Finishing the update

I am not sure why my previous post keeps showing broken links to the pictures. I hope it is some problem that I am seeing and you can see all the pictures. Hopefully they will all show up with this post. I wanted to post a few pictures of the karate party we went to with my dad and Kristi and the kids. We had a really fun time. My Dad dressed up as some crazy creepy guy, the mask was especially odd because it sort of had a smiling face. He said that when he put the mask on he felt like Jim Carrey in The Mask, he couldn't control himself and started dancing wildly. My dad never dances. Angie and I were laughing so hard. I would go into more detail but I will NEVER be able to do that dance justice.

Owen ran around and played. I think his music class has been really good for him, he is much more willing to run around without me. He played with the kids and danced and he helped himself to the food.

Greg, Ben and Angie's boyfriend Steve left early to go to a movie. Angie and I stayed through the end and then left to go hang out at Target. Owen was picking out all kinds of things, saying "O buy" and throwing it in the basket. I tried to show him some scary Halloween creature that moves with crazy eyes, he looked a little scared at first and then said "O buy" and threw it in the basket. At one point I was buying this crazy Halloween guy, 2 plastic pumpkins, a Thomas the Train pillow and a few small toys. We discussed putting everything away and buying a little Thomas the Train to play with. He settled for that and we put the rest back. He uses the word "eeky" for little. He said he wanted an "eeky nomas". Good thing I pay some attention when I go to the store, I would be buying a lot of stuff. Not a lot of attention as I paid for my stuff and walked away, got in the car and started to drive away when I realized that I didn't have my bag, I ran back in as they were closing, there was my stuff at customer service.

The rest of the week nothing too interesting was going on, Owen and T.J. wore their football helmets, it was a typical week. My poor tortured cat. I found myself much more of a cat person before having Owen. Now, I find at the end of my day, I don't have a lot left for the poor cat.

After 10 years, I finally closed him out of my room at night. He was constantly moving and interrupting the few hours of sleep I was getting. I am afraid I am teaching Owen to dislike cats. As soon as T.J. sets foot in my room he screams "T, out mommy's room!!" He chases him away and closes him out. Greg has found himself having to correct himself a time or two when he says, he is going to go kick T.J. out of the room. Owen runs over and kicks the cat. My poor poor cat!

My new yoga session started this week. We lost 5 people from the previous session (9 came back) and we got three new people. It seems like we will have a really fun class. Angie and I are both starting to feel a little more comfortable with the poses and teaching. We are still having so much fun doing it and I love teaching with Angie. We are trying to set up a kid class and a yoga for weight loss class after the new year. We will keep this class as it seems to be going well. We are hoping to keep expanding and teaching more and more. We have a client who is a manager at LA Fitness. He talked to my dad yesterday and my dad put in a pitch for us to start teaching there. He is supposed to talk to someone and let us know. Hooray for teaching yoga!

Owen loves to hang out with Ben. He calls him "Me" or "Uncy Me". Greg called the office yesterday and my dad answered. Greg said "hey it is me, is Ben there". Knowing who it was, my dad said "who is this", Greg said, "it is Greg". My dad told him that he was very confused and next time he needs to call and say "this is Greg is Me there". My dad said as far as he knew Ben was calling for himself. The chaos we live with!

Arlington

We had such a wonderful day on Saturday. We started out the day almost leaving Greg. He was watching the Iowa game while time was ticking away. He finally moved his butt and we headed downtown for trick-or-treating and a pumpkin roll. It was a nice warm day and O was so cute!!He said trick-or-treat and thank you to everyone. mean anything, it was more of a process than anything exciting. We went into one business that was giving away a full size candy bar and we had a choice of a KitKat or a Reese's. I told the lady we would take the KitKat so his daddy wouldn't eat it. She threw Greg out a Reese's anyway which was the only thing Owen ate of all his candy. Ha Ha. I think Owen was a little bored of getting the candy, when you are two quantity doesn't really mean anything. It would be nice to be two.

He liked the pumpkin roll. We bought a great round pumpkin and donated our dollar and we were ready. Everyone lines up at the top of a big hill and rolls their pumpkin down aiming for a big bucket at the end. We were there pretty early so he and Greg played laughed. I talked to some kid about his pumpkin. Our perfect round pumpkin which was sure to win got bumped to the side and then a big pumpkin hit the side rail moving it out of the way giving our pumpkin a perfect opportunity to escape. Owen loved watching the pumpkins roll down the hill. Barely able to keep his eyes open we left to take a nap before the karate party.

Carving Pumpkins

We have had a busy weekend and into this week. We had a really fun Halloween, starting with pumpkin carving on Friday at the school and ending up in Edmonds yesterday with Noni (Angie - I have no idea why he calls her that, I told her that if we have any more kids, I am totally introducing her as Noni).

He started out the pumpkin carving asleep. I wasn't really surprised that despite the loud music and millions of kids he slept soundly. He hadn't napped and was really tired. I finally stirred him awake so we could eat some pizza, once he woke up he started having a great time. We listened to the music, ate pizza and carved away. Owen didn't do much carving.

Something is Working

I am not sure if biting nails is genetic or not, but occasionally I find Owen biting his nails. I do not bite my nails and my questioning as to whether it is genetic or not leaves only one person to blame - GREG. I am not a fan. I am constantly telling Owen to stop and reminding him that I will cut his nails and we don't bite them. The other day he was watching Greg and yelled "No Daddy". Greg asked him, "no what". Owen said no and put his finger in his mouth. (he still can't say as many things as he would like and I can't always understand him, he has developed his own sign language and does a wonderful job conveying to me what he wants to say). I was thrilled and delighted!!! Hooray Owen. I hope that something I say is getting across to him and if I cannot stop him, at least he can help me keep Greg's fingers out of his mouth.

We have all been very busy lately and have a bunch of Halloween events this weekend. We went to our first trunk-or-treat party this week. I realized it was just a lazy way to get a lot of candy, yes I know, nothing is safe anymore but seriously, the kids just kept going around and around filling up their bags. Because I am 31 now and getting so old I can say.. Back in my day that much candy would have taken hours to accumulate. Kids have it so easy. Despite my grumblings about the event, Owen had a great time. He is a giraffe and loves wearing the suit. We are going to the kid's school tonight to carve pumpkins, and then heading downtown Arlington tomorrow for trick-or-treating with the businesses and then participating in a pumpkin roll, then we are joining my dad, Kristi and the kids at their karate party. My dad told their instructor that he does magic tricks and offered up his services for the party. He bought a bunch of tricks off the Internet - I told him he better practice before tomorrow. He says if all goes well he is starting a side business. For next week, we are heading to Edmonds to trick-or-treat downtown with Angie. We went there last year and loved it. I can't wait!! I love Halloween. I told Greg that I like dressing up for Halloween, he said that he never knew that about me and asked why I hadn't dressed up since we have been together. He must have forgot that we have no friends so we don't go anywhere and my work usually consisted of myself. Dressing up for Halloween isn't very fun when you work alone.

Owen is getting in trouble. He just hit Robee in the head with something, I told him to say goodbye and that we were going downstairs. He started to cry. I told him to tell Robee he was sorry. He went over and said "sorry beea", "big hug beea", then looked at me as if to say, can I stay now. I said we are still going downstairs, he leaned back over and said "sorry beea" very unconvincingly and then gave me the look. I kept saying no and he kept hugging Robee and looking at me waiting for my answer to change. We finally stayed cause I started laughing. Then he tried taking Robee's toys, I told him we were going back downstairs if he touched it again. He looks at me and sticks one finger on the toy and smirks at me. He does that to me all the time.

My yoga class is still going well. We were supposed to have our last class yesterday but due to a cancellation last week when we lost power due to a crazy windstorm we have one more class. We have our make-up class on Tuesday and then our next session starts on Thursday. We have 14 students now and we believe 9 or 10 are coming back for the next session. We are so excited. We are teaching through the parks and recreation at the city and they called yesterday to work out next session which will start in January. We are going to teach our basic class, a yoga for weight loss class and a toddler yoga class. Hopefully we will have people sign up. We are both loving it. We had a hard class yesterday and Angie and I are both sore. I am not sure that says anything good about our physical condition as an instructor. At least we feel that we are giving a good workout.

Greg and I are disputing how he is spending his evening. His baseball team is having a meeting to discuss the new season and to find out what they all need to work on during the off season and how they want to run practices during this time, to discuss the draft and what positions they need and to talk about the new team manager, etc. Ha ha ha ha. He is trying to weasel his way there and tonight is pumpkin carving night at the school and we are going with Felix and Robee. I wonder where he will end up. There is only one other married guy on the team, I told Greg if they were all married there would be no team meeting tonight. Poor Greg. I told him if he were going to play baseball perhaps this would be a different conversation. Just have the team send him the memo. (As soon as they have a meeting to discuss their salaries, he can go to all the meetings he wants). I still love him despite being such a nerd!

Well, we are off to carve pumpkins...should be interesting!

A few pictures

He wouldn't smile for me until I said "smile and you can have another cookie."

Lunch with Kati and Travis

Travis was making duck noises and making Owen laugh so hard

We went to Jetty Island this summer - he was cold

Updates

Owen was playing with this toy in the store, I told him it was time to go, he tried to bring it with us.


We have all been so busy and I have barely had time to sit down and write anything. Work has been very busy. I have had a ton of deadlines to meet and it takes up a lot of my time. We have a terrible bedtime routine and as I am putting Owen to bed and he insists that I lay by him, it is only a matter of minutes before I fall asleep. He is asleep now so hopefully I can finish a post giving some updates on our lives.

Hiding at Target

I have been teaching my yoga class now for 4 weeks. I love it more than I realized I would. Angie and I are having a great time doing it together. We teach once a week and have 14 people enrolled in the class. We were so nervous for the first class!! We had practiced our class over and over and as the people started showing up, we were both just laughing to ourselves thinking we are about to teach a yoga class!!! After the class ended everyone clapped. We were so happy! The next test was to make sure they all showed up next week..... We went in to the next class and there they were, eager to take the next class. We have had perfect attendance since. The class we are teaching lasts for 6 weeks and then we teach another 6 week course. Most of the class has let us know they will be signing up for the second course and people have asked if we will teach next year. It is so exciting to have people enjoying what we teach. Angie and I finally get to put together the class that we want and we cannot wait until we have our own studio.

He loves eating burgers with Ben and daddy
We have four weeks of music class under our belt. It has been so good for Owen to get around some kids and he loves the class. He is so good. He sits with me and does everything the teacher asks. When the class starts we sing a song "Its our time, to sing hello to everyone, its our time to sing hello to Owen, its our time to sing hello to Ely, sing hello hello". We go through each name and do things like clap hello and jump hello. I sing this song EVERYDAY. We listen to in the car wherever we go, I sing it to him when he goes to sleep. He tells me what song he wants by waving his hand.

We went to a pumpkin patch yesterday, we picked a little pumpkin that he has been carrying around with him all day. We rode a train, ate a sucker, got a balloon and saw some goats and sheep. He wants to go back with his daddy.

He made me laugh yesterday when he told me he wanted to take his toy elephant into the store with us. The sentence went a little like this... mommy, pppppppffff (insert sound like an elephant might make), tor us. It made me laugh that he actually used the word us.

He is always taking his own picture, here he is with his Tubbies

He is still very particular and likes things the way they go. He couldn't leave the bathroom the other day until Greg fixed the towels. We usually have a purple towel on one wall and a yellow towel on the other wall. Greg had switched them during the day and Owen didn't like that all. He wouldn't leave until Greg moved them back. He was also sitting on Ben's lap the other day and they were playing. He suddenly screamed oh no, and jumped off Ben's lap. He ran over to the coffee table and closed the little drawers on the front and then ran back to play with Ben. He likes things how they go.

Greg is still doing well. He is done playing baseball for the season, we are coming in to the offseason so I suspect he will start preparing for next year. He is trying to stay in shape and he bought a weight bench with Ben. He is still liking his job, he is talking to his boss about moving up. They seem to really like him so it seems like a possibility soon. He is working on training Owen early, I came home from work the other day and I went to say hi to him, rather than getting a welcome hug or a nice hello, Owen put his arm in the air and said "Go Hawks". Greg's dream come true!

I figured I would give a quick update on Angie and Ben for those who never hear how they are...Ben is doing great, he went back to school. He is taking a web design class and a philosophy class. He needed these two courses from the Community College and then he is going to the University of Washington. He is doing really well and seems to like being back in school. Angie is also doing great, she is in Iowa now with Steve visiting his family and of course attending a Hawkeye game. (She said they spent hours in the parking lot yesterday celebrating the win).

Felix and Robee are upstairs fighting and I hear Owen saying "Eee, Beea, nice". Ha ha ha ha. Now I am laughing even more, Owen has a time out stool. He is now yelling at Robee saying, "Beea tool now". Ha ha ha ha. "eee trouble, tool now". He is his father's kid, he just came down the stairs and said "owie trouble, tool now" He brought a stool down from upstairs and sat down on it. He said he was in trouble for doing something in Felix's room.

We are heading off to lunch with Kati today, I just told Owen we were going to go see her, he said "ducks, kaki, ducks, kaki". She took him to see some ducks about 7 months ago and now everytime he hears her name he wants to go see ducks.

Happy

Owen loves to gallop and march. I make him do it all the time and I tell him how much I love it.

So, the other day we were hanging out at the office and Owen went into my dad's office by himself, no doubt to play with the zen sand garden. He was gone for a minute and then came running to the door to the main office. He looked awfully suspicious. I asked him if he did something bad, he smirked and said yes. I told him to show me what he did, he ran off. I followed him and we came to a pile of sand on the floor between the two offices. Why was I not surprised. I explained that we don't carry the sand around and told him that I wasn't happy at all. He kept saying Mommy happy all with a discouraged look on his face. I sat there picking up sand. After I told him he couldn't come back to the office and I wasn't happy, he realized I really wasn't happy. He tried to help me clean up the sand and put it back. He looked at me and said Mommy happy now. I told him I still wasn't happy. When he realized I wasn't kidding, and I was indeed not pleased, he jumped up and while I was picking up grains of sand, he started galloping around me saying Mommy happy now. I was kind of happy at that point.