Raisins Anyone?

So Can Man has a fetish for Ikea dishes and impromptu picnics for 40! My pint size little man, while the fam was watching a movie together decided to host a party for all the invisibles??? He used every last dish in the kid drawer and was in the process of distributing the raisins when he was busted (note the distressed look on his face?!) Not quite sure what the fascination with this is, but this is the second major IKEA dish operation we have busted in the last month, although this time the crime has escalated to not just a rearrangement of the dishes but petty theft as well...those raisins definitely had to be trashed! (March 2)
First misdemeanor offense occurring February 17......

Hey Soul Sister

Easton rocked the house on Monday the 12th in the Vocal Point Competition. He learned to play the ukelele in just over a month's time and wowed the audience with Train's "Hey Soul Sister". He performed at the Covey Center for the Arts in front of several hundred people. In his age group 8-11 he competed against 18 contestants. Although he didn't place, he did awesome and was the only individual that played his own accompaniment. We are so proud of our budding musician. Thanks for all the support from family & friends, mom for coming with us and a special thanks to his guitar teacher Joe for the extra practices and chillin' with Easton before the show!

To the Garage....

So I decided to try out a friends parenting technique, sending the kids to the garage to "cool down" until they can come back in the house and be nice again. It works every time for her kids they spend about 5 minutes in the boring garage away from the situation and they are ready to apologize and rejoin the family.... apparently this is not the case with my stubborn children (it must be Shane's part of the gene pool!) So after battling a particulary naughty Gracee who in her defense was in a TV induced state of nastiness brought on by hours of brain altering cartoons because I was too tired to do much of anything after a night like last night...anyway straying off topic the point is I sent Gracee to the garage to "cool down" until she was ready to go to bed, super proud of myself for doing it calmly to. I turned off the light, shut the door and came inside to congratulate myself on my newly found parenting strategy. There was no screaming, kicking, crying just silence. After 5 minutes, she still hadn't knocked to come back in, so I decided to give it another 5 before I went out to ask if she was ready to rejoin the family in the house and this is what I found. Gracee had located a battery operated camp lantern, made a bed in the sled and covered herself with the remnants of saran wrap we had in the garage from moving, and was sound asleep with her stuffed dog. Honestly I'm not sure where this imaginative child comes from, but my garage days are over. On the plus side after sneaking back out to take a picture before I woke her and sent her packing back to her real bed there were no arguments from her and due to my guilty conscience she is curled up and fast asleep in my bed. Yes I know I win mom of the year award tonight!!!!

Simply Disgusting......

So I am rejoining the blogging world so that I may rant and rave and scream and yell into cyberspace in order to keep me from breaking down into tears! (Warning: This post may contain nausiating info..) No there are no cute pics of my seemingly innocent children, as they have all been covered in some form of bodily fluid over the past two and a half days, myself included. What I thought was a bout of food poisoning as Gracee and I were the only two with a sudden onset of violent throwing up and other unmentionables Saturday night, has now been reclassified as the flu, yes I just got covered in Cannon's regurgitated dinner! In his defense he did try to warn me, while being sucked into "The Voice" with the biggin's, the big little "Canster" brought me one of those tiny little IKEA bowls, I said "oh are you hungry" to which he replied by spitting in the bowl....yes you know what happened next, understanding dawned ('cause only a mom would understand that hidden meaning) I swooped him up and made a mad dash for the tile floor, I almost made it, but not before receiving a shot of pink nastiness right to the face and into the mouth. Yes you heard me right, talk about disgusting. He then proceeded to cover my floor with his guck! So now fast forward two hours, carpet scrubbed, tile sanitized, sink bleached, laundry going, showers (multiple) taken, bowls place by all three of my children who are camped out on a bed of towels and waterproof pads in my bedroom, and here I sit thinking this single mom stuff really sucks and the flu, well that sucks even worse!

The More the Better....

I found Canster in his crib after his nap just like this, he refused to give one up. Apparently one is no longer suitable and it takes two to please this little man!

Still Halloween.......

Honestly, there were alterior motives for the bright orange Daphne Hair, it by itself acted as a reflector for our little free spirit! So despite her MIA three seperate times while trick-or-treating with the scooby-gang, she was easily located by looking for the flaming orange flair! Scooby he was content to be pulled around and eat his "scooby snacks"!

Daphne lasted just a few houses before pulling the substitute mystery machine was not so much fun anymore and returned the job to scooby's rightful owner, Shaggy!

"Fred" went in disguise as a secret covert-ops spy. This was the first year we let Easton go with his friends...of course he was outfitted with dad's cell phone and night vision goggles and might have been being followed by some Scooby-Doo look-a-likes, but all the same he had a great "I'm so old" now experience!

Amazingly we caught up with our secret spy at the park 3 minutes after he got there, crazy how that worked out!!!! He relieved Shaggy and pulled a super tired Scooby-Doo and Daphne home to inspect their loot!

Easton's Halloween Party

This year I helped in Easton's classroom with the Halloween Party. Here are just a few pics of Easton while I was there.

Halloween Parade

The kids had their Halloween parades and parties today at school. We converted Gracee's Daphne costume into a witch and Easton wanted to be a spy. Cannon he just wanted to be in all the pictures!

Carving Pumpkins

We carved pumpkins Sunday afternoon. The kids gutted their own pumpkins and drew the faces to be carved by Shane. (We really need to invest in some kid friendly carving tools!)

Cousin Sleepover

After the Trunk-o-Treat we brought Emersyn back with us to play with Gracee, they played a lot of Barbie's and petshops and we introduced her to the evil Wii! Gracee loved having her here to play girl stuff with her!

More Birthday...

Cannon had one last gift to open from Grandma & Grandpa Christiansen. He was super excited about the Little People Big Truck. That combined with the little people construction track and airplane he also got for his birthday he has been in heaven! Thank you all who sent cards and remembered little buddy on his big day!

Trunk-Or-Treat

Every year, the military puts on a Trunk-or-Treat for all the little military kids, it is the highlight of Halloween season for my kids. This year Shane's sister Kendra and her family joined us!
Our little Scooby-Doo was already worn out from the city Trick-of-Treat village!

What a Pair!


Easton decided he was the "Spy" for the Scooby-Gang rather than Fred! I guess you could say he's Fred in disguise!!!


Cannon thought it was awesome he held out his back and people just gave him candy! He got the Trick-or-Treat thing down pretty quickly, although he didn't say "Trick-or-Treat" he just led with "Tank Ew"
Our little Daphne challenged the balloon master to make her an angel....he succeeded depending on your imagination and all the kids loved the bounce houses they had set up!

Hot Dog dinner and lots of candy, a lethal combination for any parent!
Good Times! Thanks Parker's for coming with us! (Pirate: Emersyn, Spiderman: Sawyer, and Clown:Fynnlee)

Scooby-Dooby Doo....

Need I say more???? We went with a family theme this year and had fun trick or treating at the EM city Trick or Treat village and the Military Trunk-or-Treat at Camp Williams. We did however lose Fred. Yes, Easton made it part way through before deciding he was just too cool to be seen with us and went back to becoming a covert ops spy....when did we become so uncool?

Halloween Howl

Easton ran the Halloween Howl 5K today. He did awesome finishing in just under 30 minutes & winning a prize for best costume (he was a spy)!


All the kids, including Cannon ran in the 1/4 mile fun run following the race. Cannon can most often be found right beside Gracee and today was no different, he had to do what she was doing!



All the kids got medals and "goodie" bags for finishing. Cannon was pretty proud of himself and his newly acquired fruit snacks!

BIG BOY PANTS

We've been doing some minor potty-training at our house the last few months, Cannon is doing great at going poop in the toilet and loves his M&M rewards ("nema nema nems" as he says it) so we decided to try him in pull-ups....He was super proud of his car under roos and got his first M&M's of the morning which he generously shared with his baby. That however was the end of it, the rest of the day went downhill. I think we will hold off pee training for now and just revel in the fact I very rarely have to change a poopy diaper, because at least he understands that part!