Monday, November 23, 2009

Totts and Tunes

Finally this weekend my friend Kristi and I got our sons Nick (who is 2 months younger than Logan) and Logan together for a play date. It's the first time they had ever met each other. It took a little bit for them to get used to each other, but I think they had a good time. They're at the age where they don't really play "with" each other. They really just play "next" to each other. Although of course everything Nick wanted to play with Logan wanted to play with...which we're working on the sharing thing and he is learning. Although...we've still got a ways to go with the whole, "let's tackle my friends thing". The video gives you a little glimpse of Logan's wrestling skills. I do want to say that Kristi said it was good for Nick to play "rough" and that he needs to learn how so it was OK for Logan to keep taking him down. I just wish there was someone around that could take Logan down. He's tough, but a little whiny. Nick was following him around trying to touch his head and Logan was whining the whole time. He needs someone to pick on him...so Nick tell your Dad to practice your wrestling skills and the next time you two play together you can take Logan down. Wow...what a great Mom I am...I'm telling other kids to beat my kid up...geeezz....

Kristi it was great to see you this weekend though! We'll have to get together again soon!



See...he can share his stool with Nick!


The boys! How cute!


High Five!


Then Saturday night we headed to the bar for a night out and to sing some Karaoke!! :-) Here's a few shots from that night!

The girls showing everyone how it's done!


I finally convinced Brian to sing with me...although he got a little nervous and spilled his beer all over him while he was singing. Thanks for humoring me babe!


The girls


Scottie-too-Hottie


"I really like to sing"


B and T Meyer


I have to post this picture since it's like the only decent picture Dan took that night...or ever!

Friday, November 20, 2009

Fire Alarms Work!

It's a very comforting feeling knowing that the fire alarms work in your house...before you actually have a fire!

For those of you that have been to the ranch you know we've got a big stone fireplace in our living room. Well Brian is making some modifications to the fireplace so that it will "see through" out into the porch. This way we can use the fire place to heat the porch as well as load the fireplace from the porch side so that we don't have to drag all the wood into the house. It's going to be great once it's done! One step in this process is to have the chimney re-lined since the bricks were falling out of it. (Side note: I guess we had a chimney fire last year and didn't even know it. I guess it happens more then people think and most people don't even know that they've had a chimney fire.) Anyways the fire place company is coming out on Monday to re-line the chimney, but before they come out Brian needed to make some early modifications to the existing fireplace to prep for making it a see-through fire place. Mainly cut the back off the old fireplace box as well as cut the current damper off since he's going to make a new one that's a couple inches bigger. (Don't worry I'm getting to the point about fire alarms....)

So last night Brian brought home the plasma cutter to cut the back of the fireplace box off. The plasma cutter itself isn't very loud, but it needs the air compressor to run, which is extremely loud and on top of that this air compressor has a leak so it basically runs the entire time your using it.

Another side note: I think most of you know that Logan HATES the vacuum cleaner. No idea why, but he HATES it. Even if it's not on, he's still scared if it's even in the same room as him. He's been getting better about it and we can now actually have it sitting out and he won't at least start crying. So you can just about imagine how much he likes the air compressor, which is about 45 times louder than the vacuum cleaner.

So Brian gets set up with everything he needs and starts cutting. The air compressor is running which means I'm holding Cody AND Logan cause Logan's freaking out and thinks the air compressor is an evil monster...which I don't blame him because it's f'ing loud! My job, while Brian is cutting, is to hold the boys, make sure they don't get in the way (which isn't a problem since Logan won't go any where near Daddy when the air compressor's whaling), and watch to make sure no sparks shoot out of the fireplace while Brian's cutting and start the carpet on fire. Sweet! Awesome! So Brian's cutting, the air compressor's roaring, Logan's whining and I'm holding both the boys and watching for spontaneous fires to erupt on the living room carpet....when all of a sudden the fire alarms start going off.

Now don't picture clouds of smoke billowing out of the fireplace filling the house, but instead picture a faint fog of smoke throughout the living room. I guess Brian failed to realize that the house would fill with smoke while he was cutting. And it STUNK! Man did it smell! So Brian tells me to open the windows in the living and dining room and take the boys upstairs so we don't freeze our asses off while he finishes cutting. (I guess he's no longer worried about spontaneous fires erupting on the living room floor cause I now have to go upstairs.)

So every fire alarm in the house is going off, the air compressor, in an effort to be louder than the fire alarms, seems to be roaring even louder than before, Brian's contorted and stuffed himself into the fireplace cutting away and I'm upstairs in Logan's new room trying to hold both Cody and Logan, who's completely confused and thinks the air compressor is going to eat Daddy alive. The best part...this continues for about 10 min!

Eventually the fire alarms did shut off, having the windows open really helped with the smoke...although it still smelled horrible. And after about 20 min Brian was done cutting so we could finally shut off the air compressor as well. Logan was extremely happy when he realized Daddy wasn't eaten by the air compressor and as I said in the beginning of this post I was glad to know that the fire alarms work! It's comforting to know that they could literally wake the dead if there was ever a fire in our house.

There are so many times when I think to myself, I'm so glad I have a husband like Brian that can do things around the house himself without having to hire some expensive company to come in and do it...but usually while he's in the middle of his handy-man jobs around the house and I'm sitting in the bedroom listening to the loudest screeching fire alarms and air compressor holding both of the boys I forget this fact and think to myself...why can't we just hire someone to do this for us?

Thursday, November 19, 2009

People with Know How

Click here to view this video



Peter was in the school play the last two weekends. Here's a video from the play. The kids did great! Peter did awesome! He had one of the main roles in the play, the Dad in Cheaper By The Dozen.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Big Boy Bed!

Logan slept in his big boy bed last night! I was upstairs on the computer last night when Brian brought Logan over for goodnight kisses and the next thing I know Brian comes back and says, "I put Logan in his big boy bed tonight. He's just laying there drinking his milk." 10 minutes later we went up to check on him and he was sleeping. No fighting or anything and he slept all night! Now I'm not going to fool myself into thinking it was really just that easy to transition him to his big boy bed, but I am going to bask in the excitement of it for at least one day! We'll see how he does tonight. We tried to make it a big deal this morning that he slept in his big boy bed. When I went to wake him up, I opened his door and he was just laying there looking at me, already awake. Brian wants to transition Cody to the crib soon, so it's really good that Logan slept in his bed last night. There is a small part of me that's so sad though. This means my little mad is growing up. He's getting so big so fast....I mean what's next? Potty training, riding a bike, driving, college, marriage...holy crap where did the time go?

Here's a few videos of the boys. This first one is of Logan pushing Cody in the swing. He's trying to share his baseball noise maker with him. I think it's funny that he tries to make Cody hold onto it. :-)



This one is of Cody talking. He's very vocal, a lot more vocal then I remember Logan being. It's so fun to evaluate the differences between the boys and wonder about their personalities. Logan loves to be by himself on the floor and just hang out, Cody likes to be held and HATES being on his tummy. It's so fun being a parent!

Friday, November 13, 2009

Ready or Not...Here We Go

That could have been the title of the post for this past Monday with both Brian and I starting back to work and the boys heading to daycare full time. It has definitely been a crazy busy week. Brian had teacher conferences a couple days and we've started working out again at night which leaves very little time to do anything at night really. Work has been going great! Already it's as though I never left and it's only been a week. I have a great team to work with and they did an awesome job while I was gone. Daycare has been going great with the boys as well. Julie and Kim are WONDERFUL! Logan just loves it there and Julie showed me a picture she took of Cody where he's smiling from ear to ear so I guess he likes it as well. She takes a lot of pictures of the kids during the day and shows them to us. They're so cute!

The "ready or not, here we go" applies to wrestling starting on Monday. I'm really not looking forward to wrestling season, it's so long and time consuming. Don't get me wrong, I love that Brian coaches and can help the athletes do their best, but tournaments every Saturday pretty much from mid-November through end of February makes it so hard. I know we'll survive...we always do...deep breath...here we go...just sucks that on top of it the season starts right as the Holiday's are ramping up as well. At least I'm done with my grad. class and don't have to worry about that on top of everything else.

Oh well...suck it up Theresa...here we go! Go Chiefs!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Baptism Apples

Last weekend Brian and I took full advantage of the gorgeous weather and tried to spend as much time as we could outside. Saturday we knocked all the apples down that were still on our apple trees and picked them all up. I guess it's not good to leave the apples on the trees cause the bugs camp out in them for the winter instead of dieing. So with the good apples that were remaining we decided to make apple cider. Well Brian decided. I have to admit I wasn't really all that excited to make apple cider, I like it, but not really enough to go through all the work to crush the apples and stuff. Plus I thought it would be this huge mess and I had the house all clean and ready to go for Cody's baptism the next day and didn't want to get everything all sticky. But Brian was on a mission and really wanted to make apple cider. So Saturday night at 6 he starts crushing apples...turns out it didn't make that big of mess at all and the apple cider is really really good! He was done with everything and cleaned up by 9. I have to say I did not help make the cider, my only contribution was helping to pick up all the apples and even that I only started helping about halfway through. Logan on the other hand had a blast outside with Daddy picking up the apples and throwing them into the trailer. Although my Dad is not a huge fan of making apple cider. He was helping Brian crush the apples and his hand slipped off an apple and he sliced his thumb wide open. He's fine, but he's got a pretty nice size gash on his thumb.

Cody enjoying the nice fall weather!


Only the apples in the front of the trailer we used for the cider. The rest of them were bad and Brian's going to feed them to the deer.




Then Sunday was Cody's baptism. It was a perfect day and everything went great. Cody was good, he only cried during the actual baptism part and then slept through the rest of church. He was a little crabby during pictures afterward but only cause he was hungry. After that he did great! Logan on the other hand...he's been getting his 2-yr molars and hasn't been sleeping well at all! Won't go to sleep on his own any more, we have to sit with him until he falls asleep and has been a real bear when he's awake. I feel bad for him cause I know it's just because his teeth hurt, but it's sometimes hard to remember that when he's throwing a fit on the floor or screaming for no reason. Oh well as a wise friend of mine once said, when it comes to kids nothings permanent good or bad...

Mom and Cody Mouse


Auntie Jamie


Look how tired he is...poor bear...


The Godparents! Steven and Kim






Lastly here's a video of Logan giving Cody a ride in his John Deere. Logan thought that was the coolest thing!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Happy Halloween

Yes I know it's about a week late, but I've been enjoying my last week of maternity leave with my husband and two boys, so haven't really on the computer much. We had all the Meyer's over to our house again this year. Everyone's still a little to young to really do the trick-or-treating thing. Debbie did take Stella out for a little bit, but only to a few houses around our house. IT was really fun seeing all the kids dressed up. They're really starting to get to the age where they can all play together. The girls all play really nice together, and of course Logan's up-holding his end of the bargain of being a boy and is a bully to all the girls. He just wanted to tackle Stella and took her down about 6 times. The good news is he's got a really great hip throw, so wrestling coach Dad is happy about that, the bad news is he doesn't understand that it's ok to wrestle with Dad and not ok to wrestle with all the little kids. He is one tough little boy...although that shouldn't be too big of surprise...he is a Meyer after all.

Here's a few pictures.