Hello Again!

Here we are! Living in Missouri - the "show me state". FYI I looked up why it is called the "show me state" and there are conflicting stories. Basically it means, "oh yeah? Well show me!" Less talk, more action. I think. Google it.

Life has been interesting since we left PA. We were living in a Residence Inn in O'Fallon. The staff was lovely and the hotel was actually a pretty decent place to stay... if you didn't have three busy little boys. I didn't blog because I was just trying to survive.

The Pros of living in a hotel was I had no other obligations and was able to spend a lot of time with the boys and just play with them. That was also one of the cons... not a lot of room to escape. Did I mention that it was above 100 degrees outside almost every day? We were on the fourth floor too so it got a little warm sometimes. Fortunately we had an indoor pool and we escaped there almost every evening.

Here are some pictures from our hotel living experience.

Of course most of the pictures are of Sammy, and rightly so - he is so dang cute and funny. Besides, his life needs to be chronicled. I will write more later!

Pictures from Longwood Gardens and Ott's Mum Hill

At least I didn't know them

Yesterday we went to Longwood Gardens - it was a perfectly beautiful fall day. I'll write more about that later.

As we passed a large sculpted plant in the shape of a dog Mike remarked that the dog had bushy eyebrows. Ben replied, "Yeah, just like me and mom have bushy eyebrows."

Of course at that moment a small wedding party passed by and heard every word because Ben doesn't exactly speak quietly.

I said, "Oh thanks Ben, that's just great."

Mike said, "Just what you want to hear eh?"

The wedding party chuckled. At least I didn't know any of them. Of course I had to ask Mike a little later, "Are my eyebrows bushy?" Let me reassure you... my eyebrows are nothing like the furry caterpillars I had in highschool. I could put Brooke Shields to shame!

What happenend to the day, the month, the year?

Making the transition from mom of 2 boys to 3 boys has been interesting to say the least. During the summer Sam was in that hazy, not quite aware of what is going on around him phase... or maybe that was me. Now that he is 5 months old (gone by waaay too fast) and Ben is in school and Gabe is in preschool I honestly don't know what happens with my days.

I spend a lot of time feeding Sam, cleaning up spit up, bowel explosions and nose aspirations. Oh yeah and laundry, laundry, laundry.

I do manage to get in some gym time - about one hour if I am lucky and everyone is healthy.  But by the time night time rolls around, I am exhausted!!

When the boys went back to school I was excited because I thought I would have a little time to do some paintings, or write a little bit more. Instead I have about 1 1/2 hours after I drop Gabe off at preschool, get Sam down for a nap and then that precious bit of time seems to be over before it started.

I always thought that as a mom I would have enough time to do at least some of the things that I wanted to do, but now I am worried that I am on that freight train of life filled with shuttling kids back and forth, fixing meals, doing laundry, keeping the house tidy, etc. etc.

However it is not all business. Last night Mike and the boys spent about a half hour wrestling and throwing eachother around. I held Sam up so he could have a front row seat to all the rollicking fun. It was cute to see how enthralled he was by all the action. I can just see him in about one year, running and throwing himself on top of the boy pile.

It's funny though how the things I love about having boys - the enthusiasm, the jubilance, the silliness, the noise... it's also the stuff that drives me crazy too. I love them to pieces though.

Anyway, just wanted to write about stuff going on in our house these days.

Hawk Mountain

This weekend we headed to the Pocono's to Hawk Mountain.  No imagination needed to decipher what is at Hawk Mountain.  Apparently there are lots of hawks that fly around at certain viewpoints. I think that only people without small active boys see hawks flying around. We hiked up to the North obersvation point, a beautiful spot overlooking the valley below.  I saw plenty of people with binoculars and fancy cameras, maybe 2 hawks and some turkey vultures (ugly creatures). It takes a bit of time and patience to see the birds flying around - something that we lack.

The boys did great on the hike though.  For the hike up I hung out with Gabe and Mike hung out with Ben and Sam was attached to his back in what we lovingly call "The Limo".  Practically every person we passed remarked that the baby was travelling in style. It's true.

Once we got to the top Ben remarked several times that it looked like a postcard.  True enough. The funny thing about the boys is that they don't seem to have a volume control.  At the observation point people were conversing in low murmurs, obviously focused on seeing some pretty birds.  Then we come along and everything we discussed was heard by everyone. Needless to say, we didn't stay all that long - maybe 25 minutes, which was plenty long enough.

It was a beautiful day, though and we had such a fun time. The boys did great on the hike. On the way down Gabe found a perfect stick - in his words, "just the right short, long, smoothness".  When we got to the bottom and passed the girl sitting at the entry/exit gate she told Gabe to leave the stick behind - whatever was picked up had to be left. Oh puleeeze. We kind of gave her that look "whatever" and begrudgingly asked him to put the stick down. I told Gabe, within earshot, that we would find another perfect stick. Gabe pushed out that bottom lip and did his best to maintain his composure. Ben mananged to weasel out some acorns, though - such a rascal. After five minutes of searching we did find another perfect stick, which he ended up leaving in the parking lot. That's gratitude for ya!

Here's some pics of our afternoon.