Change of the seasons.

I do not like winter!                                                                                                  12/8/2011

Sometimes I wonder why I never moved somewhere warmer when I was single. I really do not like winter. I don't like it being cold, I don’t like snow, I don’t like having to wear a bunch of clothes. Plus, it affects my mood a lot. I get the winter blues big time. I love working on my gardens and playing outside with the boys, all of which cannot be done in the winter. I suppose that I could go outside and play with the boys still, but that just goes back to me not liking the cold. At least this year had been a very manageable winter so far. There has been very little snow and the temperatures have not been really cold. A lot of people say they want a ‘white Christmas’, not this girl. I would be very happy if it did not snow all winter long. Although, I think that would be terrible for the enviroment.

Eli is awesome.

So much to talk about!                                                                                                      12/5/2011
I feel bad that I have not been updating as much as I want to because there have been so many things to tell. First I want to talk about Eli, it seems that he has grown up sooooo much within the past couple weeks. He is talking so much, and so good! If he wants something, he can actually ask for it, he is even saying please when asking for stuff. Not a lot, but we are working on that. It is funny when he wants me to do something but does not know how to ask. For example, I have a tin of buttons sitting on top of the china cabinet. They are just used buttons that were cut off clothes. It was something that my Great-Grandma Brotherton had collected for me. When she babysat me, I loved to play with the buttons. Well, Eli loves to play with them now too. So, when he wants to play with the buttons he will come find me and take my hand. If I am sitting down, he will tell me “up mommy”. I get up and he holds my hand, walks me over to the china cabinet, points to the top, and says “buttons”. The first couple times I let him play with the whole tin of buttons, but that was always a huge mess, now I give him about 4-5 buttons to play with. The funny part is that I have no idea where the buttons end up. I know when I do a good cleaning of the house (behind furniture) I will find a lot of buttons lol.
He is also currently obsessed with my bottles of nail polish. I left them out one day when Aidan painted my toenails (will explain that later) and Eli found them and has been playing with them ever since. I have realized that it good for him though. When he plays with them, I will ask him what color they are, it seems to have really helped him with learning his colors. He will take about 5-10 bottles and carry them around in a bucket, they move them from the bucket into a tin, then move them into some other container he can find.
For some reason he keeps calling Derek, Gabe. I think he does this because it is easier for him to say. So I have started trying to get him to call Derek, O’Flynn. He seems to like trying to say that better, but he has only done it a couple times, so we will see how that works out.

It's been a fun week.

What an amazing week at our house!                                                                11/7/2011

This week started with Halloween on Monday. Eli was dressed up as a dragon, and Aidan was the Green Lantern. It was such a nice night for trick or treating. My dad came over and helped take Aidan around the neighborhood. They seemed to have a very good time. I tried to take Eli to a few houses, but he did not seem too interested. First, we went to our neighbor's Jeff and Sandy. Eli insisted on getting one of the smaller pumpkins from our porch and taking it over there with us. We tried to take it away from him but he screamed, so we just let him take it along. Then we went to our other neighbor's house, and they have a rock driveway. Instead of wanting candy he wanted to collect rocks out of their driveway. He put about 10 rocks in his bucket and wanted to leave. After a few more unsuccessful attempts, we called it quits on Eli.

On Tuesday we all helped rake leaves in the back yard and made a huge pile for the boys to jump in, I mean all the boys lol. It was one of the first times that all of the boys got to hang out together. They seemed to have a lot of fun. We took some really fun pictures, everyone seems to think they are photoshopped, but they are not.

Wednesday, Aidan showed me something that one of his friends from school made him. He pulled it out of his bag and I noticed it was a 'cootie catcher'. One of those oragami things that you use your fingers to work. The best part was that he kept calling it a 'pootie catcher'! Then, on Wednesday night Dan and I went to the boys hockey game. They ended up losing, which was 5 in a row for the team. Gabe did not play, but Derek had a good game.

Thursday evening Derek and Gabe left for games in New York for three days, and Aidan went to his moms. I was so bored!  You would think that I would enjoy having time to myself, but that really did not happen. I tried to get laundry and cleaning done while they were gone, I somewhat succeeded in that task lol.