Patrick has been taking private voice lessons through Converse College this fall. On Monday, his teacher held a winter recital. Fortunatley, Charlie's sister Christie and her husband Joel were here to join us. Here are a couple of photos from the event and the video of Patrick's performance. The song is in Italian so don't bother trying to figure out what he is singing.
Mitchell, Vinny, Christie, & Joel.
Patrick before the recital started.
After Thanksgiving dinner we were all a little too full to do much more than sit and watch TV. Vinny had made spent some time before dinner creating some Thanksgiving Art...
Gotta love sidewalk chalk.
So, after dinner and dessert we watched Meet the Robinson's, Cars, Monsters vs Aliens and The Fast and the Furious.
Mitchell aka Jasper.
Patrick aka Edward Norton.
Vinny aka Ariel.
The best part of my day involved two phone calls. The first from my brother Jim and the second was from my brother Pat and his wife Debbie. Thanks for the calls guys, it really made my day.
That is it for Thanksgiving.
Today is Charlie's Grandson Michael's birthday! Happy Birthday Michael.
This photo was taken two years ago but I just love it! I hope you had a great day Michael!
It is also this beautiful ladies birthday..
This is my niece Chelsea with her husband Mike. Happy Birthday Chelsea!
We have a tradition on Thanksgiving where we come up with a theme and then dress up. Two years ago we had a Hippie Thanksgiving. We all wore tie dye shirts that year. Last year our theme was Tacky and we dressed crazy and tacky. This year our good friend Waller came up with our theme. We dressed up as our favorite movie character or actor.Here are some photos from dinner.
Charlie was a combination of the guest from under the house to came to dinner in 'Guess who's Coming to dinner'.
Mitchell was Jasper from New Moon.
Patrick as Edward Norton from Fight Club.
Vinny as the Littlest Mermaid. She had her ankles tied so that she appeared to have a fin.
I was attempting to be Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's
I even wore false eyelashes.
A shot of our table. We had rolls, turkey, ham, stuffing and sweet potatoes.
For dinner we had Apple Pie and Peanut Butter bars. Yummy! More on our day tomorrow!
Have I ever mentioned that I have wonderful kids? Well, I do! With my Tysabri treatment on Monday I was not quite myself on Wednesday. I still had a bad headache. I did not want to wait until Thursday to get Thanksgiving dinner started so I just decided to give it a shot. In came my kids, well, two of them anyway. Patrick was still sleeping but Vinny and Mitchell told me to sit down and to tell them what to do.
Mitchell browning the sausage.
Mitchell browning sausage while wearing an apron.
Vinny chopping onions and celery. She also peeled sweet potatoes, made the bread cubes and helped me with dessert.
After Patrick woke up he helped me with a few last items. Charlie did his share by going to the grocery store for me on Tuesday! I am so grateful to have the most amazing husband and three wonderful kids!
I hoped you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I will post about our day tomorrow.
My poor Mitchell has been suffering from the Swine Flu since Tuesday. He has ran a fever as high as 103, has sore throat, body aches, tummy ache and a bit of a cough. I have been holding a vigil by his side since Tuesday and not much else has happened. It has just not been our week.
The other bad news from this week involves this...
This is what is left of Patrick's car. He was coming home after picking Vinny up from Gymnastics. The car in front of him slammed on his breaks and Patrick was too close and bam! he ran into the back end of the other guy. They were not going to fast and since his car just ran under the SUV he hit, the air bags did not deploy. No one was injured which is all that really matters. The car is a complete loss. This means we are down to one car for the time being. Not what we needed with a child starting college in the fall.
Please say a prayer for Mitchell that he is better soon. Tomorrow we have tickets to a very special show. I will post about the show on Monday. I hope you all have a great weekend!
If you are a mother, do you have any regrets when it comes to how you have raised your children? I can admit to having a few. One of my biggest regrets is not allowing my first born, Patrick, to cry himself to sleep. I not only never let him cry for long, I actually got into his crib once and slept there so he would sleep. I did not feel safe bringing him into my bed since a friend's husband had accidentally smothered their newborn baby.
I did learn my lesson with the next two children. Now, 17 years later, both Patrick and I are paying the price. He has NEVER been a good sleeper! He has required music playing while attempting to fall asleep and now we have learned that music is a big no no when sleeping.
I mentioned the sleep issue last spring to his pediatrician who recommended we see a pediatric sleep specialist. We finally had an appointment early this summer. The first thing the doctor did was to ban all music at bed time. Patrick did not know if he could go to bed without music but he was willing to try. For two months he kept a log listing the time he went to bed, the time he fell asleep, if and when he woke up during the night and what time he woke up the next day. Today we went back to the doctor and he felt that Patrick's internal clock was okay, and wanted to try one more behavioral method before resorting to medicine. Both Patrick and I were happy to hear this since neither of us want him on drugs. Patrick truly wants to learn how to go to bed, fall asleep, stay asleep and feel rested when he wakes up. This is very important to him with college in his very near future.
Starting last night he is to stay up until Midnight for four nights waking at 7:00 am every morning. The reason for 7:00 am is because that is the time he needs to be up for school. Then after four nights we move the time up by 15 minutes to 11:45 pm for four nights and so on. He still must wake up at 7:00 am even on the weekends. The goal is to have him in bed and asleep by 10:30 pm, 11:00 pm at the latest. On nights that he works until 10:00 pm, it will be tough for him to be in bed by 10:30 pm. Eventually he will be able to sleep in later on the weekends but for now, he has the alarm on his phone set to 7:00 am. He will also continue to keep the sleeping log. We will go back to the doctor in 2 months.
So, you might be wondering what role Charlie and I will play in this new sleep program. Well, Charlie will go to be at 9:30 on weeknights as he does now and get up at 6:00 am. He will get up on the weekends whenever he wakes up. Me, well since I do not have a job, will have the pleasure of going to bed when Patrick goes to bed and will be getting up at 7:00 am with him to make sure he does not go back to sleep. Am I looking forward to this new schedule? NO! I can at least take a nap during the day which I do most every day anyway.
So, if you are the parent of a newborn, please take my advise and around 6 weeks or at whatever age your doctor suggests, let the baby cry a little. We did this too late with Mitchell even though he is a pretty good sleeper now. With Vinny we started at 6 weeks and it took two nights. Since then she goes to bed without any problems and would sleep for 12 hours if allowed. When she was old enough to climb into her crib, she would just climb in and go to bed without telling us. We would be looking for her and find her sound asleep.
I am not complaining, after all he is so worth it. Just look at this face...
I am writing this on Thursday night at 10:00 pm trying to keep my eyes open. I hope you all have a groovy weekend and a happy Labor Day! Goodnight.
Patrick's actual birthday was on Wednesday, May 13. He had to work that night so we decided to celebrate it on Thursday. It was a BEAUTIFUL evening! He had his choice of going out to dinner or having my enchiladas. He chose my enchiladas. I told him he could invite a friend over so he invited Beautiful Bo. Remember her? I don't think I posted about their breakup; they have remained friends. I did not take any photos of dinner, I guess I was too busy cooking. After dinner we went outside for presents. Here are some photos of our night.
Opening presents. This was a 6 pack of Reese's Peanut Butter cups; his favorite candy.
He is saying 'Yummy'.
A Giant Hershey's Bar; his second favorite candy.
Reading the card from mom & dad.
Attacking the present from mom & dad.
A big box...
with a smaller box inside...
with a purple I Pod inside. In case you haven't noticed, Patrick's favorite color is purple.
Card from Mitchell & Vinny...
with an I Tunes card inside.
Then they went for a quick swim before we had cake and ice cream.
You might be wondering where Mitchell is. The explanation deserves a post of it's own.
The cake.
Singing.
Make a wish.
Well, that is it for his celebration. One more gift was a set of ear phones from Storm. Storm was at work while we celebrated.
Thanks for stopping by. Tomorrow I will explain the latest Mitchell saga.
One of the best days of my life happened 17 years ago. Even though I was told that I would never give birth to a child, God blessed me with this beautiful creature...
Here are 17 things that I love about Patrick (there are more than 17 but just go with me here)
1: He loves his little brother..
2: He loves his little sister...
Patrick, Mitchell and Vinny.
3: He loves his mommy and still kisses me goodbye and hello in front of his friends.
4: He loves his daddy and still kisses him goodbye and hello in front of his friends.
5: He is not afraid to be goofy in public...
On a trolley in New Orleans age 18 months.
6: He loves babies and little kids and they love him...
7: He is always willing to help...
8 & 9: He loves animals and knows how to multitask (okay, that counts for two...
10: He is very talented...
New Orleans age 18 months
11: He is very compassionate...
12: He has his own personal style...
Wearing a pj top given to him by his cousin Nicki. He wore this top for 10 years.
13: He is brave when outnumbered...
14: He looks good even with stitches and two black eyes...
First trip to camp. He came home with 5 stitches across his nose.
15: He has the greatest laugh...
16: He still listens when daddy reads 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' on Christmas Eve. Well, sort of.
17: He looks good as a blond...
I lied, I have one more...
He looks even better as a brunette...
There are so many, many more qualities that I love about Patrick. It would take me a year to list them all. Stop by on Monday to see how we celebrated.
Happy Birthday Patrick! I love you.
April 25th was the Prom at Patrick's High School. Patrick took a lovely young lady who is in the choir with him. She is a Senior so Patrick was anxious to make her last Prom very special. Storm also went to the Prom. He took his girlfriend of almost two years. Her mom was out of town so I had the pleasure of doing her makeup and helping her get ready. Here are some photos.
Isn't she lovely?
Storm went the Mafia route.
Patrick presenting his date with a corsage.
We went to a Bed and Breakfast in Inman SC to take photos before the kids went to dinner.
Patrick is the good looking one in the middle. The other two boys are dates of a couple of the other girls.
I got tired of the standard pose so I asked them to skip.
Walking towards me. The girls are all friends of Patrick's date.
Walking away from me.
I wanted them to jump. It took a couple of tries to get it right and the other mother's were getting angry with me because they were worried that the girls hair was getting messed up. Love how the photo turned out.
After the Prom, they went to one of the girls' house and watched a movie. Patrick got home at 4:00 am. He had a great time. I am just happy that I have a year to save for next years Prom.
Thanks for stopping by!
