‘aLicious!

Micah’s new description of most foods. At least when the fancy strikes him. Like his lunch today which was supposed to be a deconstructed ham and cheese sandwich, until he asked for peanut butter and jelly on the bread. After that it was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with ham and cheese on the side. And I think it might apply to the many money saving opportunities at www.Shutterfly.com. First I will say I have used both Snapfish and Shutterfly. I think the quality of their products is comparable, but in ‘ease of use’ Shutterfly comes out far ahead of their competition. In so many areas their products are just easier to customize than Snapfish’s and don’t even get me started on changing the font! (If you have received a Snapfish gift from me, I chose that font because it is Snapfish’s default and either you can’t change all the pages at once like you can at Shutterfly, or I just can’t figure out how. FAIL.)

Back to money saving. My last post, the memory book I did at Shutterfly for 2009, got me a $25 gift certificate to use at Shutterfly! And you can get one too, i fyou have a project at shutterfly simply go to it, and then 'share' and it will pop up instructions. Oh, I thought of another way that Shutterfly is better than Snapfish- you can use multiple coupon codes on a single order. At Snapfish you can only use one. I intend to combine my gift certificate with a good sale to get my 2010 memory book for free/ super cheap. By the way, if you scrapbook and don’t have a stockpile, making photo books online is thousands of times cheaper and way easier. Of course, if you do it because you enjoy the craftiness of it, by all means, keep on with what you are doing!

This post is inspired by Shutterfly’s Christmas Cards, and the 50 I will get for free when I am done! So far I like this one, but I am holding out for better pictures:

Good Blessings Religious Christmas 5x7 folded card

Personalize the christmas season with Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

Or how about this one with the matching thank you’s?

Joyous And Blessed Religious Christmas Card

Create modern Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Joyous And Blessed Holiday Thank You 3x5 folded card

Shop 100s of holiday cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

I also have been pondering Michael’s Christmas present. What do you think of this?

Blank Project Mouse Pad

Create personalized greeting cards and invitations by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

It’s only $7.99!


Finally if anyone out there wants to get me a present, I would totally go for something like this:

Blank Project Canvas Print

Create personalized greeting cards and invitations by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Except these are (while reasonably priced) really expensive!

Thanks for humoring me with all my getting my own free stuff posts! I guess a give-away would be more entertaining. Maybe I 'll send you a card. : )

2009

Click here to view this photo book larger

Where is my mind?

Ramen noodles. Top Ramen. Oriental flavored. Or as Micah requested, "Not those spicy noodles, and not spaghetti, the other one noodles. No, not those. Oh, Oh! Those blue square noodles! Yes! Those! Yay!!!" He ate all his noodles.

Micah has mastered his agc's, next time won't you sing with him?

It snowed last night. Micah was very excited when he saw it and immediately asked his dad for presents. It seems he has not forgotten Christmas.

Micah received a quilt in the mail from his great-aunt Joann. He was very pleased with his new puzzle floor thing. (he thought it was a rug).

If your following the potty training saga:

Micah went 3 days accident free and is back to about an accident a day now. Amy has not yet pottied in the toilet that I no of, but she sits on it a lot. Hannah fills her diapers happily. Constantly. I think she has been permanently poopy today.

Not much. . .

I'm not sure I could fairly say that Micah ate 'lunch' today. He did eat at least two cups of dry cereal in the period of time before and after I sat him down to lunch, but he did not eat much of what I put in front of him. I put salad in front of him, I put it in front of Amy too and she inhaled almost all of hers in about 5 minutes.

Aunty Val was over about a week ago and took some pictures, which I put on facebook, but I was thinking there are some people who love us, but don't love facebook, so here you go. I hear Hannah. I may not get this finished before she sends me to bed. Kids can be so bossy.

Micah went all day today in dry underwear. I know he has done this before, but it has been such a LOOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time. I know he knows how, but he is just so unmotivated. As he keeps explaining to me, "Mom, I go potty in the toilet A LOT. I did lots of times yesterday." He doesn't seem real thrilled when I tell him that its just a big part of life. And really, a rather important part. So this morning I told him if he ended the day with dry underwear (the same ones he started with) he could have popsicle. I discovered as the day drew to a close that this has multiple advantages. Not only did he consistantly go potty when he needed to, without me making him go at certain times, he ALSO wanted to go to bed early. Heh. Someday I am going to have to figure out how to parent without bribery. ugh.

Amy is talking more! Praise the Lord! It might also be that I am listening better. Or perhaps I have learned her language. Anyway, tonight her new word was "Yummy". Michael brought home a small watermelon that she wanted to eat, and it was indeed yummy. Earlier this week she learned "Me" whihc has also been popular with her since them. Amy is also being potty trained. officially. I think. maybe. She is very excited, as she has wanted to be potty trained for about 3 months now, but it just wasn't a good time. Now seems like a good time though. We started today, so we are nowhere, but still. Her favorite part is washing her hands and she sings "Jesus loves me" while she does it. She says mama mama mama maaaa ma ma etc. but keeps the tune better than I do. Probably. I can't really tell, actually.

Hannah is huge! Not really, but I had forgotten how 'big' they get right around 6 weeks. I had to put away all her NB clothes already. And her alert times are much more interesting now. She bats at toys and talks to them and looks all around and smiles at us- not as much as Amy, but on par with Micah at this age, I think. I'm getting quite fond of her. It's too bad they grow so fast. . . people should always be able to have a baby on hand.

I read Psalm 128 the other day. Gives you a little of God's perspective on children. How can we as a Church (much less a country) have drifted so far from this?

Here are our blessings:

Micah learns to draw faces. . .

Today Micah and Amy had spaghetti and grapes for lunch. Amy had parmesan cheese on her grapes. Micah preferred his cheese on his spaghetti. Hannah decided to nap during lunch, so I got to eat too. I had short ribs and spaghetti.

Micah practiced his art today. I am very impressed with his new talent- smiley faces. I just wish he drew them on something less . . . permanent. Like the magna-doodle.

Introducing Hannah LaVelle

9/9/10

12:27am

7lbs 19inches

A Sandwich of his own design. . .

I really should have taken a picture of it. The sandwich, I mean, which is what Micah had for lunch today. It involved two pieces of bread, some sweet pickles and some cheese. He had a rolled up piece of lunch meat on the side. And an apple.

Here's some of what we have been up to:

Eating dinner. Amy has such lovely table manners.

Playing with play-dough and drawing frogs. I thought that was a good enough frog to save forever. Or at least for a while. I mean, it seems to have all the right things (eyes, nose, mouth) in the right places, plus hands and arms. I didn't ask Micah about it though, I was pleased with my own interpretation and didn't want to find out that those are really it's boobies and bum-bum and who knows what else. . .

We've got some extra kids this week and in their honor, we are havinga new blog. Will it ever be updated again after they leave? I don't know, but if you want to look at it: http://www.sticksfordinner.blogspot.com

Argh, formatting on blogspot could drive a person batty. Good thing I DON'T CARE. Thank you. We are going to go make dinner now.

Easing in. . . .

I seem to have lost my blogging motivation somewhere, along with all my energy and general physical good feelings. Since I seem to have picked the energy back up somewhere along the way, I guess it might be time to ease back into sharing Micah's lunch, too. Besides I don't write anything else down and if I don't do this, I will forget all these things.

Today Micah had halibut, beans, and rice for lunch, along with a few bites of salmon. Amy had the same thing, but twice as much. As usual.

Micah has been a gold mine of quotations lately:

"I not selfish, I Micah. Selfish swim in water."

"Amy a big boy too, Mom!"

"Big boys not like diapers, big boys like jammies!" (and apparently cannot remember the word 'underwear')

"Noah said, "Hi, Jesus! Let's go on the boat!""

'

"One, two, three, Jesus me. One, two, Jesus me. . ." (More honest perhaps than the original 123 Jesus loves me, 12 Jesus loves you.)

"Amy! Shut down!!!" (I don't know where he has heard shut up a lot, I haven't noticed Michael and I using it in this context at all. . . at least he's heard it little enough that people shouldn't easily recognize it while we are teaching him not to say it.)

"Maybe lay Amy down on this table like in that picture, Mom?" (After she nursed to sleep last night)

Chicken and Peas and Fries

Today Micah had macaroni and cheese for lunch. At dinner he looked across the table at me and said, "Thank you, Juwie." If he has a little sister he wants to name her Amy, Angel, Jesus or God. We don't really have a girl name picked, so I've been asking him. I don't think we'll go with any of those, though. He usually says sister if we give him a choice, but since we told him we would name his brother Noah he's been more and more excited about that idea.

Amy's walking around everywhere, she realized yesterday that she can push the little shopping cart we have, so she's been pushing it all around. Today she learned to steer it.

Micah has gotten into puzzles recently. We did a lot of 24 piece puzzles at Grandma and Grandpa Veal's Sunday and I forgot to eat while we were doing them, so now puzzles make me feel nauseated.

He was playing with the cats ear for a while tonight and then he noticed she has another so he announced he was "gonna go check it out" as he moved to the other side of her.

He pets Amy's hair when she is sad.

He hasn't nursed in about 4 weeks. He hasn't asked in about 3 days. Well, except when Amy was nursing and he said, "Micah drink that?"

35. The number of times he said "I'm a big boy!" today.

15. the highest number he can count to.

0. the number of times he has gone poopy in the toilet.

Alright, I need to eat and go to bed.