Happy 2nd Birthday Giovanni

We celebrated LJ's 2nd Birthday yesterday, even though it is technically today.

Cake and Ice Cream...

And of course lots of presents (mostly toys that he really doesn't need, but who can resist giving a little boy a new toy)

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Friday Nites Live

Out at Jefferson Point in good 'ol Fort Wayne, IN they have what's called "Friday Nites Live", which is a free concert every Friday night, June through September.

The boys had a blast! Poppa and Gamma (as my son calls them) came and picked up Alex to take him out there, while Jon-Jon and me waiting for Daddy to get home from work and them we met up with them later.

The boys had so much fun dancing. Poppa took them out on the dance floor area so that they could dance with everyone else. Jon-Jon was sooo funny...just boppin' to the music and swing his arms and clapping his hands.

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Day at the Park

Last weekend was such a beautiful day, that we took the boys a local park to fun some fun.

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Easter Day Picture

I know I complained about Easter Day being a nightmare, but I did get picture of kids being happy for the most part, so I guess the day wasn't that bad after all.

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My Boys!

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Christmas at Nanna's

My mom decided to have Christmas this year on Saturday, December 27 at 1:00 PM, so if we wanted to do anything later on we could. She even nice enough to decide to keep the boys over night, which was exciting for me. Once the party is over I don't have to worry about feeding them dinner, giving them a bath, putting them bed even thought they insist that they're not tried, because they want to keep playing with their new toys. Instead, I get to enjoy my evening...I get to go home and relax, watch an R-rated movie if I want, have a beer or glass of wine (oh hack, why not both), and stay up as late as I want without having to worry about getting up in a couple of hours to start the next day all over again at 6:00 AM in the morning, because I get to sleep in. That's something that has not happened since the Jon was born.

So I'm suppose to be at my mom's by 1:00 PM and I haven't even left KayC's house, which by the way we are stay at until Sunday night. At 1:15 PM, my sister calls, but I miss the call because I'm getting the car packed and the coats & hats on the boys, which they do not even need on, because it's 62 degrees out. Yeah, I know, WARM! By 1:30 PM, I have got the boys in the car and backing out of the drive way when I noticed I had a missed call. So I call Laura and tell her to cool her jets, it's not the easiest thing to wrangle two boys ages 3 & 1, especially when they haven't had naps.

We finally made it to my mom's house which is only 15 minutes away in the next town over. While I'm getting everything into the house, my mom asked, "Where are the boys?" Are you kidding me...where does she think they are if they're not in the house already. Like I would have left them at KayC's to miss out on the fun of unwrapping Christmas presents or give up my night of freedom...she joking right? They were out on the car still because they haven't had naps and they fell asleep on the way over.

The boys had fun unwrapping their gifts, but I can't say the same for their cousin Hailey. She was getting more and more upset with every gift she opened because they weren't "The Little Pet Shop: DOGS" and she had told Santa that, that is what she wanted. How every disappointing at 3 years old. But after all the toys were unwrapped and surgically removed from the all the packaging, that you need a doctorates degree for the kids started playing with there new toys and soon forgot what they didn't get.

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Build-A-Bear

My mother-in-law, KayC, has a tradition that when her grandchild turns three or about three, she takes them to Build-A-Bear. Well this year Alex turned three and my niece, Ayla, will be turning three in about 4 months. KayC wanted to take them together and pick out their bear, but I didn't want Ayla to influence Alex about his decision.

We are talking about a two hours nightmare!

Alex didn't get it at first. He didn't want the unstuffed animal, he wanted the display one, so I took him to the front of the line to show him what was going on.

Then he needed to pick out his bear or animal....at first he has a glittery teal fru-fru bear, which I convinced to put back, with a cute pengin. After about 5 minutes he put that back and grabbed a husky dog, which was also cute, but I still like the pengin. Then about 5 mintues later he but that back and grabbed the clearence turkey from Thanksgiving...OMG! That turkey was butt ugly. Finally, we convinced him to put that back and he picked out an elephant, which is cute and boyish.

Everyone keeps asking me if I put a voice box in it, but I decided to skip that, just I can wash him without having to worry about ruining it.

On to the heart and stuffing him, he really liked warming up the heart and giving it a kiss.

Now time to pick out an outfit...OMG again. I know that this is where the bear starts to get expensive, so I tried to tell him to keep it simple. First problem is they didn't have a whole lot to choose from to make a boy, and half of the boy selection was ugly, so that left us with about 3 outfits. Well he finally picked out an outfit and it was the ugliest one. I showed him a karate robe with all the belts, with was cute and thought he might like it, since he is really into Kung Fu Panda, but not a big hit. So we decided to just keep the outfit that Alex had picked out, since it is his choose and all. Then we get closer the the checkout and he see the PJs, and he changed his mind again, but at least the pjs he picked out were cute.

Almost done and now we have to name him. Well you have to go thought several screen prompts, and then save & print. Well once we got there Alex was started to get impatience and started touching all the buttons on the key board and before I realize what he is doing, he has exited us out the whole thing and we had to start all over. After going through the prompts again we are all done.

Alfie the Elephant has now been born!

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Merry Christmas

We did not have Christmas at our house, we decided to go the Andy's parents' house for Christmas. We came over Christmas Eve and Alex set out cookies for Santa....which later on that night when no one was around the dogs knocked them down and ate them...bummer!

I thought that maybe since the boys went to sleep so late on Christmas Eve that they might sleep in on Christmas morning. WRONG! Our dog, Buddha, heard Andy's dad, Bert, get up and wanted to go down stairs at 5:00 AM, so naturally Buddha started to whine and wimper, which is so pathetic after about an hour. So at about 6:00 AM we let him out the room to go downstairs. But when we did this the other two dogs, Apollo and Baci, started to bark out of pure excitement, which once they start barking good lucky trying to get them to shut up. So about fifteen minutes later the boys were awake and fortunately I was able to get them to go back to sleep for about another hour.

Now that the boys are up, we took them down stairs and Alex couldn't believe how many presents that Santa left him. With him being three years old he thought that all the presents came from Santa, he didn't make the connection that Mom and Dad got him gift anf so did Grandma and Grandpa. Jon on the other hand just doesn't understand it yet, since he is only one.

We let them get theie stockings down from the fireplace first, then ate breakfast and relaxed for a little bit, and then opened up presents. They had fun and that's what matters the most.

Now comes the hard part....taking all the toys out of the boxes and packaging.

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Im Over My Head - The Big Day

The boys had a great time at their birthday party! Since, it wasn't until 4 p.m. I spent the whole cleaning the rest of the house, that I was suppose to do Friday night. And because of my procrastination i wasn't able the meet with Mary and her kids at the mall, since they were in town for the day.

(If you can look past the people and into the dining room you can see the decorations that I hung up and the two giant dinosaur balloons

The boys took a nap starting at about 1 p.m. (I wanted them to be well rested for the party). While they were napping I went to go pick up the balloons, cake, and some snack food, which because it was snowing out, it took me about 1 1/2 hours. I bought some dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets made by Tyson, but I never got to cook them, because I forgot and there were only two other kids who showed up. So I just put out some fruit for the guess and got them drinks as needed.

Then once everyone was at the party we put the candles on the cake and pigged out on it. Alex and Jon both got their own cake. I thought that was only fair, since I was combining their party together. Thanks to Wal-Mart for decorating them plus a free cupcake, since Jon was turning one, but the dinosaurs on the cake I bought at Toy's R US.


Alex only ate the frosting off the cake, but Jon fully enjoyed his cupcake. Once I got him all cleaned up, we moved all the presents to the living room for the boys to open. I put Andy in charge of taking pictures. The boys got a lot of presents, now I feel like we don't have to open presents on Christmas Day, but I'm not a mean mom like that.

After all present were unwrappped, the kids played for awhile, and one by one the guess started to leave.

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