Detour...

Well we had sort of planned to stay at home this weekend but plans changed a little. We decided on Friday at about 5pm that we would head out of town to my parents house. We haven't been to La Crosse since Christmas so we quickly packed our bags and headed on our way. My dad took the boys this morning for a little while and my mother and me headed out to do a bit of shopping. Tonight we went to a local basketball game and let the boys run around. A good time was had by all.

Here the boys are checking our Rachel's new pets named Mac and Cheese.

Train Mess

The boys were busy this afternoon putting a train together.

Nick has taken the lead in clean-up duties and has told me to take the night off. He didn't have to tell me that twice! Nick has been so helpful around here lately, which has been nice because I haven't been feeling 100%.

I'd like to lie about my weekend but...

Nick won't let me. After asking Nick what I should write on the blog about this weekend he answered with, "Why don't you just be honest? Take for instance me and the truck, you didn't hold back when I made that mistake."

So here is my confession; I spent the weekend reading smutty books (yep, plural, as in more then one). There I said it. Don't frown down upon me people. Just because I didn't read anything thought provoking or enlightening doesn't mean it wasn't educational. Down right smut, the kind of books you can pick up at the grocery store. This is also the reason I haven't been able to blog, I've been so busy reading. The only thing missing this weekend was my bikini, a beach to sit on and the sun to soak up.

You will all be happy to know my kids had no idea what I was reading and I would have lied to them had they asked. They did have a bit of fun of their own.

Nick's cousins came over to play for a while.

Below is Geremu, the magician, right before attempted to split his beautiful assistant in half.

My boys enjoying each others company.

Early Morning Fun

We got a little more fun yesterday in the form of snow. When the boys woke up and realized it snowed again they were eager to get outside and "help" dad shovel. Here are a few pictures of the morning.

Not that long ago when it was a bit warmer the boys made a snowman. Well the temperature has since dropped and we never moved the snowman, so he is now an ice man that has made the driveway his home. I don't know if you can tell but his arms are a long reflector and a flag, so cars coming into the driveway notice him.

It's too bad I didn't get any front views of the boys, but this view isn't too bad either. I'm sitting my butt in the garage staying warm watching the boys do all the work:)

Little Helpers

Cullen and Geremu are lovin' Dad these days. The other day Geremu broke the bathroom faucet so it needed to be replaced. The boys "helped" or rather hung out under the bathroom sink while Nick was replacing it. I should give Cullen a little more credit then that, he did actually hand Nick tools when Nick described what he needed.

Don't you wish your boys were sexy like mine...

At one point Nick left the bathroom for a phone call. I went into the bathroom after I heard the boys laughing loudly. Loud laughing is never a good sign, it usually means trouble. Turns out Geremu had gotten a hold of the Lysol and numerous other cleaning products that are usually locked under the sink. Geremu ended up Lysoling himself and the bathroom. So not only did Geremu smell extra fresh and 99.9% disinfected but our shower curtain also got bleached. Cullen was totally entertained by the entire incident.

This next picture might bring back some memories from last spring ( http://awishwithwings.blogspot.com/2008/05/weeds.html ). Nick is not pulling weeds this time just vacuuming... a spot??? Anyways, thankfully he had the "helped" again of his boys.

If it wasn't for the "help" of our boys we wouldn't get any thing done around this joint.

Today was another beautiful day, temps in the 30's. So the boys enjoyed a little time outside on the screened in porch (think giant playpen). Here is what I walked out to while I was getting dinner ready tonight.

Their new party trick is to knock on the patio door. Then from in the house I yell, "Who is it?" Each time they make-up a different name and bust up laughing. I'm glad they get a kick out of spending time together.

AHOPE

There’s a movement growing. Everyday in the Western world someone’s eyes are opened to the orphan crisis that’s ravaging the developing countries. The problem seems so large and we seem so insignificant. We can make a difference though. By raising awareness we foster a community and as a community we can provide. We’re asking you to help us in creating that community.

World AIDS Orphan Day is May 7th. The AHOPE Store has developed a t-shirt to commemorate this day and the community of supporters that are growing year after year. Please join in by raising awareness. It’s simple. Order the newest t-shirt from the AHOPE Store for a $10 donation. (All proceeds go towards care of the children served by AHOPE.) Wear your shirt as often as possible, and especially on World AIDS Orphan Day. It will serve as a reminder to your community. It may even create a dialogue. That dialogue could open someone’s eyes. You might inspire them to do more, give more. Join us in creating a community that is committed to orphan care.

After seeing what one little t-shirt can do you might be inspired yourself. If that’s the case be sure to check out the World AIDS Orphan Day website. Here you can find further information on this grassroots campaign.

The new t-shirts images, designed by 13-year-old Isaiah, are shown below:

To order your shirt, please visit www.ahopestore.org.

AHOPE for Children is a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve the children of Ethiopia, with a primary emphasis on caring for orphans infected with HIV.

Happy Valentine's Day

What a beautiful day outside! We woke up to some fresh snow on the ground but it did warm up to mid 30's. Here's what the day included:

A walk outside.

Building a snowman.

A winter fire.

Sampling of snow from around the yard- yummy!

Tagged; Four and Four

I've never been "tagged" before so I'm a rookie with this. But we were tagged by Tony and Julie. Here's the game:
1. Go to the 4th folder where you keep your pictures on your computer.
2. Post the 4th picture in the folder.
3. Explain the photo.
4. Tag 4 fellow bloggers to join in the fun!

Here is the result:
This picture was taken by Nick when I was out of the country, in the Netherlands. I don't know the details of what happened but it seems pretty clear to me from the picture that Nick wasn't keeping a very close eye on Cullen this day.

We now tag:

1. Katie and Erik

2. Callie and Jason

3. Katie and Billy

4. Brigit and Chris

Patrick's Birthday

I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday because well we were up late with company. Here are a few pictures of our fun night. It was Patrick's (Erica's Dad) birthday and he came over for a party. I have much better pictures but they are on Nick's computer so I'll post more this weekend from our fun night. We had a great time celebrating with their family.

Here Patrick is shortly before leaving in his senior picture pose, he was trying to steal my favorite red vest. The vest is an entirely different story I'll explain some other day.

Mmm... ice cream cake!

As you can see from the below picture Geremu's New Year's resolution isn't really going so well. Here he is caught standing on the kitchen table busting a move. He likes to push a stool over to the CD player in the kitchen and turn on "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley then dance. I've recently taught him to "brush it off" when he dances and it's so cute when he does it. The kids can dance like you wouldn't believe! You might also want to note just how tall he is getting, he's like a really good weed!

Stay tuned in... I've been tagged and I'm going to do it tomorrow night!

Where is the week going?

I can't believe that tomorrow is already the middle of the week. I should have some good pictures posted tomorrow night. I'm not going to tell you what's happening but I will tell you that it involves a PARTY! Tonight Cullen and me had a special night together, just the two of us. It started with his school screening. Then I told him I would take him anywhere he wanted to eat, he choose Red Robbin. Afterwards we came home and decorated sugar cookies for V-Day.

Truck for Sale

So if you have been following this blog for a while you may remember when I ran out of gas in Nick's truck. Well our beloved truck is now for sale. The truck has never given us any problems and was a dream come true when we bought it. Our family is growing (slowly) and we would like to keep at least one vehicle that gets good gas mileage. So the time has come to put the truck for sale. We recently bought a Sexy Honda Odyssey with a little hail damage on it's body, who doesn't have a little of that? (I'm just going to tell people we live by a driving range.) So Nick has spent time cleaning, changing oil and just lovin' his truck before he has to part with it.

Today I put Geremu down for his nap and fell asleep in the process. Nick comes into the room shortly after I fell asleep and tells me to hurry, I need to get up. So I go out into the hall to see what this is all about and he proceeds to tell me that he was driving with Cullen and something is wrong with his truck. While he was driving the truck started smoking. To make an extremely long story short I'm just going to say he left the truck on an off ramp, one mile down from where I was when I ran out of gas.

Some "really nice man" and his son gave him a ride back to our house. I did ask him if he asked the "really nice man" if he wanted to buy the truck. Apparently, he wasn't interested. Nick did "think" he could fix it so he wanted me to bring him back. I woke Geremu up from his very short nap and put him in the car next to Cullen then grabbed the camera. As Nick gets into the car he looks at me and asks, "Why did you bring the camera?" Um, because I've got a blog and I need to capture this memory on film.

So we get to the truck (pictured below), stop drooling over the lovely purple color.

People, this could be yours!

Nick fixes the truck within five minutes of our arrival. It turns out the last time he changed the oil (a week ago) Nick put the wrong oil filter in, he used one for the car on the truck. So oil was shooting out because it wasn't sealed tight. Part of the afternoon was spent cleaning oil off of the truck and lovin' it a bit more. You will all be happy to know that the truck is still for sale and working as good as it did the day we drove it off the lot (only now it has more then 150,000 miles on it). Don't all start calling at once. Nick summed up the incident tonight, "A lesser idiot would have run the truck until it ran out of oil." But not my husband!

Geremu is doing excellent today, althought he didn't sleep so excellent last night. I think he slept too much yesterday during the day and today his nap was cut short so he was VERY tired tonight. You would never know that he had surgery yesterday, he is such a freakin' trooper (he gets from his mama).

We are in the midst of a heat wave, it was in the 40's today so we spent most of the day outside.

Surgery= Best Case Senario

Geremu had surgery today, this was planned and scheduled. I'm not going to go into to much details, I'll just say teeth and dinker. It was early this morning and we have been hanging low ever since. You will all be happy to know Geremu is doing very well and it went much better then we had thought it all would. Less work actually had to be done then all of the different doctors we took him to thought he would need!

I hadn't blogged much this week because I didn't want to voice my worries but now that's it's all over, I'm feeling like a million bucks. Geremu on the other hand is only feeling about half of that. I'm hoping tomorrow goes well but I think the day after surgery is usually worse then the day of. I'll keep you all posted.

Oh, I also think I may have broken a record today by reading more children's books aloud in one day then anyone ever has in a single day- seriously.

Erica, Erica, Erica!!!

Some of you might remember our good friend Erica, she will be visiting often!!! I'm not sure who in our family is more excited- we feel so lucky to have her around. She graduated with her Masters in December and just accepted a job close by, today was her first day of work.

Below Cullen is talking to Erica's Dad on the phone. Shortly after this picture was taken Geremu got his chance to talk. He tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder then walked out of the room (I have no idea where he gets this from) but when we caught up to him he had closed the phone thus hanging up on Erica's dad.

Erica reserving her spot for the Bachelor. I'm not sure it was the best seat in the house since Geremu climbed all over her for the majority of the show.

I'm sure you will be hearing more about Erica, perhaps I'll make her guest blog some time...