Ashton has been begging for a Mario hat for weeks.  This past Sunday his Gammy struck a deal with him, that if he did something to earn it, she would order it for him.  He swept leaves for her and she held up her end of the deal and told him it would be here Wednesday…  When I picked him up today, he had his stuff together, backpack on and immediately said… “can we hurry up and get home and check the mail mom?” He is one happy Mario fan.

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Celebrating Pop Pop’s 66th Birthday

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Thursday night I had probably the worst day at my job that I have had in almost 8 years.  It was emotionally draining and I was behind closed doors with my boss from 4:15pm until 8pm hashing some stuff out.  I was so caught up in our meeting that I completely forgot to text or call Todd and the kids and let them know I was going to be late.  They called my parents looking for me, then police stations asking if there were accidents anywhere, then hospitals.  Todd finally packed the kids up and came to my work.  It was a mess.  My boss and I finished around 8 and left it with us both needing to think about some things.  I went home and proceeded to not sleep one second that night.  Friday morning, at 6am I finally got into the shower and started getting ready to get the kids to school and head into work for probably more discussion with my boss.  Apparently after I turned the water off and was done showering, I blacked out and fell.  I hit my right shoulder on the lip of the tub, followed by my cheek underneath my right eye.

All of a sudden I was sitting on the floor of the bathtub, wondering why in the hell I was down there and noticing that I had something protruding from my cheek that was completely blocking my vision from my right eye.  I got up, dried off, looked in the mirror and saw the enormous goose egg on my cheek.  I did not remember hitting the side of the tub at all.  I am guessing I was SO stressed from the night before and from lack of sleep that my body just shut down for a second.  I started crying when I saw how huge my cheek was and that is when Todd came running upstairs from making coffee.  At this point, he had had just about enough of worrying about me between thinking I was dead and now this!

The goose egg swelling went down relatively fast, like within two hours… but then the black eye started setting in.  It is looking absolutely fabulous!  Todd is NOT liking being in public with me while I have it, he is sure that everyone thinks that he has hit me - “fell in the bathtub, huh?  Sure!”  It probably does not help when I try to joke around while we are stoplights in the car and look out the window at the car next to us and mouth the words “HELP ME!”  He does not find that funny at ALL.

It is starting to turn yellow now and look all gross.  I am eagerly awaiting the disappearance of it entirely!

She has been taking dance since she was 2 years old… but she loves playing soccer.  Honestly, I will probably stress over this more than anyone else… and honestly I feel so heavy inside over it, that I have felt nauseous all day long.  I want what is best for her and I want her to be able to make this decision, but at the same time, I want all the factors weighed and I want us to make the RIGHT decision.  I am dreading this conversation with her.  DREADING.

01/19/20 UPDATE:
We had a long discussion and we talked about the pros and cons of each.  When it was all said and done, her heart is in soccer.  I am not going to lie, I cried a little bit.  Kaiden cried too.  But this is her decision and she wants to pursue soccer over dance.  I have given our notice to the dance studio and Kaiden has been signed up for several clinics and academies to now fill in the time that is free with dance gone.  So, we will now put full effort into soccer for her.  Starting next week we have a 5 week Grassroots Academy (Wednesday nights) for technique and we also have a 5 week Indoor Futsal Academy (Monday nights) starting up.  We will continue playing in the winter Advanced Indoor League (Thursdays/Saturdays) until her official outdoor season starts up in the spring.

Had an orientation, electives tour and then registered for her electives for next year. I cannot believe she is heading to Middle School next year.

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The last movie she brought over was Pan’s Labyrinth, which she had hyped Kaiden and I up about, describing it as a fantasy movie… “you know like Narnia or Labyrinth.”  So we all got ready to watch it and found out quickly that the film was completely in Spanish with subtitles.  Kelly thought she not only got screwed out of the Blue-Ray player, but also was bought the Spanish version of a movie.  After some quick googling, we found out that it is only available in Spanish and made the group decision to watch it anyways.  Very quickly into the movie we pretty much figured out that this WAS NOT A KIDS FANTASY MOVIE… like after this scene:

Kaiden very quickly covered her eyes and Todd and Kelly shot each other looks and we continued watching.  It was not until after this next scene that I finally shot Kelly a look and said “Okay Kaiden I am going upstairs to watch TV in my room, do you want to come?”  She did not skip a beat and immediately said yes and followed me up.  Todd and Kelly continued with the movie making the evening a “date night” for them.

Not until AFTER the movie did we check the rating and read some reviews clearly stating that this was in NO WAY a film suitable for children.  Not that ratings or reviews have ever made a decision for me on what I will and will not let my kids watch… because they do not, BUT this one was a little rough.

So what did we all choose to watch the next night together???

Paranormal Activity.  Who picked this one?  Kaiden.  What was Todd and I’s response to her wanting to see that movie?  “Screw it… if she wants to watch a scary movie and thinks she is all big and bad… let her watch it!”  But not only watch it, watch it in the dark, with the surround sound turned up LOUD!  We were ready for her to be done with it 30 minutes in, but damn if she did not sit through the whole thing!  Damn her!!!  She even went right to bed that night with no problems.  Double Damn her!!!

I really hate when I want my kids to fail and they show me up. 

2011 was a good year for us… a really good year.  We are happy, healthy and surviving life’s ups and downs and hope that everyone else is doing the same.  We are looking forward to 2012 and all that it brings for us!  Happy New Year to everyone!

NASCAR TRIP

Back in October, Todd and I headed to Charlotte for a weekend with my dear friends Kerry and Renee and a Nascar Race.  We had a blast!  It was so great catching up with friends.  And we certainly had fun tailgating, playing cornhole, emptying coolers of beer, grilling lots of great food and LAUGHING!  It did not hurt that Kerry scored us some pit passes in the airport bar before Renee picked her up.  The whole weekend was so much fun!  I cannot wait until we all plan something again! 

Photos from our Nascar weekend are located here.

HALLOWEEN 2011

We once again spent Halloween over at Nadine’s house, where we got the kids ready, chowed down on pizza, filled the wagon with ice and beer, Trick or Treated and then compared loot when it was all over!

Kaiden and Kevin dressed up as Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter this year - they looked super cute.  Ashton was Darth Vader.  For weeks he had insisted on being “Bat Vader” and wanted to wear the outfit of Darth Vader and the mask of Batman… Todd finally talked him into just being Darth Vader.  Ethan was the fantastic Lil’ Wayne, complete with dreaded hair, tattoos and a grill.  Brianna was a Zombie Volleyball player and Riley was Raggedy Ann. 

All our photos from Halloween are here.

FALL SOCCER

Another season of soccer came and went.  Kaiden’s team played fantastic this past season, placing second in their age group against all the other Hampton Roads advanced soccer teams in three different leagues.  So far this winter we have already had an undefeated season of Indoor and are starting a second session of Indoor this week to carry them through to the Spring season. 

All of Kaiden’s fall soccer photos are here.

BLACK FRIDAY 2011

I survived another Black Friday expedition with Nadine.  This year our bestest pal Mel was in town to join in on the madness and we also met up with Nadine’s sister Natalie.  We squeezed in a lot of shopping, a lot of delirious laughing, plenty of coffee and another year of memories.  This year, when we were done, we had to make sure to get home and SLEEP to make sure that we were rested to go out that evening for Todd’s birthday, which brings me to the next item…

TODD’S 39TH BIRTHDAY

The day after Thanksgiving, Todd turned 39 (gasp)!  We all went out for a night of celebrating with the birthday boy… and man did he celebrate.  Getting him home that night was LOADS of fun!   

For his birthday, we got him a custom painted Steelers corn-hole set.  We have been having a blast with them over the holiday season.  I cannot wait for the weather to get a little warmer so we can use them even more.

CHRISTMAS 2011

The Christmas season was great this year and jam-packed full of events and traditions.  My sister has been in town for just about the entire month of December - so we have been enjoying every minute of having her around.  Kaiden has been especially happy about this - those two are inseparable whenever Kelly is in town.  We made sure to plan all the usual things that we do around Christmas…

We headed down to the Oceanfront for the annual Christmas Parade.

We made the kids pose in the life-size Nativity Scene again and made them run to the car after the photos, yelling for them to hurry before the cops bust them for trespassing. 

We went and saw Santa Clause and gave him our lists and chatted it up with him for a while!

Both kids had a fantastic Christmas.  Kaiden got a new beach cruiser, a Kindle Fire, Wii games, board games, DVD’s, a bean bag, lava lamp and a disco ball (surprisingly enough she did not ask for any hits of green blotter LSD to go along with the bean bag, lava lamp and disco ball that she asked for).  Ashton got a new bike, a Kindle Fire, Wii games, PS3 games, DVD’s and Hot Wheels stuff.  Both were spoiled rotten!

One of my favorite memories of this holiday season has to be the Ornament Party that Nadine made me go with her to.  Basically, a woman that Nadine knows from her son’s baseball team is always asking Nadine to hang out.  Nadine does not have a ton of free time and if she is free, she hangs out with me dammit.  We have this conversation all the time… we really do not have time for new friendships, we have our core group of BFF’s and that’s it.  Anyways, this woman invited Nadine to an Ornament Party and Nadine called me and sold me a sob story about how many times she has not accepted invites from this woman, how she felt obligated to go to this thing, how she would not know ANYONE except the woman throwing the party and that I needed to go with her.  Are you familiar with Ornament Parties?  Basically a group of women get together to eat and drink and each person has to bring a $10 to $15 wrapped ornament to put into a pile and then you draw numbers and take turns picking a wrapped ornament or stealing an already opened ornament… I have always known this as a Chinese Gift Exchange but have heard it also called a White Elephant Gift Exchange.

Anyways, I agreed to go with her under ONE condition - that we hand-make the most AWKWARD Christmas ornaments on the planet that include photos of us when we were little and looked like they were made by six year olds.  We would of course buy real ornaments, but we would not let the people know until AFTER they think they are stuck with the homemade catastrophes that they were forced to unwrap in front of everyone.  Why?  Because why the hell not.  We would not know ANYONE at this party.  They have no clue what our sense of humor is, what we looked like when we were younger and would be forced to have to publicly act like they were thankful for these ornaments.  So what did they look like?

F*CKING AWESOME… that is how they looked!!!  The one on the left is a picture of me waking up when I was like 8 at my grandpa’s house up in Philly and on the right is Nadine looking hot as hell in a white strapless dress that her mother should have NEVER allowed her to wear at that age!  My ornament was the second one picked and it was HILARIOUS.  I had to bury my head in Nadine’s back to stop from losing it.  The woman that picked it could not even act like she was happy with it.  She kept saying “whose kid is this?” and “did this drop off someone’s tree and it is a mistake?” - OMG it was awesome.  We made her sit with it for like 9 more rounds until the second one was picked and they were both like “okay what the hell is going on here?” - so we finally fessed up and went and got the real ornaments for them.  Hell of a way to introduce ourselves to a group of people we do not know.  We made sure to wrap the ornaments up when it was over and we mailed them to our friend Mel in Florida, who could not have been happier to receive them and put them on her tree.  I think we are going to make a tradition of making Mel some beautiful ornaments every year.  What could be better than having an entire tree decorated in ornaments of Nadine and I in the worst photos we have ever been featured in?

All our photos from the 2011 Holiday Season can be viewed here.

So there is the latest round-up of what has been going on!  As always, I will try to suck less. 

Which was followed up by this:

And then this:

And then just all went to hell from there…

Another straight hair shot for Kaiden for school pictures.  I like this picture of her, except for the fact that she is really starting to look more grown up.    She looks very pretty though.

Ashton once again decided that for his school picture, his shirt buttoned all the way up to his forehead was the “cool” way to go.  He didn’t give a big smile for his picture, but he has that shit-eating smirk on his face that is ALL Ashton, and because that is just SO him, I like it more than if he had smiled!