Antics

The latest little attitude thing Josiah has been dishing out is "Do you understand me?" Pretty sure he is exactly mimicking us...and yes it always comes back to bite you in the ass, those little comments. But this little comment he used on me, in a not so quiet voice in Meijer the other day. He wanted to ride in the fun video carts and I told him no, we were just getting a couple of things. And he proceeded to yell at me "Do you understand me? I want to ride in the carts!!!!" Over and over actually! Funny as hell to all those surrounding me, but slightly embaressing to the mother. :) What do you do! Sadly to say, he got that cart, because I thought it was so funny...and yes to all those parents that are thinking that is going to bite me in the ass too, I know!

He has been so funny lately. "It was an accident" is the precursor to anything he has just done that has caused a mess. The great thing is, you know almost immediately when he has spilled something, pee'd his pants, knocked something over, because he comes and tells you it was an accident. Funny kid!

Sweet kid: He has learned the song "Santa Claus is coming to town". So one day he was sitting in time out for something quite minor. But he was sitting there as good as can be and he looks at me with the sweetest little face and says "Santa is coming to town". My heart just about melted, not necessarily because of what he said but because of how he said it :) About a week later, Dan picked him up from daycare where they had made glass mugs decorated to look like Santa, filled with candy. They got out to the truck and realized they had forgotten the mug inside and Josiah looks all sad and says "Santa's not coming to town?" I have yet to hear him sing the song, but my mom caught him singing it when he was all by himself :)

He is soooo excited about Christmas presents this year. So excited that he has already opened the presents that he made for Dan and I at daycare and wrapped himself. Then yesterday he waited until Dan got to Kim's to pick him up yesterday and then proceeded to open the one present left under the tree that was meant for another kid. Kim said he had been eyeing that present all day, and he just couldn't stand it anymore, so as soon as Dan walked in, he tore open the gift. Silly kid! Oh, but the classic opening present story happened at daycare the first day she had the tree up. She had wrapped a couple of presents and put them under the tree. Never did she imagine that it would be Josiah that would have to be watched. The first day, she caught him under the tree tearing only the corners of all the presents. To cute! She got a big kick out of it :)

I am sure there are many more antics that are worthy of putting down in type, but I can't think of any more right now. Just know that he is just a silly kid right now! And a whole lot of fun, when he isn't trying to be independent ;)

Digital Cards

I used a digital cards program to create the heading. I made the card, emailed it to myself, opened it and saved the image. And wala...the heading was created. I then had to match the background with the heading of course. I love having a laptop on my lap when I am mindlessly watching TV, especially on the weekends. The only bummer about this card making program was that you couldn't really do any of the designing...it was all prepackaged if you will. Hopefully I can get an updated version of photoshop so that I can use the digital scrapbooking programs.

Let me know what you think!

We had a great date day/night!

We never made it to the movies, but that decision made it a better day for both of us. It meant we didn't have to rush around to make it to a specifically timed movie. Shopping was good and food was good. The rest of the night we played the Wii. I bought Mario Party 8 for the Wii for Dan (and myself) for Christmas, plus another guitar for really cheap so could both play guitar hero....way more fun:) Great day/night!!!

Visit to Grandma Julies and Birthday Party

The silly cat jumped on the cake box and pushed the train into the cake and smeared the writing, but you get the jist that it is a birthday cake for Josiah's 3rd birthday :)

Josiah enjoyed the frosting on the cake the best of all.

Crayola's Glow Station was a big hit. And with my new camera I can use a slow shudder or writing with light. Pretty cool feature.

Josiah couldn't wait to open Presents, so he helped himself to opening the first one.

Party Preparations with Grandma Julie

Visit to Grandma Julie's House in the UP

Making Cookies with Mom

Black & White/Sepia Fun

These black and white pictures are from Josiah's Birthday at McDonalds (his choice).

The Sepia pictures were just a day during one of our first snows this year. Josiah and I were having a snowball fight.

Date Day and Night

Today is a day for mom and day, aka, Heather and Dan minus Josiah. My mom and Bob have taken Josiah for the weekend. The original plan for getting a weekend babysitter was for Dan's company party hat was scheduled for last night which was cancelled because of the storm. But because of the storm, Mom and Bob came and picked Josiah up on Thursday night. So we have a whole day today free of responsibility. Every once in a while it is a great feeling.

So today we are watching the movie that I was to tired to watch last night. I got home around 10pm last night and Dan had gotten a movie. I got a glass of wine took a couple of sips, sat down and swiftly fell asleep. So much for a kid free Friday night. But we woke up nice and early today and are watching the movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth". So far a bit cheesy, but it has Brandon Frasure, so who cares how cheesy the movie is :) After the movie we are heading into town so Dan can finish his Christmas shopping. Then we are going to see a Matinee "Seven Pounds". After the movie we are going out to eat at a Bar and Grill that we have a gift certifiate for. I looked it up online and the most expensive thing on the menu is about $4 and we have a $50 gift certificate. I am figuring that even witht a couple of drinks and an appetizer we should be able to eat out here at least twice ;) Apparently this place has the best burgers in town. We shall see. Free food to me is always good food!

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Putting 2 and 2 together

1st story: we were up at my mother in laws over Thanksgiving. She keeps a salt/pepper shaker by her chair in the living room (at a perfect height for a 3 year old to grab ahold of it). And grab ahold he did. Actually the point when I saw the shaker again it was in Josiah's hands and the salt was empty. I told Julie to beware...all of her salt was gone and I have no idea where Josiah dumped it.

2nd Story: I bought this cool tupper ware thing that works great for cereal at a garage sale this summer. So I finally got around to putting our favorite cereal (Cinnamon toast crunch) in the thing back in the beginning of November. Hey at least I am using it!! As I was packing to go up north for Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I would stick the tupperware with the cereal in since it was already set for packing. Over the course of the weekend, Josiah had been in and out of the thing. Saying the cereal made him happy! Too cute! When we got home, about 2 weeks later, Josiah and I had the Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It tasted funny, but I thought it was the milk. It was a brand we hadn't had before. I actually said something to Dan about it and he said he didn't notice anything funny about it. He just thought it was 1% instead of skim. Nope, it was skim. But I still just wrote it off as something wrong with the milk. I had it again a week later and it still tasted funny, but still nothing clicked that there was something wrong with the cereal.

The 2 and 2 moment: occurred while trying to fall asleep for an afternoon nap last Sunday. Something the pastor said at church about Salt of the Earth. And then all of the sudden, out of way left field, it clicked....yep, I know you have all guessed it by now...Josiah had dumped the salt shaker into the tupperware with the cereal. The confirmation test: there was actually salt around the rim that I thought was sugar from the cereal. The taste test confirmed that it was salt. Soooooo grosse! But then again I suppose it really could have been worse. Silly kid!

ElfYourself by OfficeMax

The following 4 posts are just to funny and were just to fun putting together. The fourth one that is labeled (Country Line Dancing) is actually the original ElfYourself Dance...I just named it wrong.

The bummer about them is that you will have to go to my side bar (along the right hand side of the blog) and hit pause on my "playlist" that I finally got working today. In order to get the full effect of Josiah the Dancing Disco elf...I would suggest turning the playlist music off.

Here is the link if you want to create your own elf dancers

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/

Have fun and Enjoy!!

Country Line Dancing Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The Charleston

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

disco

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Country Line Dancing

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Play list and family tradition

All of my changes to my blog have been inspired by a good friend who has learned from friends who have blogged before her. Check out her blog. I sent you to this particular blog post because she talks about Christmas traditions...a really great one I might add.

Our family traditions are not as elaborate, but just as meaningful to us because we have done it every year since Dan and I married. If you look over at the playlist that I have just added, there is a song titled "You gotta get up" and we have woken either each other up or our families or now Josiah every Christmas morning to that song blaring in the house. I love it! It is so much fun and just gets me excited about Christmas day happenings. One day I am sure Josiah will have to have a copy of his own, because I am sure that in the not to distant future he will be waking us up in the morning dawn. I can only hope that for this year anyway, he wakes up an heads to our room bypassing all the presents under the tree that will not have been there the night before and comes to wake us up before proceeding to open all of his and our presents. I can just see it;) What a laugh and story that would be!!!

Another tradition that my family has carried on is new pajamas to where to bed on Christmas eve. That was the only present we could open (at least in my memory). Dan's family opened most of their presents on Christmas eve except the stockings and Santa gifts which were saved for after Santa came.

I have almost always gone to Christmas Eve service at our church as well. Some years I was even able to play my trumpet at them. As of right now though, I don't know if my work will let me out early, so I don't know if I will be able to go to our church's service. I would be really sad if I had to miss it for work, but there isn't much I can do except pray that they let us out early.

Another tradition I can remember were these little stockings that were hung on the tree, about 2 inches long. There was always a few coins in the stockings on Christmas morning. A silly, but fun tradition that I remember always looking forward too. Luckily the one stocking I have on our tree already has coins in it, so I just have to remember to point Josiah in the right direction.

If I remember more, I will share, but feel free to share any of your favorite childhood family traditions. We are always looking for ones to start with Josiah now that he is of the age where he will start to remember from year to year.

New Look

I am working on the header. I have just been introduced to digital scrapbooking, however the version of photoshop that I have did not download the pictures right and I was on my own to add stuff and I am not that creative ;) So I will have to do some more searching. Plus I would love to have a family picture to put on the header.

But I love being able to do a different background than the 10 templates that blogger has. So much fun and so personal. My next thing to add is music. We'll see if I get ambitious tonight. Since none of my shows are on tonight, I just might have to do some more fiddling!!!

The Monkey Dance

If there is ever a time that I am feeling at all down or blue, I can simply ask Josiah to do the Monkey Dance and I am instantly happy. I have laughed to tears watching him run around the house doing this dance. He just looks like a limp noodle and I can't help but smile. So enjoy!!

I'm Back and armed with a laptop!!

Once again it has been over a month since I posted. Time just gets away from me and I just haven't had much time to sit down at a computer. However, I now have Dan's old computer that I can take with me to work and happily enough, the company that resides above my work office is a computer education school. So they have an unsecure wireless network that I can tap into. Not sure if I should publicize that, but I am excited nonetheless.

So I don't even know where to start really! Work is going well for the time being. Working with 4 girls has been the most trying work environment I have faced so far. these days, most days are good, but in the not so distant past, every day was bad. So who knows what next week or even tomorrow will bring. I just try to come in every day as though no one is upset at me and I do my very best to pretend that no one ever gets annoyed with me. Because the second I do, I turn inward and that causes tension. So I try to just be open and happy as much as I can be. And you know what....it works! As long as I can stay in that mind set, work seems to be going well.

Dan is doing well. He had a bad bout with his back right before Thanksgiving! Thank goodness that by the time we were up to the UP for our break, it was feeling better. Work seems to be going along for him. His supervisor keeps forgetting that he can't take any board up calls in the evenings because he has Josiah. But other than that...ok! Like I said he got a new computer, so he is super excited about that!!! Which makes me not only happy, but excited that I too have a laptop computer of my very own!!

We are all healthy!!

I will do an update for Josiah with pictures on another post...so stay tuned! It might even happen tonight, but no guarentees.

Fun with Cody and Brady (photoshoped)

During the last week of summer/fall a couple of weeks ago. A good friend of mine, Dawn and her kids, Cody and Brady. What a fun couple of days we had. One day we went to the local park and the boys played and played. Then we went to the zoo! I still can't believe what great weather we had that week. And then of course since I just went to this photoshop class, I have been playing around. I am not all that creative but I am having fun!!

Original

Black and white with some color

Original


black and white with color

Original


black and white with color

Original


Black and white

Original


Notice where Brady is looking in the original picture

Original

Notice that there are crumbs of food on the original and they are gone on the new Original

Black and white/red shirt
Original


Notice the Position of the Lama

Original

Mosaic filter

Original

Cropped

Blurred background to bring out the people

This one is kind of weird, but the background is in color and the people in black and white.

Original


Black and white with red shoes ;)