At 9 in the morning I found myself changing Austin's diaper while Ethan busied himself by playing daddy. He was merrily tucking Alaina into his bed with the whole night-time ritual...reading her a story, singing a song and then with a sweet goodnight kiss he leapt out the door. Life was moving along at an easy, regular pace. Seconds after Ethan left he burst back in the room to start the whole process over again. This is game that could go on for awhile. Ethan puts Lainy back down and tucks her in again. After he gives her another good-night kiss he jumps up for the door...but this time it's different. The door doesn't open. It only takes us a moment to realize that Ethan had lock us in. All of us. Frantically I search for the screwdriver that Robert usually keeps above the door for just such an emergency as ours. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
All eyes move towards the windows. I unlock our windows and after a lot of grunting and kiddie-friendly cussing, (dag-nab-it you crummy thing!) the window slowly works its way up. Another 10 minutes is spent figuring out that two buttons need to be pressed down to allow the window to pull open like an oven door before the screen can come out. Then, with the stealth of a mountain lion, I jump out the window onto the wet grass (in my bare feet, even) and make a mad dash for the front door. It's locked. We have a total of 5 doors that could lead us inside (ridiculous, I know) and I find each one of them securely locked. We were all locked into Ethan's room and locked out of the house.
Looking at my safe home I realize that the only way in is through Ethan's door, and the only way we would get through that door was to go to my neighbors for a screwdriver. I was really hoping to introduce my family to the neighbors looking all done-up with my sharply dressed husband and three perfectly groomed kids, holding a plate of Christmas cookies. Standing in my PJ's in my bare-feet was not part of my pretty picture. Taking a deep breath and a big helping of humble pie, I sprint for our nearest neighbor. No one answers. I go to the next door. Again, no one answers. By the third door the embarrassment of the situation starts to wear off. I look at my self, this crazy haired, no make-up, half-dressed stranger running around my new neighborhood. As I hit two more neighbors without any luck, I start to laugh at the hilarity of it all. There I am grinning like a maniac and in the background you can hear my three kids screaming their heads off as they hang halfway out the window. Now why do you think no one was answering the door? A little frightened, maybe? Finally, at the 7th house I get a response. A nice man opens up the door and after I stammer out, "hi, yeah...super embarrassed about this, but...please help?" I'm actually really happy it was a man at the door because, (and despite my predisposition to do so, I"m not exaggerating) within 30 seconds he had a tool box in front of me. (Where does he keep it? Displayed on the mantel?) And 10 seconds after that I was trotting back to my window with the right tool.
After getting through the window and saving little Austin who had become trapped between oven-door window and his bed (I love that huge bum of his...but it does get him into some awkward situations) I freed my little family from what could have been the longest day of our lives. And within two minutes I was back at our new favorite neighbor's house, Oh-bee-jus (the phonetic spelling of his name...don't ask me the proper way to spell it,) and after a few high fives from the diaper clad children that followed me, we were on our way back into our humdrum little life in our new house. Welcome to the Neighborhood!
I thought ya'll would share a Merry Christmas Chuckle at yet another strange, but sadly, not the strangest, experience in my little life.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Here are Rudolph's helpers:

Here it is...our new paint job, all finished. It wasn't quite the renovation that Noelle has been going through with her kitchen, but it sure was nice to say goodbye to some of that orange.

Here is our kitchen before:



And After:



Here is the living room before:


And After:


Here is the side of the living room before:



And after:


Now as soon as we get the curtains up (dark brown, something or other) and our couches, we'll be able to sit down and relax. Oh, and after we unpack. :)

Happy Birthday Rob! That guy finally turned 31. I swear, he is taking FOREVER catching up with me. At the rate he's going, I'm always going to be older than he is. :) We had a fun little family party for the big day. I had purchased all the stuff to make him a great cake and dinner when our oven broke. So, instead I ended up buying him a store cake and frying salmon (ah the shame...) It turned out decent enough. Maybe next year will be perfect.

Sometimes I hate being the adult. I found Ethan running erratically around the living room this morning. Not an entirely uncommon sight, but a little stranger than usual. When I looked closer I saw he was chasing an enormous centipede, daddy-long leg spider like insect. It was huge with long tentacles going every which way. And fast. And did I say huge? After swallowing my initial scream I grabbed a cup and piece if paper and set about capturing the scary devil. With 3 kiddies cheering me on I managed a double turn, dive roll, sudden death capture maneuver that trapped the "thing" in mere seconds. It was pretty spectacular. At this point the thundering crowd of barbarians started chanting "mercy! mercy! mercy!" (sound like a movie you've seen?) Now, as a lover of all things living, I usually take lost and frightened bugs back out to the nature they came from..."back home" is the phrase we use as we let loose the little buggers back on the porch. However, this guy was straight from a horror movie, so I did what any other loving mother would do. I lied to my kids. I told them that we would let this special guy swim home...through the toilet. So, with my cheering squad behind me, we marched to the bathroom to flush the bug back home...to his permanent home. Yeah! Now, I'm thinking I will call that bug guy to come spray after all. I'd rather not help too many types of bugs reach their final resting place in the rushing waters of the drain.



Find Waldo...or the boys. We thought we lost them for a moment under the ocean of packing paper, but we eventually found the bottom of the kitchen again - and what do you know? The boys were still there :)

We decided to do Christmas even though we are only half way unpacked. I've got the front rooms looking passable, but that spare room/office looks like a storage unit.


Ethan.... Why do so many of my stories start that way? But yet again, it begins with Ethan. Ethan was busy running around the house, getting into mischief, as I stared deep into little Austin’s eyes and discussed the long lasting repercussions of dumping out cereal boxes all over the floor. It was in the middle of this conversation that I heard the words no mother should ever hear. "Mama! I went pee pee in there!" I looked up to see Ethan with his underwear around his ankles pointing into the closet with Alaina gleefully cheering and clapping at such a wonderful feat. "Go Ethan...go! Go!" I swear I sat frozen for a good few seconds imagining the mess I had ahead of me. And for the first time in a good while, I was quite speechless. "Don't pee in the closet!" just seemed like too strange of a phrase to yell out. When I came to myself I walked over to assess the damage. Ethan remained a picture of pride, beaming with the happiness that comes with knowing he did a job well done. I took a breath and looked into the closet only to once again become speechless. Instead of the disaster I had imagined, I saw that Ethan had found the little portable potty in one of our many boxes and put it to good use. Now, the back-splash wasn't pretty, but most of it was contained in the pot. It was such a bizarre, funny thing to see that I completely forgot to tell Ethan that peeing in closets is inappropriate behavior.

Here is Alaina, our future fashionista...I swear, some of the things that girl puts together. We call it toddler chic. That is a belt and a hat on her head, by the way.



Last night we were taking turns saying a prayer before dinner. Austin usually spits out a routine, "thank you...mama, austin, dada, bless. bless. amen!" Alaina's prayers are more imitation then anything else...and not imitating words, but the tone of voice used. Her prayers go, "Hebanly Farder thank you...wah bahh zuee wee baaah da gooz zee. AMEN!" Ethan always gets a kick out of that...I think it is mostly for his benefit. So silly. Ethan's prayers are getting more and more interesting. Last night he was thankful that we went to a park and saw a dog. He was also thankful for the food and mama and dada. And just when I thought he was going to wrap up he said, "and thank you for underwear." A strange thing to be thankful for, to be sure, but seriously...where would we be without it? (besides splashed on tabloids like some of our current little starlets.) I guess we've been a little focused on the whole potty training thing for a while now.



We went to a tree-lighting event at a small, but posh shopping center and the kids were dancing to a live band. It was fun to watch them show off for the mayor of Charlotte, good ol' mister what's-his-name.