Trying to concentrate but having a hard time!

I currently sit at my freind Maura's house with a few great friends and we are doing a knitting and knoshing night, however, I don't knit :) So I actually brought my laptop and am working on my blog, catching up on emails and am even going to attempt to work on Syd's baby book!
A couple of other moms are doing the same thing (blogging, scrapbooking, etc.) My friend Chris is working on organizing her daughter's art work. GREAT Chris, another thing that i need to add to my TO DO list!

The last week has been busy as usual. Art took Taylor to a Father/Daughter dance for charity on Sunday and they had a great time (see before and after pictures). Taylor was so excited to go and dance with her daddy it was the highlight of her weekend. By Monday though she had moved onto something else of course, but Art relished his daddy time with Taylor.

The week has been a mix of highs and lows. I tell you I am feeling a little burned out. We met Art for lunch on Monday at ZPizza and Sydney was a pistol as usual. He is so frustrated right now with what I assume is his lack of communication skills. A typical meltdown with Syd looks something like this:
me: Syd, here's some pizza.
Syd: NO!!!!! as he proceeds to push the pizza away
me: okay, you don't want the pizza? I proceed to take the pizza away
Syd: NO, MINE!!!!!!!!!
me: So I give the pizza back
Syd: NO!!! shoves pizza away
me: what do you want Syd? i don't understand what you want (my temperature is rising)
Syd: screaming and crying and kicking in his high chair and raising hell in ZPizza

Art had to take him out of the restaurant at this point.
It turns out that he wanted his pizza sliced up. WTH?!? This goes on numerous times throughout the day and has been going on for weeks. i swear I am having a hard time dealing with him right now. we had 1 good day on Thursday where he really didn't melt down at all and it was great. By Friday though he was back on track with his usual MO. Oh well, at least we were 1 for 5 this week. here's to a good weekend right?!!?

Thank the Lord for my parents! They are going to take the 2 kids overnight on Sunday after church. A much needed break is coming very soon!

LB Aquarium

On Friday I took Taylor, Syd and Skylar (T's best friend) to the Long Beach Aquarium. It was the first time I managed 3 toddlers in a public place all by myself and overall it went smoothly. Here are some pictures of our day. It was nice and sunny so we played outside for a while and the kids got wet with the sprinklers and then we enjoyed a lot of time inside viewing the fish and touching all the different sea creatures on display. The picture of the 3 kids watching the seals/sea lions I thought was really cute. they were so enthralled with them we stood there for about 20 minutes. Check out Syd's new kicks!

The girls decided to each bring an umbrella with them and it ended up being the perfect thing to keep them from getting wet!

Carousel Fun and my Little Artist

Yesterday we went to South Coast Plaza with our good friends and neighbors Ali, Caroline and Olivia. (we missed you Sarah, Reagan and Paige!). We had brunch, went to the Disney Store and of course rode the carousel. Afterwards mommy got to do a little shopping at Nordstrom which is always nice and I finally got myself a new pair of black work pants! My little reward for losing 10 pounds ;)

Over the weekend we hung some artwork that Taylor did almost a year ago with her Nana. they are watercolors and I think they're absolutely amazing. I matted and framed them and we hung them in the main bathroom. I think we have a budding artist in the family?!?!

Ya, I'm a Loser

So on the top of my list of things to do are:

Finalize Living Trust (after filing our living trust back in September, I have yet to fund the darn thing. Now I know why Legal Zoom only charges $499!)

File for dental insurance - still contemplating that one

File for new health insurance - DONE! We got accepted to a new health plan that will be saving us over $100 a month. Thank God!

Finish Syd's baby book - hmmm, think I may complete that one before he turns 2 (hopefully!)

Print up 2008 pictures - I am very close to completing that one!

And finally, UPDATE BLOG! Well to check off one thing off my list, I proceed to update my blog.

I am a little anal retentive you see. What happened is that Art takes a ton of pics on his fancy Canon camera and then hoards them. They are stuck on his computer and I have no access to them. All the pictures from Thanksgiving, the El Dorado Park Home Tour and after-party, and the biggest one of all, Christmas, are all stuck on his computer at work! UGH! So the AR person that I am cannot move forward out of sequence. I keep saying, how can I update my blog and not post something about Christmas, the home tour, holiday party, etc.??? I am hard wired to just go in order.

So at this rate, I may never get my pictures (although I bug him about it every day so maybe some day?). I finally decided today the hell with it and just move forward.

The last several months have been eventful of course. Christmas was wonderful this year and the kids really enjoyed themselves. We saw both sets of famlies but still managed to keep it stress free. We limited our spending which was nice and focused on the kids.

Right before Christmas we were one of 4 homes featured on the El Dorado Park Estates Home Tour and we put in a lot of grueling hours in the preceeding weeks painting the living room, dining room, hallways and entry way and we got some great design consults from my neighbor Sarah. We redecorated a couple of rooms and if I ever get the pics I will share them eventually! I promise Lea :)

After the home tour we had a holiday open house and had about 40 guests. It was a lot of fun and we plan to make it an annual thing.

We celebrated New Years Eve with our dear friends Mark and Ali and their girls and had a mellow glass of champagne and called it a night by 9pm! We left the next day for Scottsdale to visit Lea and spent 3 nights with her. After our visits I am always reminded what a dear friend she is to me. I honestly can say that I have never had friend that I "click with" so well. I love you Lea!

The next weekend we took off to Lake Arrowhead and spent 2 nights and had a great time playing in the snow and feeding the ducks at the lake.

Yesterday was Valentines Day and Art and I just stayed home and had a good dinner with the kids. I made chocolate milk for them and gave them a V-Day cookie. Well that was a mistake becauase this morning we walked into Syd's room and he had puked pink all over his crib! Poor bubba :(

I have attached some pictures. There are a couple from our trip to Arrowhead, our Tales and Trails class at the Nature Center, Taylor on her way to a birthday party and the kids having fun with paint during Arts and Crafts time. If you see, the paint is all over the place, which is exactly why I refuse to get a new dining room table until these kids are at least 5!

I will try, but do not promise, to be such a stranger!