Happy Birthday to you...

...you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey...


As many of you know our "buddy" turned 5 on August 19th. With the hustle and bustle of back to school madness, we have failed terribly by not posting pictures. I guess it's not too bad, since it's only the 24th, but still...
Cameron came home early from work, so we could begin the festivities by going out to lunch at Dylan's favorite place...Pizza Hut. I can't remember what else we did, but here are pictures of his party:

Here is Dylan with all his birthday presents. He made out like a BANDIT!



Dylan loves puzzles! Have nooo idea where he got that from...(so hard to type sarcasm)


Obviously, I couldn't resist getting in on the fun too!


We also decided Dylan was old enough for Legos...

Soni, however, is not.

He got a LOT of new school clothes too! THANKS GRANDMA SLOAN!!!

Cameron loved showing Dylan how to actually build something with his Legos. This little beauty is a helicopter, that Dylan can now build all by himself.

We rounded out the day with some good ol' San Francisco 49ers cake. I know, based on where we live, we should be tarred and feathered...


HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DYLAN!!!

Cheer season again

It's time for football/cheerleading season again! This year Andi is cheering for the Raiders. Dylan didn't want to play football this year. At least that's what he told us until two weeks ago, when it was way too late to sign up. Oh well, there's always next year. Their uniforms are pretty cute. The first game was Saturday in 100 degree heat, but she had fun, so it was worth it.

I seriously need to buy a shotgun. And then learn how to use it.

They have a few more cheerleaders than they did last year. Last year there were three, now there are 18. Quite the difference.

Oh yeah, we have other kids too. Here they are. From the picture it may look like it was windy that day, but we actually started combing the kid's hair like that. Flock of Seagulls is going to make a comeback sometime, right?

When did that happen?

Today was a very productive day. The last few weeks have been spent slowly gathering school supplies and necessities that our two elementary schoolers will need for the upcoming year. Today, we officially finished. With a handful of school supplies, and the only clothing item still needed for either kid...shoes, we gathered and paid for the items, and then headed out for the very last "Back to School" chore... getting Andi a haircut. Andi is almost 7 years old, and has NEVER had a haircut, unless you count the time she twirled it too much she had a horrific knot that required scissors. I have always loved her long hair, and was definitely hesitant to cut any length off of it at all. But, the fact that it was SO uneven due to the aforementioned twirling, it became a necessity. So, we made the trek to "Sharkey's cuts for kids" and committed to what we had been dreading. Andi didn't get to sit in the fancy Barbie Jeep to get her hair cut, but she did a fantastic job of holding still, and doing what the stylist said. To say the least, Andi was timid, and even looked mad when it was all over, but after some encouraging words from the stylist, and her parents, I think she's grown to love it. Because her hair was so uneven, the length cut off ranged from 1-8 inches, but it's all even now, and it aged her big time! I just can't get over how grown up she looks! Her hair is still long enough to put in a ponytail, and to do french braided pigtails (a requirement I gave the stylist at the beginning) plus, this length should be much easier to manage.

What do you think?

Road Trip

Last week we took our first road trip in years. We went to the Lubbock area to visit our old friends Matt and Becky. Sam and Becky were roommates in college, and we've ended up following them around wherever they move just because they are so cool! This was Soni's first long trip in the car, and our first one since Thanksgiving three years ago. Wow.

The kids did pretty ok in the car. Soni had her moments of being ticked off, but she did pretty well considering how young she is. About halfway there, Peyton started tapping me on the shoulder to ask me if we were there yet. He did it every 5 - 10 minutes. At least he was polite and tapped my shoulder instead of just shouting.

When we moved to Texas, we noticed that in order to be considered a town, a place needs to have a Sonic. Apparently that is just East of DFW, because when you go West, Dairy Queen is the notable restaurant of choice. There were Dairy Queens in towns called Merkel, Clyde, and Baird. Every town had a gas station and a Dairy Queen. I thought it was odd, but I guess I'm just used to it being Sonic. You didn'tt need to know any of that. Sorry.


Here are our kids and the Williams kids. They had lots of fun together. Peyton has been saying that he's going to marry Sarah (the one in yellow). Hailey (in green) is two days older than Dylan. They're all pretty close together in age, so they all had someone to play with.

Saturday morning they formed and band and recorded their first single, "I love you Mommy!"

Becky took us to the Science Spectrum, which was way cool. Dylan keeps saying that he wants to go back. They had a bunch of different "experiement" stations set up. This one had a bunch of water going through it. I'm sure there was some point to learn from it. I learned that if some streange little girl purposely points a squirty thing at my baby and gets her wet, I get mad at said child. Maybe that's what you were supposed to learn.


They had a station set up for bubbles. Dylan was pretty good at making big bubbles like this.


We also went to a park and let the kids play for a couple of hours. Andi, Hailey, and Sarah rode on the tire swing for 15 minutes. They had a lot of fun doing that. Andi said "This is the best vacation ever!" Cool, we don't need to go to Disney World or anything, we just need to find a tire swing. That's quite the difference in price.

We had lots of fun visiting the Williams. We'll have to visit them more often than once every two or three years.

Sleeping in

I am the first to tell you that the following story is my own fault. During my 3 month long recovery/hiatus from real life to devote to healing, I became quite accustomed to sleeping in. My children also got used to this as a way of life, so mommy could rest. This is not such a bad idea when you have at least one more adult in the house to keep the shenanigans to a minimum, but it is a VERY BAD idea when you are the only "responsible adult" in the house. Normally, Cameron wakes up between 6:30 and 7 and gets ready for work, and feeds the kids breakfast and then leaves around 7:30. The kids will watch cartoons for about an hour, and I am up and ready for the day no later than 8:30. I guess I was a little more tired this morning. At 9:30, I got up, got ready, and exited my bedroom to find weird spots on the hallway carpet. I didn't think much of it because it looked like someone had just gotten into the vacuum cleaner canister, and spread some dirt on the carpet. That is, until I made it to the kitchen...

Turns out, Soni, who has recently taken a liking to taking off wet diapers herself, had taken off her diaper, and proceeded to go #2 all over the kitchen. I will spare you all the gory details, but the spots in the hallway were NOT what I had originally thought, and required immediate attention from the Bissel.

Lessons learned from this experience:

1-Bedtimes are not just for children.

2-Diapers only work if they are on the child's body.

3-Modesty is a concept lost on 21 month old kids.

4-The inventor of personal home carpet cleaners MUST have been a mother, or at least had a toddler in their home.

And finally:

5-Cameron does not pay me enough.



If a girl's night out wasn't already planned for tonight, I would be planning one thanks to the events of the morning.

School Clothes

We took Andi and Dylan shopping for school clothes yesterday. (Can't believe it's only three weeks until school starts, and that we'll have two kids in school.) Heather forwarded an Old Navy coupon to us that saved us 30%!!! There's nothing I like more than saving money. Well, I like my wife and kids more. I also like food more than money, since I will part ways with money for food. Then I guess you need to count the 49ers, and the High School Musical franchise. Anyway, I like saving money a lot, so the coupon was wicked awesome.

We got the kids some pants and a couple of shirts. Dylan got the coolest shirt ever!
Yeah, buddy! You may ask why I didn't just take a picture of him in the shirt instead of making this one. Well smarty pants, our camera is not working at all, so this is going to have to be just as good.

It's a little harder to shop for clothes with Andi. She's kind of picky. Apparently every piece of clothing she owns has to have pink on it somewhere. If she had her choice, this is how she would dress every day of the week.
Sam had to talk her out of the Pepto Bismol look and convince her to buy some non-pink clothes. She still got some pink stuff, just not so much that it's sickening.

So after the trip to Old Navy, we hit Target and finished up. Now we just need to buy our list of school supplies and we'll be ready for school. Woo hoo! Does Costco sell 120 packs of glues sticks? It seems like that's how many we'll need.

Zany Action

Our Mouse Trap board game is a few years old, and in the past year it's been played quite a bit. I guess the kids love the zany action on the crazy contraption. Well who doesn't? It's also kind of adventurous because of the choking hazard. "Hey, where's the green man? Oh no, daddy is choking on it again!"

When you play the game out of the box for the first time, it's just amazing how the thing works so fluidly. All the parts perform their necessary function to make a complex and wicked cool mouse trap. The boot swings freely and precisely kicks the bucket, etc, etc. It's genius I tell you!

Well, after the game has been played a certain number of times, it really doesn't work so smoothly. Dylan was playing it this morning, and after he had it built the contraption worked something like this:

Turn the crank
The rubber band broke
Replace the rubber band with an elastic out of Andi's hair stuff
Turn the crank
Stop sign hits the boot
Boot swings around the pole, missing the bucket completely
Manually knock the bucket over with finger
Steel ball rolls down the ramp, gets stuck in a groove
Help ball continue down the ramp
Ball gets to the end of the ramp, but misses the hand pole because the ramp isn't set quite right any more
It's ok, because the other ball got lost, so the one ball has to be put at the top of the diving board.
Knock the ball from the diving board down into the bathtub
Balls gets stuck in the bathtub
Push the ball down the hole in the bathtub onto the diving board
Green man is knocked into tub (Hey, that part actually worked!)
Cage on top of the pole shimmies down onto the poor mouse
If the mouse were real, it could climb through one of the parts of the basket that is broken and has been re-taped several times
Feel the excitement!

Our Online Store!

Sam and I have been working on building an online business for the past few months. We're expanding our vinyl business from an Etsy shop to its own website. We've spent most of our spare time the past few months working on this, so it's nice to finally get it going. Here's the web address for our new online business:

www.perfectlyspaced.com

We made all of the items in the catalog ourselves, and because I'm a nerd I was able to create the website myself. (Yeah for PHP!) We'll be adding items to our shop periodically, so check back every now and then.

Right now we're having a grand opening sale. Enter the coupon code "Grand Opening" to save 20% off your order! Texas residents will also get an automatic 10% discount to offset the sales tax.

Feel free to pass this on to your friends ;) We would appreciate it.

If you have any questions or run into any problems, please let us know.

Let's go to the movies

The past couple of weeks, we packed the kids up on Friday night and went to the drive in theater in Ennis. We used to go to the drive in all the time when we lived in Nevada, but this is the first time we've done it in Texas. It's pretty fun. The kids enjoyed themselves. They finally got to see Up, and The Proposal was on for the second show, which wasn't bad. We let the kids pick out a box of candy to have, so they were pretty stoked about that. We had a good time. We'll probably keep doing it because it's a fairly cheap way to see some movies, and it's fun to get out of the house every now and then too.

Here are the girls waiting for the sun to go down and the movie to start.

The boys hanging out in the back of the van. This is one of the only time it is cool to have a mini van. Even then, it's not that cool.

Holy cow, that's a lot of kids!

Here's the view we had of the screen. Not too bad.

On another note, you may or may not recall that I have a beef with Sandra Bullock. After The Lakehouse and Premonition, I wasn't really a big fan of hers. So, I was a little skeptical of The Proposal. Luckily, the movie wasn't too bad. There was no time traveling, or correspondence with people in a different space time continuum, so that was a plus. I think Sandra is off my list for now, and has been replaced by Drew Barrymore. Just because.

Who?

This afternoon Sam and I mentioned how weird it is that Michael Jackson died. We've never lived in a world without Michael Jackson, it's strange. (Or exactly like it was before, just without him in it.) Andi heard us talking about it, and asked "Who's Michael Jackson?" Well, NBC had a Dateline special about him, so I sat down to watch it with her and point him out. It turns out, the first segment we started watching began talking about his sexual assault charges. Because I didn't really want to explain what sexual assault charges are to my 6 years old daughter, I changed the channel rather quickly. We can learn who Michael Jackson was some other day.