The Premier

I know most of you have already seen this, but I too must post our pic from last night. The premier of Eclipse was amazing. And seeing Twilight and New moon first was the icing on the cake! I was commenting to Erica that it was awesome just to be sitting in a room with 500 or so other people that were just as happy and excited as I was. You could feel the energy in that room. It was also nice to know that there were so many other people who loved it as much as I did! And that many of them were my age or older! Yes, there were even middle-aged men there!

It was a great night. One that I won't soon forget. Also, I must say how grateful I am that my kids are at camp right now because I have been absolutely worthless today. I don't do well with little sleep. It was worth it though! Soooo worth it!! Thanks to Erica and Annalynn for experiencing it with me!!

And as for the whole Team Edward, Team Jacob thing... I think we figured it out last night. It seems that Jacob's fans are younger girls and Edward's are more Mom's like me. Here's the reason, Jacob's still a boy. An admittedly gorgeous boy with a smokin' hot bod, but a boy just the same. Edward on the other hand is a man. A mature man who knows what he wants and who he is. God, I love Edward!!

Looking forward to the release of Breaking Dawn part 1 on Novemeber 18, 2011. You can bet that I'll be there!!

The power of the pen

As soon as my kids learned to pick up a crayon, they have both loved to draw and write. Logan began drawing me pictures when he was just a little thing. He started using them to convey emotion too. Especially when he was angry. Some of those pictures scared me a little (blood and guts!)

Then came the note writing. There are signs all over Logan's door telling everyone who can and cannot come in, if they have to pay, etc.

Ellie, being much newer to writing has really just started using this form of expression. Here are 2 of her latest. The first is hanging on her door. She was mad at Logan when she made it. I thought it was so cute!

If you can't read it (pencil is hard to photograph in a dim hallway) it says, "Logan may never come in my room agin for the holle summr No love (by the heart) Brokcen hart" ( I think the writing and spelling is pretty good for someone who just turned 6!)

The second she gave me last night. Not sure what I did to deserve that, but it was nice to get a fond note rather than an angry one! (translation: Mommy is nice, never mean and thoughtful)

Just love my kiddos (especially when they're at camp! Ha!)

My Edward "collection"

I have to justify myself by saying that I didn't purchase ANY of this stuff. The universe just keeps bringing it to me. (Well, actually Erica gave me the doll and the little box). The other 2 things we just got this weekend in Burger King kids meals. Does anyone else think it's weird that they have Twilight stuff as the prize in a kid's meal? I didn't think their fans were that young. Maybe it's more for the Mom's like me!!

The crest is actually a giant ring with Edward's hologram picture inside. Maybe I'll wear it tonight! Ha!

The last item is a wallet. Logan got this one. He's actually using it too! It's not specifically "Edward", but I decided not to hold that against it.

I may just have to take the "kids" to burger king a few more times and see what else I get!

Gordan Alfonzo

I just love calling him by his whole name. It makes me smile every time. Logan gets mad at me though, so I have to do it in private. I was checking on him today after the kids left. He's been moved onto Logan's desk in his room. Stuart didn't like eating with him on the kitchen table. Can't imagine why? I must admit I've grown pretty fond of him. Who knew? Anyway, Erica suggested that I take another pic with something in it for scale. So I did. He likes to "hide" in the rocks we gave him. Pretty big, huh?This is his little belly. I like his little legs sticking out and his little mouth.

While I was at it, I decided to take one of him with Edward. That made me smile too. :-) Tomorrow, Edward...

It's almost here!!

22 hours and counting...

"Dad Life"

This is the funniest freakin' thing I've ever seen!!

Gordan's new legs!

This is not the greatest pic due to backlighting and murky water (needs to be changed again!). But, you can clearly see his new little legs and even his webbed feet!

I'm hoping watching him grow will help me to like him more than I would if we got him when he was already grown. Like this...

This remains to be seen!

Butterflies and Turtles

Our butterflies hatched over the past few days. We didn't really get to see any good hatching since it's pretty quiet when it happens and it seems to happen pretty quickly. They leave a long trail of "bloody" stuff when they hatch. It's gross. But they are very pretty butterflies. We decided to let them go today.
Painted Lady butterflyThe last one out actually landed on Ellie's finger. The kids wanted that to happen since they show it on the commercial.

I was surprised that it stayed there for a while and even went onto Logan's finger too!

Yesterday morning I went out for a bike ride (too late- around 9 am). It was already sooo hot! Along the trail behind our house I found a huge turtle. I debated what to do. If I went home to tell the kids, I would be cutting my ride very short. If I didn't, they could miss a really cool thing. So I went home and got them. After we went to see if it was still there and look at it, we went back and told Stuart about it. He's a notorious turtle lover since childhood. I told him I was a little worried that it was pretty far from the pond and I didn't want anything to happen to it.

So we got a bucket and headed down the trail to find him. He had moved and we didn't see him at first. But then, we found him and loaded him up in the bucket.

This is the pond by our house where they live. On the way to the pond we saw another stray turtle. It was in the street, so we added it to the bucket. When Stu first reached down to get it, it peed everywhere! Eeewww!

You're free!! We dumped them out and they scurried down into the water.

Awww!

Loving the "wild" life! (Gordan's (this is how Logan wants to spell it) back legs have really popped out. More pics to come!)

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

I just read this book online (which I hate to do, but I didn't want to buy it). It was very good. Too short, not enough Edward or Bella. But still enjoyable and a new perspective on things. It takes place during Eclipse and will probably be good background for next Tuesday (Yay!!!) when I finally get to see Eclipse the movie!! I can hardly wait!!!

How do I get myself into these things?

OK, so for like the last 2 years I've been saying, "No more pets!". And I've been sticking to my guns too. The last pet we acquired was a blue betta named Zach. The only reason we got him was because Logan won a 1 gallon aquarium. I figured a betta wouldn't be too much trouble. He's not, just cleaning the tank is a pain. But it's not too bad.

That's just the tip of the iceberg though. Let me give you a quick run down of all the pets we've had in the last few years. First off, we have a giant cat named Jack and a giant basset named, Frank. Many of you are familiar with them. They are both almost 13 years old and giant pains in the ass!

We've also had a total of 4 gerbils (3 of which were killed by the above named giant cat, Jack because they would escape from their cage!), 1 hermit crab (that lived for almost a year!), snails for a brief period, and if that weren't enough... keep reading!

It all started innocently enough. It was right before Logan's birthday and he was telling me about a boy down the street that had caught a tadpole at the creek and had it in a tank. It had turned into a small frog. How cool, right? So I was at Target shopping and I saw a tadpole habitat (above). I thought, oh, that would be cool to watch (Erica's rubbing off on me again). So I bought it. It had a sticker that said you could send off for a free tadpole. OK, I thought, we can do that. (There was no certificate in the box for the tadpole, by the way). Liars.

First though we went down to the creek to see if we could find a tadpole. No luck. So we look online. The only place to get a tadpole has bullfrog tadpoles. OK, I don't really know anything about frogs or toads. So we pay the almost $15 with shipping for 1 tadpole. A few days later it arrives in the mail... HOLY CRAP!! What have I gotten myself into???

Meet Gordon Alfonzo Smith (Yes, Logan came up with that before he was here and his initials are GAS! ). This thing is enormous!!! I can't believe it!! I never thought I would see a "tadpole" that's this big! How freakin' big is the frog going to be. As you can see, I didn't research this well. I did however think that we may be able to let him go "free" in the creek once he gets bigger! We'll see how that idea goes over!

Once I saw him, I knew immediately that the "habitat" I bought wasn't big enough, so we headed strait to Petco to buy something bigger. Not sure how long he'll last in there though. I put the sunglasses next to him for scale!
Both the kids wanted their pictures taken with him! We just added some rocks to Gordon's tank today. Before this it was just him in an empty tank of water. Once he grows his front and back legs, he'll need to start breathing air, so we'll lower the water level so that the rocks stick out. Just look at that monster up on that top rock!! Crazy!

Like I said, how do I get myself into these things? I'm a sucker, that's how! Do you know how many animals I've said no to? A LOT!! Just goes to show, if you keep asking enough every once in a while you'll slip one past! Ha!

Anyone want a bullfrog in a few months?

We got stuff hatching too!

So as not to be completely outdone by big sis, we too have started hatching stuff! No, not eggs, but butterflies!

Ellie got a butterfly garden kit for her birthday. So we had to send off for some caterpillars. We only had them about 2 days before they started changing. They do it in just a few hours. It's weird to watch.

I'm taking them out of their little cup(of disgusting food stuff) to hang in the habitat.
One fell off the paper. Look at it up close. It's got little bits of gold on it where the legs were. Cool!

While we were waiting for these, we noticed a ton of caterpillars around outside. So we decided to catch some and put them in the garden to see what would happen. This is a cool black spiky one.

The second one is my fave. Have you ever seen anything like it? Crazy!

The 3rd is the fuzzy yellow one. I didn't get the greatest pic.

I decided to let these guys go today since our others changed into their chrysalises and we needed the room. I'll keep you posted when they decide to hatch!

More Birthday fun!

So, I'm finally starting to recover from the birthday craziness. I have a few pics from those days that I haven't shared yet. (Above is Ellie with her new birthday shoes!)

First, here's Ellie at Gattiland on her actual birthday. That's where she picked to go eat dinner. Did you know that they give the birthday boy/girl $5 in free game play? I didn't until we got there and I mentioned that Ellie was 6 that day. Cool, huh?

Here's what Aunt Susan got Logan. He REALLY wanted it! Now he can swim like a shark!Logan wanted me to take a pic of him jumping, so then I had to take one of Ellie too!

Here's Logan on his birthday morning opening his new Daisy Red Rider BB gun!

He wanted to look serious, like a soldier. Then, he did a nice smile for me. :-)

Yummy cookie cake (if you can't tell, it was 2 layers with icing in the middle, yumm!). Not sure why he picked the Texans for the decoration? Whatever the birthday boy wants though, right?

Here's the 2 boys that came to his "party". Stu took them to Main Event then they came back to sleep over.

We wound up having to take one of them home at about 11pm, but that was the only "bump" in the road that night. Everyone was asleep by about midnight. That seems pretty good to me!

Happy 9th Birthday Logan!!

Here he is this morning when I brought him his breakfast in bed. He requested cinnamon rolls. I found a better tray to use than I did with Ellie's. Live and learn.

Logan's officially 9 years old as of 10:38PM! We have 2 boys over here right now spending the night. So far so good. One of them is asleep!! Ye haw!! Stuart took them to Main Event this afternoon for a few hours. Then they came back here for pizza and cookie cake. All in all, it's been pretty easy. Knock wood...