Happy Birthday Aaron!

6 years ago today at 12:37am, I became a mom. What an amazing 6 years it has been. Full of mostly ups, some downs and getting to know the most amazing little boy I have ever met in my entire life. Experiencing things with him is like experiencing them for the first time.

Happy 6th birthday Aaron, I love you more than you could ever, ever imagine.

January 3, 2003










January 3, 2009

Personalized M&M's???

I will confess right now, I am a candy freak. I seriously love candy and truly love chocolate the most. And M&M's, well, they're pretty much a staple in my house. We put them out when we have company over and when we have parties. Oh yeah, and we use them as a prize every time my two year old daughter goes on the potty. And she loves them.

Over the past year or so, I've heard about how M&M's is offering personalized candy. Sort of like SweetHearts with a message written on the candy, but with the M&M's, you can choose the written message. You can actually choose everything about them - the color, the packaging - and now, you can even put a photo on your M&M's!

With Aaron's 6th birthday coming up this weekend and his birthday party next weekend, I had been struggling with what to give as a party favor. In about 5 minutes yesterday, I was able to order M&M's that said "Aaron's 6th Bday" and "Happy Birthday" from mymms.com. When our M&M's arrive this week, I'll divide them up into little bags and be finished with the party favors for this year.

The whole concept of these personalized M&M's are pretty cool. You can choose whatever message you want, which makes them perfect for anything - birthday parties, holidays, weddings, baby showers, the list goes on and on. We were able to choose from 22 different colors, including custom color blends for springtime, sweetheart, wedding and more. Entering the text is simple - you are allowed two lines of 8 characters each and you can have two different messages. For the men in your life, you can order MY TEAM M&M's printed with his favorite NFL team, which is pretty cool. And for grandparents, printing a photo on the M&M's is totally awesome. All in all, the most hardest thing about ordering these M&M's was making up my mind given all of the choices!

One difficulty I did encounter was during the checkout process. I had a gift certificate code that paid for all but $1.38 of my order. At checkout, I selected the "gift certificate & credit card" option, entered my credit card information for the difference and submitted my order. In the end, my credit card was charged for the full amount of my order. Immediately I was on the phone with David from M&M's customer service, who, truthfully couldn't have been nicer or more helpful. He looked everything up on the computer and told me that for some reason, the gift certificate didn't download into their order system. Within about 3 minutes, he had fixed the whole thing for me and gave me a confirmation number for the new order along with his apologies.

So now I'm waiting patiently for my M&M's to arrive. I truly hope that they survive a week in my house and make it to Aaron's birthday party. I'll probably have to give them to my husband and make him hide them from me! (I will post pictures of them when they do arrive!)

Thanks to Mom Central and MyMMs.com!

Kids Remember

Aaron's birthday is coming up, he'll be 6. Either that means that he's getting old or I'm getting old, old enough to have a 6 year old. A little scary either way you look at it.

The other day we were talking about what we would do on his birthday. Mostly because as the slacker mom that I am, by the time I booked his birthday party, the day of his actual birthday was all booked up, so we have to have it the next week. I keep telling myself him that it just makes his birthday longer. Anyway, in our discussion about what we should do on his birthday, we talked about going out to dinner to a hibachi restaurant where they cook in front of you. We talked about inviting Grandma and Papa and maybe even Grandma Cheryl.

Here's the conversation that followed.

Aaron: Grandma Cheryl can come too?
Me: Yes, we can ask her.
Aaron: But Papa Bill can't come because he died.
Me: Right.
Aaron: Mommy, if Papa Bill didn't die, I would have wanted him to come to my birthday.
Me: Me too.

In the six months that my father in law has been gone, Aaron really hasn't talked about him. I wondered if he understood, remembered or how his almost 6 year old mind had processed the whole thing. Clearly he both understands and remembers both his Papa Bill and how much they loved each other, which makes me happy.

Happy Birthday Theo!

Growing up, I always wanted a dog. My parents always said no. My mom would say "When you are older and you have a house of your own, you can get a dog."

When I got married, we lived in a co-op apartment, with strict rules of "no pets that make noise." We tried to get a cat, but that was a disaster. When we lived in our apartment, we would often talk about what kind of dog we wanted. We knew that we wanted a dog that would be good with kids and gentle. We did some research and found out about Labradoodles. Funny, right? They are a combination of Labrador Retriever and a poodle. Digging more, we found out about Goldendoodles (combo Golden Retreiver and a poodle). Bingo, we hit the jackpot!

A little history on the breed. Someone was researching hybrids and found that if you crossed the poodle with another breed of dog, hypoallergenic traits would come out. Crossing with the golden or the lab to produce a dog that had a great change of being hypoallergenic allowed people with dog allergies to have seeing eye dogs. Extremely popular in Australia, the breeds were slowly making their way into the US. At the time, there were only a few breeders of this kind of dog in the US. People who lived here were having the dogs imported from Australia, paying thousands of dollars to have them sent here.

We found a house in December 2001 and went to contract right away. Once we knew we were moving in in the summer, we started to do some internet research about the breed that we wanted. After alot of research and deliberation (no joke, this was a HUGE project), we put our name on a waiting list with Mueller's Woodville Kennels in Wisconsin, and, after approximately three months, we received a call that our puppy was born on May 23, 2002. Yay for us! Sure. Yay for us that our dog, who was supposed to grow to "60 pounds and medium size" has grown to be 90 pounds and extra large size, often mistaken for a pony. You laugh, but I am so not kidding. We used to take him all over the place and bring him to outside fairs in the summertime. One time, a little boy approached us and asked "Is that a dog or a pony?" His mother heard him and looked over also wanting to know the answer. Yes, our Theo has come a very long way from the 10 pound puppy that we picked up at the airport in July 2002.

Theo turned 6 years old yesterday. He was here before either of our kids, when our house was a disaster. We went through about five different dog trainers and countless numbers of time when we almost rehomed him for various reasons. He's a little hard to manage, still barking at the mailman like he is hungry for his lunch, but he's a good boy, mellowing a little bit in his old age. Our kids love him and love dogs, although our daughter is afraid of cats. Go figure.

Here's Theo yesterday on his 6th birthday with Aaron & Camryn.