at the 554

Busy Busy Busy!

Things have been kind of crazy around here lately. Besides the normal stuff like Home and School board, managing Aiden’s soccer team, homework, soccer and lacrosse games, we have started the process of moving! We are building a home in Brian’s “childhood" town about 35 minutes away from our current neighborhood. It was with incredibly mixed emotions that we made the decision to go. We love everything we’ve experienced here – the friends we’ve made, the school the boys attend, the thrill of seeing a small town grow and develop – it’s been a blast…and we won’t be far away!

So…we’ve had meetings with the builder, meetings with contractors to fix some issues we have with the current home (like the 20+ windows that need replaced due to broken seals…all under warranty thankfully!), meetings with realtors and a fun day I spent with the mother of one of Brian’s best friends who is an interior designer! She and I poked around the builder design center together and she gave us some great tips and helped start the process of selecting everything that will go into the new house. Then there’s the massive to-do list we made to get our house “sale ready”. I have no less than 15 bags of stuff to donate…and AmVets comes next week – yeah! We’ve cleaned closets, entire rooms, the garage, the pantry…and there is so much more to do! (totally avoiding the basement for now!) Yesterday, I spent the morning thinking I was going to measure all the windows that need replaced. After I popped out a bottom window above the kitchen sink on accident and then almost killed myself getting it back in (cut three of my fingers, bled all over the kitchen, scrapped up the wall, almost toppled out of the sink where I had to stand), I decided to organize the linen closet and hire a professional to do the windows!

So – that’s my long rambling excuse as to why I haven’t posted lately. I have pics to share from my phone and the camera!

My children are definitely the sons of their father. Here they are celebrating HOT SAUCE on tacos!

Logan photo-bombs Aiden

Brady – lover of hot sauce, hater of shirts!

Dinner outside (one of the only ones we did this summer – early September!)

Farmer’s market corn and asparagus – steak!

One day it was SO HOT at soccer practice that I took a cooler of ice water and some rags for all the players to use to cool off. The younger brothers all took off their shirts and had at it – dipping rags in and throwing them at each other. I should have taken a pic of the water in the cooler at the end…they stood it in and it was NASTY with dirt and grass. Poor “real” soccer players!

This is the map of the subdivision where we are building. See the green pins? That means the lot is available.

Well, we needed to change one of those to a red pin. 8/31/13 – Brian and our new buddy RoxAnne lift the glass…

I get to do the honors!!

Good-bye cloths that don’t fit anyone! My guest bedroom closet is so very Zen and clean now!!

Sometimes Logan forgets to bring his snack containers home from school. He hoards them in his desk and brings them home all at one time! I might have to give up my earth-conscience ways just to make sure there are not SO many containers that Logan can’t find his school books in his desk every day!

I love nerf guns!

Soccer makes Brady sleepy!

beautiful

Art project: turn $2 tiles into something I can hang in place of “personal” pictures for when we put the house on the market

I like the way they turned out! I framed them in big black frames and hung them along the big hallway upstairs.

This is a GoPro camera that the boys received from the director of a little film they did over the summer. You can buy attachments like helmet straps, chest straps and bike clips. The GoPro films ACTION shots and they LOVE it!! I let Logan take it to school one day. I have a 14-minute clip of recess! That one may need some editing ;)

facebook post: Brian and Logan watching the Bears and celebrating their culinary victory over today's "chopped challenge" (custom designed by me, Brady and Aiden for Brian and Logan the sous chef): game-day chili with the following - strawberries, red velvet cake mix, chicken nuggets & ground beef. They made: a mole (chocolate) beef/chicken nugget chili with a strawberry and chili-powder infused crema. Fine...I'll get them next week! — with Brian Houck.

(next facebook post): Well...we can't let unused red velvet cake mix go to waste, now can we? Logan created a little desert masterpiece for us complete with shot glasses of milk.

Two weeks ago, we had a DOWNPOUR of rain right at school pick-up time. Um…don’t think my boys minded walking home and getting wet.

Rain rain don’t go away!

The GeoTracks made an appearance for a couple of nights. Aiden and Brady built a BEAUT in the basement…this ended up extending to the far back wall.

Hey! Where are daddy and I supposed to sleep? We found the boys in our bed one night when we went up. You’ll notice that Brady has his Team Chicago shirt on. Guessing this was a Friday night because he has very early morning games on Saturdays and he likes to wake up “ready to go”

Logan’s soccer buddy slept over one Saturday night. Aiden had a game, then Logan, and Brady had played that morning. LOTS of yellow in my car!

2nd chopped challenge weekend. Logan’s basket for dessert: bacon, potato chips, whoppers and ice cream sandwiches. It was a “gimme” in my opinion!

Unveiling the basket!

Brian’s dinner basket: ground veal, tarter sauce, brussel sprouts and ramen noodles.

Good thing we have a well-stocked pantry!

Logan dipped the potato chips in chocolate (happened to have it around the house – ha!) and then covered them in crushed bacon. He cut the ice cream bars in to tiny squares, dusted them with crushed whoppers and layered the whole thing. Like I said – total gimme! :)

Brady is super helpful in the kitchen! He licks spoons covered in chocolate!

step back – master chef at work here!

Brian’s dish: Tai veal-meatball stir fry. He used the brussel sprouts like cabbage, used the tarter sauce as a binder in the meatballs, the ramen as a noodle (obviously) and made an Asian stir fry sauce. It was actually AWESOME. I think he added basil and red pepper from the garden.

No one passed on dessert either!

Pictures of our sleepy puppy on the couch

Looks like a little wolf, maybe a fox, from this angle…howls like a wolf too (don’t tell her, but she’s very tiny…she doesn't’ seem to know!)

Logan’s teacher sent me this picture to make me laugh one day. It’s Round II of “not bringing my snack containers home”. Notice how he’s hiding in shame behind a book ;)

Me trying to measure windows. Yikes! This is not the most graphic picture I took…I’ll spare the blog the true bloody mess I made!

Phew – I think we’re up to date! :)

Playing Hooky

Brian had a LOT of traveling on his plate for work this past month. For a week, he went to London and then Belgium, returning for the weekend before heading to Singapore (a 24-hour flight each way and something like a 13 hour time difference…sadly, we never quite figured that out in the 2 days he spent working there). Last Friday, he arrived at O’Hare early in the morning. He came home, had a nice long nap, and then went to the school about an hour before regular dismissal to steal the kids away. I had stopped by the office earlier in the day to arrange the surprise so the amazingly awesome secretaries at our school took quite a delight in seeing each of our children called down to the office to see daddy ready to steal them away (I went to watch their reactions before assuring them that I was retuning home, not to intrude on their boy’s-only hooky adventure).

Brian took them shopping for updated soccer stuff to “kick off” the new season (sorry…I couldn’t help myself!), to a BBQ place for a snack. After that, they hit a fro-yo joint and then met me at our weekly TGIF gathering (where Joel gave the boys their hot sauce…see previous post).

Despite his crazy traveling schedule, Brian always finds a fun way to make special time for his little men!!

Outside of the school as they steal away early: One Jet-Lagged daddy and three delighted boys!

The Hot Pepper Incident

So…Brian is growing these crazy hot peppers in our garden – the purpose of which is to make a jerk chicken sauce. Aiden has tasted these peppers before…and had to have milk IMMEDIATELY after as he wiped the tears running down his face (he always plays it cool though…claiming it’s not hot while coughing and downing drinks as fast as he can). In fact, he came to me about 5 minutes after he handled the peppers the first time and had apparently rubbed his eye and nose with his hand and we had to treat those areas with milk to make them feel better. (handy trick: for hot peppers in the eye: fill a shot glass with milk and, while leaning over, form a seal with it around your eye, tilt back and blink several times to cover your eyeball and surrounding area with milk!)

So…last Friday, I’m drying my hair around 7:30, preparing to go down and make breakfast for the boys before school. Up comes Aiden and tells me that they picked a green tomato from the garden and all took a bite. He wanted to report that it, “actually tasted good…kind of like celery!” Well then about 5 minutes later, in comes Brady SCREAMING that, “it hurts! it hurts!” I guess they didn’t stop at tomatoes…they went for the super hot peppers (remember, Aiden KNOWS they are hot…and Logan witnessed Aiden trying them for the first time and said, “um…not thanks”). So…I find out that Logan BIT into one…Aiden took a small bite and Brady ate…only God knows how much. By the time I ran downstairs, they had yogurt, milk, lemonade, sour cream, you name it, out on the counter in the kitchen trying to kill the burn. Brady literally had a red mark around the outside of his mouth (which started me yelling at the older boys because they should know better and it was picture day at school!) Anyway, I ended up putting burn cream (BURN CREAM!) on Brady’s face and gave them cereal with milk for breakfast. All was OK by the time they left for the day, but I heard multiple times that morning, “um…so this goes away eventually, right?!”

Ironically, that night, our friend Joel had a gift for the boys. You see, some of the peppers were ready while Brian traveled to London one week and Singapore the next and we couldn’t use them. Aiden took great pride in biking to Joel’s house with the peppers which he turned into hot sauce. He gave the boys this bottle on the same day they burned themselves tasting them in the morning:

First Days of School

Logan and Aiden started 3rd and 1st grade on Monday. Brady had “kindergarten round-up” on Tuesday and started full time today (as in ALL day…like his brothers). Kindergarten round-up is a 2-hour period where the parents are able to walk their kids to the classroom where they get to stay, hang out with new friends and do fun things. Meanwhile, we parents go to a meeting and listen to transportation information, school nurse stuff, what to expect etc. It’s also an opportunity for our wonderful principal, our assistant principal and (my very very good neighborhood friend), the school social worker, to try their hardest to make us cry by telling us how much they love our kids, will care for our kids and then read us a super sappy book called The Kiss Box (damn you Kristin and your adorable book about a mama and baby bear who have to be parted and make boxes full of kisses for each other! I cry every year!) After the meeting, we go back to our child’s classroom, get more information and gather them up to take them home. Today (Wednesday), we are allowed to walk our kids in and get them settled. Brady was SO excited to run off with his brothers today, to enter the doors of the school as a true student and buy his first school lunch (apparently he chose salad which was like…WUH?)

I cried when Logan went to 1/2 day kindergarten. I might have even cried when he went to first. I definitely cried when Aiden went to full-day K last year…when I had only my Brady at home in the mornings with 1/2 day pre-K in the afternoons. But let me tell you – Brady NEEDED to go to school today! That child is LOST without his brothers! He is the most social creature I’ve ever met (Brian says he wonders which of us that came from…Ha! I’ll tell you it’s not him!) Brady needs CONSTANT entertainment…and God love him, he never stops talking! On Monday of this week, I had his besty neighborhood friend over for like 4 hours just to keep him entertained! On Tuesday after round-up, he went to the same friend’s house for like 3 hours (love you Heather!) He is my SOCIAL kid! He is READY for school and I was so happy to give him that opportunity today!

I also realized that the only thing standing between me and being the mom-I-know-I-can-be is actually having the kids in my house (ok…that’s sarcasm, but sadly a little true). Today, I did the dishes, put away laundry, planned out meals, had dinner in the fridge by 2 to throw in the oven when needed…the house was clean for HOURS on end and I have HUGE list of stuff to get to that I’ve been putting off for like…um…years! I got the oil changed in the car and had only myself to worry about during the 1-hour wait! I had soccer gear organized and loaded into the car, emails about PTA (“Home and School”) answered, soccer-team-manager stuff organized….I might even mow the lawn tomorrow…you get the drift. They still come home at 3:35…we still have plenty of time together…I’m SO SO happy they are still little and love their mommy…

….but, I’m so very happy they are all in school now!! They get to do fun stuff with friends and get smarter while I get to organize and…be me for just a little while every day! GO SCHOOL!!!!

Here are my beautiful boys on their respective first days of school

Monday: Logan and Aiden. While Aiden is still very willing to let me pick out whatever he wears, Logan is insistent that his wardrobe reflect his athletic personality and only wants to wear “sports shorts”. Guess I’ll be passing the massive amounts of “nice shorts” down to his brothers.

I like their Merrell's this year (the shoes)

The usual gang ready for the first day of school walk

Sam, Logan and Aiden. Nice face Aiden! ;)

Aiden (behind our blond friend Ashley front and center) heading for his seat

Logan at his desk – number “6” in class this year (they all go by numbers based on last name.) Logan was 8 for K and first, 6 for 2nd and 3rd…guess “H” always lands somewhere in that range! Aiden is 8 this year just like Logan in 1st!