five years

We've been looking forward to this wedding anniversary for five years. When we got married, at our reception we had a "time capsule" table for our friends and family to make predictions for our lives and our marriage years down the road. There were worksheets to fill out, not to be read by us until our First, Fifth, Tenth and Twenty-Fifth Wedding Anniversaries. These worksheets were placed in the appropriate boxes (decorated by our little sisters) and "sealed" up until the year we were to open them. So the highlight of our evening today was opening our Five Year box!!
It is so fun to read these... some are funny, some are nostalgic, some are eerily true!
Here are a couple of our favorites.... (click on them to see them full size to be able to read them)

David's (since you wanted to make sure we remembered)












My Uncle John's












And The Laughlins'
*Kasey, did you know you filled one of these out?.... even though we didn't even know you existed for another couple of months?! HAHA! Mike just knew....*












Ryan felt we needed to add a few "honorable mentions" for accuracy...

• Heather Braker predicted we'd be living in St. Louis this year.
• Patty Pakulak predicted we'd have moved 5 times in the past five years. (St. Louis will be our 5th home since we've been married)
• Jennifer Sanders predicted we would have a 4Runner
• Dan Smith predicted the Portland Trailblazers would have zero championships in the past five years.

Like I said, these are always fun to go through. The only disappointing part (besides that we don't get to do this every year) is that there aren't more of them. We counted only 15 pages today. Funny, because we had about 150 people at our wedding reception.
So here's your assignment.
If you were at our wedding and did not fill out these papers, have a little fun and join in the game. We still have papers to read in another 5 and then 15 years. Send us your own answers and we'll put them in the boxes to read when the time comes. And if you weren't at our wedding, or didn't know us then, you can join in as well if you like. I want all the predictions we can get. Lord knows we'll probably need some entertainment when we've been married for 10 years!
I'll make up a blank copy if anyone's interested in me posting it or emailing it to you.

To celebrate today we planned a yummy shrimp dinner for ourselves. For after the kids went to bed. So before that, we fed them a quick and early dinner and then we all went over to The Cascades Park for some ice cream. It was the perfect evening for it.

and awww... they actually like each other

p.s. Mom, thanks so much for the adorable little Calla Lillies... I meant to call and let you know I got them this afternoon, but our evening was a little rushed and then I forgot until I just posted that picture of them! We'll give you a call tomorrow.

celebration

Five years ago today I married My Ryan(as he has come to be called with all the other dozens of Ryan's we have as friends, LOL!).
I am one of those lucky enough to be married to my best friend. In the past five years he has seen the best and the worst in me and he continues to love me.
I am so grateful. I am so blessed.

From the moment I saw you, I wanted to meet you.
From the moment I met you, I wanted to know you.
From the moment I knew you, I was in love with you.
From the moment I loved you, I knew I would share my life with you.
And from that moment to this moment,
And all the moments yet to come,
I will love you with all my heart.
Happy Anniversary My Love... it's been the best five years of my life

our "little" playdate and my failing photography 101

Okay, so our "having a couple of friends over to splash around with us" yesterday afternoon turned into a HUGE playdate. We ended up with 9 moms and 13 kids (ranging in ages 12 weeks to 6 years) in our backyard. Wow! How's that for a distraction from my bad day!!
We had water in the pool, the slide going into the water, the sprinkler going, kids and toddlers running around, and babies spread out on blankets trying to keep cool.

Here are the babies of the group... four little dolls six months and younger.

The babies didn't last very long... it was so hot yesterday and they weren't too happy in the heat.
But here's baby Reyna sunbathing and showing off her little belly. She had this ridiculously frilly baby bikini on... isn't it hilariously adorable?!






It was kind of a quick little visit, but it was fun to get so many of us and the little ones together.


*********

I'm getting really frustrated with the whole photography/new camera thing. I was really looking forward this summer to getting into really learning the basics of photography and learning my new camera and experimenting and practicing and working on all that stuff. I have absolutely no desire to do anything in the professional aspect... I just want to get to where I can reliably capture quality pictures of my kids and our memories. I'm just feeling so frustrated because I know what my camera can do but I don't know how to technically do any of it; I haven't a clue what I'm doing and I feel like I don't have the time to learn it right. My visions of a laid-back summer of playing with and learning my camera outside taking great shots of my kids are slowly being replaced with visions of boxes and painting and getting settled again in a new community and all the other details of making this big move again. I think it's overwhelming me because there's so much I want to learn and it takes so much practice and trial and error and I just don't have time for that now.
I'm at this point where I'm not happy with my photos on autopilot anymore... they're too dark, or the focus is off... but I'm still at such basics (or below) with the technicalities of a camera that I can't get good shots myself either. I feel like I do have an eye for photography... but I'm wondering if I should step back from trying to become somewhat accomplished in it. I feel it's getting to the point where I think it's making me too picky. I'm not having fun taking pictures when I'm trying so hard. I don't want to look at everyday snapshots and pick them apart because they're dark or flat or grainy. I want to see them for the memories that they are and not the technical aspects of them. But then I do so love when I get those random (very few and random around here!) shots that are just about perfect and feel so right...
Anyway, it kind of makes me sad because this is something I think I would really enjoy as a hobby. But I don't feel I can put enough time into it right now to make it a fun hobby, you know what I mean? Aside from balancing everyday life, the busyness of two young kids and making the time to actually spend quality time with my husband... it seems this whole summer will be filled with moving stuff with us still trying to fit fun summer stuff (camping, etc.) all in between. Then as soon as we feel we're getting settled in our new home, we really want to get started on the first steps we have to take to get the ball rolling on finding a child to adopt and all the paperwork and details that go along with that. And then hopefully soon we'll have a new family member to get to know. So it's kind of like, will it never end?! I know that's how life is... there's always something. I guess it just boils down to time management is not being one of my strong points and I just either need to do something about it or quit complaining, huh?
Maybe I'm just feeling overwhelmed in general.
Maybe it's just the stress of buying, selling, and buying yet another house and moving with two kids to another new city for the second time in the span of one year. You think?

Anyone have a crash course learn how to photograph in two days or less?!??? Otherwise I feel I'm going to be on pause in that aspect for a long time.

not so good

I'm just sitting here waiting for Porter to show up for the morning.
Kind of dreading today.
Well not today in itself as much as I wanted to wake up this morning and find that yesterday had been wiped clean. Yesterday was not a good day.
Why is it that is seems so often when I feel we all had a really good quality everything-in-life-is-in-balance weekend, the start of the week hits with things trying to slap me out of that mindset?

I started out not feeling very well yesterday. Couldn't really put my finger on it... I just felt off. With a headache, but that's nothing new. I just felt exhausted and wiped out with no motivation for some reason.
And then I had a touchy situation with a friend that I was trying to deal with throughout the day and it didn't turn out as I hoped. Along with another 'feel-bad' situation with another acquaintance.
Got a phone call from a mom from Savannah's school who never received her last book order so the teachers and I were scrambling around trying to find that.
And then to top it all off last evening, we got some really bummer news about our house.
All that getting the perfect buyers, perfect timing and other good stuff I wrote about the other day? Yeah, cancel that.

Just kind of an emotionally exhausting day when I started out feeling pretty drained to begin with. And I don't mean to be a downer, I just needed to vent real quick. Like maybe getting it out of my system will help me pick up and have a better day.

And why shouldn't it be a better day? It's sunny and supposed to be in the 90's. I filled up the pool yesterday and we have a couple of friends coming over to splash around with us this afternoon. At the moment I'm really dreading company and having to be happy and social. I'm just not in the mood. But I know we'll have fun once we're out there in the sunshine. I just have to get through the morning, lunch with these three kids, and hopefully a decent naptime first.

And it's Wednesday right? Halfway to the weekend...

look at that face

No, this is not a five o'clock shadow on my toddler.


















He and Savannah had a little art time with the markers.













This is why we normally have Sawyer do markers stripped down naked at the Little Tykes picnic table outside.

p.s.

Nic, I put those cookie recipes over here. Bake away! Just don't bring them anywhere near us... I've had more than my fair share in the last few days.

it was a busy relaxing weekend

I was kind of bummed when this weekend started out rainy and gloomy.
Saturday morning, Nicole and I were going to take Savannah out downtown for a little photo shoot, but we got rained out. So Ryan the kids and I spent the morning running a few errands, had lunch out and came home for a late naptime. We just kind of lazed around the rest of the day with the weather so gloomy. We decided to try our first Family Movie Night, so after dinner we picked a movie (Monsters Inc.) popped some popcorn and all kicked our feet up on the big comfy couch. Yeah, Sawyer's not quite ready for that. He would sit for all of about 30 seconds. Just about long enough to climb up on the couch, grab a handful of pretzel sticks, and jump back down to play. It was a nice idea though, and it was fun to relax together. Savannah thought it was pretty fun.


Sunday, we tried for Savannah's pics again, and Nicole got a few shots in, but were rained out once again. So we headed home, had lunch and then all took a long afternoon nap. Nice.
After us parents dragged ourselves out of bed, we all hopped in the car to meet up with the Barczaks and head over to a new playplace we found in Chelsea, called the TreeHouse. Turned out to be a great place (wish we would have found it this winter!!) and the kids had a blast. Savannah was a little hesitant at first, with her fear of heights, but she was soon climbing all over and even did the biggest fastest slides all by herself!! Sawyer was raring to go (he wanted nothing to do with the toddler area) and begged for Daddy to take him up to do the slides again and again. That kid was non-stop the whole time we were there. Good thing there was plenty for them to do!




































After the kids ran around for a while, we headed to Red Robin for dinner. Yum!






I worried about how the kids would be, considering our last attempt to sit down to eat out, and the fact that they had just ran themselves ragged at the TreeHouse. But they were all awesome. Savannah ate everything she put her eyes on,


and Sawyer... well, he didn't do so hot with his meal, but he made a nice dent in our tower of onion rings!!



And here's Porter with the same look as the Ryans... 'it takes all my concentration to eat and watch the sports on the tv at the same time'!





Today Ryan decided to make my weekend and take us all over to Ikea. We had been wanting to make a trip to get Sawyer's bed before we move, since we won't be as close to an Ikea location at our new house. So we got it and we're leaving it in the box until after we get moved and settled. It's hard for me to not pull it out and put it together!! Not so anxious about getting him started in actually sleeping in a bed without bars to keep him in, but it'll be so cute in his room, I can't wait to see it! I have some good ideas rolling around in my head for that thing.
So that was our outing today. When we got home this afternoon, we spent some time outside since the weather finally decided to get it's act together. In fact it's quite warm again tonight and supposed to be for much of the week. We might be pulling the pool out again in the next couple of days. Anyone care to join us?!

how about a little catch-up?

last week...
with the weather so warm (hot) and nice (hot), we filled up our little pool for a couple of days and during that time, we had some friends over to splash around with us. Nicole and Porter hung out with us, as well as some new friends who live close by, LeeAnn and her little Lukas who is the same age as Sawyer. All the boys had a great time together and it's so fun to see them actually playing together and "conversing" now that they're getting older. Very cute.
Here are a few pics.














Savannah (what would be the opposite of the word celebrated?) had her last day of school. We were sad to see the year gone; she loved her class, her teachers and her friends so much! I know she's disappointed to not have class to go to and her teachers and friends to visit with, but I think it helps to look forward to another new school next year. I just hope we find as good of a place as we were blessed to have SJ in this year. They had a big picnic day at the park last week and she had lots of fun with the girls and so many snacks. I can't believe "summer" is here already and my little girl finished up a whole first year of preschool!!

back it up!

Where has the week gone??
Wasn't it JUST Monday? I really hope the whole summer doesn't fly by this fast!

Okay, just to organize my thoughts a bit...
pictures and posts:
my only goals for today were to both edit pictures and play with my camera. I have hundreds of pictures from the last two weeks or so and I need to go through and edit, crop, delete, etc. and I just keep putting it off. So today was my day to get them all transferred onto the computer and dive right in. Also, staying in the photo mode, I was going to take some time to really play around with my new camera and try a few things out, get a little more comfortable venturing out of the auto settings and to really start learning and practicing. Anyway, started a little of that, but then went to go look for my owners manual to help me quickly figure out how to adjust little things here and there, and I can't find it anywhere. I guess we re-organized the house a little too well. So I'm just a little frustrated at the moment and I need to just step away from the camera. I have some pics to share from the last few days (and of course catch up on my record no pics over here), but I'm going to take a break and hopefully get back to those this evening.
Other things I've been meaning to post about (and will elaborate on later):

• We had a little "pool party" over here yesterday with some friends, so I have a few pics to share from that.
• Savannah's last day of preschool today
  
• We're mostly healed up... Ryan's back to walking (and driving)

And I'll try to stop babbling so much and post more pictures.
More pictures of the cute kids-- not the ugly feet. I promise LOL!


BUT for now...
the biggest news...
AMAZING news...

We sold our house!
It is amazing. It was on the market for less than a week, which is an absolute miracle around here. (Have I mentioned how saturated the market is around here and how long people sit with their houses listed? There are houses still for sale right now that we walked through when we were looking for this one 14 months ago.) And it's not even like we had it priced real low, which is what a lot of people ask when they hear how fast it went. It was actually priced a lot higher than the realtors and assements projected.
It went on the market a week ago Monday (but was under the wrong address, so it didn't even come up in any area searches for days after that) and we then had an Open House on Sunday which brought 10 couples through. One of those couples left the open house talking about making an offer and made an appointment to come back the next morning with their realtor. Monday morning they were in our house for two hours(!!) and our realtor had an offer in her hand from them not an hour later. Granted, it wasn't a full price offer, but we did a bit of negotiating and came out quite satisfied.
Like I said before, we weren't terribly worried about the house sale thing, as if we couldn't sell it on our own by the time we left Pfizer would buy us out (we would lose no money) and take care of it. But there were incentives to selling it on our own before that time, not the least of which being actually selling it for more than we paid last year.
We were honestly counting on ending up selling it to Pfizer because of the market around here, and even if we did happen to find a buyer to pay the price we were asking in the limited amount of time we had, still the majority of perspective buyers here make offers contingent on the sale of their home, which we couldn't accept going through the relocation benefits. And which we wouldn't want to accept even if we could because like I said, houses don't sell around here!
Our buyers just moved here from Idaho and have been renting for the past three months and were really anxious to find a house-- perfect for us!
Also we close on our new house June 25th. Our buyers wanted to be out of their rental June 25th and pushed for an "early" closing of June 22nd-- perfect for us! We were having to stay up here through July, but now Ryan simply let his 'higher-ups' know that we have to be out of our house by then and they shuffled things around a bit so he can leave mid-June. The movers will get everything off, we'll close on this house on Friday the 22nd, have the weekend to take a nice leisurely drive down to St. Louis and be just in time to close on our new house on Monday. Could the timing have worked out any better?!

It's just so nice to not have to worry about any of this house stuff any more. To not have to keep the house up and be ready for realtors and buyers to come through, to not have to decide how to deal with our realtor (we were having some ISSUES with her), to just not have to wonder what's going to happen.
We are amazed that it all worked out so fast. And so perfectly. I can't believe it.
But then again, it's not so amazing; not so unbelievable. God really does have His hand in all of this. I'm just so thankful for the nice reminder.
Thanks for your prayers!

it's a monday

I feel like I'm so behind on everything.
Everything except the house work that is. I don't believe our house has ever been so clean and organized. Cupboards closets and all. We had our first open house yesterday and another showing today. Kind of nice to HAVE TO clean so well.

Ryan wiped clean our laptop this past week and so I didn't do much with pictures, editing or uploading. I actually was very lazy with my camera, so the computer is really just an excuse. I do need to get caught up on my picture posts though. Very behind on that page.

I'm behind on emails and mail too. I've had cards and gifts to send out for birthdays and new babies, and it seems my life has been consumed with endless house stuff and senseless injuries.

So while I'm thinking of it...
**Happy Birthday Kasey!!! Glad you had a fun weekend and hope you have a great day celebrating YOU!
***And we got some great news last week... Ryan's little sister Jenn, is visiting his other sister Holly in Guam. A great vacation for Jenn and Greg on an amazing tropical island getting visit with Dan and Holly, to spoil Taegen and to meet sweet baby Tasi. Well, we got a phone call from Jenn the other night and good ol' Greg finally proposed!!
Congratulations you guys! We are soooo excited for you and can't wait to see you and give you some big hugs of congrats ourselves!


Well, about the only exciting news around here is that I started another new blog. I know. The excitement!
Well, I have to admit I totally stole the idea from Melissa. I had read her blog here and there awhile ago (she seriously cracks me up!), kind of lost track of it and then came across her again. Then I noticed she had an alternate page to jot down menus, meals and recipes for her picky eater family. I loved the idea!! I had personally been trying to get better at implementing a "planned menu" each week as well as keeping track of what the kids were actually consuming during this hunger strike they've been on for the past month or so. Only I was not very successful at remembering to write down what they (especially Sawyer being so sporadic at meals) ate everyday. So I loved this blog idea because hey, I'm on the computer everyday right? As long as I'm supposed to be doing my picture a day and my blessings for each day, I might as well make a record for all this non-eating too! I know, like I don't have anything better to do!
Anyway, here it is, I gave it a trial run last week and decided to go forward with it: Check out "Our Own Gong Show"!

Not to be outdone

After Heather hurt herself on Friday (see previous post), I took it upon myself not to be outdone. After all we did have a pretty big weekend planned, consisting of hours upon hours of cleaning the house for our open house on Sunday.
So Friday night was beautiful and so I thought that it would be a good night to get a little exercise. So I invited Don and Ryan over for a little basketball. We started playing at about 8 pm, and we were having a great time. By about 9 pm we were on our last game of "21", since it was starting to get a little dark, and I was driving along the baseline and was attempting a finger roll when I landed twisting my ankle. It actually sounded like a rubber band snapping. So after I rolled around the ground for a minute Don and Ryan got me a bag of ice and a chair to sit in. Then Don took off my shoe and discovered that my ankle looked like a water balloon, so we decided that the game was probably over and that we should get Heather, who was inside trying to nurse her injuries with a nice warm shower and relaxation.
So needless to say I got out of a lot of house chores this weekend. But you would be impressed with how much I can do crawling around on the floor to clean the house. Or if kneeling on a chair I can do quite a few dishes. And I did manage to mow the whole yard on the Deere without using the brake at all, since that is on the hurt right foot side. But seriously, Heather did most of the work getting the house into shape.
Here is a picture from Friday night....
and one from today... (go ahead, click on it. I dare you.)I am developing some very nice colors especially in near my heel and in my toes. Even the "webbing" between my two webbed toes is swollen, making Heather even more disgusted with my toes.
I told Heather that I really feel like a Laughlin today.
Special thanks to Ryan Barczak for the piggyback ride inside and the use of the crutches, and to Don Huff III for coming over to edge and push mow the yard that I couldn't reach with the rider. And of course to Heather, giver of the drugs, bringer of the drinks, cleaner of the house, getter-upper with the kids, hander of the crutches...etc.

I'm scared

to wake up in the morning.
I am going to HURT.

Don and Katie bought a new house, they were very excited about it, so we went over to do a drive-by this evening. It's just down the road from us (figuratively, not literally. but funny enough, it's right next door to a house we went through when we were looking last year!) and we had some time to waste before getting the kids ready for bed tonight, so we jumped in the car and headed over to look at this "sweet house".
Nice house, very different layout, very wooded lot about an acre in size. The lot. Dun-Dun-Dun.

After walking around the house and peeking in all the windows (yes, it's vacant), we decided to scope out the yard. Well, there's just a few tiny patches of grass outside the front and back doors, and pretty much the rest of the land is little hills and tons of trees. Seriously, you can't see the road from the house at all; it's like you're in the middle of the wilderness. Not flat wilderness. So we (Ryan) wander up one embankment to see over and how much land is between the house and the road. Savannah, of course wants to follow, so I help her up but I am also holding Sawyer. This is not just a small rolling hill, mind you. It's a steep hill made up of dirt and pine needles and the top is at least eight feet higher than the "yard" at the front door where we where. It was as rugged of a hike as any I've ever taken, albeit it was only a few yards. Ryan was way ahead of us, over the rise, checking out the view. I was trying to help Savannah up with one hand and keep my balance with Sawyer in my other arm. I finally call for Ryan to come help Savannah get the rest of the way up, and as he takes her hand, and as I let go of her, I must have shifted my weight and all of a sudden I feel dirt giving away underneath my feet. I try to get my footing, but with Sawyer in my arms, I can't see or move very well, and before I know it I'm sliding down the hill along with the dirt. Sliding down a hill backwards on your feet doesn't last too long, and so I of course ended up falling forward which led to sliding down the hill on my hands and knees. Like I said, this hill was simply loose dirt and pine needles, so there wasn't much hope for stopping myself. When I fell, I had Sawyer in both arms directly in front of me, so trying to protect him from the fall and trying not to fall completely on him myself, I held him and landed with all my weight on my elbows, jamming both my arms in the process. And then continuing with my slide to the bottom. Sawyer, thankfully survived with just a few scrapes on his back. I, however, am a little bit worse for the wear. When I finally stood up I thought, 'oh, it's not so bad... just mostly scared and shaky.'

Well when we got in the car, I realized how tender my shoulders, elbows and forearms were... my right arm looks like a ripe red strawberry patch. Scraped up my knees (through my pants) too. And my back hurt between my shoulderblades along with my neck... I felt like I had whiplash. I laughed to myself. In all my years of camping and hiking, I don't remember ever being hurt like I was on this stupid little hill. Then again, I don't normally hike with a 30 pound kid in my arms.

When we got home, Ryan had me just sit and relax while he gave the kids baths and got them ready for bed. Then Don calls and decides to come over to play a little basketball, so I decide to take a nice hot shower and just lay low for the evening.
Well when I got up off the couch, I knew I was in trouble. The muscles in my arms and in my back were already stiff and sore. My triceps felt like I'd worked out for 8 hours straight yesterday. I thought a nice hot shower would help, and the water pounding on me did feel good. But once in there, I realized it was an extreme chore to lift my arms to wash my hair and just soaping up was painful. Getting out and drying off... that took a lot of effort. I'm thinking if I shower tomorrow, I'm going to need a spare set of arms to soap and shampoo by then.
I am completely dreading getting up in the morning. I already feel like I was in a car accident or something. I wonder if I did seriously jam my arms.
Sheesh, what a trip! (I guess that would be a slip technically, not a trip.)

Ryan's about ready to move me back to Oregon. He swears that moving here has caused me to fall apart. It's true... I pretty much only saw doctors to have a baby before, and since we've been here I've been in the ER, had surgery, had a root canal, had wisdom teeth taken out, so on and so forth. Pretty ridiculous.
Maybe I'll do better in Missouri. LOL!

rain, rain, go away

It's been real cool and drizzly ever since our storm the other night. I put Sawyer to bed in a footed fleece sleeper last night. Two nights ago he was just in shorts. Crazy. Guess I had to be reminded summer's not here yet!

I was going through pictures from earlier this week when we had all the warmer weather and I thought I'd share some of them to kick out of this gloomy weather mood around here. Remember you should always be able to click on any pictures to see a full screen view.




We broke out the sprinkler on Monday. Lot's of fun!!




































Savannah went on her first real bike ride. She made it all the way around the loop of our neighborhood (almost a half-mile!) and was quite proud of herself!!






Sawyer was bummed he couldn't ride the big bike too.

Shootin' a few hoops with Dad

Bye-Bye!

lights out

We had a good thunderstorm this evening and we actually lost power for a couple of hours. It was so dark and gloomy outside, it made it very dark inside -even at 6pm. The kids had fun traipsing around the house with flashlights, playing "hunting" games and making light shows on the ceiling. At one point we were all snuggled on my bed reading books by flashlight. Then the kids got silly on the bed and I decided to play around a bit with the camera and try to take some pictures of the lights in the dark.

some of them looked pretty spooky!

one year ago today

... we closed on our house.
Two days ago
it went back on the market.






One year ago we were so excited to have our first house. It's a great house. It has exceeded our expectations in so many ways. We couldn't have imagined in the quick glimpse we had before deciding on this house how perfectly it suited us. We found in the months following our move how our belongings just seemed to "fit" in this home. Pieces of furniture that fit just perfectly into certain nooks or corners of this space. Closets or cupboards that fit some of our storage needs just right. I remember thanking God often for providing this home for us and having hand-picked just the right one, a better choice than we even knew "we" were making at the time.
We have more space here than we know what to do with... plenty of room to spread out, but still feeling comfortable and not separated. And the yard. Our beautiful, easy-care yard where the kids have room to run (and run and run) and play to their hearts' content.
I will certainly be sad to leave this home. If we could take our house and yard and move it with us, we would.

But now we're leaving it. Please pray that the right buyer comes along for us. As much as we've been blessed by living here for the past year, I would hope we could get just a little more blessing out of it, if you know what I mean!

And pray we find that our new home is just as (or more) right for us as a family and as where we will be in the coming years.

this is getting ridiculous

Can you tell we're all running on too little sleep around here?
Click on these...












Ryan put Sawyer's pajama pants backwards and inside out this morning when he changed him.

Sawyer was up from 3am to about 5:30am again. Ryan got up and went downstairs to sleep at about 4 just so he could get some sleep before work. I really don't know what is going on with that kid.
Then he was up at his usual 7am this morning. And of course falling apart by the end of the morning. I finally put him down for a nap by 11:30. And guess who was awake and yelling in his room again by 1 o'clock (I don't know where this yelling/screaming/howling in his crib came from so suddenly)? Arghhh!!!! Something tells me it's going to be a long afternoon...

Well, at least he's eating more. How much more you ask? Here's what he ate for all of yesterday...

• less than one half of a banana (breakfast)
  
• six fig newtons (am snack)
  
• a handful of green beans at dinner (first time in a loooong time, yay!)
• a cupful of pretzel sticks before bed
  

And today...

• a cupful of cereal for breakfast
• ummm, would take nothing for lunch so I guess that's it

And yes, that's actually much better than it's been the last few weeks. Sad, isn't it?!


Also, just thought I'd share I've been chuckling to myself...
the Mother's Day picture we took yesterday, I thought, turned out rather well of all of us. Both the kids actually looking at the camera and smiling!
Well, then the more I look at it, the more I notice Savannah's eyes. Or lack thereof. She has her Daddy's squinty-eye syndrom. LOL! When they really smile, their eyes disappear. She looks in that picture like she could have been adopted from China!
Okay, I've probably ruined that picture now. I just thinks it's pretty funny. That kid really has the biggest eyes... it's amazing how they can totally disappear when she smiles!