Rice Family

BEFORE AFTER Like I said, I don't know if it was a good idea or not, but she is still really stinkin' cute.

E is now 1 year old. I can not beleive it. One. year. old. And he is wonderful as ever and adorable as ever, and is picking up on this walking thing pretty fast. What did we do for his birthday, you ask? (that being yesterday): CLinic Visit: 2 hours, DMV (to register car): 45 min (which is an all time record) and a touch of shopping. Then home for naps. That's the way we Rice's celebrate. oh yeah. have no fear, however, we will party hard on sunday at Granny's house. M also got her hair cut...by me...for the first time. I'm not sure it was a great idea, but fortunately for her she is super cute no matter what I may do to her :) PICS will be posted later - if I can get it to work. I'm at school right now so it can't happen at this moment. I am going crazy. Just to let you know.

So, we went to my cousin's daughter's (Charlotte) 3rd birthday party on sunday at Pump it up - a place with inflatables you can play on, slide down, and in general go crazy. It was fun for everybody and then J decided he and I should race eachother through the obstacle course. Well, I was well on my way to beating him through it when I got over the FIRST hump...at which point I sprained (or strained, I'm not sure) my ankle. It hurt like hell right away and then the pain kinda went away and I felt like I was being a baby. But then, later that night, despite the icepack and elevated foot, it hurt even worse. I could hardly walk on it. In the middle of the night I had to go to the bathroom and I had to crawl - it was that bad (and embarrassing, I'm not sure why I'm telling you except to explain HOW bad it hurt). The next day I couldn't walk on it, and THANK GOD Justi lives with me and was willing to help me out. She took care of M, E and me all day. She...

We've been busy lately...and then again not. It is life and that's all there is to it. Classes are going well so far - it's only been a week, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can get all A's despite that 3 of my classes are online. E is crawling everywhere, and walking while holding on to whatever he can grab - even if that means depantsing me. M gave up yesterday and didn't want to clean up her mess from playing one of her games, even though I told her if I had to pick it up it was going in the garbage (a tactic that usually gets her to pick up). She responded with: "It's ok mom. I don't want to pick it up. It's ok if you throw it away - I won't cry this time." So in the garbage it went. I'm constantly picking up garbage from Sugar chewing up dog toys so that E doesn't chew it after her; I often miss peices and later find them in his mouth. Last night at dinner J and I were discussing (not quite fighting) somethin...

Reading Justi's blog made me realize that my blog was stuck in autumn, and so I changed it. Not that this background is wintery, but it is not autumn. It is new and refreshing and that is all I needed. We went swimming today at the Y and so far it has been quite the debacle to conclude. I have not yet mastered how to get both kids and myself showered and dressed, without E crawling all over the nasty floors. Justi has definately been the saving factor so far, but even that did not prevent E from leaving with moist clothes, me with wet pant legs, and all of us leaving with dripping hair. Sooner or later, we will get it down. Also, to add to the list of things J can not make last (mainly being jeans- that, if we're lucky, will last 1 month) are his boots. He wears out everything in ridiculous ways. It wasn't too long ago that one pair of his sneakers tore along the sole; now his work boots came apart along the sole at the toe. He came home and showed me his gaping boo...

It would seem to me that children are best at recording and REPEATING the worst of you. Why it can't be the good things you say and teach them is beyond me. As many of you may know, on Christmas Eve (rather technically it was Christmas morning - 1:30 am to be precise) we got stuck in a snow drift. This could be passed of as bad luck, but I feel compelled to point out that the reason we got stuck in said snow drift is because my dear hubby thinks nothing will ever go wrong for him -but it always seems to catch up with him. So, yes, we were running wrecklessly through snow drifts, and they got the better of us. I was angry ( it was definately an "I told you so momement") and apparently I voiced it, despite my desperate attempts to not say "I told you so", I must have expressed myself clearly in any case: We were shopping around Gander Mountain (a sports store) and we got E and M in one of those carts that has a car attached on the front so they could entertai...