How To Pack A Car (Alone) With 2 Children In 27 Easy Steps

1- A week before your trip, make multiple lists for every possible item you may need. 

2- Spend every spare moment you have in that preceding week packing the bags and making new lists.

3- The night before you leave, collect your bags by the door and double check your packing skills.  Make a new list of last minute items to be packed in the morning and have yet another bag ready for those things.

4- The morning of your trip, wake up, get the children up and (referring to your final list) pack your last bag.  Go ahead and feel really good about yourself right now and take a moment to let that feeling sink in because this will be your best parenting moment of the day.  Please notice that your best parenting moment did not include children. 

5- Try to take the dog out and realize that it's starting to rain.  Well crap.  You will then have to pick the dog up and put her in the grass because she has developed a sudden, irrational fear of water (especially the kind that falls from the sky).  Tell her that she's being ridiculous, that it's only sprinkling and that she needs to pee now.  She does not pee, but turns around the second you put her on the grass and runs back inside. 

6- Go put a pee pee pad down on the floor in your bathroom for the dog to pee on. 

7- Attempt to stop the 1 year old from unpacking all of your beautifully packed bags that are still sitting by the door.

8- When the 3 year old asks to help, tell her that she can help by watching the 1 year old.  (She will then say "OK!" and sit on the floor in your room with the 1 year old to play with her.  Appreciate this moment.)

9- Begin carrying the bags out to your car.  You will need to take the double stroller, so there will be some strategy in packing the trunk of your little Ford Focus. 

10- After you have the stroller and larger bags by the trunk of the car, take a moment to assess the situation and visualize how everything will fit best.  About half way through packing the bags into the trunk you will notice a small, chunky baby running out of the garage into the rain...barefoot.  And guess who's running out right behind her?  The (apparently miraculously healed of her water phobia) dog.  The same dog who was acting as if we had acid rain in North Florida is now chasing after the 1 year old and jumping in puddles like she's a puppy.  Meanwhile, of course the rain starts coming down harder and the bags are getting wet. 

11- Screw the systematic approach and throw the rest of the bags into the trunk.

12- Run after the barefoot 1 year old who is now soaked and filthy and is also now running away from you while shrieking with laughter.

13- After you get the 1 year old back into the garage, go back out for the dog who has now apparently gone deaf because she suddenly has no idea what the phrase "Minnie! Get back in the house!!!" means.  As you get the dog, be prepared for the 1 year old to try to escape back out into the rain...it will happen.

14- With the dog under one arm and the 1 year old under the other arm, get back into the house where you will find the 3 year old standing in your room.  Now here's where I'm going to save you the trouble because if you ask her: "Alexa, I thought you were going to help Mommy by watching Kate and Minnie"  she will answer: "I was watching them and then they walked away from me and I couldn't see them anymore."  I have no words.

15- Get the baby cleaned up and put shoes on everyone.

16- Pack up some snacks for the car .  Look up and realize that it stopped raining (probably as soon as you came inside).

17- Tell everyone that it's time to get in the car and, with the bags that contain the car toys on your shoulder, try to herd the children through the garage and out to the car.

18- Spend about 5 minutes getting them into their seats and buckled in.

19- Bring the dog back inside.  Again.  Tell her that she's not coming this time.

20- Grab your purse and keys, lock the door and get into the car.  This is when the 3 year old will ask for a drink...and you realize that her sippy cup is not in the diaper bag.

21- Go back into the house to get the missing sippy cup (which the 1 year old had pulled out of the bag in her attempt to unpack everything).

22- Get back into the car and realize that your phone isn't plugged into the charger and in the cup holder where you keep it.

23- Search frantically for the phone.  Dump out your purse and diaper bag onto the front seat.

24- Go back inside to look for your phone.  (you left it on the kitchen counter)   On your way out, grab some more snacks.

25- Dump your phone and the snacks onto the front seat in the car and go back into the garage to get a Pepsi out of the fridge (because who the hell thought it was a good idea to wake up at 6:45 so that we could leave as soon as the girls got up?!).

26- Go back into the house at least 3 more times for random items that you either forgot or one of the girls said that they need.

26- Drive to the stop sign at the end of your street where you will suddenly remember 2 more things that you forgot.

27- Keep driving.  It's not worth it.

This post brings new meaning to the phrase 'Crazy long post of pictures' (consider yourselves warned)

We went down south for Easter last weekend, which also happened to be the weekend before Nick's birthday.  So, obviously we had to have a party (because what good is a trip home without a Nettina party?).  

 Easter Bunny Alexa helping to put candy in bowls.

 'I have my baskets, where should we go shopping?!'

Yes, those are glass.

 Lexi and my mom

 She loves to dip.

 Alexa and Nikki.

Again, yes, that is a roll of tape that she's playing with.  No worries, I took it away from her before she could cut herself.

 awwwwww...look at the little cousins playing!

 They are so cute!

 Happy Birthday to Nick!!!  This was about two seconds before Alexa dipped her

finger in the icing and had a little taste.

 OK, so apparently this is one of those paper lantern things where you make a wish or something like that (I don't know, I was giving Alexa a bath when they took it out).  But, regardless, look at how big it is!

 Everyone on the patio watching the lantern go up.

 How can you send up a lantern while on a screened in patio, you ask? 

Oh, that would be through the large hole that is ripped into the screen.

 Want to see something just as ghetto as the gianormo screen hole, 10x as creepy and 100x as awesome?!  We (we being my mom) found a website where you can put people's faces into movie posters.  So she put

Nick's face (plus some with other people) in all these different movies, had them printed on 8x10s at Costco and then we taped them to the front of all the picture frames in our house.  Yup, scotch taped them.  Like I said, ghetto, creepy and awesome all at the same time. 

That was Saturday, now on to Easter Sunday.  We went to church in the morning.  Alexa was pretty good, she made it about half way through until Nick had to take her outside to walk around.

 I know that this isn't the best picture, but it's the only one where I don't have a triple chin.  Since this is my blog, I get to choose the pictures, and I choose the one where I don't look like a fat ass.  :)

 I don't know what she's doing in this picture but, I'm not gonna lie, she's pretty cute.  Why are you all standing in front of a slide, you ask?  Well, that's because Crazy McCrazeCraze threw a small fit and insisted on being by the slide.  In an attempt to get a decent picture, we went with it.

 Looking for Easter eggs (by outlet boxes).

 Yummy, Easter bread!  And...it's off to Easter with the Nettinas:

 Alexa got an Easter present from Aunt Kathy (and a bunny from Aunt Bunny...appropriately)

 Nettina cousins (plus some red-headed husbands)

 Playing with Aunt TeTe (aka Aunt Bunny)

Katie and Michael decided to talk to Grammy to avoid cleaning up...slackers.

 Yeah, I'm related to them.

 I love this picture just for Alexa's face toward Anthony. 

She seems to be very concerned about those cupcakes.

Both Nick and Abe's (Jennie's husband) birthday was on Monday so Aunt Kathy made them a peeps cake and we sang to them.  Apparently, they gave Grammy 1/4 of the cake as her piece and she went with it.  :)  Please notice the bib, it's awesome.

Purple Weed and a Fuzzy Baby

I don't know if I've written about this, but Alexa doesn't say 'Mama'.  She used to.  I still think it was her first word and she used to say it all the time.  But for some reason, since she has really started trying to talk, the Mama thing has disappeared.  She says 'Dada' and 'Daddy' with no problem, but never 'Mama'.  So when I picked her up from day care the other day, the strangest thing happened.  They were playing outside and when I walked out on to the playground, Alexa saw me and started walking real fast toward me saying 'Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama'.  She wasn't loud or screaming, but almost saying it to herself.  Of course, I was super excited to hear her finally say it!  She came up to me and I gave her a big hug and a kiss and asked her to say it again.  Do you want to know what she did?  Shook her head no.  That little crazy.  She can totally say it and flat out refuses!  Hmmmm.

The continuation of a super long post describing our week (or at least two days of our week) in pictures:
  

Oh, so many things to be said with this picture.  First of all, yes, that is our Christmas tree, still drying out and waiting to be turned into firewood.  Alexa picked out this outfit to wear and she thought she looked super cute.  Especially the shoes.  She threw an absolute fit when I tried to put her sneakers on her.  I told her that we have to have shoes on to go outside, so she went into her shoe basket and pulled out the purple crocks.  OK, kid, whatever, as long as you have shoes on.  She was probably trying to coordinate with the shirt.  It has Mickey on it and the shoes are Minnie Mouse.  I don't know how that all works.  I don't do fashion.  Obviously. Oh, and her hands are over her mouth because she's coughing.  We are currently working on coughing into our elbow, but it's proving to be slightly more difficult to learn.

 Playing with rocks.

 Now that is a handsome looking dog!

 Is it bad parenting to take a picture first before taking the rock out of your kid's mouth?

 OK, two pictures.

 And....she spotted a bird.

 Yup, there it is, in the tree.

 She's showing me her teeth ;)

 We went to the baseball park to watch Travis, Chase and Brayden play.  It was pretty windy! (Nice hair, Lex! hehehe)

 Just checking things out.

 Look at Hot Stuff climbing the fence!  Hopefully, she won't use this new love of climbing to get out of her crib!  I'm not ready for a toddler bed yet!

 I shall call this picture: "Purple Weed and a Fuzzy Baby"

 "Hey"

 Nick and Alexa planted two of the trees that we got on Arbor day.  And of course they had to use her car to transport them around the yard.  Actually, the pots fit very nicely in the 'trunk' of her car.  Have I talked about the car yet?  She's obsessed.  Every time we go outside she has to ride in her car and then most of the time throws a fit when it's time to go inside again (actually, the going inside part is getting better).  She just walks up to it, sits down in it and looks at you, waiting to be pushed around.  She loves it.  It's the best $3 my mom has ever spent...yay for garage sales!

Big helper girl. 

 Planting the dogwood tree.  See that black thing in the background?  That's our compost bin.  Nick got it for Christmas from his dad.  He loves it.  I fear it and call it the bear magnet, which Nick does not understand at all.  I'm not sure what there is to not understand.  We had a bear in our back yard who went all through our garbage (and ate the food).  So the obvious thing to do after something like that happens is to put a bin in our back yard that is full of old, rotting food.  Because that won't attract bears at all, will it?  Exactly.

 She found an extra tree to be planed.

 Lexi learning the fine art of digging with a shovel.

Tree #2 ready to go in the ground. 

Hi Glynniss.  Glyn says that she's embarrassed to have this picture up because of her rough hair cut.  I told her that maybe if she would stay still while she's being shaved, her hair would look beautiful like Minnie's.  Minnie looked at her smugly, then Glynnie gave her a look and walked away.  (what?  Not everyone has conversations for their dogs?  Because that is totally what happened!)

Feb Trip Home

Here are some pictures from when we went home a few weekends ago:

 Run, Nakey, Run!!!!

 Alexa taking a bath in the famous bathtub.

 Mom and I were trying to get a good picture of her but when we counted "one...two...three!!!"  she lifted up her dress instead and showed us her diaper.  I'm not sure and a little concerned as to what this means for her future.  We are going to have to have a discussion on the inappropriateness of lifting up your dress any time someone counts to three.

 Our little family (minus the dogs)

 Alexa and Ricky playing an intense game of tic tac toe.

pretty girl

We are trying to convince Diet Pepsi to sponsor her...haven't gotten a response yet.

Alexa loves to play peek-a-boo! In fact, she has recently run into furniture while her hands were over her face which led to a small discussion on the importance of keeping your eyes open while you are running...and that we should only play peek-a-boo standing still.  By the way, she also does the hand signs for Itsy Bitsy Spider and Skidamarink.  She must sing them at school.  I got the Spider one but when she asks for you to sing Skidamarink she gets so excited that instead of holding her elbow, she holds her arm pit instead.  So sometimes by the time I notice that she's even asking me to do something she's got her hand shoved into her pit with the other one frantically flapping in the air.  It took me awhile to figure out what that meant. 

 Katie taught her how to play the piano.

 She thought she was hot stuff.

Oh, and she likes to clean (which is AWESOME!!!).  She saw me mop up some spilled water from the dog bowl with my feet and wanted to join in the cleaning fun.  I plan to milk this for all it's worth.

Just so you know, there are a couple of really cute pictures of Alexa and my mom but she (mom, that is) made me promise that I wouldn't put them on my blog.  Which is dumb, because like I said, they are really cute.  But this is me not putting them up here.