Be careful Daddy...

Joe goes out to turn the grill on for dinner. As he's walking out the back door, Ellery says, "don't fall in the hole Daddy."

Why do I do this to myself?

What did you do this evening. Better yet, this last week (and the next few) after your kids went to bed? Me, you ask? Well, I painted, and I'm painting, and I'll be painting. I called my parents to ask what event in my childhood caused me to be so particular and determined to make things difficult for myself. What's wrong with simply painting the room green. Better yet, why not just leave it the plain "builder brown" as I call it? Why would I decide to paint it two colors and then, if that wasn't bad enough, scallop the edge??? But...I have to admit...it is pretty cute! Now if I can just finish the rest of the room before we move again.

My new coffee table book

Grady's Baby Book

He climbed up the entire flight of stairs (all 16) by himself this morning.

Sam's Club

I went into Tulsa the other day with Ellery and Grady. I needed to run to Sam's Club for my monthly stock up. Ellery was so excited to go to Sam's (I could not figure out why.) She kept asking, "when are we going to be there? Why did they named it "Sam's Club"? Are we going straight there? Why is it taking so long?" When we pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car she said, "Mommy, this isn't Sam's Club." I told her it was. She then said, "this isn't Betsy's house." Now I understand why she was so excited. She thought we were going to my friend Betsy's, who's son's name is Sam. Hey, it's his club, right? Lucky guy.

We have a hole in our backyard

Well...too late to turn back now! There is a giant (well, not that giant) hole in our backyard. The girls are hoping they can go swimming this weekend. Too bad life doesn't work like that!

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Pajama Day

I go outside to get the kids for dinner and Molly looks at me and says, "Mommy, are you still in your pajamas?" I smile and answer yes. She then says, "Gee, I wish I could be in my pajamas all day." The tone in her voice was more like the adult sarcastic version of "must be nice." Now let me explain WHY I'm still in PJs...I got up this morning, fed the baby, got all the kids changed and dressed, made breakfast for the family, put Grady down for nap, then cleaned up after breakfast, wrestled with the girls to go down for a nap, then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out my new vacuum cleaner and then testing it by vacuuming every nook and cranny of the entire house (see post about Dyson) in between fixing lunch, changing diapers, cleaning up, and feedings. So...I'm still in PJs (even now as I type this) because I have spent the whole day taking care of everyone else instead of me. But that's the life of a mommy, right? =)

Dyson vs. Kenmore

Moving from Bellingham to Bartlesville reminded me how lucky I was that our last home had a central vacuuming system. This is something that I dearly miss, but when I had a company come out to give me an estimate, the $3,500 price tag put a hold on having one installed. So, I've been using my old (3 1/2 yrs) Kenmore canister vac. It works pretty well (or so I thought), but does have some quirks and a few broken parts. Last night, Joe wanted to take a family outing to Lowe's (doesn't that sound like fun???) so off we went, to pick up a few things for our weekend projects (he might think twice about that idea next time). Well, I've been looking at some stick vacs and hand vacs because the movers left the base to my little hand vac in Washington...and you can't buy just a charger. Of course you have to walk by the really nice vacuums to get to the piddly little ones....and back by them to get out of the aisle. There at the beginning of the aisle was a shiny new Dyson vac, just begging me to check it out....so of course I did. And while I was looking at this wonderful machine, I happened to notice that they were all 20% off. Hey, I was saving us $110. Actually, I was saving us over $3,000 by getting a simple vacuum, instead of having one installed, so buying a new machine wasn't that big of a deal, right? Well, I bought it...just to take home a look at it for a bit...I can always take it back, right??? I had just vacuumed yesterday with my old machine, so thought I'd take the Dyson for a little test run on the already "clean" carpet. OH MY GOODNESS...I cannot believe how much dust and dirt that thing picked up from my "clean" carpet!!! Disgusting!!! I couldn't just stop with the living room carpet, I had to vacuum the whole house. I won't even tell you how quickly I filled the canister...and I consider myself a pretty good housekeeper. My little Kenmore...GONE! Thank you Mr. Dyson.

Grady's Baby Book

He's started cruising on furniture. He's also giving kisses now....you know, the open mouth gummy kiss, where you just pray that he doesn't spit up.

Naptime?

Two of my boys taking a snooze. A day with the Gallagher kids just plum tuckers you out!

Cabo, the drama, in three parts

Part 1: Getting there

After about 2 hours of sleep, we woke all the kids up (crazy, I know) at 4:30, to drive to the airport in Tulsa. Our flight left at 6:45 and Tulsa is a small airport, so we figured if we get there by 5:30 we'll be ok. That would have been find if it hadn't taken forever at the check-in counter. Upon checking in, we find that, whoops, Joe's passport expires 2 days before we return home (slight oversight), we're late, so we'll deal with that later. When we get to security, the line is way too long for 6:15 in the morning. Like Tulsa is a metropolis??? Those of you who've travelled with small children, know the amounts of stuff that comes with it, so it takes forever to unload everything that has been so carefully and efficiently packed, including a car seat and stroller. Not to mention trying to get the kids to cooperate by getting shoes off, through the machine, and back on, all while what they really want to do is go back to sleep. We're at the part where we're walking through the sensor and I realize there announcing "last call" for the flight. We send Joe running ahead to stop the plane. It worked, because we had a gate agent come grab the baby and escort us (and our accouterments) running through the terminal to make the plane. Right about this time I realized that I have quite a headache. Lack of sleep, stress, adrenaline? Who knows!?! All I know is that because we're flying on a small aircraft and we got there so late, I had to check my carry on, which contains my advil and Immitrex. Not good. What a lovely start to our vacation, right? Then the screaming begins. Grady, we've come to find, is not a traveler. (Luckily there was another baby on board, so we were able to blame the noise on him...come to find out that his parents did the same to us! =) When we arrive in Denver, I run to my suitcase to dig out my migraine medicine, but it's already too late. Full blown migraine with nausea and everything. As we wait for our next flight, I try to make a decision on whether or not I can even fly. When boarding time arrives I asked for a "barf bag" right when I entered the plane. The flight attendant scrambles for a garbage bag (did I look that sick?) and asks if I'm ok to fly. (I wasn't sure if she was asking due to my stomach or the three kids we had in tow?) Well, I survived the flight (barely) and was thrilled to get off the plane By the time we got through customs, my head was bearable (only 12 hours later). My parents flight arrived shortly after ours, so we had just cleared customs when they got in line. The girls were so excited to see them and watched them snake through the line, waving and yelling at them every few minutes. I set their car seats up for viewing, so the girls sat side-by-side in their seats, watching the customs line like a movie. Too cute!!! Anyway, to make a really long story (oh, wait...maybe that was just a really long day?) shorter....we arrive in paradise 12 hours later, quite tired, but ready for a great vacation.

Part 2: The vacation

More to come on this...but I'll post some pics for now.

Part 3: Getting home

Let me start off by saying that I never want to get back on an airplane with my children. The abbreviated version... Joe had to leave early; despite attempts to get his passport extended, the State Department, the Embassy, the Airlines, nor Customs were much help. One agency actually suggested that Joe catch a flight to Tijuana, walk across the border, and catch another flight home...but I won't tell you who told us that because we never had that conversation. (Do you feel safe now?) So, Pat and I were left to travel with the 3 kids. I had planned Grady's feedings with the flight schedules, as much as possible, so of course everything went wrong. Our flight was about 2 hours late leaving Cabo, which left seriously grumpy and hungry kids because by the time we got into Denver, get through the enormous customs line (we were last in line due to waiting for our gate-checked stroller), get our luggage, re-check it to Tulsa, walk/run the 18 million miles from the international terminal to security, get through security (refer to Part 1 for more on security fun), navigate the gazillion escalators and elevators to arrive at the outer-most point of the terminal where (once again) they were announcing final boarding for the flight. During this time, I had wrapped Grady in the Moby, had his car seat in the stroller, Ellery sideways in his car seat holding onto all our documents and my carry on, Molly sitting on the back of the stroller with me dragging the whole load by the handle of Grady's seat, all while holding another car seat in my other hand. Pat was packing our roller board, the girls backpacks, the diaper bag, and a car seat. I'm sure we were quite a site. Besides the fun of getting through the airport, there were the actual flights. As I've determined earlier, Grady is not a traveler, so I won't even go into detail about the crying, not feeding and not sleeping on his part. Over the course of the two flights (3 1/2 hours and 1 1/2 hours), I visited the shoebox bathroom on the airplane no less than 15 times. If one of the girls didn't have to go, Grady was constantly pooping and I was trying to change diapers on my lap. If that wasn't bad enough, I ran out of baby wipes on the last flight (due to the many diaper changes), plus they were low on potable water (the water they use for lavs and coffee...not exactly in that order), so the last few times I was in the lav, I was trying to rinse the soap off of my hands with barely a misting spray of water. The good news...we all made it home. All in all, the travelling was worth the wonderful week spent with our family.