Lauren just lost her first tooth!  She couldn’t be more proud of herself.

Here is what she wrote in her note to the tooth fairy…

“Dear tooth Fariy I am relly prod of myself for loosing a tooth.  from your new frend Lauren Cancio.”

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On a not-so-related note, Charlie took his first trip to the groomer yesterday.  He did really well, but came home looking like a brownish cotton ball.  I had to spritz him with water to get his coat to de-frizz.

They also cut the hair on his face really close, which just looks goofy.  The picture doesn’t do his new ‘do justice.   Trust me, it looked goofy.  I’m definitely going to ask them not to cut his face so close next time.  I think he looks much better with hair.
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And back to Lauren….

Here she is in all of her toothless glory.

Brian’s out of town this week.  It’s been so long since he went on a business trip, I forgot how hellish our evenings get without him.  BRIAN, PLEASE COME HOME!!!!!!

Lauren has a bit of a wax problem.  So, while at the doctors office yesterday, she got her ears flushed.  One got cleared out completely.  The other side, which was worse, was a little more stubborn.  Lauren was a bit upset and uncomfortable, so they decided to stop.

This morning, Lauren wakes up and starts fussing.

M:  What’s wrong, Baby?
L:  My ear hears funny.
M:  Which one?
L:  This one.  (points to the ear that is now clear)
M:  Lauren, that’s because they got all the wax out and now you hear more clearly.
L:  NO!  I don’t like it!!!  Everything’s too loud!!!!

Maybe I need to buy an otoscope?

I spent some time with my camera today, trying to get a picture of Charlie.  It’s somewhat like trying to get a picture of Will - he just doesn’t want to stop moving!

Where has Lauren’s beautiful smile gone?????  It’s been replaced with this frozen, toothy, expression.

Charlie loves the snow.  Usually when he comes in, there’s snow all over his mouth from digging his snout around in it.

A fuzzy brown fur-ball in motion.

Aww… there’s our little Charlie-boo.  That’s what Lauren started calling him and it stuck.  According to her, his full name is Charlie Charlie-boo Cancio.  

Brian just said to me, “Are you BLOGGING??!!!???!!!

Yep, I am.  I know, I haven’t been keeping up much, but I took a picture today that I just had to share, so I decided to back up to the beginning of the month and post the photos that I probably would have put up if I were blogging on a regular basis.  So……

We spent New Year’s Eve with the neighbors.  Lauren and her friends made us these beautiful works of art all over the stairway wall.  They are made from Bendaroos, so they came down just as easily as they went up!  The face on the right is Brian.  The face to the left of Lauren is me.

A few days later, my very very very dear friend came for an all too brief visit.  The kids were playing down in the basement and Will came up dressed in his sisters Halloween costume and this crazy wig.  I’m sure I would have had more pics from our afternoon together, but I was too busy playing with Carrie’s new camera, so the pictures went home with her.  Can you say jealous???

What would a new post be without a few pics of the newest member of our family?  Our little Charlie used to spend a lot of time sleeping.  Seriously, how could this be comfortable?

This at least looks a little more cozy.  He’s sleeping less now, and chewing more, but for the most part, he’s a great little dog.

On the 11th, Lauren and I hosted a Mother-Daughter Pampered Chef party.  She had five friends and their moms come and we made little pizzas and some yummy, gooey, brownies.  This is Lauren, explaining how it works to her friends.  She’s quite a little salesman.

Will and I went to Bouncetown with a friend.  Here they are playing air hockey.

(Note to the dad of the faceless little guy in this photo:  Don’t threaten to leave, if you’re not going to follow through.  If your son is not complying with your commands, pick his little @$$ up and take him away instead of trying to reason with him while he constantly tries to take away the puck and hit our boys- thanks so much!)

We had fun despite the little faceless hellion. 

This is our friend’s new little sister.  Isn’t she a doll?  I’m hoping to share a three month portrait session soon.

A couple of days later, we went back with the neighbors since we had the day off.

Charlie thinks this is his chair.  I’m trying hard to teach him not to sit on the furniture, but every time he comes inside, he jumps right up in this chair.  Even if someone’s in it.

Today, I was making getting something from the fridge and I opened it to this.  Besides the clearly-in-need-of-being-cleaned-out shelves, see the Avatar horse at the bottom right?  I couldn’t help but smile.  This is what being a parent is all about.  Toys in the fridge.  Oh Will……

For those of you who may not know us personally, our little Gracie dog died quite unexpectedly on Halloween.  :-(   Within minutes of finding out that her “big sister” had gone to heaven, Lauren asked me when we could get a new puppy.  I was quite taken aback by this question, since my poor little dogger was barely gone, but maybe that’s how a little mind deals with the loss of a pet.  *shrug*

My response to my darling daughter was this, “Let’s give it some time.  I’m not ready for a new dog yet.  Maybe in the spring when the weather is nice and it’s easier to potty train a new puppy.  We’ll talk about it then.”

Famous.  Last.  Words.

Within 48 hours, Will and I were at a local pet store, looking at all of the cute little pups.  My search had begun.

Long story short - I researched many breeds and weighed pros and cons, and finally found the perfect breed for us - The Mini Goldendoodle-

For those of you, not familiar with dogs, a Goldendoodle is a Golden Retriever/Poodle mix.  This I already knew.  What I didn’t know - They. Are. Expensive.  Really expensive.  I was thinking seriously about how we’d have to save up for several months and cut back on some things if we were going to get a new pup in the spring.

Then I happened across an ad.  A woman within 3 hours of us was selling her Mini Goldendoodles for half of what most breeders wanted for them.  Half.

I called her up right away.  After finding out that this might be the only litter she breeds, we decided we better go ahead and take a look at the puppies.

After borrowing some cash from my grandparents (half of Really Expensive is still Expensive) in order to have a deposit to give the breeder, we drove up to take a look.

Here are my pics:

These little guys are four weeks old.  There were five (of nine) pups left for us to choose from.  After playing with them for a while (well, not really playing, since four week old puppies don’t play a whole lot), we narrowed our choices down to two little boys.  I was partial to the bigger pup, but I was out-numbered and we decided on the smaller of the two.

Cute little guy, huh?

In this next picture, he’s the one sleeping on the bottom.

It was really hard to leave him.  On our way out, the breeder, Sandi, thought this would make a cute pic, so she put our pup in Will’s hood.

Of course, Lauren can’t be left out.  Thank God, she had a hood today.

Now we just have to decide on a name, which may not happen until we get him home.  As long as he’s healthy and ready to leave his mom, we’ll be going back to pick him up the Sunday before Christmas.  A precious little Christmas gift.

Here’s an abbreviated version of all that’s happened since my last post.  (BTW, most of the photos have had very little editing, so please, forgive the poor photo quality.)

Will turned 3!  Seriously.  3!  I can’t believe it.

It was an all Thomas The Train birthday.

We’ve had more rain than sun.  Ugh!  It might as well be January for the lack of sun.  It’s disgusting and I’m already developing a serious case of SAD.

We got some new neighbors, (from whose mom I’ve yet to gain permission to post their pictures.)

We’ve even had a few precious moments of peace.

My son’s been reading too much spam and has decided to look into male enhancement devices.

Lauren decided to try out a new hairstyle.

I spent a fun, relaxing, women’s weekend with some of my favorite relatives.

My backyard has become some kind of wildlife refuge.

This little vermin and I have been playing a kind of keep-away game.  I move the bird feeder, Crazy Squirrel finds a way to get to it.

We attempted a Halloween costume photo shoot.

What?  You’ve never heard of Supergirl?

Yeah, you’re all caught up!

Now all I have to do is spend the next two weeks catching up on all the blogs I used to read!

Last Sunday, I tortured my family by making them dress alike and taking them to the park for a photo shoot.  It’s amazing how difficult it is to get a decent shot when two little kids are involved.  It’s also hard to see the shot when you’re not actually behind the camera.  I wish I’d have set us up further down the hill so there wasn’t so much bright light in the background.

This is the better of the family pics.

I dressed Lauren in the black tee and jeans.  She accessorized it.  I told her she could keep the hat on for her pics, but she had to take it off for the group shots.

Will almost always looks to the side as he smiles, making it nearly impossible to get him looking at me while smiling.

I asked Brian to get a shot of me with the kids, but they’d had enough pictures.  Still, I think both kids look cute in this shot.

I love the lighting in this shot, but I can’t take credit for it.  Brian shot this as I was getting the kids in place.  It’s my favorite.

I just came downstairs after tucking Will in for the night.

First, he read me a book.  A scratch ‘n sniff book, or in Will’s case a sniff ‘n scratch.

Then we said prayers.  We always say the same night time prayer, followed by lots of God Blesses.

Tonight we said our usual God Blesses- the ones who died in my family (Lauren), the kids at St. Jude’s (Lauren), and a whole host of Cub’s players including Carlos Zambrano, Micah Hoffpauir, and Fukadome.

Then we added a special blessing for our neighbor, who had a terrible accident this afternoon and is in the hospital, which led to blessing many of our neighbors before circling back to Sam (the one in the accident).

Then we had this conversation:

Mom: “Sam needs lots of help from God because he got a bad owie and had to go to the hospital.  We need to pray that God will help heal him.”

Will:  “Who’s God?”

Mom:  “God is the one who made Heaven and Earth.  He made you and me, the Earth, and everything in it.”

Will:  “Is God a alien?”

Mom:  (after a not-so-brief pause) “um…..  some people think so, but no, God is more like you and me, just much bigger.”

This is not the conversation I expected to be having tonight and I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond, but in a situation like this, you just do the best you can.  And so I ask you, Who is God?

I don’t really post blogs.  But, I’m a geek, and I thought I would hack Kim’s blog.  I enabled an Easter Egg on this blog if you enter in the “Konami Code” while visiting our blog.

Won’t be tough for you to google the Konami code.

Enjoy!  (Lauren loves it)

-Brian

Ever feel like a complete failure?  I look around my house and feel like I have failed.  I just can’t keep up.  This is what I see when I open my eyes in the morning.

A bedroom that is half-painted and littered with clothes.  There is an unpacked bag that sits in the middle of the room from our vacation 2, that’s TWO weeks ago!  Two kids rooms that need to be picked up, dusted and vacuumed.  A kitchen with an endless supply of dishes to wash.  Piles and piles and piles of laundry.  A garage full of garage sale crap that needs to be organized and either stored or donated, along with two cars that sit in the driveway waiting desperately to be out of the weather.  A backyard full of weeds - weeds in the grass, weeds in the flowerbeds, weeds in the garden.  And to top it off, a blog that rarely gets updated.

overwhelmed.  simply overwhelmed.

The only bright spot in my day is the little boy lounging on the couch who’s resting after a two mile ride on a really tiny bike.

Today, I’m tackling the garage and the kids rooms and some laundry and some dishes……  wish me luck, I’ll need it.