Giggle Fest 2010

Dude loves his dad. Tim gets him to giggle uncontrolably like no one else can. It's heartwarming to watch. I'm pretty sure dude peed his pants during the giggle fest below. Oh how I love my boys.

The Hunt

The annual neighborhood egg hunt is one of those happenings that WILL occur, regardless of rain, snow, mud, sleet or shine. Come prepared for a 3 minutes period of chaos where children scatter, looking to collect as many plastic eggs as their little hands can hold. This year it started with the co-op of women stuffing the eggs in our backyard. It was scheduled to take place in our basement, but when 17 children and 9 moms RSVP'd, I quickly changed the date to accommodate for being outside. It worked beautifully.

The hunt was on Sunday afternoon. In the snow covered grass. But the kiddos didn't care. They showed up sporting boots and short sleeved shirts and hunted until no eggs were left to be seen. That only took about 30 seconds, but it's still tons o fun for all the kids involved. See photos below...the cutest part of the day was watching dude and 3 friends walk, hand in had, all the way to the park and back. Precious little souls. Dude got a whopping 2 eggs, but he's none the wiser. He actually got more of a kick out of playing with the warning tape used to mark off egg hunting areas. After the hunt we headed to the park for an hour. A perfect kid day.

Maaaaaaaaaaaaa

I'm going to start this post by explaining to those who don't know my son very well that he has a love hate relationship with anything that makes sudden movements or sounds. For example, ALL animals. They move, unexpectedly, and typically make sounds. From a distance, he loves them. Thinks they're hilarious. But when they get close and move, he gets ridiculously nervous and goes into a slight state of panic.

That being said, I'll continue. Palm Sunday is a day I look forward to. All the children wave their palm branches up to the front of the church, smile, wave frantically to their parents and go on their way to Tot Church. Now that dude has just started attending Tot Church, this was a day to look forward to. OUR kid would be up there waving his palm branch. Well, this ideal Palm Sunday vision was going quite smoothly. I did take away the giant palm branch before he went up front as he kept waving it the elderly couple's faces behind us, but he was sitting nicely up front, waving at us and smiling his oh so sweet little smile. And then they brought in the sheep. A real live, "MAAAAAAING" sheep. A sheep that wanted to climb on the children and "MAAAA" in their faces. At that point, it all went quite the opposite direction of up.

This was the first Sunday dude sat in front on the steps all by himself. We sat 2 rows behind where he could see us and find solace in our smiling faces. As Tim and I became aware that the sheep was joining the children up front, we hoped the pastor's wife in front of us wasn't hearing us muttering "Oh sh*#@" under our breaths. He did pretty well....for 2 minutes. He kept telling the sheep to "stay away sheep! Nice sheep! No more "maaaaing in my ear sheep!" Yes, everyone was laughing at our son's nervous response to the barn yard animal. And then the sheep came too close and "maaaaaed" too loudly and before I knew it, there was a screeching dude, running up the aisle to the comfort of my lap, all the while yelling at the sheep from our pew.

At that point, I decided I would walk him out to Tot Church to avoid a big(ger) scene. He told everyone he passed that the sheep said "maaaaa" in his ear and then had the entire left side of church chuckling. Yes, ha ha. Isn't he cute. Our friend Amanda, this week's Tot Church teacher, informed me that the sheep was going to visit their class room. At that point, I gave her dude's hand and wished her luck, saying prayers all the way back to my seat that he wouldn't kill the sheep or run out of Tot church, vowing never to return.

The good news is that he did just fine in the classroom (sitting right next to Miss Amanda) and only told me 32 times about the sheep after I picked him up. And a mere 5 people asked if he was the one who ran to us screaming about the sheep. Yes, yes. What I didn't tell them is that we were quite pleased with how it all played out. I think we both envisioned it going so much worse. Let's hope they avoid all barn yard animals or even giant bunnies next week or he'll never sit on those front steps, ever again.

March Madness

Much like my championship NCAA pick Kansas falling flat on their faces, my ideal vision of March has done quite the same. Denver has been showing its true colors this month. Remember how I said it was my favorite time of year? Signs of good health, balmy temps, green life popping up, trips to the park? Well, this is how March has played out thus far. Dude has had a cold and double ear infection the entire month. Just Tuesday his coughing and snot came to a close. We're down to one ear infected, so that's progress. We've received over 17 inches of snow in the past week and a half. The first 7 inches melted the next day, but we were blessed with another 10 just 2 days ago. There's about 4 inches remaining on the ground, prohibiting anything green from showing it's face. Granted, it's been in the 60's most days, so we can't complain about that. And Dude and Dad built their first ever snowman, cleverly named Frosty. That was worth the first 7 inches.

We're supposed to get another 2 inches of unwanted white stuff tonight and then it's upper 60's for the next week. Unfortunately, the ground will be nasty for our neighborhood egg hunt on Sunday. Maybe we'll just let Dude roll around in the mud for kicks. What am I talking about? That kid wouldn't touch mud if we put a bowl of chocolate and lollipops in front of his face.

Hope you're enjoying your March! Here's hoping April turns into what I always dream my March to be.

Ladies, All the Ladies

Dude has the fortune of being surrounded by a host of lovely little girlfriends. They're comin' out of the wood work these days. There are some fellow dudes in his life too, but the lady factor seems to outweigh the dude factor. Count yourself blessed my son. This will not last forever. Eventually they'll want nothing to do with your boyness energy and love of trucks and rough housing. So for now, take it all in. Below is a recent sampling of some of the lady loves in his charmed life.

Who Be 3?

3 years old. He's not a toddler anymore. He's a kid. A biggish kid. He talks in full sentences. He doesn't wear diapers anymore. He eats carrots and broccoli and understands consequences. He can skip naps without falling apart. He can undress himself and kinda dress himself (the undies tend to go on backward and sometimes both legs go in the same hole, but hey, it's an A for effort). And according to his 3 year check up today, he's in the 75% for weight and 80% for height. What? When did he go above the 25th% for weight???? He's just not our little babe or apparantly our little light weight anymore. He's 3. When did that happen?

This year dude totally understood that it was his birthday and thought it was a-w-e-s-o-m-e. Last year the whole concept didn't really phase him, so we lived it up. The day started off with a larger than life singing card from Grandma V & Grandpa Marc and a computer game present. Then we opened the door to pure helium filled bliss. The playroom floor was covered in balloons, which kept him busy for a solid hour. We got ready for our partaaaay at the Fire fighter's Museum and headed downtown for a ton o birthday fun. 7 of our little buds and their parents joined us for a home made (by Cara and myself) fire truck cake of all cakes, running around exploring the museum, presents, climbing on trucks, coloring etc. etc. It was the perfect 2 hour party. All the kiddos got fire hats, stickers and were all sugared up, right in time for lunch.

A solid nap was had that afternoon and we hung together as a fam at night, ordered pizza, played with all our rad new presents and slept like babies. A good day for an amazing kid. Our kid. Love you buddy. Happy happy birthday.

(the video is at the tail end of the photos)

Attic Rodent Parties & Freaky Blue Moon Lights = Sleep Depravation

Bad squirrel. VERY bad demon possessed squirrel.

If you entered our home last night between oh, 10:00pm and 4:00am, you would think we had a heard of cattle residing in our attic. A very angry heard of cattle. In reality, it's probably only one freaked out squirrel, but the cattle heard is a much better reference for what it sounded like while trying to catch some zzzzzzz's at Casa Vogel. "Trying" to catch some zzzzz's is the key word. No zzzzzz's were had last night. You see, I heard a slight scratching in dude's wall 2 days ago. So Tim braved the attic, didn't find anything and put plywood over an obvious entry point in the chimney. Mistake. They WERE in there and tempers flared when they realized they were trapped.

On top of that, we had to deal with a disoriented dude who didn't adjust well to the new, genius night light that we purchased. This innovative night light was intended to enable him to sleep in longer in the morning. It's about 6 inches in diameter and displays a bring, smiling blue moon at night that turns into a bright, smiling, yellow sun at a specified time in the morning. The sun signals that he's allowed to get out of bed. What we didn't realize is that the freaky blue smiley face moon would freak him out and he would sit up, waiting for it to turn into a sun. And so yes, he did sleep in this morning. Because he was awake for the majority of the night. And Mama "slept" on his hard floor, offering much needed comfort. Mission accomplished. Genius.

The Evil "Blue Sun"

Dude's source of morning happiness. This glorious sun's arrival means the evil blue moon is all gone.

Between the freaky blue moon taunting me as I laid to rest right beside it on the dude's floor and the demonic trapped rodent/s in the attic, it was quite a night. Tim is lining up pest control to come today to take care of problem #1. In fact, he's on his way home right now to undo the plywood and was warned that the rodents might very well be waiting at that entry point to attack. And so he's a bit freaked out. Don't worry, it's only costing us $350 for a rodent man to come set traps and come back every day for 2 weeks to make sure they're all dead and gone.

Problem #2 will be laid to rest in it's box and shipped back to the warehouse it came from tomorrow. Dude will be happy to see the moon go, but he has grown quite fond of the sun. In fact, this morning he sat next to it for 15 minutes gazing at it, singing to it, cuddling it and talking about how much he missed it.

Wish us luck on tackling #1 &#2. Lots and lots of luck.

The Big Bad Teeth Man

Before the scary chair started moving. It went downhill from this point on.

Now that dude has crossing over into his fourth year of life (birthday post to follow) and hes been developing funky stuff on his teeth (aka toddler plaque), we decided that a visit to the dentist was probably wise. We talked about how fun the dentist was for days - dude would get a toothbrush, toothpaste, a toy...and his teeth would be clean.He adores being clean, so this was actually an incentive. I had visions of the fun and creative pictures I would get during our visit. It was going to be a super cute blog post.

Note the lack of cute pictures. The dentist was NOT all we cracked it up to be. In fact, if you ask the dude, he would tell you that it was the worst 20 minutes of his short life. 3 adults had to restrain him so the dentist could get a peek in his mouth and remove the funky stuff that was forming on his miniature teeth. It was torture. The fact that there was a monkey hanging from the light didn't hold a candle to the reality of 3 people holding him down on a chair that moves, sticking their hands in his mouth and scratching your teeth with a sharp object. Not a good time.

The second he was let off the "moving chair" he was golden. And he headed right for the door, informing Tim and me that we were to follow him. As we left he yelled, "goodbye dentist and moving chair!" in his most pleasant little voice. More bad news? He still has 4 molers to come in. Not good. The good news? We were sure he was peeing his pants during the ordeal, but he managed to keep it in. Way to go dude. We're so proud of you.

Handro Crying Like a Baby

I came home from an appointment yesterday to dude and dad in the kitchen. This is what I was told upon my arrival.....

"Mommy! I hit Alahandro in da face with my yellow bat! Boom! Ouch! Handro cry like a baby Mom. Wah, wah wah!" I look at Tim with obvious confusion. Who is Handro, why was Handro at our house and why did my child hit someone in the face with a bat and not get put in a permanent time out? Tim just stood there smirking. Dude repeated it again, getting frustrated that I wasn't following.

Turns out some new neighbors moved in down the street and the little boy's name is Alejandro (not sure how to spell it). His mom, sister and he walked down to meet Tim and dude. The boys were playing t-ball- Dude took a swing and apparently didn't notice Handros face in front of him. Smack. Tears. And probably a big ole welt on the poor kid's face today. Nice dude. Way to welcome the new neighbors.

Last Weekend's Haps

It was a crazy weekend round here. Downright crazy. Tim spent Friday night and all day Saturday in Breck and Copper hitting the slopes with some college buds. Aside from their nasty hole in the wall hotel, they had a blast. And his super old 30 year old body is still paying the price. Dude and I played hard at home and ate doughnuts. I might have slipped some wine in there too.

Sunday we woke up to a long-awaited call from our neighbor friends. Baby girl #3 joined their precious little fam at 1:27am on Sunday. They checked in at 1:00am and 27 minutes later.....BAM! Baby. Delaney Michele had to be in the ICU on oxygen for a couple days since she came out too quickly, but she's doing beautifully now and will be coming home this afternoon. Precious. Love her already.

Bret and Mike (skiing buds) visited for a while on Sunday afternoon and after nap time we went to celebrate with Brady for his 3rd birthday car party hoopla. Cara made an awesomely creative cake and we chowed on tasty grub. Can't believe the little dudes are already 3. Happy birthday buddy!

Dude thought it was like Disney World having 2 big guys there to wrestle with him. He giggled his little pants off the entire time.

Tunnel fun is not just for the little squirts. Mike had a good amount of fun all by himself.

Bradster, the b-day boy, sporting his sister-made crown.

So darn cute, isn't he? We like to think so.

That sums up the weekend. Dude's looking forward to his birthday partaaaay this Saturday! Our closet is already packed with presents from grandparents. Spoiled little man. It should be a fun packed weekend once again. Stay tuned.

Where My Mommy Go?

One of the traits that make my marriage go round and round in such a happy, ferris wheel like, way is the fact that we encourage each other to leave. Hop aboard a plane, a car, whatever form of transportation necessary, and get the heck out of town for a couple days. And we do. Quite often. Granted, it's easy with one kid. I can't promise this trend will continue once a second is added. I got home yesterday from a trip to San Antonio, visiting my 7 month prego friend Amy. She's my queen of girls weekends as she and her darling hubby share in our "get away" mentality.

Dude and Dad held down the fort, but I must say, dude wasn't so pleased that I ditched him. Dad got some 2, almost 3, year old attitude for the first 24 hours, but dude eventually realized that it was getting him nowhere and wasn't bringing his beloved Mama home. It didn't help that he had a double ear infection brewing. I had the luxury of dealing with that a couple hours after touching my feet to Colorado ground. But we're good. Medicated and good.

Texas was rainy, but we had one nice sunny day, which I thoroughly inhaled. I love taking prego shots, so we shared one of Amy's kick arse cameras and did photo shoots of each other downtown San Antone. We ate on the Riverwalk, walked around and took in the day. I was introduced to Texas BBQ and cheap Mexican eats, watched some good girly movies and got to know little one year old man Jay. Precious little soul. OH...I slept until 8:45 each and every morning. Heaven.

Little man Jay.

Going away is just the best. It makes you appreciate home that much more and makes the boys in your life appreciate YOU that much more:) Tim's turn now. He's off to ski with some college buds for the weekend. We live rough lives. What else can I say.

Prego shot #1 - cool walls huh?

My "Make love to the camera" pose. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Amy's slightly obsessed with Coke, thus this photo.



There were 4 hispanic men watching us like we were off our rockers.

Creativity. Pure creativity.

Aren't these the cutest little chairs?

Soon to be family of 4 (another little man's on the way).