Sleeping babysitters

This photo was secretly taken while our babysitter SLEPT. After we raised our babysitters arm we dropped it and watched it fall right back to the sofa. All of this indicates that she was sleeping on the job!

Please take our poll on the side.

Festival of the Arts

We went to the Festival of the Arts tonight. It was great. We ate lots of good food and saw some great art. Dad was working a bit on the Wimgo booth while Mom, Clark and Charlotte all hung around. We almost bought a great piece of art for the house. It was a small piece of wood that had been painted. It had a painting of a small girl swinging on a tire swing. It was very cute. I imagine we will go back and buy it as the week goes on.

On another note, Jason is coming to town this weekend. He is going to attend the Norman Music Festival with me. Also, I bought a t-shirt cannon for work and it was delivered today. I went outside to test it. It was awesome. I never new shooting cotton out of a big gun was so fun!!

Marilu Video

The Marilu & Gunnar video interview

First salad ever

This is a photo of the first salad I ever ordered at a restaurant. It was at Nonna's last Friday with Marilu Henner and Gunnar Peterson. To be honest, I didn't like it much.

Last Friday

I spent all day last Friday with Marilu Henner (actress on Taxi and Celebrity Apprentice and author) and Gunnar Peterson (celebrity personal trainer to the stars). They were in town for a book-signing at Barnes & Noble by Quail Springs Mall. I had a blast. They were so nice and down to earth. However, they didn't really like each other too much. They both loved Oklahoma City. In fact, Gunnar is coming back to visit in mid-June. They both talked about how tired they are of Los Angeles and the lifestyle of being a celebrity in Los Angeles.

One a funny note, I ordered my first ever Salad while at lunch with them on Friday. We went to Nonna's in Bricktown. I leaned over to ask Gunnar what I should order. Gunnar laughed at me when I said, "Dude, flip the menu, you're looking at the salad page." After he flipped it I said, "I've never eaten a salad in my life." I never thought he would stop laughing.

I took them to several interviews while they were in town. Once we all learned of Marilu's strict diet, Gunnar was all over her for it. He was constantly cracking jokes about eating steak and other "chemicals." She is a no dairy lady. She talked a lot about the hazards on dairy on our bodies. I thought she was a lovely lady but she was annoying Gunnar and Caralyn, his business partner, in the worst way. Because of that, Gunnar, Caralyn and myself would sneak off to eat frozen yogurt. We were all laughing because we didn't want Marilu to see us.

I took them to the OKC Memorial and we listened to Jamie Smith doing her sound check for a performance on the next day. All of them, Gunnar, Caralyn and Marilu cried. Each one of them was taken over by their emotions at the memorial. Jamie came over and gave them copies of her brand new CD. You would have thought they just won an Emmy. Gunnar kept talking about how cool that was. He was so excited to have her new CD. Marilu mentioned it again several times during the day as well.

You can watch a Gunnar video that was recorded at The Oklahoman below. Gunnar references my "No Salad Eating Diet of Champions" during his video. I was just behind the camera and we laughed about it all day. I have posted the photos for you to enjoy also.

Wild Weekend

Man, what a weekend. We tried to do fun stuff with Clark all weekend long. We were going to take him to the OU Red & White game. We went down to Norman on Saturday only to realize that the game was last weekend. Nice work on our part. Then today we went to the Olympic Trials in Bricktown only to arrive one and a half hours after the last race. Again, nice work. That one wasn't our fault since the races started two hours earlier than promised. So, we told Clark that we would go play glow-in-the-dark minature golf with him at Lunar Golf. Wow, how sad were we when we realized that the store had closed and moved out of Quail Springs Mall over four months ago. After consoling him we told him we'd go to Chick-Fil-A for lunch while at the mall. Once we arrived in the food court we remembered that they aren't open on Sundays. Poor kid. All the promises in the world and no follow through. He managed to go on like a trooper.

Photos of Charlotte

Reaching New Heights

When Charlotte awakened from her nap on Monday, I heard her crying from the dining room where I was working on the computer.

I took my time going to her, engrossed in whatever I was doing. When I finally opened the door of her room, I was shocked to find my little bundle of just-learned-to-army-crawl goodness staring me right in the face with white knuckles gripping the rails of the crib. That's right. She was standing up! She's only 8 months old.

Does that make her "advanced"? (There's only one right answer to that question.)

Brotherly Love

Already, Charlotte annoys Clark at times. I often hear, "Maw-om. Charlotte pulled my hair!" or "She's squeezing my nose." or "Charlotte kicked off her shoe. That's not nice."

But, even in the midst of being annoyed and irritated, Clark loves Charlotte in such a special way, and it makes Mom and Dad extra proud.

Yesterday, as I was driving the kids home from pre-school/MDO, Clark--with breathless excitement--said, "Mom, my whole life, I've wished for a little sister, and now I have one! Charlotte's my little sister!"

Then tonight Clark said, "Charlotte's the best sister I could ever have," and, later, "We prayed all day and all night for a baby, and we got Charlotte. Right, Dad?"

We pray that Clark and Charlotte will always have a tender heart for each other.

U2 3D Premiere

Go to U2.com and refresh the main page until you see a photo of a bunch of people with 3D glasses on. Then look in the middle of that photo. That handsome guy is my brother. He was in Dublin last week for the premiere of the new U2 3D movie. The band is several rows behind him. You can see Edge, Larry and Adam. Bono is in between Edge and Larry. You can only see part of his face. Woody Harrleson is in the green scarf at the bottom right of the photo and Al Gore is further to the left down the same row as the band.

Pretty cool huh?

Then watch this video on You Tube.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hQVThHBt-ek

You can skip ahead to about 6 minutes into the video because the beginning is a bit boring. The video was taken by my brother at the same premiere. It’s the band in front of the movie screen with the director of the film, Catherine Owens. At about 6 minutes into this video Catherine thanks Jason personally. It’s awesome. Jason said he was really thrilled that she thanked him in public like that.

I’ve been telling you all for years that my brother leads the exciting life.

Mr. Sensitive

Clark has been so sweet today. First, he accompanied Charlotte and me to the pediatrician's office. On the way, he leaned over from his car seat to Charlotte's seat to say, "Awww...I'm sorry Charlotte. I'm sorry your ear hurts. I'm sorry Dr. Stephens is going to have to give you a shot. It'll be okay."

Just as Ryan came home, I had to head out the door to pick up Charlotte's antibiotic. When I returned, Clark was just finishing the movie "Charlotte's Web" in the living room. Dad was in the nursery rocking Our Charlotte to sleep. I greeted Clark, who looked a little forlorn. I said, "Hi, Buddy. How are you?" He answered, "I'm good. I just needed some company." I explained where I had gone and why Dad was in the other room, then I asked, "How was the movie?" As he began to tell me, his little bottom lip curled, his eyes squinted shut and the tears began to flow. "It was good, but...(sniffle, sniffle)...Charlotte the spider died. It was...It was... dreadful!" Needless to say, that last word was not exactly the kind of adjective you expect from your 3 year-old. It was everything I could do to contain my laughter. But, as I picked him up and consoled him, I began to tear up, too. Me and Mr. Sensitive were making memories!

Funny Story

The other night Marian and I were playing hide and go seek with Clark. Marian and Clark were counting and I went and hid. I nestled into a hall closet and held my breath. I could hear them walking around the house. As they got closer I couldn't hide my excitement. I was in the closet giggling while trying to hold my breath. Finally, they showed up outside the closet. I was so excited I burst out of the closet door screaming like a wild banshee. Clark, who loves to be startled, started screaming and in slow motion fell over backwards. I had scared him right off his feet! He sat on the ground laughing boisterously at me. "Let's play again! Let's play again!"

Finally eating real food

Charlotte is moving to real food. Here she is with some prunes. How cute is she?

HUGE PROMOTION!!!

I've been working my you know what off for the past 6 months and asked my boss every day, when are you leaving? And she finally did after I planted mice in her office, BUT I GOT THE JOB!!!!

New comment

Well, here we are. I have been so busy lately. I recently got a promotion at work. I was named the Sponsorship and Events Manager at OPBUCO Communications Group. My boss, Kelly, quit the paper after 18 years to stay home and work on a new business opportunity. Bad news for me because I will miss her. Good news for me because I now have her job. She has been training me for about four weeks. I hope I have learned a lot. But, I think I still have a lot to know. Anyway, I'm excited about the opportunity and can't wait to see where it will lead me. Thanks, Kelly.

How important is a washing machine?

We had a pretty interesting weekend. It was going along well when things started to shift into high gear. On Saturday evening, Marian and I had hired a babysitter so we could go to the Pink Martini concert at the Civic Center. I had especially been looking forward to this concert since I really like this band and we were going to get the opportunity to meet them at an after party we were attending.

However, 18 minutes into the concert my cell phone began ringing. It was the babysitter. I waited for two minutes until a break in the music before making my way out the doors of the auditorium of the Civic Center to return the call. When I called her back she said, "Um, something is wrong with the washing machine and water is on the floor. I tried to turn the valves off behind the washer but I couldn't get them to turn." Oh boy.

I said that I would call a neighbor to ask them to turn the water off to the house in the front yard and we would be home in a minute. The last thing I said is, "whatever you do please try to keep the water off the carpet since it's new." She said, "Um, okay. I will try." It wasn't very convincing. I knew she was doing whatever she could do to control the situation but I also knew by her statement that it was probably going to be more than a small amount of water on the floor.

Marian and I literally ran out of the theater to the car. I called a neighbor and asked him to go turn off the water to the house. He said "No problem at all." Then I called the babysitters father who had called me on my cell phone. He said his wife was headed over to help. Again, I thought it must be pretty bad if she is coming from North Edmond to help clean up our house.

When we pulled into the driveway our garage door was open and I could see into the house. From the street I could see that there was water on the floor. There were 5 men standing over my washer and it seemed like chaos in the house. We rushed into a pretty big mess. Turns out that the washing machine had a broken valve and it did not shut off but just kept filling up. Water was everywhere. There was an inch of standing water in our kitchen on the back side of the island. For those of you that have been in our house you will know that the water had already traveled down a hallway past the pantry and completely filled the kitchen before traveling past the island.

Marian and I quickly began the clean up process with the babysitter, babysitter's mom, several neighbors, plus two men I had never seen before. The carpet (less than 60 days old) in our study adjacent to the washer was soaked. We have a vinyl "wood" floor in the laundry room, hallway, pantry, bathroom and kitchen. Almost every inch of the vinyl floor was covered with water. But, to my surprise it had only touched the carpet in the study. Clark's room is next to the laundry area and the carpet installer had placed a metal divider where the carpet stopped. To my surprise not one ounce of water was in his room. On one side was dry carpet on the other was probably a half inch of water. We vacuumed with three wet vacs, dried with towels and swept up the water. Once a towel was soaked we would pass it along to someone else and they would go outside and ring it out.

After about 40 minutes we got the water up. The floors were mostly dry, except for the water coming out under the baseboards. Then I spent more time with my neighbors assessing the situation. Amazing enough, the neighbor across the street has a side job as a handyman. Even more amazing the two men I did not know were his business partner, another handyman who happened to be eating dinner with him, and his son-in-law. What were the odds on that. We quickly discovered that the water valve behind the machines was frozen open. But the water leak was from the valve in the washer that was also stuck open. We were able to finally get the washer to stop filling the tub and then unplug it. Now the water would not be overflowing anymore.

Then I started asking them what I needed to do next. They said, "Nothing except fix the washer." What, I thought??? Much to my surprise all of that water had been cleaned up and not left a trace of any damage. The carpet in the study was still wet. I soaked up the water with towels and left a box fan on it over night. By Sunday morning everything was fine. You can't even tell that water has been under the carpet. Knock on vinyl "wood" floor as that may change over time.

We were feeling pretty good about our luck. We loaded up and headed to church on Sunday morning. We were planning a Sunday School party after church. Marian had prepared a craft activity for the children of our class and I had ordered pizza for 40 people. We rushed around the church getting supplies. Then we rushed out to the car so I could drive Marian over to the church pavilion where the party was being held. When I started the car, the battery was dead. We looked at each other and smirked.

I ran all the way back into the church about 150 yards to the nursery desk. I couldn't find anyone that drives a golf cart in the parking lot so the woman working the desk gave me the keys to her car. I still don't have a clue what her name is. But I know she drives an Infiniti I30 and keeps it kind of messy. I couldn't believe how trusting and nice this woman was. Anyway, I ran to her car and drove up to mine. Marian had this puzzled look on her face when I arrived. She got in the car with the supplies and said, "whose car is this?" I laughed and said, "I have no idea."

I found a man to jump the car at the same nursery desk. I don't know his name either. I had to leave the van running while going back into church to pick up the kids. Clark was walking as slow as a snail and I was thinking someone was driving off in my van because it was unlocked and oh yeah, it was running. I was late for the party because I had to pick up the kids and get the car jumped before I could drive out to the pavilion but I made it.

After an afternoon of buying a new battery and doing laundry at mom's house we finally laid down to go to sleep at midnight. We had had two "problems" and neither were major and both were solved with little pain. God is good. Our house had one inch of water in the kitchen and you couldn't even tell it now. The car was good as new. Off to sleep we went.

Until 1 AM that is. That's when Clark woke up and started wretching. He's been up for three hours (and so have we) puking his little brains out. Marian called the doctor and was told there is a stomach bug going around and he has apparently picked it up. Great. Our carpet that had been saved after the water finally took some damage since he puked on it. There I was blotting up vomit with a mixture of water dishwashing liquid (according to the carpet brochure). What I didn't know until Marian told me was that the dishwashing liquid I was using had bleach in it. Nice.

I started to think about what a headache this weekend had been but how lucky we were to be dealing with a water leak, minor car annoyance and vomit. We could be dealing with something much more serious like disease, a car wreck or an entire flooded house. We are so blessed. God is watching out for us.

Lastly, the same babysitter that mistakenly put Charlotte into the high chair without strapping her in several weeks ago was the one that was over on Saturday night. Charlotte had leaned forward and fell face first into the hard floor on top of the tray. Her face was banged up badly. This was on the day Clark's tonsils were removed. Only a mere two weeks ago. We knew it was a mistake and we felt bad for Charlotte and for the babysitter. After the water incident she may not want to come back to our house for a while.

To answer the question that is the title of this blog, VERY IMPORTANT with an infant and three year old.

Clark's first movie

We took Clark to his first movie tonight. We saw The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. Clark loved it. It was a good movie. We got Clark some Reeses Pieces, water and popcorn. He sat there with his HUGE bag of candy, big bag of popcorn and ate like crazy while watching the movie. Every once in a while he would shout out a question about the movie. We would tell him to not talk so loud. He would wait several minutes and do it again. He was so funny we loved it. His first movie was a big success.

After the movie we picked up Charlotte from a friends house and went home. Clark and I dropped off the ladies so we could run a quick errand. As soon as we turned on to Portland I noticed that Clark stopped talking mid-sentence. He started coughing and suddenly he couldn't respond to my questions. The I realized he was puking all over himself. I quickly turned around and handed him a plastic bag I had in the car. We were a few blocks from home so I turned around. I told him to continue to puke in the bag and we would go right home. He continued to throw up in the bag. Once we reached home I jumped out and went back to get him.

He looked up at me and said, "Dad my throw up fell out of the bag." He was holding the bag upside down. Upon further inspection I realized that he was COVERED in his own vomit. His car seat was covered. The back seat of my car was covered. The floor of my car was covered. It reeked and he was crying.

I quickly picked him up and set him out in the garage. Then I stripped him down and took him inside. He jumped into the bath and cleaned up. Marian and I realized that he actually wasn't sick, he had just eaten too much candy and popcorn. I could tell because it was all over my car.

Rule number one when taking a 3 year-old to a movie: Don't let them eat all the candy and popcorn they want. It will quickly come up!

I will never eat another Reeses Pieces again.

BEWARE OF THESE PHOTOS

By clicking this link here, you will go to the next page containing photos of Clark's actual tonsils after they were removed. It's pretty nasty but so many of you commented that you wanted to see them that I had to post them.

I sent photos to Jason and he replied:

AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! NASTY!!!!

That is SOOO Gross!!!

Wow!

Good one!

Does it freak out the little guy?

I'm going to go PUKE!

I hope each of you enjoy looking at the photos. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Charlotte's First Solid Food

We fed Charlotte cereal for the first time on Saturday. I have attached some pictures for your viewing enjoyment. You can tell what she thinks of cereal.