new york city...the highlights

where to start?
well here's a few highlights of our trip...

• the subway is dirty & stinky, but is an awesomely convenient way to get around!

• the strollers of choice in manhattan are the bugaboo & the phil and ted double

• you never know who you'll see while riding a tour bus...like al sharpton coming out of a pharmacy in a random neighborhood or cameras filming a csi ny scene on the steps of a museum

• the wave is not done at yankee stadium..."take the wave to shay!!!"

• finding the president of iran is surprisingly easy...just look for the paparazzi, large police force, lots of black suburbans carrying men with guns and the secret service trolling the street...just be careful how you use your cell phone cuz the guy next to us got questioned by the secret service when someone thought his cell phone was a gun. oops!

and to olivia, garrett & ryan...we missed you guys tons!
thanks for being so good while we were gone!!

** click here to check out more of our pictures **

filling the void

after 14 months of sharing our bedroom, we finally moved ryan into garrett's room. ryan has been a great roommate, but we were pretty excited about the possibility of turning a light on in our room at night or even watching tv with the volume at a normal level. plus we were hoping that the new room might help his current sleep pattern...waking up at 6:30 every morning :)

kids must have a 6th sense...they can sense when a void needs to be filled. garrett came into sleep with us around 3am after waking up in hysterics about his missing pez dispenser. olivia (who never wakes up before 9:30am) wandered in around 7am. i guess they knew we had some open spots in our room.

sweet, little ryan woke up at 7:45...so maybe the new room worked for him :)

deja vu - baby boy style

under the computer table (hey look, we painted!)

lots of fun in the kitchen!

olivia's 1st day of kinderstart

here's olivia's first day of school...from the before school photoshoot to seeing her brothers once she got home. all in all, it was a good day. she LOVES school and i love the fact that garrett can now fall asleep on the couch in the afternoon :)

goodbye summer...labor day 2007

if you look closely, you can see where garrett had his surgery.
nice sticky tape residue :)

the soccer player & her groupie

olivia's first season of soccer starts this week. she's all set...pink shin guards, pink socks, pink & black shoes, pink shorts. we can only hope the team shirt is pink. ha ha!

garrett thinks he's part of the team too. after tim bought him shin guards, socks & shoes is it any wonder that he thinks that?? well, with tim as the coach hopefully the little groupie can play a little bit during practice :)

jump!

suddenly our backyard has gotten a little bit smaller.
but the kids are loving every minute of it!

who am i kidding...we all love it :)

naughty stuff

last week our photographer gave me a magazine that is basically a listing of all sorts of companies & websites for cool kid stuff. i had to stop by and pick up some pictures today, so i brought the magazine along to give back to her.

olivia saw it in the car and asked to look at it. she was way in back plus i knew she'd crumple a few pages so i told her NO and that it was just an adult magazine.

olivia: "oh, so it has naughty stuff in it? like what kind of naughty stuff?"

nice. real nice. i can just see her telling her teacher at school about her mom's naughty magazines. ha ha! it's amazing & scary at what a 4 yr old will say!!!

a little explanation: once i told olivia she couldn't watch csi with me cuz it was an adult show. so i'm guessing the murder scene on csi = naughty. ha ha.

ryan's true loves

at 13 months you'd think ryan would be obsessed with his blanket, his mom and even food on the floor. nope.

ryan is obsessed with our tivo remotes and fans.

he knows where the fans are in every room. when he's up they are always unplugged since he knows how to turn them on. and he knows exactly where the tivo remotes are. keep in mind we've tried to offer him old remotes with no success. he knows a tivo remote when he sees it. (i can't blame him...i love tivo too!!) as soon as we set the remote down he races over to it and points it towards the tv.

so now we've gotten quite good at hiding the remote behind couch cushions or on the mantle. and when we use it, we have to do it discretely or else he'll have a nervous breakdown.

silly ryan!

super hero naptime

i'm always on the lookout for boy toys. garrett has a girly girl sister and he loves to play dolls with her. so lately i've been trying to find more boy toys that he'll like. we were at target the other day and i found some super hero dive sticks on clearance. the kids were super excited since they were just like the ones the barnetts have.

the cast of characters included: superwoman, superman, flash gordon & batman

obviously olivia grabs superwoman and gives garrett the rest. so i'm ready for some good boy fun and figured garrett would start imagining all sorts of boy superhero scenarios.

nope, next thing i know superwoman is the mother and the other guys are her sons. the conversation went something like this...

olivia (superwoman): boys, it's time for a nap
garrett (superman): oh mom! we are not being naughty.
olivia: i said it's nap time!
garrett: ok, mom.

later little later...

olivia (superwoman): boys, i'm caught in a net. come help me.
garrett (superman): i'm coming sweetheart!!!!!

so i guess i'll just have to wait till ryan gets a little older to play super heroes with garrett. maybe then i'll hear them fighting crime and saving bad guys.

at the time of this picture, superman was missing (and still is). maybe he's taking that nap.

(sarah, when we took the guys out of the box olivia says "oh mom! they don't have a B on the back!" ha ha!)