Last night I met a new friend. Let me preface this by saying I have made exactly ONE new friend in the last ten years. This makes number two. My Babycenter and Blogging friend Amanda , was having a conference in KC. We made plans to meet up. I felt a bit odd. Here I was making plans to meet someone I only knew from the Net. But Mark thought it was perfectly great and even said for me to stay out as long as I wanted. He said it was not as if I was meeting up with someone I saw often. Stay out and talk and have fun. So I did. I made plans to meet with Amanda. I knew we had a lot in common. Both from the board and from reading her blog. I knew she was someone who if she lived closer to me we could hang out. But I was a bit apprehensive. Here was someone who only knew me through the computer. So many what if's , right? Mark was actually the one who said I should meet with her, if only for a little while. So, I picked Amanda up at her hotel and off we went to Fooleries. Great place to

Here is a typical day here. Davis after his bath. Davis worn out after said bath and having an afternoon snack of yogurt. So worn out that he fell asleep with yogurt, though all eaten, and spoon still in hand. Emma busy doing her school work. A day in the life of me. Is it bedtime yet?

Things over here have been.....whoppy. That is a word I use when it feels like things are all over the place and chaos has broken out and I can not seem to regain any sense of normalcy. Whoppy. Now, I do thrive under a bit of chaos. I work better with noise and on a deadline and all of that. Always have. I do not, however, function well when it feels as if *I* or my feelings are all whoppy. And they have been for the last week. My husband has been doing a lot of changing over the last few months. In a positive way and it is both beautiful and annoying at the same time. Why? Because we (the kids and I) got used to a certain way around here. Now, it is being all stirred up and honestly, even though it is good, it is also hard. Mark is coming to the place I have prayed for for years now. In every way. My nature wants to then, instead of thanking God for that or telling him how great it is, push the other way. Nuts right? Mark is becoming the man I always wanted and honestly knew he was an

It is getting to that time of the year. While I love Christmas time, it in other ways breaks my heart. For most, Christmas is a magical time of the year. The time where you see beautiful lights and decorate a tree. The time where you get to spend time with your family and eat great food. For most, it is a time of the year where your cares seem far away and you look forward to a new year. Because you have something to look forward to. Me, being the overly sensitive person I am, has moments during this time of the year where I just cry. Why? Because there are little ones out there who do not have this experience. For whatever reason Christmas is not a time of joy and love for them. It is not magical. And it hurts me inside. So consider this my plea. If you are looking for a way to do something. Or if you have a few extra dollars you can spare. I have some suggestions. Be forewarned, some are religious. Only in that the organizations for which these projects are through are religious. If

Maybe I am the only one that is this way. But does anyone else ONLY use a certain cup for their coffee? I know Mark does. And I use my Mickey Mouse mug. Always. Unless we have company and then sometimes I do not. My mug is from my sister-in-law. She actually bought me a pink Minnie Mouse one and Mark the yellow Mickey Mouse one. I had them on a mug tree for a while. Then when my aunt came over and helped me fix up my house, we redid (or maybe just actually DID) the kitchen, that mug tree went away. I was using Mark's Mickey Mouse mug because it was the one that was out. The kitchen is blue and yellow. Mark uses a VW mug. We got if for having to wait when we were getting our Volkswagen Jetta wagon TDI. BEAUTIFUL car.....too bad we leased it and then decided to trade it in. Anyway, the car salesman taking care of us gave us some free stuff because our wait had been so long. This blue transparent mug was one of them. We got that car in 2003. Mark has used that mug for his coffee every

I was sending an e-mail to a friend. I was thinking of what life feels like at times and could not seem to come up with a good analogy. I was thinking along the lines of the when life hands you lemons type thing. But really, at times, life does not hand you something even as nice as a lemon. Sometimes life hands you a big pile of crap. Which is by far worse than lemons. So this is what I came up with. Be forewarned, I am crude. Honest in an off the wall way. And a touch crazy and neurotic. Sometimes it feels like life has me standing in the middle of the monkey cage at the zoo. Crap is going to be flying everywhere. From all directions it is coming at you. You do not know whether to run or hide or duck. Inevitably, the crap is going to hit you. You are out numbered and the monkey's have good aim. They are Pro Crap Flingers . I guess the point in life is how you are going to deal with the crap that you are covered in. Do you sit and whine and complain about the poop?

Judy posted a comment about being jealous at two weekends away from the kids. About how she figured it would be a long time before she got that chance. I have to admit, I thought better her than me to have the new baby. After our two weekends away and Mark joking that it was his ploy to convince me to not have anymore, I have to say.....I think it worked. After thinking about it and being able to get away so easily because the kids are bigger, I could not help but think, why go back and do it all again? If you had a choice between going out of town for the weekend or being stuck, tied down to a newborn who was feeding from your breasts every two hours and waking every three ,which would you choose? To which one might say why ever have kids at all.....fine. I have TWO. I have done it TWICE. Not only that, but for anyone who cares about it, I have one of each. One is almost seven, the other almost three. Granted Davis is not potty trained yet, but he does change his own diaper sometimes

After two weekends away, without kids and just being alone with Mark, Love Thursday has a new, fresh meaning for me this week. We have been to both Chicago and St. Louis before. St. Louis had involved a trip to see Ben Folds Five in concert the winter after we were married. The second trip to St. Louis was to see The Wiggles, which was a trip in which I was a couple months pregnant with Davis and Emma was three. Our trip to Chicago was for our five year wedding anniversary, a little over four years ago. Going back to both of these places now, almost four or more years later, I am a different person. In too many ways to count. As is Mark. With the trip to Chicago I was just happy to see Mark again. He had left on the Wednesday prior to my Friday departure. Once there, I realize I would have been glad to stay in the room and watch t.v. with him, just to be near him again. When it came time for me to leave, it made me unbelievably sad to leave Mark all alone in that hotel room.

This is us. Us at the Davolt Family Reunion this June. Sometimes Mark can make it down and sometimes he can not. This year due to the Costa Rica trip, he was not able to. Hence why he is missing from the photo. I first got my DVD of photos last week. I browsed thought them and was depressed. Yikes, I do not photograph well and it seems my tummy flab is hanging out in all the pictures. Got to love having kids. Not to mention we were at the lake so there are plenty of pictures in a swimsuit. Not cool either. For me anyway. But as I was looking through the pictures, I always can not wait for the family shots. Every year we take a family picture, in that all that made it to the reunion line up and take a big family shot. There are about thirty or so of us and the kids are growing so much. It is really neat to see how much they change from year to year or how much they have changed since the beginning of this family reunion which took place in 2001. And each year for the photo we have new s

I may be from Kansas City and we may have a ball team, but it is the Royals . Which really have not been playing much ball. Not that the Chiefs have done much better lately.... Mark got offered playoff tickets for the Cardinals~Mets game for Sunday night. Game Four baby. How do you pass that up? In a matter of minutes I was on the phone begging and bribing people to watch my kids and come stay with our dogs. After all, we had just gone out of town the weekend before. I had to pull out the big guns. Fortunately for us, we have plenty of willing family around to help us out. I am not sure how willing, but they did take care of things for us. With that settled and our hotel room booked, we packed up and headed to Saint Louis. On our way we detoured into Hermann MO . For those who do not know, Hermann is Wine Country for Missouri. And it is Oktoberfest . Score! Off we went to find a couple wineries and do some wine tasting. We went to Adam Puchta Winery (May I suggest Hunter's Red a

Seems there is a Blog Phenomenon. Love Thursday. I found this out from Amanda . Wondering what it was about, I l clicked on her Love Thursday link to read up on it. I have to admit, at first I thought it as like another Valentine's Day type deal. You know. We NEED a day to tell people we love them and all of that. Things we should be saying all the time. Then after a few moments I thought maybe this was trying to get at that. With all the crap in this world this was a way to take a day and just be thankful and think of all the good around us. And with that in mind, I could get on board Love Thursday. This lead to what I thought of for Love Thursday. I could go on about how great my husband is. Or how great my kids are. Or how great life is. And while all those things are true, it just seemed too contrived. Too forced and not genuine. Next I thought I could go on about something totally off the wall. Like how much I love Hello Kitty. And how in Chicago there was a whole store of He

Emma showed me how loose her tooth was before I left for Chicago. I knew it would likely fall out while I was gone. I told her to keep a hold of it if it did and the Tooth Fairy would come once we were back at our house. Sure enough, I go away for a few days and she loses another tooth. That makes Numero Dos. Why does she keep having to grow up?

Last night the boy and I were sitting on the floor looking at the picture in the camera. He would see himself and laugh this fake, crazy laugh. It was beyond funny. So we took a few more pictures of ourselves. Then Davis took his first ever pictures of your dog Max. Here are a few of our fun adventures from last night. It is great that we are so easily entertained.... Davis up close and personal. This one made him laugh the hardest. My baby boy and me (excuse my look.....long day) Max as seen by Davis Time for quiet hours like this with him cuddled in my arms, Where I wish he'd always stay, protected, safe and warm. And yet I know the day will come when his tiny hand, Will be bigger than my own; he'll grow to be a man. But until then he's mine to love with no one here to see, As we rock slowly back and forth My baby boy and me.

I changed over to Picasa for my photo albums. The link is located over in the Click 'Em It's Okay section with the title Photos at Picasa. I added the photos I took in Chicago and that is where I will add any new photos. As you can tell I usually just do them in folders by month. Though some things are special occasions and get their own folder (Costa Rica, holidays, birthdays). Anyway, it was easier to do them this way. Most of the Costa Rica photos are there too along with photos of the kids from July until now. Just an FYI.

I spent the weekend in Chicago. My husband is there for work and he had the weekend sort of free, so I went up. We ate Chicago dogs and Chicago pizza at Giordano's . We had fabulous Italian food ( Rosebud's on Rush ). We ate more meat than any one human should ever consume in one meal at Fogo de Chao. We walked the Magnificent Mile and went to The Field Museum. I spent Saturday at Millennium Park (the picture above is of the Bean in the park.) I spent most of Saturday at The Art Institute . Beautiful museum. They had some great photography displays and I spent over four hours walking around that place and still did not see all of it. Sunday night it was time for me to leave and come back to my kids. It was hard to leave Mark all alone there. I discovered this weekend that I do not like for my family to be split up. I thought I would go and enjoy seeing the city and experiencing something that I usually do not. Not only did I do that, but I came back with a new sense of life.