This never happens

If Nathan is calm and laying still, it means that he is sick. He has been wanting juice and movies all morning. He is totally thrilled with Lightning McQueen and apple juice.

Feel better soon!

Ho Ho Ho!

Santa has been here! The Santa that comes to the O'Louughlin house really prefers a good piece of peach pie over the cookies. Caitlyn thought it a very lucky situation that Santa likes pie and we happen to have some left over from a family party. Lucky indeed.

Merry Christmas!

Despereaux or Desper-"neaux"

This afternoon we went to see Desperaux for Caitlyns birthday. All said and done, she said she liked it, so that made the expenditure a little bit more bearable but seriously, this movie is horrible. Wouldn't recommend it for kids. There are some scary parts (for kids). Chad and I sat there thinking "Yikes, this is pretty intense", but really that wasnt the worst part for me. It was the overall lessons in the movie that I didnt agree with.

Sure, the mouse is cute, cuddly but thats about it. The lessons learned are coveting, envy, revenge, sorrow and vanity.

It starts out illustrating that rats have a lesser value than mice and therefore must live in the dungeon. The mice have a cute little village with a school and families and what-not. Oh, and all of the mice are light haired and the rats all have dark hair. All kids love a good racial stereotype right?

Lets now move on to vanity. If you have a young daughter that may be a little gravitationally gifted (chubby), do not take her to this movie. According to this movie you can only be a princess if you are blonde, perfect teeth, skinny, blue eyed and possess a nose that appears to have as much work done on it as a few vain movie stars. Meanwhile, the girl servant who feeds the pigs and scrubs the floors is plump, brown haired and snaggletoothed. She speaks with an accent to her voice that rivals that of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.

This poor downtrodden young girl becomes convinced that she deserves to be the princess. The envy is portrayed in scenes of maniacal jealousy and stealing personal items of the real princess. It gets to a point where the brown haired girl is packing a meat cleaver away and preparing a rope to dispose of the princess. Seriously, I don't think we need to encourage kids that may be facing a more difficult social experience growing up that they can just "remove" their competition.

This is just all around an unhealthy display of how to deal with the lemons that life gives you.

1/2 out of 4 stars - because the mouse is so darn cute.

Happy Birthday Caitlyn

Today is Caitlyn's 6th birthday. Holy cow! She has been so excited all month about this. As with our tradition, we start snapping pictures even before the kids are fully awake on their birthday. Caitlyn is such a morning person. Here are her 6 year old morning pictures.

After she woke up, we had one little present for her. This girl absolutely loves dress up and anything princess. We got this set that has a "happy birthday" crown. She gets to wear this to school today. You would not believe the excitement over this. She really thinks that she will be the princess of the school. As long as she doesn't start trying to find a prince. She has her eye on a boy in her class. She told us that Tristan is a very handsome boy.

We are meeting Grandpa and Grandma O'Loughlin for dinner at Red Robin tonight. That has been Caitlyn's long time favorite restaurant. She says its because they have corn dogs and balloons. She must be part carnie. State fair here we come!

We love you Caitlyn. Happy Birthday!

Daddy's done it

Several weeks (or months) ago, we got a seat/swing that hangs from the ceiling. I decided to get it put up in Nathan's room today. It was no big deal. Went in easy.

Nathan loves it (as pictured).

Nathan kept trying to spin himself by pushing himself off the wall. I decided to help him by winding up the swing and letting him spin super fast. He was absolutely cracking up over spinning and being dizzy. I decided that he needed to try and walk after being spun so fast. He did very well the first time and stumbled around abit. That was funny. I needed to see it again. I wound him up, let him spin, and stood him up. Then this:

I had to push it too far. I had to do it one more time (even after Emily said stop). I feel like poop.

Chad

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So, I have been doing through one of those mommy slumps. I cant seem to get out of it. I just feel like everything I do is not enough, and at the end of the day I still have piles of laundry to fold. This morning I did something that made myself feel a little better as a mom.

I dropped Caitlyn off at school, kisses were blown and we exchanged I love yous. I always wait a few minutes just to make sure she made it over to her class okay, but this day something different happened. Caitlyn came running back to the car with a very distressed look on her face. I rolled down the window and she remined me that today she was supposed to wear a Santa hat for the Reindeer Run. Let me just preface my "disappointed in myself feeling" at this moment. On Wednesday I forgot to take her to gymnastics which was met with a bucket full of disappointed tears, and yesterday I completely spaced taking Nathan to his OT appointment. (I seriously dont know where my mind has been).

Back to the story... not knowing what to do at that exact moment to fix the situation I told her to run over and ask her teacher if she had an extra hat. While she was on her way over I looked at the other kids. Not many were wearing hats so I thought to myself -"is it really that big of a deal?" When she got to her teacher I could see her shake her head no and then wisk the class into their room while holding Caitlyns hand.

I knew she was disappointed.

I was on my way to the gym and kept debating with myself what to do. With thoughts like "this is something she'll remember you doing for her.." against "It's a hat, not a big deal!" Well, my better half won. I quickly turned around and made my way to Target to look for a Santa hat. NO SANTA HATS AT TARGET ~just in case you were going to go there looking for one. I got back into the car and a few more discouraging thoughts entered my head like "get to the gym before you change your mind about going." Then I said a little prayer. I knew we had a hat at home, but wear it was is your best guess. I said a prayer that it would be easy to find. When I got home it was sitting as plain as day on top of all the toys in the playroom. I hurried back over to her school and delivered it to her classroom. She was so excited to be one of the few to have her hat that day.

At least for this morning I saved the day. Im sure we will have a few run ins after school - which happens often with such a strong-headed little girl, but I hope she will remember the time her mom went back for her Santa hat.

Day of Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

This picture was taken last year, but I think it is too adorable to not be revisited, (it probably will be next year as well!)

It is easy to let days pass by without acknowledging all of the blessings of our lives and it is nice to have a day that is dedicated to celebrating the joys we are able to experience. I hope that we will all take advantage of that chance.

Freebies? I love Freebies

Okay - so there is a drawing being held at

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Our House : The Kitchen

Previously on "Our House", the family room was reviewed. All the comments were appreciated, and in a shameless effort to solicite additional pats on the back, here are some pictures of the kitchen.

The kitchen went through 2 phases of renovation. The first was during the no money / new baby on the way phase. that took us from this:

to this:

This was the basic paint on the cabinets, chip out and re-grout the white ceramic tile countertop and scrub the crap out of 1970's, original to the house, kitchen faucet until the chrome shined. All the same appliances except for the refridgerator. That had to go. We still had the terribly sick color of light from the flourescent lighting (gives me a headache).

Then we grew tired of this and opted for a "new" oven / microwave combo. Craigslist.com is the best.Then we had to have new floors. The 16" white ceramic tiles with grey grout was unacceptable. Totally hideous and totally showed every speck of dirt. So, the tile had to be chipped out. It was awesome.This was about the time that I realized this was a stupid idea.

So then the floors were laid. My dad came over and helped me get the floors installed. After that, it was countertop time. We should have done this in reverse order but whatever. We had the money for floors before countertops. I tore out the old crappy tile tops and had the stone company install the new ones.We added subway tiles to the walls from the oven around to the refridgerator. This one feels like the most significant change. It added a ton to our kitchen. We then glazed and varnished our cabinets over the green paint that we had originally done. Added hardware from IKEA and they were done. We also changed the light box to 5 directional lights to get rid of the terrible light color.

After all of that was completed, you get this:

SO....Hooray. This is a great kitchen for us and it is all worth it now.

Halloween has come and gone and the kids had a great time. This year they got to pick what they wanted to be. Can you imagine that! I didnt care if they matched, I know it is a big step for me.
We visited Target yesterday morning and Caitlyn helped pick out her costume for next year. I'm taking the lazy way out, no sewing, gluing or assembly of any kind. Luckily for me, she picked out something that I could match Nathan really easily too. I can now have a big sigh of relief :) but I cant tell what the costumes are.... you'll have to wait 'til next year.

Nathan wanted/wants to wear this all the time. He loves the muscles. Thanks to Lanae for letting us borrow it, and thanks to Jessie for lending us another suit too! We had plenty of help with this one, but in the end we didnt know how skinny this kid actually was and had to go with the smaller size!

Can you guess who? I'll give you a hint, we would never let our daughter dress up as Brittney Spears.

Don't ask me twice

So we had some requests to see pictures of our house. To be honest we had one request, but I did read it several times.

Before I post the new pictures, I want to either show for the first time, or remind people what we moved into. This will only be about the family room. That is all that I felt like cleaning right now.

Here goes.

Take notice of the gross slump block fireplace over there looking a tad 1965-ish.

Make sure you soak in the beauty of the exposed beams in the ceilings. Make sure you also relish in the luxurious "popcorn" ceilings that have marinated in the smokiness of 2 disgusting foremer owners

Finally here is a small sneak peak of the kitchen from the family room. You can only imagine the destruction that took place in there.

Now, hold on to your hats. Here come the afters. This is the current state of our family room. I hope that you find it a little fantastic.

Here is the corresponding picture to the first one posted. Notice the remodeled foreplace complete with flagstone seat. Notice the lovely carpet and repainted walls. But, make sure that you absorb the most significan undertaking. Recessed lighting in a flat roofed house. (Flat roof houses do not have attic space.)

Oh how soothing are the warm colors that flow from the overhead lighting. With the popcorn ceilings removed you actually get a reflection of outside light back into the room from the ceiling. Oh and the french doors are totally new too. Those were easier to put in than I thought they would be.

Finally the sneak peek into the kitchen. We worked hard on this room, and we are totally happy with the way it turned out. Hope you like the new look>

Chad

What used to be fun

Painting. When we first got our condo, back in the day, I couldnt wait to paint. It was fun to see our little place transform just by picking a new color; putting our stamp on the place. I have now decided that a lifetime retirement from painting is in my near future.

We are so happy to finally have our ceilings done. Looking at holes for a couple of years has not been a highlight of our house, but painting these new ceilings has been draining. Everyday they are staring me in the face, taunting me until I finish them. Today I am working on this -what feels like - a never-ending process.

We worked really hard on Saturday and Chad and I finished the painting in our family room. What an accomplishment! Yeah! our room feels home-y and inviting. Its a breath of fresh air! It made me so excited that I am anxious to finish the rest of the house so we can actually wake up on a Saturday and not already have our day planned with house work. I know that is Chad's dream too :)

So, enough with the complaining. Its time for me to get to work. Plus, I just bought some cute drapes for my dining room and I cant hang them up until the ceiling is painted. There's my motivations for the day.

One Final Push

(Picture of the kids at Zoo Walk 2007)

Autism Zoo Walk is tomorrow! We are excited to go, but we need some donations. If you can spare even a small amount to this great cause we would be appreciative.

Just click on the link to the right, under Zoo Walk. When filling out the form in the memo box put "ASU Research Foundation". This makes sure that your funds stay local and are put back directly into our community.

We are really grateful for all that we have received so far from our family, friends and the community. For all of love, support and service that has come to us and into our home, we will be forever thankful. By participating in the walk we feel that it is our chance to give back to a community and honor those who have given so much to us.

What was yours?

Who gave your favorite talk during conference and why? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Mine was Elder Corbridge - in the Saturday afternoon session. It was a talk that was completely different to me. I appreciated his plainess in speaking. He had no stories (not that I dislike stories - Im always glued when President Monson starts talking) and his sentences were short and to the point. If you didnt get to see it, I highly recommend looking it up. If you can get video feed of it I suggest that to. There was something in his delivery that I was completely drawn to. I really appreciated his words about reaching high standards and how life teaches us that if the bar is set high, we learn that only a few choice people can reach it, but how that earthly lesson does not apply to spiritual greatness.

Conference

If anyone would like to have an activity packet for children. Let me know I have a great packet that a friend sent me for General Conference that I would be happy to forward to you. Just leave me your email!

Construction Conversation

Me: I just saw a car with an Alaska license plate. That would be a rough drive.

Employee: Especially over the water.

Me: Where do you think Alaska is?

Employee: It is an island by Russia, right?

Me: It's connected by Canada!

Employee: Oh.....It's been since 5th grade since I had a geometry class.

Me: That's nice, but when was your last geography class.

Employee: Oops! At least I got the "G" and the "try" right.

Me: It's geograPHY!.....You're fired.

Totally a true story. This was from a 35 yr old.

a little prick on the knee?

So - when I tell you to look at that little spot on my knee you probably think... "no big deal so you got pricked by a pin or something", right? (And I'm sure you think, "Dang, you need a tan" - but that is not what I am dwelling on right now.)

Well it is so much more than that. It is actually the entry point where the blunt end of a needle (with thread in it) entered my knee. (Did you pull back your gag reflex yet?)

Here's the story: I was crouched down pulling a blanket out of our closet. The blanket didnt give like I was expecting it to, so I fell forward and my knees went to the ground. When my left knee hit the ground I heard a really weird, odd, disturbing crunching sound. When I looked down at my knee I saw the needle protruding from it. "Okay, dont panic. Just pull it out" I told myself.

I pulled and tugged and it was totally stuck. I couldnt get a good grip on it and it was in far enough that I couldnt move because it had pinned my knee in place.

So I called for Chad (thank goodness he was home!) When he got there I said (very calmly I might add) "Go get some plyers and pull this needle out of my knee."

He ran to the garage and returned with some needle-nosed plyers and said"Okay, I'm going to do this really fast"

To which I replied "Just do it"

When it came out it became apparent that it was more than an inch in my knee. The crunching noise that I heard was most likely cartalidge or bone. I am too stubborn to go to the doctor to have it looked at. The wound just looks to sissy. This all happened Tuesday night. It really hurt yesterday, but today I woke up and it felt fine. I'm just going to watch it and if anything else happens then I will consult with my physician. I promise.

Anyway, I hope that this prepares you to go eat a lovely dinner!

Oh, after it came out Chad took it to the bathroom to further investigate it. When he was looking at it the needle broke - most likely from the stress put on it. I'm so lucky that it didnt break off in my knee!

While we were gone

We had a lot happing at our humble abode. Our ceilings were finally completed (minus the painting) and we couldn't be happier. Well, we could be happier if the process wouldnt have left a layer of dust on everything that we own. Seriously, every crack, shelf, table is covered in dust. My mom was nice enough today to come over and help me wipe down the walls. yes folks every wall has to be cleaned to. But really, it is nice to have the work completed. We finally feel like we are close to having our house done. I started to think about it today, and I honestly dont know what we will do when our house is "complete". We will be bored, but it will be a good bored :)





these pictures of the finished product may not look like much to most people, but they look like heaven to us. We've been staring at holes in our ceilings for too long.

I would like to give a huge shout out of thanks to all the men that came over to help Chad move all of our furniture. It really means a lot.

I would also like to give a huge thank you to my sweet husband for all of his hard work.

All alone

This man was not meant to be alone. It has been 9 days without Emily and the kids, and I am feeling it. at first I thought that I would be so happy to not have anyone dictating my time. Turns out, I don't really want to do anything else. Last night after dinner I was geared up for the bedtime routine and found myself wandering around the kitchen of my friends' house.

To make matters worse, my own house is in a major state of destruction. Everything moved out of it or into the playroom. Dirty, dusty, depressing state over there.

The silver lining is that my family returns to me tomorrow night. The house will be done (barely) and I will have to get crackin' on cleaning and moving things back in so the kids will have a place to sleep. (not to mention a place to welcome Emily home).

10 days is too long. I can't wait to no longer be a man alone.

A Weekend getaway

Well, I'm off for the weekend with the kids. Just me, my mom and two children in the car for ten hours until the treck finishes in Sacramento - more specifically - "Aunt Sissy's house". Caitlyn couldnt be more excited to see her cousins and play, but when she realized that she was going to miss school elephant tears began to roll down her face. She said with tears streaming " but how am I going to learn?". It was a sincere, heart - felt concern of hers that she was going to be behind the curve when she returned on Wednesday of next week. I explained to her that I would make assignments for her while we were away and that we could have lessons with her cousins. This soothed her for the time being. When I took her to school this morning she explained that she was going to say goodbye to all of her friends because she will miss them so much "I'll even miss Brendan" she said. And so my perspective goes back and remembers the time when time seemed to crawl. I remember sitting for hours (or what seemed like it) on our kitchen floor watching the clock and waiting for a friend's birthday party to start that afternoon. Little things to a child make such a huge impact.

We'll have a great time, but we'll miss Chad. He has been out of town since Sunday afternoon and we are definitely feelin' it. We are leaving tomorrow to help ease the pain of the construction that will be going on at our house over the weekend. The construction will leave our house pretty much unliveable and therefore, impossible to have kids in. So, visiting family seems like a good option. Chad is coming home tomorrow to move all of our funiture out of the house to help with the work on the ceilings - so if anyone has a husband to spare on a Friday night... send them to our house because he'll be working into the wee hours of the morning to ge the place ready.

So - until next week... signin' off!

Antics

Where have we been? What has been doing on? Well, let me catch you up on the antics of Caitlyn and Nathan...

Caitlyn has been her usual diva self. Her new passion - infomercials. I can believe how many commercials they gear towards the parents by making the children crave it. The ad agencies are very cunning when it comes to Disney Channel and Nick Jr.

So a couple of weeks ago Caitlyn was watching her new favorite - "Kewlopolis" (Channel 5 - Saturday mornings) because it has Horseland and Strawberry Shortcake. Anyway, in the middle of these shows a huge informercial played about "The Biggest Little Bag Ever". Caitlyn was totally convinced - and will still make the argument for- that we definitely need this. Because in her words (quoted by the commercial) "it can hold up to three full-sized water bottles". Believe me if I could rely the passion in her voice about this feat I would.

She is also convinced that the Aqua Grow is a necessity for life. We were walking through Walmart when all of a sudden Caitlyn exclaimed "Theres the Aqua Globe. We need that. You just put it into the soil and it waters your plants for you!"

So congratulations marketing agents. It appears that when Caitlyn was born so was a sucker for your marketing ploys.

Heaven help us on the day she gets hold of a credit card.

Nathan's little imagination has been growing and growing. On this day, he was a astronaut. You have no idea how much it gives me joy to see him dressing up and enjoying it. It was almost time for his bus when I took this picture. I tried to remove his astronaut vest to which he replied softly "no" while putting his had over it. It was really adorable. If he hadnt removed it a couple of minutes later I would have been glad to let him wear it to school. You're only a kid once, right?

On Saturday we went to Bartlett Lake with Chad's family. It ended up being us and Mike and Janna, and we had a great time. Well, almost all of us...

This pretty much sums up what Nathan did most of the time. It was a little overwhelming for him. If he was up on deck he looked like this, but he spent most of his time down in the cabin enjoying his little cave of space. He came up and had fun when we were docked for lunch - which leads us to believe that it may be the motor that scared him.

He also had to go the the bathroom pretty bad. How do you explain to a child - especially Nathan - that in this situation it is okay to go in the water, but it's not okay at home or anywhere else. Yeah, didnt work. So we took him to the marina and he was a lot happier after that.

Caitlyn had such a great time. She couldn't wait until it was her turn to get back out on the water. She rode the tube and the Hot Dog for quite awile. Everyone managed to get me out on the Hot Dog with Caitlyn and Chad with the promise that I would be pulled back in so I could get directly on to the boat. Chad says it a irrational fear - I say it is purely sanitary.

A birthday surprise

Afew of my girlfriends surprised me for my birthday with a night out. Where else does a group of girls who like sweets go? Cheesecake Factory, right. We had a blast, and we had the waitress laughing with the topics of conversation that we were covering. Why are girls so open? The rest of the night was filled with laughs, eye openers and more laughs. For those who were there - good times.

Thanks girls! It was such a fun time - and definitely something that should be done more often then just for a birthday. Lanae and I discussed this... our husbands actually like it when we go out, because we come home in a good mood and ready to jump/be pushed back into motherhood. Having a fun night with friends = relaxation/rejuvination.

Seriously - one of the biggest desserts ever. Amber was definitely eating with her eyes more that her stomach when she ordered that one

Like riding a bike

Going back to school has not be a huge adjustment at our house. Caitlyn was excited. She practically left me in the dust to get to her class, and that is saying alot considering that she is on crutches right now.

Nathan's first day is today. I just put him on the bus. The bus. It was such a tramatic experience for me last year, but I have adjusted and this year it was a smooth transition. Nathan went on like nothing was out of the summer ordinary. He put on his backpack and hit the road, but not before I could get a few choice pictures. You could tell he was thinking "Eh, whats the big deal. A bus."

Caitlyn on her way to her first day of school yesterday

I got to go into her classroom because she cant carry her backpack right now. I know, your thinking, put it on her back, but I'm telling you with the weight of her lunchbox (she should definitely not go hungry with the amount of food I supply her) it throws off her balance. Anyway, I snuck a picture of her in the classroom. I'm pretty sure its frowned upon at school because of all of the other kids.

Nathan couldnt stop posing for pictures. He just kept saying "Cheese" - he was ready for his close up. Acutally, I just know that he likes the flash on the camera. He laughs everytime.

Whatever works, right?