Flanagan Clan

This morning I woke up and walked downstairs, only to remember the pile of dishes I had backed up in the kitchen. A tell tale sign of a busy weekend. On Friday, Andrew had the day off and he took the time to catch up on some stuff that he’s been putting off for a while, mainly computer stuff that I don’t even pretend to understand! I spent most of Friday morning cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, washing the floors, and getting ready for company on Sunday. Friday evening we packed the boys in the car and made a trip to the new Walmart, where we bought curtains for Patrick’s room and the kids’ bathroom. Afterwards, we decided to take a little trip down to Canyon Road, where we visited a hardware store and started picking up new plants for our yard. Andrew let me pick out several different rose bushes. Roses are by far my favorite flower, and I picked a dark red “Mr. Lincoln” and a light pink with white tips “Delicate Beauty”. These were the colors of my wedding flowers :o). We also got several arborvitae, 2 rhododendrons (my dad would like that!), fuchsia starts for two hanging baskets, and a couple other things that I forgot :o). After that, we went over to this really neat pet store that sells exotic pets. Last time we were there, they had a pair of chipmunks! They were soooo cute. We saw a bunch of squirrels, bunnies, and other rodents, a chicken and duck that have free reign of the store (be careful, they bite!), several pure bred expensive yappy dogs like chihuahuas and bischon frise’s, and lots of colorful tropical fish. Patrick loves animals, so he was really enjoying it. Sammy, in the baby carrier, was too busy trying to grab anything that got within arm’s reach.

On Saturday morning, I continued to prepare the house for company and get some odd jobs done while Andrew went into Tacoma to help a group from the church do some work for one of the families in need of help. Afterwards, he went to Lowe’s and picked up even MORE plants for the yard. He spent the afternoon planting everything in the ground. Patrick spent the afternoon playing with a bunch of the neighbor kids, who like to push him in their wagon. I had time to take a nap. Saturday evening Andrew sweetly took me to Michael’s to pick up some craft things, and then we went to Panda Express for dinner. I had a coupon for a free entree with the purchase of a two-entree meal, and so we managed to to pay under $6 for Andrew, Patrick and I to eat lots of yummy chow mein and orange flavored chicken. It was good. That night, we rented an interesting movie called The Prestige. It was actually pretty good. Andrew and I are usually disappointed with a lot of the movies that have come out recently, since we’re picky, and it managed to pass our little test. Definitely one of those movies that we’d like to see again someday.

Sunday was pretty busy for us. We woke up early for the early service and then attended Sunday School. Afterwards, we rushed home to put the beef tips in the oven, set the table, and do some last minute cleaning. We had the Bechtels and my parents and brothers over. Ron Bechtel is the church organist and was also our real estate agent. We had been meaning to have them over to see the house for quite a while, and just finally got around to it. This was the first time in a long time that we’ve had company over for Sunday lunch, so I had spent a lot of time worrying about cooking times and making sure that everything was clean, but it all turned out well. Sunday evening, however, Andrew and I were both exhausted and the boys were on their last legs, so we all went to bed early.

And now it’s Monday again. Another busy week ahead of us, with Easter being this Sunday. Sorry I don’t have any pictures, but I’m sure we’ll take a ton next week!

Here’s a little game for everyone to play.  Directly below, are two random baby pictures of Patrick and Samuel taken when they were roughly the same age.  Further below are a bunch of family baby pictures that I happened to have saved on my computer. Take a look at the pictures, and pick the baby or babies that you think look the most like Patrick and Sammy. Leave us a comment with the pictures that you picked!

Patrick, 7 Months

Sammy, 8 months

Here are your pictures to choose from. You can pick multiple pictures, if you want!

A)

B)

C)

D)

E)

F)

G)

H)

Yesterday, for the very first time, Patrick tried to say the name, “Sammy”. However, it came out more like “MeeMee”! It was pretty funny. He is saying more and more words, and he’s becoming a lot more vocal. It seems like most of it has just happened in the last month or so. It’s nice to actually understand him better. He’s very curious… he will constantly go around pointing at things and say, “What dat, Mama?”. Sometimes we’ll say to him, “Patrick, say _____”, and he’s finally trying to say more and more things that way. However, if you ask him to say his name, he’ll say “RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!”. What a boy!

Andrew took a couple days off work this week because he’s been pretty busy with work, with all the traveling and such. It’s actually been nice for me, because today Andrew is giving ME a little break. He took Patrick out to the park and to Costco for a little while this afternoon. I’ve been playing with MeeMee. He has such the cutest expressions, that I love taking tons of pictures of his different faces. Then I have a hard time picking the ones that go on the blog, so I’m just going to post a whole bunch, although there are many more I didn’t post :-P.

Haha! Patrick can’t steal my toy from me! He’s gone with Daddy!

Uh oh! Better not fall over!

How do you like my tongue?

It’s fun to spend time with Mommy

Today was not one of the better days of motherhood. Actually, today things were sort of frustrating. To start with, Patrick, Sammy and I have colds. I believe Patrick caught it at Bible Study on Tuesday… a loud, raspy cough and nasty accompanying cold. The boys are almost better, but I finally caught the bug yesterday, and I’ve been in a bit of a daze ever since. Which is why the next two things happened.

Dents in the side of the minivan… the 1 1/2 year old 2006 Toyota Sienna has several new battle scars from this morning’s run in with, guess who, PATRICK and the swing set!!!! Let me explain. Our next door neighbors have two kids, ages 11 and 6. They had a metal swing-set that they’ve had stored in their shed for a couple of years, and they asked us a couple weeks ago if we would like it for our boys. On Saturday we picked it up, and since it was rainy, stuck it in the garage. It has two swings, a monkey bar, a bench swing, and a slide. Well, this morning I was hurrying to get the boys ready for a trip to Walmart. I had Patrick’s shoes and coat on, and I was in the process of putting on Sammy’s jacket and finding my purse when I heard a loud cry from the garage. Patrick had managed to get into the garage, get onto the bench swing (this thing is huge with metal arms), and knock it onto the car. He was scared and/or hurt and I was furious… we had specifically told him yesterday to stay away from that stuff. The car ended up with three small dents and several scratches. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to cover up a lot of the scratch damage with the touchup paint we have. It’s annoying because we like to have nice things, but at the end of the day we realize that it’s just stuff… and it’s not like we’ll be taking it with us when we die. I also bet that before we get rid of that car in 10+ years from now, it’s going to see a lot more damage than what happened today.

Another not so pleasant experience… burning bacon until it becomes a big black mass of yuckiness. I’ve never actually done it… until today. Here’s the next story. I was sauteing bacon in a pot to make split pea soup for tonight’s dinner. I realized that I needed to do something in my bedroom and ran upstairs after turning down the heat a little bit… I told myself I would be right back. Patrick followed. What started out as a quick trip to check on something turned into me playing with Patrick’s hair and showing him how to spray his hair with the spray bottle and make it stick up in little spikes. Suddenly I heard Sammy hacking downstairs and I ran down the stairs to find the entire downstairs covered in smoke and my bacon a black, gooey mess. It was gross. I quickly opened the back door, turned on the ventilation fan, and disposed of the icky bacon. While I was busy defrosting new bacon so I could make my soup, Patrick was still upstairs with the water bottle…. and let’s just say that by the time I had finally finished sauteing my new bacon and got the soup simmering in the pot, I found Patrick with the water bottle downstairs squirting everything, including himself and Sammy. His little long sleeved tee-shirt was soaked with water… so now he’s running around the house in nothing but his diaper and hiding under blankets and coughing away. I hope this cold clears up sooooooon… and there’s always hope that tomorrow will be better. I’m not quite sure I’m up for taking the boys to Bible Study because we’re all sick again, but maybe if the weather is nice we’ll get out of the house. Mondays are hard because I always do laundry and grocery shopping. Which reminds me… I am no where near finished with the 5 loads of laundry I had to do today. I better run!!!

Patrick’s running around the house as I type, yelling “A BOY! A BOY! A BOY!”. It’s his newest word, and Sammy seems very impressed and humored by his big brother. Here’s some shots of the boys from the past two days.

Sammy trying out his “new” carseat in the kitchen

Sammy perfecting the art of sitting

Patrick not only picked out his own outfit today, he tried to put it on himself. Can you tell?

Sammy loves playing with the bouncy bumble ball… when Patrick lets him have it, that is!