Spurs, thistles and cockelburrs (sp?)????

Gosh, I suck as a mom when it comes to choking hazards. I really don't freak out too much about what Teague eats or puts in his mouth. Like dirt, he eats it a lot. Seriously, unless we have just used "round up" or some other weed killer on the ground, does it really matter if Teague eats the dirt? I mean dirt really never killed anyone, right???!!! Well last night my parents stopped over on their way home after their trip to Ireland. Teague was so freakin' happy to see them. He was just hamming it up for them. Well as they are getting ready to leave Teague is just drooling and crying (and he is not the type of baby to cry unless he is TIRED and ready for bed). He kept chewing on something and then crying - like BAWLING. We were all relatively concerned, but like most things in his mouth I just kept saying "ah, he will chew it up and swallow whatever is bothering him". Well after 15 minutes of this nonsense Ryan finally sees something in his mouth and after wrestling him down and putting him in a choke hold he scoops out a spur/thistle/cockelburr from his mouth!!! Those suckers hurt when I get one on my sock and it barely touches my skin and now my kid was chewing on one! No wonder he was carrying on like death! As soon as we got it out, he acted like normal - like nothing ever happened. What a weird-o. I do feel bad telling everyone - "oh he will be fine. Just let him be." Can you imagine that thing going through his tiny little butt?! Okay, I know - you really didn't want to picture that. But still!

The weather is amazing!! YIPPEE!! FINALLY. It is my first official Mother's Day. We aren't planning to do much. Church, brunch and relaxing. I already know what I will get from Ryan/Teague and I already bought some flowers and planters for them - and spent a lot of money. But I am such a good mom (aside from the semi-choking incident) that I deserve it. At least that is what I tell myself.

Have a great weekend!

Happy Birthday to Dada!

Ryan is still such a young pup, not even 30 yet. We had a low key evening on Friday to celebrate his birthday and just had the Bayer's over for dinner. Teague and I gave Ryan a couple of gifts - I won't mention what they were here because I don't want to embarrass him and have you question his masculinity. You will have to ask him if you want to know.

Mmmmm, yummy! Daddy's Birthday Cake!

Here is Chase making his best "scary" face for the camera. Yikes, don't strangle poor Teague!

Teague is becoming a total Daddy's boy. He only says dada constantly. It's almost annoying. Okay, well truly I am just jealous. We say to him "Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma" and he smiles and says "dada". Even when I mouth "mama" he outright says to me "dada" and laughs. I told Ryan all I wanted for mother's day was for him to say mama. So we practice and practice and he still says every babble word possible, but when prompted it's always "dada". (I put a short video clip of this on the side bar - it's not as clearly stated as he usually says it, but you will get the picture)! He can just keep it up as far as I am concerned and so when he wants something he will just scream for dada and Ryan can go runnin'. Even today when Ryan's parents were over helping us with some spring projects (i.e. transplanting those 500 trees we planted when we bought the land - what a job); Teague stood at the screen door, banging on it yelling "dada dada dada" and then smiling if Ryan turned around to look at him. What a stinker!

Things on the job front continue to get interesting. I am surprisingly really at peace with whatever happens. I think part of it for me is just that I know I have no say in it and it is a fight between the administration (who wants to keep me 1.0 FTE and the union who is battling for a social worker with more seniority to take over my position - LUDACRIS!). Anyway, the union representative came to see me on Friday and said that with my current license I can do special education testing. So what the union is planning to do is if the social worker who was placed on leave asks for a hearing to take my job - then an arbitrator would hear both sides (the administration and the union). The union will present that I am a Guidance Counselor .4 FTE per day and a special education tester .6 per day and the social worker will take the .6 guidance position and it will be named a social work position. This all leads to the question of will I have two different offices then? I mean seriously, so when I am working as a special education tester and a kid comes to my office with a question on financial aid, credits, classes, etc. - do I have to have a sign on the door that says "Guidance Counselor not in, Special Education tester in"?! As if I can only be a Guidance Counselor .4 FTE per day?! Oh well, the saga continues.

Well the good news is that the weather seems to finally be in our favor. The cement slab was laid last week and tomorrow they will start construction on the new garage! Hooray! Now if we can just get a consistent amount of warm weather, maybe we will actually get the swimming pool in this spring/summer!

Have a good week.

Teague's 9 Month Professional Pictures

Here are just 3 of the professional pictures we had taken of Teague for his 9 month bday. He did so well, smiled and laughed every time the flash went off! The lady commented that usually the babies/toddlers will cry because the flash scares them. Not my kid, he apparently thinks the world is hilarious. I was a little skeptical of how he would do with pictures - I thought he would crawl all over like a monkey and try to tear up the place, but he was really good and very fascinated by the whole process! So these pictures were taken about 3 weeks ago. Oh, at his 9 month check up he was 30.5" (off the charts) and 24 pounds (90th percentile). So he continues to grow and amaze us! We about peed our pants laughing when Grandma (Esther) said Teague is already almost half of her height!

"Vegas, Baby!": Prom 2008

Yes, it's true - the students still think we are the coolest teachers at Melrose HS, so we were once again the prom advisors this year. Okay, so truthfully they don't have a decision in whether we are the advisors or not, but it makes us sound really important. This is my fifth year doing it. It's pretty fun, but it's a lot of work for one evening. This year it should have been called winter formal instead of prom as we had a blizzard going on Saturday morning and afternoon. People were calling asking if we were going to cancel prom. Ryan's response (to me - not to the callers): "...last time I checked prom was an inside, optional event. We could get 10 more inches of snow and we STILL would not call it off." The reason for the sarcasm: we seriously are given about 5 hours to set up in the elementary gym and cafeteria. If we had to go and tear down all those quality cardboard structures, we would have to re-order everything (thus costing us a ton more) and then set it all up again on a weekend that worked for everyone. Not going to happen. So luckily the snow tapered off and the roads were good enough and everyone made it! Teague stayed home on Saturday night with Nana and Papa. Many of the girls were asking if they could take Teague as their prom date, but I said he is MUCH too young to date. The only girl he cares most about right now is his mama and I am going to keep it that way for as long as I can because I know there will come a day when I just don't rate anymore. The kids picked "Las Vegas" for decorations and we needed to come up with a theme and Ryan gave them the grand idea of "Vegas, Baby!" and it stuck! Ryan was dealing blackjack, which was a hit - with no real gambling going on of course. He complained that his shoulder and "rotater cuff" hurt afterwards. At least I don't have to worry about him quitting his job to go work on the reservation as a blackjack dealer. So all in all it was a great evening and the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves. I forgot to take some pictures of the cafeteria, only the gym. Here are some pictures...

Progressive Dinner

We had a great weekend. The weather was semi-decent and we had a good time with some of our closest friends! We had a progressive dinner. We started at our house with appetizers, moved onto Sartell to the Wahlin's for dinner, moved to the Woods' for dessert and ended at the Sand's for after dinner cocktails and entertainment. Unfortunately our friends the Dukowitz's were supposed to join us and bring their Rockband with (the only reason we invited them - no just kidding Jaci/Cory; kind of). Anyway, it was a good time with lots of wine, beer and champagne enjoyed by everyone. It was kind of nice to do something different than meet up at a restaurant. And it gave them all an excuse to come "all the way" to Melrose!!

Teague went to Grandma and Grandpa's and we joined him in an overnight visit there. He was great. I always get a little nervous when we sleep somewhere else because he can be a pain, but he did awesome.

Here we are (towards the end of the night!):