Home Sweet Home away from home!

We have now been living at the Staybridge Suites for a little more than 2 months. While living in a 2 bedroom suite with 2 adults, 3 kids (3 and under), 2 cats and 2 fish has lots of challenges, we have enjoyed the Staybridge Suites for lots of reasons!! They definitely treat us like family!

 

 

Perks of being kicked out of our house (due to flooding):

Friendly staff, who really aims to please!

Hot breakfast everyday! (If you get up in time:)

Dinner 3 nights a week (This is what I will miss most)

Maid-service once a week and trash removal DAILY!!

TV and cable (we don't have a TV at home)

The fun of riding an elevator everyday (for the kids)

A ride to and from the airport (we both travel a lot for work)

Location to church and work is closer

 

 

I will not list all the challenges, but I'll hit the highlights:

All the kids sleeping in the same room (which now works out great most of the time)

Trying to get 3 kids out the door, down the hall, in the elevator, out the door and in the car without loosing someone or getting hit by a car.

Not have an oven (or much kitchen space)

Having people above us and trying to make the kids understand we have someone below us!

 

 

ALL that to say the Staybridge Suites-Chantilly is an awesome place to stay (or live)!! We will definitely miss them when we go home! THANKS FOR HAVING US!!!

Camping in Denial

We have had mild colds this week, runny nose, fussiness... you know how that goes. In an effort to not spread it and hopefully end it, we have stayed home. Lars and Stina are in denial that it's cold out and ask all day if we can go to the beach or go outside and swing! We have been building lots of tents and tunnels and pretending to be wild animals!!

They are really ferocious! Watch out!!

Bonus pics: Stina going to the beach and Lars showing how he really feels about his sisters!!

They must be Scandinavian...or Cajun! :)

The question of the century for this household is "What's for dinner?"!! No one ever wants to decide! The actual cooking is not ever really a problem, since both Karl and I like to cook, but WHAT to make!! Recently, we have been having lots of blackened fish, Mahi Mahi mostly.

We have offered the Lars fish in the past, but he was never a huge fan of it. Until last week! Now it's his favorite food!! I might also add that for the past 6 months or so Lars has decided to be picky and now all of a sudden he has returned to eating us out of house and home! This is a welcome adjustment (although, in his teen years you may have to remind me I said that)!

See above:
This week he has been requesting fish for dinner and a LARGE piece at that! I'd like to add that Stina is no slouch in the eating department! That girl can put away the food!! Her piece was almost as big as Lars' and she has already finished it! This week we also had steak one night for dinner. How would you divide a 20 oz steak between Karl, Lars and I? Karl, 6 oz., Jessi, 4oz. and Lars 10 oz!! Stina took some of Karl's too! These kids love their surf and turf!! They are only 1 and 2 years old!

This is just a bonus "eating" picture! Stina has been feeding herself more and more lately. She really does a good job with silverware, but sometimes things get a little messy!! I wish I looked this cute with food all over me!

A day in the life...

A month or so ago I decided that I really need to blog more and Facebook less. Mostly because Facebook is saved for like a second! and blogging can be saved forever! The dilemma is Facebook can be update in a few seconds, a couple words here and there, add some pictures and people get the idea of what we are up too. A blog on the other hand, I feel like I need time to sit down and think about what I'm going to say and be picky about what pictures to post.

That being said, I'm going to work on it! I was also checking our blog's stats today and turns out people actually come to it! I thought it was just our parents and close friends (who really only come to the blog with urging and reminding), but apparently others are interested in the musings of a crazy mom with 3 kids under 2.5!! I will try to accommodate those of you faithful readers, who have been left with nothing to read for the last 4 months or more!!

Before Christmas, we were SO busy we had at least one activity everyday of the week except Monday, which usually ended up being grocery store/Costco/Target day! SO I decided we needed to slow down and try to catch our breathe a little in 2011. This week we actually had 2 days that we (well the kids anyway) didn't even get in the car! THIS IS A HUGE FEAT!! We are all much happier for it too! We still went to Lars' Soccer Tots and his preschool co-op group, which I call Playskool. The other days we had lots of fun playing with our neighbors. One day "in the snow", even though there was only an inch. The kids really enjoyed "sledding", aka moms pulling them around in the driveways! :):) (My friend Katie took pictures and I'm hoping to steal some from her! I will add them to this if I get them) Stina even really like it! I was freezing because of the wind, but the kids didn't seem to notice. Today, we spent the whole day at our neighbor Sara's house. She is awesome! She even watched Lars while Stina was napping so I could run to Fedex, without dragging everyone along!

Well, hopefully I will actually be better at blogging in 2011! Although, I'm not making it a resolution, those always seem to backfire. Like the one I did make, going to bed before midnight, everynight! It's January 15th and I haven't gone to bed before midnight yet!

Been up to lately...

This is a little scattered, but I thought I'd try to catch up since our last post.


We have been so busy this Summer already! We finished off the Spring with a visit to the National Zoo with our friends, the Gates and Youngs. This has now become an annual event which is SO fun! Not to mention that still today (almost 3 months later) if you ask Lars what he did today he says, "Monkey, Elephant, Tiger". I think he likes the Zoo a little:) We have been to 2 other zoos since then, the Dallas Zoo and this week the Reston Zoo. Both of which we had a great time at too! If you live near Dallas you should go to the new exhibit there it's awesome! You can actually feed giraffes! Thanks Wallings for coming out in the heat with your new baby, Ace!


We kicked off the Summer, Memorial Day weekend with my sister Jenni's wedding to the wonderful Mr. Todd Singletary! We are very excited to have him in our family! (All the pics after this are from Jenni's wedding).

Staying Busy!

Lots has been going on around here lately!! I apologize that I have become such a slacker with this blog. It is so easy to just pictures on Facebook and call it a day, I haven't been posting on here much.
The biggest news is we are expecting Baby 3.0 September 25th!! We have decided this time that we will find out the sex AND tell people. The first time, Lars, we didn't find out at all; second time, Stina, Karl and I knew, but we didn't tell anyone; so this time figured it was only fair to find out and tell:):) I'm sure that most of you will be very happy with this choice!
For those of you who are thinking "Didn't they just have a baby?", YES! Our kids are all going to be really close together! Lars and Stina are 15.5 months apart and Stina and baby 3.0 will be 14 months apart!!

Lars is now a big 2 year old!! Not that anyone ever thought of him as small:)! His birthday was Easter Sunday, April 4th. We had a Veggie Tales birthday party for him on Saturday. While he was very excited to see "Bob", his cake, I think we probably should have had a CARS birthday! The mostly got cars and he has been playing with them constantly since he opened them!
He is a great big brother! He loves for Stina to sit in his lap and watch videos with him. If we go anywhere in the car, he always wants to make sure that she is in there too! He loves to play with Cars, trains, the water table and now Easter eggs:):) He is a joy and delight to be around!!

Stina is now 8 months old! I can't believe how the time flies!! She is so fun and happy!!! She has just started clapping and waving bye-bye! She also says, "Da-da" now! :) She seems like she really wants to crawl, but hasn't quite got the hang of it. She loves to put anything in her mouth! She has 2 teeth on the bottom and is working on more!! She just adores Lars. I hope they always care for each other like they do now!!:)

Returning from Atlanta!!

I apologize for not blogging in so long. Poor Stina is not getting the internet exposure her brother got! I still feel like I'm getting used to having 2 kids, but it's fun! Now on to the story at hand.

Saturday, we were returning from a week in Atlanta. I had to work a conference and Karl had to be in Florida for work, so my sister Jenni GRACIOUSLY volunteered to come with me and babysit, in a hotel no less! Not only did she come to Atlanta, she flew to D.C. and made the whole round trip with me! I don't know anyone that nice!!
Saturday I wrapped up the conference at the hotel, while Jenni took Lars and Stina to her future in-laws (Todd's parents) for the day. I arrived there to pick them up and needed to repack a few things. Lars was being unusually clingy cause I had been leaving him all week, I thought. Come to find out he was being clingy cause he didn't feel well. A few minutes into packing Lars was crying and then projected vomit ALL over me. I kinda panicked and called Jenni over, but her "father-in-law" came over. I just asked for Jenni and said Lars had thrown up all over me, he said, YES he did and went to get Jenni. We changed out of those clothes, while Todd's mom hand washed our clothes and put them in the dryer. We had to leave the house in 45 minutes so we wouldn't miss our flight. We sat down at the table to eat quickly when Lars insisted on sitting in my lap. A few minutes later I was covered in vomit again! Put clean clothes on and rushed everything into the car. We really needed to drop something off at FedEx and put gas in the car, but as we got closer to the airport we realized we didn't have time for either of these things! Plus, on the way Lars again threw up all over himself in the car! We got to the airport, I let Jenni out of the car with Stina in a baby carrier and all of our bags to be checked, 5 total, miraculously they let her check them all! I drove over to the Rental car return with Lars sleeping in the backseat. Knowing we would never make it to the plane on time if we took the normal transit system back, I asked to rental car lady if she would drive Lars and I back over there. Thankfully, she agreed! We got back over to the terminal. I got out carrying Lars (with throw up on him:), his carseat and my carry-on bag, unknowingly headed in the wrong direction. A VERY nice man who worked at the airport asked if I needed help, don't know what gave him that clue!:):) So he carried the carseat and bag while I had Lars. We ran through the airport and made it to the gate just as they would doing the final boarding call. Jenni actually was behind us with Stina cause she had gone to the wrong security line, which the airport man saved me from!

So, we actually made it on the plane, much to Karl and Todd's surprise. Todd was already making arrangements for his parents to come back and get us, cause there was "no way" we would make it!
On the plane we were surrounded by men who were thankfully all fathers and understood how difficult it is to travel with kids! After take-off with both kids screaming, Lars decided to throw up on me yet again! The rest of the flight was relatively uneventful. Stina cried a little cause she was hungry, but no biggy. We are finally on the ground and they tell us we have to wait for them to bring stairs so we can get off the plane. Everyone was already standing in the aisle and you guessed it, Lars threw up all over me again! It was quite dramatic since everyone was watching and wanted to help! It was 45 minutes before they came with the stairs, so even though I was sitting there soaking wet, others had it worse cause they missed international connections!
Karl, is there waiting for us. He takes all the bags, the sick child and then we realize Stina's carseat is not there. At this point we are laughing cause we are wondering what else can go wrong. After another 45 minutes of paperwork and locating the carseat (which is still in Atlanta) we get a loner and we are on our way! Lars of course had to throw up one more time, just to make it an exciting trip home!
We made it all in one piece and even received Stina's carseat back the next morning. The only thing missing is a small back cushion from Lars' carseat. AND of course we had LOTS of laundry!
Anybody want to volunteer to travel with us!!:)

Lars' favorite song

http://www.hulu.com/watch/90244/sesame-street-plain-white-ts-song

I just thought I would share with you what we have been watching lately; about 10 times a day for the last week!
Lars has been watching Seasame Street clips, Tom & Jerry and other "old" cartoons on Hulu. I have been trying to think of things for Lars to do while I'm nursing Stina. Most of the time he is happy just playing, but sometimes he gets jealous that I'm holding her, so I let him sit in my lap and watch a "show".

For those of you wondering, why he has to watch them on Hulu (on a laptop), it's because we don't have a TV. We don't have anything against it. Actually, it drives my boss crazy, cause we know so much about what's on TV and we don't have one! :) We just don't have one because we decided when we got married we didn't want one for our first year of marriage, because we knew it was a huge waste of time. Well it's been almost 7 years and we still don't have one.

Well, that was a really long explaination for a short video clip. I hope you enjoy it!!

Life with 2 kids!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while! Having two kids keeps me quite busy! I'm not sure how people with more kids keep up on their blogs.

Stina continues to be a great baby. She's a great sleeper!! She has already had 2 nights that she slept 7 hours straight!!! She's a little colicky in the evenings, but James Taylor and a box fan are helping take care of that:)

Lars is doing great with her. He is definitely a little more jealous, but I don't mind having them both in my lap so it usually works out.

I'm sure it will be a while before I'm back to regular updating.

Here's a couple pictures to hold you over for a while!

Aug 1st, Stina Smiled!

Aug 14th, Lars climbed all the way down the stairs by himself, VERY carefully!!!

Adjusting

Lars is doing a great job adjusting to being a big brother. He wants to kiss Stina all the time, which is really cute!! He will (passive aggressively) try to sit in our lap while Stina is there.
Thanks for all your prayers and encouragement!!!

Lars is walking!!!

Lars has been walking while holding onto someone or something for at least a month now, but recently he has decided to do it on his own! He took his first steps (without help) about 2 weeks ago. Now he is walking by himself a lot! He will just stand up and go for it. Here are a couple videos of Lars showing off his walking skills!! :)

15 months!

Lars continues to grow at his rapid rate! He is 31 lbs 2 oz and 34 inches tall! At this rate he is going to be 7 feet tall!!
Dr. Ben said he looked great and loves the fact that he is such a big guy!

Corn on the cob!

Lars loves to eat corn on the cob! We have given it to him twice now. The first time we tried cutting the corn off and giving it to him, he wanted nothing to do with it, he wanted the whole thing! Now we have to give him his own ear of corn.

Happy Father's Day!!

Father's Day 2008
I just wanted to take this opportunity to say what a wonderful Daddy and husband Karl truely is!!! I can't believe he is on Father's Day #2 next thing you know it will be 20! Time has gone by way too fast since Lars' birth! Sometimes I wish life would slow down a little bit!
Karl is not only my best friend, but he is a wonderful husband! He works very hard to provide for his family. Then somehow in his free time manages to paint, build and entertain!! :) Every once in a while we let him have some time off to ride his motorcycle or go to the gun range, but he always manages to be home in time to grill dinner for us!
Karl also spends time playing with Lars, which is one of the greatest joys of my life. I love to see Lars' face light up when Karl comes in the room! They spend lots of time playing ball, drumming (make noise:), building things and splashing in the bath or pool.
THANK YOU KARL FOR BEING SUCH A GREAT DAD!!

1917 Military Truck

For those of you who know my dad, Dale Hardy, you will not be suprised at all by his resent request. He has been a major player is having several old LeTourneau Vehicles located, rebuilt and modeled. As a result of his interest in LeT vehicles he is a member of a Historical Truck society. One of his good friends in the society is the owner of this 1917 Military Truck, that is currently the oldest vehicle taking part in the "Transcontinental Motor Convoy", traveling from D.C. to San Fran. For more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_Motor_Convoy
Dad's request was to have Lars' picture taken in the 1917 truck! Lars and I had a great time checking out all the military vehicles that are taking part in the TMC. Lars took a particular interst in the motorcycle:) The owner was nice enough to let Lars sit on it for a photo op!
Dad, wish you could have come with us!

Big Boys!

I can't believe how big these boys are getting!! Our friends Dave and Kristen just moved into a new house and their barstools are the perfect height for the boys to sit in, by themselves! It's hard to believe they are big enough to sit in a stool by themselves!! They were all so cute sitting up at the bar eating their lunch.

Time has really flown by this past year, Luke and Lars are 14 months old, Isaiah is 11 months and Davis is 10 months! Next thing you know they are going to be going to college! Now I know why "adults" are always saying kids grow up way to fast!! (that doesn't mean I'm an adult, does it? :)

Fun with the Fam!

Lar and I went to Nebraska this past weekend for my cousin Jake's wedding. As you can tell we had a great time hanging out with the fam! Although, Lars has some stranger anxiety with most people, he felt right at home the the craziest people around. Maybe cause that is "his normal", with me for a mom!!

My Aunt Becky took us to the Omaha Zoo on Friday before the wedding. Hands down this is the best zoo I have been too in a long time! If you are ever in NE you have to go!! If you see any crazy animals out of the cages, don't worry, it's probably just my family! :):)

Lars is normally a great kid, but I have to give him major props for this weekend! He was really on his A-game the whole time! For four days he never got to have a whole nap and he went to bed around 11pm each night. He didn't complain, he just kept rolling with the punches, and hammin' it up! We had such a great time!!