Owen's Camera

Owen got a camera for Christmas. He took a lot of pictures and they ended up with a rather artistic feel. What do you guys think?

Bubba-

Matt & Lori-

Who knows?-

Who knows?-

Lori-

Karla & Peter-

It's the little things...

The newest little thing - my car parked IN the garage, with the door closed (even though the picture is with it open). Ahhhh, the little things. My car will not have snow, or sleet or rain on it from now on.

S N O W !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goodie, goodie, goodie! There was snow today in the greater Portland metro area. We drove up into the West Hills in search larger accumulations. There was only a light dusting here, unfortunately. The drive was lovely perfectly perfect with Christmas music accompanying the snow falling and swirling on the road.

Even though we were only out of the truck for about 10 minutes we managed to do quite a bit. The temperature for our excursion ranged between 20 and 27 degrees with a very brisk east wind. This one is of O right after we got out of the truck. The snow touched him, without asking.

Matt was plowed the road for Owen. Then O plowed the road too.

We ran into another family enjoying the snow and they took this picture of all of us.

Matt made a snow angel.

The most fun of at all for Owen were the snowballs or rather handfuls of snow that he was throwing everywhere. The glove came off with this throw.

Joy, Pure Joy!

I have the most beautiful sink. Parts and pieces of the whole have been laying around the house since I moved in, in may. I feel the need to explain the horribleness of the of the beauty's predecessor. It was a cheap stainless steal sink, about 4 inches deep with a rickety faucet and a garbage disposal that shot food onto the ceiling and sounded like grinding metal - you could hear it blocks away.

The new one is cast iron with a white porcelain coating about 9.5 inches deep a Kohler no less ahh the quiet splendor. The faucet is has a brushed nickel finish, sits high above the sink, with a pull out nozzle and two count them two options - spray or regular. There is now enough room to have a pot in the sink and fill it with water AND take it out without spilling a drop, or just fill it while it sits on the counter. I can CHOOSE!! The garbage disposal is so quiet I thought that it didn't work.

I am pleased as punch. I love it. Big thanks go to Mr Smith, Dad, Matt, Owen, the Academy of Arts and Sciences and of course God who gave us boys with green mustaches.

Big Boy Room

So after a lot of hard work, O's really big boy room is almost compete. This is Matt's side of the room... He gave O the BBall Hoop for his birthday and donated the crime scene tape - it's over the closet door. The railroad crossing sign was from my parents. If you look really hard you can see a picture of the Mariners game, The Columbia (aka Peter's boat) and Kelli's cho cho Train.

This is the wall that is waiting for it's decorations - a Large WA State map and a map of the US are destined for this location. On the bed is a quilt that my Great G'ma started and my G'ma finished for O. If you look really hard you can also see the magnets from Kathy and Dale spelling out Owen Z, in the bottom right.

Even Diego likes the his new digs. The signs still have a little reflective coding left on them, but they don't glow in the dark or anything.

Here's the rest. It looks pretty good, my Dad & Matt really did a good job making my vision come to life. I'm pleased as punch and Owen was too.

Birthday, birthday, birthday, birthday, birthday

Owen was graced with 5 birthday parties this year - Chinook, Daddy's w/kids, Daycare, G'ma Lyn (my yaya) and G'ma Jeanette (my other yaya). Wow, I am birthday'd OUT! He had so much fun at all of them, although he talked endlessly about being a fireman for his birthday, he was not.

"My Matt Daddy Dale" is bringing out the cake, and O can't wait to dig into it. He actually didn't wait. There were finger marks in it already from earlier.

As you can see the tradition of finger licking birthday's continued at my mom's house too. O's favorite gift of the night was a nerf gun. Coincidentally it was also both Matt's favorite present too. Unfortunately i didn't allow O to bring it home. It's at Grandma's house for now, until he understands that we don't shoot EVERYTHING and EVERYONE! He's asked for it twice today, but hopefully that's the end of it.

Before we went to G'ma's house Matt and I took O to the Children's Museum. We had a bunch of fun and it started before we ever got inside.

Portland has funny cows everywhere and this was theirs.

Bob the builder was visiting with many of his friends, including Pilchard the cat. Does sitting count as climbing? There were please don't climb signs on everything, which seemed a little weird - we weren't very good at listening.

Matt was happy to see Wendy. As soon as Matt hi-fived her O went to do it too.

Matt and Owen even went and helped people with ouchies. They were even able to make the siren and lights on.

He had the most fun in the store, they get to shop, with carts and scan their stuff - making it beep - they haven't figured out a fun way to make stock boys yet though. No one wanted to put the stuff away. There was even a cafe where the kids big or small could cook and serve food. It was cool.

On the way out, Owen had to give Bob on last five.

Thank goodness the birthday's are over, but Christmas is right around the corner.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween happened in a few parts for Owen. There was the beach about 2 weeks ago (bridgewalk day), great grandma's last week and real Halloween on Friday with Matt and me.

This is just about the cutest picture, ever! He's holding ambulance candy from the meeting room. He grabbed it when Dale went to get us the Camera, since mine died.

We all had to get on the fire truck. Dale is concerned that Owen is going to go down the "hireman pole." Just about anything can be a fireman pole.

These are from Halloween night. We were just getting ready to go to Matt's house here. This is a full on cheese face. As you can tell Owen is not having any fun.

Who needs candy when you can get house flyer's. Unfortunately there are a lot of houses for sale in Matt's neighborhood.

He's still dumbfounded that they are giving him candy for no reason at all. The only problem, he hasn't figured out that it was just one day. We've worn our "outfit" everyday since, at least 2 or 3 times, a day.

He was getting tired, so Joe the Plumber gave him a ride.

O came in, went potty and took 1/2 his clothes off in about 2 minutes flat.So that was the big night. He ended up with a good haul a whole pumpkin full. He could hardly carry it at the end. A good time was had by all. I just love seeing everything through his eyes.

Pumpkin & Pie, but not Pumpkin Pie

Matt came over today and carved pumpkins with Owen and me, but really just me. Owen wanted nothing to do with pumpkins. Instead he built a chocho with the chairs from the table, rode his scotter played with a book and was just generally crazy. Mat carved his pumpkin and I carved O's, so I still have one left - we'll see when it gets done.

I went out side to take a picture of our handy work and O's pumpkin was already turning into slug food. I knocked them off - gross!

I baked a pie for my dad's birthday - which is Tuesday. He wanted Lemon Meringue, this was my first time making one. I think it turned out pretty good, but we'll see what the family says tomorrow. My grandma made one too, you know just in case mine didn't turn out. Such faith in my cooking abilities - nice, huh. I made dinner for all of them last week and they're still here, so i think it should be fine.

Hey prego, craving anything? We should be down the the over the 7th weekend - hopefully. Matt's on-call schedule changed to accommodate Thanksgiving and Christmas, so he's supposed to be working that weekend, but is trying to change it. Otherwise we might come next weekend.

Another fun weekend at the beach!

We had fun going to Kelli's baby shower, but we had to do some other fun stuff too. We went to the beach and built "sandcastles" courtsey of Lori and Steve's buckets. And what do you do after you build a sandcastle... you JUMP over it!

See even Matt had to jump...
and then you stomp on it!

Squishing crabs is so much fun, too... Owen really liked the noise and the feeling of this. He didn't really want to stop, it got kinda yucky.

We did the bridgewalk with Kathy, Lori and Matt. I'm holding on tight to O, it's more for me than him - I didn't like being up so high! This is a good place to mention that uniforms are necessary for next year.

This is where we walked. It was a 10k or 6.something miles.

Owen really had a good time, this is a cheese face - I swear.

We had a ton of fun! Items of note that aren't pictured - Homecoming football game, Kelli's baby shower and playing on Dale's Firetruck in our fireman halloween costume. I'm pretty sure Kelli has pictures of the game and Dale let me take pics on his camera of the Halloween costume. I'm hoping we'll make it back at least once more before the baby's arrival...

goober

I just figured out how to check my comments. I'm a goober.

Matt will last the longest

Are any of us really surprised?

I could survive for 1 minute, 22 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Created by Bunk Beds Pedia

basking in the lovely yellow glow

Dare I say success, I dare I dare - SUCCESS! As you all know this hasn't been an easy ride. We were almost there, then completely regressed, complete with screaming fits. But about 2 weeks ago he decided he would go pee in the potty again, and then last week he went poo. Yes, I literally cried from excitement. My Owen is officially a big boy. He's been peeing and pooping in the toilet now for a full week. We haven't had one accident and have also been making it through the night. I'm beaming with pure joy over all of it.

Not to toot my own horn, because lets be serious he decided to do it, but I really feel like my determination helped the situation along. I used a dream of a big boy room to help him along, charting his progress with every little tinkle. Thankfully my child is as anal as I am. He really enjoyed making x’s all over his chart. We every scratch of the pen he would say “mommy, you so proud of me now?” And damn it all if I wouldn’t get teary again. I hadn’t cried for 6 months but poop and pee did it. And if that wasn’t enough, upon seeing me cry O looked up at me perplexed – “mommy, why you so sad?” Try and explain that one.

Thank goodness for wrestling techniques!

I could survive for 1 minute, 13 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Business up front, party in the back

Matt, Owen and I went to Family Day at the Oregon Air National Guard Base. It was pretty cool. Matt had a lot of fun. He got to see jets up close, really close.

My dad took us down to the runway so he was able to see the f-15's and passanger aircraft take off and land.

Owen got to play fireman and go on a super bouncy obstacle course. The day was mostly fun. There were some tense moments as always with my mom.

I also caught this lovely picture of Matt, trying to get Owen's attention, I really think his dad would like it. He really doesn't like me taking his picture that much, but i have the camera so i make the rules.

Then there was little baby Addison, my neice and her fabulous mullet. Business in front party in the back!

Who's a Newbie?

I am, I am.
Welcome to my ramblings.
Today's ranting is potty training. I am the proud owner of a fabulous little monkey, also known as my son Owen. Circumstances that need not be discussed have led us to our current location which consists of me being the primary parent. I am caught between so many rocks and hard places that it's hard to describe them all in one sitting - bulleting is easier, so here goes:

Ex - wants what he wants, no matter how it affects our son
His Parents - never wanted time with O before the divorce spend more time now, but don't like doing anything "hard"
My parents - slightly needy and over bearing, still trying to be to involved
Daycare - stretched thin with 3 kids of her own on top of those she watches

Out of all these people i am the only one (until last week, when my parents started listening) who is actually trying to potty TRAIN. The rest have just asked him, like he should have an option. I'm not proud, but today i finally lost it on all of them. I am just tired of it - I mean COME ON! So i threatened my parents and really explained to the daycare lady and even bought a potty chair for her house even though her own daughter is potty training... I also really tried to explain to Ryan that we needed to have a united front and what does he do, but put him in a diaper tonight, after we said we were both throwing them out!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Who knew that the biggest issue with potty training would be with getting the f'ing adults on board.