Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Walkin the Walk

I'm officially putting 9/28/2009 as Madison's first real steps. She has been walking from person to person for a while now, but starting on Monday, she has preferred walking to crawling. She still crawls but is getting more and more confident with her walking skills. I catch her walking from place to place all the time now. Or walking to a toy to pick it up and stand back up again. I'm so proud of my baby!!! Look at her go!!

Please excuse the nakedness of my children in this video. I swear my kids are always naked. Do you get to the point in your day that the clothes go off and on so much that they end up just staying off when you are at home? Or am I the only one? Most of the time my girls walk around with tops and no pants. Madi more than Riley but whatever, that's totally off subject.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Adventure With the Rush Family

I want you to sit back and enjoy this short story based on true events.


Chapter 1: The Beginning

Mrs. Rush was sitting at her computer one day when she received an email from her sister in law in Oregon. It read, "We're having a surprise party for Joy (Mr. Rush's mother) in September, do you think you guys can make it?" Mrs. Rush instantly wrote back, "Of course!! We can't wait, count us in, can I do anything to help?" A few more emails and phone calls back and forth and Mrs. Rush was to make the cake for the party. How does one make a cake for a party 16 hours away? Why, they drive up of course with all of their cake decorating things, and their two small children. Riley, who is two and a half and Madison (sometimes referred to as Baby, or Madi) 11 months.


A month passes by and Joy comes to visit the Rush's in California. We have a great visit. Joy is very upset because she's turning 60 and nobody will be there for her birthday, not even her husband. She asks if the Rush's can come up. Mrs. Rush quickly says, "No, we can't. Too expensive, but you can call me and we can have a glass of wine together over the phone." Because that's better than actually being there right? Mrs. Rush quickly wipes her brow, that was close.

Three days before the trip, Mrs. Rush starts preparing for the trip. The 16 hour trip with two small children (sigh..."Why are we not flying, Mrs. Rush thinks to herself.). Mrs. Rush has much to do, pack for four people, grocery shop, Target shop, cake shop, cake pack, clean house, do laundry, work, get the car cleaned, and all that goes along with raising small children.

Mr. and Mrs. Rush discuss when to leave for this trip, what will be easiest on the girls? They decide to leave by 8:00 Wednesday night. Maybe driving through the night will be best, the girls sleep at night, it should be good. Oops, Mr. and Mrs. Rush forgot that they too sleep at night. Oh well, that's how it happens. Sigh..."Why are we not flying?" Mrs. Rush thinks to herself.


Chapter 2: The Drive
The day of the trip, Mrs. Rush awakes by alarm clock by 5:00 am. She has much to do today. Finish packing, clean the house, clean the car, pack the car, pack the food, make the sandwiches, take a shot of tequila, bathe the children, bake the cakes, bathe Mr. Rush, and take a shower herself, oh yes, and work a minimum of 6 hours. All to get ready for the 16 hour trip. Sigh..."Why are we not flying? Mrs. Rush thinks to herself. After her 6 hours of work, an unexpected 3 more hours come flying her way, with an accounting emergency. "Never heard of one?" you ask? They do exist, they do, and they happen at the best of times. So Mrs. Rush is now 3 hours behind schedule. A little panic kicks in. "We have to be in the car by 8:00, that is the latest the girls go to sleep, if we are any later, our entire plan will be ruined." Mrs. Rush thinks to herself. She then goes into her Super Mom, super hero, flash mode and runs around the house frantically to make sure they are ready. Mr. Rush actually makes it home by 6:00 Wednesday night, which worked out perfectly for Mrs. Rush. They surprisingly get everything done, and by 8:05 pm, they pull out of the drive.

Riley is very excited to be sleeping in the car. Mrs. Rush did a good job of convincing Riley that it will be so much fun to sleep in the car. Mrs. Rush decided that she'd start the drive. They get gas. After getting gas Mr. Rush told Mrs. Rush that she could not eat her sandwich until they were really on the road. Mrs. Rush said, "Screw you, I'm starving, I'll eat it now." She finishes her sandwich at the red light before she even gets on the freeway, and says, "Boo ya," to Mr. Rush. They make a stop at the office to drop off work and payrolls, and they are back in the car and off by 8:54 pm.

9:30 pm. The children are sleeping, Mr. Rush is drifting off to sleep, Mrs. Rush is driving. "Why are we not flying?" She thinks to herself, "only 15.5 hours left. All is well, the first hour was the hardest, the second she spent downing cherry diet cokes and head banging to music. The third hour, she had had enough soda and decided she should switch to coffee. Conveniently, there is a Starbucks, but, after further review, it's closed. She settles for McDonalds coffee. "Ouch," she says as she burns her tongue and ruins any tasting she'll do for the next couple of days. The girls woke up during the stop but were able to go back to sleep. She drives for 2.5 more hours and her and Mr. Rush switch.

Mrs. Rush settles in for a few hours rest, when, Riley and Madi both wake up. Beautiful. "Stop, Baby, stop!!!!!!!" Riley screams at the top of her lungs. Apparently, Baby was screaming too loud and Riley didn't like it. This goes off and on for 1.5 hours. Riley keeps telling Mr. and Mrs. Rush that she wants to go home to go night night. Beautiful. To make what was a very long car ride shorter, Mr. and Mrs. Rush make a few more stops, wonder once again why they didn't fly, eat some breakfast, down more caffeine then they ever thought was possible, and finally show up at Melanie and Jared's house at 1:00 pm Thursday. Not bad, Mrs. Rush thinks after she gets out of the car with maybe 30 minutes of sleep in almost 24 hours.





Chapter 3: The Visit

Riley was not herself for the entire visit. She was an alien being. Little did Mr. and Mrs. Rush know, she had a small stomach flu. Nice. Mr. and Mrs. Rush visited with Melanie, and Jared and Grand Dad came home on Friday in the afternoon (early from hunting) to spend time with the Rush's. Mrs. Rush spent Thursday night crumb coating her cakes and making chocolate mousse filling and most of Friday decorating her cakes. She finished by 6:00 pm Friday, just in time for dinner and bedtime routine for the girls.






Saturday, the big day. The party was at 1:00, all guests were to show up by 12:30. Joy still had no clue that anyone was there for her birthday. Melanie told Joy she was taking her to lunch and to make another long story short, everyone surprised her. She was shocked. Jared had Mr. and Mrs. Rush be a second surprise as to hopefully make his mother pee her pants. Mrs. Rush had her money down on Joy needing new pants after the surprise. Joy was so thrilled, there are no words to describe how she felt that day, which is good, because that makes this short story even shorter.











Saturday night, Melanie made everyone Taco Soup and they all visited. Mrs. Rush packed everything back up while everyone visited and then Mr. Rush packed the car back up to head over to Nana (Joy) and Grand Dad's house for the night. They visited more there and Mrs. Rush had a glass of wine with Nana. They discussed how it was much nicer to have a glass of wine in person than over the phone. They laughed. They are funny people.






Chapter 4: The Drive...home

5:00 am. Sunday morning. Mr. and Mrs. Rush pack sleeping children up into the car. They say their good byes. The children wake up. They fall back to sleep after getting gas and ice and coffee for Mr. and Mrs. Rush. The caffeine party continues. About an hour into the trip home, Riley gets car sick. Yes, this means that Mrs. Rush was able to catch most of Riley's vomit in a bundle of baby wipes before it went splattering onto the back of Mr. Rush's seat. Mrs. Rush gets five points. About three hours in, the family of four stop because they are afraid that Riley might be getting sick again. They all get out, Mrs. Rush changes the children's clothes, Baby's diaper, and they get into a fight with a bee. After a very heated battle between Mr. Rush and the bee, the Rush's re-enter the vehicle and start driving again. Mr. Rush tells Mrs. Rush, "we are almost a quarter of a way done." This gives Mrs. Rush the idea to treat the trip home like a football game. By quarters. She also decides that it would be fun to keep score. The one with the most points wins.

Scoring:

A child falling asleep: +5 points each
A child throwing a fit: -5 to - 10 points depending on the severity of the fit
Anything that adds more hours onto the trip: -5 points
Anything that makes the trip easier: +5 points

The players:

Mr. Rush and Mrs. Rush (they play as a team)
Riley
Madison, aka Madi, aka Baby
the Bee

The easiest way to explain the drive home would be with the scores of all players. Riley's entire body hurt the whole way home, Madi was pretty much an angel, Mr. Rush was pretty good. Mrs. Rush ended up looking like a nightmare, and the bee, he didn't stick with the family for long.

The final scores:

Madison was the winner with... +30 points
Riley was the loser with... -1,560 points
Mr. and Mrs. Rush ended with ... +15 points
The Bee ended with... +10 points

The moral of the story: Never, I repeat, never go on a road trip that is 16 hours long with two small children....Ever, unless you want to be crazy.


THE END


Where did the Rush's go last weekend? Taking guesses now. Full post, later.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Eleven, count 'em, Eleven Months Old

This past Saturday, Madi turned 11 months. I can't believe it's almost been a year. She's getting so big, so fast! She's doing a lot too!!




The most important thing that she's doing is SLEEPING!!! Can you believe it? After 10 and a half months of screaming, crazy baby, we have this kid that's sleeping from 6:00, 7:00, or 8:00 until 8:30, sometimes 9:30 en la manana!!!! Mama is so totally happy. She's been doing this for about two weeks now. The first three days that she did it, Tim and I didn't talk about it. We thought that if we talked about it, it wouldn't happen anymore. Well, it's happening all right, yay!! On top of the big sleep, she's taking two other 1.5 - 2.5 hour naps during the day. The only time I have a problem is if she poops. Think she's making up for lost sleeping time? I hope it lasts forever!!



She's also doing a lot of "talking". If I hold a phone up, she says, "talk." Her other list of words is, Mama, Dada, Nigh, nigh, Hi, and something that sounds like all done, she says that when she's done eating. If I ask her to say something she will concentrate on my mouth and make some kind of a sound that is close to what I am saying. It's weird because all Riley was doing at this age was the sign language and didn't make a peep unless she was crying. Kids are all so different, it's amazing! We decided not to teach Madison sign language, I figured since she's so vocal and shows a lot of interest in talking that there really is no need for it.





She's not quite walking yet, but the problem is that she thinks she can. She will do a four or five step walk from one piece of furniture to the next, and eleven steps is her longest from person to person. Her favorite person to walk to is Riley. That makes me very nervous!!! She also will stand from the sitting position a lot, she's so proud of herself when she does this! A few times today she's just started walking to nothing from the standing position so I bet by next week I might be able to say we've got a walker!




Other fun things she's doing, is pointing 9/2, blowing kisses (not perfectly) 9/11, giving real kisses 9/15, and dancing!! She's such a little cutie. She still loves to eat and will pretty much eat whatever I give her and that is so nice for me. She loves the bath but yells at me more than I yell at her because I'm constantly telling her no. The girl thinks that I'm going to give up first. She just wants to stand in the tub and that ain't happenin'! She also throws a major fit whenever I put the gate up for the stairs. If it was up to her, she'd be crawling up there every five minutes. She throws herself onto the ground and screams, I should really get that on video, it's pretty funny.

Blowing kisses...



So that's about it for now, oh yeah, two more teeth up top 9/4 and 9/9, those came in with no fussing.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Via Text Message

I've been receiving picture text messages from Mama and Papa since they've been in Hawaii and I thought I'd share some of them with you guys. I know every time I get one of these pictures, I feel like stopping what I'm doing to sit in a lawn chair and put an umbrella in a glass of wine/beer and imagine that I'm there. It looks so beautiful and I am one of the unfortunate people that have never been. The hubby lived there for a while, even Sean has spent a month there, I always feel so left out when they all start talking about it. Whatev.
My Mom and Dad are the hardest working people that I know and they totally deserve this break from craziness. Love you both, have a great time and we'll see you bright and early for work next Monday morning!!!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Courtesy Crack

I just want to give a big thank you to my hubby. He is so handy. I never new how nice it would be to have such a handy hubby until we bought our house. He has saved us so much money. Our garbage disposal broke this week and he installed our new one for us. You know, every time he takes on a project like this, I have visions of Tim the Tool Man Taylor and he'll get done with installing and turn it on and you know, stuff will come flying out everywhere. Well, we have yet to have anything like that happen. It works great and I love it, thanks babe! I asked him for a little courtesy crack because all good plumbers show a little bit of crack when they do a job. He didn't disappoint...


Don't worry, I fuzzed out the crack, crack is only cute when it's on babies, not grown men.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Gwamom's House and Matching Shirts

Apparently, my daughter is obsessed with her Gwamom. Every five minutes she wants to go to Gwamom's house. So yesterday, Riley is playing with her legos when she informs me that she made Gwamom's house. Here it is:




Madison told me that she made a cookie:

and it tasted really good.


Went to Children's Place on Sunday. You know, for me, that place is hit and miss. Sometimes I love what they have and other times I'm so disappointed. This was a kind of disappointed trip but I managed to find a few things that I liked for the girls. I got them these "matching" shirts that say, "Little/Big sisters are the coolest!" So cute. Of course when I showed them to Tim he informed me that I did what I said I would never do, which is put my girls in matching outfits. To be honest, I don't think I ever said that, I can't seem to recall...




I asked Riley to put her arm around Madison, this is what I got. I think this is what pictures with Santa will look like when the girls think they are too old for him.



Madison took over the photo shoot.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Thank You Mom + A Teaser

First off, I want to say that I have all of my windows open this morning and it feels amazing! I hope it stays like this all day long.

With my Grandma moving into my Mom's house, I've found some pretty neat stuff at my house. I just received a sofa on Friday for my bonus room and my Mom brought me over a little table for my master. I've been searching for two pieces for my bedroom that I have not found yet. I don't have a million dollars to spend so I'm trying to find some pieces that I can paint or am saving up for one in particular that is way too expensive. Anyway, I bought my bedding before we moved into our house and since then, I've changed the colors I want in our room. Originally I wanted browns, but, blah, that's boring. So I've decided to go black, white, and aqua. My Mom had some curtains from when she redid her bedroom (hers is gorgeous in aqua and chocolate brown, so soothing). My Mom likes to buy things, and then not return them, so she gave me these pretty aqua curtains and conveniently she had three panels. Perfect for my bedroom! Thank you so much Mom, I love them!!! I went to Target yesterday for some rods and I love the way they turned out. My bedroom is far from completion but, it's getting there. Here's a little teaser of what's been done so far.

Here is the little Popsicle table my Mom brought over on Friday, it's perfect for right now because I'm slowly phasing out the brown. Once I find the bedding that I like, it's all going bye bye, but I love the way this looks right now!


The one panel we hung in the bathroom, I still need to fix this so don't judge it just yet.


The curtains in the bedroom.



Sorry, just realized that my foot is in this picture and that I desperately need a pedi.


I also realized that I have not posted any pics of the girls' bedrooms. They both are not yet complete, I still have to paint their names and put chair rail in Riley's room and a few other things, but when I get my new camera, I'll post their rooms too.

Friday, September 11, 2009

AAAAARGH!!!!!

This post was going to be a happy post until this morning. I just received my new camera yesterday and it is awesome. It's the same one that my Mom and bro have that I've been drooling over for months. So yesterday, my battery charged just as Madi woke up, PERFECT!!! A cute subject to pose for my newly found photography "skills." This camera is awesome, and so clear. I just love it. Until this morning. Aaargh!!!! I'm snapping pictures of the girls when my camera lights up this warning: !Error. Press shutter release button again. So I do, same warning. Grab my book. Instructions: Call the jack #$$ at Nikon technical support. Not a big deal. Call. Wait. Wait. Wait. WAIT - STOP THE DAMN MUSIC AND GIVE ME A LIVE PERSON PLEASE!!!! Excuse the French. Hi, my name is jack #$$ how can I assist you. I mean, drive you crazy, I mean, treat you like an idiot, I mean why am I in technical support if I don't like talking to people, I mean, I have issues and really shouldn't even have a job, I mean, what do you want lady, I don't have all day? So fun, just what I need to start my morning. A Jack #$$. So he goes through some procedures with an accent that is very hard for me to understand which is even more frustrating then the fact that I just spent a ton of money on a product that really shouldn't break within 24 hours of receiving it. Well, we try both lenses and he comes to the conclusion that it's in the body and I need to return it for a working product. GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you MR JACK #$$ for ruining my morning and for telling me that now in my "spare" time I have to go to the store to return something I haven't even had for 24 hours. Whatev.

Before it broke, I was having so much fun just playing around with it. I'm posting a lot because who knows when I'll be back up and running. I don't think I can go back to my old camera with having a taste of the new one. It's just not the same. I haven't edited these or anything but it was so nice to just be able to click and get the picture I wanted, not the delayed two second version. I'm really going to enjoy this camera when I get one that actually WORKS!!!!!

 

Me

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I'm Kristi, the wife of one very lucky and handsome husband, and mother to two beautiful little girls. I'm honest and sarcastic, funny and easy going. I love to eat and love to hate that I love butter. And wine. And did I mention butter? I'm always learning new things, happy to lend a hand, and love my life. This is a blog of my family and the day to day crazy that we call Rush Hour. I hope while you are here that you enjoy yourself and come back often!

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The Rush Family

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