Brad's 32nd Birthday weekend

Its Brad and Josh the Handyman.  And several shots of tequila.

Willa got a new stuffed dog.  I named him Bacon.  She named him Donut.  We compromised and call him Bacon Flavored Donut.  Its probably a real thing.

Might I recommend the bloody mary? And the brussels sprouts?  And the truffle fries?  And will someone take me back here again so I can try the mushroom pizza?

Brad turned 32 a few weeks back and it was a great weekend.  We had dinner in York with his family on the evening of his birthday, and then had some drinks with friends downtown in Lincoln  Then on Sunday, we went to Omaha and stayed at the hotel that is home to CoCo Keys waterpark.  We had waaay more fun there than I had planned on!  What a fun place!  I think what made it the most fun was that Willa was totally game to try everything, even the really big waterslides.  For the first time around water, we saw her have no fear and completely let go and have a blast.  We left the waterpark totally exhausted!  That night, we had dinner at Pitch, which was so good, and then we got ice cream and ate it in bed in the hotel room while we took advantage of the cable tv:)  On Monday, we bummed around in the Old Market, had lunch at Blue, and did a little shopping.  How does anyone who lives in Omaha get anything done ever, besides eating and drinking?!?  I wouldn't!  So far, Brad is wearing 32 well.  I love this period where, for 4 months, we are the same age and I don't feel like such a cradle robber.

Favorites from Easter

I am slowly learning that as a mom, you have to let go of a little bit of control.  For instance, when you want to dye eggs like Martha Stewart does and your child just wants to use a jillion Hello Kitty stickers on them, SHE WINS.  You do not.

My mom made this scotcharoo bar cake.  In the shape of a bunny.  Which she would like me to inform you IS NOT the playboy bunny, no matter how much you insist that it is.  (It stopped looking like the playboy bunny after willa covered it in gum drops, but it still tasted, um, sinfully good.)

This may be in my top 5 favorite pictures of all time.

We gave away Willa's best friend

Isn't this little guy just the cutest?  He was hanging around our house a few weeks ago, when we got all the snow and really cold weather.  And he looked pretty unloved, dirty and matted fur.  He was obviously some sort of cruel dump job.  I really wanted to bring him in the house and take care of him until we could relocate him to a shelter or a new home, but the cat of the house, Stickers, was not a fan of that idea.  Anytime he could hear the kitten, or anytime we opened the back door to let Bailey out, Stickers would hiss and puff up all his fur and seem so angry!  So, we made the kitten a box with old towels, and gave him food and water.  He/she really seemed to like it!  It was so tempting to keep the baby, but we had to remain loyal to Stickers and also the little guy really needed some veterinary attention, at least to make sure he didn't have any funky bugs or anything, so Brad put an ad on Craigslist for a free kitten to a good home.  In a matter of minutes, he had several takers and that evening he delivered the kitten to a nice family with another cat, a small dog, and a few kids.  We had not even touched the kitten yet, as I was a little freaked out about the possibility of (eek!) worms or something, and certainly hadn't named the thing, but when Brad left with the wandering friend, Willa lost it.  She cried soooo hard and for so long and was so mad at us.  She just kept saying over and over "I want my best friend Puffball back."  Apparently, she had grown very fond of the cat living on the back steps, and had named it.  It just broke my heart.  Every few days or so, she still tells me that she wants Puffball back.  And that the family that we gave him/her to is so mean.  Please, oh please.  Don't let anymore stray animals into our yard.  The meltdown over Puffball has been traumatic.

The holiday of L-O-V-E

I feel like we kind of made Valentine's Day a big deal this year.  I think it was because Willa got to celebrate at preschool and that got her kind of revved up for it.  Usually, aside from my love of the colors red and pink together, I'm not a huge fan.  (If any of you reading ever lived in Babcock Hall from the years 1998-2000, do you always on Valentine's Day picture those cut-outs in the bathroom that were from "the magazines"?  With the strategically positioned construction paper flaps?  I do.)  

Anyhooters...this year was fun!  On the Monday before Valentine's Day, we had a family date downtown.  First, we got coffee at Indigo Bridge, then we made stuff at Paint Yourself Silly, then we had ice cream at Ivanna Cone, and then we had dinner at Bison Witch's.  All fun stuff.  Lots of good food.  I swear Willie was having more fun than it looks like she was having.  She painted herself a little duck and also helped with Brad's pencil cup.  I think she has figured out how OCD I am about certain things, as she didn't even ask if she could help with my spoon rest.  She knows I would freak out if she painted out of my lines.  And today, she wouldn't let me play Monopoly with her, as she said I would make her play it "the right way."  Damn straight, child.  

Wednesday night, we made brownies.  And we ate a lot of frosting.

Thursday night, Brad brought home Noodles and had flowers and wine awaiting us:)  Note that he has learned that I do not think that roses are pretty flowers.  No picture, but I bought him some spicy garlic sauce from BW3s.  And some pink sea salt.  A tasty gift, but I did feel a little lame when another gift arrived for me the next day and it was this little guy that I have been wanting and wanting and he cost much more than wing sauce...

See?  Cute little guy.  Ready for a cute little plant, when I find the one that I am imagining.

All in all, it was a very nice holiday.  But Easter is my favorite and it is next.  And again, I have sworn off excess/refined sugar from Valentine's Day through Easter.  So Friday morning, I gave away the leftover brownies and have been saying no to all my favorite things ever since.  No, that was pretty dramatic but I did order black coffee at Scooters while Willa ate red velvet cupcake ice cream with M & M's on top the other day.  And today while we were snowed in all day, I may have mixed a lot of unsweetened cocoa powder with peanut butter, honey and banana and eaten it like yogurt.  I'm really blurring the lines of what is acceptable, natural sugar and what isn't.  Honey?  Really?!?  I was desperate.  Brad is giving up soda.  I am so proud of how well he is doing.  We stocked up on many flavors of green tea to get us through.  Tosha gave up meat again.  She is discovering the joys of Trader Joe's Meatless Meatballs.  We are all suffering together:)  Except Willa.  She is getting a really sick kind of pleasure out of my inability to eat candy.  She went so far as to rub my back with a little bag of Valentine M & M's the other day, singing to me about how they are made of sugar.  Mean, mean little creature.  Its fine.  I'll get her back on Easter Day.  The Easter bunny might bring her a basket with only candy wrappers.  Wrappers from reece's eggs, starburst jelly beans, and sweet tart bunnies and chicks.  I really like Easter.

All kinds of stuff and things

A quick look at things, through pictures.  Early October at Martin's Apple Orchard.  Great place to take the family in the fall and we got a bag of the BEST apples I have ever tasted.

And then I put a picture on Instagram and Anderson Cooper liked it.  And I got all excited.  I mean, its ANDERSON COOPER.  I'm sure he operates his show's Instagram all by himself, right?!?

 

Then there were pumpkin flavored things.  Like pancakes.

And scones.

Then Willa and I spent an afternoon shopping with Tosha.  And enjoying Happy Hour.  I'm sure that Happy Hour is not a proper noun but I feel it is important enough to capitalize, ok?

Then there were presidential and vice-presidential debates to be enjoyed with warm, spiced apple cider drinks and family. 

Then we pulled off a fun surprise for a good friend.  And this was the night that prompted the new 2 Drink Maximum Rule that I have in place for myself.  And it also taught me not to take shots of vodka and then play tag.

Then there was the pumpkin patch.  JK's to be exact.  

Brad and I had a few nights out.  The Yelawolf concert at the Bourbon Theater

And the Hers Launch Party at Voda

Willa, Borne, and Wash at the Hoffman's Halloween party

And Halloween!  We love trick or treating in the Highlands.

Fort building.

My first movie with Willa - Wreck It, Ralph!

Aaaaand...Voting!  I was going to do a whole post about the election, but Facebook got me so flustered about the whole thing that all I will say is, its never a good idea to call me (or imply that I might be) lazy or dependent on the government.  

In a big 'ole nutshell, that's what we have been up to the past several weeks, aside from being busy busy at our jobs.  And Willa has been busy just getting bigger and smarter.  It is so much fun to watch her learn and also to observe her making friends.  She has got counting and abc's down, really is starting to grasp days of the week and shapes, is trying to actually draw things and color in the lines rather than just making big blobs of color, remembers the words to songs they sing in school, can compare and contrast the Michael C. Hall of Dexter with the one of 6 Feet Under, knew the names and faces of both presidential candidates, and is super excited to get big so she can go hunting with Grandpa with her very own gun!  

School update

Now that we are more than a month into preschool, we can officially say that we love it!  If you or anyone you know is looking for a place to send their little ones, I would HIGHLY recommend Dimensions.  Worth every penny.  Everyone there is so nice and they have done a great job with Willa and she is learning more than I would have thought possible!  We had parent/teacher conferences the other day and I just couldn't stop smiling the whole time Mrs. Katt was talking about Willa!  Such a nice lady...(Mrs. Katt.  And Willa)  We are so proud of our little stink-bomb.  The 2 teachers, Mrs. Katt and Ms. Miller, often email/text us pictures of what Willa is up to during the day, so here are a few...

One thing that we have heard from Willa's teachers is how focused she is on her tasks.  For example, this dot picture which utilized a gajillion dot stickers.  And that she worked on for most of the day.

This is from a mini-field trip the kids took to the Sunken Gardens, just down the street from school.  The kids were matching paint strips with holes punched in them to the plants.  What a cool idea for learning all kinds of colors!

Then they drew pictures of the plants in their journals.

Watering one of the school gardens.

Preschool?!?

On Thursday, my one and only tiny baby Willa went to preschool.  Except that she isn't a tiny baby.  And who would have ever guessed that I would be the kind of mom to CRY?  I made it almost out of the building before I did it, but I don't think I get any points for that.  And just so I don't feel like a complete sap, Brad doesn't get the "not crying points" either.  So there.

Here's the run down on the education of Miss Willa.  She goes two days a week to Dimensions at First Plymouth Church.  They are a very sciency/natury based program and they do lots of things outside and in a greenhouse with gardens and composting and plants and stuff.  Very cool.  We are going to have a very hippie child, even if I can't keep a plant alive for anything.  We are so very excited to see everything that Willa learns there.  Her teacher's name, thank goodness, is Mrs. Katt.  Pretty sure the only other way she would have remembered it was if it were Mrs. Dog.  When Tosha and I picked her up from school on Thursday, we had about a bajillion questions for her about what she learned and about the other kids and she didn't really want to answer any of our questions.  I thought that was something that happened in the teenage years, but ALREADY she is annoyed with my interest in all that she does.  The teacher did tell us (and wrote on her little daily progress sheet) that she REALLY enjoyed painting.  Her sheet, in fact, said that "she painted and painted and painted."  I am going to take that as a nice way to tell me that my child is obsessed with painting and it might be a problem:)  Next week, we are going to work on learning the other kids' names, and making sure that she is helping to pick up after all the painting.

While I am so excited to watch Willa learn, I still have this little nagging sad feeling in my heart.  I realize she is still very young, and we have many more years of school and childhood left but for some reason I feel like this is the beginning of the end.  All of a sudden, there are other people, teachers, peers, other parents, involved in the shaping of my child's personality and future.  Its like preschool is the very beginning of a world of making friends, peer pressure, trying to fit in, getting along, finding your "place".  And while I am inclined to want to shield my little lady from all of these things that could potentially hurt her little feelings, I also kind of want to see how she handles them.  I want to see proof that what we are doing at home, and what our values are, are going to hold up out in the real world and that my daughter will be an asset and a ray of sunshine to those around her.  Wow.  Heavy. Time will tell, I guess.  I need to get back to blogging about something less serious.

Oh yeah.  We did eventually get Willa to show us how to walk like a dinosaur, like her note said they did.  Sooo there must have been a few minutes where she wasn't thinking about painting.  She also talked me into taking her out for ice cream after school and getting a balloon animal from the clown at the Fallbrooke farmer's market.

And then this happened for most of the rest of the evening.  Not gonna lie, I was in a very similar position on the other end of the couch (when I wasn't taking pictures for her graduation slide show:)