jazzercise

it's no secret that i need to lose quite a few baby pounds.

i think i found my new workout routine.

what do ya think?

oh boy...

so i thought yesterday would be a good day to reintroduce jagger to potty training.  

the training has been on hold for quite some time, due to all the transitions we've been going through for the past few months, but honestly, i wasn't being real consistent with it for a long while before that.  

and boy, can i tell.

jagger did not want to go to the potty at all.  he hated that i would interrupt his play time, or monster watching time, or whatever was going on, to make him sit on the potty.

he did like wearing big boy underwear, though.

by 2:30, here were the stats:

peed in potty:  0

pooped in potty:  0

peed in pants:  3

pooped in pants: 1

ugh...and it didn't improve.  he did not once go in the potty.

the sad thing is, he was doing so well, at least with peeing in potty, when we first started.  it's my lack of consistency that has made him reluctant.  boo on mama!

so now that i'm home all day, we're are starting over again.  

we will make progress!  he won't wear diapers forever, right?!

and i'm thinking i need to go out and buy more big boy underwear :)

(do you think this post will embarrass him when he's older?)

nap time

have i mentioned before that jagger likes closets?

well, he does.  

after we stayed in a hotel room with the kids, we discovered that he especially likes closets with sliding doors.

and as luck would have it, our new place has sliding closet doors.  

what a lucky boy :)

he has started to take his naps in the closet. 

maybe because it's darker in there.  maybe it's quieter.  maybe he just feels like he's on a secret adventure.     

i have been finding him in there a lot.  

i walk into his room and it seems empty, except for the snoring (which he inherited from me, unfortunately).  so i walk over to the closet, quietly slide the door open, and find this...

completely conked out :)

funny, huh?

and not to exclude the other two kiddos, here some pics from the other day.

whatchyou talkin' 'bout?

slade, happy and eating an egg.

important things

this is jagger's new place to store important things.

he has been shoving all sorts of goodies in his waistband.  

corey's phone, little toy cars, markers, various toys.

he is constantly asking me to help secure his important items there.

i think it's cute :)

exhausting

that's what today was.  those crazy kids of mine were complete punks.  woke up in bad moods that lasted all day and caused them to pick on each other and scream the whole day long.  poor corey was at work all day.  left at 8:00am  and didn't get home until 9:20pm.  looks like his tuesdays are shaping up to be long ones.  

it was just a long day for all of us.

cooking adventures in the kitchen

have any of you had that chicken & gnocchi soup from the olive garden?  i love it.  i may even be a little bit obsessed about it.  so i decided i was going to try to make it.  i found a recipe on the internet that claimed it was similar to olive garden's and got to work.it turned out alright, i guess.  definitely not as good as the original.  i let it cook a smidgen too long so it was thicker that it should be, and i wasn't a huge fan of the gnocchi that i bought, but once again, the boys ate it up, so it was not a complete waste.  i think i'll just stick to the original from now on, though.

also,  i am having a hard time getting used to our oven.  can anyone guess why?that's right.  there are no numbers on the knob.  it's a pain.  my mom bought me a temp gauge to put inside the oven (thanks mom!) which helps me get in the general range of the temp i need to be at, but it's still a guessing game.  

the one cute moment of the day

even though the boys were punks for the vast majority of the day, they did have this one redeeming moment.  they were all outside playing on the deck and for once they weren't screaming.  so i peeked out and saw slade pushing and pulling cash around in a tiny little lego wagon.  they were just so happy and getting along and jagger was laughing and it was a perfect little moment. slade pushed cash around for probably a good five minutes.  then jagger decided he wanted slade to pull him around, but cash didn't want to get out and they started pushing and screaming and the cute moment was over.

it was a relief to get them all into bed tonight.  after a good night's rest, they'll be refreshed and happy for a new day tomorrow.  i'm sure it will be a great one :)

pictures from our days

hello, hello!  good day to you!

did everyone have a nice mother's day?

my boys were kind enough to sleep in and therefore I was able to sleep in.  yay!

in fact, i had to wake jagger up at 11:45am, 'cause i was afraid he'd sleep the day away.

when i went in to wake him, this is what i saw.  
there is a little boy underneath that blanket.  he was funny when i tried to wake him up.  i pulled the blanket off his face and he wrinkled his little forehead, with eyes still closed, and pulled the cover back over his head.  i had to pick him up and bring him downstairs to get him up.  :)

today has been a fairly relaxing day. i decided to try my hand at making a quiche.
 i wouldn't say it was a success.  the recipe definitely needs adjusted.  but the boys gobbled it up, so i guess it wasn't a complete failure.

jagger has been in a monster phase for a while.  he's sees them everywhere, blames them for doing bad things (like pushing his brothers around), and has become quite a fan of the movie, monsters, inc.  here he is, watching it and thoroughly engrossed.

here is the box of clothes that i was determined to unpack today.i still haven't been able to get the clothes boxes unpacked, and i end up rooting around in them until i find what i need.  unfortunately, it is 10:00pm and i still haven't gotten to that box yet.  maybe after i'm done blogging...

i was on a reading frenzy at the beginning of the year.  by march i had read 22 books since the first of january.  i put reading on hold once we knew we were going to be moving and would not allow myself to get sucked into any stories while packing, moving, and then unpacking needed to be done.  but i decided to reward myself for making it to this point of the process and i started this book the other night and finished it today.it was pretty good. started out strong, got a little sloppy in the middle, pulled it back together towards the end, and left the story wide open for a sequel.

the boys seem to be settling into a good routine these days.  they get up around 9:00-9:30ish and they all play hard for about three hours before they are plum tuckered out.  here's cash and slade taking their naps.after they get up, they go right back to playing.  cash and slade are quite enamored with the camera and give me some pretty good faces when they see i have it out.  except they tend to come running at me full speed because they want to touch all the buttons.  cash was asking me the same question over and over, but i couldn't figure what he was saying.slade gave me a nice grubby faced smile.and jagger is still not a fan of posing for the camera so he decided to try to throw water at me to deter me from snapping off a pic.

later this afternoon i filled out a ton of paperwork for the church that was supposed to be turned in last week.actually, we had it partially filled out and i took it to the church to give to corey.  but of course i forgot to give it to him while i was in the building and remembered as we were strapping the kids back in their car seats.  so i set it on top of the car, told corey not forget to take it back inside, promptly forgot, and drove away with the paperwork still on top of the car.  i probably never would have noticed except a cab was honking all crazy at me and i couldn't figure out why.  was i going the wrong way down a one way street?  then it hit me...crap, the papers!  so i drove around the block, called corey, pulled back into the parking lot, and we scrambled around the street and dodged traffic trying to gather up all the papers that were blowing away with corey's info on them.  classic us, wouldn't you say?  the paperwork i filled out today was to replace the copies that had been run over and had big tire treads all over them.  like i've said before, there's never a dull moment with the blairs :)

and this final pic is just all the kids trying to cram into the laundry basket together (with clean clothes underneath!) this evening.it worked for a moment before they decided they did not like being so close to each other and things went downhill.  i just picked them up, plopped them in the tub, and all was well.

that's all for today.  more adventures will be had tomorrow :)

can i just say...

i love being home with the rugrats.

naps are pretty great.

i love sunshiney days.

i'm glad i found a job.

i love to hear my boys laugh and giggle.

etsy.com has some pretty sweet stuff.

music makes my soul happy.

so do books.

may is a good month :)

whew! we made it.

but i honestly don't know how we did it.  if it wasn't for the blair fam, mike, rob, and jessica, we never would have gotten the house packed and ready to go.  it was down to the wire, and we ended up leaving late and driving through the night.  that was tough but we survived.  we got in town just in time to meet with the landlady and then the staff from riverside came to help unload the moving truck.  what took us two days to load only took them 2 hours to unload.  thanks to everyone who helped,  it was greatly appreciated!  

so now that we're here, we're trying to get things figured out and situated.  boxes are everywhere.  a lot of stuff will probably stay packed while I just try to figure out what are the essentials.  that way when our lease is up and we (hopefully) find a house, we'll be a bit more ready (pray that our house sells quickly!).  the kids seem to be adjusting alright.  cash is taking the move in stride, jagger is doing decent, while slade, poor slade is a very rigid schedule kind of kid and so he is a bit out of his element right now.  it's been a tad rough.  it will take a while to get things unpacked (it's hard to unpack with the rugrats running around, demanding attention!) and a routine figured out, but we'll get there and things will smooth out. 

next on the list is for me to find a job.  pray that i find something that will work with our schedule and pays decent!  we've started to learn our way around town, but i am heavily dependent on our gps (her name is penny).  i have my priorities though, so i do know my way to target (i heart target) and the local library (i already got a card), so that's a great start :)

my mom has already been to visit, which was fabulous.  i'm so glad we are closer and we'll be seeing more of her!  

later today i'll be hanging with a friend from church and her kids, so i'm looking forward to that, and i'm sure i'll have some stories to post :)  there's never a dull moment in the blair household!

saying goodbye to our house

slade eating a banana and watching 'toons very early in the morning

one of the first places i went to once we got here

jagger playing on the deck 

(thanks lee & rob for the water table.  the kids love it!)