Bugs and Bunnies

I hope everyone had a nice Easter!

We did....sort of.

We had planned to go to Little Rock for Easter and weren't sure if we were going down on Friday or Saturday.  It just depended on Wade's work schedule.  Well, we made a last minute call to go on Saturday morning.....THANK GOODNESS!

Please enjoy our Easter timeline:

Friday 6:50 pm  Since we decided to wait until Saturday morning to go to Little Rock, I went with a couple of friends to see Slumdog Millionaire.  This is not at all important, I just want to mention it b/c if you haven't seen it, YOU MUST!

Friday 9:30 pm  I'm sick.  I mean yucky thought-I-had-food-poisoning sick.  I saw every hour between 9:30pm and 4:00am .  I'm so glad we waited to leave for Little Rock!

Saturday 1:00 am Ben is trashcan-by-the-bed sick.  Seriously, soooooo glad that we waited to go to Little Rock.

Ben and I had the exact same thing for dinner, by the way.  

And no, it wasn't my cooking....it was Zaxby's chicken.  

Saturday 11:30 am  We were puny but better.  It was out of our system, so around lunchtime we set out for Little Rock.

Saturday 3:30 pm  Easter eggs hunt at my aunt's house.  She does this every year and it's GREAT!  SO CUTE!!  Ben feels great and is excited to hunt eggs.  Oliver is just taking it all in.  I'm still feeling like I have been up all night, but I'm getting better all the time.  I'm actually getting a little hungry at this point which is great b/c there are LOADS of chocolate treats in that Easter basket.  Sweet!!

Saturday 6:00 pm  Dinner with Auntie and Bob.  The sickies are hungry, the healthy are hungry.  All is well.  The Easter Bunny even showed up!!

Saturday 8:00 pm  We dyed our Easter eggs.

Don't ask.  We're a little nutty at the Blackwood house.

Easter Sunday 2:00 am  Ben gets sick again.  

Hmmmmm.  Maybe this isn't food poisoning.  

Nothing like cleaning up after a sick kid in the middle of the night.

Easter Sunday 8:00 am  Ben is up and feeling good again.  Hooray!  It's over!!  

Time to hunt eggs again!

Easter Sunday 9:00 am  Breakfast.  Hot Cross Buns.  I feel great and I was STARVING!!!  Wade says that he doesn't really have an appetite.  Uh oh.  

Easter Sunday 10:00 am  Wade decides to go upstairs and rest a while.  

Ok, he never feels bad enough to go rest.  

Yeah, we're not going home today and Wade's not going to work tomorrow and Ben's going to miss school.  

At least Mom and Dad are feeling ok.

Easter Sunday 15 minutes later  Dad mentions that he doesn't fell well.  

What have I done?  We're like the rats that spread the Plague.

Easter Sunday 1:15 pm or so  We eat the wonderful Easter dinner that Mom made....minus Wade who is still sleeping upstairs.  He feels AWFUL!  I was still STARVING!!    

Easter Sunday 6:00 pm-ish  Dad still feels yucky.  Mom is good.  Wade finally comes downstairs and sits wrapped in a blanket in an armchair.  He looks pitiful.

Easter Sunday 8:00 pm  Ben goes to bed, but he's worried that he's going to get sick again in the middle of the night.  I tell him that he shouldn't worry and that he's done with that.  He was convinced....I wasn't.  I left the trashcan by his bed and crossed my fingers that he didn't puke in bed again!

Monday 7:30 am  Ben walks downstairs and announces, "No barfy!"  Wade is puny, Dad still feels gross and, now, so does Mom.  Super.

Monday 9:00 am  Time for the rats to head home.  I drive so that puny Wade can sleep.   

I think that Mom slept through Monday.  I know Dad said that they didn't eat that day.  I felt SOOOO BAD!!  We brought a stomach bug with us and spread it around.   

Ben missed school on Monday, Wade went in to work that afternoon and had a big dinner that night.  We were all glad to be better, except.....

Tuesday 6:00 am  Ben says his throat hurts.  I take a peek and it's not good.  Ben stays home again and I take him and Oliver (who has a pretty nasty cough at this point) to the doctor.  

Ben has strep and Oliver has bronchitis.  

GOOD GRIEF!

Save the Date and Whoopee Cushions

Time FLIES!!!  Everyone is growing up.  Oliver is a year old and Ben, well, Ben......

Save the Date

Ben came home from school one day recently and said, "something very exciting is happening at 4:30".  

I thought that we were in for something very cool on the NASA channel or maybe the President would be speaking to the youth of our nation on all the major networks.  

Then he said, "Me and Olivia are getting married."  

Screeeeeeeeeech.  Huh, what?

So, there's this website that they use at school during free time called Poptropica.  He can play it at home, too.  He and his friends can meet at certain hotspots on the website (movie theater, sewer, whatever) and, apparently, make life-long commitments.

This particular day (his wedding day) he and his fiancee were meeting at the Soda Shop.  See the above invitation.  

So, he does his homework (homework before vows), he goes to the Soda Shop, meets up with his soon-to-be wife and off they go to be betrothed.  

The only problem (besides the obvious) is that they couldn't figure it out.  They knew it was possible to get married in Poptropica land, they had seen it done, but they couldn't get anyone to marry them.  I suggested that maybe parental consent or counseling was required before they could get married, but Ben just shot me daggers.  Here he was trying to marry the cyber girl of his dreams and the mother of the groom is cracking jokes.

Where we stand today is that Ben is still available.  They never quite figured it out.  He was crushed at the time.  I was surprised that it took him so long to bounce back.  Let me tell you, that was a rough 10 minutes!  I guess it just wasn't meant to be.  I'm glad, really, I still haven't met Olivia and I had nothing to wear.

Whoopee Cushions

Oliver turned a year old on April Fool's Day.  It's still hard to believe.  We had a cupcake with a #2 on it (April Fools) that evening.  Notice his Christmas jammies (AF).  

Here's the birthday boy "opening" his card from Grandma and Grandad.

We officially toasted the King of April Fool's with a party on Saturday, April 4th at "the castle".  It was an April Fool's Day theme, so we had whoopee cushions, disguises, Laughy Taffy and a cake that was a riddle.  See if you can figure it out.  I'll put the answer at the bottom.  

Audra and Oliver with Pam and Jonathan (Audra's parents)

This is Audra trying to kiss Oliver.

Babies racing to the ball.

Erin helping Oliver open one of his presents.

Oliver is trying to keep Audra from the Little People Farm.  That's not polite, Ollie.

Pam helping Oliver to a little cake.

He's done.

We had a lot of fun and I again want to thank everyone for coming and celebrating Ollie's birthday.  Good times. 

Miss Jan gave Oliver this Elmo balloon at the little party she had at her house.  He loved it!

Here are some more pics from the weekend....

 

 

Thanks for tuning in!!  xoxo

**did you get the riddle?  

there's a crown, an olive and an "r"  

King Olive-R.  

GET IT!

Bedside Chats with Ben - Wednesday, February 24

There has been talk that our new president will be using FDR's "Fireside Chat" style in addressing the country and it's legislators.  

So, in the spirit of the "Fireside Chat", I would like to introduce 

"Bedside Chats with Ben".

Many times these chats are just a stall..."can I have some water?", for example. 

But sometimes he's calling me to discuss something that he's been thinking about in the quiet and comfort of his bed.  Most of the time you leave his room wondering how on earth his mind "got there" and, usually, it's pretty funny.

Last night's chat was just one question:

"What did Yankee Doodle stick on his head and call macaroni?"

And that concludes this Bedside Chat with Ben.  Sweet dreams.

  

Did you miss us?

That was the longest blog break, EVER!!  

Here's what's going on with the Esty's:

(Don't you think that should be Esties?)

We got through the Great Ice Storm of '09.

This family actually weathered that storm quite well.  We did lose power twice, but it was nothing like most of the people that I know.  One afternoon we lost power for about 4 hours and then the next day we lost power again for about 2 hours.  No biggie.  

AND our trees did really well, too!!  Thank you, Wade!

This was Monday.

This was Tuesday.

It looks like a pretty dusting of snow, but it's not.  It's ice.

There are a lot of trees around our house and going outside at night was so creepy because you could hear all the trees cracking and snapping.  No one was on the roads so it was a really eerie kind of quiet, except for the trees.  

Ollie is up on two feet, just not walking.  He'll stand up, decide he wants to go somewhere else, plop down on the floor and take off!  That kid can MOVE!  You can't look away either b/c he won't be there when you look back.  

He loves to "chase" the dogs.  Once he catches up to Lucy (and he only catches up because she goes to the door and stands there waiting to get out), he tries to grab her feet or her tags, which she hates.  She is the sweetest most tolerant dog on the planet. 

That look...

Oliver is also getting his first tooth.  

See it in there?

He's learning a couple of words, too!

He says, "mama", "hi", "dada" and "weeeeee".

Ok, while it's tempting to let you think that he is a genius and starting to speak at 10 1/2 months old, I have to be honest here and let you know that he doesn't really use any of them correctly.

Sometimes, in the early morning hours, you'll here this sweet little "hi" on the monitor.  

When he is being playful, he says (screams)  "da da da da".

When he is getting cranky and hungry, he says "ma ma ma ma".

Actually, maybe he is using them correctly.  Ha!

One is getting teeth while the other is losing them.  

Here's Wade tying a string to Ben's tooth so that he could work on loosening it up....shudder.  

Ben was just sitting on the couch, reading his book and tugging on that string.  

As of the writing of this, the tooth is still hanging on.

Ben has also started riding the bus to and from school.  It seems to be a good thing.  And he made a little bus friend.  Awwwwww.  

The bus picks him up a block away from the house at 6:55 am.  Yes, you read that right.  I can see him from the porch and I usually stand there until I physically see him get on the bus and head off to school.  

Then, about 3:05 in the afternoon, the bus comes screaming down the street...I'll get to this in a sec...and I watch him LEAP out of the bus and run all the way to the house.  He comes flying out of that bus like he is being thrown out.

"I just like to jump out"

That's what he tells me.

He's just a little dude getting himself to and from school.

Ok, supersonic speed demon afternoon bus "O".

I don't know if it's because the bus driver assumes that he has all the neighborhood children with him and therefore it is ok break the sound barrier as he barrels down the street, but I do know that by the time I hear the bus, it has already flown by the window and made me spill my hot coffee all over me.  That last part was a lie.  I was just re-living that scene in Top Gun when Mav and Goose buzz the tower.

I guess I just feel I have to question how safe a driver this guy is if he thinks that Mach 10 is an appropriate speed for a residential street.  I was thinking more like 20 mph.  

We were in Kansas City recently, too.  We had a short, but fun visit!  

LOTS of Wii.

I feel that I should tell you that, unless you are six year old Anastasia, I cannot be defeated at Wii tennis.  I'm not trying to brag or anything, I just wanted you to know.  

I will take you down.

It is becoming a little more difficult to take pictures of Oliver right now.  I will explain with a visual.

I flash the camera hunting for the perfect moment to capture....

He spotted me, the hunter becomes the hunted.....

it's over

I'll see you next week...yes, I mean it.

Love, 

The Esties