No more naps???

Anyone who knows our Sweet Sydney, knows that she is a go-go-go girl. She also believes that for all intents and purposes, she is AT LEAST as old as her big brother, and therefore entitled to all that he is. She gets a popsicle if he does. She gets to go out front and play when he does. You get the picture.
Today she pushed the envelope a little however. She decided that she would not be taking a nap today. Believe me, I tried. I was pooped. I bank on those 2 hours that she is out to get stuff done around the house, or to just have some quiet "me" time. Here's hoping this trend does not continue. If so, I will be one SAD and TIRED OUT Mommy!

Dinner in New York

Dow falls 504 as Wall St. woes batter stocks

Chris flew to New York today anticipating the first of 3 consecutive work weeks (home on the weekends, of course). About the time he arrived he received a call from an associate at work requesting that he return to SLC as soon as possible to help with the fallout of Lehman's bankruptcy filing. SO, looks like he'll catch a flight in the am tomorrow....since he'd just been on a plane for 5 hours. No one in their right mind would turn around and hop on another one. Plus, now he gets to have a nice dinner in New York!

The good news is, he'll be in town indefinitely while everything is worked out at Lehman Bros. The bad news is, our economy is crashing, and burning.

See the link below if you want to catch up a bit. I find myself gravitating toward these articles so I can understand the financialese that Chris speaks after work.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/market-dispatches-091508.aspx

Weekend Whirlwind

Last weekend I had the opportunity to get away for about 30 hrs and attend a wedding reception of my cousin, on a yaught, in Newport Beach. Also, 5 of my 6 siblings and my parents would be there. Including my oldest sister, who I see WAY TOO infrequently! ...not to mention her 5 children would also be in town, the youngest of which I have never seen in person....and she's 14 months old. Chris and my kids stayed at home, and so I did a whirlwind style get-away. It was a wonderful time. I wished that my kids could've seen all their cousins, but there will be other chances for that coming up soon, I'm sure. Here's a picture of me and my sisters, we haven't taken one together in at least a decade! Sad, but true. Now that Sara lives in the western states, it might happen more often!

We spent Friday night on the boat for 4 hours, it was fun to be there sans kids with all the fam, minus Joel. I swear, we all revert back to childhood at times like that. There were some pretty classic moments, including my big bro donning crazy big sunglasses and proclaiming that he was the 4th sister, never recognized by the other 3, left out. LOL. I saw all my Aunts and Uncles on my Mom's side, which hasn't happened in a long time. Some of my cousins, it's been about 18 years since we've seen each other. I know they love it when you say, "last time I saw you, you were in diapers!!" Awesome. Way to date yourself, huh?

Saturday we spent time together at Bolboa Island and Newport Beach. We took the little kids on the ferris wheel, and crossed on the ferry with some cars, pretty nice ones, Bentley anyone?, strolled along past all the little piers and quaint houses. My niece Madelyn held my hand so I wouldn't get lost! I think she was worried about me since I didn't have my kids there to keep me busy. She was such a good little buddy....when I wanted to take a picture she held on to the edge of my shirt. Mom's got her so well trained. And all the Davis kids are so grown up! We had a blast together. I think we should rent a place out there for our next family reunion! It was wonderful. Perfect temps, nice breeze, beautiful scenery!

Run of poor luck

Well, this post is beyond delayed. We had kind of a crazy run of things Labor Day weekend. We had some freakishly cold weather...snow in the mountains and cold cold temps. While it was blowing in Friday night we got a major wind storm that split one of our park strip trees right down the middle, actually it was 2/3 of the tree that split and toppled off! We have LOVED those trees, put them in a few years back and they have thrived. They are called Purple Robed Locusts and are so pretty. Anyway, one is now so damaged it appears we'll have to take it out and replace it. We've since found out that these trees are pretty susceptible to wind damage so we'll need to replace it with something else. I think Chris has his eye on a Red Blaze Maple.

The next in our run of bad luck is that we had a break in Sunday night. They came into our garage and rifled through Chris' car, took his CDs and some other things from his glove box, rooted around in the trunk....but Chris doesn't keep much stored in there. They also stole the drill set that he got for Christmas and much to his dismay, his Mountain Bike. He was looking forward to getting in a few more rides this month before it gets too cold, but alas, now we are filing with the insurance company and waiting on all of that to shake out before he can replace it. Such a bummer. It appears to have been the work of a teenager, or at least a thief with no car, as they only took what they could easily fit in a backpack. Chris' golf clubs were right next to the bike and were not taken. We filed a police report, but it's not very likely that anything will be done to recover our property. It's fairly low on the police's list of priorities, I imagine.

Finally, our router fried the other day as I was getting on to catch up on email and blogging after a too busy week last week. So, we're finally back up online! Yay! I'll try to catch you up on some of the other, more positive things that have been going on in our lives shortly! Thanks for tuning in. :)

Back to School

To be fair, Savannah had her back to school picture taken 9 days ago, but to me, Back to School was really today, since Kindergarten didn't start until now. I actually have almost 3 hours with only 1 child in my care every weekday!! Sydney and I are thrilled at the prospect of some one on one time. It's so important!

Savannah is LOVING school still, everything about it. She was thrilled the other day when 3RD GRADERS!! wanted to join her and her friend on the playground the other day. lol. Funny how 2nd graders really look up to those just 1 year ahead... She loves her teacher and is already making a host of new friends. We're quickly getting into a homework routine that works, whew. Notice her hair is curled in her picture. She wants me to help her in the morning to get it done up, which is a change from last year when she just wanted to do it herself. Now she wants it just so, and knows I can make it look really nice. I don't think I was as self aware as she is when I was her age....or maybe until I was 12!

Gunnar is our Kindergartener, and was pretty excited this morning. He played on the playground until the teacher came out and asked them to line up. Ran past and gave me a high five on the way to line up. Too cute. One of his classmates at the back of the line was a little more worried about his day, it seems. Just as they were about to go in he started to puke...and couldn't stop. He was at the back of the line and had his Mom right there, but you could hear all the parents saying "OH PLEASE, JOHNNY, DON'T TURN AROUND!!!" Could you imagine, a whole class of 5 year olds puking on the first day of Kindergarten???? Luckily none of the other kids seemed to catch on. Poor kid though, I hope he's not scarred by that the rest of the year.. "Oh yeah, you know, Jimmy, that kid who PUKED on the first day of school?!"

Gunnar did come home a little disappointed. "They wanted me to be quiet and WORK!" Yeah, well, it's not a playdate honey, you're there to learn! I'm hoping that he'll catch on and start to look forward to the fun activities they'll do on a regular basis. He did mention a few things later in the day that he's excited about...so I'm optimistic.