September 1st, 2009
Literally. Not only was it busy, but the kids and I also made these jam-filled muffins.
We got out all the ingredients (but then realized after taking the picture I had left a few out hehehe).
The kids whisked their jam so it would get nice and runny. Katie had grape. William had strawberry.
William got to measure the flour. Why do kids insist on tasting the flour? Ick.
Katie measured the baking powder.
Then she poured the oil into the yogurt.
Here are our wet and dry ingredients:
After we mixed them together, this is what the dough looked like:
It was kind of sticky, so I pretty much filled the tins. But then the kids helped me make the holes in each filled cup and they, all by themselves, put a spoonful of jam in each hole.
Then they decided to start mixing the jam flavors.
Next, Mommy topped with more muffin mix.
Ours didn’t look as good as the recipe’s picture, but hey.
Mmmmm… sprinkle with powdered sugar….
And EAT! They were so proud of their muffins. They were relatively healthy and pretty good, too!
Posted in 2009, Katie, Shannon, Vacation | No Comments »
July 29th, 2009
It began with a grocery list. A battle to cross off all items and pay the least amount possible. All items were retrieved from the store with the intention of putting them safely away in our pantry, refrigerator and garage freezer.
But wait! Did the bagging clerk not give me one of my bags? Items are missing! Rage beginning to boil up inside of me at the potential recklessness of the grocery bagger, I go over the list once more… comparing it to the receipt.
Just as I am ambushed by the natives yelling “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”, I drop the mechanical pencil. It thrusts itself into a large wooden kitchen table. I am witness and exclaim that “she who draws this pencil from the table, she shall be queen!”
Ok, maybe not exactly… but isn’t it funny how the pencil I dropped just happened to lodge right into the table and stay that way?
Posted in 2009, Shannon | 2 Comments »
July 21st, 2009
As a parent, you sometimes get requests from your kids that mean so much to them, but make no sense to you. Katie came to me one morning adamant that Kitty reeeeeeeally wanted to go to work with me.
Ok really? Me taking a stuffed animal to work?
….
…..
Ok! Sure! I’ll take Kitty to work today. But you better tell her to be a good girl.
After Katie’s stern conversation with Kitty, she skipped off to school with a smile on her face. I can only imagine her daydreams of what Kitty might be experiencing that day. (Either that or she completely forgot once she got in the playground.) Nonetheless… It occurred to me during the day that if I took a picture of Kitty at my desk, Katie would know that not only did Mommy do as she asked, she also made it fun for Kitty.
Here is Kitty, hard at work. I think she’s writing some Oracle Database PLSQL code… 
Posted in 2009, Katie, Seriously, Shannon | No Comments »
June 25th, 2009
We have always sung lullabies to our kids before we shut their lights off and say, “night night.” William’s lullabye of choice is “Rock-a-Bye William.” Katie’s has long been “Twinkle Twinkle,” except for that short stint with the Barney song. You know… “I Love You, You Love Me.” (Ha! You’re totally gonna have that stuck in your head now.)
When Katie graduated from Montessori school last month (more on that later), she decided to change her nighttime song to “Oh Beautiful”. You may know this as “America the Beautiful.” Although not a lullabye or typical bedtime song, I found that so cute & have been singing it to her.
Enter scene last night….
Mommy: Katie, would you like a song?
Katie: Yes.
Mommy: Which song would you like?
Katie: Pickface.
Mommy: Huh?
Katie: Picker face.
(Mommy looking totally confused.)
Katie: You know. From your car.
Mommy: Poker face?
Katie: Yes! Sing that!
Needless to say, Mommy did NOT sing “Poker Face” by Lady GaGa. We came to the agreement that “Oh Beautiful” would be much more soothing. LOL.
If you listen to top 40 kinds of songs, you can now thank me. If not, have fun with Barney the rest of the day. 
Posted in 2009, Katie, Seriously, Shannon | 2 Comments »
May 2nd, 2009
The Saturday before Easter my mom and I took the kids to the UT Golf Club for an Easter Eggstravaganza. The kids had a great time. They met the “Easter Bunny”, jumped a lot in the bouncy house, got their faces painted, ate lunch, hunted for eggs and fed animals in the petting zoo.
I’m back to thinking Katie is heading towards being a vet. She had absolutely no fear of these animals. She loved on them so sweetly, talked to them genuinely and fed them. They had 5 day old baby goats. Omg. They were so precious. One of the animals the kids loved the most was the monkey. It was on a leash with a trainer. The kids thought it was hysterical he was wearing a diaper. (and he picked his nose & licked his finger once. Absolutely hysterical in their book)
We had a great time with only one minor hiccup. The kids were in two separate age groups for the egg hunt. Katie in the under 5. And William in the 6 & up. Katie’s started first and William was sooooo patient. Apparently the other 6 & up kids don’t have ears though… Or their parents don’t, I’m not sure which. Maybe both. They started their hunt when the little ones did instead of waiting. And many of them didn’t follow the “only 6 eggs per kid” rule. By the time I ran William over to his hunt, all the eggs were gone. Parents were taking pictures of their older kids with baskets overflowing with eggs. I saw the tears welling in William’s eyes. Luckily one sweet girl saw & asked me if it was true they were only supposed to have six. I said “yes,” and she shared with William.
Sorry this is so late, but here are some pics…
Posted in 2009, Holidays, Katie, Shannon, William | 3 Comments »
March 15th, 2009
A couple weekends ago I took Katie to a birthday party for a little boy in her Montessori class. I was totally amazed at the effort put forth for this party. It was so much fun! It was a carnival type theme. As soon as we got there, Katie got to decorate a pail with stick-ons of letters for her name, and various animals. After she was done decorating, we went through the house to the kitchen. The food! OMG! They had hot dogs, pizza, nachos (or chips w/ wet cheese is what Katie calls it), frito pie fixin’s, bags of chips, fruit snacks and cuties (like oranges). Then we go out to the back patio to eat and there’s a popcorn machine! Tea, sweet and un… juice boxes and sodas.
After Katie ate, it was off to the bouncy house. She loves those things! Then the clever part. They had set up self-made carnival games. There were tickets in the pails they had decorated earlier, and the kids used their tickets to play the games. Older kids were running each station. It was very cute. Of course the little ones always won and the prize was a miniature piece of candy. It was a VERY windy day, so they had a tough time keeping the games steady but it was still so much fun. They got little tattoos. Katie really loved that.
Next came the part that really blew me away. They had The Capital of Texas Zoo come to their backyard! This guy was amazing! He brought a camel, kangaroo, chinchilla, blue-tongued skeenk, albino snake andgiant hissing cockroaches! The kids got to pet some of the animals. And GET THIS. Katie held a giant hissing cockroach! I almost crawled out of my skin. She even let the snake smell her with his tongue. She is so brave I cannot believe it.
After we washed their hands, it was time for cake. LOTS OF CAKE. Then the most clever thing was the goody bags. It was set up like another carnival game. There were paper bags filled with trinkets, numbered like 1-30. The kids got to go in age, youngest to oldest, and pick 2 numbers. They were delighted to see what they each got. William came towards the end of the party (he had gone to a play with his Grandma), and Katie exclaimed to him “COME LOOK, WILLIAM! THIS PARTY IS SO AWESOME!” We had a great time!
Posted in 2009, Katie, Seriously, Shannon, William | 3 Comments »
February 27th, 2009
While I am well aware that I carried them both for nine months and they were surgically removed from MY belly, these two rugrats I call my kids look sooo much like my husband that I have often joked about getting a maternity test done. Well… after six long years of waiting for conclusive evidence, the results are in and I am proud to say I am 100% William’s biological mother. (Unless scientists have somehow figured out a way to only clone the personality & not the body. But I’m relatively sure that hasn’t happened.)
William started taking showers on his own, in our bathroom, around the first of this year. It is amazing to watch him blossom into this independent little boy. The more tired he is before bedtime, though, the more he lollygags & piddlefarts around. (I just wanted to use those two words in a blog post.) Either Chris or I have to remind him to move it along so showertime doesn’t end up taking an hour.
Well one night this week I found him sitting naked on our bathroom floor while the shower was running. I said, “William, that’s wasteful. You need to get in the shower.” He replied, “but it’s not 40 yet.” “What do you mean it’s not 40 yet?” “When I count to 40, I know the water is the right amount of warm.”
That’s my boy!!! No one has ever told him to do this. We checked. It’s engrained in him! He stood there one night & counted until it was just like he likes it. Now he knows how long it takes our shower to warm up. He has done this every night since then.
Note to his future wife: he will most likely continue doing this for…
THE
REST
OF
HIS
LIFE
And there’s nothing wrong with that, Son.
Now I just have to wait for Katie’s tests to come back…
Posted in 2009, Shannon, William | 5 Comments »
February 18th, 2009
As most everyone knows (I think), we’re at the hospital today. Chris hurt his knee playing dodgeball on our last cruise. He’s having surgery to repair the ACL in his right knee with harvested tendon from his patella. (That’s why I’ve had time to catch-up on blogging! What better way to keep my mind occupied? Well… I tried to work, but the wireless here is sketchy. Having WordPress on my iPhone makes it easy to update our website though!) But back to the subject in the title…
As we were waiting for them to take him back for his operation, I noticed the second band on his arm. Chris thought I was kidding when I exclaimed, “How on earth is that band going to prevent you from falling???”
ROFLMAO! Gullable? Naive? Whatever you want to call it, I crack myself up sometimes.
Posted in 2009, Chris, Injuries, Seriously, Shannon | 1 Comment »
February 13th, 2009
This was about two weeks ago. Chris was out of town & my mom was contemplating taking one or both of the kids to a UT basketball game. I thought she would be nuts to take that on herself, but also thought it sounded fun for Katie to finally get to go.
I decided we should all go. I crammed my butt between their two car seats in the back of my parents car. I thought I would just buy a nose-bleed ticket and either run back & forth trading off kids or hope the seats next to my parents stayed empty. Luckily the seats stayed empty & we all got to sit together.
My Dad is very particular about arrival time, so we were in our seats 30 minutes prior to the game. First we had lunch. Katie had “chips with wet cheese” (aka nachos), William had a hot dog & I had a BBQ turkey sandwich. We sang “The Eyes of Texas” and “The Star Spangled Banner”, then it was show time.
As soon as the game began, it was time to hunt down cotton candy. That’s all I heard about the first half. Darned guy never came down our isle! I finally decided that it was about time for Katie to have to peepee anyway… so I took her upstairs to do that and buy some cotton candy before they ran out, cuz then I’d be in a LOAD of trouble!!! The funny thing is that as soon as we got through the bathroom door, she pulled her pants down and walked over to the stall with her pants around her ankles, showing her bare butt to everyone. She didn’t realize it, but she HAD TO GO!!
Cotton candy in hand, we headed back down to our seats. Just as the kids finished their yummy delights, it was half time. Wow, was this an entertaining half time! Chick-fil-A was doing a promo where the “Eat More Chiken” cows were parachuting from the Erwin Center ceiling! And I mean HUNDREDS of them! So we spent the majority of the time reaching for parachuting cows. We finally got one! Then I realized I have two kids. A nice teenager behind us gave us his. Then just as half time ends, I get beaned in the head by another cow falling from the sky. So we ended up with three. hehehe
The game ended up going into overtime. Which normally I’d be happy we got to that point since we were down by 15 points at one time. But Katie was at her limit. I held her for quite a bit of the overtime period. Then with 1 minute left, she reached under her seat, found her activity bag and started playing her “tv game.” Duh, Mommy. How on earth did I forget I brought activity bags until the last minute of overtime???
Well, we didn’t win. But I doubt Katie noticed and a nice man behind us took a lovely picture of me with my Longhorn Fan kidlets.
Posted in 2009, Firsts, Katie, Shannon, William | 3 Comments »
December 12th, 2008
I have to preface this story with the fact that William has been dying to go to one of YMCA’s Parents Night Out events. Every once in awhile they have a Friday or Saturday night where they keep the kids 5:30-10:30pm and watch movies, eat popcorn, have a magician or something… and the parents get to have a night out together. Everytime one of these rolls around William asks to go. We have yet to do this. They had one last Friday and Saturday evenings. We already had plans, so did not sign him up. I’m sure we will sometime soon if he continues on this awesome behavior kick.
Now to the real story.
Monday evening as I’m walking up the stairs to tuck William in bed, I hear him “singing” as he’s laying out his blankets just so. I hear:
I said a boom chicka boom
I said a boom chicka boom
I said a boom chicka boom
I said a boom chicka boom
Well, as you might guess, this naturally prompted me to swing the door open and jollily (is that a word) exclaim:
I said a boom chicka rocka chicka rocka, chicka boom
ROFLMAO! You should’ve seen the look on his face! He said, “DID YOU GO TO PARENTS NIGHT OFF???” LOL. Apparently he learned the chant at YMCA earlier in the day and was told this was something they had learned the previous Saturday evening. He thought I made him go to bed and I went to the event. HA! HA! HA!
After composing myself from the laughter, I said, “no, William. Mommy was in school once too. I think it was middle school when we learned that.” He thought about it for a minute, then said “wow. You were cool, huh?”
Yes, son… in your eyes, I suppose I was.
Posted in 2008, Shannon, William | 3 Comments »