Where have I been?

I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted. AND I don't see any changes in the near future.

The small company I work for has been acquired by a much larger one. We have been issued new laptops and new blackberries. This would normally be great...but now my internet viewing is non-existent. There are so many rules and regulations that we're not accustomed to, but boy are we learning quickly. There's a "web-marshall" and several "web-deputies". I thought they were just names, but these people really exist...I met them. They are not well-liked in the company.

So not to bore you with all the details, but our on-going "transition" has been pure hell. Everything about this change is great....salary, benefits, people, future advancement. There's only ONE little thing that we are not crazy about. We have to drive into downtown Houston now. I used to have a measly 15 minute commute to work, now that has been replaced by a minimum of 45 minutes. I'm just glad my boss now will still be my immediate supervisor and is totally cool with my homelife responsibilities.

Anyway, I need to work and I'd be STUPID to pass up this incredible opportunity that's been handed to me. I'm just going to have to deal with it.

So you'll be seeing much less from me on the blog.

But SO much has happened. We've been SO busy! Brittney has been involved in a lot of activities, the boys are getting cuter and cuter and also more difficult to deal with on a daily basis.

As far as dealing with 2 year olds goes, I feel I'm capable to handle quite a bit. But something has overcome my sweet innocent little angel boys....it's a certain word known as MINE. This word is very powerful to me. I can not STAND to hear them fighting and yelling MINE. My fuse is so short and I immediately start yelling myself. I hate that it affects me in such a negative way and I'm TRYING to deal with it, but Lord give me strength........SERENITY NOW!!!

Onto the adult-life at the Kearley household. Last weekend we had so much fun! We had some friends in from out of town. She had just been accepted for an intership in Alaska and Steve had just finished taking his comprehensive final for his college courses....we had a lot to celebrate. So we hired a babysitter Saturday night and we all went to a tattoo place. Yes, that's right....a tattoo place. Steve and our friend Leah had BIG plans to get tattoos. (He's been wanting another one for awhile now. She had too!)

I just realized I don't have a finished version of his to show you, but here's one DURING the procedure.
Here's HER finished product.

There was some GOOD people watching to do at this tattoo place. This was the customer service manager of the store. (Her husband was the owner - who is doing Steve's tattoo). She was actually really nice and really cute. She has been been a featured model in several tattoo magazines.
I'm SO out of this world, but it was neat to "visit" for one night. I got lots of peer pressure to get a tattoo, but I just don't know what I would get. I don't like anything enough to permanently tattoo it to my body.

Then we headed over to a karaoke bar to meet up with more friends. I was doubtful when we first walked in this place. But after a few drinks, we warmed up to the place and ended up having SO much fun. We closed it down at 2 a.m. I can't remember the last time I've done that.

Anyway, here's a picture of my boyfriend that I met at the karaoke bar. (Steve was SO jealous....ha ha!)


He performed "Home Sweet Home" by Motley Crue (Steve's favorite song, by the way). Before he went on stage, he asked ME (see, I told you he was my boyfriend) if he could hand out lighters to our table to hold up while he sang. We were honored.

Let me just tell you, he could really sing....but BOY did he take his karaoke seriously! He not only brought his own microphone and microphone stand complete with material tied to it like Aerosmith, he also had FIREWORKS on his belt that he pulled out at a certain part of the song. We thought that maybe our lighters were malfunctioning when he did his firework thing. It was so weird.

As awesome as he was at karaoke, it was sad to see that he was such a LOSER. I'm sure he attends every weekend. The guys running the karaoke machine seemed to know him.

Well, here's a few pictures of my boys this evening playing in the MUD. They were happy as could be. I just figured that they were going straight to the bathtub anyway.

I must go, this weekend is our LAST cheer competition and we have to be there at 6:45 a.m. YES, that's right. This will require me to get up by 4 a.m. in order to get ourselves ready.

Happy Valentine's Day

I just want to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day. Here is my whole little family, of which I am SO proud.


(ok...so maybe this was a Christmas picture we took, but it also fits the Valentine requirements....RED!)

Have a great day!

Ready for the Sun!

I am ready for Spring and Summer to come. Please come and rescue us from this nasty dreary weather we have been having. It's been cold and damp for the past 5 days or so. The sun was out in the beginning of last week but hasn't made a reappearance since.

I've mentioned before that my boys LOVE OUTSIDE. They are tired (and I am tired...and Nana is tired) of keeping them cooped up indoors. Plus we have a stomach virus epidemic going around Brittney's school and the surrounding areas. I'm not too keen on getting the boys out to go and catch new germs. No thank you. Right now, knock on wood, we're all okay.

So, this weekend was pretty boring. Although we deserve a boring weekend after all the travel and excitement of last weekend. I needed to just chill.

Jace and Cade, however, did not get that memo. They decided to get up at an ungodly time yesterday morning. I think I heard Cade freaking out around 5 or 5:15. I went to rescue him from waking up Jace and brought him in bed with us. This is always a mistake...he thinks we're having a party in there. He never went back to sleep.

Jace woke up on his own at 5:45. They were BOTH so cranky and so was I. By 7 o'clock Cade had so many breakdowns that we decided to put him back into his bed. He apparently just needed a little "me" time (I know the feeling). He was in a much better mood after about 15 minutes of quiet time.

But the morning was L-O-N-G..........

Brittney entertained the boys in her room for a little while. They came out looking like this.......

We have way too many of these blackmail pictures now. I can't believe Cade participated. Normally he sits back and watches his brother act like a fool.

The movie Cars is my new HERO! They are totally fascinated with this movie and can literally sit in their chairs (with a snack and a drink) for about 20-30 minutes. That's enough time for me to take a bath and get myself dressed. It's Wonderful and saved me yesterday. (I actually LOVE this movie too...it's so cute!)

They ended up sleeping for4 hours in the afternoon. I, of course, didn't get to enjoy the quiet time at home. I had a hair appointment and Brittney and Steve were the designated babysitters. BUT, the boys never knew I was even gone...they slept for so long.

I can guarantee you that if I was home, they would've only taken an hour nap or so.

They got to go outside for a little bit last night, but still......WE'RE READY FOR THE SUN!

As promised, here's a fuzzy but yet video clip of our parent team hard work!

I'm the first one out of the shoot...after that I move all over the place. (We're totally mocking the facial expressions that our girls make out there on the floor. We know we're not all that!)

Jacey Poo

I talked about just Cade in an earlier post, so now I'm moving on to Jace.

Jace is a little Steve. He looks just like him, he acts just like him and he's going to be trouble just like him! He is definitely the more outgoing one.

Jace is like a switch....he's either ON or OFF. Such is true about his voice volume...it's either ON or OFF. As hard as we've tried to work to work on his "inside" voice, we've had no luck. I know the MINUTE Jace is awake in his crib. I can always hear him through my wall.

Jace's belly laugh can make anyone smile....his mother-day-out teachers have even said it. He always like to make the other kids in their class laugh by being silly at lunchtime.

He has the biggest, juiciest lips that you can NOT resist trying to smooch on. When he lays a kiss on you....oh, it's just too much. It just melts my heart. PLUS when he gives out hugs, he pats your back. It's so sweet.

He's been developing his speech in the last few weeks. When we returned home from our weekend trip, Steve showed me how he liked to sing "Mr. Sun" with him.

This video showcases his little voice in addition to showing off their new teeter totter. Which I might mention Jace LOVED, but he loved it so much and went so high that Cade got scared and hasn't gotten his courage back up to try it with Jace again.



I don't know what I'd do without my little Jacey Poo. He can definitely brighten my day just by looking at me or just by saying his infamous little "hi". (He says this non-stop throughout the day. It doesn't matter how many times you see him, he will always say HI!)

We Survived!!!

The anticipation is over with .... for me, at least. Our parent team performance went off with only a few flaws.

All I can say is that I have a newfound respect for Brittney and her teammates when it comes to cheerleading. Now granted, I have 26 years on her and things are easier for her to do. But still, it is a LOT of hard work. I seriously thought I was going to pee in my pants when we were waiting to come out on the floor. They had all of the lights down and spotlights were EVERYwhere. This thing was even televised...or at least it WILL be televised in March sometime. Cheer Power puts on a huge production for this competition and they hand out the coveted leather jackets for first place teams.

The parent teams weren't judged, it was just for fun. Of course we were ranking everyone that we saw. We weren't the best, but we definitely weren't the worst either. Most of our competition was coming from huges gyms with tons of coaches. Our gym only has 2 teams and 4 coaches. So we did good with what we had to work with.

Anyway, I bought a copy of the performance from a company selling DVDs at the competition. BUT, I can not figure out how to upload it because of the type of file it's saved as. I have my company's IT guy working on it and I promise to post it as soon as it's available.

On to Brittney's team......they had 21 teams in their division. It was really ridiculous to have this many teams. The competition was phenomenal! I won't admit to what place they got, but it wasn't last and it wasn't first. It was somewhere in between. They were pretty bummed but still had a wonderful time.

I asked Brittney what her favorite part of the entire trip was and she said it was when we played a scavenger hunt game in the hotel one evening. One of the moms was smart enough to think up a game and it was a BIG hit with the girls. Then her favorite part was when she won her team's "jump-off" during one of their practices. She won the best toe-touch award.

I'm really glad the girls have such fun, but they really want to win too. I don't know why their team always gets such lousy results from the judges. The world of cheerleading is a world of its own and I don't understand all of their point systems and levels of degrees of difficulties. All I know is that the performance they gave in San Antonio wasn't bad at ALL. It wasn't their best either, but they had no major mistakes at all. Then when you have 20 other teams in the same boat, the scores get really close.

I'm a horrible mom because I barely took any pictures (the Alamodome wouldn't allow cameras). Then when we went to the Riverwalk after our performance, I still didn't have my camera. Hopefully one of the parents will send some pictures my way.

When we came home, it was SUCH a sweet greeting that we got from the boys. I swear in the 2 days I was gone they grew a foot and can actually say more words. Jace is non-stop with talking. Cade isn't too far behind him. Then after about 10 minutes of being home, reality was back! Never fails......

An Update of sorts.......

• The potty training thing.........it was a one time wonder. Now, Cade refuses to even sit on the potty. He prefers to get into the bathtub as the bath water is running and THEN go pee-pee. I knew it was too good to be true. He DOES continue to be dry throughout the day and absolutely HATES to have poo-poo in his diaper. So eventually we'll try again!
• We've been busy re-decorating Brittney's room. Her room is pastel pink and her furniture is white-washed. We have officially redone her room in her cheer team colors........pink, black and white. We're simply adding black accents throughout the room. I surprised her last weekend by having her room rearranged and TOTALLY cleaned up and organized when she got back from staying the night with Granny. She's made her bed almost everyday this week b/c it's so organized now........
• This coming weekend is the BIG cheer competition in San Antonio, TX. This is the weekend that the infamous "parent" team is performing.........that would be ME!! This competition is the BIGGEST one of the year and is held in the Alamodome. That place holds a LOT of people and I will be performing!!!!!!!! I used to be on drill team in high school and perform all the time, but that was 20 years ago!!!!!!!!!
• Also, one more thing about this competition. I'm in the front for the beginning of our routine, so when we line up to come onto the floor....guess who's the first in line? That's right. ME!!! It really is like drill team all over again. I'm just older, about 20 pounds heavier and a LOT more out of shape!
• We finally completed our TWO AND A HALF MINUTE routine this past weekend. That's all it is and it's taken us THREE MONTHS to learn it. And I'm not kidding when I tell you that after we do the entire routine ALL out, we are ALL sucking some serious wind. On our Sunday practice last weekend, we did the entire thing 5 times and I swear I could barely walk on Monday.
• It will be a LOT of fun this weekend. It's just going to be me and Brittney and we're going to have nothing but "girl" time together. I'm looking forward to getting away. The grandmas are going to work a split shift this weekend to watch the boys. Steve will be busy with school work and rugby practice.
• I'm getting Brittney out of school at 11:30 tomorrow and then we're off to lunch and then to get pedicures. Like I said........girl time this weekend.
• Think about and pray for me around 11:32 a.m. on Saturday morning. That's when our parent group goes on to perform. There are 10 parent teams and we are the FIRST ones!!!! No pressure or anything........wish me luck!!!