My Surprise Party and Daddy's away

Carl threw me a surprise 30th birthday party on Sat Feb 9th with the help of my best friends Amy and Tonianne. The party didn't surprise me as much as the people who were all there including my wonderful neighbors and my FAMILY! My Mom, Dad, Christy, Daniel, Michelle, Katie, Rachel and Timmy. We had a great night of fun with some really delicious food and almond torte cakes! We played minute to win it games and Taboo. I had a lot of great laughs. It was an adults only party and I was grateful for that time with my friends.

Thank you baby for an awesome evening!!!

This week Carl has been away in CA for work so my mom graciously stayed for the week. We had a packed week and the help was exactly what I needed! Jackson had a rough couple of days but he has started to enjoy his peapod again. He likes us to sing to him and rock him back and forth.

 Tenley loves her new camping out spot in our bedroom!

On Ash Wed we went to Ford's Fish Shack for fish sandwiches. It was very good and the kids were pretty good too. Tenny is now telling me she has to go potty pretty often and so I've had to take her in public restrooms. gross!!

One of the things that Nana does when she comes is wash Tenny's dolly's hair. Tenley has now seen this enough to have figured out how she can do it in the sink herself. It's so cute to watch her!

My 30th Birthday

Today is my 30th birthday. Wow I can't believe I just wrote that! It was a pretty amazing day! It started with an early (for us) morning at 8am. I had breakfast with the kids and even got to snuggle with Jackson on the couch for a bit. Then at 11:30 we went over to Tonianne's house for a birthday brunch. Tonianne hosted a yummy brunch with a great spread of food! I even got to take home some leftover Blueberry Buttermilk Cake! Amy, Ariana, Alaina, Melanie, Colin, Renee, Karis and Ethan were all there too! It was difficult for me to handle Jackson there because he needs open space to roam and I had to hold him alot. He also snuck away and walked right out the front door!!! I was glad to see my friends though, they are all so caring and sweet!
Carl came home early and we took the kids to their Music Together class. Jackson just wanted to run around the whole time. It was cute watching Tenley! After that we went to my pick for dinner, Bon Chon for their famous chicken wings! Right after they came out we had to pack up and go home. Jackson had enough! When we got home Carl waited for me to sit down at my computer and had a special slide show waiting that told me we were going to The Homestead March 1-3 and that he already made arrangements for the kids to be taken care of. I am sooo excited. It meant so much that he planned something so special and romantic for us!

Jan 28-31

This week has been a crazy one because I'm preparing for my sister Christy's baby shower on Sat Feb 2. I have lots of small projects to finish up and finding the time to do them is hard! I like blogging because it allows to me to write down the funny and sometimes frustrating stories of the week.

On Monday we went to open gym at JW Tumbles with our friends, The Larsons. The kids really loved it and it was nice that the Daddies could be there with us too. It only took Tenley two times to figure out how to climb up the tree house to go down the slide and then she did it over and over and over! She even got brave and went down head first. Jack enjoyed the tire swing with me and he liked hanging on some of the bars.

 On Tuesday we did some afternoon shopping and met Daddy for dinner at Chick- fil-A. It was soo warm out that we didn't even need jackets. My temperature gauge in my car said 71 on Jan 29th!!

On Wed 1/30 we stayed in all day because it was rainy and gloomy. I wanted to wrap up the prizes for the baby shower but realized my wrapping paper was left in the van. I literally ran down the stairs (having left the gate open) and was gone for like 30 seconds. When I came  back I found Jackson with a piece of my Airwick scented oil burner in his mouth and he was shaking the oil all over the floor. In a hurry I tried to grab it from him and he flung it from his hand, landing on the tile, without breaking! I was sooo mad but even worse than that I was concerned that Jackson ingested poison. So I quickly went to the Airwick website and read the safety guidelines and it did say to call the poison center. I rinsed out his mouth and had him drink even more water and then gave him a snack. He seemed to be fine and I knew he wasn't drinking the oil so I didn't call. But boy was I in a panic! Can I catch a break around here??

I was able to snap this cute picture this morning of Tenley feeding Jackson a bit of cereal. It was adoarble! She kept calling him back for more "Jacksony meer" = Jackson come here! 

 Today, Thursday, right before lunch I told Tenley I would paint her nails if she ate all her food. So I got the nail polish out of the drawer and gave it to her to bring downstairs. Well when she went to hand it to me in the kitchen, it was a bad exchange and it got dropped and broke all over the kitchen tile floor. I was so mad! But since it was organic nail polish it cleaned up pretty easily with multipurpose cleaner and water.

This afternoon my task is to make 70 cake pops for the baby shower! Here's to hoping that the kids take long naps and I can get it done easily. My best friend Amy is coming over to help me dip them in chocolate and decorate them later this evening. Then tomorrow morning we will pack up and head to Pittsburgh for the baby shower festivities. I'm really excited, just hope the weather cooperates!

One last thing, I'm turning 30 in exactly one week. I put something on facebook asking what I should do the last week in my twenties and one friend said I should do 29 random acts of kindess! I think I'm up for the challenge!! I will post as I do those things!

A cold week

This week was very cold here in Virginia and we even had two snow days! We were able to get out to a playdate with our friends Blaire and Izzy. The kids had a fun time playing with all her toys, playing in her room and bed and playing with her dogs! Even Jackson wanted to pet the dogs. On Friday we took Jackson to school for therapy and then went to Subway for lunch. (see pic below)
On Saturday morning I went to my first Coffee and Connect through McLean Bible church. I got to meet some very nice ladies and share my story of our special needs story. I'll look forward to going again next month.
Right after that I scooted home to jump in the van with my family and head to our friends, The Bunn's for brunch. They recently moved into a beautiful house so it was nice to finally see it. Tenley had fun playing with Parker on his choo choo train. They were so cute! Jon happens to be our realtor and took us around to look at some single family homes. Very enticing!!

Happenings of Jan 7-9

Jackson found a new favorite thing to do...climbing into the washer and dryer. He did this for about a half an hour. He went back and forth from playing in the sink to climbing into the washer.

During this time Tenley found some new nail polish in her accessory box in her closet and asked me to paint her toes. So while Jackson was playing, I sat Tenny on the toilet and painted her toe nails a teal color. They looked adorable!!

This week Tenley also learned how to feed herself cereal and without making a big mess too! It's so cute to watch her spoon the cereal into her mouth and then pick up the bowl to drink the milk.

I also got to meet my newest niece, Alexis "Lexi" Birchok. She's the cutest, tiniest little peanut and I love her so much already!

1st playdate of the New Year

This morning I got a text from my dear friend Denise (at 9am) asking if we wanted to go to Chibis Indoor Playground at 10:30am. For most normal families that would be enough time to get out the door but my kids like to sleep in! Tenley woke up at 9:45 and Jackson woke up at 10:10. That didn't leave me much time to get out the door in time but we did it and got there just a bit late. The kids loved playing and had fun together. Ethan and Claire are great friends to my kids and it's cute to watch them together. Ethan gave Tenley many smooches and now she just tries to run away from him. Who knows what the future holds for those 2! I enjoyed watching Jackson have fun playing. I could tell that he remembered the place as her ran from climbing structure to climbing structure. And I enjoyed getting to talk with Denise in between chasing Jackson!

New Year, New Us!

This year I'm going to try to blog more about the day to day life at the Schnur's! I'm interested to look back at the end of the year and see all that we did together.
Today is the 2nd day of the year and all family of 4 are all under the weather with colds. This cold just won't go away! We've tried OTC meds, homeopathic remedy's and home remedy's and can't seem to shake it. 
Over the past few days we've been putting Tenley in her "big girl" bed instead of her crib. Some days she likes it, some days she doesn't. When I lay her in bed, I put her huge puppy next to her to block her in, but that didn't work last night. She fell out and I had to then sleep with her in her bed because Jackson was already in our bed!
Jackson was pretty miserable most of the day because of his cold but he did get happy enough to give Tenley a few kisses. She loves that. Then she put her finger in his mouth. uh-oh! Her face turned from happy to scared in a few seconds. I have to mention that yesterday Tenley basically told me that Jackson had a seizure. I was doing something in the living room while Jackson was playing on the couch and Tenley was nearby, all of a sudden I heard Tenley saying to Jack "Jackson you ok??" I quickly turned to look and see that Jackson was indeed having a seizure. If Tenley hadn't told me that, I wouldn't have even known he had one. She is a very sweet and caring sister.
One last thing for today - while I was working on Christy's baby shower invitations and Carl was installing the bed rail on Tenley's bed, Tenny was going thru my jewelry armoire and found some dry erase markers. Pretty soon Carl found her hiding with marker on her face. That was a first.