Zoo & Huber's all in one weekend.

We took the kids to the Louisville Zoo for the halloween party this weekend.  This will be the last year that we waste our time on this crappy event.  You wait in aweful traffic with rude people who think it's ok to drive to the front and expect to get in, then you pay $5.00 to park (it's free any other time) and if you are not a zoo member it costs $8.00 to get in.  It used to be that if you are a zoo member you get in free, now, you have to go on the "zoo member" weekends which are the first two in October.  All of this for....wait for it...... 7 pieces of candy.  I'm not kidding, I'm not being dramatic, LITERALLY 7 PIECES OF CANDY.  Are you kidding me???  This used to be such a cool thing to do with the kids and now it's just a huge waste of time and years of my life shaved off due to the high blood pressure enducing madness. 

OK.  I'm done with the gripe.  On to the positive.  Eden is beautiful, even when you use eyeshadow to paint her blue.  My good friend Andrea who is an amazing artist and is currently in cosmotology school agreed to do her makeup for me and WOW am I impressed.  She did a great job and we had all kinds of people talking about how amazing her makeup was.  Google Avatar makeup and you'll see just how awesome Andrea is.  It's not an exact match but still looks great!

Tyler wanted to be Darth Vader.  Him and Jacob were both so cute!  They both called him Dark Vader.

Eden took a friend with her.  Nya, vampire queen.  Makeup done by Andrea.

Jacob as Indiana Jones.  Five o'clock shadow provided by the lovely Andrea and brown eyeshadow.  He thought this was the coolest thing ever.  Sat right in the chair and let her "paint" him with a makeup brush.

 After the nightmare that was the zoo on Saturday night, I took the boys and Eden to Huber's with Keith, Dana, their three, Mom, Erin and Erin's friend Beth.  They loved the tractor ride to the pumpkin fields.  Personally, I wasn't such a huge fan.  It's been really, REALLY dry here and the dust from the tractor tires was pretty bad.  At least it was a gorgeous day.  Sunny, low 80's and a nice cool breeze.

Eden wasted no time picking her "perfect" pumpkin.  She grabbed this one within the first two minutes and it's the one she carted back to the barn. 

However, Jacob did not pick his right away.  He thought he liked one until he put his finger in a big hole, then he thought he liked this one here.  Then, I picked up a pumpkin that is so smooth and perfectly orange I just had to show it to them all and guess what.  That's the one he liked. 

I thought it was cute.  So does he.  If you look closely, he's decided to draw on it with a green crayon.  It kinda looks like a pancake.

Grandma helped Tyler pick his out.  I like it.  It's small and kind of pear shaped. Tyler didn't pick up the first thing he saw, but he did have to be told that you can't just drop them if you decide you don't want it.

I think he's happy with his decision.  What do you think?

Back on the tractor to head back to the barn and pay for our u-pick pumpkins.  All in all a pretty good weekend.  Even if I did think I was going to have to cut a b!tch if she let one more line jumper in while waiting in traffic to get into the zoo.

Happy Father's Day

I follow the Pioneer Woman's blog and I love her post of her MM and her punks. So...I thought I would follow suit and post some of my favorite pictures of Michael and our babies.

This little girl started it all.  I knew that he would be a great daddy, I didn't know he would be the BEST daddy.

I love this picture.  Tootie has always been the baby we couldn't get to stay in bed.  He was snuggling with daddy and I couldn't resist taking a picture of two of my favorite guys.

Here he is with all three and three generations of Goodman's.  Great Grandpa Titus, Grandpa John and Daddy.  Michael's Grandpa will be 100 this fall.

Not a huge fan of my look here.  This one was taken so that Eden would have a family portrait for her preschool class the night before she needed it for class.  I love her expression and her toes in this one.  Also, we all miss those natural curls.

Twenty-two days old in this picture and that chair was pretty much my bed for the first several months of the twins lives. 

The level of exhaustion is beyond words.  But just look at those faces.  So sweet and even though we were so tired all the time you can still see how much he loves those babies.  All three of them.  So, to the man I love, thank you so much for being the best daddy.  You are the best thing that ever happened to me and we make beautiful babies together!  I couldn't be happier.

What's been going on?

WOW!  I haven't really posted anything since New Years.  It's time to change that.

Let's start with the hardest 7 days of my life so far.  Last Friday, I took Jacob to the doctor because he was coughing again.  He had bronchitis just a few weeks ago and he took some medicine and was feeling better, but while we were at the Dr.'s office for that cold...the doctor asked me if Jacob had been diagnosed with asthma. 

You see, we were taking the kids to another doctor and that doctor wouldn't listen to me.  I've been telling him for a long time that the kids weren't sleeping through the night and I was concerned, Jacob was very hyper and I was concerned.  However, until the preschool teacher sent me an email that I could take with me to the doctor his response to me was that they were just young and hadn't settled into their own sleep pattern yet, and Jacob was just a toddler being a toddler.  I don't know if I've posted it here before or not but Jacob is ADHD and he's now on a medication that makes a world of difference for him.  That's another thing that wasn't so important to the previous doctor.  The first medication worked really good for a little while and then all of a sudden, he started getting VERY emotional after the meds started to work out.  When we went to the new doctor he changed the medication immediately, it works like a charm and he's the same Jacob who is better able to control himself and his emotions are under control most of the time.

So... back to the asthma, last Friday, Jacob was diagnosed with asthma.  Here he is taking his breathing treatment in daddy's lap.  For 7 days he took two different breathing treatments.  One three times a day and the other twice a day.  That's a lot of time in the chair.  Thankfully, as of yesterday afternoon, he's down to one medication, once a day.

I have said before that I love the boys' preschool teachers.  I have to say it again here.  I got an email from Ms. Sally the other day and it said that she was working with Tyler on his letters and numbers and he kept asking her to hold them closer.  She told me that they were so close to his face and she was concerned. 

I had noticed him starting to do this but for some reason it just didn't click for me that he could need glasses.  So I called and got him an appointment Wednesday afternoon right after he got out of school. 

Tyler has astigmatism in both eyes and he's far sighted in both eyes as well.  One eye is 20/30 and the other is 20/40 and the eye doctor explained that the muscles in the eye can correct the vision in one eye but not the other because once the first eye focuses on the object it stops, it can't fix the vision for the second eye as well, so for right now he has ALMOST the highest prescription you can get on a pair of glasses.

So, I just wanna know, HOW STINKIN' CUTE IS THIS KID?!?  When we picked his glasses up today they had to adjust the frames to fit his face.  He is the one of my kids who is the funniest about the things that bother him and let me tell you.... they bothered him.  He was complaining about them hurting and the tech who adjusted assured us that the frames themselves were not hurting him.  He started crying and that's when daddy and I got upset and took him to the car. (She was finished adjusting the glasses.)  The tech told us that the glasses may give him a headache and that it could be straining his eyes a bit because they had already adjusted to what used to be "normal".

So, while I know that both boys will be perfectly fine and both the eye doctor and the pediatrician have told us that with proper treatment the asthma will probably go away and the far sightedness can be corrected by changing the prescription when it's needed and then he could have lasik when he's older.  But, getting this kind of news and being stressed at work and home and feeling like the crappiest mom ever because it took the preschool teacher telling me that Jacob was really having trouble and he was wheezing and it seemed a lot like her son when he's having an asthma attack and then telling me that maybe we should have Tyler's vision check before it occurred to me to do it, really made it a rough week.

Also,  my beautiful little girl made me cry when she said to me and her daddy, "I just wish I could take the things that are wrong with my brothers.  It's not fair that I'm the only one that doesn't have something wrong with them."  It's amazing to me how much kids understand and the depth of their feelings.

Sorry this post is so long, I just wanted to update anyone who cares to know how things are going.

I heart Faces Angles

So this week's focus is on interesting angles.  I usually shoot straight on but occasionally I'll take a picture while I'm standing over one of the kids. 

I love this picture right down to his messy little mouth!

They are playing in grandma's flower bed and I can tell Tyler is tired.  He's got his finger diggin' in his bellybutton.

I Heart Faces - Bundle up!

I've followed I Heart Faces through the Pioneer Woman and finally joined the online community so that I could post in the weekly photo challenges.  I'm glad it's getting warmer and staying darker longer, but we did have fun playing in the snow this winter.

I'm brand new to the I heart Faces community but wanted to share one of my favorite photos from this winter season.  Meet Tyler, my older twin.

I'm not dead!

The title is a nod to Monty Python movies and I felt it appropriate for someone who used to blog every night and hasn't since last Thursday. I've been a little busy and I haven't felt all that great either.

I'm better now and ready to start blogging again.

Mom is much better now. She up and around and feeling good enough to watch my boys again, which is a really great thing. I appreciate that my mother in law is willing to help out at a moments notice, but when the kids are with her, they tend to get away with more than they do when they are with my mom. They railroad the MIL and get away with it because they use those cute little puppy dog eyes and those super cute smiles.

He was being a complete little turd in this picture and look at that smile. I know at least two of you are going, "Ahhh, he's so cute." Yes, he's cute, but it's so that I don't kill him! LOL

And then we have Tyler, who is double trouble, because he has the golden brown eyes perfect for giving puppy dog eyes and the sweet little smile. Thankfully, he is the more well behaved of the two. They have flopped on me several times since they were babies as to who was the easier of the two and who was more laid back. I have a feeling that the personalities are pretty much here to stay at this point. It's probably a good thing, because, for as sweet as Tyler can be, he has a filthy temper and can be down right hateful at times. Luckily he seems to be pretty sweet natured most of the time, because when he's being mean, he's really REALLY mean.

We took the kiddos to the zoo on Saturday. We were going to go with Louise when she was in town, but didn't get to make it because of the nasty weather that was forecast. I'm glad that they went on Thursday and were able to enjoy the nice weather, our outing to the Huber Orchard and a planned visit to the waterfront park was cut short by a nasty storm on Friday. So of course, because we didn't go to the zoo, my kids don't see it as, "we did something fun, we shouldn't beg to go somewhere else too" they have been asking to go ever since and we finally made it over there. Admission to the zoo is astronomical! $11.95 per adult and $8.95 for kids 3 and over. It was going to be $50 to take them in. Instead of paying $50, we paid $75 and go a membership to the zoo. $25. more to go back as many times as we want for the next 365 days starting on Saturday! It was a no brainer!

For the first time since they opened the exhibit, we were able to take the boys into the Lorikeet landing and let them feed the birds some nectar. We took the train down, and right back up after the lorikeets, the big hills in the zoo. I was able to completely avoid them! Yeah me!!!

Here I am feeding the lorikeets. The boys wouldn't hold the nectar cups because they were a little afraid of the birds actually landing on them. They did however, want to pet the pretty little birdies and of course, the trainer had to keep telling them, "Don't touch them, I don't want them to bite you, they don't know that you are nice and don't want to hurt them. They don't like to be petted."
OK, whether you call these guys Zaboo from Zaboombafu or King Julian from Madagascar, these little guys are pretty cute. They had all been taking a nap and the two in the back were just finishing up a big yawn. The one in front was sitting there like that and I just kept waiting for him to do something obscene that I would have to cover eyes up over. Thankfully, it didn't happen and they decided it was time to get up and play.

The newest zoo baby. I don't know if you can zoom in on this picture or not, but if you can, you can see the lioness' in the background sunning on the rock.

For the first time that I can remember, the male lion was out and about in their "pride" and this was taken on the tail end of a big yawn. I guess all the animals were just waking up from nap time when we got there. Here are a few more picture of him that I just love. They are such beautiful and majestic creatures.

I LOVE this shot. I think this is why they call a lion's territory a "Pride"! It's a shame he's a predator, because I really just wanted to climb in there and pet him.

Well, that's all for now. I have more pictures from the trip that I want to post but they will have to wait. Michael is waiting for me so that we can watch American Idol. I want to see if Kris can out sing Adam for the third week in a row! ;o)

My vehicle

My sister in law has been driving a Toyota 4 Runner for a long time. Mike and I have borrowed it on several occasions and I really loved it from the very beginning. I've wanted one since the first time that we took it.

Now, I have a Toyota Sequoia. I LOVE THIS CAR!!! It's a 4 Runner, monster sized! Of course, I have three little monsters I have to haul around in it. It's also nice for times when we want to go out with friends, it seats 8 comfortably! Did I mention I love this car???

Since we bought it, we have discovered a few minor problems, but nothing that I can't live with. For instance, the speedometer says that I am only going 40 when I'm in fact moving 10 miles an hour faster, this is true at all speeds. When I'm going 5 miles an hour, (like this happens anytime other than pulling out of the drive) it doesn't even register that I am moving.

Just last week. I discovered that the drivers side mirror was broken. How could I miss something like a broken mirror you ask? Well. I took it to the car wash on Saturday and Sunday, after it was sunny and warm, I found the mirror broken on the ground, the mirror that was covering the broken mirror. Guess how I fixed this problem. I found a web site that sells pre-cut mirrors, the perfect size, and I did the same exact thing. Here are a few before and after shots.

Not conducive to the "mirror picture method" that Louise came up with. Props to Louise, because, I got this really cute picture of Tyler I'll be sharing in just a sec.

Here's one of me in the newly repaired mirror. My reflection through the open door.

Here's that really cute picture of Tyler. This was the look on his face when he first saw daddy when Mike got back from Bowling Green and the Diesel Drag Races.

And after he found out I was taking pics of him in the mirror.

Stealing from Louise's book again. Here is a picture for today. This is from the rose bush on the corner of my house. We have several folks that drive by our house, just to see if this rose bush is blooming. I gave it to my mother in law for Mother's day a long time ago and it's still blooming like crazy every year.

Family Fun

I'm so excited I got to spend some time with my cousin who's in from Tennessee and her kiddos. Louise, they were all so well behaved and they are absolutly adorable!

I'm pretty impressed with myself too! I actually kept the twins straight all day! I loved it when Natalie came over and started checking my pockets for tokens to ride the tractors. That was so cute!

I can't believe they only had three of these tractors, but they actually did pretty good taking turns. We only had one major meltdown and it was pretty short lived.

He's not real good at sharing, but then again, my boys aren't much on sharing either.

I think the kids really liked feeding the goats. Poor May May was the only one who had a goose mishap. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from that area.

Sweet little Conner, thinking about kissing the goat, since that's what his mommy suggested. Then he decided to just pet his ear.
Natalie and Conner getting corn to feed the animals. I think they are feeding the deer in this one.
Tyler petting the baby goat. This one was just his size and stood at the fence and let him pet him for a long time.
Jacob, just like his daddy, always in a hurry to get somewhere. Isn't he precious? Looks just like his daddy!

I love this picture of Regan, she was watching the other kids on the tractors and when I said her name, she turned to me and smiled right before I shot this picture. She knows when there is a camera on her! I also noticed that she is a big helper! She rode with Conner, because he couldn't quite reach the pedal to make it go and she was happy to let him steer while she pushed the button. Such a big girl!

Sweet little Madyson, I don't think she felt very good, but she was so good. I took her to the pedal cars and helped her and Regan go around the track once. The pedal cars are a little to big for the smaller kids, but her and Regan had so much fun, and she didn't even get upset when Regan started saying "I'm winning!" Mady was so sweet, she was happy for her sister.
Eden, the oldest on the trip today, she did so good with the younger kids, here she is waiting patiently for her turn. I know that I am biased because she's mine, but I still think that she is so beautiful. Sometimes, I forget just how pretty she is, and I love days like today, because they bring out the little bit of natural curl left in her hair. Couldn't you just drown in those deep brown eyes?

Here's Louise helping Dalton over the little tractor bridge. This was before the meltdown, when he was still being really good.

And little Mady who was just content to sit in the stroller. I think she actually fell asleep in it not to long after this picture.

Aren't these some of the most precious kids you've ever seen!?! We "Smith" girls sure do make pretty babies! This includes yours Amy, you just weren't here for me to take pictures of them too! I hope you can make it up, or I can make it down there soon and I'll get pictures of your kiddos too! Louise, I have a ton more pictures that turned out so good. I'll send them to you if you want. Just let me know. Here's the last one I want to post. I love the look on Conner's face. Michael took this picture and the look on his face is just so precious!