What a Tuesday!

There was some excitement at the boys' school today. As I was picking the boys up, we heard a crash. Turns out someone drove their car right into the building! 

Photo credit: The Oregonian

Even though school was letting out, it happened in an area where no one walks, so no one was hurt - driver included. Apparently the driver accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake. Oops.

Aiden had an after-school activity, so I had to go back after a little while. There were LOTS of police officers (more than seemed necessary for the situation) and a lot of news crews. Nothing like some Tuesday afternoon craziness!

Nathan's Birthday

Ugh, the lagging with the blog posts. I do not like this. Better late than never, I guess. Anywho, Nathan turned 6 (what?!) back on January 14 and we had not one, but two celebrations!

We tend to stick with family parties for the most part because it's really just easier that way, but now they're getting to the ages where they want friends and lots of fun things to do at their parties. We were terrible parents and flaked out on giving Aiden a friend party (I was uber-stressed due to school and it just didn't happen. Aiden was quite upset), but wanted to make sure that we got one pinned down for Nathan.

But first, the family party. We had the family party with grandparents, great-grandparents, cousin, and aunt the weekend before his birthday. He loved showing off his new keyboard to everyone, and I showed off my new violin!

The day of his birthday was mid-week, so we had a fun family night at home. We made burgers and milkshakes. Yummy! (No pictures - I was too busy eating!)

Then the weekend after his birthday, we had the friend party at Out of This World Pizza. However, two days before the party, John got REALLY sick with the flu. It turned out that I was left to pick up the cake at Costco with two giddy boys and do the party all by myself as a single parent. This also meant that the date night we had specifically scheduled for the evening after a noisy kid party had to be canceled. Not cool.

I was quite stressed out being on my own, but of course my mommy friends helped out and everything was just fine. 

Aiden and Kahlan. Kahlan INSISTED on wearing her fancy dress to Nathan's party. She kind of adores Aiden and Nathan.

It turned out that the only people who didn't show were non-preschool friends, which meant it turned into a preschool friends party. Nothing wrong with that, of course!

Nathan and his "girlfriend" Rachel. They tell us that they're going to get married when they grow up. To have extremely blonde children, obviously. :-)

It's downright impossible to get pictures of children at a place like Out of This World since they are never sitting down, so I ended up with zero pictures of most of the children. Oh well. It's the memory that counts, right?

 I think Nathan had a fantastic time. We ended up with WAY too much cake and massively hyper children. And even though I was on my own, it worked out fine and I really enjoyed not having to clean up afterwards. Paying someone else to do it is very much worth it! And yes, John and I had a date night the following week.

Teeth, Unlimited

We have been keeping the tooth fairy massively busy lately. Within the last two weeks, we've had three teeth whose time had come.

First, one of Aiden's VERY stubborn teeth finally came out (translation: I sat on him and pulled it out).

Then last week, he lost another tooth at school.

They get a cool tooth holder from the office when they lose teeth at school.

Then in the middle of the night last night, I was awoken by a squealing Nathan next to my bed. He was shouting "My tooth came out!". Sure enough, he had woken up and his tooth fell right out of his mouth. I don't think I showed much enthusiasm at the time, but once it was a reasonable hour of the morning we celebrated his very first tooth lost. He is extremely excited to get a visit of his own from the tooth fairy tonight.

However, the tooth fairy has a been a bit flaky lately, so she really needs to remember to actually leave money under a pillow tonight. Not mistakenly hidden elsewhere, where Mommy just so happens to find it while the child is at school. Silly tooth fairy.

Check In

A few months back, I posted "When Parenting Sticks" about mine and John's struggles with gaining some weight/not being particularly in shape since becoming parents. It all really started once we had Nathan, although I'm not blaming him whatsoever! I had gotten back in fantastic shape after I had Aiden and John had lost a lot of weight from college. Then I had Nathan and the addition of one more child made working out feel impossible. John started a new job and switched from being on his feet all day to sitting at a desk all day. So the flab/weight struggle began.

Anywho, Christmas was going to be my check in point for our journey but I never had a chance to sit down and blog. So I'm doing it now, two weeks late.

John has lost 10 pounds. Working out ceased for about two weeks for Christmas and New Years chaos, but all in all he's done a wonderful job sticking to his routine of working out three nights a week. Because work can get very busy for him, the weight loss might not happen super fast, but it's a great start and I'm very proud of him.

Me? Nothing has changed. I took a break from attending ballet class to finish up the school term from hell, but plan to return this coming Sunday. Working out never really happened during the fall, although you could say that pushing 200 lb carts full of books at the library is a bit of a workout. I'm ready to actually work on myself and hopefully tone up the "gut" that continues to make fitting into my jeans a problem.

Our diet has changed a lot over the past year and continues to evolve into healthier, real food options. Lots and lots of fruits and veggies, a lot more organic options, fewer and fewer packaged food, and we are in the process of eliminating high fructose corn syrup and food coloring from our food options.

I'll (hopefully) do another check in around Valentine's Day. I look forward to seeing if we've made any more progress by then!