My Sweet Little One!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE 3 YEAR OLD GIRL - MISS SELA ROSE! I just put her down to sleep after a LONG day of playing! She had a great day, and at the end of it said her favorite part was eating ice cream with Cade. I will recap a little of our day to let you in on the fun. This is how it all started, love from her brother!

While Aidan was a school we met a couple of friends for ice cream. Sela's most favorite friend is Cade and she was just elated to hang out with him during the day. After ice cream she went over to their house to play while I went back to school to play with Aidan. She was ADAMANT about finishing her ice cream, but the moment Michelle invite her over, with a mouthful of ice cream, she said "I'm all done" and ran out the door.


Posing with brother again before attempting the three candle blow! Yeah, she did it! And now the best part, licking the candles!


Now Muma gets a chance! We ended up devouring my ice cream cake before we sang to me on my 30th. My husband wanted so bad to put 30 candles on the cake, so he got his chance. And, WOW!, I must have been excited that I blew all of them out!


Yeah! Don't mess with a muma and her cake!

Noni gave Sela a pink baseball bat, a pink mitt, a pink ball, and a pink wrist band. Dominic, Aidan and Sela were having a blast playing after we opened gifts.

I thought I had a serious face while eating cake, but I think Sela has topped me!

I have been feeling pain all day. I won't give all the details but it has been rather weird. Must be the 3 thing, I have always had a thing for 3 and 7. Basically, I have felt all day like I was giving birth to her all over again. Even the drugs I was taking didn't help. Drugs in my world is Xtra Strength Tylenol. Funny how I can birth 10pd 14oz child and a 9pd 2 oz child and not take a thing, but the first sign of cramps I am all over the stuff.

We all had a great day, although I thought you weren't suppose to scream or whine on your birthday. Maybe next year!

Feeling Like I Haven't Posted

I am just coming up with anything to post today, just to be able to see something new on the site! I missed my birthday to myself, the 23rd, so I will have to make that up to me. Maybe tomorrow as I am documenting Sela's #3 birthday.

My husband is coaching Little League this year. Just check out my little guy, they get to wear uniforms this year. And he has quite the batting form, eh? (at least that is what I have been told) He just looks so damn cute in those tight little pants!

So check out this photo. See how he is wearing his right handed glove on his right hand. I know this sounds goofy, but if you throw right handed you have a right handed glove, even though it goes on your left hand. And vise vera, if you are left handed you have a left handed glove, which you wear on your right. Well, Aidan is determined to wear his right handed glove on his right hand. He catches the ball, then takes off his glove to throw it. And just look at how it fits - it doesn't. We will work on this.


That's my girl! I need to start taking style tips.

We just put a bid on a house today. I am sure that we will go back and forth for days to come trying to "agree" on a final bid. It is hard to believe that soon we may be moving out of our home into another. Our area is not the best, we have some yucky stuff slipping in, but we have been blessed with amazing neighbors. Not having family close is hard so it is great to have other people their looking out for you and helping along the way. This was our first home and we birthed both of our children here. Maybe we just need to have ONE more to child to birth in our new home as a way of initiating it?!? (And mom if you are reading this just calm down. . .it is always on my mind. . .we'll just have to see. . . ) I'll get a photo of the house we are interested in and post it soon!

Ahhh! I feel so much better. I finally typed!

Thank Goodness it wasn't a Sharpie!

My children know not to use the "mumma markers". We all know I am a sharpie freak! It pretty much is the only writing utensil I will use.

We had friends over and they were playing inside so nice. Then I saw this and the first thing out of my mouth was, "What kind of pen did you use?" All I could think of was my child becoming a permanent kitty cat, at least until enough of her dead skins cells fell off to reveal her natural color of skin.

I actually washed some of the marker off before the photo. Her entire lips were colored on as well. I had to get that off asap. Seeing black bleeding into her mouth just didn't sit all that well with me.
Had to take a break in the blogging world. I have been spinning out of control and have not had much sleep. That is where I am heading!

Conversations With A 5 Year Old

This may be the first and last post without a photo. This is just too good to share, and I must do it quickly. You will soon know my favorite store, not that it isn't everybody's favorite store. My children obviously have been there many times, enough to be effected.

Our great dane, Vega Sky, has been on her "deal" the last couple of weeks. We are planning on breeding her her next heat, so conversation has been in the air. Aidan, who is 5, has been so excited talking about puppies. We look at pups online and talk about what we will need to do for Vega while she is pregnant. Out of the blue, in Aidan's pure excited mode, which exceeds most, he tells me "We need to get Vega a penis so she can get puppies. We need to get her a penis now! Mom, can we go to Target and get her a penis?"

This has to be the funniest moment, yet, in my raising my children. I was crying so hard from laughter. That may have not been smart though. He kept saying penis things for about 10 minutes after the fact. Well, this is how our family runs, we are very open and honest with our kiddos. Good thing we were because I wouldn't wanted to miss out on that hilarious moment with my little innocent one.

"Happiness Only When Shared"

I did not realize there was a book to this movie, I am sure I will read the written form of this story now. I watched the movie again last evening, but turned it off just as he was meeting the older gentleman. I could not bear to watch the sadness of this man again, and I did not want to see "Alex's" death. (Especially how his death was shot, images of his parents and him smiling in their arms. It disappointed me they would assume what he was thinking right in that very moment. It is a special moment of transition and it is only for him to know.)

I don't want this to sound cliche', I am not meaning it in a literal form. This movie struck deep because I understand it, it makes me mad but I get it. I have felt similar feelings at a younger age, but now being a mother those thoughts seem so far withdrawn. I have felt the anger, I have wanted it to be only me, I have taken off on a traveling quest, I have been extremely selfish in that way but not cared, I have felt the frustration of life in that artistic manner and looked for "truth", I've wanted to go far away. He did it to the extreme, but came to the realization that he was lonely. Maybe he may have never gotten there without Alaska or maybe he would have in a healthier manner. While poisoned in shaky hand writing he wrote, "Happiness only when shared". Us artist tend to have a hard time growing up and tend to be very selfish.

The relationships he made; his "parents", his "best farming friend", his "grandfather", the young woman whom loved him, were all engraved so deeply into each other. It makes me so sad to think that neither party will be able to connect again. They were balanced relationships and both are loosing out. It is not felt by him now because he is dead, but I am sure after the realization of death it was felt. If his past was so bad, then he could have used these "new" family members as his family and re-created his life into what he needed. He was just unable to see past his own pain.

He was an extremist, he was young, he was selfish, he was on his OWN quest. Nobody else mattered. I can only hope he conquered these things in Alaska. It is such a confusing thought to understand but disagree so strongly and be angry at the progression of his actions. I also think about my children and it scares me.

So - to not leave you all on such a weird note, and because I can't imagine a post without a photo. He is my own personal "CHIP".

I don't know what he is thinking with those shades. Actually, I really think he likes to make me laugh and he looks so much like a cocky police officer, I just can't get enough.

Not Fools in My Book

My family went down to Ann Arbor this afternoon and joined in the Parade of Fools. I don't agree with the title, I thought it was rather brilliant. No candy in this parade, only home-made streamers and square white paper stapled on cardboard with a crayon taped on back. Another stroke of brilliance! The kids loved it, especially when the extremely over sized cat shot out an extremely large turd.


They added an interesting element to the flow of the parade. It started out from the right and in the middle of the parade puppets started coming from the left side. They had obviously planned this and crossed, interweaving through each other. Here were my favs.



I have an evening to myself and the children are sleeping. Hmmmm. What shall I do? The obsessive Niki comes out and. . . . .I am going to watch Into the Wild again and see what my take on it is today.

Into the Wild

Into the Wild. . .normally I would be talking about one of my wacky children. Maybe Sela doing a little number for us here:


Unfortunately, I am talking about the movie. We watched Into the Wild, which was directed by Sean Penn, last evening. I have never been so emotionally affected by a movie in a long time. It threw me for a loop and I have trying to recover all day.

The movie is about a young man who went to discover life the way he felt it, along with inspiration from many poets. He left everything and took off on a road trip searching and ended up in the deep wilderness of Alaska by himself. I will not bluntly tell you the ending, but if you want to see the movie maybe don't read on, you probably will be able to read between my lines. My husband believes he found what he was looking for so the ending was o.k. for him. It is not that simple in my mind. What he was looking for changed. I feel so strongly about the relationships he made on his journey! They were quickly made but felt so deep by both parties. I don't feel his time was over, he needed to return to these people. I understand the selfishness that goes along with his quest, but am angered on how selfish he was. (Boy this circular talk really makes sense in my mind, hope you are hangin' in there.) I am so saddened when such an intellectual mind goes to waste. I understand this is was a documentary on the items that were left by him on the "Magic Bus", so not all parts are portrayed accurately. It has been a long day, I have full out cried and come to tears many of times telling the story. . . tomorrow is another day!

Aces High

I have to say the highlight of living in Ypsilanti is the Corner Brewery, neotech.net/ABC/index.php?site=cornerbrewery
If you have ever been to Bell's Brewery Kalamazoo, it is similar. They have an open space with picnic tables outside, you can order from local resturants and have food delivered or bring your own food, they brew very tasty beer, no smoke, and they welcome children. They have games for all ages dispersed throughout the resturant and we always bring coloring books for entertainment.
Our family and two others met there for a drink and to celebrate two birthdays. We were all witnesses to what happened. My usually very high-strung energetic boy sat calmly playing cards the entire time! Here is a photo.

Now, these women in the photo, I have no idea who they are. There were 4 of them playing Euchre and Aidan Rue inched his way up to their table, right about uncomfortable level - 2 feet away. He just stood there interested, not saying a word but staring at them. I just started to head over as they invited him to sit down. Of course, I started a conversation with them asking if it were o.k. and checked on him on and off throughout the evening. They fell in love, as did he. One lady was a math teacher at EMU and was quizzing him in math. She just had to comment how good he was at math and she got, "two plus two is four, eight plus eight is sixteen, one hundred plus one hundred is two hundred" in this proud voice, as if they have NEVER heard such brilliance. It was hilarious and they were OOOHing and AHHHing adding to his excitment. After two of the women left the older two sat with him the rest of the evening playing card games with him. My son loves math, loves cards and loves games. It was the best evening!

This is a photo of Gabriel and Aidan. They are cousins and are famous, at least they think they are! (They made it on the front page of a newspaper during an Easter Egg hunt)