The 100th post of Muss Matters brings back a familiar host - Clint. Before you navigate to another page to check your stocks or to confirm that random, annoying kid from 7th grade English to be your newest friend on Facebook, I encourage you to read this blog entry. Not only will you be blessed with my wonderful sense of humor, but you will see unbelievabily cute photos and a video of little Laners.

As for Steph, she is feeling well. We are getting ready to head to Oklahoma for a few days as our last round of vacation before the season starts. Our last two visits included nearly a foot of snow. Let's hope that isn't the case this time. Our car (I really mean Steph's car) is dirty enough.

This weekend included me working here at the house, Steph and I keeping the Coltrain kids and a spur-of-the-moment dinner party titled "Leftover Buffet." At 6pm tonight, Steph and I decided to clear the fridge of leftovers and eat whatever we want to before sending the rest to the disposal. We invited the Coltrains over and our fridge is now pretty, darn clean - the title of eating the most again belongs to Lane.
While I have never considered myself "cool", Lane let us in to his sense of hippness (just using that word makes me that much more un-cool) by walking around with his Superman shirt and hat on backwards. This kid has potential - I'm certain we can credit his mom for that.

Lane loves shoes. If he's anything like his dad, he will have ginormous feet, thus really big shoes. To prepare for this, he tried walking around in his mom's shoes for a bit. To our suprise, he handled the larger version pretty well. With that in mind, we will not be buying him anymore shoes, he can use mine. Although, that might decrease his chances for being the "cool kid".

That's Amore

Do you remember that scene from Lady & the Tramp, when the dogs shared a strand of spaghetti? My boys are working to getting the noodle sharing move down. They've had lots of nights to practice since we have had some kind of pasta dish just about every other night of the week. In the past few weeks we've had shrimp pasta, Cajun chicken pasta, macaroni & cheese, spaghetti, and spaghetti with artichokes & tomatoes to name a few.

Look how cute! Now I've got to get the song That's Amore out of my head. If I can get it out, maybe the pasta cravings will go too! I don't know how much more pasta my guys can stand.

Snow!

As I type this it's snowing in RR! Lane and I went out to play in the snow this morning and although the snow wasn't as deep as it is in Oklahoma Lane had a great time out in the snow just the same.

I think today is the first time he's actually played in snow as it is falling. The flakes are huge fluffy white flakes so they lots of fun!

Lane was so busy running around it was hard to get a picture of him looking at me. He seriously stopped what he was doing and put his foot up to pose for me. So cute!

Murph put on her sweater and came out with us but refused to move off the dry part of the front step. Chicken!

Love the big snowflake stuck on Lane's nose!

Lane DID NOT want to come in! If it keeps snowing, like it's supposed to, I think we'll probably have to go back out. The snow is calling our names!

Shoe Shopping

This weekend we did a little shoe shopping for Mr. Picky, Clint. While I helped Clint look for shoes Lane helped himself to a pair of brown penny loafers. I looked over at him and found him with these shoes on! Since Lane was content with his new shoes I focused on helping Clint. We found two pairs he liked. One pair being the exact same as a pair he got for Christmas and returned. We are on our third pair of returned shoes from that one pair so I have my fingers crossed he will actually keep and wear these shoes. For someone who wore the same shirt to work three days in row, it's amazing he is so concerned about what his shoes look like. And yeah, the shirt incident occurred a couple weeks ago!!!

Regardless of what happens with the new shoes Lane had a great time in the shoe store.

Lane's going to have ...

Monday we made a trip to my OB/GYN to do our 20 week ultrasound.Yeah, I look like I'm not in my right mind and my face looks fat, that or I have a distorted skinny idea of what my face really looks like in real life. But, anyhow Clint took the picture while the technician had me on the table checking out our baby. Clint thinks I don't post any pictures of myself, because I don't, so I'm posting this one just for him.

Ta-Da!!! Our baby, who we are affectionately calling BB. Notice the baby's hands, my Doctor's first comment when we went back to see her after the ultrasound was "Wow, your baby has really long fingers". My first thought was great, another extra large child!
Before we went to the Doctor's office we made envelopes for our parents to announce the sex of the baby. Since we didn't know what the baby was before we were going to send them we made one card that said girl and one that said boy. We mailed the cards with the intention of them just opening the one envelope of the baby's sex. Our plans didn't exactly work as intended...I did get a picture of my two boys with the correct card before we left the Doctors!!! It's a GIRL!!!

As to how the parents found out:

My parents didn't get their envelope before their big get together with friends as planned so we went with plan B. Ruth, my Mom's bestie was a huge help and printed out this picture for my P's to see. My Mom called right after she found out. She sounded excited but not overly so, I asked if she was excited and her comment was "yeah, but I knew it was a girl". Kinda funny, but I have to agree with her, I felt the same way when we found out. I've been telling everyone I thought she was a girl from day 1. My Dad told me Lane is going to be a great big bother to a little sister and I do have to agree!

Clint's parents finally got their package today and we got on the phone with them via a three way connection. Gotta love three way. Anyway, I got to be the one to tell them to open the envelope labled #2, after what seemed like 5 minutes they finally got the envelope open. I think they were so anxious to find out, that they dropped the envelope in the process. Once the envelope was open I think all of Longview could hear Margaret yelling. After having two boys, and two grandsons I think to say she is excited to have a granddaughter would be an understatement.

G is for Grapefruit

Lane LOVES grapefruit. I had some for breakfast while he ate his oatmeal. As soon as he saw mine he wanted some too. So, I gave him some segments in his oatmeal bowl. He decided using a spoon was too time consuming.
He saw me trying to get pictures when he came up for air and tried to duck out of the picture.
Then he went back in for more. Notice this time the bowl is tipped up a bit more. He's really getting his face into it.
Another break. I think he looks unhappy because he was out of grapefruit. Don't worry I refilled his bowl.

Now that's a happy face. Checking out what he got.

And he went for it. Notice how his bottom lip is curled around the bottom of his bowl!!! He is such a boy! I promise we use spoons in this house. Somehow he came up with this all on his own.
One happy guy. I love that messy little face!

First Hockey Game

Tonight we took Lane to his first Hockey Game! He had a great time. He spent most of the game playing on the rail and stairs in the suite. He had so much fun he barely ate, you know if Lane misses a meal there is something exciting going on. He'd stop every once in a while to see what was going on down on the ice.

Before we left, he and Dad took a minute to pose for a picture.

On our way home we stopped at Dairy Queen for a treat. Lane and I split a blizzard. Luckily, I had a bib in the car!

We can't wait to go to another game!

Attempted Photo Shoot

I wanted to get some cute Valentine's pictures of Lane this year. I got a lot of cute shots that I made into a collage last year, so I was excited to try again this year. Sadly, my little model did not want to participate. These are some of the outtakes, cute, but not the happy, smily pictures I was hoping for.
Lane thought up the squatting pose all by himself. He stayed in that exact position until I took the picture. I love his face, so intent on taking a good picture.
When the stem on the flower didn't' work out, we tried taking the flower off the stem.

Also not a great idea, however I think Lane got the flower in the mouth idea from Murphy.
A final shot of just Lane. He was so happy to be rid of that silly flower. Happy Valentine's day!

Sickie

Lane hasn't been feeling too hot the past couple days. I took him to the Doctor to have his ears checked yesterday and sure enough, he has ear infections in both ears! When we got him up for dinner last night he looked pathetic. While he ate his dinner, a jello cup, he told me he wished his T-T (Auntie) was here to give him a massage. He is sure that would help him feel better.

So, how soon do you think you can be here Auntie?

Disciple Now

Clint and I are running on fumes! Literally and figuratively. This weekend we hosted 7 fifteen and sixteen year old girls in our home for our Church's Disciple Now. The weekend began at 6:3o on Friday night and ended today after Church. During our weekend I burnt two things - cookies, and a breakfast pie and our house still smells of smoke! And, over the past two days we got a total of about 8 hours of sleep. We all took a solid three hour nap this afternoon and are looking forward to a good night of sleep tonight!

We spent most of the day Saturday working on the sweetest woman's home. Nanny is 84 and needed part of a new floor put in and LOTS of window and blind cleaning. She has had quite the life. She was a postmaster for about 30 years and got to have lunch with Elvis back in the day.
Our girls cleaned up and ready for the Saturday evening service.
Lane with all of his new girlfriends. He loved having so many girls around wanting his attention. He's already looking forward to next year!

This is the video Clint made for the weekend.

Date Night

Clint and I went out to celebrate his birthday tonight. We had a DELICIOUS dinner at Joe DiMaggio's.
Clint loved his Filet Oscar and sauteed mushrooms. We had so much fun having a fancy night out together. Lane was at some friend's house playing with their two kids while we ate. After dinner we went to pick him up and stopped to get ice cream together at McDonald's on our way home.
I think it was the highlight of the night for all of us!

An Apple Today

Laners and I made a little trip to the grocery store this afternoon. Lane is to the age now that he knows the foods I am getting in the produce section, the place where we get all of his favorite foods. He usually cries for a banana, but today it was an apple. I figured what would it hurt if I let him eat on an apple while we shopped? So, I gave him one and he pulled the little sticker off of it. I thought, ok, he just wants to hold it. Then, I looked down and he took a tiny little mouse bite. It was so cute. He took a few more little nibbles and I got down to business, grocery list business that is. The next time I looked down, a few isles later, Lane had attacked the apple! There was hardly any skin left on it and he was covered in apple pulp and juice!!! I was so mad I didn't have my camera with me to capture the moment that I took a few pictures as soon as we got home. Yes, he was still working on that apple!

I'm sure he's thinking "Mom, this is the best apple ever, thanks for letting me have it."
"Mom quit taking pictures and let me eat my apple!"

When he finally gave the apple up this is what was left. I should have taken a picture of a whole apple with this one to get the full effect. I think he did pretty good for his first ever attempt at a whole apple.