A day in the life

Some days these boys play so well together and other days they fight so well together . Yesterday was a play so well together day. They were "wild dog friends" all morning . Tate was named "Spike" and Tanner was named "Snake Kill". Tate has the best imagination for playing and make believe names. They killed all kinds of wild javelinas and even got into a few pretend dog fights too. I want to remember these days of playing and make believe .

The first picture is them getting ready for their big dog fight . The 2nd one is the fight , 3rd- just Tate as a wild dog and Tanner as his owner, and last pic- on my bed with all their javelina spoils. (all their stuffed animals) Such funny boys!

Friday night dilemma

Chris was gone for nearly an entire week at scout camp last week. It was the longest week ever! It was fine, just long. It was weird not talking to him at all from Sunday night until Saturday late afternoon. I was faced with the dilemma of what to do on Friday night and luckily I found something so I didn't have to sit at home . I hate sitting at home on a Friday night! Apparently the town of Gilbert does movies in the park on the 2nd Friday of the month with free popcorn, too. Good 'ol Gilbert. The movie was The Little Mermaid and the night was a success.
I guess this is the new little babe's blog debut as well. Introducing Ivie Lynn Smith born 2/20/2012. She is such a doll and quite arguably the best baby ever. More on her later. She has a fun birth story. Plus she was over 8lb, which is nearly 2lb bigger than my boys. And she was a week late , bless her heart. Actually, now that I think about it, that extra week of gestation might have been 50x longer than this past week ...

Cowabunga!!

I suck at life documentation. Tate and Tanner found our old ninja turtle movies at the end of August, and it was love at first sight. They wanted to be ninja turtles for Halloween the moment they saw the 1980s film.  Here is our take on Ninja turtles:

I found the main parts of the boys costumes on 2 separate Goodwill trips, but had to make the accessories, as well as mine and Chris' really fancy costumes. Every day they would as me, "Mom, what's my name again?"

"Tanner, you're Donatello the purple one."
 "Tate you are the red one, Raphael"
"Mom is the orange one, Michaelangelo"
and "Dad is the blue one, Leonardo."
Repeated 12x each day.

 There was a couple of days there where they wanted to be Indians, but in the end the Ninja turtles prevailed.

 I think i had the best weapon overall, the nunchuk .  It was definitely the most dangerous, as Tanner can attest. (He hit himself) :)

So Halloween was grand, and the weather was beautiful the entire weekend. (No jackets!)  and Chris and I are still eating their Halloween candy. :) 

 This next bit of info deserves it's own post. I am a little frightened to say this prematurely, but we no longer have diapers in our house!! I only started potty training Tanner 4 days ago, but he has had no accidents for 2 days. It is AMAZING. I have been putting off potty training because my first experience (Tate) was less than desirable. But this is seriously miraculous. He is the man!!

I guess I never blogged it, so I should also say that there is a legitimate reason why I have a pot belly in the above photo. We are expecting a GIRL at the beginning of Feb!!

The best date ever :)

Check out my handsome date, Tate P. Smith. My friend Alecia suggested that we take our two oldest kids to Chic fil A for the mother/son date night last Friday. IT WAS SO FUN! 

Tate was so cute. I came downstairs ready to go in my jeans and tshirt and he gets this dissapointed look on his face and says, "But I wanted you to wear a pink dress." So I run up stairs and rummage through my closet that is virtually devoid of anything pink and I try and convince him to let me wear a black skirt.  He says again,  "But I want you to wear a pink skirt." So I hold up this purpley number and I said "What about this one?"

"Yes."

Whew. So I come back downstairs and he is wearing these lovely swimming goggles. He really thought that he looked good in these and that he needed to wear these out on our date. And he did. FUNNY. Where he got the notion that I needed to wear a pink dress/skirt I am still trying to figure out. I thought it was so cute though. 

A hostess seated you when we walked in and presented me with a rose and Tate with a toy. They took our order at the table, and I had the most delectable oreo milkshake EVER. 

They had two members of "the herd" there that Tate HAD to hold hands with and take pictures with, and the night ended with balloons and a limo ride. It was a blast. I don't get out with just Tate hardly ever, so this was a treat. I am constantly amazed (as I am sure all parents are) at how smart and funny and witty he is. I cant believe the things that he says sometimes. He comprehends so much. 

Oh, and he said his first naughty word this week. I am so proud. (Not really) He has this motorized car that he got from our neighbors and when it wasn't going the way he wanted it to he said, "this d*** car" Yes, he did. Sorry, mother, if you are reading this. I am ashamed. I do find solace in the fact that I know he did not learn the word from me. We have, however, narrowed it down to three people.  It was John Wayne, Tate's father, Chris, :) or the movie Shrek which he watched the same day. Chris seems to want to blame John Wayne, but I am not so sure. I really am embarassed to blog about this, but I think in a few years I will find it quite comical and will want to recall the details. 

Here's the little buddies, Tate and Tanner. They got into a huge fight last week when Tanner hit Tate on the head with a toy gun because Tate was trying to take the gun from him and Tate's head started bleeding. Tate was mad so he gouged a chunk out of Tanner's nose with his fingernails and then luckily I intervened. Tate truly needed a band-aid, but then of course Tanner wanted one too. This was taken about 2 minutes after their huge fight. They play (and fight) so well together. 

Last week it hit 100, so went swimming a couple of days. Tate and Tanner loved it, even though the water is still cold. I am excited for the summer swimming days. Here is Tate doing the "monkey walk" around the pool.

I had a really good mother's day. I will have to post some details/pictures soon. For now I am really enjoying one of my gifts...a cook book.  La di da. But there really is some good stuff in here, with ingredients that you can find easily at virtually any grocery store. I bought a cook book once that had totally obscure ingredients and I NEVER use it. They have a lot of recipes on their blog...you should check them out! The baked chicken taquitos are AMAZING. 

Go fly a kite.

 Tonight we had some good wind so we decided to try our batman kite again. We tried it a few weeks ago but it was pretty much unsuccessful. Tate has this Berenstein Bears dvd where the whole episode is about them making this big red kite and then flying it so he has been wanting to do the same thing. He told me "I'm just like Papa Bear!" He has an uncanny memory to recall lines from movies. He says some funny stuff. My favorites are:

"Pigs are naturally stupid" (Babe) (I think he likes this one too because he thinks he can get away with saying the word "stupid" because he is quoting a movie. He will say this line over and over and over...)
"Do you want to get nabbed by the police?!" (101 Dalmations)
"Kill the Goat!" (Home on the Range) and
"You indiats" (101 Dalmations) Cruella says "You idiots!" but when Tate says it he thinks the word is a cross between the words indian and idiot.

 He is always saying random stuff and when I ask him where he heard that he always references some movie. Even movies he has only seen once he can recall lines from. Definitely not like me. Exactly like Chris. Maybe its a boy thing??

Tanner...of course wearing his cowboy boots and a carrying a bag of "fishies"

The proud kite flyer.

On a completely different note I had a surprise waiting for me the other day. Tate was using the restroom and I stepped outside to do some work in the backyard. I came back a couple minutes later and this is what I found:

:

I was dying when I walked in and this is the first thing I saw. What a great brother, huh? I think Tanner was enjoying himself a little bit too much, though. (See his face in picture below)  He LOVES helping Tate do anything (put on shoes, pick out clothes, get underwear out of his drawer, share his toys with Tate, etc.) so this was right up his alley. So Funny.  This is the kind of funny stuff I want to remember a few years from now so I am so glad to be blogging again for that reason alone!

On another completely different note I did a "Ragnar Del Sol" last weekend. It was so fun! During it I did not think it was as much fun, but looking back I think I would do it again. Basically we have a team of 12 people and our team ran approx. 200 miles in 1 1/2 days. Each person has 3 legs to run, of varying distances and difficulty. I had a really cool ragnar logo neck tattoo for the event because I am so hard core. LOL. I will have to post pictures when I get them. It was the most I have ever run, (or is it ran??) so overall I feel it was a huge accomplishment for me!