Fun at Home.

The morning drinks...with Daddy wishing he had one.

Brooklyn, thinking that her Daddy and brother are quite silly.

The first "real" ride. She did great! We went to both the pond and the marsh in the morning and she wanted to do more.

Also the first "real" ride, hehe. He did great, but wanted to walk too, which is fine.

A neighbor came out and told us how much she loves seeing young kids out riding their bikes and such and wished us a merry Christmas.

Time for rock throwing!

"Come ooooon!"

Then after the rest of the family came, we decided to hit the park to try out Russ' rocket. Sam wasn't much interested in riding, but was very adamant about his pumpkin riding.

...until Bubba got in.

THEN he wanted his wagon back!

Then Dut decided that it looked much more fun then her bike.

And of course, Daddy got stuck taking care of the bike.

Sam found this ball--he and I were kicking it around and racing and playing, the whole time I was trying to get this shot:

But fell in love with this one because it reminds me of how much fun we were having--him trying to beat me to the ball and diving to get to it before I could.

Everyone patiently waiting for the non-working rocket to lift off. They didn't get it to go, but have plans to cover it in glow-in-the-dark goo and send it off at night. Should be fun!

They're Here! They're Here!

We'd been semi-patiently waiting all November for the Big Day--the day when Bubba and Grampa flew in!

They got in around 7:30pm or so, so Brooklyn and I went and got them. Then they went to their condo on Carolina Beach. So the next morning we got to get up and head that way to hang out with them. So we had breakfast and cartoons there.

There's not a whole lot to do, but the kids manage to keep themselves busy...oftentimes at the expense of our sanity, but at least we're all together, right?

They DO have an indoor pool though, so we are often found there.

Looooove the rolling ocean right out the window with occasional pelican fly-bys and dolphins swimming past.

Giving Grampa some love.

Hehe, anybody know what Bubba is saying?

Hehe, I love Sam's expression here. He's MORE than eager to relenquish his "Nah nah" (pacifier) when cheese enters into the picture!

Nom nom nom.

My book babies.

Of course we need our PBSkids.org.

We discovered that Sam loves wearing hats. I'm sure the second that I buy him his own though, that'll go down the drain.

Brooklyn was so excited to show Bubs her sandwich making skills.

Russ' parents were kind enough to swap places with us--they stayed with the non-sleeping-through-the-night children for a night while we got to go out on the town. Well okay, so we got to go to dinner, go swimming without packing floaties, go for a night walk on the beach and watch tv in silence. Oh, and the best part? The blissfully uninterrupted 10+ hours of sleep. Ahhhhhh!!!!!! And yeah, this is the best of like 10 photos that we tried getting. Sigh.

Christmas 2009

Ah, what a great Christmas! Brooklyn is MORE than into the spirit of it, Sam is into the spirit of ripping everything down that he can touch, and Russ and I were both happy that he got to use all his vacation time whopping 16 days off and that his family was able to come and spend it with us. Also, I was so happy that Jerry brought his camera--he caught many things that I couldn't, so much of the Christmas morning documentation here is his doing.

The night before we finally found the box with all of the stockings and good Christmas decor. Oh well. Brooklyn was happy to be able to put the topper on the tree finally.

Russ decided to make cake balls for Santa. They didn't quite turn out how they were supposed to...but that didn't stop us from eating them!! We weren't having much luck this evening though--I made sugar cookies for Santa, which were AWFUL, and Russ started some cheese, which did not turn out. Bah.

I snuck out and took a picture of the Christmas loot after Santa came. :P Little did I know that this was only half of everything....the Teeter clan came the next morning and the gift pile multiplied. Wowza!

Brooklyn was so excited to show Sam how stockings work. She worked very hard the night before, hanging each stocking in very special places around the room and naming who's each was. She couldn't wait to dump those suckers out!

Mmm, candy orange slices! Lol, you can see Sam has one in his mouth the same way as well.

I'm not sure why we're comparing tongues here, but we are.

Ah, Christmas morning is good.

Sharing with Daddy.

Morning juice and snuggle time while waiting for the rest of the clan to show up.

Morning juice (or chocolate milk, in this case) are like these kids' crack.

WaHOOOO, Corinne is finally here!! She took the red eye to be with us at 8:30am Christmas morning, and the kids are loving it.

Everyone was settling in to their spots for the opening of gifts...this is how Sam chose his spot--a full-out launch.

Sam was actually really apprehensive about all of the Christmas morning chaos. He didn't finish opening all of his gifts until right before he went to bed that evening. This was his first one though--one of those bead maze things. He opened this little bit and this is him yelling, "YEAH! YEAH!!!"

Feeding the begging baby birds.

Sam went STRAIGHT to the wagon from Grammie and Grandpa Scott.

This thing will get much use with these two.

Sam was a bit apprehensive of Corinne at first, but quickly learned of her awesomeness.

Christmas morning chaos.

As you can see, Sam was a bit apprehensive about his jack-in-the-box...although Bubba seemed to enjoy it. :P

After a few times he figured out that it's a pretty fun though.

I sent Dut on a treasure hunt for her new bike.

Grampa needed a photo with Dut and Mr. Pirate Pinata.

Bubba found this table and chairs for the kids and they love it!

The "adults".

...see what I mean...?

Showing off my new Christmas shirt from Suzy (thank you, Suzy!!) and thought it would look more elegant with a giant bee in my hands.

Dut loves using binoculars.

Grampa with all of the lovies.

Christmas dinner, minus Corinne.

hehe, we looked kind of funny b/c Russ was sitting in a camping chair, so he was way shorter than Sam and I.

Who says Duplos are only for kids??

Lovin' on Corinne.

We pooped Grampa out.

"YEEEE-HAWWW!"

Dut in her new jammies from Suzy and reading her new Harold book.

What a goofball.

Ahhh, another Christmas documented. Now to get it into the photo books...eek.

Family Photos 2009

I decided that it was time to update family photos, given that the last ones we have, Sam couldn't even sit up on his own... So we gave it a shot. Here's the Teeter Clan, who I forgot to remind to open their eyes. :P

And this would be ours, but I didn't quite get it in focus, so we'll give it another shot later.

Brooklyn's possible new photo for the wall.

Sam's possible new photo for the wall.

I think I'll try for another sibling shot, maybe. I really like the one that I have now, but I always need more sibling shots so why not. Anyways, this one was a bit more difficult, as you can imagine, but Grampa did a great job attempting to gain attention.

And I think this is my favorite, just because we never get photos of us as a couple and when we do, we definitely don't look this good! :P So this will probably go on the wall.

Stay tuned for more Teeter Family fun.

Day In The Life - November 2009

Ah, finally getting caught up. Anyways, I decided to do this on Thanksgiving. It was just us and we ended up postponing our feast until the following day because we were too busy playing and stuff. It was kinda nice actually!

Yes. That says 3:44am. And I'd been up for a half hour. Sam has been sleeping horribly and woke me up because his binky fell on the ground somewhere behind his bed. Got it, got back in bed, was almost asleep and "Mommy! Momma!" Ugh, Brooklyn. So she just came and climbed in bed with me. And then Sam woke up again. Was almost asleep, and up again. Poor Brooklyn wasn't sleeping either. I was getting so irritated being woken up everytime I JUST got back to sleep that I just got up.

I needed to get up anyways...Turkey Day was when the pharmacy's Black Friday deals started! I spent hours getting my transactions figured out. Kind of bummed though because I got to Rite Aid and had forgotten my back up plan, so ended up totally scratching that one off the list. Oh well.

Brooklyn got up and watched some cartoons w/ Daddy. Sam slept in, go figure.

Time to de-stinkify and get ready to hit the pharmacy!

Sam finally wakes up--it's the first night we had the childproof doorknob on his door so he wouldn't come out of his room 34,485,382 times every time we try to put him to bed. Go figure, he dismantles it. He was so proud, too.

Ah, breakfast.

Russ declared Turkey Day "Trim Day". Sam was so interested in what Russ was doing that at one point he grabbed a piece of trim and just yanked it off!! Granted we found it was only nailed into some flimsy baseboard...we were a bit surprised, lol.

I left to go play at CVS. I got $135+ for $2.29 (plus tax)!!! Plus I earned $17 back in pharmacy bucks and have money coming back to me for some of then. SUH-WEET! November was my best month by FAR as far as couponing goes--$300 spent, $1390 SAVED!! That's 78%! Although December's been good to me as well, although it just started--I'm at $55 spent, $448 saved. Woot woot!!

I moved the toybox to another part of the room and the kids are loving playing in the bay window area, especially since Russ and I are working right in front of it, outside.

This little ragamuffin was so silly--she stayed inside almost ALL DAY. The rest of us were outside for a good chunk of the day. She just sat inside with the windows open and talked to us. We kept asking if she wanted to come outside, "Nope, I'm okay." Funny girl.

Yay! I was so happy to plant something. As much as I looking at greenish-brown grass everywhere... There is soooo much more I want to do, but am just keeping it simple because I know how well I tend to plants...eek.

Last step: Pine straw. Got to clean up the back yard and decorate the front yard all in one fell swoop.

A lunch fit for a king: hot dogs and soda. Went great with that cold pizza for breakfast. This is turning out to be a fabulous Thanksgiving after all.

Ahhhh, Quiet Time!!! I always say that it's "nap time" for Sam, but "quiet time" for Brooklyn...for obvious reasons. But dang it, that girl is catching on. When ever I mention it, she always replies, "But MOOOOM, I have WORK to do!!" lol, can you tell what excuse I always give her for her needing to take a nap??? I'm just glad that she's usually content with reading a book and passing out. For now, at least.

Head out to take photo of final project (for now). Russ decides he needs to be the Vanna White of landscape photography.

I decide to take a break and TRY to get some of my book read. I was given this book WELL over a year ago and have been reading it for at LEAST 4 months. I guess that's what I get for reading right before I go to bed... Note to self: Keep future books under 600 pages...

Remember that I hadn't watched last week's Glee. Yippee!

I don't want the kids to sleep too late, so time to wake them up. Awww, they are just so darn sweet when they're sleeping though...

Yes, she truly was sleeping like this.

We head outside to check on Russ. Yay! He decided to tackle the remnants of the chicken coops that were in the swamp. He still needs a chainsaw to cut a bit more of it, but he got the pile cleaned up. This fire burnt for hours. HOURS and hours.

Dinner time!! Must be good if she's doubling up! I count myself lucky if she's using ONE utensil.

Wow, he thinks it's good too? Most impressive. I consider it a successful dinner.

Ah, this is actually taken from the following day when we really did cook our turkey. Russ did great--it was fanstastic...if you couldn't tell.

And for dessert, pudding! With a straw!!

We decide to go keep Russ company outside while his fire burns. I let the kids stay up for awhile--they never get to play outside in the dark and they loved it.

Russ was adding a bit of fuel to the fire...literally. He attached the air compressor to a long steel pipe, which he stuffed into the coals...yeah...BIG flames.

I neglect my camera during bedtime and the 1 1/2 hours of me losing my mind, trying to get Sam to stay in his bed. He normally passes out between 6:30-7:30. At 9:20pm, I give up and give him a bath in hopes it'll clear his head or something. Or keep me from wanting to tie him to his bed. It worked...sort of. Only like 4 more escape attempts before passing out.

At the end of my rope, I get ready for bed, exhausted from battling with Sam all evening (and all nap time as well).

Done. SOOOOO done.

A Dramatic Weekend.

It's been a pretty good weekend--not really dramatic, I was just feeling the dramatic black & white look. We had lots of family time, which we were definitely in need of.

No, my kids don't usually have 10 boxes of cereal for breakfast--there was a great deal this week and I thought it would be fun to have it all out waiting for the kids when they woke up in the morning (plus they got 4 new bowls for free w/ the cereal). And yeah, they were pretty excited.

Brooklyn asked to make some playdough, so Russ did while I got a bunch of photography work done. They all played for a couple of hours. Here's Russ's shark and unfortunate surfer. I took it at just the right second because Sam dessimated them both a split-second later.

A stand-off between an octopus...

...and a crab.

Sam thought he was the cat's meow with his new kisser.

"Look at my giant hand, momma!"

RARRR!!!

It was disturbingly quiet, so I set off in search. First it was the ruby red lips, now it's my shoes. Funny boy.

A tapeworm picked the wrong day to mess with Russ.

I think she was doing imprints of her lips onto the playdough, but I'm not sure, lol.

Can you guess who's creation this was--complete with swivel-head external flash?

Annnnd Sam comes to the rescue again...heaven help us if we have a playdough creation just SITTING there! MUST.DESTROY.

Russ, having way too much fun.

Then, after the 18,333,405,485,399 time of Brooklyn asking Russ if we could get a Christmas tree yet (I'm sure my hinting to her had nothing to do with it), we set out to Lowe's. Yes, kind of sad that we bought it at Lowe's, but at least they SMELLED like trees, unlike last year's...

She jumped and grabbed onto Russ when the guy started his chainsaw to trim the bottom of the tree.

Ah Sam, 110% boy. Puddles! Puddles! Puddles! Oh, and you can't tell, but he has rocks in both hands. Lately, they've become his security thing. We usually have 3-4 in the car that he always asks to hold on to.

Prepping the tree.

This is how the kids entertained themselves while Russ checked out.

Being home was such a relief to me. I have a fear of things falling off/out of my car after moving last time--I had a bookshelf fall out of the back of the truck going 40mph...SCARY. When I asked Russ at Lowe's if it was tied tight he said, "Eh, it should be okay. We'll see, I guess." ACK!!! Getting home was a heart attack for me.

Brooklyn is SO into gifts--she is always wanting to wrap more and more!!

And we had to decorate the tree, of course. Thank HEAVENS we got the non-breakable (AKA - plastic balls) on clearance last year. Russ opened the box and immediately Sam starts chucking them across the room. There were probably 40 balls rolling all over the floor while Brooklyn and I were trying to put them on the tree.

I felt so bad when I couldn't find the hooks to put the balls on with. Actually, I knew where they were, but when I put my hand in and pulled some stuff out a swarm of little cockroaches ran around the bottom of the box. GROSS!!!! One of the drawbacks to this area...grr. So instead Russ said, "What about your paperclips?" Voila!

Sam even got into it. Although he just stuffs them in there, lol.

There's been an awesome sale on diapers this weekend, so I've been stocking up. The kids were really quiet for a bit, and I found them stacking, lining, throwing, shoving them all up and around Sam's room. They were having a blast! Who needs toys when you have 10 bags of diapers?!

Sigh...another favorite. Good thing we have a trampoline, huh? Geesh, this reminds me that we really need to get some doors on Sam's closet so I can actually USE it. Right now his bed is up against it so he can't get to any of it while he's in there. Not exactly ideal. Blah.

My very sweet Santa's helper.

We've been doing bathtime every night to try and get Sam calmed down and ready for bed (for the past couple of weeks it's taken HOURS to get him down for bed and naps, but it's definitely gotten better). I had to take pictures of him this night though because what he was doing really reminded me of Brooklyn a year earlier--lining up his toys and one by one, knocking them into the tub.

She was, let's see...almost 2 1/2 (29 months) and Sam's 20 months old here.

Anyways, all in all it was a good weekend. Okay, I'm off to rescue my kids from the bath. Have a good one.

Landscaping!

Well, Russ and I have just about reached agreement that we've about come to the end of things to do to the inside of the house (minus some closet doors for Sam, new doorknobs throughout, and random other little paintjobs and things) that we're finally getting to move to the outside! YEAH! I have SO much that I want to do, but am wrestling with how much I really need to do... We know we won't be here for years and years, sooo, we'll see. But I knew I wanted to start with the small area in front of the bay window.

I started trying to hoe all the crud out. It was TOUGH! I thought it was just a bunch of weeds and stuff but that stuff was like sod. Which was GREAT because it was the perfect amount to cover up the empty spot in the backyard we had from remediating a septic tank.

I was having a HECK of a time, so I had to bring in the big guns. Yes, he had all that sod out of there and transplanted within an hour. Gotta love it!

It's always extremely interesting trying to do any sort of housework with the kids up and about. Sam is a wanderer and will be GONE in a split second. So while Russ and Brooklyn dug up sod, Sam and I meandered down to the water to toss some rocks (I think he would do this ALL.DAY.LONG. if he could).

Brooklyn did a great job helping Russ transplant the grass.

This was my fate for the rest of the weekend. BAH!!

Fabric in? Check.

I once read something about how your house will always look better through your eyes because it's yours. So I'm always struggling with 'does this really look good or is it just me?' But I must say, it's definitely getting there.

We had to wait until the following day to get our trees and shrubs, so I got to work and Russ raked up a big pile of leaves for the kids. They were pleased.

UGH. The sad part is that this was WEEKS ago and although I have 90% of the job done...I haven't touched it since this day, lol. My goal is to get it done before Russ's parents get here in 9 days...eek.

Russ thought he would assist in showing our accomplishments...even though he's blocking half of it, lol. I'm a bit bummed the small shrubs are so small right now--I'd had my eye at entirely different shrubs when I was at the nursery a couple of days before and told the owner that I think I wanted them. I go back and go figure, they were cleaned out!! She said that they'd had them for a good 6-9 months and bam! Doh. Oh well. I'm happy with what I got and am excited to see them grow.

Next project: New front door. Yeah!!

Geocaching.

We were driving to get my Sunday morning papers a couple of weeks ago and both Russ and I thought that it would be a great day to drive and go for a hike or something outside. Russ mentioned geocaching. We hadn't gone since I was pregnant with Sam!

So we ran home and got our GPS and figured out where we wanted to go. The kids were pretty excited...

We ended up at Lake Sutton, which is all of 10 miles from our house.

Yup, those are smokestacks. I'm told that the fishing is decent here...but do not eat the fish.

We tried looking for the first microcache, which was supposedly somewhere around the dock, but we are awful at those--we have yet to ever find one.

Then we went on a bit of a walk. It seemed like a loooooong way to walk...especially with midgets.

She was the leader of the pack.

He sure loves his Daddy. He does great with riding on people's shoulders, but what I love is that every now and then he'll wrap his arms around your head and give you a big ol' hug. And then he goes back to just hanging out up there. Pretty sweet boy.

Geocache #2 was a dud as well, which I was really frustrated about. It just seemed like it should be right THERE. Alas, it was not. Soooo we trekked a bit more and Russ FINALLY found one for us!!

The kids were enthralled. Brooklyn picked out these two little toy things that melted in her hand on the trek back...not sure what they were...in exchange for a new pen (so people can log when they were there).

It was a fun little journey. What cracked me up was that the way in seemed SO long, but when Russ and I picked the kids up and walked out at our own pace, it took about 10 minutes. lol.

Halloween

Yes, I am very behind...the story of my life at this point. Anyways, we went over to our friends' Darcy and Roman (and Blake)'s house. They're downtown-ish in a fun neighborhood and just had dinner together, passed out candy, chatted, and the guys took the kids trick or treating. It was pretty awesome, minus the mosquitos.

Carving pumpkins.

Eating dinner outside on the porch. Well, most of us were. Sam preferred to sit and suck on his "nana" (pacifier).

Good food, great times, lots of fun!

The pumpkins were ready and waiting.

Brooklyn saw trick or treaters coming, jumped up from the table and ran to the candy bowl. She assumed the job as candy-hander-outer and took it VERY seriously.

This is the best group shot we could get. Sam was Tigger, Brooklyn wanted to be a snake. I found a dragon costume at a yard sale that is size 2T...she decided it would work. Blake was going to be a fairy I think, but then saw Brooklyn's dragon costume and decided she wanted to be one too. Roman was The Phantom and Russ was....well, I'm not sure. He wore his Tex Mex shirt and cowboy hat w/ horns attached.

Ah, it was really nice. Darcy and I just sat and talked (and swatted mosquitoes) and hung out while the girls had a blast. They definitely got some loot! Sam was content sitting in the stroller the entire time.

All in all it was pretty great. Brooklyn's already talking about costumes for next year...

Preschool: Nature Walk

I'm getting way behind!!!

We did a Nature Walk for pre-school a few weeks ago (okay, more like 1 1/2 months ago...). Of course you have to start with artwork...

Thankfully, Sam really enjoys playing with Blake's kitchen while the older kids are learning. He'll occasionally stick around for the lesson part of school, but generally causes more distraction than it's worth.

Then we were off for our walk! The kids were scouting for things that remind them of Fall. And here is my "rock boy". If he sees a rock, he acts like it is physically impossible for him to NOT pick up.


We went to Darcy's neighbor's house to check out her garden.


Sam was more interested in squishing bugs. Go figure.

These were some of her many limes (I think...maybe they were lemons...). She had TOOOONS of stuff there though! We were quite envious.

The kids were wanting to catch butterflies--fortunately for them (unfortunately for the butterfly), this one had an injured wing so they all got to hold it for a minute.

And then of course game and song time.

And round everything off with another healthy dose of messy artwork. How could a kid not love this?!