Can't resist pink!

Pink clothes are making their appearance in our house. Mary Jane (from church) surprised me with this adorable outfit today. She got it from Old Navy which I was in just recently and never saw the dress or shoes! Otherwise, we'd probably have doubles of it now! :)

Who could resist these shoes??? HOW CUTE!

I also did some resale shopping with Angie and Janine on Saturday. I bought the baby a little suntop and two dresses. For some reason, I'm having a hard time resisting the dresses! :)

Can you believe we finally are going to have another girl in our family?

Jordyn wins!

Now everyone needs to convince Mark that the name is not a boy's name. And, if we name our baby Jordyn, she won't be a manly brute. (That's what he's picturing.) So help me out everyone. Change Mark's opinion on the name!

Fun with cousins at BK...

The kiddos got together on Nathan's birthday to play at Burger King for awhile. Nathan picked out blue frosted cookies at Giant Eagle to share. He was one exhausted boy by the end!

You've got mail!

Nathan was super-psyched to get a birthday card from Aunt Danielle and Uncle Jeff. The card was exciting enough, but they also included 4 dollar bills! It reminds me of when I was a kid waiting anxiously for Aunt Sharon's birthday card with Juicy Fruit gum in it. I thought that was the coolest thing ever!

Down memory lane...

I was looking through some of my old pictures/videos. This is from Thanksgiving 2003? (still at mom and dad's old house). Wyatt is wearing a shirt that Ben is wearing now. Thought I'd try to pull out some of these videos here and there.

My baby is 4!

Where does the time go? Four years ago today, I was sitting in the green floral chair (now at mom and dad's house) timing my contractions, scared to DEATH about the impending birth of Nathan and all the wonderful pain that it would entail. Now I'm carrying full conversations with my baby about how I should be decorating his cake. Yep, that's right, I made his cake. What was I thinking???





We headed to Buehler's today to order a cake. Mind you, this is year #3 of train cakes. When Nathan turned 2, Buehler's had a little Thomas set-up that I ordered. Last year, Wendy surprised me with a beautiful train cake. (Which I appreciate even more after my experience tonight.) This year...no train choices AT ALL! Now, I think it would be safe to say that at least 25% of boys aged 2-4 love trains. I was not at all pleased that there wasn't even one train in the selection. Sucker for punishment that I am, I decided to make Nathan a train cake. Making cakes is HARD!!!





Mark came in when I was finishing the engine. This was all the while that Nathan was telling me that I still needed to add a whistle, boiler and steps going up to the cab. (not going to happen) Mark then told me that I was doing such a great job that I should make Ben's cake. My response was, "I don't think so!" I not so gently reminded Mark that at Ben's birthday I would have a 6 day old baby and would be in the process of recovering from a C-section, but he could feel free to make a cake if he wanted. That ended the discussion. Mark apparantly got over the idea of home-designed cakes really quickly. :) ~~Love you, Mark. Just had to pick on you a bit!~~





So, all in all, this has taught me some lessons. Lesson #1: Paying a little extra money at the grocery store for a cake is definitely worth it. Lesson #2: If I ever tire of teaching, I don't see a future in cake decorating for me. Lesson #3: Men somehow have some magical exemption on birthday responsibilities (buying gifts, making cakes, decorating, cleaning) Why is that???





Anyway, here's my feeble attempt at cake decorating:

I'm thinking I'll need to stop at Walmart to at least buy a cake that is edible. There is so much frosting glopped onto this one, I don't think anyone is going to want to eat it!

Tomorrow, the cousins are heading to Burger King to have a mini-celebration for Nathan and Weston whose birthday is on Sunday. After that, the grandparents are coming over to our house to eat and watch Nathan open presents.

Happy Birthday, Nathan Daniel Riley!

We love you!

Ben playing his favorite game...

Peak-a-boo! As I seemed to be folding and hanging clothes most of the day, Ben occupied himself by hiding in one of the laundry baskets. :)

BTW, Nathan did great watching the movie yesterday. He napped on the way there, napped on the way back, but stayed awake the entire movie. He ate most of the popcorn Grandma Shari bought and enough pop to warrant a potty trip midway through the movie. He did inform me that it was a long, LONG movie, but he seemed to really like it. Yay!

How cool is this?

I admit it...I get excited about weird things, but I made Nathan the coolest vinyl sticker for his bed today. I started with just an engine with his name in it. That wasn't enough for Nathan. He wanted his WHOLE name. Navy blue would have been my preference, but the royal blue was $2.50 for a roll (normally $9.99). Many of you have seen the cool advertising on the back of our explorer. This is using the same stuff - a vinyl material that removes very easily from all surfaces.

So...drum roll please....here it is:

I know...you're CRAZY impressed! The train is almost 2 ft. long, and Nathan LOVES it. (big surprise!)

Easter egg hunt and other stuff

If you've already been to Angie's site, you'll see that we also participated in the Roth Easter egg hunt. Mark brought his work camera which was not taking very good pictures. You'll get the idea. Yep, there were even eggs in the bathroom!

Nathan was thoroughly thrilled with finding eggs.

Any holiday that includes candy is okay with Ben.

Nathan is out with his Grandma Shari right now. She is taking him to his very first movie at the theater. They're seeing "Horton Hears a Who". It will be interesting to see if Nathan can stay still for a movie that doesn't star a train. Regardless, I think he thinks this outing is pretty cool. (even though he told me he'd miss me very, very much)

We spent the day with Angie yesterday. The three cousins (Weston, Nathan and Craig) were going to spend the night at Angie's house, but Nathan decided he wanted to go home. He's still hesitant on these times away from mom and dad. I'm thinking he's going to be so bored with his momma by the end of this week that he will be wishing he had stayed with his cousins!

All the grandparents are coming over on Friday to celebrate Nathan's 4th birthday! Mom is going to take Nathan home with her and then shopping the next day. Hopefully he will be okay for an overnighter. According to Nathan, he can can do it because he is a big boy...as big as a ROCKET! Wow!

Easter traditions

I let Mark know that the boys would be decorating Easter eggs. He rolled his eyes like it was the dumbest thing he ever heard of. I then expounded on the wonders of traditions and how much he must have enjoyed decorating eggs when he was young. Mark's response was very underwhelming. Obviously, he doesn't hang on to childhood memories too strongly. I was very glad when I mentioned to Nathan that we would be decorating eggs that his eyes lit up and he was ready to go! We started off trying to include Ben. He immediately poked a hole in his egg. I then peeled the egg and let him go to town with a butter knife.


After that, Ben was banned to spend time with the grump on the couch in the living room. Nathan and I continued on bravely "decorating" eggs. I use the term decorating loosely as the eggs were a sad sight to behold.
Nathan was having fun, though!

After one too many pictures, Nathan started to get silly.




This is a picture of Nathan's reaction towards the end. "Why are you taking so many pictures mom????"

I explained to Nathan that these pictures were memories so that he could look at them and remember decorating eggs.

In typical Nathan fashion he responded with, "I think that's enough memories now, mom."

Happy Easter, everyone!

Names...

OK...to the left are some names for the baby. I put Paige on because that's probably what our girl would have been named if she came first. Since then, I've had 2 students named Paige who kind of changed my perception of the name. Mark and I are not agreeing on names at all! I only have 2 that I currently like; Mark has the rest over there on the left. So what ones do you like? VOTE! :) Also, put suggestions/insight in the comments. My preference is to have the name end with some sort of "in" sound since we have NathAN, and BenjamIN. I'm not dead set on that, though. I am determined that I get the final decision this time. I've earned it. Right, ladies???? P.S. Mark read this blog and accused mwah of trying to lead my fellow bloggers into preferring my choices. As long as I'm being accused, I also wanted to state that it would be really NEAT if the girl name just so happened to be a Biblical name since Nathan and Ben's names are from the Bible. Now, I'm not trying to sway anyone's decision, but I do believe I see a name over to the left that fits all my criteria....

Be careful...

Lately, I've had a bunch of comments left on this blog that link to other pages. Clicking on the link will put a virus on your computer. I've decided to add the comment codes before comments can be posted. If that doesn't work, I'll probably go to screening the comments. This is getting annoying! :[

A child's point of view...

Today, on our way to the outlet malls, we passed the Creston cemetery. Nathan goes, "Wow! That's sure a lot of signs!" ...he continues to crack us up. :)

Our precious baby girl...

Doesn't seem that long ago that I posted Ben's profile. Well, here's the newest one:

Cool web site...

I found this site which Nathan loves! It has audio books with animated illustrations for tons of children's books. Nathan's personal favorite is no surprise....All Aboard the Dino Train! http://www.sjlibrary.org/gateways/kids/books/read_online.htm (Click on Tumble Book Library on the right)

Shopping!

Well, I did my first girl shopping since finding out the sex of the baby. I actually went to Old Navy with the intention of trying to find matching shirts for Nathan and Ben. (no luck there) I came across these sweaters for only $3 each. So, I got my shopping fix, and Mark should be happy the bill came under $10!

Need I say it?

Or do you sense a theme? Pink background, pink baby ticker...I even have pink toes right now (thanks to the pedicure Shari bought me!) We have an apparantly very healthy baby girl who the technician thinks is going to be a chunker. Mark is ecstatic, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around having a baby other than a boy! Keeping to the budget with all the adorable girl clothes out there is going to be hard! I guess it's good I didn't find out until now...hopefully it will curb my spending! ;)

Lessons in patience...

7:30 a.m. this morning, I get a voicemail from Wooster Hospital asking me to call back regarding my ultrasound appointment. This is not unusual as they always want to get the registration done ahead of time. Of course, I was a little miffed since I had already done the preregistration. I called back during my plan. They pulled up my information, and the lady then asked, "Will tomorrow be good for you?" TOMORROW? What about today? Well, it turns out the ultrasound technician called in sick. I had to give Mark a very disappointing phone call letting him know he'd have to wait a bit longer. The good news is that we should be finding out by tomorrow. Can you believe this Friday, I'll only have 6 weeks left? (And only 4 weeks left until maternity leave?) I am so not ready. No lesson plans...no baby preparations. This one is sneaking up on me! :)

Grandpa's favorite phrase...

Nathan loves to say Grandpa Norm's favorite phrase where he lifts up one fist and says, "Six months in the hospital?" and then raises the other and says, "Or sudden death?" Well, today, Nathan tried his hand at ad-libbing which cracked us and his grandparents up! His question? "A single light in your face or lights off?" It was much funnier in person, especially when he closed his fingers together when he said lights off! I'm sure he had no idea what he was saying, but I think this could be a new version of the famous saying! :)

Let's try it again!

As I was leaving for my OB appointment today, I looked at Mark and said, "If you really want to make sure I ask for an ultrasound, you may want to come along." Without hesitation, Mark jumped up and was ready to go. Good thing, too, because I probably would have wimped out on asking. We are set up for Monday at 4:00. I tried to tell Mark that it was silly to find out with only 7 weeks left, but he's not buying it. Marky wants to know NOW! :)

Fun at the Arthur's!

After being snowed in all day Saturday, it was a welcome relief for the boys to get outside and have fun. We (Scandlons, Rileys and Arthurs) all enjoyed the new tube that Mark "had to have". :) Actually, it turned out to be a great purchase since the kids were out most of the day (especially the older ones) enjoying the torture Bill and Mark were giving them at high speeds with the help of the 4-wheelers. It was making the mommies a bit nervous, but we could tell the kids were having a blast!

After getting their fill of the great outdoors, the kiddos came in and enjoyed hot chocolate and East of Chicago's pizza. It didn't take long for the older kids to head back outside.

If you've taken a look at Angie's blog, you'll know that Ben was quite the amorous fool, kissing everyone he could find in a desperate attempt for attention. He's definitely not lacking in attention from Weslea and Caryn. Ben still holds the coveted status of "baby". That title will be disappearing soon! Truth be told, Ben might be happy for a little less attention. :)

Those brave girls willingly kissed Ben's pizza covered lips. Yuck!

Now we just have to get Angie and Janine to buy a tube. The kids would be in tubing heaven, not having to wait their turn or share!

What a nice day!

When I got to Trinka's house today, my boys were out enjoying the unusually nice weather. We decided we couldn't stop there, so we headed over to grandma and grandpa's house with the bikes. The boys had fun riding bikes, collecting rocks, running the trains and riding the 4-wheeler. It was so refreshing to be outside, not even needing a coat. Ahhhh.....

Grammar...

I was just reading a random blog of a friend of a friend, and couldn't help noticing all the their, they're, there errors. After that, I came across a quiz over grammar. Thankfully, I passed it. What would that say about me as a language arts teacher if I didn't do well? I should have my students take it...that is, if I want to go into a deep depression.

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

So, give it a try!