The gift that keeps on giving.

What is this wonderful box of fun? According to the packing slip, it was a birthday gift for Aidan (6 weeks ago) from his Uncle Mike and Auntie Jamie that I have never seen. I was straightening up all my crafty stuff that's threatening to take over our guest room yesterday, when I saw this box stashed under that antique bassinet that I need to take apart and send along to my cousin Alisa before her new little one arrives. Anyway, I saw this box and thought to myself, "Hmm...I wonder what that is?" It had been opened and shoved under the little bed, with all these fun goodies inside. I don't remember receiving the box. John doesn't remember opening and putting it there either, but he thinks he may have done it anyway. So Aidan gets to celebrate his birthday some more! Lucky duck.

Thanks, Mike and Jamie! And here I thought you'd just sent him the biggest coloring book known to man (or child). You also sent the biggest collection of Playdoh!

Something to Smile About

Preschool Crush

I have no pictures to accompany this one, so hopefully the story itself is good enough.

When I dropped Aidan off at Mom's Day Out today, one of his little girl friends, Victoria, was being dropped off by her grandfather at the same time. (A little aside about Victoria - she is a supercute little brunette who is always wearing a huge, fancy bow.) I must have called Aidan's name as we were walking up, because Victoria's grandfather said, "Oh, so this is Aidan." Apparently, on the drive to church, he'd asked Victoria about her friends at class, in particular if there were any little boys that she liked. She talked about Aidan the rest of the way there.

Victoria overheard Grandpa telling me all of this, and you should have seen her light up when she realized Aidan was on the other side of the door. As we opened the door to let Aidan in, she immediately comes out and starts bestowing hugs on him like crazy...all while he was hiding behind my legs and trying to get away from her. It was cute, cute, cute.

Grandpa also warned me that I may be in trouble when Aidan gets to be a teenager. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, I suppose.

Neglecting my Feathers and Eggs

Over at the Nesting Place, the Nester is hosting a Mr. Linky party for those of us who purchased Feather and Egg prints from L. Herbert Designs to show off where we have proudly displayed them in our homes. I am sad to say, this is where mine are still living.

Every once in a while, I take them out and gaze at them. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Aren't they pretty? I think so. I was so eager to have them, since I missed the first go-round, that I purchased them without putting any thought into where they should hang. I'm thinking about here.

That's my nearly-naked entryway. Once upon a time, I had a pretty little hook board hung there, but the command hooks weren't strong enough to hold it and it broke when it fell. I've been wanting to put a console table or a bench there, so I'm thinking that I'll just make sure whatever I get coordinates with my feathers and eggs so I can finally hang them!

And maybe I'll quit being a procrastinator one day, too.

Sweet Babies

Look at my sweet babies, playing together on the kitchen floor. Now that Neely's sitting, Aidan is starting to pay a lot more attention to her. Sometimes it's not what I want, like yesterday when she was in her jumparoo and he was twirling her in circles, but most of the time it's sweet. He'll sit with her on her blanket and play with the baby toys with her, showing her what to do with them. It's going to be really fun once she starts crawling!

Madely Clairoline (and Aidan)

Whenever we go to visit Auntie Stephanie and Uncle Pants, we typically don't do anything other than eat, sleep, lay on the couch, and sometimes shop. I don't usually take a lot of pictures, but we had to get some of the kids all together, because they were so cute! (Maybe Stef will post the picture of Aidan pretending to be a cat in the window with Claudia. I wasn't lucky enough to capture that one.) Anyway, for your viewing enjoyment, here are Neely, Madeline, and Aidan.

The girls are already sharing secrets.

We were halfway home when Aidan asked, "Mommy, can we take Madeline home?" Aidan really likes Maddie, because Maddie thinks Aidan is hilarious.

(FYI: Madely Clairoline is Stefandra 2.0, a funny combination of Madeline Claire and Neely Caroline.)

News

Neely has a tooth!

Three Cuties

We made it to Fort Worth yesterday with only one minor incident. The kids were awesome. Hank was pretty good. But 15 minutes from Stephanie's house (according to the GPS, anyway) the pickup truck in front of me ran over something on the highway. I'm not sure what it was. It looked like either a piece of carpet or a big strip of tire from a blowout. Whatever it was, it flew up and swiped the driver's side of my car before I could even brace myself for the impact. When I looked over, my driver's side mirror was gone! When I pulled off the road at the next exit, I was sure the paint was going to be scratched down the entire side of my car. Lucky for me, it wasn't. Just the back of the mirror was scratched, and the mirror part itself and popped out with the impact. But arg! It's so annoying. I have to turn all the way around just to see if there's a car beside me right now. I tried to find somewhere to get it fixed before we drive back home on Sunday, and nobody can get the part in time. So I get to drive back to Shreveport that way. I think I'll just ride in the right lane the whole way so I don't have to merge left.

Anyway, that adorable picture was taken when we thought I'd be dropping my car off at the body shop and piled all three kids in the back of Stef's Pathfinder. They're so sweet.

AND within minutes of putting them in the playpen together yesterday, Maddie leaned over, grabbed Neely's face (gently), and kissed her on the cheek! I think my heart melted. It was the sweetest thing I've ever seen a baby do.

Some Hawaii Pics

Rather than try and give a long, drawn-out dissertation on our trip to Hawaii to visit John's parents, I'm just going to share some of my favorite pictures. This is the condensed version of the trip in pictures even. I took over 300! I know. I have kind of a problem. Anyway, enjoy!

Happy Easter!

Well, we did the best we could with our dreary, stormy Easter Sunday. Up top, there's a picture of the kids checking out what the Easter Bunny brought them. I had planned on setting up the camera to get a family photo before we went to church, but it was really dark out with the clouds and looked like it'd pour down at any moment. We tried to get a picture of a few of us on the stairs inside, but John and Aidan didn't want their picture made....so here are Neely and I in our Easter dresses. It's the best we could do.

Little Green Men

As we were returning from the gym this morning, Aidan made a funny. There's been construction on the North Gate for the last several weeks, and traffic is rerouted along the flight line for a little bit before we can get to our house. As we drove by this morning, Aidan said, "Mommy, that's where Daddy lives." You know your husband has been working too much when your three-year-old thinks he lives there. I corrected him, reminding Aidan that Daddy works there and lives with us. Then he said, "Daddy likes to work. Daddy likes to work with the green people." I about died laughing. I couldn't exactly correct that part. Yes, they do all wear green flight suits, therefore making them the green people, I suppose. I wonder what John will think.

Easter Celebration Begins

Our Easter festivities began today. The 96th Bomb Squadron hosted an Easter egg hunt and picnic at a park in North Bossier. It was the perfect day for it. We had that crazy tornado come through on Thursday night, so it was nice and cool, t-shirt and jeans weather, but sunny. There was a pretty good turnout for the event. There were probably between 15 and 20 children there, not so many that everybody starts to get out of control.


Aidan had a blast. Last year, he wasn't too interested in picking up eggs. He got distracted by a lacrosse team practicing on the other side of the field and watched them rather than hunt for eggs. He was great with it today. He also got to play with balloons, on the playground, attempt to jump rope, and chase kites. Needless to say, it wasn't difficult to get him to lie down for a nap this afternoon.


This evening, we dyed eggs for our little family Easter egg hunt tomorrow afternoon. We're keeping to ourselves this year - we're still a bit jet lagged and probably wouldn't be much fun - so Aidan will get to find all our eggs by himself. Anyway, he loved coloring the eggs. He got a little carried away toward the end and was just dunking them in every color and pulling them out of the cups with his bare hands. He got messy, but that's what little boys do, right? Hopefully next year, Neely will be better able to participate.

I couldn't resist.

I just loaded my photos on Granny's computer, and I had to share my little kissy lips hula girl. Isn't she adorable? Tiffany's going to have fun with her once we reschedule her pictures.

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Now that I'm sounding like little orphan Annie, we return home to Louisiana tomorrow evening. We've got a little less than 24 hours of Aloha left. When we return and recover from jet lag, I'll get started posting some of my 300+ photos. No, I'm not kidding. My amazing new memory card holds nearly 500 raw files. It's wonderful. But don't worry, I won't subject you to all of them. Only the best! Until then...aloha!

Reminds me of a joke from Miss Congeniality....
Gracie Lou: In Hawaii, don't you use "Aloha" for hello and goodbye?
Miss Hawaii: Sooo...?
Gracie Lou: So if you’re on the phone with someone and they won’t stop talking, how do you get them off? Because you say, "Okay, take care, aloha." Don’t they like start all over again?

Thank you all...

...for your help. We made it through our flight just fine. The kids were AWESOME, and we got tons of compliments from the passengers surrounding us when we landed in Honolulu. Hopefully, they'll do just as well on the return trip.