It's Safety City!

Summer is in full swing at Casa de Pesty, and with it brings a full summer with something going on every day.

For the past two weeks, Aron and Alyssa have been doing one of every child's summer rite of passage, Safety Town. Who has not rode around the little buildings in big wheels while obeying the "Stop" signs and practicing their arm signals for stop, left, and right turns? Every day brings a new topic, such as crossing the street, stranger danger, and railroad crossing. The funny thing is is that my kids seem to be the teacher's pet because I have been working with them at home previous to this summer's class. I have one child who knows his phone number and most of his address while the other one knows she lives two houses down from Leela. (Leela is a neighborhood girl who is about 10 months younger than A2.) That's my kids for you, one analytical as you can get while the other is currently running around the yard hugging trees with no shoes on.

Everything's Shiny, Captain!

Alright, so I have let this little blog down. It has been half a year since my last posting, and so much has happened I am not sure where to begin. Since August, the Pesty Family has had major changes. First, the little house that was Down by the Bay successfully went into contract and closed, with our new house closing following a few hours behind. This was followed by the insanity of packing everything and anything into caravans, laundry baskets, and moving boxes. This was after the inevitable filling up trash bins of at least three different houses. :-) And despite the insanity, both dogs and children alike seemed to survive the process. Mommy decided to make the A-Team an active part of the process in order to avoid a lifetime of therapy bills, and was completely up front about the entire moving thing. It helps that we managed to move into a neighborhood of similar-aged children and keep them in the same school.

Old House / New House

Thanksgiving was normal and Chanukah and Christmas passed with little trouble. Two round-trips to Cleveland and a malfunctioning garage door made the holidays all the more worse. Nothing bums one out than a broken part of your new house but that is life. The little Pests seemed to be overjoyed with their family time and presents, with Aron and Daddy trying to make the Bakugan Maxus Dragonoid while Little Ms. Thing did her princess thing. Of course, Grandma B. brought supplies to make edible dreidels, which was a big hit for young and old.

Insane amounts of snow managed to hit Columbus during January and February, and every calamity day allotted during the school year was used in the wake. While Mommy was happy for a break, sleeping in nowadays is next to impossible. (I suppose it has to do with a daughter who is convinced that she is a cat, and sits on one's head in the morning until you either wake up or put on her little show.) So I scored some snowsuits and went outside with my friends to "shovel" the drive, the street, the trees...you get the idea. Hey, it kept them busy for thirty minutes and tired afterward.

Warmer weather is around the corner which means mowing, chalk drawings, and trips to the local zoo or playgrounds. Add to the insanity that we recently purchased a membership to COSI, which was used on Tuesday. Both children and Mama alike were exhausted from this adventure but that WAS the intention. :-) Of course, warmer weather does mean more time outside, and this year we were alerted to a bunny burrow in our mulch bed by Kira. Thankfully, she was the one to find it because if Barney found it, the casualty list would be four and not one passing of natural causes. :-) I suppose that this makes my "Saving Wildlife" list ahead by two creatures, seeing how Barney has a bird, a partially paralyzed squirrel, one full bunny and 3/4's of another to his "kill list." We never did find that missing leg....

Summertime once again brings fun and chaos in dress and tuxedo form. Aron and Alyssa will be participating in Aunt Becki's wedding, so let the fun begin! And now, off to do dinner and dancing. Well, not dancing as so much as a song and dance about how little people do not want to eat their dinner.

We are 4!!!

Summer has gone by way too quickly! We have been so busy with the school year that Mommy has not been able to do a posting since December. Since summer has arrived, we have been busy planting flowers, riding bikes, playing on playgrounds, doing sleepovers with our good friends, and having a blast at Steve and Ms. Lori's wedding, not to mention the entire turning four thing! For their birthday, we decided to go to Magic Mountain this year due to the entire house selling process. Aron got a camera for one of his presents and promptly took some weird but good pictures. Alyssa decided to go for a beautiful princess dress with one of her gift cards and promptly dressed up to sing on camera. We have decided that Alyssa is the artsy type while Aron is the fartsy type. :-)

Aron and Alyssa got to be part of a wedding this summer. Daddy's cousin, Mr. Steve, was getting married and Ms. Lori wanted the twins to be a part of the bridal party. Alyssa was a flower girl and properly posed for every and any picture she was requested to be a part of. (We had actually lost her for about forty-five minutes because the bridal party wisked her away right as we were unloading from the car and she was enjoying her girl time immensely.) Aron was the ring bearer but got more of a kick out of being dressed up in his "monkey suit." He looked handsome and posed very well for each of his pictures. The best part of it all was that the Twins performed and behaved well for Ms. Lori and Steve, and ask me all the time when they are going to go and visit them.

Aron and Alyssa got to camp overnight with Grandma, Grandpa, Sadie, Lexie, and Bentley at a real campground. They slept in the camper overnight, went swimming, played on the playground, and went for wagon ride. They even had some of their pictures show up on the campground's website.

All in all, it has been a funny and busy summer. We decided that, after four years of squishing into our good little house, we needed to upgrade. Essentially, we outgrew our nice little house the moment we found out we were going to have a baby...oops, babies four years ago. So on the July 4th weekend, we officially placed our happy home on the market. We never thought we would be able to pull it off, what with living in our house while doing over twenty showings inside of the first five weeks. This house has never been so clean and will likely not be so ever again! :-) In addition to all of that drama, school will resume for us in a few days after they moved buildings as well. I will never move again, this I promise!

I believe this catches us up. Like I said earlier, lots of things going on and, as always, very little time to play. :-)

Holidays with the Pests...

Another holiday season has come to an end with wonderous gifts for all. Despite the rough schedule, Aron and Alyssa did wonderful for Christmas in Cleveland. Both sets of grandparents and great-grandmas doted on Aron and Alyssa. This year, Alyssa got her first Barbie, Aron got a bunch of toy cars from the movie Cars and we got a bunch of books. We even got a Hungry Hippos game which is fast appearing to be the new favorite game of choice. And after all the shredding of wrapping paper and excitement, we had a couple of tired Twinnies. At one point in time, we had a snoring contest between Grandpa V. and a small but powerful Lyssie. If it wasn't for all the noise, we would never have figured out that there were two in the bed. Any bets as to who won? (Hint, hint: It was the one that was about three feet tall.)

The holiday break has allowed us some time to unwind and relax a little bit. Alyssa let her hair down and even combed it, too. We also had a visit from Aquaman one day. On the coldest day, we had to put warm sleepers on the kids, which afterwards they insisted on a group picture. Nowadays, we often hear the two of them playing together very nicely. We even got to experience Alyssa comforting Aron when he got hurt. Sibling love is wonderful but is kind of not fun when they are fighting over the same toy.

Holy Batman, its balloons!

What a fast, furious, and fun past couple of months it has been for the B's!

The summer came to an end with a trip to Grandma B's tomato patch where the Twinnies got to pick a ton of tomatoes of all sizes. (Since then, all tomatoes that we get from anywhere are tomatoes from her garden.)

Since the beginning of September, Mommy, Aron, and Alyssa have been going to school. Aron and Alyssa are in a different classroom from the one Mommy is teaching in but we all get to eat lunch together. It has been both fun and tiring, with the Twinnies often collapsing either on the way home or shortly after. So far, we are benefiting from school which shows in our thinking and speaking. We now have complete thoughts and logical steps being made in our thought processes. For example, if Mommy can not buy something for our wonderful Twinnies, the typical response is, "I know! We go home and get money from the Piggy Bank!" Mommy's reply is that there may not be enough money for the object of desire, which prompts the follow-up comment of: "I know! Call Daddy and Daddy will bring home money at work!"

October brought a massive sugar rush as Batman and Robin left Gotham City to prowl the streets of the Squirrel Hill subdivision with their friend, Leonard. Despite having deposited the contents of his stomach into a porcelain bowl shortly before leaving, Aron made the rounds for almost two whole hours. He was not willing to stay home and not wear his Batman outfit that he was looking forward to for almost a month.

November brought out the best of the BuckNuts in our house, and I got to say that sometimes it turned a tad scary. However, the biggest game of the OSU season just happened to be the same day as Ms. Amy Y's baby shower, which left the Twins with Daddy during the game. But when Mommy returned, she had some wonderful gifts for her well-behaved little angels, courtesy of Ms. Amy. Seeing how happy they were at a bagful of helium-filled balloons almost made me overlook the fact that Aron was wearing Alyssa's shirt. Oh, I guess it was okay. We like to dress ourselves nowadays anyways and it is always a riot when Daddy or I get to see what is picked out. :-)

And of course, to all of our family and friends who frequent this blog, we wish every one a

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rock Lobster!!

Or better known as....

Leaving on a Jet Plane part 5!!

We have done it again, another trip to that wonderfully hot and humid state known as Florida. We saddled up the troops and piled in the plane, all before the sun was up. However, if you asked the troops, the sun needed to be helped up by "tickling it awake." ("Sun comes up and we wake up. Sun goes down and moon comes out, time to sleep.") This time, things were a little slower than in the past as Great-Grandma was a little under the weather. However, it did not stop the Dynamic Duo from feeding her crispy noodles and sliced almonds from Wendy's, not to mention the daily trashing of her humble abode.

This trip, we managed to do it all. A few days before we left for Florida, we had watched an episode of Jon & Kate plus Ei8ht where the family went to a beach. Of course, I immediately got the quick, "Mommy, I wanna go to the beach!" as soon as the episode started up, and we were able to do this fun little sidetrip during our visit. Alyssa and I went "surfing" in the ocean while Aron decided he would rather collect shells, sand, and coconuts. (Yes, I said a coconut. It washed up on the shore and was carried to our towel.) At the end of the day, Mommy was as red as a lobster, and the A-Team was exhausted. But the fun did not stop as the following days brought playtime at the mall with the large breakfast foods, a flat tire with half a day waiting on repairs, and a visit to the splash pad. Similar to the trip down, the trip home was uneventful with Alyssa snoring during takeoff from the Tampa Bay airport until shortly before landing at C-bus.

Now comes the hard part.... PRE-SCHOOL!!! Yes, you read it correctly. The A-Team is now enrolled in a part-time school program, and I will be seeing a sight that I did not think I would see for another year. See, Mommy was planning to take her time to research the schooling options available to her for the 2009-2010 school year, not to mention working on perfecting that dreaded potty thing but ended up enrolling Aron and Alyssa in a partial day school as well as returning to work. Many things tend to happen fast for us, such as the entire instant family. I guess what takes some families a few years to obtain we like to do in about two minutes, or in about three days. :-) At least we tend to need the same things for both of the them at the same time, and it is a form of organized chaos that I would never trade for anything. :-)