Breaking it Down on Holiday Break!

Water park fun! 

Daryl was in the lazy river for about an hour! 

I have been home with the boys since Christmas. Even though I have broken up many fights, and yelled more than once, it has gone really fast!

We had the Stiles family over for Christmas. I really enjoy when our families can be together since we live so far apart. Little Clara is getting big, as are Henry and Charlie! We had our traditional Chinese take out Christmas Dinner and watched Lego Batman together. I think that is my favorite Batman movie.

A couple of days later I took the boys for a couple of days at a indoor water park for their Christmas present. They loved it! There was a major meltdown both days when we were leaving the pool, but that was to be expected. I like our trip instead of toys, we might have to find a new location for next year!

I hope everyone had a happy holiday, and a safe and happy New Year!

 Daryl is drawing Purl in her natural habitat. On the couch! 

The boys got sketch pads and pens in their stockings. They love to draw!

Clara got the only knit Christmas gift this year. She will need it in South Dakota! 

Cousins at Christmas!

Let Christmas Begin!

We had Dodge City Christmas last weekend, the boys have Holton Christmas this weekend, and we have Topeka Christmas next week! It is so fun to get together with all of our family over the holidays.

The presents have all be bought, AND WRAPPED, so that might be a new record for me. I had a few less to wrap, because this year I decided to get the boys an experience over toys. So sometime next week we are going to Coco Keys water resort to spend a couple of days swimming and having fun in Kansas City. I will report on how my little experiment goes! Frankly, I got tired of stuffing clothes in their over flowing dressers, and picking toys up off the floor. They didn't need anything, so let's just go have some fun! It was an easy sell to Daryl, Alex is not so sure.

I knit a thing this month. A little baby hat made with my leftover sweater yarn. So it is officially winter, and in 2017 I knit TWO things. LOL I will make the goal three things for next year. Merry Christmas Everyone!

A very rare picture of all three of us Stiles girls! Sofia is camera shy but had some peer pressure to take this one! 

We stopped at Braum's both ways for Ice Cream! We love our ice cream!  

Larned has a great park, it was cold but that didn't stop us! 

A wee little hat! 

Holiday Card 2017

Last weekend was so fun filled I can't believe it is almost the weekend again! On Friday, the boys and I had the Shunga Valley 4-H Christmas party. That ended with a walk through Potwin to see the lights. It was a gorgeous evening for a walk!

On Saturday, we went to the Lawrence Old Fashioned Christmas Parade. It is all horses and horse drawn wagons. I had never been before, and it was really cool to watch. Parking was a challenge and we will be a little earlier next year!

To round out our weekend, Aunt Barb hosted us in Holton for Birthday lunch! We got to see Grandpa Mike and Great Grandma Hazel too. Thank you Aunt Barb, everything was perfect! The boys were asleep in the car before we were even out of town!

So the story of the family Holiday card is usually taking the picture, or the idea of the picture. That was easy this year, because I decided to make it easy. The wonderful Harrington's invited Santa from the North Pole, and I just booked a session for me and the boys. I didn't tell them Santa was going to be there, so they were very surprised!

I was hurried to get our proof back from the photographers because I wanted to hit the Shutterfly Black Friday sale. They had a really good deal on cards and photo gifts, and I already had my list ready. I just needed the proof! I got it in time, but my card list was at the office. So I just ordered 25 and the gifts I wanted.

When I got to the office on Monday I counted how many I actually needed, 30. Shoot! The sale was over, but there were not five people I could cut from the list. So, I ordered just five more and paid the shipping for them. I wasn't even going to have an extra card for me, because you have to order them in 5's.

So imagine my surprise when my first order arrived,  and I received 50 CARDS! What?! Don't get me wrong I was excited about the mistake, but a little mad at myself for ordering the five more. Well, at least I would have one for my fridge now...

Then this week another package from Shutterfly came, great my five extra cards. NOPE! It was 25 MORE CARDS! Ok, again won't complain, but I don't really have that many friends....

So, I figured the mistake this time was I got 25 instead of 5, NOPE again. I got my five extra cards yesterday. If anymore cards come, I'm going to have to call customer service. I'm also going to put some in my purse and just give them away to random acquaintances. At least it's a good picture, right?! LOL

Watching the parade! 

Visiting Grandma Hazel, so happy I got to visit with her! 

Merry Christmas from The Meerpohls! If you need a card let me know! LOL

Looking at you December!

If you are going to have a birthday on a Thursday, might as well spend it with some of your best work friends from across the state. Monica even brought me a present! I'm spoiled, and I have no regrets! LOL

The boys asked their dad if they could bring me a present before school today. It really started my day off right. It was a cute coffee mug with skittles and a Starbucks gift card in it. Good job boys! When I picked them up from school Daryl was trying his best not to fight with his brother, since it was my birthday. He was trying so hard we got a pizza for dinner, birthday pizza! 

After that I finally gave in and got the Christmas tree from the basement. Daryl has wanted to do this since Thanksgiving. Growing up I was always weird about not decorating till after my birthday. After all, I am not a December baby. That was intentional, thanks mom! Since my birth had been thoroughly celebrated, we decorated. Now it's Christmas time! We will continue to deck our halls this weekend.

I need another little tree to go on the other side of the white tree. I'm going to make a little Christmas tree forest in the corner. 

Funny Alex story. On Saturday he got in big trouble for being mean to Cedar. He may have pulled out some of his hair. So he went to his room and was in there for an hour throwing a huge tantrum. He did finally come out, apologize, and calm down. 

Well, Monday night I was arranging his blankets to tuck him in when I see something written on his sheet. In pen. I turn my head to read it, and it says, Alexs mom is sopid. My first thought was, wow should a kindergartner really be writing in sentences? My second thought was, you can't even spell stupid, what does that make you?! Lastly, I thought it's bedtime, I'm not even doing this right now. 

Me: "Alex, did you write on your sheet?" (We are both looking at the sheet)

Alex: looking me square in the eyes, "I don't remember." 

That boy! 

Mom Came Through!

The boys and I had a great long weekend! We even got to host Grandma and the Larned cousins for a couple of days. That means a lot of Nerf Gun wars, and card games. My house is not very big so thankfully we had some beautiful weather for everyone to play outside!

Grandma also brought a craft for the boys to make. It is the cutest little advent calendar. Unfortunately, a painting project is not as much fun as Nerf guns. So, Cadence and Grandma did all the painting. The boys did put on all the stickers when the older boys needed to catch their breath. LOL

Grandma didn't just bring something for the boys!! I also got my new crock pot! I was so excited that I already used it yesterday to make Ham and Beans. It is perfect, and I love it. I wonder if it is too early to ask for a can opener and spaghetti grabber for Christmas?! 

Poor Turkey

Hello All! Long time, no blog. Honestly, the boys have not been giving me a lot of good blog material lately, slackers! I am knitting a hat, and I'll show that off soon. Other than that I just finished a busy time with work, and I'm looking forward to the Holidays fun.

One of those fun school projects I kind of forgot about was, "disguise the turkey" homework! This is the assignment where kids get a paper turkey and they have to dress him up so he doesn't end up Thanksgiving dinner.

When Daryl had this assignment I got a little too involved and made a sweater for his turkey. We did it together, and I did more of the work than he did. For many reasons I decided to let Alex do his turkey by himself. The first reason is I had 100 other things to do, the second reason is Alex loves to draw and color, and really doesn't want my help anyway.

I went over ideas with him. "Alex, we could use one of your school pictures and dress him like you!."
Alex said, "No."
Daryl suggested, "You could get leaves from outside and make him a tree."
Alex said, "No."
We put this off to the very last evening so when Alex said he wanted to make him a pizza I said great! Here are your crayons, get busy!
Only this morning when he was putting the finishing touches on his Turkey Daryl had a thought, "If you don't want the Turkey to be eaten why did you make it a pizza?"

Oh my gosh, why didn't I think of that. Thankfully, Alex is stubborn and he had finished his Turkey pizza and he was proud of it. We shall see what the teacher says today! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

He is a pizza, and Alex did it all by himself!

A Green Sweater Story

I know I laugh sometimes when people ask how long it takes me to knit something. They may not even believe me when I reply years. There are many reasons I'm a slow knitter, but most are I get distracted by other things. I start a different knitting pattern, I sew for a bit, or more recently I'm taking a class, and only have time to read and write papers.

This particular sweater was my second time using the lovely Wollmeise Lace yarn. It's kind of a pain in the neck to get this yarn, because it is made in Germany in very small quantities. But, the color and quality of this yarn is amazing! The Lace yarn costs $60 a skein so I limit myself to only buying one at a time and I have to knit with it before I buy another one.

I've checked the records to give this sweater a timeline.
So I bought this lovely 4-H green yarn in Dec. 2013
I started my sweater pattern on August 28, 2014
I finished it yesterday, Nov. 5, 2017

Mostly, I'm just thankful that after three years I'm still the same size! Yay!!
P.S.-Making a sweater out of lace weight yarn is crazy pants, I do not recommend it.
P.P.S.- I'll most likely do it again....

Happy Halloween!

This is just a rush post before I head out of town for work. Got to see the boys at their school parties this morning, and I was very glad I was able to make it! Daryl is Thing One and Alex is Iron Man. I know what you are thinking, shouldn't Alex be Thing 2? Well that would have just been too easy, and not how my boys operate at all! LOL

I hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween!

The School Halloween parade is always fun!
Sometimes a little cold, but always fun! 

Leaving for school in costume makes for a good morning! 

Parent Teacher Conferences

Last week I had Parent Teacher Conferences with both boys teachers. It should be no surprise that they are opposites in most things with school. Daryl exceeds in reading and struggles in math, Alex exceeds in math and it still working on all the sounds the letters make. Daryl is so caring for other students, sometimes that leads to him getting his feelings hurt. Alex is a social butterfly that is buddies with every student and teacher. Alex invites boys and girls over to his house to spend the night, he tells them to just find his house on Google!

Both boys got good reports, and are good listeners for their teachers. I'm so glad they listen to somebody!

One of my favorite parts of conference was reading Daryl's fiction story he wrote for class. I have copied it below! Looks like I'm not the only writer in the family! (There is no title but it is definitely a comedy turned tragedy. LOL)

This is the story of Daryl going to the pumpkin patch in 2017. We went to Germany for fall. Picking a pumpkin is going to be fun. The boat we took was a hotel. It took a long time to find a pumpkin! We got stuck in the mud and it was super wet. I got to go to the gift shop and I got a German coin and a pumpkin carver.

We adopted a dog that was low on heartbeats. The dog was a German shepherd. Then a tornado hit Germany. I dislocated my arm. And I also got hit by a pumpkin in my eye. And a car almost hit me. There was no shelter. The whole gift shop flipped over. I covered myself in pumpkins. 

The End

Oh Daryl!

Some pictures from our weekend exploring Topeka!

Dance Parties and Lunch Dates

There is never a boring week with Daryl and Alex around! The boys tend to get fixated on a movie and we have to watch it about 100 times. This was torture when the movie was Aliens in the Attic, still pretty bad when it was Frozen, but the new film hasn't gotten old yet. We are probably on the 50th viewing of the musical Hairspray, and we are still rocking out every night!

I'm not exaggerating with the every night comment. I have to put my foot down that we only watch it once a day. LOL

I need to look up other musicals they might like, the love story can't be the main theme. I think they like Hairspray so much because of the cool male characters like Corny, Seaweed and Link. They even get a hoot out of the fact that Tracy's mom is played by John Travolta. So I am open to recommendations for grade school appropriate musicals. The only other one I have on DVD is Chicago and I don't think that will do!

Yesterday, was the annual school cook out. I got to eat lunch with Alex and Daryl got to eat lunch with Dad. Since the boys have two different lunch times it worked great! I secretly am happy I got to eat lunch with Alex, because of the last "Donuts with Mom" fiasco I had with Daryl. Evidently, taking a picture with me is not the worst thing in the world! Alex was hugging on me, letting me kiss his head and was practically in my lap when Ms. Campos took our picture. Awwww Kindergarten is the best!

Will still take a picture with me! 

He was so cute I let him eat my Cheez Its too! 

Let's Party!

Everyone at the Manor has had reason to celebrate! The boys had their elementary school skate night last week. Alex was doing really good with the walker thing, but after awhile didn't want to use it anymore.

He decided to just hold my hand and skate that way. Only problem is every time he started to fall I had to yank him back up to a standing position. He, oddly enough, didn't complain about this. However, things like this now hurt my back. So I felt the skating for a couple of days! Oh the joys of getting older.

Daryl had a really good time too, he just didn't want me to skate with him and his friends. So Alex and I kept our distance. LOL

I'm celebrating because I've finished another semester of Graduate school! I only take one class a semester so it will be a long time till I'm done. The reading for this class about did me in. The material was very interesting, but there is a reason I haven't been keeping up with the blog, the housework or the knitting!! So I'm happy to be home this weekend and just get caught up on things!

Weekend Whirlwind!

Last weekend was so much fun I'm just now getting a chance to write about it. It started Friday evening with a celebration of the new class of Topeka's 20 under 40. I wasn't sure I was in the mood to have an adult night out, but my friends reminded me they are super fun. They were right, as usual, and I had a great night catching up with everyone!

However, that 6am alarm rang early when it was time to be off to Dodge City for my cousin's wedding on Saturday! You can never have enough reasons to celebrate with your family and this wedding was a great celebration. The ceremony was great, and the boys stayed quiet!! Yippee!

The reception, dinner and dance was just a lot of fun. Daryl had a little too much fun at the candy bar, he payed for that later that evening. I don't think he will be eating hot tamales for awhile! Thank you to Kayleigh and Brice for letting us be a part of your day! Also, big thanks to Aunt Rita and Uncle Steve for letting us stay with you and visit. Sorry about the puking kid! oops We will be back soon!

How Alex wanted to dress for the wedding. His new shirt was a scarf!

How we finally convinced him to wear his clothes!

Some day I want someone to love me as much as Alex loves cake! LOL

Memories and Mysteries

September has been zooming and, with this blog, no news is good news! Last weekend the boys and I had nothing on the schedule so we decided to take in the Hot Air balloons at Huff and Puff. 10 years living in Topeka I have never made it out to this event. I was thinking about skipping it but Saturday night Daryl made me promise I would get them up early enough to watch the balloons!

The Alarm clock went off at 6am, and I kept my word. Daryl lept out of bed, so excited to head out to the lake for the 7am launch time. Alex was not as excited but with the promise of McDonalds breakfast, he agreed to put some clothes on! 

It was a beautiful sight to see all the balloons prepare for flight and then watching them all fly away. 

I think this will become an annual tradition. We know for next year we need to bring a blanket. Thankfully my car looks like we live in it, so we all found a sweater to sit on! 

Yesterday, Daryl got his retainer. He only wears it at night but he was super excited to trade his head gear for a retainer. All week he reminded me his appointment was on Wednesday. I wasn't allowed to forget this one!  I'm super glad to be done with the rubber bands, I find them everywhere! Which is weird because his headgear lives in his room. I try not to think about how they are in the floor in the kitchen, or on the couch in the living room. Ewww

Only funny story I have came from Monday. Alex decided to dress himself which went well until he couldn't get his shoes on. I had to help him and that was almost WWIII. So I pick him up from school and as I'm putting him in the car he whispers, "Mom I lost my underwear." 

I said, "what, why are you taking off your underwear at school? Did you have an accident?" 

His reply, "No, they just disappeared!" Then he pulled his shorts down to show me his bare butt! 

A little detective work, turns out he never put them on. I found them still folded on the floor of his bedroom. However, don't tell him this because he will insist to you, they just disappeared.....

I'm super proud of us!

The boys and I are in a good place with routine. It is third week of school and we are rolling. Reading is getting done at night, boys are getting to bed on time and backpacks are getting checked! Sometimes it's the little things that make me so happy. 💖

This weekend we did some visiting. I wonder if kids even know these days that going on visits used to be a weekend staple? For the first time in a year we spent time with our friends Ron and Claudia. Claudia watched Alex from two weeks old to four years old. She will always hold a special place in his heart. To this day when I'm making him mad he will ask to see Claudia!

Daryl stayed with them for awhile too and he loves to tinker with Ron. On this visit, after they were done playing in the backyard, Ron and Daryl made jewelry. It was a great visit and we look forward to being back before another year!

We also visited with Reiyna and got to hear about her first week of college! We were glad to help her run some errands and be there for her. We are always here baby cousin!! The boys got to see inside a dorm room. They were fascinated. "Why don't you have a kitchen? Where is your bathroom? Is that the only place to keep your clothes??" It was pretty funny!

Alex didn't want to take a picture. He waited in the car!

Ron made both boys a stamped bracelet! 

Every good weekend has some baseball!

Eclipse Day :-/

On Monday, Alex shot right out of bed and said, "It's eclipse day mom!!"

He was so excited, I felt bad that it was really cloudy here in Topeka. We couldn't really see it at all from my office. The kids did sit outside and Alex still thought it was cool. I grabbed this picture from the school's PTO site. I love that they did the paper bags over their heads.

We were sitting in a meeting Monday night and Alex told the table of adults, "If you stare at the eclipse it will burn a hole in your eye!"

He was so serious, I know that he did not peak!

Daryl was not as impressed, he was pretty blah about the whole thing. He did ask if we could go to Maine to watch the next one in seven years. Probably not bud. LOL

Daryl is back into his WWE toys full force. He has ignored them for an entire year, opting for Pokemon cards and coin collecting. I never thought I would write this, but I'm glad he is playing with his WWE toys again. He was just collecting stuff with those other interests, at least with his action figures he is playing and using his imagination. He sets up matches and now is trying out, "moves" of his own! As long as we don't end up in the ER, I am better with playing than collecting.

Now, if I could get him as excited about saving his money, hmmm.......

First Day of School!

On Monday the boys had their first day of school. Daryl started 3rd grade, and Alex finally got to go to Kindergarten. I was a mess when Daryl started school, pretty much cried all day. When we got up Monday morning I felt my emotions coming to the surface then Alex asked, "Mom can you just drop me off out front? I don't need you to come in."

Then I was double teamed.

Daryl said, "I can get him to the gym mom, it's OK."

I let them know, I would drop them off for the rest of the year. First day and last day of school, mom goes inside! When I think back to why I was so emotional for Daryl, I wasn't sure if he was ready, I didn't know if he would make friends. On Monday I knew for a fact Alex was ready, and no matter what he has his brother. So, no tears were shed!

Having the boys I do, I got no details about the first day. However, I did learn Alex got a talking to about hitting his brother at after-school program. If they can be nice to each other in after-school every day maybe it will spill over to time at home!

I've been looking forward to having them in the same building for years, and so far it does not disappoint! One drop off and one pick up is glorious!! I hope all the kids and teachers going back to school find their groove quickly, getting up on Tuesday Alex already said, "I don't want to go to school!"

This coming from the boy who counted down the days to school all summer. Go figure!

Daryl said, "Mom we need to take a picture by a tree." So we did!

Don't they look like they love each other?

My baby is in school, can't be sad when he has wanted this for years!