Tuesday, May 25, 2010

House Call

Dr. Jack made a house call today.  Here is the transcript between the doctor and his patient.

Doctor:  What is wrong with you today?

Patient:  My foot hurts.

Doctor:  I just looked at it and there is nothing wrong with the inside or the outside.  Is there anything else?

Patient:  My leg hurts too.  Can you look at that?

Doctor:  You need to lift it all the way up for me to see it.

Patient:  (lifts leg)

Doctor:  There is nothing wrong with the inside or the outside.

Patient:  But it still hurts.

Doctor:  It will be fine.  Maybe in a couple of days.  Or...I'll go get you a bandaid and then it will be fine.

Dr. Jack saves the day again.  With only a bandaid.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

A Couple Weeks Ago

A couple weeks ago, we spent a little time in the kitchen and I thought to get out my camera and take pictures.  We had a banana that needed to be used up and I found a recipe for King Cupcakes which are basically banana cupcakes with a peanut butter frosting.  Here are Jack and Casey in the kitchen...


I got Jack to smile by telling him the picture was going to be for Grammie.  She made the aprons for them for Christmas.  They like to make sure that they have their aprons on and that I also have an apron on.  Then we get out the big chairs and get to work.  The cupcakes were pretty good...good enough to put the recipe in my "binder of recipes I like enough to make again".  Jack and Casey preferred to eat mostly frosting but I think if they hadn't had the delicious frosting, they would have eaten the cupcakes anyway.

We also went strawberry picking last week, and by last week I actually mean the week before last.  I have no pictures because I thought I had my hands full with Jack, Casey and two buckets of strawberries.  Jack loved helping pick the berries and showed me how big and red almost every berry was that he picked.  Casey picked a couple but mostly wanted to try to sit on the mounded hills where the berries were.  Once she realized she could eat them, she started shoveling them into her mouth.  Luckily she didn't figure this out until it was almost time to leave.  She still managed to cover her shirt in red strawberry juice.

The berries were delicious and looked the same as they did last year when I wrote about them in this post.  I made two jars of strawberry jam, strawberry-orange muffins, strawberry shortcake, froze some strawberries, strawberry smoothies and the rest went straight into Jack & Casey's bellies.  

I also got a couple pictures of Jack and Casey together and they are both smiling.  The best part of these pictures is that they are on Pat's back getting a horsey ride.  Casey's bangs are getting long but they don't seem to bother her as much as they do me.  Most days we put a barrette or elastic in, but most days she also pulls it out at some point, hence the "scraggly bangs in the eyes" look.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Thoughts on Wednesday

After two days where Casey continually interfered in anything Jack related, they woke up this morning best of friends.  Maybe a front passed through or something.  Not only did they enjoy each other's company but they were imaginative too.  They made beds for their babies with the MegaBlocks box.  One had the box top and the other the bottom and they carried their babies all around the house.  It was only a short truce but it was so peaceful.

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I love the fact that I am writing this blog and kind of chronicling Jack and Casey through these years (since the baby books didn't turn out that great).  But I wish I could capture their voices right now.  What they say is funny and I can write that down, but it's so hard to capture how they say it.  Casey's voice, in particular is so cute right now.  And when she getting really excited or a little wound up, she has a deep voice that she uses and it is a riot.  I could take some videos or even record some audio but in reality I'm not going to edit and put together voice soundtracks.  And I would probably never get the funniest parts anyway.  I guess I'm just writing this down to remind myself someday that they had the cutest little voices.

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Jack had Little Gym tonight and as I was saying good night, he wanted to chat a little bit.  Earlier he had told me that if he pees more that means he is growing.  He wanted to sit on the potty until he peed again, but I diverted him back to his bed.  As we were laying there, he said, "I think if I pee more at lunch tomorrow I will get bigger.  How do you see into my belly?"

I said, "I can't see into your belly Jack."

"Well, Alicia [spoken with a Spanish accent that I didn't get at first - A-lee-see-a] can see into bellies and sees all kinds of things.  She put this thing in an alligator and could see that he didn't chew, just swallowed."

"Who are you talking about?...Oh, Alicia from Diego?"

"Yeah, she's Diego's sister.  She can save animals too.  Where does Diego live?"

"It's time for bed now Jack.  No more questions."

As I was leaving he said he was thirsty.  When I went to give him the cup of water, he told me he was only a little thirsty and could I please get him the cup with just a little water in it.

I'm really curious as to exactly what Alicia was doing with that alligator now.  I'll have to catch that Diego rerun some day.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Rainy Day Crazy

Thank goodness I had a babysitter that came at 5 to relieve me of my children yesterday.  It turned out to be a really long rainy day.  Despite my best efforts at entertaining and coming up with fun ideas, nothing could stop Casey from hitting Jack or taking his toys or playing in his space.  And nothing could stop Jack from whining about it.

Just before the babysitter came, there was a serious skirmish regarding a picture of Batman that I had printed for Jack.  Casey got the paper and crumpled it up.  Jack cried and whined about it.  I got Casey to give the paper back to Jack.  Then she took it again.  Jack whined and cried more.  I intervened again.  I asked Jack how Casey kept getting the paper if he was holding on to it.  I told him to hold on to his paper if he didn't want her to get it.  She got it again.  At one point, I crumpled the paper up some more in frustration, which did not help Jack out.  He was seriously distraught about crumpled Batman.  Eventually we moved on.  But it was a tough 15 minutes for all of us.

Even if I was sitting down and playing with Jack and Casey together, Casey somehow managed to bother Jack.  I finally decided that she needed to be wherever I was and I tried to bring her to do some chores around the house.  As soon as I was distracted by something, Casey was off to bop Jack on the head or take his Legos.

They were both excited about a babysitter coming and it couldn't have been a better day to know that I had some relief coming.  I knew they would behave somewhat for her and it was only a couple hours until bedtime.

Pat and I met at Isle of Wight County and went to the Spring Homearama.  There were eight gorgeous new homes to tour, fully furnished and decorated.  It was also local restaurant night and there was food being served in the kitchens of all the houses...kind of why I picked Monday night.  The food was delicious and the homes were gorgeous.  And we got to tour the homes at our leisure and really check them out.  We came away with some great ideas to incorporate into our own house.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

A Finished Project

In the car on the way to Ocean City last weekend, I had a little sewing to do.  I had to finish sewing one side of the binding of my first quilt.  It was a gift for my sister-in-law, Jenny and niece, Charlotte, who will be arriving in June.

I am so excited that I finally finished my first quilt!  And I love how it turned out.  In fact, I'm a little sad that it's no longer here for me to admire.  After I gave Jenny the quilt, I had to take some pictures because I hadn't had the chance to take any as I was still sewing at the last minute.



A few years ago, when I was living in Gig Harbor, Washington, I thought I would make a quilt.  I found some intricate pattern on the internet and figured it wouldn't be too hard to cut out the triangles that I needed to make the quilt.  I was so wrong.  I don't think I had the right equipment and I didn't realize exactly how patient I would need to be to cut really straight lines to make all the triangles the exact same size.  Then, I decided to just cut out tiny squares and put them all together but that wasn't working either.  So that quilt is just a tangle of crooked strips and crooked squares sitting in a box in the closet.

A few months ago I stumbled across a website called the Moda Bake Shop.  Every other day or so there is a new sewing project on there using Moda brand fabrics.  I learned that you can buy precut fabric and I found a quilt that looked pretty simple so I decided to try my hand at quilting again. And Moda's fabric lines are so beautiful that I want to make something with all of them.

I decided to make a Snuggly Layer Cake Throw, using a layer cake, which is a stack of 10x10 squares.  There was a little cutting and trimming involved but once I started making it, I realized I was actually going to finish this quilt.  I had been holding off on buying the fabric for the back until the top was finished.  I think I went to the fabric store about a dozen times buying all the thread and binding and tools that I needed.  I used multiple tutorials on the web about how to do the actual quilting and how to finish the quilt with the binding.

Jenny is planning to decorate Charlotte's room in brown and purple so I found a line of fabric called Gypsy Rose (from Moda) that had some pretty purple and brown in it, and some pink too.  For the back, I used material called Minkee in a chocolate brown.  I used a premade binding in purple to finish it.  The Minkee is super super soft and so snuggly.  I quilted using straight lines (per the tutorial), but some day I will figure out how to make all the swirlies that are on some quilts.  


And now I think I'm hooked on quilting.  Beautiful fabrics, modern, simple designs and all the right equipment are making me think I should do a few more of these.  In fact, the second one is already started.  I have another niece or nephew due in August.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Weekend at Ocean City

This past weekend we went to Ocean City, Maryland to surprise Pat's Dad for his 60th birthday.  His birthday is in June, but my sister-in-law is having her 2nd baby on his actual birthday so we thought we'd get the family together a little early and surprise him with getaway weekend.

We planned for months to make this weekend a surprise.  In the middle of planning the weekend and figuring out how we were going to get Dad to Ocean City, Mom & Dad decided to start looking into buying a beach house in Ocean City.  The house hunting search worked perfectly into our scheme.

We rented a place, figured out who was bringing towels, sheets, etc, and figured out how to make the surprise work.  We were all in Ocean City, waiting for Mom and Dad to show up at the rental house after their day of house hunting, minutes away from the surprise.  And then...the gate guard ruined it!  The rental house was in a private gated community.  As Mom and Dad drove into the community, Mom tried to tell the gate guard about the surprise and for some reason, he walked straight over to the other side of the car and said, "The other Eliasons are already here."

Despite the fact that we didn't get to yell, "Surprise!" and give Dad a heart attack for a birthday present, it was still a nice surprise to find out that we were all down there for the weekend and there was some golf involved too.

The community we stayed in is called Sunset Island and consists of townhomes, condos and some single family homes.  It is a beautiful community with private beaches on the bay side, two pools and many other amenities.  We stayed there a couple years ago for a weekend and loved it at the time.  It is very kid friendly and so easy to get around.

On Saturday morning, while the guys were golfing for "Pop Pop's Golf Birthday" I took the kids down to the beach.  It was warm but very windy.  I had a wagon, two kids, a boogie board and an inner tube.  Before I even crossed the road, the boogie board and inner tube blew out of the wagon.  I just stuck them back in the wagon and continued on.  By the time we got to the shore, I realized it was way too windy for me to control the kids, a boogie board and an inner tube.  We returned the toys to the house and headed back to the beach.

Jack and Casey had a great time on the beach and I did too.  The beach is small enough and the water is calm enough that I could just sit and watch them.  The water was also still cold enough that they were barely getting their feet wet.  They played with their buckets and shovels in the sand for hours.  Casey was trying to get the hang of getting water in her bucket.  She went to the waters edge and held her bucket down for about 10 minutes.  She would lift it up and check it every minute or so and just put it back down in the water.


The kids also had fun with Aunt Kelly when she came down to the beach to join us.


On Sunday we went to Spring Fest at the boardwalk.  There were tents full of crafts and food galore.  It was a sunny day, but it was chilly and the wind made it miserable.  Casey kept saying, "It's too windy for me!"  We wandered through some of the tents and grabbed some food and headed back to the house.  


Overall, it was a relaxing and fun weekend and hopefully we'll be able to do it again sometime soon!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Week in Quick Review

I didn't quite mean to take a little break from blogging but we've had a visitor and been on some adventures.  Auntie Jenn came to town for a week to visit and also to babysit on Saturday and Sunday while Pat and I went to a wedding in Baltimore, Maryland.

We managed to fit in a lot of shopping, a trip to the zoo and a trip to the aquarium along with the weekend away while Jenn was here.  I'm surprised that we were able to get in all the shopping that we did.  Shopping with two kids lately just doesn't happen for me very much.  Jack thinks he should be able to buy something in every store now and it's not a lot of fun listening to him ask why he can't have a toy for the hundredth time.

Luckily, last Thursday, Jack was in school and Casey turned out to be a fun little shopping companion.  She got a little excited in the women's section a couple times and started running around and amongst the clothes but we moved on to the toys and she enjoyed "browsing."  She also enjoyed draping women's shirts over herself and saying, "I like 'dis.  It's so pretty."  It would have been the perfect time to have a video camera because it was so cute.

I have also been working on another project and I will write more about it next week.  In the meantime, here are a few pictures of what Jack and Casey were up to today:


First, Casey found the little Diego figure and asked me where the garbage truck was so she could put him in it as the driver.  And then I guess Diego became the chauffeur to Baby as well.  Baby rides in style.


In the meantime, Jack told me he wanted to make a flag.  He got himself a black marker, a piece of construction paper and got to work.  After he was satisfied with the drawing, he taped it on the side of the counter in the kitchen and asked me specifically to write "Everybody Come Into the Kitchen."