Breakfast in Bed:)

I always try to give credit where credit is due. Today I got served breakfast in bed. It has been almost 2 weeks since I got to sleep in past 7:00 A.M. I know I shouldn't complain but I'm the type of person who needs a lot of sleep (like 9 hours/night) in order to feel my best. So today, Aaron took Cecelia to school and let me sleep in and made me breakfast in bed. I got a chili cheese omelet and honey biscuits. I can't even make an omelet! I was so surprised. I actually asked him if he was trying to apologize for something...he wasn't. I wish every guy knew how much women appreciate little things like this, every women deserves to be served breakfast in bed! Moms especially deserve something special like this every once in a while. He is such a great guy!

Fender Bender

Yesterday I was rear ended coming home from school! I was getting off HWY 75 onto 370 and was the first car stopped at the red light when it happened. Luckily neither of us was hurt. His truck was not damaged at all and my car just had some paint damage...I'm just glad Cece wasn't in the car with me. The kid who hit me was only 20 and was visibly upset when he came and sat down in my car to exchange information. I asked him what was wrong and if he really did have insurance. He explained that because he is only 20 (and because he is male I assume too) that his insurance is ridiculously priced and that his parents were going to kill him. I agreed to not to file a claim with his insurance if he wanted to pay out of pocket. He looked really nice and was such a gentleman too(I still took all of his information down- just in case). So today we met at the repair shop and got an estimate and it's getting fixed next week. Unfortunately for him I won't have my vehicle back for 2 days so he has to pay for a rental car too. I know it was risky to do it this way since it put me in a vulnerable position but I truly believe in Karma. I try to always be fair with people, give them the benefit of the doubt and treat others as I would want to be treated too. The funny thing is that I have been rear ended 3 times in my life. The last time was a little over a year ago. I've only been in 1 accident that was my fault (well only 40% my fault- whatever that means) and that was when I was 17...knock on wood. Aaron and I are constantly frustrated by the number of accidents we see on HWY 370. People just need to slow down already! The risk of being in an accident on this dangerous road increases for us since we have to drive on it regularly. Next year when we buy a house I hope to be somewhere in Papillion, south of HWY 370 so we don't have to travel on it as much.

Valentines Day

I gave Aaron his present 2 weeks before Valentines day ( I got him a new T.V.). Aaron gave me my present the week before V-Day (I got my hair done- Highlights...I had been taking about and debating whether or not to go back to blond highlights again for weeks). Then Cecelia and I both got roses the day before Valentines day. Then the day after Valentines day we celebrated with take out. We were originally planning on going to the new Cine-dine theater. However Aaron said that he wanted to take "both his girls" out to celebrate. So we were planning on going just out to a restaurant. But Monday the roads were terrible because we had gotten a little snow and there were a ton of accidents. Plus it was freezing cold! So, Aaron went and got take out for us and brought it home:) We joked about how we celebrated kind of funny this year...it keeps it exciting I guess. I have an awesome husband! I'm happier than ever and I'm so glad I married him!

Cecelia Elise

Cece's Valentines day party at school last Friday went great! The kids had a blast. Cecelia picked out yummy sugar cookies from the bakery and Capri suns for all of her friends (which they devoured). I headed up to the school a little earlier than I needed to because I wanted to have a chance to observe. Kindergarten/5 yrs. old is such a fun age. They say and do the cutest and most hilarious things. It's also great to watch them grow and learn so much! After exchanging cards and eating all the goodies parents had sent, the kids played a version of Heads up seven up...it was really heads down hands open (for a piece of candy). They had a lot of fun doing this. Almost every time I pick up Cecelia from school or kids club at least one of Cecelia's classmates wants to give me a hug. After the party this occurred again. Cecelia said "I wonder why everyone likes you so much and always wants hugs", I said I didn't know why either. Then Cece said "It's probably because your so beautiful". I melted...how sweet!

Parent teacher conferences are in just a few weeks and I can't wait to hear the positive feedback from Cecelia's teacher. We have seen a lot of improvement since we have started using the chore chart. This week in addition to earning her allowance, she is also working on earning a pillow pet that she has been begging for since she saw the first commercial for it on the discovery channel. If she does her "chores" thus getting her allowance every day, I promised her we would sit down on Friday and order whatever animal pillow she wanted off line. She is thrilled! Cecelia's school is also doing a kindergarten musical the last week of April. The theme is "Beauty and the Beast". When I was at the Valentines' day party, a little boy was singing the theme song from the movie and I remember thinking how strange it was that 1.) a little BOY was singing this song and 2.) do kids even like that movie anymore? Well, that night at home I was reading the school newsletter and sure enough they talked about the musical program and it all made sense:)

Cecelia also has her first loose tooth. It's her left central incisor (bottom front tooth). It is hardly loose at all and I'm sure it will not actually come out for a few months. However Cecelia is very excited about it. We realized it was loose after she asked me in a very frustrated tone when she was going to start loosing teeth. So I washed my hands and wiggled each tooth one by one. Thinking nothing of it and we were both very surprised when one actually wiggled a little. My baby is growing up :( Pretty soon it will be time to start thinking about braces I'm sure. She is definitely getting them earlier than later. I refused to let them pull the teeth that they needed to in order to put braces on me for 2 years. I ended up getting them when I was 17 and getting them off when I was 20. Not fun at all, and I really don't want Cece to go through that.

Cecelia is starting swimming lessons at the high school in 2 weeks. We gave her the option if she wanted to do soccer again or try swimming. She couldn't decide and we really didn't know what would be best either. We all decided that learning to swim was a little more practical than necessarily having to do another season of soccer at just 5. After all, which skill would come in more handy if she fell into the deep end of a pool? This was the question Aaron brought up when we were trying to decide. I can't wait. I love having her in some sort of organized sport. As with most aspects of parenting, being actively involved and talking with your children about their life is very important. Being proud of accomplishments, sharing in wins and defeats, and talking to them about what has happened helps them develop the skills and capacities for later success in life. The lessons learned during children's sports will shape values and behaviors for adult life. Because of these reasons it's important to Aaron and I that we keep her active and involved. However I think swimming is a very useful and practical "sport" as well.

Chore Chart

We already know that success in life begins with positive habits and goals. We recently decided that Cecelia should start to receive an allowance. We also decided that in order to receive that allowance we needed to make a chore chart for her. We did this so that she can visualize what her responsibilities are and we can keep track of what she has or hasn't done and how much allowance she should recieve. We are just starting with $1/Day if all of her chores are done. And were going to start off by giving her the allowance daily so that she can comprehend the cause and effect factor a little easier...eventually we will start giving it to her weekly instead. I went to this awesome website, Goalforit!.com, where you can completely customize the chart. In addition to chores we also added behavior goals and healthy habits too. Some of the "chores" are really just things that she does every day already like making her bed, putting her clothes in the laundry, and feeding and watering the dog and plants. For the behavior goals I put down things like: listening, using table manners and saying please and thank you and homework. She doesn't usually have homework but I consider practicing reading, sight words and practicing math (like county coins) homework for now. For healthy habits I checked things like: brushing teeth, and washing hands. Since she is only 5 we have to start off with her chore chart being manageable and age appropriate. The majority of the things she is doing on the chart are things that she is already doing anyways without prompting. We really just want her to know that we aren't just giving her an allowance but that she is doing "chores" for them and that she truly is earning her allowance. I will eventually modify the chart but for now I think that she will enjoy receiving an allowance and I will enjoy (hopefully) not having to prompt her to do these simple basic tasks. Right now she helps me with everything around the house that needs to be done but eventually when she's big enough she can do these things as chores, on her own instead.

Class field trip to the Chidren's museum

On Friday Cecelia's class went on a field trip to the Children's museum. Of course I couldn't pass up the opportunity to volunteer and come along. We love the Children's museum but haven't been in quite awhile. In part because they have limited hours during the week that don't usually work for us (or any child in pre-school or kindergarten for that matter), plus the museum is always so busy on the weekends. We got lucky though because it snowed on Friday so the museum ended up being not very busy at all. I was assigned 4 kids to be responsible for during the day. What a handful. The kids were actually very good for me. Cecelia and her friend Catherine stayed together for the most part, and the two boys, Hunter and Graydon, tended to play together too. It's just kind of hectic because your trying to keep and eye on all 4 kids at once...no volunteer parent wants to be the one to lose a kid they were assigned to watch! It was really fun to see Cecelia interact with all of the other kids. Plus, when we stopped to eat lunch I had an opportunity to spend time and chat with Cece's teacher and a few of Cecelia's classmate's mothers as well. I'm a room mother for the Valentine's day party at Cecelia's school next Friday too. Last night Aaron and I took her to the grocery store and she picked out Capri Suns and Yummy looking frosted Valentine's day cookies to bring to the party on Friday. Another parent is assigned party games to bring as well. It should be another fun day! I love that I have the opportunity to be an active parent for these kinds of things. Cecelia enjoys me being present and involved with her school and classroom too. I'll post pictures of the field trip soon. I received a new camera from my mom (the photographer- go figure) for Christmas and am having trouble uploading pictures to the computer from it. I really just need Aaron to do it for me...computers are one thing that I admit to not being good at:)

Getting ready for Valentines Day

While I was making dinner last night Cecelia decided she REALLY wanted to make her Valentines Day cards for her classmates. Since all she really had to do was sign her name and tape a piece of candy to the card I figured I would let her do that. My mom got her Hannah Montana Valentines this year. Then we just went and got a big bag of candy to tape onto each card. The thing is that Cece only has 20 kids in her class and the bag contained 50 pieces of candy...so tempting and not good for my diet. Apparently we don't need to make a Valentines card box. I guess in the past some of the children either forget their boxes or they didn't make one at home at all, so to keep kids from feeling left out they just decorate white bags at school before the Valentines party. I was a little disappointed to hear that because I remember making very elaborate, festive boxes every year for Valentines day. I understand the teachers dilema and I certainly don't want other kids to feel left out either.

My sleeping beauties

My sleeping beauties. At this age Cecelia rarely takes a nap on the weekends but when she does it is so adorable! Cecelia fell asleep watching I was Bitten. She loves that show, actually she likes a lot of shows on discovery health. I wouldn't be surprised if she grew up wanting to be a nurse just like her Mom. Anytime I have my nursing books out she quietly sits and looks at the pictures in the texts, occasionally asking me questions about the pictures. Stanley is usually such a cuddle bug but that particular spot on the back of the couch is Stanley's favorite spot to sleep at.

Issues in our house this week

Our washer and dryer in our home are only a few years old. So imagine my surprise when Aaron's sister who was doing laundry at our house, informed me that the dryer stopped working. For the last few months I have noticed that it hasn't been drying as quickly as it was or should be. It wasn't bad enough to where I was really worried about it though. We were debating whether or not to buy a new set, buy a used dryer off of craiglist or try to get it repaired. Well, we didn't really want to invest in a new set (honestly who wants to spend their disposable income on that?) mainly because we are going to be buying a house next year and it may come with a washer and dryer. In this housing market people are frequently including brand new appliances in order to sell their home. Plus, if we did end up needing to purchase a new set, I wanted to get a pair of front loaders and those are typically pretty expensive(for a quality brand and model at least). Right now we just didn't really want to spend that kind of money. So we looked on craigslist and didn't really find a whole lot. The ones we did find were snatched up before we could even get in touch with the seller. So we decided to try and have it fixed and if that didn't work than we would buy a whole new set. Aaron found a really friendly appliance repair store to fix it for $45...so cheap! Apparently the problem was a simple fuse. It probably cost just a few dollars for the part and it took 5 mins. to fix. Plus Aaron watched him fix it so he knows how to do it himself for any future issues I guess. The best part of all is that it works better than it did before it stopped working. Apparently the fuse slowly goes out. I'm so happy we didn't have to spend a ton of money unexpectedly.

The second issue we had this week was with our new T.V.. The picture was looking kind funny to us. I talked to my friend Rachel and after describing what it looked like she said her T.V. had the same problem and that she thought it was just LCD TVs. Aaron and I discussed returning it and buying a different brand or perhaps a plasma vs. an LCD. Well before going through all the work of researching other TVs, and boxing up and returning the old one, Aaron called the Phillips customer help line. The representative walked him through how to change all the settings to get the best quality picture and he fixed it completely. The picture is 100% better. Plus I called my friend Rachel who was complaining about the same problem and she is having her boyfriend fix hers too. Unfortunately for her, she has had had her TV for far longer than we have and didn't know there was a way to fix it up until now.

I know this is nothing to brag about but it's part of what you have to deal with as a parent.
Cecelia said her first naughty word at school. Well, technically it was at kids club. It was bound to happen someday. Kids repeat everything they hear, and up until now we have never heard her say any profanity. In her defense it wasn't the worst word she could say. I was absolutely shocked and mortified when they told me what happened though. They weren't upset at all. Apparently they hear alot worse all the time:( She knew she was in trouble right away. She didn't deny what happened at all and she told me the truth when I asked her about it. She lost her TV privelages for 2 days because of it. I asked her what punishment she thought was fair and she willingly accepted it. We talked at length about how little girls and any child for that matter shouldn't say those types of things and that sometimes she will hear adults or other people saying those words but that she knows right from wrong and that that's wrong. She usually calls her dad when she gets home from school but she didn't want to call him last night after we got home. She knows that her dad is much more strict than I am ( for example she isn't going to be allowed to date EVER apparently). I just find it hard to keep a stable balance of disciplining but yet allowing your children to be kids and also what are acceptable punishments for children at different ages and developmental levels. Plus what works for some kids doesn't work for others. We have pretty much phased out time outs. At this age she enjoys her DS, watching TV, playing learning games on the computer, playing board games with us, staying the night at her cousins' or having her cousins stay the night at our house, shopping and playing Wii. So we have have lots of opportunities to take away privelages. Hopefully we won't have to very often.
Last night as I was reading Oh the places you'll go by Dr. Seauss, we were talking about how it's important to be successful in school and college. We were talking about college and she said "yeah, college is hard but the parties are fun"...seriously? We may just have our hands full with this one. It's not always easy being a mom but I wouldn's change Cecelia for the world. She has the most amazing personality ever. She is constantly making us laugh with her sense of humor. We have always referred to her as an old soul because since she could talk we have always been impressed by how mature she has always been.

What a little princess

Just a few new pictures of Cecelia. The first picture is of her hair after she got it done at Sweet and Sassy. She went to a birthday party there for one of the girls in her class. While she was at the party my sisters met me at the nail salon next door and we got pedicures. Then after we were done we all went out to lunch at Wheatfields. What a perfect Saturday afternoon. I love Shadow lake town center. It doesn't have as many stores in the outdoor mall as I would like, but it really is overall pretty convenient. I later found out that Cecelia blatantly refused to change into the "costumes" and participate in learning a dance and song with the other girls at the party which was videotaped. Apparently she was very entertaining while all of this was going on. She is just so strong willed. If she doesn't want to do something she puts up a good fight. She later told me she didn't want to get cold in the dress they wanted her to wear. Completely understandable. The second picture is of her after I got her ready for a baby shower we were attending. I curled her hair, pinned it back from her face and hair sprayed it. Then she got a little mascara and lip gloss. She loves getting all dolled up! The last picture is of her after the bath with a towel wrapped around her head (just like mommy does). She does this quite often. She imitates me all the time. She likes to refer to herself as my "assistant". She likes me to ask her to do things or help me get things done around the house. It's so cute. She just got a hair cut a few days ago. We took off almost 3 inches. Aaron and I have talked about cutting her hair to about shoulder length, but I just couldn't bring myself to have them do it. She has a beautiful golden dark blond hair color and I'm not ready for such a big change yet. Last year Kiley cut some of her own hair when she was at her mom's house. So they had to take her to get a hair cut. To fix it they had to cut a lot of length off. Since then Cecelia has occasionally asked if she could get her hair cut like Kiley's was. However since Kiley's hair has been growing back out Cecelia hasn't asked about it the last few months. Cecelia really looks up to and loves Kiley. It's so sweet. I can't wait until Cecelia has another sister (or brother) that she can adore as much as she adores her sister.

Stanley being a little stinker!

Stanley-parked on the back of the sofa, licking a huge wet spot into the couch. It's so gross! This is what Stanley does...I have no clue why either. He is so adorable though. It makes it really hard to stay mad at him. It makes it easier for me not to be too mad at him when I find that he has done this because it doesn't stain at all. Every few months I take my little green machine and clean the sofa and wash the cushions anyways. Between cleanings we just febreeze and all is well. I love this little guy, he's like a son. I was never a dog person before Stanley. Now I love dogs. When we buy next year we will either get another Shih Tzu or a Cocker Spaniel. We'll see, they are both such beautiful, kid friendly breeds.

Stanley got a hair cut

Stanley will never be the kind of Shih Tzu who has really long hair. I say this because he absolutely despises being brushed. He doesn't mind his head and back being brushed but he doesn't like his legs or his tummy being brushed at all. Because of this he has to have a haircut at least twice a year. Usually in the summer time we shave him down (this helps keep him cool too), then in the winter we have to get his hair cut again (I trim up his face, paws and potty parts when they need a trim at home with the clippers). This winter though he had to be shaved, I didn't want to have to do it because I was afraid he would be too cold. However he had so many tangles on his legs and in his armpits we had to start from scratch with a very clean short cut. He is always so soft but when his hair is short he's even softer. My sister gave me the name and number of a really awesome groomer who is just a few miles from our house. Plus, this groomer is about $20 less than what pets mart or any other groomer that I have used or called would potentially charge.

Happy Valentines Day:)

I gave Aaron his Valentines Day present early (coincidentally in time for the super bowl). We got a new Phillips 47" LCD T.V. and since the TV is so large we had to get a new entertainment center too. It has totally transformed the look of the living room. The first night we had it we watched the Grammys and we were stunned at the amazing picture. Then last night we played a game of Wii bowling with Cecelia. It's so much funner on the big screen than on our little 32" in the den. I know I went a little overboard but Aaron works so hard to take care of all of us girls, he really deserved it! Plus, it was about time for a new TV anyways. I'm not quite sure of what all I will be receiving from Aaron for Valentine's day, but all I can say is that I better be getting spoiled all year long...I'm not worried though. I'm pretty lucky, Aaron always gets me great gifts and it's usually exactly what I wanted!