Crawling...Chocolate...Poop

Crawling...
Shay has been crawling for about a week now. She is finally realizing she can get wherever she wants and is exploring the house. It is fun to watch her during this new stage...so cute! She is still a little on the petite side, weighing in at 50% for her age and 90% for height, so she is twiggy! She LOVES to dance. My goal is to get video of this posted this weekend. She is EXTREMELY flexible in her hips and gets her groove on to all music. We are hoping for the next Olympic gymnast, haha!

Chocolate...
Conley loves all things chocolate. Normally Nate clears the table after dinner and I do the dishes. Conley has taken over Nate's duties and Nate rewards/pays him in chocolate for doing his job. The conversation went something like this...

Conley "I take momma the dishes, okay dadda?!"

Nate "I will give you candy bar anytime you do my chores buddy"

Conley "I get candy bar?"

Nate "If you clear off the table"

I never got paid in chocolate for doing my chores, how unfair!!!


Poop...
My kids now take baths together...another video needing posted. It is so fun to watch them play and interact in the tub. The other night I put them in and sat back to let them play. Every kid has a poop face. Every mother can tell when their kid is loading their pants by their poop face. I did not see a poop face in Shay for one second. I don't know how long they played before I got closer to the tub to start washing and noticed some serious floaties. Shay had poop A LOT in the tub. I of course, clean freak, just start screaming for Nate. He comes running expecting a serious crisis, only to receive a naked Shay in his arms. He laughs and goes to clean her up. Meanwhile....Conley sits among poop, pointing and talking about it. I finally figure out to get him out and start scooping! Conley continues to dialogue "Shay pooped in the tub", "Shay we don't pee pee in the tub", "Shay we don't poopoo in the tub", apparently he needed to have this conversation with her earlier. Conley did receive the rest of his bath after some serious cleaning. I didn't have the camera handy, and I'm sure nobody cares to see the pics. Looking back, oh so funny, but in the moment very disgusting!

Nothing is free!!!

A couple of months ago Nate worked at a house and a lady was sharing with Nate how her sons wanted a trampoline but they needed to get rid of a swing set first. Nate, of course offered to take the swing set off her hands. She told him he could have it for free if he would move it out of there.

So.... 5 guys and three trucks each pulling full sized trailors later, the swing set arrived at our home. Now, this was free, which was great because these things tend to cost as much as a down payment on a house! So find a place in the backyard and put the thing together, right?! Oh no, Nate (as stated in previous posts) tends to go all out, all the time! This free swing set, turned into many Menards trips, and adding on to the back porch. I haven't received the Menards bills yet, but I'm sure my swing set is the farthest thing from free. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my husband and his handy skills go unmatched! I can't recall hiring out anything that we built, fixed or remodeled on this house (except the roof, but it is trecherous). I have to admit, at first I thought is was a little much, but he did an awesome job, it looks great, and Conley loves it!

Here are pics from yesterday's first testing of the swing set by Conley. He was in love! We need to have all our friends over in the spring to help break it in right!!!

This is the walkway from the back porch over to the swing set, you can also turn right about half way down and there are stairs down to the back yard.

Nate and Sampson await Conley:)

This is looking at it from the back deck. It came with that seperate wooden swing set in the background. The colorful plastic set we have had for a couple years. It will be better for Shay next summer, or will make me feel more comfortable than the bigger one!

The steps Conley is climbing is the only part I feel is unsafe, which is saying a lot because I'm very cautious when it comes to my children. I will make Nate put something more protective in front of that opening until Conley gets older! Nate will be disappointed in this pic, I cut off showing his pond/waterfall. There are 2 small ponds behind the deck/porch that overflow a small stream to a waterfall and bigger pond at the bottom. You can see part of this in the picture above, it is the rock bed that the stream comes down before reaching the bottom pond. Sorry, my husband is not for hire...too many undone projects around here, plus we never see him because of that same reason :)

Wax Paper

1 roll of wax paper

1 toddler

1 man who sometimes acts like a toddler

2 girls trying to survive in this crazy house :)

The wax paper was obviously fun to run and slide on in the kitchen!

It was also fun to tear up and throw in the air, Shay loved this!

Probably not the safest activity. Don't even ask about the pants...

Our floors are quite slippery after this event.

Scary Baby!

When Chloe was younger I bought some toys to have at our house for when she would come over. I had purchased a baby that came with some accessories (bottle, comb, fake powder) at Stuff and was excited for the first time Chloe would come over to show her my new toy. She had been playing with it all night and it must have been time for them to leave. Mindy must have told her to tell me thanks for buying the baby for her to play with. Chloe's response "thanks for my scary baby aunt Sara". I remember we all burst out laughing. No one had given baby that name, she came up with it on her own. Now I have to admit, this baby has quite the haircut. It has a resemblance to my youngest sister when she was younger and just woke up in the morning, minus the dreadful perm my mother forced upon us for many years!!

I introduced Scary Baby to Shay this weekend. I figured she should have some girly toys, considering she has been playing with Conley's spiderman, Thomas the trains, etc. Shay didn't understand how to "love" her baby. Instead she loved grabbing it by the hair and swinging it around. She had a great time, but we'll have to work on her "mothering" skills. I have included some pics of Shay and Scary Baby's first meeting.

She tried drinking from this bottle a few times. She wasn't willing to share with her baby!

We tried to comb Scary Baby's hair, but we both felt it was a lost cause!

Such an innocent look, moments before she flings Scary Baby around by her hair!

"What, you don't call this loving my baby?"

Honey & Snakes!

Another funny Conley story...I'm sure other moms have nicknames for their children or just use different names to get their attention or calm them down. I sometimes call Conley "honey", when trying to calm him down or just talking to him in general. I truly don't say it all that often. I'm sure he is called that at daycare every now and again. Where am I going with this you are asking yourself....well now Conley calls me "honey". Some of the phrases from the other night included, but not limited to:

"Honey, throw the football"

"Come play honey"

"Honey, more chocolate milk please"

I would respond with: "My name is mommy"

only to hear..."Moooommmmmy" shouted, and almost mocking me

It was so hard not to laugh. He is fascinated by our real names lately. Although, he still can't remember my name is Sara, but loves calling Nate by his name or Nathan. It truly is precious!

Boys and Snakes!

What is it with boys and snakes. Conley just loves snakes. He has a fake play snake that Nate and my dad bought him at the Mall of America. He loves playing with it. We had a huge black snake living under our front porch for the longest time. He (sadly, yeah right) died this past week, but Conley would look for him every time we went outside. One afternoon Conley carried a box around the front yard for a long time while I watched from the window. Little did I know he had caught a baby snake and it was in the box. I truly felt bad for the snake because Conley squeezed and handled the snake quite aggressively. I did capture the moment on film, just to gross Mindy out, haha! So this ones for you Mindy!!!

Pulling the snake out of the box to show me! Yes that is our dog/horse behind Conley!

Very proud of his new pet. No fear in handling the snake!

Inspecting the living conditions. I'm sure this box will be home to many other creatures!!!

Pumpkin carving...Sundblad style

We carved pumpkins last Thursday night with my parents, Mary, Grammie Pat, Chloe and Isaac. Nothing like the last minute...that is how we operate most of the time around here!

Of course, Nate doesn't do anything lightly. Everything here is modified to be bigger, better and faster. Nate is the man of crazy ideas and inventions. His brain never stops working. For some people this would not be such a bad thing SOME of the time. However, it can be quite exhausting. So of course, power tools had to be used to carve our pumpkins. Nate used the jig saw and did an awesome job! I took some pics to capture the event, because I thought some may not believe (if you know Nate this comes as no shock).

I don't have any pics of the kids in their costumes, they are all on my mom's camera. So if I ever get those from her I will post them. Conley, of course, was Spiderman and Shay was a butterfly. We did a little bit of trick-or-treating and parading around to the relatives to show off our cute costumes.

Some power tool action. Poor pumpkins :)

The final product! I have no idea what happened to my kids' pants.