sorry!

This is the face I imagine everyone having when they click on my blog looking for a new update... and there's NOTHING!

The "I don't get it... why can't she just write a LITTLE something... a picture... anything!!" face.

Everybody's life is crazy, I know, but mine has seemed especially nutty recently as we find our summer groove and I'm thrown into being a swimmer mom... which I am discovering is WAY more of a commitment than a soccer mom.

Lunch

A cute photo at lunch...which happened right after a serious discussion with brooke on why we don't LICK THE BOTTOM OF OUR SHOES! Seriously...she was lickin it like it was a freakin' lollipop! I'm not tat grossed out these theys, but this made me throw up a little in my mouth.

Nellie's blog post

Bgf rd wqwrttrtyi try uooopgvhj km bccgbv chaff cctv co..niebuhr arts beverage

Nellie loves to sneak my phone out of my purse, hide, and get in all sorts of trouble. Somehow she did this blog post, changed my wallpaper, sent a few text messages and called qdoba 5 times (I only caught her when I heard the phone ringing...it was qdoba wondering why I kept calling them)... woops!

Nellie is 16 months now!

For all those readers out there...if there are any left... I'm sorry. I've been a terrible blogger of late. I have a bunch of excuses, but I'll just stick with sorry!!!
Nellie turning 16 months is a good way to get back into it. She has changed so much in the last month but really in the last couple of days. She is finally walking... not just the few steps here and there that she's been doing for the last month, but really walking the majority of the time. Yay nells :-)
With that though has come a new stubborn, screaming, independent phase which is not fun at all... that combined with 4 new teeth and the dropping of the morning nap has been challenging (using the nicest word I can think of) for us all. I've got to rethink my shower time and our daily routine to maintain my own sanity and keep Nellie entertained enough to ward off that SCREAM! I would put a video up to give everyone an idea of the background scream that seems never ending in the house right now, but I'm afraid if I did that I would lose my last two readers.
On the cuter side of nellie (since we are celebrating 16 months not venting on her attitude)...she is talking up a storm... once those steps came the words just started pouring out of her
Favorite words:
Oops
Eeewww
I spilled
Nellie (pointing to herself and pointing to anything she wants)
Bubbles
Teeth
Shoes
There are so many more but these are the favs.
Happy 16 months nellie!! Here's to surviving the next 5. I like 21 months a lot more than 16... at least there is less of a communication issue... more words less screaming. At least I'm hoping so.

why won't this picture rotate? annoying but still cute

awful purple bubbles. Do NOT buy these! While fun and cool to see the colorful bubbles the mess they make is just not worth it. If I had one this would go on my NOT FAVORITE THINGS list.

pokemon

Batman. Spiderman. Star Wars. Superman. Mario. I get it... super heros are fun and cool. But...

Pokemon... what are you and why does my son want the cards so much?? Apparently they are cool right now to trade. Is there a game involved? If so, I don't think Hud knows that. He just wants cards with lots of power. Power for what? I just don't get it... but like a good mom, I don't judge. He knows that I don't get it though. I'm just not cool enough. Apparently I call them PokeMAN not pokeMON. Yeah, I just don't get it.

Makeup everywhere

All the girls are SO into makeup right now. They walk out of the door everyday with these bright red cheeks and glitter eyes. They don't really know where it all goes yet, but I love their creativity. We try to have a no makeup before school rule, but sometimes that's just not the battle I choose to fight. This is what I walked into this morning..brooke did nellie's makeup...wow...pretty right.... those are some red cheeks...she still had blue eye shadow on at bedtime...that stuff is hard to get off! Look how happy Nellie is back there that she gets to play in all the powders too! Even Hudson gets in on it... all the kids came in the other day as clowns. Seriously, how many things are there that will make 4 kids from 1 to 7 happy all at the same time and they are all quiet while they do it! It doesn't get better than that.

There is an app for that!

Thanks for your comments cat!! You know it's taken us over 5 years to paint the rooms in this house...but now that we started I realize how much better it looks and how easy it really is. I just downloaded this blogger app for my phone....this is a test post.
So yesterday got even better when I got to the gym and had 1 sneaker...then came home to a clogged poopy toilet. Yay.
Here's for a better day today!

More pics of the kids to make my day better

Here are a few more pictures to brighten up my otherwise shitty day. Today, I found out that our dishwasher is going to be a couple hundred bucks to fix and I broke a tooth last night that is apparently going to cost over a thousand bucks to fix... and to top it off I didn't even get an interview for the professor job I applied for... yeah, feeling awesome today. These kids sure are darn cute though... at least I can get that right!

The last month

How does the time keep getting away from me! Ok... so the last time I posted, it was Larkin's birthday. Since then, we had a weekend of snow (check out the link to home videos on the sidebar under march 11 to see us sledding in the snow dusting... yes we were mostly sledding on the grass, but it was a lot of fun!). We celebrated Gregor's 33rd birthday on the 18th of March. His parents were here visiting and we ended the day with a super yum oreo cookie blizzard cake from dairy queen. The day after his birthday, Gregor flew to California with his dad for a fun weekend and a little bit of work. Oma stayed here with the kids and me and got to see first hand how crazy the day to day life is with four kids on the weekend! We had a Hud's soccer game, a friend's birthday party, and Larkin's "tangled yoga" party festivities (I'm still trying to get those pics off of my camera)... and that was only saturday! On Sunday we went to see the local production of Annie which was amazing! The following weekend we saw the local community theater production of Annie as well (don't ask why we went to two shows... it was a little bit of ticket confusion... but we had a great time). We all agreed that the high school one was the best! Seeing Annie changed Brooke's life I think. Larkin was totally into it and has been singing the songs ever since, but Brooke has turned into a total ham! She will belt out "tomorrow tomorrow I love ya " to anyone anywhere. It is hilarious. She wants me to say, "good singing Annie" after she finishes. I had to download the album to my phone so that they could learn more than two lines from every song (honestly the same lines over and over were starting to drive me a bit nuts). So now, the girls love to get sponges, clean the cabinets and sing It's a hard knock life (or heart of life as larkin thinks the words go). It is so funny! I put a few of those videos on the dropshots link as well.

So after that crazy week, we needed to regroup for a bit. Brooke came down with the flu and had a 6 hour long nose bleed (it finally stopped on our way to the emergency room... so luckily we avoided that... but 6 hours of serious gushing really wore her out!). Gregor got the flu and we almost had to cancel our spring break plans. But ALAS... we all got better and headed to hilton head last saturday.

Hilton Head was so much fun. My 83 year old grandparents were there... mom and mikie... quality time with my aunt lori and david... It was 65 to 70 degrees and sunny most days (except for that one super storm). The kids totally adore my mom and mikie (okay, mostly my mom... but mikie they love you too!). Lynes Land (as the house is called) always has random animals. There are dogs, ferrets, a super annoying bird that yells all the time, a pig named Beyonce (who had to move to a real farm because she got enormous), and this year 5 day old baby chicks were added to the mix... not just regular chickens but designer long-haird chickens that are apparently the lapdogs of the chicken family. You can check them out here at mypetchicken.com (yes that's a real website). For a kid that is pretty indifferent to animals, Hudson fell in LOVE with the chicks... especially the one he named Hudson Jr.

Hudson got to take his first kayak trip in his own boat, yay Hud! Gregor rented a paddle board and had sunset paddle that he's still talking about. We rented bikes and rode on the beach forever. Our bike set-up was hilarious though... we had a trailer with Nellie and Brooke, Larkin was on a tag-along with Gregor and Hudson rode his own bike. We went out to dinner and relaxed into what felt like our first vacation in forever! It's nice that Nellie is finally sleeping through the night and more independent in terms of sitting and playing on the beach. Everything seemed to just jive well this trip (well except for Jughead the annoying bird that seriously doesn't stop screaming).

Now we are home and settling back into our routine here... it was not so fun coming home to rainy 45 degree weather after a week of beautiful weather in hilton head...but what are you going to do. We painted the bathroom last night a really pretty turquoise color. It's amazing the difference a coat of paint makes! I can't believe we've been in this house almost 6 years. It probably is time to start updating some of the rooms.

The pictures are all out of order, and I'm about to throw my phone through the wall because I can't seem to get the pictures off my phone without emailing them to myself one at a time. I admit it, I've been cheating on my blog with facebook. I wish my phone had a button that would just upload my picture to the blog... there's a button to do that to upload to facebook and it's so easy. Can I do that?? Does anyone know?