The World Is Waiting

Thoughts while watching AR9:

1. It's Sao Paulo, not San Paulo. Arrrggghhh!!!
2. "Lake, like the ocean?" Duuhhh.
3. The nerd handshake has got to go.
4. Go Team Atlanta! Latina Power!
5. Portuguese is NOT Spanish!
6. Good challenges so far.

We had an AWESOME day today! It was so beautiful here in northern Georgia that we went to two different parks and also for a walk in our neighborhood. Gabriel got to play with Thomas, Joshua, Christian, Lily Claire, Enzo, and Ty. He was so nice with all of the other kids at the playground, and we were so proud of him. At the first playground, he got to see three fire trucks unrolling their hoses and rerolling them. As soon as the trucks arrived, all play on the structure ceased as all of the kids ran over to look at the trucks. It was really cute.

Patty had Moms' Night Out tonight at a Mexican restaurant with four friends, and we had a blast! We celebrated Fat Tuesday with margaritas and fried ice cream. Luckily, there was a Japanese restaurant next door, so a container of sushi happened to jump into the Liberty for Matty. Boys' Night At Home was also a rousing success! They were having so much fun, they didn't even notice Mommy come home!

Party Central

We had such a great time tonight at our MOMS Club Family Night Out! Our house was packed to the gills, and everywhere happy faces. The kids had a blast, and the grown-ups had a lot of fun too. We even got an unexpected treat - one of our guests is an opera singer and sang a beautiful song for us. Add to that a super-fast cleanup, and it was a perfect night! Here are some photos, and you can see them all in our Shutterfly album.

American Loser

I'm watching American Idol from DVR, and what the heck? They make the loser sing their loser song after they're told what a loser the judges and the whole world think they are? That's horrible! Have they always done this?

But on the flip side, I did pick the first two to go. Hopefully, I've also picked the last to go. I'm on Team Taylor!!! (Stupid phone line was busy all day, so I might as well "vote" on our blog...)

Our New Family Portrait

We took a new family portrait today. Since Gabriel was putting his sketching pencil in his mouth, nose, and eyes, we figured we might as well use our faces as canvases. Matthew loves his new beauty mark! Actually, it makes him look a lot like Alton Brown. You can see in the photo above that Gabriel was actually saying "cheese"!!! We couldn't believe it - he was saying it every time!

Today was another family birthday - Patty's uncle Joe, or Joe Joe depending on whom you ask. Happy Birthday, Joe Joe! Here is our favorite photo of him:

Since we're on the subject of birthdays, we also want to wish Patty's cousin Valerie a Happy Birthday. Valerie was born on, you guessed it, Valentine's Day.

Happy Birthday, Dad/Granddad!

And now, last but by no means least, today is Dad A's birthday. It is just an indication of what an amazing person he is that he and Gail sent us presents on his birthday! Matt's always adored his dad, and now Patty and Gabriel do, too. Now if Patty could bribe him into a helicopter ride, he'd be perfect. Ha!

Happy Birthday, Mom/Gramma!

Yesterday was Mom A's birthday, and we wish we could have been there with her to celebrate it. She's always been a perfect mom, and now she has a daughter-in-law and grandson who love her, too. Happy Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday, Jack!

This is a birthday-filled week! We've decided to give each person his/her own post, because each is so important to us. We start with 17 February, when Jack celebrated his 28th birthday. When we asked his favorite flavor of cake, he said, "Chocolate... martini." So we gave him his favorite cake flavor. And believe us, it took the two of us and Jack's friend Will to come up with a way to get a candle into that darn thing!

A New Kingdom For the Throne

BATHROOM PHOTOS!!! I know this means Nancy will not have a reason to call anymore, but we'll try to be okay with that. The only "before" photo is the first one, with Chip. At least you can see the ugly wallpaper, even though we had already scored it in this picture. It turned out exactly as we'd envisioned it.

As we said yesterday, Jack spent his birthday weekend with us, and we had a great time. Here are a couple of photos from this past weekend:

Fun, Fun, Fun!

We've been having so much fun that we haven't had time or energy to post in a while. Jack was here last weekend for his birthday, Gabriel and Mommy went to the circus today, and we finally finished the bathroom - okay, so it wasn't all fun, but the bathroom looks amazing. We will get back to the blog as soon as possible, but here's a couple of pictures from the circus today to tide you over.

Va!

That means "go", and it's the title of the Olympic Hymn sung today at the opening ceremony. The part of the ceremony where the people formed a giant cross country skier, then a downhill skier, then a ski jumper was just awesome. That was the coolest thing we've seen in a long time. Unfortunately, we can't find a photo of it yet. And the Ferrari Formula One car doing donuts in the stadium was super cool... but why did they play a medley of American old dance music, and what the h-e-double hockey sticks was Susan Sarandon doing carrying the Olympic flag? Was she the most important American woman they could find, or was Jessica Simpson busy today?

We're writing this as the ceremony is being broadcast, so here goes some train of thought. Currently, there are acrobats forming a giant dove, which is great symbology, but, like, okay TIME OUT. Why is Yoko Ono reading onstage? What is going on? Is Torino in California? We thought it was supposed to take place in Italy... And of course, here is Italy's favorite native son, PETER GABRIEL. We love the guy's music and give him extra props for making the music for Patty's favorite game, Myst IV, but can he please stop singing Imagine? Even Kevin Spacey sings it better! The commercials, though, are way better than the Superbowl. And here comes the flame. Alberto Tomba is bringing it into the stadium, cool, and here is the 1994 Italian cross-country gold medal-winning team, good, and they're handing it off to a 1976 slalom guy, okay, whatever, big honor, good for him, and here is an alpine skiier who won gold in 3 different games, and now the flame lighter - the most decorated Italian Olympian ever with 10 medals in 5 Olympics, apparently a cross-country skiier. Huh, actual Italians. Well, at least they're embracing the international thing. And Sweden, by the way, wins the award for coolest mittens. Oh, and one serious question: Is Torino the same thing as Turin? The Pope did bless the flame, after all...

Okay, to on to our personal news for today. We trapped Mom and Dad in our house all day so we could work on the bathroom (and get Matt's hair cut, FINALLY), and we got a ton done. We sanded, cleaned up all the edges, and plastered some more. We have a schedule to get the painting done by Sunday and then finish the cleaning up and decorating throughout the coming week. We moved the toilet out onto the back deck. It gives new meaning to "when nature calls":

Gabriel loves to be helpful. Since he unloaded the dishwasher yesterday, he decided to load it back up today. We found him in the kitchen loading all of our clean silverware into the basket in the dishwasher. Here is a photo of our little cutie - you can see how neatly he got everything in there:

We had a good time before dinner watching a video we got at the library about helicopters. It was an IMAX movie, and we found it in the kids' section, but we all three generations loved it. There was even a section with Marines flying over Onslow Beach, which is where we stay when we go visit Jack.

We also set up the train set that Aunt Laura gave him for Christmas today. He LOVES it! With it, he learned how to turn a crank, and he caught on to the remote control for the train right away. He didn't want to go to bed; he just wanted to stay up all night playing with it. We will be surprised if he doesn't spend all day tomorrow playing with his train.

Time For An Update

So the Kellys are finally residents of the Bible Belt (official motto: a Baptist church and a Curves on every corner)! We've spent a lot of time helping them get settled and just spending time with them, so we haven't set aside much time for blogging. They are getting settled in very quickly, and we're really happy that they're here. We'll put up some pics of their new digs soon, but we want to let them get settled before we go publicizin'.

It is now officially hiking season, as we took our first hike last weekend. We started out by exploring our backyard, which we had yet to do because of the mosquitos and then the cold. It was a good hike, but a fence keeps us from getting to the creek. We didn't see any snakes or spiders, but we did find a couple of Christmas trees. Now we know what to do with ours, since the garbage guys won't take it. Here's a picture of Matty and Chip making their way through the wilderness:

Our hike continued in the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield. Gabriel walked a good portion of it and rode the rest out in his Kelty.

As we returned to our car, we passed a very unconcerned herd of deer. Here is the biggest one staring us down:

We finally decided to contribute events to the MOMS Club calendar. This month, Gabriel and Mommy hosted a Starbucks outing, and Christopher brought his mommy, Lisa. Christopher is one month younger than Chip and has so much of the same personality and mannerisms, it's funny. They both have just started spinning in place until they get dizzy and fall down, and they both love to watch Elmo's World on Sesame Street. They're also both going through a slightly shy phase, but both were sharing books in no time.

Later this month, we are hosting a family night out at our house so everyone can meet everyone else's family. We're excited to host it and already know that there will be a few families here.

Gabriel is getting so darn cute. He's putting together lots of new sounds and can now say "th". He has quite long conversations with us sometimes. He also mastered the art of opening doors yesterday, to our nervousness, but he's learning a lot of good things by watching us, too. We were watching TV in the family room today while the Chipster roamed the house, and we came into the kitchen to discover that our little angel had emptied the silverware from the dishwasher and put it all away in the silverware drawer! Sometimes we wish we could give him a Good Boy pill, but other times we wish we could bottle up his sweetness and sell it at the mall.

We are planning on finishing our bathroom this weekend, now that Gabriel has somewhere to go and we have a drywall sander to borrow. We were able to make one really good home improvement this week already; Mom and Dad gave us an under-the-counter TV for the kitchen. It's making cooking, cleaning, eating, and blogging lots of fun, and it saved Matt today when the sound on our family room TV went on the fritz and he wanted to watch Seinfeld. It even has a little remote control that is magnetic so it can stick on the stove hood or refrigerator. So clever!