Actually, they were one month old a few days ago, but I just got around to posting the photos.  Hey - at least I took them on time!  Click the photo above to see lots more, plus a few of Levi.

PS - Reagan's on the left, Sera's on the right.  :-)

Made you smile, didn't it?

So anyone who took the time to read my "50 questions" meme has learned that Levi is in a cast.  He was chasing Jonny and Gracie around the house and totally wiped out in the kitchen.  Poor kid broke both bones in his right arm, just above his wrist.  It was broken badly enough that an orthopedic surgeon had to reset the bones before they could put the cast on.  The entire experience was quite awful, but he handled most of it really well.  After a couple of cranky-ish days, he's back to his usual self.  We go to the ortho clinic on Monday, where we'll find out how long he has to wear the cast.

One of his new favorite games is to whack himself in the head with his cast (on purpose) and say "Ow!" over and over again, because it makes everyone in the vicinity laugh.  Goofy kid.  Great - he's a clown AND a klutz.  I see many ER visits in our future!

Here are a couple of photos I took over the weekend:

   

Sorry you have to tilt your head to the side to look at the second one.  I'm too lazy to rotate it.  :-)

The party was a success, but I still can't believe that Jonny will be five tomorrow.  I've been feeling pretty funky and sad about it; much the way I felt when he turned one.  He's quite excited about being five, though, and is already talking about what he wants to do when he turns six.  Whoa!  Slow down there, buddy!  Let's take one year at a time, ok?

The kids all had a blast with the water stuff.  Funny - the baby pool/sprinkler thing was the most popular!  They got a kick out of their goodie bag loot, with the "spider slime" being the biggest hit.  They figured out that if you put it in the water, it gets even slimier.  Lovely!

Jonny was hilarious.  Dad brought him over just before 1:00, and the first thing out of his mouth was, "I am ready to PAR-TAY!" complete with a little dance.  I already had all the Spiderman decorations up when he got there - he let out a big squeal when he saw them.

I was running around too much to take many photos, but I did get some.  Hopefully Sharon and my dad will send me some, too - they took a lot.


Click to see more!

I did manage to capture a few cute videos...

Lots of kids; one cake
The precursor to this video is that my mom always insists on cutting cake with dental floss, because it doesn't mess up the icing like a knife does.  This is true, but generally a bunch of kids don't care if the icing is messed up (and really, do adults?)  In my opinion it takes longer to cut cake with dental floss, and you still have to get a serving utensil to actually serve the cake, so why not just use a knife in the first place?

Anyway, we had this whole discussion, and she still insisted on using the dental floss, but then decided she needed to find a knife to cut some of the pieces, leaving one cake surrounded by several 3-5 year olds.  Did you really think they wouldn't touch the cake?



Car chase
Sharon's oldest, Christopher was playing with Levi's remote-control car.  Levi had fun trying to chase it down.  The extreme close-up at the end is one of our neighbor's kids, Evan.




As I was cleaning up later in the evening, I discovered that I'd forgotten to put out the potato salad.  I called my mom to laugh about it, and my dad ended up coming back over to have another burger and some "tater salad."  He took some home, and I brought the rest of it to work today.

Overall, it was a really good day.  Tomorrow is Jonny's actual birthday, so we'll do dinner over at mom and dad's in the evening.  I'm taking the day off work, and Lee doesn't have to be at work until 4pm, so we'll do something with him tomorrow, but I haven't figured out what yet.  Probably the zoo or COSI.

My neighbor, Jill, babysits my kids during the week while I work.  She has two kids - Josh is a week younger than Jonny, and Skylar is 2 and a half.

Jill sent me this video one morning last week.  Apparently, Levi figured out that if he pushes the button on Skylar's ride-on Barbie toy, it moves!

The day she sent it, I played it nearly every fifteen minutes all day long.  It's just so damned cute - you can't help but smile when you watch it!  Every time I played it, my officemates would say, "Play it again!"

If you listen carefully, you can hear Jonny saying "Levi's driving!" at the end. 

Someone asked me yesterday, "Why don't you blog?"  My response was that I write entries in my head all day long, but never manage to get them down.  With three kids, there are a zillion potential entries a day right there, nevermind the rest of my life.

But then I read journals other mothers keep about their kids... they started them when they were pregnant, and somehow manage to log every milestone, big and small, as it occurs.  And they have pictures to prove them!

Um, Jonny will be five next week.  The last time I touched his scrapbook was on his first birthday.  And Gracie and Levi?  Yeah, right.  Oh, don't get me wrong... I have tons of pictures.  I even have them all backed up in not one, but two places.  Wouldn't want to lose those pictures I keep meaning to get to someday, right?

Anyway, the thing about blogging, particularly blogging about the kids, is that I have this NEED to start at the beginning.  To go back to 2002 when Jonny was born, get all the pictures in order, tell all the stories that go along with them.  And then I get completely overwhelmed and just do nothing instead.

And then stuff like what just happened, happens... Levi, who always sleeps through the night, just woke up.  So I had to go get him, calm him down, fill his cuppy, change his diaper, and put him back in bed.  Of course, when I took him into his room a cat followed me.  Figuring it probably would be a bad idea to shut her in there for the night, I chased her - tiptoeing, mind you - around the room.  Oh yeah, I was quiet as a mouse, and Levi was almost asleep, until I cracked my toe on the damned giant toy-play-something in the middle of his room.  I managed not to yelp, but the giant-toy-play-something started blaring music.  And then Levi fell out of his bed, and I had to do the whole thing all over again.  Well, except change his diaper - that was still dry, thankfully.  And the second time around, I managed to chase the cat out without injuring myself.

Right, so - this is my life.  And I have no earthly idea what I was writing about prior to the Levi-waking-cat-chasing fiasco.  But I'm still writing, anyway, and that's something.  And I'm not going to worry about the fact that I'm not starting at the beginning.

This is it.  This is the beginning.

Hi!  I'm a blogger!