Hall of mirrors

This blog is a mixture of our travel adventures and our new family adventures.
The title comes from a dumb blonde high school girl on a tour with us in Versailles who asked this question in every single room of the Palace.
The picture was taken while on our Honeymoon in China, on the Xian river.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Thirty-One Party

Today I had a Thirty-One party.  It was a fabulous party when you look at products sold and awesome ladies (AWESOME ladies), but the boys were a little, ahhh, what you'd say rambunctious.  At first, they were all really good, but there were only three of them.  They got a bit loud (OK, so ARES was loud), but they were behaved. 

First problem - Ares was loud, so I told him that if he, Lukas and Connor can stay out of the room while the consultant was talking, I'd give them a brownie when she was done.  I put the boys on the island with a brownie when she was done (and they did as I asked).  I forgot that I had a ton of different kinds of candy all sorted into nice bowls.  I went back to see how the boys were doing, and each of them had handfuls of Skittles and Starburst wrappers all over the place.  I can only imagine how many they ate.  Eeeks!

Insert 4th boy and all hell went loose. Not that boy #4 is bad, by any means, none of the boys are, they're all very good, but I think that with the extra head in there, the boys thought of much different (read: worse) things to do.


First random phrase that made everyone stop:  Let's go play now, I'm done hitting you. (Ares to Lukas)
Then, the boys were laughing hysterically upstairs, running down the steps and all around.  Colt comes down the steps with white stuff in his hair (looks like the scene from Something About Mary) and says that they were fighting bad guys in the shower.  So, what was in his hair? They said 'soap', but it was Ares' prescription steriod cream for his dry skin.  And on the carpet, and on the floor, and on the doors (like, 5 of the doors upstairs).  In fact, 2 days later, I'm putting Ares' cream on while in the spare bedroom, using it off the closet doors. 

The toy room looks like a bomb went off, really, everything was on the floor, EVERYTHING.  I'm ready to get rid of all toys, ALL. TOYS.  (Can you tell I've about had it?  OMG, what a disaster!!) **update, I've already put all duplo blocks in storage, along with a Thomas track.  I have a box of 'get rid of crap' that I'll put out for free at our next garage sale.
***setting the scene***
Boy 1 - loves to play with tool sets, carries a toy hammer or drill around everywhere (Lukas)
Boy 2 - loves sports.  Baseball, football, it doesn't matter (Colt)
Boy 3 - loves to be in the center of attention (Ares)

The three boys (the three older ones, not Connor, who was playing nicely by himself) were all swarming around our floor lamp, crawling behind the chair, on the chair, around the chair, when, you guessed it *crash*.   The lamp falls and breaks (not the bulb though).  Boy #2 runs away, Boy #1 starts picking up things to try and fix it.  Boy #3 stands up, puts his arm in the air, and assures everyone 'I'm OK!!'  Hahahaha!!  Wow, do their personalities shine through.

Oh, so the boys were quiet again, later until Lukas came up the stairs saying that someone hit him with a ball.  So we go downstairs, and Ares has a Santa sign (that stakes into the ground outside) and a ball in his hand.  A genius way to play baseball without the proper equipment.   They said they were trying to dress up, but then  they say how they decorated the basement.  Yes, they did.  They pulled down all of the Luau boxes, and the Christmas ornament box and 'decorated' the basement with Christmas ornaments.  Really, they did.  Ornaments hanging from the treadmill, from the penguin christmas decoration, but there are lots of broken ornaments. Lots. Of. Broken. Ornaments.   There was a lone Halloween costume waaaaay up in the closet, untouched, no doubt the cause of all boxes on the ground.  How no one got glass in their hands/feet is unbelievable.

Thanks to Chrissy and Sarah for helping me clean up.  It's still a disaster, but at least the ornaments that are still in tact are put away.   The next day, I was telling the story, and Ares interrupted me, saying that they didn't take ALL of the ornaments out, 'because some were stuck'.  

Can we say 'exhausted'?
Most of the broken ornaments are underneath the inflatable tiki god, 

But the boys were right, they did decorate.  And they were SOO proud of themselves.  *sigh*
On the plus side, it was a very successful party.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Big A$$ Table!

OMG, it was A LOT of work, and ended up costing us a lot of $$, but man, do I love these tables and chairs!!

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Scooby-Dooby Dooo





3 Years 7 Months 2 weeks and 1 day

Ares' favorite things out of his mouth:

Color:  Blue - only blue
Movie:  Teenage Mutant 'Inja' Turtles  (Aladdin is the movie he always requests in the car.)
Ninja Turtle: Mikey
Car: truck
Song: Circus Afro (from Madagascar 3), Rebels of the Sacred Heart (Flogging Molly) and Never Ever (Taylor Swift) (He always sings Baby Balooga though).
Continent:  Norf AmeriCAH Souf AmeriCAH  (as if it's one)
Favorite TV Show: 'Inja' Turtles
Favorite Superhero:  Superman and The (insert deep voice) Incredible Hulk
Favorite Book: Big Bad Wolf book (The True Story of the Three Little Pigs)
Favorite Food: Pizza, Spisghetti

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Lobster Petting

Slightly out of order - oh well. If my OCD can handle it, then you should be able to as well.

We took Ares to Red Lobster on Friday.  Adam and I decided to use some gift cards we got for our anniversary, take Ares to a place he loves, and take advantage of the AYCE shrimp!

We started off with the Lobster pizza.  Ares had a piece, but when I showed him the piece of lobster on there, he gave me a horrified look and asked me if it was going to pinch him.  No, dude, it's a cube of meat, where are the pinchers?!  hahaha.  He downed his entire drink in 3 minutes flat - no refills buddy, sorry!

The salads came out, and my kid ate my croutons, and them my entire salad, onions, radishes and all with a vinagarette dressing. He usually only eats ranch. The waitress told him if he eats all of his dinner, she'll let him pet a lobster.  This kid ate ALL of his broccoli and ALL of his shrimp popcorn, and some of my shrimp!    Oh yeah, and since he ate so well, we ordered him an ice cream sundae - which he ate.  After the dinner, the kid went CRAZY at home.  CRAY-ZEE!  I'll try and get a video up. 

I wish I had a picture of him petting the lobster.  It was pretty cool. 

First Coat Done!!

I can see the light!  Well, last night after we stained the first coat I couldn't - I got a massive migraine.  We started around 8pm, and it took about an hour for the first coat.  Unfortunately, I then got a horrific headache and had to lay down (read: pass out).  I was even wearing a mask while staining!  Adam finished sanding (especially hard where the stain leaked from the bolts - oops) and we're ready for another coat tonight!  Wahoo!!!


Monday, November 5, 2012

I'm a Nice Person

So my absolutely wonderful husband took last week off to build me a table.  The table is together, waiting to be stained since Thursday, but Adam was tired of working on my project (no doubt) so he decided to work on his soon-to-be bar in our basement.  I'm a nice person, so I told him I thought it was a great idea.   It's going to be a long and big project, because he has champagne tastes and no Lowes or Home depot gift certificates left, so he decided to just start with tearing a wall down in the basement.  At least this will allow him to later pull up the carpeting (see, I told you, BIG project). 

He was excited.  Everything was going well. Until (hey, you had to have known there was an 'until' or 'but' coming next) until he plunged a nail 1/4" deep into the sole of his foot - through the shoe!  Pretty crazy.  At least he thought to put a glove over his foot to prevent the blood from dripping on my carpeting and tile throughout all three floors of my  house.  He had a Tetnus shot the year we were supposed to go to India, so he's up-to-date (thank goodness) but he's in PAIN!

Enough that he skipped his soccer game on Sunday morning, and after Trick or Treating Sunday night it was all swollen.  At least he can walk on it now, it was a little rough on Friday evening - especially when we were standing and waiting for a table at Red Lobster.

I should have not been a nice person and put my foot down and told him to stain that table!  (OK, I would never do that) but if I did, he'd have one less hole in his body.

Girl's Weekend 2012

Every year my mom, her sisters, my grandma and my female cousin meet my grandma's best friend (Aunt Jeannette), and her daughters for a weekend at a haunted bed and breakfast/hotel.  This year, my cousin Brent's new wife Emily and (cousin) Eric's girlfriend Kathlyn joined us too!   I only make it about every other year, because it seems I'm in Cincinnati often. 

13 women, shopping in thrift and antique stores (crazy) visiting a chocolate store (yes!) and having two different tables at the dinner theater (read: tomato thrown into another table's glass of water) was pretty crazy.  This is why I'm not surprised to see pictures posting of us ladies in our PJ's as we ran around the hotel looking for the haunted room and hallway.  Of course, we passed through the bar/nightclub in the hotel to do a little bit of dancing and take some pictures with whomever wanted to take pictures with us.

At least we got an extra hour of sleep Saturday night - whew!!


Last weekend we went bowling.  Ares loves bowling, but after the second game he says "Mom, my arm is all wore out."   He made it longer than the 6 year old!!  (Whom he ADORES!!!)

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Table

My mom and dad, Mario, Renata and Lukas came over today to help bring this table from the garage to our kitchen.  It took them no less than an hour to do it.  No kidding, they even had a flat dolly to get it from the garage to the back door, those stairs were awful though.   I'm so grateful for the help, although, we should have had one additional person. 


See all the pop in the corner of the desk?  We're always ready for a party, we just stocked up!

A HUGE thanks to my dad and Mario who helped bring this massive table in. 

Growing Up

Ares no longer asks for 'blue' or 'red' yogurt, he asks by flavor now. 

We let him watch the Avengers movie (Why? I'm not quite sure.) and he's now obsessed with the Hulk.  He loves the "Inja" Turtles, especially "Mikie" and runs around the house with nun chucks. 

He would rather watch Boy Meets World (a sitcom I grew up with) than Chuggington (a cartoon he watched all of the time). 

This morning, I closed the door between the bathroom and the bedroom because Adam was still sleeping.  I brushed my hair and teeth, put my contacts in and got dressed in there.  Ares came knocking on the door because he 'was worried' about me and he 'wanted to make sure' that I 'was OK' since I had been in there for so long. 

And don't forget, whenever there's something scary in a store (or at the circus) he tells me that 'it's only metal mommy, it's not real'.  Isn't it my job to make sure he's OK, that he's not scared?  Sheeesh, my baby is growing up.  I hope he stays this sweet. 

(But, in all actuality, he is still a three year old that throws a pouting tantrum if there are no more 'car-carts' at Giant Eagle.)