Nothing says spring like...

.. THE FARMERS MARKET!!

Woo hoo! It's farmers market time. For those of you not in Madison, it's hard to understand what the big deal it. Farmers Market is Madison. The market is strict - only vendors who produce their own produce, flowers, cheese, bread etc... are allowed. It all must also be from Wisconsin. The Brunkow Cheese, Spicy Cheese Bread (YUMMMY!!!)) from Stella's, Garlic Angel Hair Pasta from RP's, creamer mushrooms, a chocolate ring from Oak House bakery and the kids got a cookie from a new cookie place. Their normal cookie man wasn't there today. Hopefully he will return next week. Have I mentioned how much I love the market?

The market is held around the capitol every Saturday. About once a month we will head inside the capitol and look around. The Wisconsin capitol is really very beautiful. The 5 year old loves to visit and find the fossils in the granite.
Anyway, you know where to find use nearly every Saturday!

The 1st Trip to the Dentist

My children had never been to the dentist... yes, I know this is not the best given that my oldest will be turing 6 next week. Let me give you some background...

Until about a year ago, my oldest would SCREAM bloody murder when taken to the doctor. When he was sick, he wouldn't even allow the Dr to look into his ear. For check ups, he refused to get onto the scale on his own (this I hated! They would weigh me, weigh me with him and figure out his weight.). It wasn't until around his 5 birthday that he would go to the Dr and allow them to examine him without behaving like he was in a tourture chamber.

Would you take a child like this to the Dentist?
Well, I wouldn't.

I am actually glad I waited. It ended up that he was so thrilled with his 1st dentist visit. He had no issues with his teeth or brushing and was disappointed to find out that he wouldn't be going back until October. I really beleive that if he had gone when he was 3, as recommended, he would have had a horrible visit, screamed and possibly hated the dentist for a long time. Instead, he LOVED IT! The highlight of the trip was the x rays!

The 2 year old had a much easier time. She didn't get the full dental treatment, but she did pass with flying colors too. All in all the dental visit was a success! Unbeleivable, the kids can't wait to go again.

The good, the bad and the good!

So, it's officially Spring now! Easter has come and gone and now we are awaiting our 5 year old's birthday in a little over a week. He will be 6! My how time has flown. He's finishing up his 1st year of kindergarten. I am suprised to find out he's reading at a nearly end of 1st grade level! I am very proud of him to be reading so well. By the end of 1st grade, they want children to read at a level 18 (I don't know on what scale) and back in January he was at a level 10. End of Kindergarten should be 5! My 2 year old is having her own issues. Apparently, she doesn't like preschool anymore. All year she had NO problems going to school, and then all of a sudden about 2 weeks ago, she doesn't want to go. No reason, just that she misses mommy.. awe.... Today, she started crying before even walking in the door. We brought her security blankie along, and that seemed to help. When she goes in, her teachers always offer to read her a book, she goes along and then she's good to go. I can't help but wonder if she just wants that book read to her. On a bright note with the 2 year old... she's almost potty trained!!! She does great during the day and stays dry! I still have her in pull ups at school because she doesn't talk at school and I fear that she will just sit silently and pee in her pants at school. Soon, I hope to make the bold jump to sending her to school in undies. Well... so much for my update. Here's a photo of the kids at their Easter Egg hunt... that's a whole other blog entry on it's own!

The Windy City

So...we, took a trip to Chicago. It was my 1st parent trip to downtown Chicago. I have been to the 'burbs, and flown out of Midway, but I hadn't *actually* been to the city that I can remember well.
We couldn't find a hotel reasonable enough to stay at downtown so we actually stayed out by O'Hare. We got a killer deal on Priceline.com and stayed at a Renaissance by Mariott for just $55/ night plus taxes and parking. I love Priceline. We took the CTA trains in to town every day and even rode a few buses. I am actually surprise at how many people are afraid to use public transportation. We paid just $12 for unlimited train rides and bus rides for the days that we were there. You can't beat that.
We visited the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium as well as the Art Institute. We also got a great deal on tickets - we bought a City Pass. This includes admission to 6 different venues all for $50 (in Chicago, it varies in different cities). So I din't feel bad when we only spent 2 hours are the Art Institute, or the the Shedd was jam packed... We also got to by pass some of the LONG lines, so it was worth it just for that.
Anyway, Chicago was a success and I know we will be returning soon!

Spring is springing!

Spring is on it's way - thank goodness! Our 2 kids are getting restless and winter here in Wisconsin lasts a little longer than I want it to. I grew up in Florida and spent 10 years in Georgia and down south, spring is here at this point. I really get spring fever around this time of the year.

Today, it made it up to a whopping 50 degrees! 50 degress in Wisconsin after the sub zero temps is like a breath of fresh air. Today we started back on a fun activity we began last summer called Geocaching. We love getting out and exploring different parts of the area. All you need is a GPS to get started. The kids love it because it's a "treasure hunt" and they get all sorts of gadgets and toys they really don't need, but find to be interesting. On todays hunt our 5 year old discovered the 2 caches we found! He loves looking for it and finding them.

Hopefully we will have more beautiful days ahead.

2nd Place!

We won 2nd place in the Engadget cake contest! hip hip hooray! We get a prize!

I'll admit that I am not as impressed with the winners cake - but I supposed I was looking at something different than a sloppy cake that is a phone. I personally really liked the "3rd" place alienware cake. very cool! My Kudos to you.

Geeks & Cakes

aibo_cake9
Originally uploaded by Svengali.

What happens when you mix geeks and cakes? This is what you get. What is it? This is a Birthday cake for engadget.com . Why? They were holding a contest to give away an Alienware computer and BOY do we need a computer!

What you are looking at is a cake shaped like a Sony AIBO. Sony is not maing him anymore, so that's why we chose him.

So what WAS this contest all about... read here. But basically, you had to bake a cake -- a REAL cake (no photoshop) and the best wins. Simple, huh? Well, no so much. This baby took a long time. He's not perfect, but I think he's darn good. He's in competion with a lot of Apple products and Alienware cakes, so I am hoping his uniqueness shines through.

The kids enjoyed the fruits of our labors and will probably enjoy them for a few days to come. Keep you fingers crossed for us. :)

More Sickies...how contagious was that bag "boy"

Last week I posted about my daughter being sick and just snuggling with me. Well, by midweek, she seemed better, but was a full fledged snot producing factory. By Friday, she wasn't doing so well again and finally took her long anticipated trip to the Dr. For some reason, my daughter loves the Dr. My son, on the other hand did NOT like the Dr when he was 2. You would have thought that the Dr's office was a torture chamber by his behavior, but he always survived (even is we, as parents, felt like we did not - oh yeah, don't even get me started on the fact that he wouldn't get on the scale himself so sometimes I had to get on the scale myself with him, then put him down, and weigh me alone to get his weight! Now, that is a torture chamber!). Anyway, she was happy, she got some amoxicillian and seems back to ner normal perky self.Unfortunately, I don't think I survived this unscathed.
I had to work a a demo decorating cakes from 1-4 on Saturday then on to the mall to work at the store from 5-close. My throat hurt, my head hurt... I was MISERABLE! Those must have been the 4 longest hours in my life. I made it through, but still felt awful on Sunday. I am finally doing better and I have my fingers crossed that no one else gets sick.
So all these sickies have me wondering, where did we get sick? Well, almost 2 weeks ago I went grocery shopping at Copps in Middleton. While paying for my groceries with my daughter in her cart, the bag "boy" (35 40 year old man) asks me to move my daughter away from him (she was sitting in the kids seat in the cart, so I had to pull the cart back towards me). The 1st thing on my mind was that he wasn't allowed to be around children (child molester?) or something. When I gave him this "WTH?!" look, he explains that he doesn't want her to get what he has.
Ok, what does he have that can be passed from him to her within a 3 ft radius, but won't get us sick by putting his hands all over our groceries?! This really creeped me out. I don't think someone who is potentially that ill should be handling groceries. This also helped me to understand the City of Madison's push to institute a mandatory sick leave policy. I understand this man needs a job and may not be able to afford a day off work, but did he get my daughter sick for 5 days? Did I get sick from her who got sick from him? I will never know for sure, but it can't help but make me think.

I think if Madison passes the sick leave policy, I will happily do my grocery shopping in Madison. No more sickie ickies from bag men again for us, thank you.

The Sickie Ickies

So, my 2 year old is sick today. Not with anything too bad, I don't think. She has a fever around 102 and has been very sleepy all day. If I ask her if anything hurts, she says no. So, for now, we are just letting her rest.

This morning when we started to realize she wasn't herself, I asked her if she wanted to snuggle with me - she quietly said "yes". There her and I were just laying on the couch together. She was half asleep, snorting from her runny nose, but it was the sweetest thing. She just wanted to lay with me while she felt so yucky. I asked her if she wanted to lay in her bed, and she didn't. She just wanted me. I know in 10 years, this will be just a memory and when she's sick or even sad, she won't want to snuggle with me, so I just laid there for 15 minutes and enjoyed our quiet peaceful snuggle time. Eventually I realized even though I loved laying with her, quietly, I couldn't do this all day, I convinced her to lay in her bed... she still looked just as sweet.

Games, tickets and prizes - the HORROR!

We went to Chuck E Cheese's tonight. As a parent of a 5 year old and a 2 year old, you'd think that my kids would love this place. You'd think that announcing to the children "we're going to have pizza an play games" would be something they'd be jumping up and down. Not my son. He was nearly in tears at the thought of his terrible parents dragging him to this horrible place. Here's the deal though... in November we were at Disney World and grandma spent lots of time with our 5 year old in the "Arcade". Grandma even hit the jackpot once and got hundreds of tickets. My 5 year old was hooked. He was addicted... to tickets. So, my husband and I thought, he'll love Chuck E Cheese's.
He's been there 2 other times (ok, maybe 3). Once when he was 2 for a "birthday party", again just after turning 5 for another party and then another time or 2 at random times. My 5 year old HATES birthday parties. Why, I don't know. Add the loudness of this joint with the "nightmare" of a birthday party and I guess that's why he thought he wouldn't like it. Oh yeah, he hates large humanoid robots (buy loves his roboraptor, go figure) so the memory of the "show" wasn't not enticing at all.
So, tonight we drag him to his nightmare. We aren't trying to torture him, but sometimes we just have to force him to do things he will really end up liking. So tonight we lured him with the promise of token. He went in thinking he'd get 100 for himself. We explained, no way, we have to share. Turns out we bought the deal with 50 tokens and the kids won 20 more for themselves. We had 70 tokens. We ordered the pizza, waited for it until I offered to take the kids to check out the games. 2 games into the whole ordeal and he was hooked.
After eating we indulged both of them with tokens and tickets and rides on Clifford. They had a blast. There was only one minor glitch when the 2 year old thought she could play games on her own, which unfortunately she can't, and it caused some minor tears.
Anyway, the evening was a success. They walked away with 315 tickets which bought them some princess stickers, a bug, a shark slinky, a rubber lizard and 2 tattoos. Oh yeah, and the 2 year old ran up and gave Chuck E a hug! :) All in all, it was a nice little family event and the 5 year old was already asking when we could return. See, we aren't terrible parents at all.

My Tuesday

Let's start a REAL blog post by telling you about my day. Today was Tuesday and we are in the middle of getting serious about potty training my daughter. She's 2 and a half and she loves Cinderella. Her incentive to use the potty is Cinderella. Today, while she was at preschool I went to Target to purchase Princess undies to give her an extra incentive. It seems to be working. She was "dry" all afternoon. Yeah! we have been buying diapers or pull ups for 6 long years (oldest child, my son, will be 6 in April, and he wasn't trained until after our daughter was born) so I am SOOOO ready for her to be done.
My afternoon was quiet until my son came home. I am not sure why, but a 5 year old boy and a 2 year old girl seem to get along like oil and water. For some reason when they are both home, it seems like insanity all the time. The summer shall be interesting. But, knowing that we won't be stuck inside helps. 10" of snow plus wind chills of -30 in February I think is enough to drive anyone crazy, along with 2 kids.
I had the night off from my retail job and what am I doing, starting a blog!! I should be doing other things too.. I teach cake decorating and I really should work on my next project. Maybe I will do that now. Perhaps.

The Beginning

So, I finally decided to start a blog. I have been thinking about doing it for a long time, but just never got around to it. It's about time I figured. Anyway, about me... I live in Wisconsin and I am originally from Florida. I have 2 children and a wonderful husband (hence, the 4). My 5 year old is in kindergarten and my 2 year old is in preschool. We are currently attempting to potty train her, so some of my posts my relate to this. I am also trying to lose weight, again, some of my posts may relate to this.