The Sleepover That Almost Was

So this is my niece Jade. She and I have a little tradition going on. I say "Jaderbugs, you should come spend the night with Aunt Katie."

And she ALWAYS says "I caaaannnn'tttt doooo thhhhaattt."

It's our thing you know.

So you can imagine my surprise when the Big Burkes went to leave this weekend and I asked Jade to stay over and she looked up at me and said, "Ok."

I think Nikki almost peed her pants because Jade has only ever spent the night with her grandparents. I naturally felt very bad because I never would have put Nikki on the spot if I thought Jade would actually want to stay. It's kind of a parent code in a way. Right?

So Nicole took Jade out to have a powwow in the car. Then Jade called her Dad. Then I went out there to say that we could all take a few days to think about it and do it next weekend.

But Jade still wanted to stay. And I am the queen of girl sleepovers, especially first timers.

So she stayed. But not without her mother's phone number scratched out on her arm, which I edited this photo for privacy purposes. I'm sure Nicole would love spam phone calls but I will save that pleasure for a different time. Like when I submit her info to the timeshare company in the mall.

Doesn't this look painful?

Back to the sleepover. We watched movies and ate popcorn. We danced like princesses and had a very good time. Jade's only concern is that if for any reason her mom's number washed off her arm that I would be willing to give it a redo. To which I agreed.

But then Izzy feel asleep. And Jade really didn't like this.

Jade: "Can I wake Izzy up?"

Katie: "Wow you are very brave."

Jade: "Why?"

Katie: "Let's just say that the expression 'let sleeping does lie' was invented for Izzy."

Jade: "What?"

Katie: "Hmmmm. Waking Izzy would be poking a lion with a stick. It would be like trying to tickle your dad at 3am. Not pretty."

Jade: "I don't get you."

Then Braxton started to doze. Mind you Chase and Cody had skipped out on me hours earlier to find the comfort of their beds. So Jade was started to be a little panicked. I could tell that if she didn't go to bed before Braxton that she would be very nervous. So she and I were sitting there starring at little Braxton. I was mentally willing him to stay awake but alas like many of my mental endeavors, it was a failure. So Jade decided she wanted to go home. I tried to wake up Chase but he looked at me and rolled over. I didn't want Jade to remember the night and think of being traumatized instead of having fun, so I tried Cody. He tried to rollover but I grabbed his big toe and squeezed.

He shot out of bed.

And he took Jaderbugs home.

Nicole, because I put you on the spot last time, I'm not going to do that again. But I want you to know that I NEED a second try one day soon. Pretty please??

Talk Me Off The Ledge, I'm BEGGING You!

We had a birthday at the Burke house.

My little princess turned 4.

I know she usually acts like she is 13 but at least I could know deep down that she was only 3.

But alas, I no longer have a toddler. I have a 4 year old who will be starting kindergarten one year from now.

 You are probably thinking "WTH??"  You are too young to have a four year old. I KNOW!!

At least the people at Sizzler won't think I'm a food thief when Izzy and I sit there and argue about how old she is in front of them. 3 & under eat free but Izzy hated to be reminded that she was only 3 when Jade is 4 and Natasha is 5. So she would say she was 4 and the cashier would look accusingly at me, like I was too cheap to pay $3.99 for the three pieces of broccoli Izzy was going to nibble on.

One crisis adverted (Of course now I will FOR SURE have to pay for Izzy to eat).  But that leaves another perdicament (or two)...

I feel so old. And sad because I wish my mom was here.

But aside from all that, we had such a good time. We let Izzy pick anywhere she wanted to go for dinner.

Guess what she picked?

Leo's Place!

Or A Little Piece of Hell, which I like to call it.

And she only referred to me as "Stepmother" two times during the evening. As in "Ok stepmother" when I asked her to stop and eat dinner and "Yes stepmother" when I said it was time to leave. Success!

But above all, Happy Birthday Isabelle Grace from your mean old mom.

Actually I Overuse the Word Actually

My bestie Paula's daughter, Natasha, uses the word actually A LOT. It cracks me up because she is so sweet about it. Guess who picked up the habit? Isabelle Grace. We were standing in the LA airport when a group of Asian people quickly surrounded us and started taking pictures. It took my little lovey about two seconds before she started pushing out poses like the one featured above. She LOVED the attention but before I could get off the phone and grab my camera, they were gone. The whole incident lasted less than 30 seconds but now there are a few hundred photos of Izzy floating around out there.

Katie: So what was that about? Did they think you were cute?

Isabelle: Actually they thought I was a super model.

Katie: Actually I wasn't aware the you were familiar with any Asian dialect so I'm unaware of how you would know that.

Isabelle: Actually... wait what?

Katie: How did you know what they were saying?

Isabelle: Actually supermodels know lots of stuff. Actually, I was the prettiest super model they had ever seen.

Katie: Actually your ego makes you a little less appealing.

Isabelle: Actually everyone loves me. That's why they took my picture.

Katie: Wow you said actually more times in the last minute than most people do all day.

Isabelle: Actually is my favorite word.

How do you like them apples blogger world?

Rodeo and NOT as in Rodeo Drive

We went a rodeo this weekend.

It was dirty.

I wore white pants and had Izzy in a dress.

We got extremely dirty.

Life is dirty though, so why does it matter?

The rodeo was actually a lot of fun. Cam Cam laughed and clapped through the whole thing. Izzy told Chase that we were going to the "radio" without him. Good times had by all until it started getting cold and windy. Then the rain started in. We missed the last event because we were shivering in the car. In August. But Chuck came back to the car to tell us how a WILD horse had been caught and saddled right in front of where we had been sitting. The cowboy even put (what I assume to be) a lice infested horse ear in his mouth to distract the horse from being extremely irrate over the whole being caught thing. Needless to say Chuck was very excited as he gave us the play by play and Izzy listened to the whole thing. And then she looked at Grandpa with one eyebrow up and said, "Bor-ring."

Pleasing a three year old is tough business. Unless Sleeping Beauty is involved.

5 Months Feels Like Forever

I simply cannot believe that is has been five months since my mom passed away. Trust me when I say that it feels like a million years in terms of trying to accept the idea but it feels like just seconds since I last saw her face. No way did I ever think that I could do this without her for five minutes, five seconds, five milliseconds and yet here I am writing on the fifth month anniversary. What I have come to realize is that I can do it, I really just don’t want to. I want her to be here to enjoy Izzy, Marley and Cambri. Now here comes the selfish part. I want her here listen to me. To watch the kids for me. To call me. To hang out with me. And yet I still spend most nights alone. Sometimes I sit on my couch and stare at the door to just try to remember what it looked like when she came walking in. To me, hard is something that goes away. School stresses you out, the semester ends. The car needs major work, payday rolls around. It is just a matter of playing the waiting game. But now I’m playing the game with no end. No matter how hard this is, no matter how much time passes, no matter how much I wish and pray that it was different, this is it for me. My Aunt Cathy and her family recently came to visit (yay!) and I bawled like a baby when they left. They probably thought I was a psycho but honestly I feel like every tie I have to my mom is slipping away. It's a very empty feeling. I know that I will start forgetting and the thought keeps me up at night.

I miss you mommy :(

To my friends and family out there, I want to apologize for my selfishness for the last five months. I have had friends have babies, get divorced, get married and otherwise deal with life changing moments and they probably feel like I have checked out. Please know that I haven't and I want to make things up to all of you. I will try to get my head focused and being engaged in life again. That's the goal anyway.

Disney What What Land

I’m sure that all of you have been on the edge of your seats, anxiously awaiting news regarding our Anaheim experience. I can not disappoint.

Yes my brother-in-law is wearing a wife beater out in public. When he arrived at our room earlier in the morning, I asked him if he wanted to make use of our bathroom to recommence the dressing portion of his morning. His blank stare led me to believe that he had no idea what I was talking about. Just in case you were wondering, I did establish later in the day that this was a laundry issue and he did buy a shirt.

The Burkes' made it to Disneyland! All freakin' 10 of us! A little mini miracle if you ask me. Of course only I had to have my plane held so that I could make it and was then forced to displace an elderly couple so that I could get a seat next to my three year old. Being the last person on the plane tends to make the rest of the passengers grouchy with you (who would have guessed?) and by the time I boarded, all the seats except for two distant ones were taken. By the third plea for help by the flight attendent I knew that I was going to drug off the plane by an angry mob. When the kind woman polietly threatened the crowd by asking who was going to take responsiblity for this "lively" child if we forced to split up, some nice people did give me their primo seats in the second row. I have to be honest though that my trip was starting to look up when I thought I might be able to pass Izzy off for a couple of hours. No such luck. By the time I got to LAX, I was completely frazzled. Wouldn't you be if you were traveling like this?

Chase and Cody rolled in a couple of hours later but for the first few hours of the trip, I was on my own. And I will never do that again. I ended up rolling the stroller plus the luggage across four terminals. NIGHTMARE!

The major problem with Burke vacations is that the men of the family think that vacation means "leave with no plan, arrive with no plan, contiously keep moving, still don't make a plan, disregard tired children by forcing them to keep going and otherwise have no time to chill." Just one trip I want Nicole and I to be in charge. We would have down time plus still be productive because our movements would be fluid and organized. I can hope, can't I?

All of you should have heard grim reaper Nicole as were on the shuttle from the hotel to Disneyland. She kept saying, "You better have fun because we are neeeevvvveeeerrr coming back here." I didn't think it was possible to depress children on their way to the HAPPIEST place on earth. Of course by 8pm that night, I was completely agreeing with her.


The highlight of the trip was our breakfast with the princesses. It was very magical for the girls which made it fun for all. When Izzy saw Princess Aurora come out, she grabbed her autograph book and fell from her chair onto the ground out of excitement. I will never forget the moment because it has been burned into my brain. The look of pure joy made everything worth it.

Of course we did a lot of other things on our vacation. Some highlights...

The Hollywood experience. I have been to CA several times and have never done this, so I thought it was great.

I got to see the home of one my favorite TV shows, The Girls Next Door.

Tori Spelling's childhood manor.

The Osbourne House! Now Christina Aguilera's home.

And last but not least, an In and Out Burger.

What makes this better than your average In & Out? Paris Hilton got arrested here for driving under the influence. I literally threw myself across the limo so I could grab this photo for your viewing pleasure.

Please don't judge me.

The BEST Wedding Ever!

Can I just say that I have a new obsession? I got my first wedding invite via Facebook with a link to watch a wedding go down LIVE on the Internet. I didn't even have to pull out the spanxx and wrestle my kids into submission. I WATCHED A WEDDING in my pj's. And it was awesome! I was still raving about it at work three days later. I seriously LOVE this. Jamie and Clint got the wedding they wanted in VEGAS which was very sweet and intimate. But no one felt left out because EVERYONE got to take part in their special day. I'm still marveling at this genius of it all. People can elope without any feelings of guilt. I know what you are thinking. Wedding are recorded and rewatched all the time. But this was live! I know that Clint and Jamie are very lucky to have found each other and will happy and complete in their marriage. And I got to witness the beginning live on the Internet! So cool!

It's a....Hermaphrodite?

Please heed warning before you continue reading. You will be exposed to pictures of urine in this post. If that bothers you I give you permission to do something different with your time such as catch up on listening to the voices in your own head. It's your call...

So my sister is having a baby! It's so nice to have someting to be excited about. I get to have a baby without being pregnant! Of course I don't think that Heidi and Josh are just going to hand the baby over to me or anything but I'm sure it's going to like me best regardless.

While my sister is in town, we are going to have a garage sale. Actually she is having a garage sale with all of my stuff. When we were going through my garage, she just kept putting stuff in the sale pile without actually caring whether or not I still wanted it. Which is fine because most of it is Chase's crap. So on with the story. I asked her what of the baby stuff she wanted and she told me that she wants a few things only if she's having a girl. Naturally. I am personally very much ok with boys in pink but I respect that others are not. But being that our garage sale is going to happen soon and her doctor is three states away, we were in a predicament. But I watch reality TV. I knew what to do!

Intelligender!

I am pretty sure that this means she is having a boy. Though I could be wrong because it was super confusing. Maybe she's having twins. Maybe it doesn't work (doubtful, I know). I have to say that I was very disapointed in our first Intelligender experience. Who would have guessed?

A Litter of Little Girls

Seriously peeps? How do you sleep with 8 little hands and 8 little feet jabbing you from all angles? It’s not easy!! It all started with the girls sleeping in a fort (or princess tent as we called it) in front of the TV. The two night owls of the bunch, Natasha and Marley, were keeping the others awake so I pulled them into my bed. This was around midnight. MIDNIGHT!!! I didn’t even know the freaking clock went that late. Around 3 a.m. Jhanna wandered in. She curled at my feet and went right back to bed. Sometime after that I was trying to establish if I had any feeling left in my toes after being cruelly ribbed kicked all night when I couldn’t figure out what my toes were touching. I just laid there, wiggling my toes, trying to have a complete thought when all of a sudden I heard little Jhanna say, “Stop messing with my ear.” The poor thing had my gross toes up her ear. Which explained A LOT. Yes I did have feeling in my limbs and ears feel weird on toes. Sometime after that, Izzy came tornadoing in. If you don’t think tornadoing is a word, you have never met Izzy. She came and literally cannon balled on me and pushed my pillow on the floor to make a spot for her. Then took the little slab of corner blanket I had been using. My freshly dry cleaned WHITE bedspread was on floor at this point so I just gave up and got out of bed. Who would have ever guessed that four such tiny things could take up so much room?

First Ice Cream Cone, NOT First Mommy Mishap

Last week I got Cambri her very FIRST ice cream cone.

And for some reason, I thought eating it in the car would be ok. I obviously have extremely high standards for my one year old. She failed. Miserably.

At one point (pictured below) she dove in with her fingers. Her little inexperienced baby mind didn't realize that trying to pick up ice cream on an extremely hot day was not a good idea. Shouldn't her older, more experienced mother have realized this?

I was too busy taking pictures because she was so cute. I then spent an hour scrubbing my car, my car seat and her beautiful dress.

Lesson learned.

But instead of taking a boring old bath for cleaning up baby, I put her in the kiddie pool.

And she hated it.

She just wanted to sit in my lap...

or sit on the grass and cry!

So I ended up just throwing her in there with her big sister. It only took a few minutes for her to start having a good time. This was a good precursor for her Mommy & Me swim lesson.

What a beautiful baby!

Happy 4th of July! Or 3rd of July in our case!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. The Burke house was super busy. On Friday night we went in to the Drive In. It was Natasha & Jhanna's first time so we made sure it was a super good time. We put a mattress in the back of Chase's truck and off we went. The first movie was Furry Vengeance, which was as lame as lame could possibly get. The second movie was Eclipse. I fell asleep.



The next morning we went to the parade. My brother-in-law, Cody, got there at 6:30 to save a spot and he let those of us who stayed up WAY too late the night before squat at his feet. It worked out perfectly (for me anyway, maybe not for Cody) to roll out of bed at 9am, dress the kids, and see all the parade in a front row seat.

Later that night, we went to the fireworks. Some major hooplah was going around town about the fireworks being held on Saturday instead of Sunday. As far as I'm concerned, it should be on Saturday every year. It works best for me! I would have been dead at work if I had stayed up late on Sunday. So I was ok with it. A few weeks ago, Paula asked me if she could park at my house so she and her family could walk down to the river. Naturally I agreed, wondering if she realized how far it was.

She inspired me. Being that I really had nowhere else to go, I loaded the girls up and off we went. Walking 2.2 miles at 8pm isn't so bad.

Walking home 2.2 miles at 11pm sucks! The girls were feisty. Luckily Paula and the fam caught up with me and so I wasn't completely alone. Not having my mom on holidays makes them super hard and Chase being gone just made it worse.

Something did make me laugh this weekend though. When I went to put gas in Chase's truck.

Advertising placement gone wrong. Horribly wrong.

Cambee's First BIRTHDAY

Little Carmbri turned one yesterday.

And let me tell you, she ate cake.

Izzy, Natasha & Jhanna were super helpful and baked little Cam Cam her own cake. They even frosted it themselves.

I hope that Cam Cam gets to feel like a princess on every one of her birthdays because she really is one. Happy Birthday Cambri!