ShannonAlbert.com - June 2009

I'm about to head to bed now because we have to get up early Friday morning to catch the Amtrak train to St. Louis. We (the four of us plus my mom) will be staying for 3 nights downtown and plan on doing some fun stuff while we're there. I'll be continuing to post pics via wireless camera and see how that works out. Update more later!

Andy gave me my Christmas present on Christmas Eve so I would have it to use on Christmas Day and get this, it's a wireless camera!

I have it configured with my Flickr account so the images below will automatically update throughout Christmas Day.

Only shows the most recent ones but this is a sampling of visitors to this blog.

This doesn't even count the presents I had shipped to my parent's house.

That's right, around 9 a.m., just in time for the ice to hit. We're playing it by ear right now and will delay our departure if we need to.

Disco style, including the dog.

So everybody's commented on how different Payton looks lately but she's not the only one making changes...

On my birthday, Blake had a dentist appointment and I told the dentist his two front teeth were super jiggly and it would be super stupendous if they might possibly jiggle them out. They agreed they were so jiggly that they could easily pull them. To make it easier, they applied a little bit of gel to numb it and they just easily got BOTH front teeth out. He sat up in the chair and had no idea the teeth were gone. Best birthday present ever - mommy was tired of seeing two dangling-at-45-degree-angle teeth for the past several weeks!

I would call him cute but I'm officially banned from that word. My options are: awesome, cool or handsome. Not sure any of those three apply in this case. He looks so cute.



In less dramatic news, I went to get my hair trimmed tonight and ended up getting the back stacked instead of just layered like usual. I think I like it.

So my friend Amanda gets me fabulous gifts from places like Williams-Sonoma and Brookstone. I get her fabulous gifts like a chef's hat for her dog (monogrammed with his name!).

She just received my Christmas gifts for this year in the mail which include these gems:

Shot glasses made of ice!


A kitchen scrubber that you can blow bubbles with (see my previous post regarding my love of bubbles)...


A mini tape gun just like the big ones - in purple!


Ice cubes shaped like the Titanic. Titanic/Titonic...get it?


And the pièce de résistance.....

A stamp for bread to make it Holy Toast!


For my birthday, Amanda got me a gift card to Brookstone which she knows I love. I hadn't been there in a while but quickly knew what I'd be spending it on: The Grocery List Assistant.



This little guy can either stick magnetically or be mounted to the wall. You tell it what you'd like to add to your grocery list and it uses voice recognition software to add it to its memory. When you're ready to go to the store, you hit the print button and it prints it out organized by category on a paper that looks like a receipt.

This is a demo of how it works: Demo

Here's Blake demonstrating it:
Preface: He's 7 and had a hard time working the video camera while demonstrating plus narrating. Also, the device doesn't seem to recognize the sing-songy tone of kids voices so it never knows what he's saying. For Payton, Andy and I, it understands us and prints fine. Blake happens to love this little gadget (shock!) so I had him do the demo.



So thankful to have Amanda to exchange gifts with - who else would pretend to love such odd things and give me fabulous gifts in return?

On Sunday, we attended the twins' third birthday party. As much as I think that all Wichita birthday parties seem to be at Pump It Up, that place is so fun. Maria and Tom came to town with their two kids so we had several cousins together along with several other kids that were invited.

Bree in her jousting gear...


Blake finishing the obstacle course...


Fearless Micah...


Yea, static!


Bree loses her mat...


Blake and I doing handstands in the bouncy thing...


Bench suspiciously bowed in the middle...


All the kids...


You can spot the kids I know in this pic by finding the ones doing something a little odd.


King and Queen for the day!


So many presents x2!


Fantastic cake (and I don't like cake!)


Pretty much sums it up...