALLELUJAH here!) 

Some days I get to school at the perfect time, I get to sit and watch Boston at recess without him knowing!  So far, he's always been well behaved (why can I not get this behavior at home?)

We took the kids to their very first Red Sox game two weekends ago... would have been much better at Fenway, but we'll settle for what's close!  Madi wasn't feeling so great, but she did NOT want to miss the game.  Amazingly enough, she felt better after a sno-cone.  In her defense, she did have a sore throat, so I bet it felt much better after that.  On Friday, DJ & I got to go to the game with our realtor (and friend) who got us amazing seats, two rows back behind the camera pit, just to the side of the Red Sox dugout.  The next night DJ had to work, but I didn't (I still worked the day shift) so Steph and I used the AMAZING seats my parents gave us.  Diamond Club, behind homeplate.

Besides school, mama has been working her butt off (ok, not really, but much more than just the lunch shifts I was getting used to).  We've got some girls hired, so hopefully within the next couple weeks, we'll go back to my easy goin' work.  The kids haven't seemed to mind my working because they have been able to go to Grandma's, Mammo's, Uncle Geek (Cody), and/or Uncle Brian's house.  Last weekend alone they started the weekend off with Grandma & Grandpa (after a trip to Legends for Madi to do some more school shopping), spent the night there, went to Uncle Brian's for little Miss Molly Jane's birthday party (so sad I missed that!!) then went to Rushville to celebrate Uncle Geek's birthday (also sad I missed this) then Boston stayed with Carter and Madi stayed at Gracie's house (Aunt Jennie's cousin).  When I went to pick them up Sunday they were NOT ready to come home... of course.

Boston & Tessa in the trees, like the monkey's they are!

Last week Madi auditioned for Snow White at Theatre Atchison.  She said she was nervous, but that she was going to get up there and read loud.... well, that wasn't exactly what happened.  She did get up there, and she did read, but it wasn't very loud.  We sat there for quite a while and she was never called to read for a different part.  We talked about how she would feel if she didn't get a dwarf part (which is what she wanted) and she told me she would be upset, but ok.  We found out on Friday that she didn't receive a dwarf part, but the part of a bird.  Her friend Katy also got the part of a bird, so she was happy about that.  They have no lines, but I'm sure this will not be the end of either of their dramatic careers ;)

Madi has lost TWO teeth since my last blog, so here she is in all her glory...

Soccer begins in the next couple weeks, so let's add that to the list of things to do during the week/end!  Madi already has play practice T/Th, so hopefully soccer is on M and/or W for both kids!!

I almost forgot... I decided on an e-reader.  I have only downloaded one book for myself, it's called "Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip - Confessions of a Professional Waiter".  I have however downloaded two games and seven kid books!  Madi has been doing her SFA homework from the Nook.  The new LOVE in my life:

Something else starts this week too......... K...S...U...WILDCATS!  ........ FOOTBALL!  It will not be the same here, but I'm going to do my best to bring game day to Atchison!  I worked this past Saturday for the first BC home game and I was amazed at how few of our staff showed up in Red & Black to support their school (quite a few of our staff are STUDENTS).  I'm used to showing up to work with everything purple I own on my body!  Purple Headband, Purple Eyeshadow, Powercat Tattoo, KSU Shirt, Purple Shoes, Purple Fingernail Polish, Purple Earrings, Purple Ring, Purple Necklace ...you get the point, if it's purple, it's ON!  I'm not alone in this fashion statement on game days, most every employee at the Manhattan Willie's will be wearing just as much, if not more (if possible) purple on game days.  WE LOVE OUR CATS!  You will definitely be seeing me in purple this weekend as well!  This is the time of the year I will miss Manhattan the most.  I love the college town atmosphere on game days, you just can't duplicate it.  ...and in case you were wondering, my children will also grow up wearing as much purple on Saturday's as possible... and they will also LOVE IT ;)

I'm sure I'm missing something, but this will do for now.  Good night & SKO CATS!!  (insert Lindsey Wilson screaming at the top of her lungs here!!)

One Year Later...

This time last year we had a truck of stuff packed up and made the move to Rushville... well, the kids & I did.  DJ would be staying behind in our house that we had barely put on the market and work at Willie's.  The kids & I moved in with Mammo & Papa.  I was jobless and the kids were starting school so it was going to be a LONG few months while I waited for Willie's to open.  I applied at a few places but felt it necessary to let everyone know that I would be working full time at Willie's once we opened, needless to say, I didn't get a job.  THREE MONTHS of boredom.  We made quite a few trips back to Manhattan to hang out with daddy and friends and DJ made trips to Atchison once a week, but then it happened, we opened Willie's and all that boredom I was hating was LONG gone.  We opened the day after Christmas for Friends & Family and for the next month I was working more than I had worked in years at Willie's.  We had multiple current & former employees from the other two places come to help, and it was nice to see familiar faces.  When we moved to Atchison a year ago I only knew a couple people that weren't related to us.  I'm happy to say that a year later I have finally made some friends ;)  Thank you Jodi & Steph for working beside me almost everyday and then choosing to also hang out with me after hours... love you girls!!  Boston didn't take long to make friends or adjust to the new living situation.  Madi on the other hand wanted to move back to Manhattan IMMEDIATELY.  She had a hard time at school, even though she had made friends, but she didn't want me to leave her there.  It was awful.  Gone are those days! She has made a lot of friends and she really took to a couple girls, thank you Blair & Katy for being such good friends to my little girl, I really think the two of you made her a lot happier here in Atchison!!  I am so grateful!

1st day of school 2010

the three amigo's

Blair, Katy, and Madi

the usual suspects

Jodi, Me, Jana, and Steph

After the newness of Willie's was gone, I was able to go back to working just days and hangin with the midgets at night.  I am able to drop them off & pick them up from school, go on field trips, and be a room mother, I love having that opportunity!  I still need to be there on occasion at night, but I'm not working near the hours I was when we first opened.

Willie's Atchison

When we started looking at houses in Atchison, we fell in love with an older home (built in 1885).  It had been renovated with a new kitchen, all new windows, new furnace & a/c units, and it had an amazing price tag!  One small problem, we looked at the house for the first time in November, our house in Manhattan was not sold yet!  We didn't end up closing on our house until March!  But, the house we wanted was still for sale, the bank had signed a contract with us and the selling realtor pretty much took it off the market long before we sold our house!  Love small towns, that would have never flied in Manhattan!  We moved in on March 4th and we love our new house, Madi still wanted to go back to Manhattan, but LOVED her new HUGE room!  Boston was thrilled with his new room as well and I love that the laundry room is upstairs - in my closet - BONUS!  There are still some things that need to be done, but slowly we will get to them... like that room that is completely bare!  If I wait til Christmas at least there will be a tree, HA!

our new crib

Summer came and went very quickly!  The kids played softball & t-ball.  We had big plans of going to Mammo & Papa's pool on a very regular basis, but that STUPID FLOOD thought differently.  What was once a 15 minute drive MAX now became an hour & having a pool to ourselves just wasn't worth an hour drive :(  The flood also brought house guests.  Sheila and Kelsey have been with us since the end of June when the flood hit.  Sheila works a couple blocks from our house and goes home to see Rick on the weekends and Kelsey works for us.  Kelsey will be moving out in the next week or so when she can get into her apartment.  The kids are REALLY going to miss their Kwelsey, especially Boston because he can usually sweet talk her into playing Wii while the rest of us are not so interested.

I think we're all happy to have made the move and it is really nice to be closer to all of our families.  The kids love being able to have JoJo aka Georgey aka Jordan watch them.  They love being able to run across the street from Willie's just to say "Hi" to DooDoo and they love being able to get to Mammo's and Sheddy's in 15 minutes (sometime this will be true again) and they love only driving 45min-an hour to get to Grandma's.  We still miss our friends in Manhattan, but truth be told, I think we just miss the idea of what we had while we were there.  Most of my friends have left the Manhattan area and Madi's bestie from Manhattan has moved as well, but for some reason, I think we think that if we were there it would be the same as before, and it just wouldn't.

Here's to many more happy years in Atchison and lots of reunions in Manhattan ;)

Goodbye Summer ...

It's official.  Summer has ended.  School started today and it seemed to have come out of NO WHERE.  We'd been planning for this day for a couple weeks, but when I say planning, I mean, talking about it, not actually going to bed any earlier or trying to get up any earlier... whoops.  The kids did really well this morning though.  Madi slept through her alarm for 7 minutes, Boston was a little hard to wake up, but once they were up, they were pretty excited about school!  After a couple pictures on the porch, we headed to school.  All summer we teased Madi about what she will do when she sees Boston at school & every time she said things like, "I'm going to turn & look the other way" or "when he says HI to me, I'm going to ask my friends if they know who he is".  RUDE, but a little funny.  Today on the way in the building she said, "I'll take him to the gym everyday before I go see my friends."  ...we'll see how long that lasts, I say about a week, week & a half, tops, but hopefully if he asks her after that, she'll still take him!  I got to stick around to pass out "1st day cookies" to the classes.  I delivered Boston's cookies & got to see him at his table, then since I didn't deliver the 2nd graders cookies, I snuck in to take a picture of Madi.  They both seemed happy as could be to be at school (YAY!). 

Madi didn't pose for quite so many pictures :(



The kids made it home in one piece & said they actually enjoyed their first day of school!  Madi was happy because when we went to Open House she was sitting by three boys & when she got there today a change had been made and now it was 2 boys, 2 girls.  Boston was happy because there was a boy from his preschool that he knew sitting by him! They had differing opinions on lunch, Madi - GROSS, Boston - good.  Go figure, he LOVED lunch at preschool last year and it was just like school lunches.  I have a feeling tonight there will be NO PROBLEMS with bed time!

And on a side note, Boston has had a nap for the past two days & no night terrors!  I'm not sure if that has helped, but it did say that being overly tired could be a trigger.

Normal?! Who wants to be normal?!

Many people know that Madi has always been quite the busy sleeper.  If you can do it while you're sleeping, she does... Snores, sleep walks, pees in random places, talks, grinds her teeth, hmmm, I feel I'm forgetting something, BUT all of that has REALLY slowed down since she got her adenoids out in late January.  YAY!  She sleeps SO much better now!  One thing she has NEVER done is had night terrors.  I'm not talking about bad dreams, waking up crying and being scared, but waking up SCREAMING, sweating, shaking, not recognizing me (or DJ) and not being able to be consoled...and not being able to be woken up.  This is what Boston has started doing.  It's like we finally get two good sleepers and the flip is switched in Boston's head.

This started a few weeks ago, just before we left for vacation.  I came in on the end of it, so I didn't realize that is what had happened the first time.  The next time we were on vacation in Wisconsin and it was like nothing I had EVER seen.  It's like he's in a horror film.  He can't be consoled at all, just looks at us like we're complete strangers and we've come to nab him or something.  We finally laid him back down & he went back to sleep, woke up the next morning and didn't remember anything about it.

The next time it happened was last week while he was staying at Papa's house.  Rick tried to get him a drink of water, thinking maybe it would help him snap out of it, but he choked!  The next day as Rick was telling us the story, Boston said "Papa, you were dreaming, I didn't have a bad dream, that was Madi", I guess he just assumed it was one of Madi's stories because we've always had so many about her. 

Two nights ago, it happened again.  I ran into his room picked him up & tried to console him... didn't work (as usual).  After a lot of hugging (almost suffocating) he got tired and fell back asleep in my bed... never woke up again and of course didn't remember a lick of it in the morning.  After Boston fell asleep I grabbed my phone and googled "night terrors in children".  I spent the next hour reading a few different websites about how it's "NORMAL".  Come to my house about an hour after Boston has fallen asleep and witness this and you tell me this is "NORMAL".  I read that it's best just to hug them and do your best let them know everything is ok.

Last night, I was ready.  Laying in bed I just waited, finally fell asleep and then BAM, there it was, SCREAM.  DJ & I ran into his room, left the light off, hugged him, and soon after he was back to sleep.  Same awful things have happened each time, but the I think the worst is him looking at us as if we're strangers.  It breaks my heart to think of what we look like to him when he's having these terrors, but on the flip side, I love that he doesn't remember any of it in the morning!

http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/sleep/a/night_terrors.htm

Here's hoping tonight with an earlier bedtime we can skip a terror.  I'm getting myself ready to be "terrorized" for the next week.  Even with an earlier bedtime, school starts Thursday and I know it's going to take a toll on the little guy.  He's going to be exhausted, but hopfully we can get through this without too many terrors in the future.

Love ya little buddy!

Vacay Wrap Up

Our last day of vacation in Wisconsin was Friday and we decided to just sit back and relax . . . HAHAHA!  Yea right!  We played 9 holes of golf at a family course in the morning, where I may have had a slight lapse in judgement & let Madi drive the golf cart, she ran into a pole in the middle of the cart path!  Whoops!!  Golf is a game my dad LOVES to play.  Since his early retirement, he now works at two different golf courses.  Now, I'm not a sore loser (ok, well maybe sometimes) and I don't mind being bad at a sport, because there are PLENTY out there (most of them) that I suck at, BUT what I do mind & what is not all that fun, is swinging 7 times in a row & not hitting that little ball on the tee, and then hearing your five year old say to his father, "how many practice swings is she going to take" LOL.  I think we all had a great time golfing, poor Madi had to use Boston's clubs that were way too little for her, but she still did well & a couple of times drove the ball further than I did (embarrassing!).

The boy's cart

Can anyone tell me what is WRONG with this picture?

Boston swinging away

The kids with Grandma & Grandpa



 After lunch we hit up the pool!  The kids went down the slides, played on the climbing net (for the 100th time), they actually played tag in the little kids area while I got my tan on again and we all played water basketball!  It was girls vs boys again and I GUESS you could say the boys won, but they played dirty!  Boston was held up to dunk almost every score and Boston & DJ were trying to pull our bottoms down when we had the ball - I guess if you don't have talent, you have to use what you have ;)  Grandma & Grandpa even played for a while!

After some fun in the sun, we came in for a movie & a rest!  Then dinner & then off to the outdoor mini-golf course.  No one took their phone or camera, but I think we took enough pictures of our golfing experiences.  After golf we packed up our stuff & hit the road.  We wanted the kids to sleep in the car instead of fight the whole nine hours home, so we left about 9:30 on Friday.  We got to KC about 6am and stayed at my parents (who were just waking up in Wisconsin to make the drive home).  We slept until about 10am and then since 9 hours of driving just wasn't enough, we headed to Manhattan so DJ could do a couple hours work at Willie's.  First stop in Manhattan though was So Long Saloon mmm mmm good!  While DJ was working, we played some pool in The Pub and then went to Target to buy Boston a lunch box & backpack.  I was obviously sleep deprived while at Target because I let him get a Mario Bros backpack & lunchbox - I'm not a fan of the character shirts, bags, etc., but it was ALL he wanted & I really didn't feel like putting up a fight.  They're not terrible, I would just rather something that didn't have a character(s) plastered all over it!!  After all of about three hours in Manhattan, we headed HOME!  We were all very happy to be back home and in our own beds!  We watched a movie and went to bed!  We didn't do a whole lot yesterday either.  The kids played Wii until Mammo & Papa showed up with Shelly, David & Taylor.  The kids were so happy to see them all & apparently didn't have enough pool time (WHAT?!) that they went home with Mammo & Papa...not sure when I'll see them again. Just Kidding... sort of.

Anyway, that's our vacay.  It was a great week with Grandma & Grandpa up in the Dells!