the heimann family

Yup, that’s right.  I am now 34.  So I thought I would post about 34 things that make me happy.

(in no particular order)

1.  My best friend

2. My boys

3. Katie Bug

4. Large Dr. Pepper with Vanilla from Sonic

5. The beach

6. My iPhone

7. Family vacations

8. Billy’s hamburgers

9. My job

10. Saving Grace

11. Air conditioning

12. Randy Rogers Band

13. Photoshop

14. Our DVR

15. Sunday afternoons watching the Texans

16. Lilies

17. Scrapbooking

18. Bread Pudding

19. The Outlander Series

20. Baking

21. My Traverse

22. Ruby (my laptop)

23. squeaky kisses from Lance

24. Sweet tea

25. Burt Bees Lip Balm

26. Scrap Orchard

27. My camera

28. Our little pool

29. Sitting on the patio with Billy

30. Folded laundry

31. Weekends

32. Freckles on my cute boys

33. Hearing Garrett read to Lance

34. Friends that make me laugh

Because I don’t have enough to do!

http://twitter.com/amandaheimann

You can find me on Twitter now!  See that little box over there to the right?  Little updates about what is going on in my crazy life.  Because I have come to that point of being a parent.  Complete, uninterrupted thoughts are a thing of the past.

I like to think that I am organized and have it all together.  Everything has a home in our house, there are labels and containers everywhere.  We have a routine.  But for some reason mornings are crazy.  It is a combination of having one loud wild child (Lance) and one grumpy cranky boy (Garrett) and the dogs.

Yesterday morning my alarm went off around 6:30.  I got up because Katie started licking my face.  (I usually get up between 6:30 and 6:45 and just enjoy the silence for a bit.)  I took the dogs out and did a little bit of laundry.  Around 7:00 I woke the boys up.  Lance bounces out of bed, runs into the kitchen and shouts his breakfast order at me.  It usually takes two more reminders to get Garrett out of bed.  And then he takes about five minutes to decide which cereal he wants.  Then the boys get dressed which is another battle.  Lance does not like to wear clothes.  I basically have to catch him, tackle him and wrestle his clothes on.  Of course all this gets Katie excited and she starts running around and tries to attack the boys.  The commotion freaks Trevor out so he runs and hides under my bed.

The boys are finally dressed and the search for Garrett’s shoes is on.  Everyday.  We have to find his shoes everyday even though they have a home and are put up every night.  Garrett still can’t find them in the morning.

Next Garrett will get his backpack on and watch tv until the bus comes.  But since we spent too much time searching for shoes (and backpack) yesterday he did not have time to watch Star Wars.

Instead I hear the bus coming down the street.  I yell at Garrett to get his backpack on and hurry up.  He proceeds to go hang his backpack up on the hook in the laundry room.  I yell at him to go get his backpack on, not put it up.  And hurry- the bus is here!  I open the door and run onto the porch to wave the bus lady down so she doesn’t drive off.  During all of this Lance is running around the living room with Katie.  Garrett runs out the door with his backpack barely on.  And right behind him is Katie.  Garrett is chasing the bus and Katie is chasing Garrett.  Luckily the bus lady saw Garrett and stopped.  I run out the door (in my nightgown) and chase Katie.  Lance runs out the door and is chasing me.  I run across our lawn and onto the neighbors and Katie stops and turns.  I think she saw the anger in my eyes and turned and ran away from me.  Meanwhile the bus is starting to pull away with all the elementary kids staring at me in my nightgown.  Katie darts back across our lawn and I yell at her to go in.  Lance chases her inside.  I think she knew she was in trouble because she hid from me.  I call Billy to tell him about my morning and he laughs.

I thought for sure today would be much better.  My morning started earlier than I wanted.  I slept on the couch last night after falling asleep while watching tv.  Katie slept with me.  Around 5:15 this morning she starts barking like crazy.  Not her playful bark but her mean bark.  I pop up off the couch and am wide awake.  I contemplate if I should go get Billy or stay where I am.  But then I realize that she is barking at the coffee maker.  Billy set it to automatically turn on this morning.  Apparently Katie thought it was going to attack us.

I fall back asleep for a few minutes until Billy’s alarm goes off.  That wakes Katie up again.  This time Billy took her out for me.  I got to sleep for about 30 more minutes until my alarm went off and Katie started licking my face.

I got the boys up a little it earlier this morning.  Lance rolls out of bed telling me he wet the bed. Again.  I just made the bed yesterday.  So I deal with that and convince Garrett to get out of bed.  Turns out he wet the bed also.  Lovely.

We go have breakfast.  Lance asks for Cheerios and Kix.  Garrett just wants Cheerios.  I accidentally poured a few Kix into Garrett’s bowl on top of his Cheerios.  You would have thought I was feeding him liver and onions.  He had a huge hissy fit.  I told him too bad.  It was just a few Kix and he could take them out and put them on the table.  He wanted me to dump out all the ceral and make a new bowl.  All over 3 Kix.  So I told him to eat the cereal or go to school hungry.  After about 2 minutes he tells me “Fine!  I will eat the cereal but I don’t like it.”  Of course he at it all and drank the milk from the bowl.

Garrett gets dressed and out the door on time.  I come back in to put the sheets in the wash.  I step on something in the kitchen.  It is Katie’s dog food.  Everywhere.  She will eat the food on one side of the bowl.  Instead of moving over to the other side or reaching across she will spill the bowl.  So there is Katie food spilled across the floor.  At this point I went to my bedroom and turned on Little House on the Prairie.  I need an Easy button.

(Since I don’t want this post picture-less here is one of Katie.  She doesn’t look like this anymore- she got her first haircut!  I’ll get pictures of that up soon)

Last night I told the boys to go wash their hands because it is time for supper.  Lance comes running out of the playroom yelling “Daddy’s home!  YAY!  Daddy’s home!”

No, he didn’t mean that Daddy was home for supper.  He thought that Daddy cooked supper.  How sad is it that my boys correlate supper with Daddy cooking.  I very seldom cook anymore.  I just can’t get into in and I get no pleasure from it.  Now I can get into baking and enjoy that but we can’t live on cake and cookies. So last night was frozen pizzas and strawberries.  Wednesday nights are easy since we have Awanas and need a quick meal.  We have enough leftovers for tonight and we never cook on Friday nights.  Billy cooks on the weekends so I should not have to cook (or attempt to) until Tuesday.

I need to find some new crock pot recipes.  I can handle throwing stuff into a pot and forgetting about it all day.  Or dump cooking as Billy calls it.  Sigh.  At least the playroom is clean.  I have that going for me, right?

Off to go buy sunscreen and swimsuits.  It is that time of year!  Woot!

Mother’s Day started for me on Friday.  Garrett told his daddy that he wanted to send me flowers from ProFlowers.com for Mother’s Day.  And Daddy did exactly that!  Those dang commercials get Garrett every time.  My flowers arrived Friday afternoon and are beautiful.  Garrett was a little miffed that I had them already since it wasn’t Mother’s Day yet.  Billy had to explain to him that the flowers had to come early since UPS does not come to our house on the weekends.  That evening we went out to eat and to run a couple errands.  We went to Best Buy to get me a speaker dock for my iPhone.  As much as I love my noise cancelling earphones (great for that magical hour before supper) they kill my ears.  I have tried many different brands but they all cause pain if I have them in for longer than 10 minutes.  So now I have a wonderful stereo/sound dock next to my desk.  Of course Garrett stands next to me and dances every time I turn it on.

Saturday morning was laid back.  We all just did a few things around the house.  After lunch the boys and Billy went to WalMart for a super secret mission.  When they got back we loaded up to go to my parent’s house for a Mother’s Day get together.  We had a detour at the hospital to see my grandma and tell her Happy Mother’s Day.  And another detour to WalMart after Lance fell asleep on the way and wet his pants.  The party at my parent’s was fun.  I enjoyed seeing friends and family and watching the kids play and fish.  I got some awesome photos that I will have to put up later.

This morning I really wanted to sleep in.  Katie startled us at 5:30 in the morning with her growling and barking.  And then she woke me up (by licking my face) around 7 to go outside.  After I took her out I was able to fall back asleep and slept while the guys got up and made breakfast.  At one point I heard Lance whispering loudly to me under the door.  ” Mommy!  I got a delivery for you!  It is under the door.  <pause>  It is a card.  And it has Garfield on it.  And I wrote MOM on it but Daddy wrote the M.”  Lance also made me a cute card that looks like a purse at MDO.  It had a pipe cleaner handle that he threaded beads on.  Only he has been calling it his purse and carried it around for 2 days.  And then Katie destroyed it.

Once breakfast (Billy made French Toast for me- my favorite!) was ready I got to open my presents.  The boys each picked out a card for me and a gift certificate.  Lance choose Subway for me and Garrett picked Olive Garden.  YUM!    I was then told to go relax and do whatever I wanted.  I watched a little tv, scrapped a little, cleaned off my computer and just enjoyed the quiet.  The guys have been outside most of the day trimming hedges and working on the patio.  It has been a great Mother’s Day.

I do have a few photos I want to share.  I have been hanging onto them and just waiting to put them up here.  The pictures were our gift to the grandmas.   We went to College Station to show the boys around.  They got to see all the places we lived in college, eat at the Chicken Oil Co., visit Northgate and Bottle Cap Alley and see the campus.  I took the opportunity and the great mood they were in to take pictures.  Here are a few favorites.

My boys are a constant source of amusement.  Who needs television when you can put on music and have a very entertaining show while you watch Garrett dance?  Or if you really want a laugh just get Lance to say words with “or” in them.  Since you can’t plop down on the couch and enjoy the show I thought I would type out a few of the latest things that have come out of my children’s mouths.

Lance

Katie is a miniature smouzer.

Actually, Mommy.  (He likes to start his arguments with actually)

That made me frwustrated.

Everything is so burrrrrring.  (boring)

God is great, God is good.  Lettuce thank him for our food.  Wait- Mommy, lettuce just doesn’t mean food.

He likes to tell me “it’s no use” when he is cleaning.

Billy: close your eyes and go to sleep!  Lance:  I can’t because I am afraid of the dark!

Mommy, you are my best friend.  And Braxton, and Chase, and Brennan, and Matthew.  Oh!  And Katie.  But Daddy is not my best friend because he is Garrett’s best friend.  And Trevor is their dog.

Fruit snacks ARE good for me because they have fruit in the name.

You can call me Clone Captain Lance.

I need to conserve water so give me chocolate milk.  (he has a tshirt that says this but I didn’t think he paid attention to what it says)

Garrett

It’s not fun to live here anymore (said when he was doing chores)

Junie B. Jones calls her teacher Mrs.  That’s so funny.  Isn’t that so funny? (he ends almost all his stories with this)

Me: What did you do in school today?  G: Learned.

Me: What is your favorite part of school?  G: Every part.

I can’t think with all this racket in here!

But Ms. K (his teacher) said…

I can’t pick up the toys because Lance told me not to.

You aren’t going to find it here!  Sorry!

We are battling the stomach virus here.  3 down and only me to go.  Fun times.

So maybe when I come out of this death trap called laundry I will have something to blog about.

I dread days like this.  Actually it is night but still.  Garrett is sick.  Stomach sick.  I will spare you the details but Billy had to bring him home early from Awanas.  He is now on the loveseat with a big bowl.  Hopefully this is a fast moving bug.  I planned on pulling him from school tomorrow for a doctor appointment but now it looks like he will have to be home anyways.  I just hope it doesn’t hit anyone else.  Wishful thinking, huh?

So I was sitting here killing time before I head to bed.  I am trying to stay up until Garrett settles some.  What better way to fill my time than with blogging?  It is either this or Facebook.

Here are a few photos from my April folder.  And their explanations.  Because some of them need explanations.

This is Katie Bug sleeping.  With her spider.  I took this photo a couple days after her reaction to a vaccine.  That is something I don’t want to go through again. She had to have fluids and that lead to many many potty breaks.  Many.

Lance and the egg dye.  He had his fingers in there so long that they were wrinkled and dyed.  He just couldn’t figure out the little egg scooper.

Lance and his Easter basket.  The Easter Bunny forgot to take off price tags.

Garrett and his basket.

This was an Easter to remember.  We knew the weather would be bad so the bunny hid eggs inside.  There are only so many places eggs can be hidden inside.  The boys still had fun finding them.  I didn’t get any photos because I was keeping Katie away from the eggs.  The weather started getting worse and the hail came down.  I made Billy get some for a photo in case we needed to make an insurance claim.  Because a sure fire way to make it hail is to buy a new vehicle.  And ours is only one week old.  But the hail did not get bigger than that and there wasn’t any damage.

You know if was a good day when you can’t even make it all the way into the bed.  This was Sunday night after all the Easter fun and candy.  I think I need to explain Lance’s bed.  Lance is not night trained.  I don’t think he will be any time soon.  We have tried going without Pull Ups, going to the bathroom before bed and waking him up to go before we go to bed.  The Good Nites and UnderJams are too big for his skinny rear.  He refuses diapers and I don’t want to deal with them.  None of it works.  Almost every morning he wakes up wet.  And he usually soaks the bed.  I have tried making the bed in layers but that doesn’t work.  So for now we use a blanket covering the mattress and a blanket as Lance’s cover.  This time it was a sleeping bag because he likes it and I was in between washing all the blankets.  And he takes off any pillowcase I put on.  Drives me nuts!  But he said he likes how soft and fuzzy it feels.  And usually there are twice the number of animals in the bed.  They were also in the wash.

Oh Katie.  What a stinker.  Don’t let the cute little face and beard fool you.  She is something else.  So far everything is going great.  We had one set back after she was sick but we are back on track now.  She knows sit, down, come and jump.  We are working on stay and no bite. She is starting to turn silver around her face and on her legs.  She really is a good girl and we are all enjoying her.  I hope she will one day be a good watch dog but for now her role is June bug killer.  She is doing a good job with that.

And today Katie had Lance and I rolling on the floor laughing.  (that is ROFL for you Helen) Katie had discovered the area under our bed.  I haven’t been under there in 3 years so it is probably a treasure chest to Katie.  I knew she was in my room and I thought she was looking for Trevor’s stash of bones.  Side story- Trevor does not have enough teeth to chew a rawhide bone but he likes to take Katie’s and hide them.  So Katie comes tearing out of my room and I see something in her mouth.  I asked Lance to go grab it and he giggled.  I asked him what was it and he said “Katie has my old pacie fire.”  I said “What?”  And Katie looked up at me with the pacifier in her mouth.  I kid you not!  She found one of Lance’s long lost pacifiers and has been chewing/sucking on it all day.  I asked Lance if he wanted it back and he said Katie could have it.  I always knew we would find hidden pacifiers but I didn’t think my dog be using them.

Just popping in real quick! There is a problem with my RSS feeds. I am trying to figure it out. If you have been getting feed updates could you let me know what service you are using? I would appreciate it! Thanks! Oh- I also added links at the bottom of the sidebar to give you more subscription options. I also had to reset my stat counter. I am kinda bummed about that. You would not believe how high the stat counter was. I might have to do a post about my readers one day. I am really interested to see who is reading from Niue.  And the search strings that bring up my blog- um those can be entertaining.

Ok- back to answering Lance’s questions. Like this one- “Is Daddy’s name Billy because he pays the bills?”

I was at Hobby Lobby this morning buying more ribbons. Remember that- HOBBY LOBBY. After browsing every aisle in the store (and this is a big store) I made my way to checkout. There is only one cashier up there. Surprisingly there is not a huge line. I get in line behind this man who is kinda standing off to the side a bit.

The cashier is asking for someone to come to the register for customer service over the intercom. I assume there is a return or something. She then asks the man in front of me if she can go ahead and check me out. She apologizes to the man and says something about how she has paged management twice and doesn’t know why they are taking so long.

She checks my items out and makes small talk about what I was buying and how I store my ribbons. I move over to swipe my card.

Two policemen (with their hands on their guns) come running in the store yelling “Get you hands up!” One officer goes to the guy and pulls his hands behind his head and cuffs him. The other officer turns to me and starts yelling at me. “Are with him? Are you with him?” and has his cuffs out ready to put them on me. I froze. The cashier tells the officer I am not with the man and I just finished paying for my items.

In the meantime management comes running to the front. One manager runs outside and yells “there he is! there’s the other one!” and an officer follows her. The officer with the cuff man starts patting him down. Pulls out his wallet and i.d. He then asks the man what his name is and he does not answer. He asks if this shows his current address. The man says no and the officer asks for his address and the man says “I don’t know. It is a few streets over.” (WTH? you don’t know where you live?) The guy then asks “what is this all about? what did I do?”

Now, wouldn’t you ask that as soon as the officers got there?

I turned to the cashier and just looked at her. She told me she had no idea what was going on. I did notice that there was a tube of either paint or glue on the counter. I just thought that was what the man was returning or purchasing. Maybe the card he used was stolen? I don’t know. All I know is that the guy is an idiot for hanging around when he had every chance to walk out that store before I got up there.

I got my bag and left the store. I was shaking! When I was leaving the parking lot they had one guy in the cruiser and were talking to the other one.

I still can not get over the fact this happened at Hobby Lobby.

There really never is a dull moment in my life.

*updates and pictures coming this weekend!  I have to find my camera cord first!*