Mother of the year

I'd like to share with you why I think I should receive the "mother of the year" award this year.

Mason has been off-track for the last 4 weeks (including 1 week for spring break). Most of the time has been pretty boring for him because I'm either working or sleeping. I was pretty excited to send him back to school on Monday and I was hoping he would like something to do besides sit around in his pj's and watch tv or play video games. As we were heading to school (almost late as usual) I was informing him that he will have the same class and teacher but the classroom will be different. We were excited as we pulled up to the playground just before they locked the gate. All the classes line up outside and wait for their teacher to take them in. There was only 1 class left on the playground (but it wasn't his) so he just followed them in. I watched him get into the school and was pretty confident he would find the room he was supposed to be in. He isn't shy when it comes to asking questions. Excited to have a little "me" time, I headed off to the gym. Just as I got there, the school called my cell phone. "Mrs. McKelleb? We have your son here, but he doesn't go back on track until Thursday. Will you please come pick him up in the office?" CRAP! Why would they start on a Thursday? I've already done my time. Can't they just keep him? (just kidding). Luckily Mike was home watching Cord and studying for his last final so I begged him to go pick up our son so I could work out. I guess we'll have a couple more days together. I'll have to think of something fun to make up for abandoning him at the school.

On another note, I was making Mason clean up his messy room when he made a really good argument. He has some drawers full of toys that were scattered all over the room. He said, "Mom, it's not fair that I should have to clean up my room just because a CORD-nado hit it!" I guess that's the downfalls of sharing a room with your baby brother. I laughed..... but still made him clean it up.

Baby Love

We had a quick trip back home this weekend and our main objective was to play with the newest cousin. My sister had a beautiful baby this week and we immediately fell in love with Isaac Samuel. You forget how little they come and how precious they are. I had to pry this baby out of Chelsea's arms. She tried to get her aunt to let her keep him for her week long parenting project for health. It would be a lot funner to carry around this cute thing instead of a doll. But we couldn't think of a good option for feeding him. So we had to leave him with his mother. Mason and Brianna also couldn't get enough of him. Cord loved to come and touch him and would say "awww", then was easily distracted with the toys. I had still considered Cord a baby until I snuggled him after the newborn. My baby has grown!

The kids decided that we needed to have another baby, and I loved snuggling him in my arms. However, we are done, no going back, the end! As much as I love babies, there is no way I could do what I'm doing and take care of 5 kids. I guess I'll eventually have to start working with the babies at work to take care of my baby fix. As much as I loved holding him, I did enjoy my night of uninterrupted sleep :)

Wanted....

an out-of-shape, overweight friend to go to the gym with. I finally broke down and joined a gym that is close to us. In the year that we lived in MA I had gained about 20 lbs. I've been going back to weight watchers and I have set a goal to lose 10 lbs before my b-day in June and my reward will be a new outfit. (I'm telling you so now I'm accountable for that goal.) Chelsea has been bugging me for years to let her go to the gym and has expressed a desire to begin running. I checked it out and found out you have to be at least 13 to join and it wasn't much more money, so she has been going with me. We have fun together, but the bad thing about taking your skinny 14 yr old daughter to the gym, is that she can out do you in everything. I think she takes great pleasure in the fact that she can beat me, but I'm really OK with it. It has been fun for us. However, on monday we both worked our legs to hard and were so sore we couldn't get up and down the stairs. The following couple of days have been comical as we have tried to complete our daily activities. I'm sure we'll get the hang of it sooner or later.

Take your child to work day

Since I can't take the kids to work with me, we took the opportunity offered at the law school to go to "work" with daddy. We met him at the school and took the unofficial tour. We saw the classrooms, library, court room, lockers, and break room. Now the girls wouldn't put this high on their list of "fun" activities, but I thought it was great to see where daddy is spending most of his time. Plus they had treats there for the kids. The school is really nice and so is the campus. I'm so proud of Mike and all that he has accomplished thus far. He is really working hard so that he can get the most out of this experience.


Here is the little cubical in the library where Mike will be stuck for the next couple of weeks as he studies for finals. I think I would get claustraphobic.

We found a park :)

I had heard from several sources that Henderson had a lot of parks. So when the one that is closest to us is closed for repairs I decided to start exploring other parks around us. It's even nice to see other parts of Henderson. We found this nice park today and there wasn't hardly anyone there. The boys ran around and had fun. I even did sprints up and down the stairs that were there. Mason and I had a race rolling down a large grassy hill. I haven't done that FOREVER! When I got to the bottom I realized why. I was soooooo dizzy. I looked around to try and find Cord only to discover that he was quite a ways away from us. I couldn't even get up to go chase him. Luckily Mason (who beat me down the hill) was able to get up quickly and go chase him down.

Another interesting thing happened. There were about 8 police cars there with their lights on and occasionally their sirens. Then we heard a policeman belting out orders at a suspect through a megaphone. He was telling the man how to get out of the car with his hands up. We could see what was happening from the top of the slide. At one point we heard him say, "I can see your gun! If you grab for it, I WILL shoot you." Mason turned to me and said, "The police officer just said he was going to kill that guy!" We had an interesting conversation after that. I had brought Mason's bike thinking we would be doing some walking around on the bike paths, but we decided it would be best to just go home. As we drove off past the cars, we could see that they were just doing some training exercises. I guess you can expect anything to happen in Vegas.

Chelsea

I haven't blogged much about Chelsea lately. This is her favorite activity - reading. She spends most of her time on the computer chatting with friends on facebook, or in her room reading. What you can't see in the picture is the blaring music in the background. We found the nearest library and I swear she came home with 20 books. Her latest project was to compile a binder with summaries of all the books she has read. It was 54 pages long! I'm not sure where she comes from. Anyone who knows me, knows she didn't get her love of reading from me! I guess there are worse things she could love to do.

Exploring the neighborhood

Another nice day in Vegas, but it's supposed to get up into the 90's this week. Mason is still off track and I have a few days off work so we decided to go exploring around our neighborhood today. Our destination was to a park 1.5 miles away. I printed off a google map of the neighborhood and had Mason direct us where to go. I'm trying to bring out his inner scouting skills, and get him to pay attention to his surroundings. Everytime we came to an intersection he had to consult the map and tell me which way to go.

We made it to the park only to discover that the play area was closed for the week. Bummer!

As we headed back home we saw a nice grassy area to let Cord out to play. It's always interesting to watch him learn about the world around him. It's always a reminder for me to slow down and soak in all these moments. My kids are growing up way to fast!



Now we are back and I'm tired. I guess now that I've snuck in a little physical exercise we can just "chil-ax". Mason and I love to play board games and maybe we'll have a picnic in our back yard for lunch.

Trading squirrels for pigeons

In Mass, I loved seeing the squirrels running around the yard along with other woodland creatures. Lately I have noticed that we have a different creature that lives with us.




Pigeons like to sit on top of my house. This would not bother me except in the morning when they are "cooing" loudly and scratching around. I can hear them clear as day when I am in my bathroom. I guess it's good for Cord because he has always liked chasing birds.

a LONG walk

On sunday the boys and I decided to take a leisurely stroll down the street. It ended up be a LONG walk, not because of the distance we went, but because this is how Cord wanted to walk the whole way home.

It doesn't take much

One thing that I just love about this age, is that it just doesn't take much to entertain them. At our Easter dinner, Cord and Caleb were perfectly happy rolling the ball over and over again. And their giggles are contagious.


And what could be better for turning that frown upside down than bubbles? It's the nursery leaders favorite trick and always makes the kids giggle.