Where's Basil?

We watched Pat and Sarah's dog's this weekend and we probably had more fun than what would be considered normal with their dog Basil. This dog was either burrowed in a blanket or under your feet. There really was no inbetween. But with three other dogs and three kids, I would be in hiding too! So we had some fun with pictures from our dog weekend. This may not be everyone's idea of an interesting post, but that's okay, this one is For Sarah.



Please Pray for the Burke family, Pat's back is in a bad way and Sarah has had a rough month with both of her grandma's passing, so I am sure extra prayers would be appreciated.

Only 362 More Days

We had a happy St. Patrick's Day. I hope all of you did as well. St. Pat's day in our family ranks right up there with Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving! I am not sure if it is because we love being Irish or because we love beer. Probably a combination of both. Whatever the reason, the 17th of March is a pretty fun day for the ol' Burke Clan. Lately we have something of a tradition to go downtown to the Embassy. They open their banquet hall and have an Irish band and Irish dancers. It is really kid friendly, which is great, I don't know many other places on St. Patrick's day where one can go with their 4 year old, 3 year old and 5 month old and still get a beer and have a nice time. Each of the other kids have been to a bar on St. Patrick's day, but it doesn't provide quite the same atmosphere. Mostly it is just, "You have a baby... in a bar!?!?" Anyway, we had an awesome time. A lot of our family and friends came out with us to celebrate.
Kelly came over in the morning and we got ready together, which is also becoming something of a tradition. Always a good time.

Can't you tell how excited Ronni is. Normally she is really happy to get her picture taken, not today, but that is okay, Peyton's smile more than makes up for hers.
The kids had a great time on the dance floor. Bethany and Emma were able to join us. Madeleine and Leah were a bit under the weather, so unfortunately Mandie had to stay home, but at least the older girls were able to come. It just wouldn't have been St. Patrick's Day without a DeVries showing!
My friend Sadie and her kids, Creighton, Addyson and Tyson were able to join us as well. They are becoming regular members of the family, joining us for a lot of our family functions. It is nice to have such awesome friends. My parents also have great friends that have become members of our family, Curly and Julie. I can easily see Sadie and Nate in the role of Curly and Julie. We have it even better because they don't drink so when all of our kids are older and we go out we will have a built in designated driver. Me with Sadie and my mom with Julie. Curly, Tim and Nate weren't able to come to the Embassy, they had to do something called work, not sure what that is on St. Patrick's day, but oh well. Curly and Tim joined us later at my mom and dad's. We had corned beef and cabbage and beef stew. It was a great spread that my mom put together. She is a pretty awesome lady! Oh yeah, did I mention how much Creighton loves Kaela, but then again, what's not to love (watch out Mitch). She was a blast on St. Patrick's day. As well as one of her best friends, Jaci. (Julie's daughter, can you see the trend?) She held Felicity for a long time and I really appreciated that. Always nice to get a break!Two of my awesome aunts were there too,Tricia and Ann, they are so much fun, I just love getting to spend St. Patrick's day with so much of my family. My uncle Bernie was there in person for only a little while, but in spirit the whole day. We made it to a bar later in the day and I actually had a complete stranger ask me if I we knew Bernie Burke. Strange.

We were able to get out on the dance floor for our annual tribute to my Grandma Burke. Here we are dancing to Danny Boy. Later at Mom and Dad's we all joined in singing some Irish songs, our cousin Matt was there and he was pretty awesome. I actually sang Danny Boy- Mandie you are not allowed to miss St. Patrick's Day again! Let's just put it this way, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, but for a whole different reason!! All in all it was a great time, and I can't wait to do it again. Only 362 more days!

Pictures

After looking at the pictures from Grandma's house I could tell that I didn't have my blog in mind when I was there. There is not really many blog worthy pictures, but I will post what I have for memory's sake. I suppose the longer I blog the better I will be about taking more pictures. My mother had some good ones, but who knows when she will ever upload them and send them my way. (Maybe a little faster now that I have called her out! : )
This first picture is of Felicity and Grandma, this isn't the first time they have met, but it is the first time Grandma got to hold her I think, so that was pretty sweet.

This picture is of Grandma's orange tree. She is trying to see how big her fruit can get, I think it is just cool she could get the plant to fruit at all. I can guarantee you that if it was at my house the plant would die before it would even leaf. Although looking at all of grandma's plants it makes me want to have a greener thumb. They were pretty cool!

On the Road Again

So we are headed back to our home, and I am blogging from the road. My parents can get wireless anywhere, it is pretty cool. All in all, we had a great weekend! I worked on some mini-offices that a friend introduced me to. I got both Ronni and Peyton's done, so I will post a picture of those at another time. My grandma was awesome. She looks so good, it was fun listening to all the stories she has. Always entertaining.
I went to church with my Aunt Paula and Uncle Brian on saturday with no kids. It was amazing. Now I love having my kids at church too, don't get me wrong. I think they do a great job at Mass, for the most part, and I really have no true complaints, but it was really nice to get a break and I was really in tune with everything the Priest was talking about. I got over the cowboy boots and the fact he looks like Matthew Brodderick, after about six times of going to church there, so I was locked in. The only thing that distracted me were the older people in front of me. Anyway, we got through Mass without anyone getting hurt. The old lady with the cane made it to communion and back okay. I don't know why they worry me, but I just watch. Anyway, I happened to be keyed in on the old lady with the cane when we were leaving she mentioned something about St. Patrick's day and green beer. I had to chuckle a little bit. I told my aunt Paula and she said, you think that is bad, she is the person that drives grandma around! She drives grandma? She could hardly walk, I will just reiterate my earlier comment, Grandma looks awesome! (I guess the old lady pulls right up on the side walk next to the doors and grandma gets out to help her into the church when they go to sew, pretty funny!)

The rest of the night we spent eating pizza and watching basketball (ames won and I am happy to say that that was the first and last time I will be rooting for anyone with a "cyclone" in its name) It was a really fun weekend and just what the doctor ordered. The kids had a blast! We went on a walk, seeing my cousin Kimmy's old house and we played at the park. It was really neat watching the kids play with the toys I played with in my youth. Also, to pass on the love of grandma's house is just too priceless. At the end of the day, I told Ronni she needed to come downstairs and get ready to leave otherwise papa would leave without her. She just shouted down, "That's okay, I want to stay here!" Like I didn't see that one coming, but I have to say I don't blame her. I remember when I was younger counting out exactly how many nights we were going to get to stay there and being so sad when it was the last day and we didn't have any nights left. To this day, everytime I go I wish I had just one more day. I don't know why we don't go more often.

So now we are on our way home. We are looking forward to going home. Tim spent the weekend working on projects around the house. I told him not to tell me what he was doing because I didn't want to obsess over it, so now I get to go home and play the "can you guess all the things I did while you were out" game.

I hope everyone else had a great weekend and got to enjoy this weather! I can't wait for spring, I saw my first robin walking to church saturday night so I know it is getting close! It can't come fast enough!

The Other Side of the Coin

So it is funny, in life, how things have a domino effect. It really is true, I have noticed, that things just kind of take care of themselves. For instance, I had three crying kids this morning, and was lamenting life because of it. But, I had three crying kids because I was on the computer without giving them anything to do, what can I really expect. Fast forward, it is now lunch time, I don't want to cook lunch because my kitchen is a disaster, but if I don't I will only continue to be on the computer while my three kids are screaming while I am lamenting my life. You get the picture. In anycase, insert motivation, sometimes all it takes is just a spark. I got two sparks, one a poopy diaper, even I am not that lazy. Two, Tim calls to say he will be home in fifteen minutes for lunch. Okay, looks like I am going to have to get off the computer afterall. So I get up to make lunch, which means I have to do a bit of cleaning to make that possible. I feed my husband and my kids which makes everyone happy because my kids are no longer driving me nuts and my husband didn't have to starve today. Yes! And lo and behold when I get done, my kitchen is almost clean. Next, while my children are eating, rather slowly but I don't care, I decide to start packing, I realize that half the mess of my house is laundry that I have folded and put in baskets but have yet to put away. Well I just packed my kids clothes from the baskets and basically killed two birds with one stone. Now virtually all of my laundry is now put away and lunch is done. Which means, NAPTIME!!! So I put Peyton to bed, Ronni on the couch and Felicity lays down in the pack and play. All of a sudden my life isn't nearly as crazy, I posted some pictures on a previous post, I am almost completely packed for grandma's house and my house has an hour worth of work left before it is totally clean. Hmm. Now I am thinking I may just want to take all three kids to target, kmart and a fish fry. Talk about no happy medium. What can I say, I am a glutton for punishment. Welcome to the Rampage.

To Grandmother's House We Go

Life has been a little crazy around here lately, and when I say crazy, I mean the really overwhelming, when can mommy ever get a break-- kind of crazy. So we are leaving for a weekend. Which is good and bad. Good because mommy gets a break, going to grandma's is relaxing for me and something new and exciting for the kids. The kids will have a new atmosphere to get used to and new toys to play with, I am sure they will get bored and start acting up, but that will take a bit of time, right? Plus my mom and dad are going with me, so that should be fun. It is bad because, all good things come with a price. For me that price is packing and getting ready to go to grandma's. I can't just leave my house a complete and total disaster, which is it's current state right now. My kids' clothes won't pack themselves, and my kids themselves aren't really cooperating with the whole, mommy doesn't want to hear you cry right now, mood I am in. So what am I doing, blogging to appease my sister, while at any given time one or more kids are screaming, the dogs are barking and my house is still messy and my kids clothes are still not packed. Oh the life I am in... The funny thing is, it would only take about an ounce of effort to right this ship, but yet I still can't seem to muster that energy. The pain of being a lazy bones... I'm working on this, some days are just harder than others.

Anyway,I'll post some pictures so this post isn't just a ventfest....
Ronni was hamming it up for the camera once again, this was like the third shot, she decided she liked her smile in this one. This girl is absolutley adorable right now, I don't know why I am having such a hard time. She has a really good understanding of what her body is telling her to do and what her mommy wants her to do, and understands why there is a consequence when she listens to her body over her mom. In fact just yesterday I heard her telling her cousin that she wasn't making a good choice and asked her to stop listening to her body. It was so funny.


Peyton on the other hand is a handful. He understands what listening to his body means, too a typical conversation would go like this: Mommy- Peyton clean up your toys. P- doesn't listen and continues to play, M- Peyton what is your body telling you to do, P- Play with my toys, M- What is mommy telling you to do, P- clean up my toys, M- Who are you going to listen to? P- My body. Go figure. No wonder he is driving me nuts right now! This picture Ronni actually took, she is my little photographer! Notice his first black eye. At this point in Ronni's life she had already had 5 black eyes. I tell people it was his consequence for listening to his body...
Felicity is getting really big as well. She is five months now and not rolling over. I figure it is a combination of her being really crabby most of the time (gas) two siblings and two dogs. She doesn't spend a whole lot of time on her tummy. Another thing we are working on...

Happy Belated Birthday

Okay, so we actually celebrated his birthday on the day, but I will just now finally blog about it over two weeks later, like I said, better late than never!
Grandpa and Grandma Loraditch kicked off the birthday celebration with the bomber jacket, pictured in a previous post. We get a comment everytime we go out now about that jacket, it is something special! Thanks again. Mitch and Kaela then got the ball rolling, literally, when they came over the Sunday before his birthday for an ice cream treat and a gift of their own. If Peyton makes it big in the majors, we'll owe you!
We try to make birthdays special in our house without a whole lot of to-do. This year we were going to through a birthday party for Peyton, but because we had our not party for the super bowl, we decided to lay low. So we invited just the granparents and aunts and uncles over for a birthday celebration. The local ones were able to come.

Daddy came home from work early so we could surprise the birthday boy with a his birthday gifts. We didn't really want a time where he sat down and everyone showered him with gifts, so we cleaned up the playroom and brought in the gifts that we got him, he was so excited.

Next Aunt Kelly came over and took Peyton out for a birthday surprise. It was very special to get to go somewhere all by himself. Not to mention all the things she spoiled him with.

Some of these balloons are still alive and kicking (and being fought over) at our house! Next Nana and Papa and Mandie and Matt and all the cousins came over. I made chicken tetrazini, something easy for a whole bunch of people. We all enjoyed our dinner and then Nana and Papa gave Peyton his gifts. A really cute hawkeye Jersey, some long underwear, a wallett and a truck just like his uncle Mark drives. They were great gifts and we are very appreciative.

Of course we couldn't forget the birthday spankin's. Papa couldn't quite figure out how to count to three, so he asked peyton to help him after quite a few attempts at giving more than three spankin's. So he asked Peyton, how old are you again? P-Three, Papa- Okay, then count to three for me, P- "Three". The whole room erupted in laughter! They totally thought Peyton was the smartest kid ever for starting at three. Papa didn't even spank him anymore. Little do they all know, Peyton just doesn't know how to count! Oh well, we'll have to take that up with his teacher...

After dinner we all enjoyed the highlight of the night... Banana Splits! I for one am not a big banana fan, but they were delicious. Peyton is not a big cake fan so we opted for a special Ice cream treat instead.

Everyone seemed to enjoy their banana split, but none as much as Tim!

Thanks to everyone who made Peyton's birthday special. You all were so nice and attentive to him, he really enjoyed turning three. The gifts were so not necessary, but we totally appreciate them. Happy Birthday Buddy, we love you. And speaking of Buddy, a final picture to close the post, Peyton dancing on his birthday to his favorite, Buddy Holly!