Photos of the Day(s)...and such

Day 42 (2/11/12):

K, so this is a little bit of a cheat because I did not actually take this photo.  But Stu and I were going on a Valentine's date and Ryann wanted to take our picture.  She did a nice job, huh?!

Day 43 (2/12/12):

I just can't help it; the sight of Adam "reading" makes my heart go pitter-pat!

Day 44 (2/13/12):

Awwwww, I captured a precious Daddy-daughter moment.  Stu was brushing Ryann's hair after her shower that night.

Day 45 (2/14/12):

Sweet Valentine of mine :)

Day 46 (2/15/12):

This was a near miss folks.  This is seriously the only photo I snapped today.  The dog, drinking, and being reflected back at herself in the front of the dishwasher.

Day 47 (2/16/12):

Ryann at her piano lesson this afternoon.

I am a busy, busy lady these days and haven't been keeping good track of the funny goings-on around here but stay tuned for some Fridge Funnies or Car Conversations coming up. 

Here's a preview:

Tonight at the dinner table, we were asking the kids how their days went.  Max reported that H (at daycare) called Adam a name and so Max "told on H" since he was "being a bully".  Adam harrumphed, "Yeah!  He was bein' a balloon".  I guess he was mispronouncing "bully".  Later, the conversation had somehow evolved to whether or not the kids liked being in my belly when I was pregnant.  I told them that Max liked being in there the best and tried to stay in the longest.  I said that Adam was the most eager to get out and was trying to get out early.  He asked, "Was I trying to budge my way out?"  I laughed and told him yes, he most certainly tried to budge out early.

Photos of the Days catchup!

This has been a crazy, wild, crazy, busy, crazy, unexpected, crazy, exhausting, crazy, rewarding, crazy, draining, crazy, insane, whirlwind of a week.  Again, there's stuff that goes on that just is what it is and not everyone needs to know about it at this moment.  Maybe one day, I will feel compelled to share.  Don't know if anyone cares now or will care in the future but, there it is.....

Anywho, despite the craziness of it all, I managed to take at least one photo each day!  Sometimes there was just the one, so you get what you get, but here they are:

Day 36 (2/5/12):

Someone gave us Uno Roboto for Christmas (I think it was Stu's mom).  Dude! (As the kids are all saying every other sentence these days)  This game rocks.

Day 37 (2/6/12):

My three Snippets sharing togetherness time with the iPad.  This is how I stretch out the time between them being ready to go to daycare/school and the moment we actually need to get out the door in the morning.  Each kid gets approximately 5 minutes on the iPad each.  There's usually no bickering or fighting.  Glory be.

Day 38 (2/7/12):

I do have some close friends who know about what's going on in my/our world right now.  I have a very special neighbor-friend who has made it her mission to reach out and be there for me, even though she's currently a snow-bird with her hubby, living in a condo in Phoenix for two months.  She's one of those people you know God placed in your life path for a very definite purpose.  She's left inspirational notes and sweet little gifts for me with my daycare provider.  I get a little present almost every day when I drop the kids off.

Day 39 (2/8/12):

Takin' care of both me and Adam today.  It was time for his quarterly check up with Dr. B.  His eyes look absolutely, beautifully perfect!  Now we don't go back for about four and a half months.  At that time, Adam will have a full exam with dilation.  If it's time, his prescription will be changed....to a LOWER prescription.  The plan is that his glasses will get less and less thick as time goes on and Adam may need nothing but his IOLs to see with when he and his eyes are done growing.  Amazing, miraculous, blessed times we live in!!

Day 40 (2/9/12):

We've been in a Valentine card frenzy around here lately.  All three kids having been signing their names to approximately 65 cards for their classmates and teachers. 

Day 41 (2/10/12):

Max has a stack about 5 inches thick of Pokemon cards.  He'd been fascinated with them since the beginning of the school year.  Suddenly, he's decided that Pokemon cards are ok but Yu-gi-oh cards are the new rage.  His stack of Yu-gi-oh cards is only about a quarter inch thick, thus he didn't notice that the small bunch remained in the pocket of his pants he shoved down the laundry shoot.  Uh-oh!!  Dad to the rescue!!

Photos of the Days and Basketball

Day 32: Remember Riley William Bruneau?  He's my cousin's baby boy who was born a year and a half ago with a serious heart defect.  He is miraculously healthy and handsome to behold.

Day 33: Some nights, you have to chuck your dinner plans and just have Mickey D's.  This was one of those nights.  Didn't bother my kiddos any.

Day 34: The van is not the only thing around our household that's flashing warning signs about "Change Required"... I'm working on it....

Day 35: We woke up to the most beautiful frost on the bare branches of the trees in our neighborhood this morning.

Max had his second-to-last morning of basketball today.  The Roseville Varsity boys held a clinic for the little guys.  It was fun to watch the Little Hoopers learn skills and do drills with the big boys and the Varsity coaches:

Some Photos of the Days and Sledding Sans Snow

Day 28: My little girl got her own library card recently. This weekend she asked if we could go to the library so she could check out her own books with her very own card!

Day 29: Ryann's also the Day 29 photo.  This girl LOVES to color!  She loves to draw and create, but she REALLY loves to color.  The outside of her bedroom door was covered with her masterpieces so during "rest time" on Sunday, here is how she spent her time:

Day 30: I telecommuted today.  This is what that looks like:

I so love working from the comfort of my own couch!

Day 31: I managed a self-portrait while in the drive-thru at the bank this afternoon :)

It has been unseasonably warm and un-snowy in Minnesota this winter (I'm NOT complaining)!  But when you have school age kids who got sleds from Santa for Christmas - you find a secret sliding hill with a decent amount of snow and you make it work.  And when your husband insists you must go down at least once because it's "exhilerating", you go down.  And find it is exhilerating.  Especially the part where the heels of my boots bounced on the snow at the end of the hill and I got a face and mouth-full of icy, wet stuff.

Ryann thought it was hilarious that the hill was slippery enough, she could slide down on only her snowpants and didn't even need a sled.

Dad Exhileration

Adam, and later Ryann, gave Mom a helpful push



Mom Exhileration

Catch up and other stuff

Dear Lovely Readers,

I've had a rough week this week.  I don't think I'll go into details now.  Those of you who are close to me in real life know what I've been going through and I'm not ready to divulge such intimate information to the entire world.  But, the best part of this week is that I made it through it and did it quite gracefully if I do say so myself.  Because the week was a little rough, I was unable to post a photo each day but I did take a photo each day. 

At first, I wanted to make sure I posted my photo of the day each day because I thought otherwise I might forget to even take a photo but now that I'm into the habit, I think I'll not forget and so I'll post when I feel like it and have the time.

So here goes on the Photo-a-day Challenge catch up:

Day 25 "My throne for the evening" (I was prepping for a medical procedure the following day):

Day 26 "The view from here" (I was lying in bed recovering from the above-mentioned procedure and here's what I could see reflected back to me from the full length mirror on the back of our bedroom door):



Day 27 "Plant in motion" (I am blessed to live in a suburb of the Twin Cities where we have all kinds of places and opportunities to enjoy.  One of them is the Como Zoo and Conservatory.  I've wanted, for years, to go to the Conservatory on a blustery winter day and sit in the warm, steamy atmosphere and read a book.  You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to do but sometimes you just don't make things a priority.  Now I'm glad I waited because when I first got the idea in my head, I didn't have a fancy-pants camera to capture the beautiful things to look at there.  I'm going to post my favorite photo from today as my "Day 27" photo but I'm also going to share a few more because I really got quite a few shots I really like):

Doesn't it look like it's moving?  Almost makes me a little dizzy :)

Here are a few more of my favorite shots:

And now for some "fridge funnies" I've been saving up.  Sorry to disappoint but these are all Adam!  Max and Ryann have been so sweet lately and I need to be better about writing things down the moment I think of it or it's gone.  Too many things going on in this scatterbrain of mine right now.

Now, remember, when you read Adam's lines you must say them in your head with a cute baby-talk accent (e.g., place sounds like pwace).

A few mornings ago, Adam coughed.  He then informed me, "When I coughed, wetness came outta my nose.  So I pumped it back in again so it wouldn't get all over the place."  I thought his pumping his boogies back in was quite considerate of him.

We have a rule in the Stewart house regarding eating meals.  Maybe I've shared it before.  We never force our kids to eat everything on their plate but they must try at least one bite of everything and, sometimes, if they've eaten barely anything, we insist they take a few bites of the thing on their plate that is most palatable for them.  I don't remember what we insisted Adam take a bite of but he was not a fan and exclaimed, "This tastes horrible!"  Let me tell you - hearing that phrase from a 3 and a half year old with a baby-talk accent is gut-busting.

Again, I don't remember the exact details of what was going on but I jotted down on my fridge note that I asked Adam, "What happened?  Did it overflow?"  Adam responded, "No.  It almost splatted out."  Splitting hairs or something lost in the interpretation; I'm not sure?  A distinct possibility is that Adam wasn't sure what I meant by "overflow" since he pronounces it "underflow".  The kid's a real optimist/glass half full kinda guy.

Adam is still plaguing Stu and I with nighttime shenanigans.  He either gets out of bed a million times to tell us he can't sleep, ask questions, make requests, or he lies in his room and kicks his feet against the wall and talks and sings so loudly, it drives us nuts!  Adam and Max share a room so my heart just hurts for Max having to lie there and listen to that but he has never once complained about it at the time and has only once or twice mentioned, in the morning, that he had difficulty falling asleep because of Adam.  Anywho, last night, Adam was whooping it up in his bedroom and Stu stomped down the hall and flung the door open to chastise him.  Things immediately became silent and then Stu heard, "Snnnnorrrt-choooo, ssssnnooorrrt-choooo, sssnnnooorrtt-choooo".  Adam was fake snoring!!!!



Day 24

Most of the time, Adam was crawling around on his hands and knees or wriggling on his back like a happy puppy on the ice tonight.  But I got one good shot of him actually on his feet!

Day 23

Sometimes it's the little things in life that you choose to think about to make you happy.  In this case, one very big window in our house makes me very happy.  I get a little warm feeling every time I look at or out our bay window.  This window we had installed about seven years ago, while I was pregnant with Max, makes our living room seem so much more spacious. The "ledge" of the window holds photos of my most precious people.  And I love being able to lean out and peer from side to side to check out what's going on in the 'hood.  I'm a little old lady like that.