I love my cuddle bugs!

Both my boys love to cuddle especially when they are not feeling well or sleepy. Owen doesn't love to do it as much but at night. Every night when I put him to bed he says "Cuddle Momma" it melt my heart every time and I cave. I know that time of him wanting cuddles is short lived. With Eli I steal a few extra cuddles when I am putting him down for bed.

Today I get to cuddle all day with Eli, he is having a slight reaction from his shots that he got on Wednesday. He ended up getting a fever of 103 yesterday afternoon and so he had to stay home no matter what, but he still has a slight fever today so that has made him want cuddles. I am enjoying every minute, even though it has made it slightly challenging to type.

Let there be cake -

Eli turns 1 on Thursday, so my parents and Gretchen came in to celebrate his birthday this weekend. Saturday was a very busy day! Eli had swim lessons and both Gigi and Papa tried participating with Eli. All he wanted was to cuddle and be with his mama, he is a little bit of a momma's boy. He lasted about 20 min and finally we called it quits. He fell asleep pretty quickly in the car so he was probably just sleepy - I think he is teething therefore not sleeping very well. We then trecked down to get the birthday cake, which we ordered from a very yummy German bakery. We all went to lunch at Red Robin and Eli enjoyed a corn dog.

After lunch we ran to the grocery store to get last minute items for the birthday celebration. As we were unloading the groceries form the car we found out that there was a shift in the load and is squashed on Eli's cake. We were able to fix it to look fairly presentable, we planned on putting the candle in the middle of the mess and face it towards Eli so it would be the area that he would smash..

As we were getting ready for dinner Owen was very curious about the cake. He kept touching the box and trying to get into it. As I was preparing the lasagna for dinner and my mom was getting things set up I hear Owen "Mama can I help, can I take it (the cake) over to the table".. we heard this a few times. Then all of a sudden I heard noise and turned around to see the cake was on the floor upside down and Owen holding the container- needless to say I yelled about the situation. The cake was ruined and couldn't be saved. Poor Owen was upset too, all he wanted to do was help out but he and Dada got to enjoy some icing.


I probably overreacted (I know my in-laws thought I was crazy) but I wanted his birthday to be perfect. Aunt Gigi and Papa came to the rescue and ran out to get a new cake for the little man.




Eli had a wonderful night although he wasn't very interested in opening his gifts, but he had a lot of help from his big brother and his friend Justin. Eli enjoyed the cake and his lasagna dinner. It was a great evening and we got to enjoy cake tasting.

I Really Really Wanted It

In years past he was excited about the presents, this is the first year that Owen really got the whole present and Santa concept. The video says it all..

The Christmas Tour

We made our annual trip to New Jersey to visit Andy's relatives. As part of the visit, we took advantage of being so close to NYC and road the train in.

We took the boys in to see a puppet show at Macy's and mailed letters to Santa.
Then we headed up to Times Square to ride the Ferris Wheel at Toys R Us and experience the Hershey's store. Of course this was the weekend that it decided to snow like mad. We left NYC right as it was about to snow (and when it was getting crazy busy). By the time we got back to Andy's Aunts house the snow was coming down pretty well. Luckily All of Andy's relatives made it down and we got to have a nice visit.



That night we had to venture out in the snow back to the hotel. There was already about a foot of snow on the ground and there where a lot of stuck cars.. come on people you have to keep moving or else you will get stuck. Thankfully we had a car with a high wheel base and had no problems.

We were lucky to have a hotel right by the interstate and it was nice and clear by the time we headed out.. they know how to clear roads in NJ unlike Virginia. When we got back to Virginia the highways were clear but the primary roads were not great, so that made us nervous about our subdivision. When we pulled up, our road in was better than the primary. We were greeted by a deep driveway. We dug ourselves out and then headed over to my in-laws to dig out their driveway. Needless to say we were pretty tired folks and had two tired and cold kiddos.

It has been awhile...

So I have been a slacker regarding my blogging and I am going to blame it mostly on the holidays, life sure did get busy once Thanksgiving hit. We had something going on every weekend and I decided to go to training for a week in Chicago. Luckily I have a great sister who came in and helped Andy with the boys, otherwise I don't know if I would have still had 3 boys in my life. Gretchen did get hit with reality of being a mom and has decided it isn't quite time to give up the single going out life for diapers. After the first day she had the following observations.. 1) midnight-2:30am is way more fun as a chick in the city than as a mom, 2) night potty training is traumatic for everyone, 3) 3-year-olds move SLOWLY, 4) ride-able fire trucks are used for rolling over your brother, 5) having a 3-year-old look you square in the eyes and giving you an unsolicited 'I love you, Gigi' is heart-melting, 6) having a 10-month-old look at you with big bright eyes and a huge smile at 2:30am is impossible to hide a smile back from. They all survived and fun was had by all.