Another contest

Ever the optimist, I love to enter contests. Maybe I might win, ya never know. So a blog I frequent, is having this contest.... And I get an extra entry for mentioning it on my blog. I would love to win the Heart and Soul necklace, beautiful!

Molly and Kate -isms

So in case you haven't noticed from the tone of my posts lately, my kids are driving me NUTS. Today I decided I need to try and focus on more of their cuteness and less of their annoyingness. Altho, annoyingness does tend to be in great supply. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, I took them for a walk down Main Street in Newark the other day. We passed by a bank and Molly said, "Look Mommy! It's the money store!"

And just today Kate and I were talking about her friends K&K. Kate said they're my girl friends. I said, "oh you're girlfriends." Kate said, "No mommy, my girl friends." As in they are girls and they are her friends, not her girlfriends. How does she know to even differentiate this?

One more quick story. I took all 3 to the chiropractor with me this morn as I have for the past several weeks. I guess they are getting more and more comfortable there because they were WILD. WILD. So wild, Jodi the office manager spoke to them and told them to settle down. And settle down they did. Always nice when someone else whips your kids into shape. Then Jodi gave me an herbal "xanax". AHHHHH. Maybe that's why today I'm focusing on the cuteness. Might have to get me some more of that.

Family Outing

On Saturday we decided to take a family outing. We probably don't do them as often as we should so we gritted our teeth and did it. We went to Longwood Gardens as the weather was beautiful. It was a nice sunny day, breezy, not too hot nor humid. I hadn't been there in several years and it had been even longer for Kevin. Unfortunately, we waited to go in the afternoon and the kids were done before we even got there. We shoulda brought some cheese to go along with all the whine we had. Seriously. I took my camera and did manage to get a few shots and it even looks like we had some fun while there. Someday I'll look back at the pictures and think it was fun. hee hee

Random thoughts from Ryan

So yesterday the kids were driving me nuts as usual, and I as usual was yelling about something. Ryan looked up and says in one of his sweetest voices, "Maybe you shouldn't of had kids, Mom." Um yeah.

Summer Fun Photo Contest

So there's this photo contest over here that I thought I'd enter.....



I really love this picture. I mean I know she's my kid and all and I love all pictures of my kids but this one really strikes me. Not sure why, but it does. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Pin the tale on the what?!

Today was Pop Pop's __th birthday. (I'll keep your secret old man.) We celebrated by having Gam and Pop Pop over for dinner. We chowed on some pizza and a delicious chocolate cake that Gam made. The kids just love birthday celebrations. While we were eating cake, Ryan said, "Let's play some games!" Because don't you always play games at a birthday party? My dad piped in, "Like what? Pin the tale on the donkey?" *Note to readers, my kids have no idea what Pin the Tale on the Donkey is.* My dad said something about needing a donkey and Kate quipped, "We could put it on Mommy's butt." Lots and lots of laughter ensued and there were many renditions of "on _____'s butt." Fill in Mommy's butt, Gam's butt, Pop Pop's butt, Daddy's butt and on and on.

Here's some pics.....












Happy Birthday Pop Pop!

Reading

So I was stumbling around the blogging world and found this post and wanted to share my list. I love to read and hope to instill the love of reading in my kids as well.


According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list. How many have you read?



Look at the list.

Bold those you have read.

Italicize those you intend to read.

Underline the books you LOVE.



1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. 1984 - George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


So there you have it. What's your list look like?

Kevin's Christmas present from 2006

So I totally forgot that I had done these for Kevin as a Christmas present until the other day. The girls were asking to see baby pictures and it dawned on me I had made these up and never got the videos but I can share them here. Now I need to get working to make more to bring us up to the present.

Personally, I can not watch these without tears streaming down my cheeks. Ya might want to grab a tissue. Or it might just be because they're my kids. I'm just saying....

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com