havocandmayhem.com

for a 3 year old. Me: We need to go to the post office and mail some packages Him: Should I pack a snack?

Last year at Xmas Havoc was disappointed in most of his gifts. The thing he really wanted was the last thing he opened & by the time he got to it he was feeling pretty unhappy. But he was ecstatic when he opened that gift. It's not like he rejected a large pile of gifts, he had 5. It's not that there was anything wrong with the gifts he had opened. They just were not the 'hot rod' he really really wanted and had asked for from Santa. By the time he had opened the other 4 gifts he was upset that he hadn't received the one thing he had asked for & wanted. I don't criticize him for this. I've felt the same myself.  The thing is.... in the long term, those other 4 gifts have seen far more use & provided far more enjoyment than the one he really really wanted. The hot rod was the toy of choice for 48 hours and was played with occasionally for a couple months after that.  It's been sitting untouched on the shelf since July.  The Leapster he was so ...

You know you have been stuck in a car with small children for too damn long when you and your spouse staring high fiving one another when you spot a McD's with a play area.  It took us 9 hours to get out of Florida, a trip that should only take 6. Traffic was moving at 20mph on I75 for nearly the whole time we were on it.  No reason for it. No construction, no accidents, no flat tire or cops having pulled someone over (why would they, we were 50mph under the speed limit). At one point I had to pull over so DH could hack his way into the underbrush & find a spot for Havoc to poop. I'd been hoping to reach an exit for 10 minutes by then & only gone a couple of miles.  I seem to have a ton of laundry to do.  I'm not sure how that happened because I did laundry the day before we left. There should only be 4 sets of clothing & 2 of Pjs from that day waiting for us when we got home. I did laundry the night before we left FL as well. So there should b...

622 photos made the printing cut. Even with my parents' cable connection it took me almost an hour to upload them. I didn't go through all of them because I felt it more important to upload them while I had the faster connection. I can do some basic cropping online & that is all any of them really need. It'll be just over $76 to print them all and I only have 2 photo albums at the moment, so they will get printed in batches I did very little black Friday digi shopping. I got a template set by Teresa fergusson, and kits by ScrapKitchen Designs and Fee Jardine at Sweet Shopp and some some overlays by Stacey J Stahl & Birgit Kerr from DSAG. I did spend $140 at Amazon on assorted Christmas gifts & now only have to buy one game & something for DH & then I am done.

We started the morning off at 9am with what Mayhem calls a 'bike walk', where the kids ride their bikes and the adults walk along at some distance behind them.  My folks' community has all these walking/biking paths all over place, connected by humpback bridges. Havoc and cousin Mischief, rode their bikes, while Mayhem had his 3 wheeler and DH and went along. They can go fairly fast on the straightaways but they can't bike up or down the bridges so we can catch up with them at those points.  Mayhem discovered the thrill of a lifetime - riding his bike down the bridge. He lifts his feet and shout "Wooooo!" and flies down that hill. He keeps control of it the whole way & then does some gentle swerves to slow down. Impressive for a 3 year old going really really fast.  We went about a mile all told. Then we came home & everyone went in the pool.  Havoc stayed in the pool for about 2 hours or more.  Mayhem & Mischief were in and out. After lunc...

I'd planned to spend part of my time here sorting through all my photos & pick out some to print. I have no printed photos. I haven't printed out a photo at all in the 21st century (professionally, I do print my own on my crappy printer for certain projects) . I thought I might end up with about 250 photos to print. But no. I selected almost that many just for the first 15 months of Havoc's life. And those are the ones I selected. I've easily got 5 times that many I'm not printing. I averaged about 125 for years 2004-2006. I have about 500 or so photos to print before I get to this year's, this will run me about $60-70 with shipping. I'm also going to need a few more photo albums. I have a couple nice ones that have a space on the side of sleeve to write information but they don't hold enough photos. I also don't recall where I bought them, World Market maybe. I still have to go through & crops some & fix the eyes & lighting on...

Friday 9:15am - left with much wailing & whining & general grumpiness. This mental state would continue through the next 32 hours. 9:30am - stopped to mail a package, took 5 mintues 10:10am - realized plan to get oil change in C-ville was a forlorn hope. Why is everyone in C-ville getting their oil changed at 10am on a Friday morning? There was line of people waiting at Jiffy Lube. 11:45ish - got lost on a by pass & ended up 14 miles out of our way before realizing. According to the ladies at the Gas & Go, this is a common occurrence. 12:30pm - stop at McD's somewhere near the the North Carolina border. 1:30pm - cross into North Carolina heavy traffic on I77. Mayhem naps for 2 hours. 3:45pm - stop at a Love's rest stop for juice, water, chips & a race around the area for the boys.  We may have been in South Carolina at this point but I can't be sure. South Carolina did not announce itself the way North Carolina and Georgia do.  We just suddenly...