We had a surprise visitor this last weekend… Mormor! The weather was absolutely amazing for this time of year so we thought we would take advantage of not only the weather but our guest and go out on the river for a canoe adventure. It was the first time we braved taking the kids out in a canoe and the extra pair of hands definitely helped! We are positive James would have jumped out of the boat the second he had a chance if there wasn’t someone there to stop him. The water was about four feet above where it usually was because of the rain we got the day before so a lot of the beach area was underwater, but we still stopped at a few to have a picnic and play in the sand with Mormor. Here are a few photos from the day, enjoy!

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The weather has been amazing lately and we were lucky enough to enjoy it yesterday for the community egg hunt. The kids had a blast collecting eggs in their baskets and checking out the activities. Emmaline loved the train and games. James had a blast in the petting zoo and even had a donkey follow him around EVERYWHERE! It was pretty cute. Here are some photos. Enjoy!

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Wow it has been a long couple of months; if you can’t tell we’ve been absent for a while.  We have been on the sick rollercoaster since basically the first of the year and haven’t been able to get off of it until just recently (even as I say this James is still a bit congested).

The kids started off with a bad round of congestion that turned into a sinus infection with James and pneumonia for Emma.    Then as they both were supposedly getting better they were both hit again with an extra icky round of sore throats, runny noses and cranky attitudes.  Come to find out the infections never died… so they go back on another round of antibiotics and then Tash and Emma come down with the Flu big time while James is on his third sinus infection…

ugh. Can we be done yet?!  I think we’ve had our turn.  We are ready to feel better and enjoy spring!  Stay tuned for coming posts and pictures!

Wow how time flies. Our baby girl is 3!  And she loves Batman. So she gets a Batman party.

This is Emma pretending to be Batman. Lol.

don’t we all wish..

To make up for deviance, here is a good one

Well its official. He is no longer my itty bitty baby. He is my ONE YEAR OLD boy! Are you just as shocked as we are? Because we are beside ourselves. Ok, maybe I’m the only one that is beside herself. Andy just laughs at me anytime I talk about how sad it is to see him grow up so lightning quick.

So what is this big guy up to? Anything and everything!

Likes: Clapping his hands, waving “bye-bye”, eating, pooping, crawling super fast into walls like a battering ram, cuddling, giving kisses to all the ladies, dancing/jumping, shaking his head back and forth really fast, climbing, and making the ‘stink face’.

Doesn’t like: Not being able to eat everything everyone else is because of his lack of teeth, sitting still when I change his stinky bum, and being smaller than Emmaline because that means she gets all the good toys.

Stats:

Height 30″ (58%), Weight 22lbs 4oz (41%), Head 18.5″ (69%)

His birthday was a hit! We had a small family party complete with a dinosaur cake and two computers with two grandmas watching intently on the other side. James loved diving into his birthday cake and even had a second slice! He is definitely a different breed of kid compared to Emmaline, who cried at the mere touch of her cake! He was even lucky enough to get some pretty cool gifts from the grandparents! Mormor/Papa sent a hand stitched birth announcement and NaNa/Pepaw sent a ball-popper that keeps the kiddos entertained and giggling for huge chunks of time. Emmaline even ‘bought’ James a soccer ball!

We’ve had such a wonderful and fun filled year so far with James and can’t wait to enjoy many more. Here some pictures of our very own one year old on his big day! Enjoy.

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I am a tinkerer(?). It gets me into pickles more often than I would like to admit.  Everytime I get clear of such situations I swear off ‘messing’ around with things…..and it lasts for a week or two before my next new big idea hits.

Well late yesterday afternoon I decided it would be a good idea to ‘clean’ out my PS3 with a little compressed air, no big deal right? Compressed air bottles come with small, long straws that attach to the spray nozzle to aid in forcing a specific stream of air into those hard to reach nooks and crannies.  Which is AWESOME.  But what isn’t so awesome is that those same straws aren’t exactly built to six sigma standards, so results do vary. A lot. 

I decide to take our little straw friend and plug it into the nozzle and then jam said straw into bottom most nether-regions of our PS3.  My ingenious idea was met with Sahara dust-storm worthy volumes of fine grey powder.  All hail the conquering hero!  I gave it a few extra squirts ‘just to be sure’ and on that last squirt it happened.  My little red straw buddy was propelled off the nozzle and directly into BFE PS3 Houston TX USA.  What I mean to say is that I watched in slow motion horror as the straw was launched from the tip of the bottle into the farthest corner of no-return of my Playstation.  For those who don’t aren’t familiar with the geography (up to this point I was a stranger to these lands as well) it is located between the two CPU heat sinks and the turbine worthy exhaust fan.  With a high-power light I could squintily see the red outline faintly hiding amongst the aluminum radiator fins and plastic curved blades. 

It took a few minutes to for my brain to push past the waves of panic and shock… I was in deep do-do.  I had a small vent area consisting of 1×1 cm breathing holes (conveniently just large enough for an air duster straw to be shot through) to view the hopelessness of what lay before me… I had no choice.  The straw was lodged firm; halfway into the exhaust fan preventing it from moving and halfway into one of the heat sinks just waiting to be melted into a smoldering, stinking pile of charred plastic.  I had to get it out or never turn on my PS3 again.  Sink or swim.  Time to go big or go home. 

Did I mention that I HATE IT WHEN THIS HAPPENS?!!!!

I was hoping that there was an ‘easy way’ to crack the cover off and have direct access to the heat exhaust chamber…NO.SUCH.LUCK.  Of course not.  Well here goes nothing… A quick YouTube video show me how to find the first screw and from there on out I was on my own.  I am sure I could have found another tutorial showing me how to disassemble it in the dark with my eyes closed and one hand-tied behind my back…but I am much too impatient to search for such detailed steps.

Long story short it was an ugly 2 hour affair and at times hope seemed lost.  But by some miracle not only did I retrieve the offending article, but I also reassembled the flex-capacitor successfully!  And best of all it powered up and worked like nothing had ever happened…  *knock on wood*.

Moral of the story?  It’s a two parter:

        1) Leave well enough alone

        2) When using air duster, use a spare hand to hold onto the plastic air straw

I saw this via the right-side stalker column on Facebook. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud and then make Andy stop playing video games to laugh with me. This could very well be a picture of how we sleep at night… except that baby is an almost-three-year-old girl… and she is tall. Her arms and legs are gangly. She brings 524242 toys down from her playroom with her. Plus a pillow. And a Carebear. Most nights she demands Mom to “nuggle Emma head!” and then sticks her silky toddler hair under my nose holes. Ugh. Well, we hope ya’ll get a good chuckle out of this. If your kid doesn’t climb in bed with you at 3am like ours, you *MIGHT* not get it… however, if you are in that same unfortunate category of parents who children decide sleeping on top of mom and dad is the thing to do– enjoy.

I was just looking back at all the photos I haven’t put up on the blog and I stumbled upon a folder full of pictures of that crazy girl sleeping anywhere and however she wants. Oh Emmaline, my sweet Emmaline. You silly, silly girl. Enjoy!

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James’ hair has been growing like a weed since his baby fuzz fell out and big kid hair started to come in. Andy’s bi-monthly hair cut rolled around back in November so we decided to give baby James a little trim as well. I think I cried a little when we cut his hair because he didn’t look like my little baby anymore. We took a before and after picture of our little man. Enjoy!

[I'm just a little behind on the blogging as of late, so I apologize. I'm starting to catch up... or at least my intentions are.]

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This weekend was full of Halloweenie fun and adventures for the Wheatley family.

I was so excited this year having two little ones to dress up. About a week before Halloween Emmaline’s obsession for Care Bears reached an all time high when she started to rub her belly and exclaiming that she was “making belly badge”. Apparently she can make “grwumpy clouds, funshines and wainbows”.

On Saturday we were able to go to the Houston Zoo for their annual Zoo Boo! It was a beautiful day outside and the kids were so excited to dress up in their Halloween garb and go trick-or-treating at the zoo. Ok… ok… ok…. Maybe WE were the ones excited to dress the kids up and take them trick-or-treating. Emmaline’s must see list included: the ‘nakes, the bats, and the baby eraphant and we made sure to see every single thing she wanted to. After the drive home and a nap, we were ready for round two of Saturday’s festivities: Trunk-or-Treat! Andy left to help set up the carnival games and I watched the kids and got them fed before we took off. Emmaline was able to play a few rounds of carny games and watch the costume parade before she was able to run amok with the other kiddos going trunk to trunk filling her pumpkin up with all sorts of treats and goodies. It didn’t take long for her to have a bag that was heavier than she was!

On Monday after Andy got home from work, we had our annual Halloween chili dinner and got Emmaline prepped for MORE trick-or-treating. She was so excited that she could fill up her beloved pumpkin bag full of candy again. James was till taking a nap, so Andy and I took turns taking Emmaline around the neighborhood. She loved the decorations people had in their yards and loved to see the ghosts and pumpkins.

Here are some photos of the kids in their costumes! Enjoy!

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We cracked open the pumpkins tonight and Emma had a blast!  We are having a trunk-or-treat tomorrow night with our church so we had to get the pumpkins carved tonight.

Once we explained to Emma that you can put a face on the pumpkin she was rearin’ to go — once she had her markers in hand she was coloring up a storm!  After letting her get the scribbles out she cut open the rinds to dig out the innards.  Emma didn’t like getting her hands too dirty, but once we showed her how to dig out the guts with a spoon we couldn’t get her to stop!

Daddy finally pried the pumpkin out of her hands long enough to carve a face into it and Emma promptly named him ‘Round Face’.

Enjoy the pictures!  Stay tuned we have a weekend full of festivities we will be posting!

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One of the projects I accomplished whilst Tash was visiting her family was to paint the garage.  It had come painted when we moved in, but after 2.5 years of me tinkering, motorcycling and having a toddler, the walls weren’t so nice looking — so I figured what the heck why not slap on a fresh coat of paint.  It blew me away with how much nicer it makes the garage feel to not see all the scuffs, scrapes, pencil marks, tire rubs etc on the wall!  It got me thinking that perhaps there were a few other places in the house that could use a little ‘help’.  So I proposed the idea to Tash and she jumped all over it. 

When the house was purchased we had the option to have ‘high quality’ paint put in for a premium — at the time we felt we were already in deep enough so we passed — so we got basically glorified primer on our walls.  Flat, cheap paint.  And from the quality of the paint job/texture there were a few inebriated individuals working when the painting and texturing took place.  Needless to say we’ve always had a bone to pick with our textured walls and crappy paint.  About 1.5 years ago we splurged and had a painter come paint Emma’s room and our upstairs bathroom and our half bath.  The bathrooms we did a deep blue and Emma’s room a light green.  When I started talking paint and master bath to Tash she and I both knew what color we wanted — dark silver-blue.  Back when we were house shopping one of the model homes we went through had a deep silver-blue paint in the master bathroom and we loved it — so why not copy it?!

A trip to Ace Hardware, a gallon of paint later we were underway!  Considering we started at 2 pm on a Sat and without too much rush and hurry were able to complete the job before Sunday at 4 pm I think we did ok.  Next up?  Either our bedroom and closet or kitchen….