Daddy's Night Out

Last night I went to dinner and a movie with my mom and sister and Wes was staying home with the girls. Well he didn't think that he wanted to just stay home and so he decided that he would take the girls to the Mudhens game. He blows me away with what he is willing to do by himself. I always get anxious about doing big things alone with the girls because they are just so busy nowadays that it is really hard to keep up by yourself. He takes them to church every Sunday (he goes to the Catholic church and I go to a non-denominational church), he grocery shops with them and never hesitates to take on big tasks. I guess he just has the patience for it that I am lacking. I helped him get them dressed before I left. He had gotten them a new Reds t-shirt when he was in Cincinnati with his friends this week and so they wore their Votto and Phillips jersey shirts to the game. I put a piggy tail in their hair with their super cute Reds baseball bows. They looked adorable!

He took the stroller, which we haven't used in forever and I really didn't know how they would do with it. They hate to be restrained. He said they did great. The first few innings they stayed in the stroller with no complaints. Then he had to take a walk for a while to keep them occupied. He found the handcap seating and no one was in it so he parked the stroller in the big empty space and put the girls in the seats and just squatted next to them. He had brought grapes and goldfish crackers and he made them sit on his lap when they wanted to eat them. He said they had a great time and it wasn't bad at all. He stayed until the 7th inning and then headed home because it was getting late. He even thought to bring the camera and take some pictures for me! I had a lot of fun with my mom and sister and I'm so glad the girls had a great night with their daddy!

Father's Day 2011

The day began with two chefs in the kitchen cooking up some breakfast for their beloved Daddy! Actually, we REALLY need to go to the store so the girls helped me pour Daddy a bowl of Cheerios, a glass of orange juice and grab a banana. :) We loaded up the tray and marched in singing "Happy Father's Day to you! Happy Father;s Day to you! Happy Father's Day dear Daddy! Happy Father's Day to you!" Mya dropped the chef coat as soon as we got in the room. We gave Daddy our cards and a photo book I made for him filled with pictures of him and the girls. We decided that we wouldn't get gifts for Mother's and Father's Day this year because we bought new patio furniture for our back porch, but I had to get him a little something! :)

After breakfast we all got ready and headed to church. Following church was lunch and a nap. When they woke up from their nap we played for a while and then headed over to visit my grandpa. Mom, my brothers and Aunt Terry were there visiting as well so we had a nice time. By the time we were leaving it was absolutely pouring but as we made the 10 minute drive to our house it had stopped! Nice!

We stopped at the house quick to grab Daddy and then headed to Aunt Lori and Uncle Dan's house for a delicious lobster and steak dinner! Whenever we get together with the Skees' it is always sure to be a delectable meal! We had all kinds of wine and things covered in garlic - just the way we like it! Uncle Dan is my Godfather so I was so glad to be able to spend the day with him and my dad! Mom, Aunt Susan, Samantha, Aaron, Megan, Bethany and my brothers were there, as well!It was a great night with my fabulous family!

Toddler Beds

We made the first transition to big girl beds last night. The girls' cribs are convertible beds, which means they go from cribs to toddler day beds to full beds. They were so excited while we were taking the front of their cribs off and adding the toddler safety rail. They kept telling us they were big girls, but when they refer to the beds it comes out "good girl beds" instead of big girl beds. LOL Here are a few pictures of them on the beds. *You will notice the awesome new addition to their room - their name decals I had ordered from Uppercase Living back in November! I will show you the whole room makeover when we make the complete transition to full beds in the next few weeks.

Top 10 Best Days of My Life

I've been thinking about my life and how lucky I am lately and I decided to write down the best days of my life (so far). I started with top 5, but lucky me has had a lot of great days so I couldn't narrow it down to 5! They aren't in order of importance but in order of when they happened.

1. Ashley and Craig's wedding ~ October 2, 2004. I was so proud to be my sister's maid-of-honor and was so amazed by how calm she was. It was such an exciting day. It started out rainy and we were nervous because it was an outside wedding. The sun broke through the clouds a few hours before the wedding and it was a beautiful evening. Gorgeous day, gorgeous bride and fabulous event!

2. The day I got engaged! June 9, 2005 ~ We were in Cancun on vacation with Wes' family. He had all of these plans and things kept changing. We were going to go horse back riding but his sisters and Nancy went a few days before us and told us it was hot and gross because the horses poop in the water so he nixed that idea. Then he had plans to take me on a lobster dinner cruise. We went but the boat was like a wooden pirate ship and we had to share a small booth with another couple that we didn't know. We went up on the deck and still no privacy. As we headed back to the resort after the dinner it was raining and so we rode the bus with a bunch of smelly people. When we got to the resort I was running back to the room telling him I had to pee ( I drank several rum punches on the cruise!) and he was chasing behind me saying all of this sweet stuff like how we were meant to be and he loved me but I didn't think anything of it. He is super sweet normally! I was doing the pee dance outside of the room waiting for him to catch up and open the door and when I ask him if he has the key he tells me "Yeah, I think it's in here" (his pocket) and when I turn around he is on one knee with a beautiful ring! I immediately screamed and started crying and forgot about having to pee. He knew he had to do it before we got back to the room because his dad and Nancy knew it was going to happen and didn't want them to ask me about it. That day was amazing and the feelings of extreme happiness and excitement were overwhelming.

3. The day I got my job. I had interviewed on a Friday afternoon in late August of 2005. Wes had just gotten a job a week before and so I had been helping him in his classroom all week. Friday late afternoon we were down in Loramie picking up some of Wes' things because he was moving into my parents' basement since he would be teaching in a Catholic school in Toledo and I got a call from Paul Raczkowski, the principal at Lake Elementary. He asked if I would like to join their staff and be a 3rd grade teacher. I was out of my mind excited! I thought the interview went ok but was a little worried because I wasn't sure what they thought of me. There were 5 teachers and the principal in on the interview and I was nervous, to say the least. It's funny to me because the ladies on the interview are all my friends now, but they scared me. One of my very best friends, Kelly Garman, who is probably the nicest person I know, scared me the most. She didn't smile and I thought she hated me. LOL I love the people I work with and it makes my job even better!

4. Buying our first house ~ April 2006. The house was in need of a lot of work and was pretty small but it was OUR house! We got to paint and decorate and become a family in that house. I was so ready to move after the girls were born but I still look back with love at our little home in Martin.

5. Our wedding day ~ July 1, 2006. It was perfect! The day was gorgeous and everything went as planned. I was madly in love with my new husband and it was the start of our life together.

6. The day my nephew was born ~ June 8, 2007. I was so excited for my sister and Craig and really for our whole family. He was such a precious baby and I fell head over heels for him the moment I saw him. That was the day my sister began her new job as a Mommy and she definitely does an AMAZING job. This is of course, a tie with April 20, 2009 when my sweet niece, Sophia Grace was born! It was so wonderful to sit in the hospital with my sister and meet my beautiful niece! It was 6 weeks before the girls were born so I balanced Sophie on my BIG belly!

7. Getting the positive pregnancy test ~ October 3, 2008. After all of our fertility issues I really thought it might never happen for us. Complete and total shock is really how I felt. That went away and turned into absolute joy! Two and half weeks later we found out it was TWINS. The same emotions followed!

8. Finding out we were having 2 girls ~ January 20, 2009. We were so excited to find out and we had to wait all day. The appointment wasn't until 3:45. We knew Mya was a girl right away because she was spread eagle, but Miss Stella was a little trickier. It took almost a half hour of prodding to finally get a look. I was over the moon. I would have been happy with any combination, of course but I really wanted twin girls. I was a little worried that Wes would be disappointed because every man wants a son but he assured me that he was thrilled and couldn't be happier. We spent the evening shopping for our little ladies who became even more real to us that night. I still really want a son in the future but I am so happy to have my beautiful daughters.

9. The day after my girls were born ~ June 3, 2009. The day of their birth I was nervous in the morning, in labor in the early evening and recovering from surgery that night. They were born at 9:33 and 9:34 and so it wasn't until about 1:00 a.m. that I even got to hold them. I was so out of it and so that is why I would say the day after they were born was one of my best days. Meeting them and seeing their little faces was what I dreamed of for so long. Nursing them and feeling that immediate connection and unending love was so emotional. I was so absolutely in love with them and Wesley ~ our new family!!!!

10. Buying our new house ~ July 1, 2010 (well that was the day our offer was accepted, but then we began the saga of issues with the title and so we didn't move in until the end of September). It was totally worth the wait and this house is everything we wanted. If we could add a basement it would be perfect, but we couldn't be happier right now. It is so much bigger and has everything that was on our list. It may not be our forever house but it is definitely one we will stay in for a long time and one that the girls will remember growing up in!

Twin Talk Vol. 5

Hope this makes you smile....

1. The girls know which cups are theirs because we always give them the same ones. Generally, this means that Mya has purple and Stella has pink. Mya loves to take Stella's cup and run with it or drink it. When I caught her with Stella's cup one day she tells me "I just took a little bite of Sissy's milk. I was just kiddin'!"

2. This was a facebook status so some of you already saw this one.....One morning the girls and I are eating breakfast and Stella tells me "Mommy, I pooped. You need to change me." I told her I was eating and that's gross. She says, "Sorry, Mommy! I pooped! It uhgustin'!" Shortly after breakfast I took her back to the room to change her and she then is being goofy and is fighting me and running away so I left the room. Mya comes running out to me saying "I opened Sissy's poop! It digustin'! So Goss!!!"

3. Another diaper saga.....I'm changing Stella's dirty diaper and she asks me "Mommy, I pooped a corns? I tell her no, not this time. She says "Oh, I pooped a cheerio?" I told her she probably did since that is what she ate for breakfast that day. LOL

4. As I've said numerous times before the girls LOVE Dora. I love Dora too because she is teaching them so much. Well, on Dora's adventures she often goes to the Gooey Geyser. She does in one of our DVDs that we watch all the time. One day the girls are pushing each other in their doll strollers and Mya informs me that she is taking Sissy to the Gooey Geyser. LOL

5. On that same note, we were heading back from shopping at Kohl's one night and Mya says "Wait guys (she is talking to Wes and I and that cracks me up that she calls us "guys")! We need to go to the Gooey Geyser!"

6. Mya came out to the living room one day pushing her baby in the stroller with her sunglasses, hat and purse on. I asked her if she was going somewhere. She tells "I'm just going shoppin' with my baby!"

7. In my birthday post you saw the girls new stuffed zebra (Ziggy) and giraffe (Georgette). I love to listen to them say those names. Ziggy is easy but Georgette comes out "jewjet".

8. The girls were playing with some blocks one morning and I come out to the living room hearing Mya telling Stella "I'm sticking the blocks in my who ha" and then shortly Wes saying "No, we don't stick ANYTHING in our who ha!" He then tells me he certainly didn't expect to have that conversation yet! LOL

9. My girls are always watching and listening.....even when I don't notice! They are little mimics lately. Lately they love to put their sunglasses on their heads when they aren't wearing them like I do and it's so cute. One day Stella was whining about something and Mya tells her "That's enough, Sissy!" I looked at Mya and she tells me "Mommy, I tell Sissy that's enough!" Bossy britches!!!

10. Stella comes up to me singing Old McDonald (her version is hilarious!) and then tells me to sing it. I do and she says "Good singing, Mommy! I love that song!"

11. Milo loves to lick to tell us he loves us. He is really interested in the girls lately and they are a bit annoyed by this. He came over to lick Stella while she was putting her bracelet on and she thought he was trying to take it. She yells at him "Milo, no!!!! Don't try to fwipe (swipe) my ba-race-a-let!" Swipe is another word they learned from Dora. There is a character named Swiper the fox and in order to stop him they have to say Swiper, no swiping (3x) and then he backs off and says "Oh, Man!!!!" The girls love this part but they say it "Fwiper, no fwiping (3x) and then they giggle and scream "Oh, man!!!".

12. They love to sweep and so we got them a little broom and dust pan for their birthday. Mya comes marching out of the playroom with it and tells me "I gonna cean up the garbage. I gonna fweep and throw it in the trash can."

13. Will was trying to do knock, knock jokes with the girls but they didn't get their part of it. Every time he said knock, knock they just repeated it back to him. Finally he gave up. A few days later Stella wakes up from her nap and the first sound I hear on the monitor was her saying "knock, knock Mommy! Who's there, Mommy?" Guess she picked it up after all.

14. Grandpa Rethman, Aunt Morgie and Aunt Kayla got the girls a trampoline for their birthday among other gifts. We put it together and the girls love to jump on their "trampolee". So cute!

15. Lately, Mya loves to follow me around and constantly ask me "Mommy, whatchu doin'? Her little voice is hilarious!!!

16. There was a woodchuck in our yard and the girls LOVE to stand on our window seat and watch him move around. I named him Woody. When he "popped" (hopped) into the "pushes" (bushes) they kept telling Wes "Daddy, you needa find Hoody! He popped in the pushes!"

Mowing with Daddy

When I was a little girl I always used to ride with my dad while he cut the grass. We fought over who's turn it was. When we were little we sat on his lap and steered and when we were bigger we sat on the bagger on the back. I loved doing that with my dad. Today when Wes was getting ready to mow the girls told him "Daddy I wanna mow wis you" and he said okay. They only rode for a little while because he was worried it was too loud for them but they loved it! After they were done riding we played in the front yard while Daddy finished the back yard. We drew with side walk chalk and ran around in the grass. They kept telling me they "needed to check on the flowers" and then would bend over like they were smelling the flowers and blow on them. LOL Try to ignore the weeds in my flower beds. Those suckers just popped up over the weekend and I didn't have a chance to get them yet. We also need more mulch yet. Oh, how I LOVE summertime!

Stella even stopped for a moment to take a picture on Grandma's bench. Our friends in Fort Loramie had gotten us this memorial bench when Nancy passed away and we had the perfect spot for it! Right in front of it we put the stepping stone his mom's family got for us. I love the saying "When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure!" So true! We talk about Grandma all the time and we look at her pictures. The girls love to sit on Grandma's bench and it always makes me tear up. We sure miss her, but I feel especially close to her when we sit on that bench and I just know she is watching over us!