Daddy - Daughter Dance

This is now the third year that Jen and Jim have gone to the daddy - daughter dance together. Jen loves all of the fun stuff leading up to the dance - finding the "perfect" dress and shoes, practicing hair do's, painting nails - all of the fun girlie stuff. This year, she wanted a grown up dress and she tried on no less than 30 dresses. Since she skin and bones, non of the older style dresses fit her very well, they just hang on her (this dress is a 4/5 and she is 6 1/2 years old). She fell in love with this dress since it had netting underneath and looked just like a party dress. She also got mini high heeled shoes this year since her feet are larger than normal they now come in her size. Little body - big feet go figure.

Jim always takes out for dinner letting her pick the restaurant usually trying to sway her toward steak of some sort.This year she chose Red Robins - one of Jim's least favorite places, but still a nice time out with his "date".

Jim said she had a blast with her friends twirling around in their party dresses and not dancing much with the dads. I'm not sure how much longer she'll want to go to the dances, but I am loving their tradition.

Jenna and her friend Avah.

CARS, CARS AND MORE CARS

The boys had another outing, this time to the International Auto Show downtown. Since Jimmy loves anything with wheels, Jim thought he would be in his glory. I think Jim may have enjoyed it a little more with all of the muscle cars and hub caps ( I know there is another name for them and I'm sure I will be corrected) photos I found in my camera. Jimmy jumped into any car that he was able to.

And of course he had to jump into the golf cart.

He convinced Jim-really hard I'm sure- to go downstairs for an ice cream.Take a good look-it's going.....

going........

gone!!!!!!

Monster Jam and a Hannah Montana Sighting

Aunt Shawn had some extra tickets for Monster Jam on Saturday at Ford Field and offered them to us. Her family was going as well and they had pit passes to view the trucks before hand. Uncle Tom went with Jim later so that Jimmy could go with Aunt Shawn and the boys to the pit---Thank You Uncle Tom. Jimmy loved watching the monster trucks flying through the air! Jim said he watched intently and it captivated (Jim's exact quote) him the entire time. By intermission he had wanted his ear plugs out so he could hear them really loud.

The next morning he was still filled with excitement as he told me about each and every truck-telling me their names and color. Then he asked if he could go back that day. He was truly in his glory.

Jenna and I had our chance to go as well, but we chose to do a girl's night out instead. We decided to go to a movie and dinner. Jen's preparation started with hair and make up. She had to make sure her make up was just right - debating on pina colada or cherry lip gloss. She chose cherry and off we went.

We saw The Spy Next Door and had a ton of popcorn and frozen coke. When the movie was over, neither one of us were really hungry until she spotted a Cold stone Creamery in the parking lot and asked if we could have ice cream for dinner instead. Girls night out = no rules!!!

In the same parking lot is a Target store that we had to visit since she brought her tooth fairy money. After much deliberation, she picked out yet another barbie doll to add to the collection. As we were walking out of the toy section, a small girl started telling her mom "There's Hannah Montana". She was looking at the Hannah Montana dolls but Jen thought that the girl was pointing to her thinking she was Hannah Montana. Jen's face lit up as she started to wave like a star on the red carpet- I thought she was going to sign an autograph for her. She looked at me with those eyes and said " I can't believe that girl thinks I'm Hannah Montana ,it must be the cherry lip gloss". I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth and just said "It must be".

My children each received one of these ginormous suckers from Aunt JuJu Saturday morning. Before any sweet thoughts come into your head regarding these sugar coma gifts, know that they were not given out of love, but instead were given to my children so that her children would not eat them. You gotta love an sister who gives your children a 6 inch sucker at 10:45 in the morning. And so all the way home I got asked 114 times "Can I eat my sucker now?". And I got to answer that question 114 times over with a " Are your nuts?" Thanks Julie.

When I woke up Sunday the suckers were still in their wrappers with a message on the back of each. It appears that "somehow" one of the suckers was broken in half. Jen made it clear that hers was not the broken one by marking "Jenna's not Jimmy's" on the unbroken one and "Jimmy's not Jenna's " on the broken sucker. Pretty smart on her part I thought.

Paula Deen-Please send help!!!

So truth be told this whole cooking at home thing isn't really going over to well. The kids are refusing to eat what I make and the answer has been to go to bed hungry and see you at breakfast in the morning. As I found out tonight, Jimmy had another plan. When I went into his room I found his mouth full of something and he just had that look. I asked him what was in his mouth several times, and finally when he wouldn't answer me, I held his nose like a crazy lady until his mouth opened and all the the contraband came out. That wasn't enough for me, I still had to find his stash. As I looked around, his eyes were focused with fear on one spot-- under his workbench. This is what I found.

That child had not been starving until the morning as we thought. He had set up a buffet in his room! I have been trying to make things that we all like, but I guess the change is harder then I thought for them. Tonight Jim had given Jimmy his plate and he yelled " Mom look what Dad put on my plate . YUCK!!" I told him I knew what was on his plate since I made it. When I made chicken, Jimmy asked "next time you make chicken can you get it from McDonald's?" Then Jenna asked my Father-In-Law today if he could pick her up every night before dinner and take her out to eat with them. I guess eventually they will just eat what I make.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Jen has been at that age for a while now, where she loves to spend the night over other peoples houses, and loves to have people over ours. Even though I have been to tons of sleepovers growing up-and loved going- I have never been one of those moms who has is excited about having sleepovers at my house. Some of her friends have multiple friends over each weekend and she has been wanting the same. Jim and I have been trying to let the cord stretch a bit with her, so I kinda slipped the idea to Jim a couple of days before about letting Jen have a New Years Eve sleepover. I figured they wouldn't be sleeping into midnight anyways, we'll just to on that night.

We had ordered pizza(yeah a meal not cooked at home-and I swear it was the best pizza I have ever had!) and had chocolate fondue. It is one of our favorite desserts, some of the girls had never had it before. We had pineapple, banana, strawberries, marshmallows and rice crispy treats to dunk in the chocolate. We probably should of had that a little later in the night since it jazzed up all of the kids.

Jimmy found the horns a bit early and so did all of the girls.You gotta love listening to that for hours before midnight.

Jim sure did! Jen ordered a horn blowing rampage on him.

They had to try out their (sugar induced) cheerleading stunts-it kept them busy for a while. Jimmy even ended up on top of the pyramid-future cheerleader-I don't know?

So I thought that buying those poppers we used to do when I was little was a good idea-but it wasn't. The kids loved doing them, but they were not the same kind I used to do. When I was little they were bottle shaped and all of the string paper was attached to itself-minimal cleaning up. Well, this stuff had shredded Mylar (staticy mess) pieces inside. Not wanting to clean it up at midnight, I had the girls sleep on it for good luck.

After, we had ORGANIC (since I paid what I paid for the stinking bottle, I'm gonna make sure it is capitalized) sparkling apple cider. The girls loved the glasses and used them again at breakfast. Here comes the best story of the whole thing:

The next morning I made breakfast for the girls, and while we were eating, the discusion of their mom's ages came up. Great-I already knew I was the oldest. One of the girls said " My mom is old - she's 26". Then Jenna ( I love her so much for this) threw her Dad under the bus and said " Well my Dad is 40!!!!" Jim and I just laughed as the girls started saying no way 40 is old. I then had to tell the girls that he is not 40-but almost, and Jim had to defend himself and tell them that 40 isn't old anyways. Morgan said" If you were forty- you would be in a wheelchair!" That just hurts!!!!