On Vacation!

Ahhh, today, we left for church and the car was NOT freezing...what a nice treat!

We are in Florida, visiting my grandparents. It has been so much fun and I have lots to blog about, later, but I wanted to post tonight's pretty sunset on the beach.

Enjoy my chilled friends!

Potty Training Success!

Thus far, I have done pretty well not sharing all of the gory details involved in potty training, but I just can't help but share Quinton's big potty training success!

Back in September/October, I made a couple of charts for Quinton to help him see his progress in certain areas. I made a morning chore chart, an evening chore chart and a potty chore chart seen here:

And it's all filled out!

As you can see, there are a lot of squares for the little smiley faces and it has taken us a long time to fill them all up but he did it!

Yay, Quinton!

Quinton was motivated by the promise that once he filled his chart up, we would take him to his all-time favortite hang-out...Chuck E. Cheese's!

Here he is SO excited to go last night:

Quinton wasted no time challening his old man to a competitive game of air hockey. Quinton, of course, had the advantage of being the same height as the table...it helps position the puck just right for goal-scoring!Quinton on one of his favorite rides...One the ride, again...

The picture worth framing, Mr. Cheese, himself, with the potty chart!

So no gory details, just a mom's prideful boasting!

Snow My Goodness!

It's a good thing Matt flew out last night because I can't imagine many planes were coming in and out of Chicago, today!

For the benefit of my friends who live in warmer climates like Arizona, San Diego, Florida and Texas, I thought I would share some pictures I took while driving this morning. No need to fear for my safety, I was only able to go about 17 miles per hour in this mess!

There is so much snow outside!

I know I tried to "enjoy" the snow yesterday but all of my hard work snow shoveling was all for naught this morning! Oh well, I guess it's a good night for delivery since Matt is out of town and Quinton passed out on the La-Z-Boy 1/3 of the way through Star Wars!
And for all my local pals, STAY WARM!

Drum Roll Please....

In case you've been waiting breathless to hear about Matt's big birthday surprise, here it is!!!!

About 30 minutes before dropping Matt off at Chicago O'Hare airport, he found out he was going to Utah for the weekend to play and party with his 8 brothers!

I can hardly believe I kept it a secret for two weeks but I did! And Matt said he had NO CLUE that he would be leaving tonight for Utah to spend the weekend playing Rock Band and all sorts of debauchery!

A big thanks to Matt's brothers for rallying each other for what I'm guessing will be a very memorable weekend!

Have fun, Matt!

Snow Day!

It's not unusual to wake up to new snow in Illinois so today I decided to enjoy it rather than be bothered by it!

So I bundled Quinton and me up and headed outside.

Here is Quinton trying to jump on the trampoline. There was so much snow weighing it down, it was hard for him to jump. I ended up shoveling the snow off while I shoveled the back porch, too.
Here is Quinton, stuck!
It was just like in the movie, A Christmas Story, where the kid falls down and is so bundled up, he can't get up after falling. Yep, that happened to Quinton and like any good mom, I had to take a few pictures before helping him up!

Quinton also discovered the taste of snow today. He said, "Mom, it tastes like ice cream!"

Unfortunately, I did not adequately explain the perils of yellow snow, though, and caught Quinton about to taste some yummy yellow snow left by our neighbor's dogs!

At least I THINK I caught him before he tasted it...

And I just figured I might as well toot my own horn and show off some of my shoveling skills:

And to give you folks in warm places a good reason to stay put, here is the front of our house:

Quinton and I had a good time playing in the snow but Quinton decided his hands were too cold, since he took off his gloves to thoroughly enjoy his "ice cream" snow treat.

Silly boy!

Happy, Happy Birthday, Matthew Dear!

Just thought I would post some of last night's pictures from Matt's birthday.Here he is ready to blow out the candles on his Baskin Robbins fudge crunch cake.

Yes, it was absolutely as delicious as it sounds! Here is the peanut gallery serenading Matt for his birthday.
Matt's big birthday suprise comes tonight and I'll post later about that!

QH Means It's Mine!

This is Quinton's pile of pool toys.

You may wonder why they are all over my counter so let me explain...

Last night, we went swimming with friends at our gym's pool. We are lucky enough to belong to a gym that has a big indoor pool and it's perfect in the winter! It's a balmy 70 some-odd degrees in the pool area and the water is perfect for playing around.

As usual, we brought Quinton's little bag of pool toys and he is pretty good about letting old friends and new play with his stash. But last night, as a woman left the pool area with her son, I noticed she had one of Quinton's torpedoes. So I started collecting Quinton's toys since it was about time we were leaving, too, and I noticed that yes, one of Quinton's torpedoes was missing. When I went into the locker rooms, I asked the woman if she might have accidentally taken our torpedo to which she said, "We came with one torpedo and I have one that I'm taking. It's ours." To which I said, "Well, we're missing one so I just thought it might be it." The woman didn't say anything back to me, she just kept getting her stuff ready.

Then, one of my friends came in and noticed this woman's son had two of her little boy's hot wheels and when my friend asked the boy for the cars, his mom just said, "Excuse me?" Like my friend was bothering her!

Needless to say that yes, I am petty enough to be miffed that this woman probably walked off with one of Quinton's pool toys and spent some time after lunch, today, labeling all of Quinton's remaining pool toys with his initials, QH.

Oh well!