a bad experience....

"Play-Do" Grandma & Grandpa are visiting us for Labor Day Weekend. Sophia has been has learned a new word: experience. She has learned that good experiences make you feel good, while bad experiences make you feel - well - bad. A good experience includes getting a treat at ShopKo because you behave well. A bad experience would include having tweezers inserted up your nose to retrieve the Kleenex you've stuffed into it.

Yes, we have fully arrived to parenthood as our five year old stuffed a foreign object into her nose. After discovering the wedged-in-there-too-tight said foreign object, she managed to push it up even farther up her nose in the short space of time that I walked into the bathrooom to get the tweezers and return. Daddy didn't think this merited a trip to the ER, so while I was checking Dr. Sears Medicine Cabinet , he laid her on the bathroom counter-top (aka the operating table) and used the the dreaded tweezers to reach up that small nostril to retrieve the Kleenex. Maybe he should have been a surgeon & not an engineer. What a crazy night!

Just in case you don't know, according to Dr. Sears:

If the object is still lodged far back in the nose and you are unable to remove it with the above measures, take the child to the hospital where a doctor can remove the object with a special instrument. Do not allow your child to lie on his back or fall asleep with a foreign object in his nose since it may be aspirated into the lungs.

All I can say is PHEW!

HHHEEERRREEE's Nicholas crawling...

Nicholas has really taken off crawling today. Here is a clip of Sophia enticing him to crawl to her.

Oh yeah and there is alot of sound from me orchestrating the video and talking to Will in the background. Sorry!

Only One of Me

I always thought I was one of a kind:)

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 1 or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A. http://howmanyofme.com">How many have your name?

Here's a neat website. Find out how many people in the US have the same name as yours.

Info comes from the US Census Bureau.

Thanks Dan for sending me the link!

Nicholas is on the mmmooovvvee....

Nicholas has officially moved from a stationary baby to a mobile baby! I set him down in one area of the living room this evening and the next thing I knew he had made it into the kitchen. Then, also this evening, I set him down in the bathroom doorway to help the older kids get into the tub, turned around to find him crawling right for the tub to join them.

It is soooo cute to watch a baby beginning to crawl. It is more of extend the arms, hop-scootch the knees forward. So darling!

Post pix of him soon.....

Mouse Cupcakes

While browsing through a Pampered Chef kid's recipe book, Sophia found a recipe for Mouse Cupcakes. Of course, she instantly wanted to make them! So Wednesday, we spent much of the day preparing and making the cupcakes. It proved a nice little lesson in counting as we needed so-many M&Ms, Hershey Kisses and Vanilla Wafers. As you can see, the cupcakes are very easy to assemble. We couldn't locate shoestring licorice for whiskers, so we used chocolate-raspberry sticks.

This little project also provided some quality neighbor time. We ended up with 24 cupcakes...more than I wanted any of us to eat. We made up plates full of Mouse Cupcakes to distribute to our neighbors. We don't have the opportunity to talk to some of neighbors very much, so it was a great excuse to say HI & chat. It wasn't the first time we have taken food or treats to our neighbors. Now that I think about it, they probably think we are crazy for coming to their door with treats....

Rainy TRI & a Family Party

We spent the past weekend in Hutchinson, KS. For those not familiar with KS, Hutch (near Wichita) is home to the Cosmosphere (space museum), the state fair, a newly opened Underground Salt Mine museum and a sprint triathlon, The SaltyDog. We traveled (seven hours!) for said Triathlon. Michael was pumped up and ready for it, but then the city, and the entire Midwest, was besieged with RAIN. Not western Nebraska rain either, the type that blows in & blows out and we are happy to get a little wet. This was real KS rain. The storm just SAT over Hutchinson the entire weekend! So after braving the rain (which we were totally not prepared for; read: no umbrellas, no ponchos, etc.) to get to the TRI site, getting soaked walking to the swimming location, standing huddled with 200 others, the SaltyDog was officially cancelled. No one really wanted to get electrocuted while swimming or bike a flooded path.

Hutch is also home to my Aunt Lovella & Uncle Ron. The rain did not stop us from attending Uncle Ron's 70th Birthday Party and a wedding reception for their daughter Carolyn and her new husband, Jorge. I had such a great time catching up with cousins & aunts & uncles. The family hasn't had such a big family wedding party for quite a while. It was great fun to watch my kids running around and dancing with my cousins' kids. At one point near the end of the evening, kids were literally running laps around the outside edge of the room! Every parent there was hoping the kids would wear themselves down so they would fall asleep quickly. Everyone got along very well, although 4 year old Trenton was a little jealous when 2 year old Will wanted to hold 5 year old Alayna's hand. AND 2 year old Whitney wanted to slow dance a little to closely with 1 year old Ethan. My Dad arrived a bit late to the wedding dance and received an ovation from all the seated guests. Alayna asked him, "Are you the President?"

Of course, that made his day!

We managed to corral the family into one end of the room for a photo. Carolyn announced that "everyone who was related to her or ever wanted to be" should report for the picture. That left about 5 people in the room not in the photo. Great fun!

Can't wait for the next wedding party for Paul & Patty in November.

SCHAMBER CLAN

Aunt Lou demonstrating the Y-M-C-A song to her siblings.

2nd Cousins Will & Leo dancing together ... making their mothers so happy:)

TRI

Michael's getting ready for the SaltyDog Triathlon in Hutchinson, KS on Saturday. We are really looking forward to watching him race & then attending my cousin's wedding reception there in Hutch. I'll post how he does...

GO Michael GO

Post-Bath Cuties

Last Christmas, my parents gave these darling bath towels to the kids. Each towel is embroidered with their names. Sophia is a pink flower, Nicholas is a yellow duck & Will is a green frog. I finally got a good shot of all three of them after a bath last night.

I can't believe it but Nicholas is getting old enough to sit in the bath unassisted!

From above you can see the "faces" on the hooded towels...