Oh what a week it's been!

It's kinda been a rough week....our poor daycare lady caught the dreaded swine flu so we have not had daycare ALL WEEK! Turns out there is no such thing as a back-up daycare....you just gotta hope you know somebody who is a stay-at-home mom or retired or something like that. Unfortunately for us, we don't know very many of these folks so we had to get creative. Marc took kid duty on Monday and Aunt Katy (cousin Andrew goes to daycare with Jacksen and Kellan) and I split the day on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today the boys got to spend the morning with Great Grandma Sam...they were thrilled! Grandma Sam loves children...and she never tells them no. She is definitely Kellan and Jacksen's kind of gal!

AND, if having no daycare all week wasn't enough, the brakes on my minivan started making a terrible noise last Sunday. My sweet (and very handsome) husband took it apart Sunday evening....and there it still sits in our garage with no rotors (whatever those are), break pads, or tires. Luckily, my favorite twin sister let me borrow her car this week! Never thought I'd say this, but I'm kind of missing my van. I know it isn't cool to drive a van, but they sure are convenient when you have three kids and lots of stuff to haul around!

Anywho, enough about the dreary stuff! We actually did some fun things this week...on Tuesday evening we carved pumpkins.

Our no-mess scarecrow pumpkin

Pumpkin carving with Grandpa McCauley

On Wednesday morning, we woke up to our first real snowfall of the fall! Here is a photo of the view from our front porch:


And tonight, Miss Megan participated in a little show about China during parents' night at PEAK. PEAK is an after-school enrichment program that Megan attends three day a week. It's a wonderful program and she loves it!

Our girl

We are looking forward to a fun-filled Halloween weekend - watch for pictures on Sunday! Oh, and if you have a few minutes, could you please pray for little Stellan McKinney...you can read about him at http://www.mycharmingkids.net/.

Not Me! Monday!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

Since I didn't post at all over the weekend, this Not Me! Monday! post is about some of the things I didn't do this weekend. For starters, I did not invite my sisters and all of their children over to our house for dinner Saturday evening. I would never do that to my poor husband - all of those wild children in our house at one time makes him nuts! And, if that wasn't enough, I certainly didn't serve up a turkey dinner...with mashed potatoes out of a BOX. Who would think that was a great idea so close to Thanksgiving?! And, anyway, fake mashed potatoes are gross.

On Sunday morning, when my darling husband was away hunting, I did not take our beautiful healthy children out for donuts and chocolate milk for breakfast! What kind of a mother would do that?!

This afternoon I did not invite my sweet twin and her new puppy over for dinner....mostly so I could her puppy. Sheeesh, like we haven't had enough company lately!

And now I'm off to put my darling children to bed, make Megan's lunch for tomorrow, work out like crazy to make up for the three miniature Almond Joys I didn't snack on this afternoon, and maybe fix my quilt and carpet that my sister's puppy chewed on. If I ever entertain the idea of getting a puppy, please remind me that they are more work than my own children!

Jacksen the Terrible

I'm not sure where our sweet, innocent little Jacksen has gone....If you see him, will you please bring him back? In his place, we now have a demanding, ornery, but still cute little Jacksen.

In the last few weeks, Jacksen Marc (as he likes to be called) has morphed into an almost 3-year-old little turkey (just in time for Thanksgiving!). He insists on only wearing Wrangler jeans and boots,

is climbing on the counter and sneaking cookies out of the cupboard, and sneaks out of bed over and over until he is advised a swat on the bottom is in his near future if he gets out of bed again.

Mr. Jacksen insists on getting himself dressed...and picking out his clothes. AND, any offer of assistance is met with a severe reprimand from the little stinker - it has to be HIS idea...or else! The thing is, he often gets his shirts on backwards...

The worst thing about our little imposter....well, he has taken to screeching "I hate you!" when he doesn't get his way. I have no idea what to do about that except ignore it or put him in his room and make him apologize. I know he doesn't mean it, but it sure makes me sad. Let's just say that being our littlest and being so cute are his saving graces these days!

Hamburger

Kellan brought home a little friend from daycare today....a worm he named "Hamburger". Not sure how he came up with that name, but I thought it was pretty funny! He and Megan found a shoebox and punched some holes in the lid with one of my kitchen knives. NO, I did not know they were doing this until it was too late to do anything about it! Anyway, they filled the box with mud and made a habitat for their little pet. Kellan wanted to keep the shoebox in his room, but I persuaded him that the garage is much better home for a worm home. I hope he's still alive in the morning or I'm gonna have some explaining to do!

Not Me! Monday!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I have a little bit of a guilty conscience....but it's not because I fudged a little bit to Kellan. See, he really wanted to go to Megan's soccer game yesterday, but Marc really didn't want to have to entertain him through the whole game so I might've...but not really...told him I had a surprise for him. The thing is, once Marc and Megan were out the door, he expected me to deliver. So then I did not tell him that I had been planning on making some special cookies for him to take to daycare on Monday....and I certainly did not tell him we would make chocolate chip cookies, but conveniently forgot to mention that the cookies were actually called pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. And he wasn't just a little bit disappointed when he figured it out either!

And I did not spend entirely too much time on Facebook yesterday....and maybe did not get a bathroom or two cleaned (or the laundry put away or the floors mopped) because of it. That would be incredibly irresponsible and, Lord knows, I am NEVER irresponsible!

And tonight when the kiddos asked to watch a movie, I did not put in High School Musical 2 because I actually like the music. And we did not watch the Hanna Montana Movie countless times last week for the same reason. I'd like to think I am waaaaay past these teenie bopper movies....I really am!

And, now, I'm not going to tell our kiddos that it's time to go to bed even though they still have five minutes....it's been a long rainy Monday and I've been looking forward to finishing Book 4 of the Yada Yada Prayer Group series!

32 Goals

Kellan ended his Fall 2009 soccer season with a total of 32 goals...in five games! It was fun to see how much these kids improved over the last few weeks. To celebrate our middlest's highly successful soccer season, we went to lunch at Bullman's Pizza today - delicious!

Kellan and Uncle Ryan

Our soccer star

Kellan and his teammates, John and John Paul, playing hard

A little pre-game warm-up

We are very proud of Mr. Kellan - he's becoming quite a little athlete!

Why did I do it?!

So I had this great idea of taking my three beautiful children shopping for Halloween costumers tonight by myself. I have no idea what made me think this would be a great idea since we couldn't even make it through dinner without crying tonight - I mean, the kids were crying. Marc and I just felt like crying.

Anyway, Megan and Kellan argued during th entire drive to Shopko - it seemed like hours, but it was really only 15 or 20 minutes. Once inside the store, the boys suddenly behaved as if they had never left the confines of our house - Jacksen became Houdini and climbed out of the shopping cart while snuggly buckled in and Kellan was running up and down the aisles at what seemed like 100 mph. We finally located the Halloween costumes after almost tipping over a Christmas tree (no kidding, in the middle of October!) when I saw a sign advertising all Halloween costumes were 50% off. I was feeling like the smartest chick in the world for stumbling upon such a great sale totally by accident. But then I looked at the price tags on the costumes. Who in the world would pay $99 for an infant teddy bear costume?! After much debate...and several idle threats of no bedtime snack if the boys did not put the Halloween masks back where they found them...we finally settled on a princess costume for Megan - a bargain at $12.50 - and a wolverine costume for Kellan (only $17).

Next year I think we'll manufacture out own costumes our of tin foil and duct tape. And, by the way, how are old are most kids when they outgrow the dressing up for Halloween thing?