Cuteness contest...

I had to get that last entry off the top of the blog, so I thought I'd share these recent pictures, and the imaginary conversations that play in my head when I look at them...

Hi - look how cute I am

Cute? You think that's cute? Now, THIS is cute!

You mean like this? HA - I am way cuter!


HA - I won the cute contest for the day!

More imaginary conversations to come! :-)

Crashes and Bangs

The past week has been one of crashes and bangs in our life, both on the macro scale and the micro scale.

Most of you have heard about this, but just in case you haven't, a plane crashed at the opening to our neighborhood last Tuesday. Yes, you read right, I said a PLANE! For the news story, you can go here but let me tell you, the news is surprisingly brief. It's taken me this long to get enough distance to write about it here because, quite frankly, it really freaked me out. Let me explain why:

I've been trying to walk more: it's good for me, and essential for Lucy. My usual afternoon is for me to leave the house with Ryan in stroller and Lucy on the leash around 1:45 pm every day. I walk for 45 minutes, and then pick up the big boys at the bus stop at 2:30 pm. Monday night, I didn't sleep well, so I was really tired on Tuesday and fell asleep on the couch. I woke up at 1:45 and spent the next 10 minutes blearily putting on my tennis shoes and getting Ryan and Lucy ready and we were out the door by 1:55. I spent the next 5 minutes or so beating myself up for being lazy and not getting my walk in, all while walking towards the front of our neighborhood. I heard a "putt putt putt" sound, and promptly discounted it because I was dealing with a stubborn puppy and a grumpy toddler. Then, I heard (and felt) a BOOM! and looked up (finally). I decided that I must have imagined it, or that maybe it was a backfire, or something rolling off a truck - anything except a plane crashing into the ground. A few seconds later, I was disabused of that notion as I heard sirens and saw them stopping right at the entrance corner to our neighborhood. I still couldn't imagine what it was, until I got to the corner and saw the wreckage:This is the thing, though: We should have been on that street, in that place, at exactly that moment. It was on my walking route, and that was where I was planning to be. If I hadn't fallen asleep on the couch, if Lucy were not being stubborn on the walk, if I had run instead of walked, if, if, if...

In the end, there was one casualty - the pilot of the plane. Amazingly, no one else was even hurt. But the "coulda, shoulda, woulda's" have haunted me for the last few days. I'm okay now - really! :-) Which is why I can now write about it.

And if that weren't enough, we had some crashes in our family last week too:

Poor Ryan, he fell and scraped his face on a brick wall - OUCH! And then later that day he tripped on his own feet and bumped his head on a chair - HUGE goose egg on the side of his head. He would not let me take a picture - he kept running away from me. :) He's looking much better now, though.

Add that to the assorted bumps and bruises that are part of our every day life with three boys, and it was a rough week last week.

Here's to hoping this week goes better!

Happy Shirt

Here's what Ryan has to say about today:


"Happy...Me..."

Contrary to what you see here, this is Ryan's favorite shirt. Usually just asking about it causes him to say "Happy shirt!" Ask him about it sometime! :)

Unfortunately, today Ryan is sick. Fever, sore throat, and general grumpiness turn even the Happy Shirt into the Sad Shirt. He has what Nathan had last week - so he'll be better by tomorrow.

Talk to you all later!

Nathan's news...

Okay, I admit - it was pretty mean of me to put in a teaser for Nathan's news and then not update for a couple of days. My only defense is that I truly meant to update that night, but... well... we have a puppy, you see. :)



See if you can guess what Nathan wanted to share with you...

Can you see it? No? Here's another guess...

Nathan has lost a tooth! A tiny tooth, but still a tooth! He lost it on Friday last week. I guess the Tooth Fairy was very busy (tired) that night and "couldn't find" the tooth (because she forgot to look), so she had to leave Nathan's gold dollar on the kitchen counter (in the morning). She came back for the tooth the next night and left a nice note for Nathan and an extra prize as an apology for not taking the tooth the first night - an Optimus Prime transformer! Oh Lordy, somedays I'm good at the mommy gig, and somedays not so much. :)

In Lucy news, here's a pic of her with the big boys:

And this is what Tyler thinks of the whole thing:

"Stupid bitch"

You know that's what he's thinking!

She has a name....

Lucy!

Although maybe we should have named her Dumbo - those ears!
Lucy is sweet as can be and she is fitting into our family nicely. She is also taking up way more of my time than I anticipated, and I anticipated a lot. :) Mostly I just have to watch her like a hawk, since we are still housetraining her. Luckily, Lucy likes to be near me (she's sleeping at my feet right now.)

Wish us luck! :)

I will be doing more updating later today and tomorrow. Nathan has news!

Holy Crap! We have a dog!

What did we just do?


She's a sweet little thing. We got her from a rescue organization. She's part chocolate labrador retriever, part hound dog, and maybe some other stuff we haven't figured out yet. She's dark brown and has the cutest little patch of white on her chest. Also, the tips of her back two feet are white, just at the toenails.

You can see that she already loves Stephen to death. :)


We don't have a name yet, but we'll update tomorrow when we finally choose one. Feel free to put in your two cents in the comments section, if you can think of a cute name for her!

Long day.... :)

Another trip to the Emergency Room...

So, since 2008 has been passing by emergency room free, Ben decided to make sure they didn't forget us at Children's Hospital:
He sprained his knee while at a playdate at someone else's house. What were they doing, you ask? Jumping off a headboard onto the bed in the master bedroom. Yeah - I can tell they were being well watched. :-P Just goes to show that you can't leave boys alone for a minute or they get into much more than any of them would get into alone. I know Ben and Nathan would never do that here, and I'm pretty sure that the kid they were visiting aren't allowed to play that way either.

Anyway, in the end there's no harm done - he's on crutches for a week and no permanent knee damage was done.

Just another day in the life of the Lathrop boys...

Ben Lost Another Tooth!

So how cute is that huge gap?


Yeah, he's pretty excited by the whole thing. And I'll say, that smile is pure Jenny Werner. :-) If you knew me in high school, you'll recognize that smile. :-)

More pics coming up later this weekend - Nathan had his first soccer game today too.