the birthday song...

Here is a video of us singing Happy Birthday to Caroline. Can you belive she is one year old?

She started walking three days before her birthday. WHOOO HOOO. Thanks for watching.

Look who is one today!

Happy Birthday Little Caroline.

happy birthday to Sesil

Okay.. So my birthday on Sunday the 20th. Mom and Dad sent a web cam so we can talk over the web with the kids and they could see the kids grow up being so far away.

So here is our first video blog to you....Enjoy!


I will post some new pictures of the kids soon...Probably next week some time. :)SESIL

Princess Sammie...

Pictures of Sammie before she went to school today. They had a costume party at school today. Love the dress Lola!!! I will post more pictures of the kids from their costume party soon.

Pictures from this weekend...

Some pictures from this weekend. I will post more pictures from the Easter Egg Hunt tonight. Just trying to get some pictures on the blog. Enjoy. Now off to figure out what I am going to do with the kids while we are on spring break from Pre-school. So that only means......more pictures to come. Enjoy! :)Sesil

Phyllis (aka "tia") and Sammie

The baskets for the kids....The easter bunny came and knocked on the door and droped them off.

Caroline and her expression when she got her basket.

Drew discovering his loot in his basket.

Sammie being the good big sister and about to deliver Caroline's basket to her.

Happy Easter!!!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter. We are heading over to Phyllis' parents house in Indiana and celebrate Easter with her and her family. They are like our second family.

So in preparation for Easter we dyed eggs on Good Friday with the kids and here are some pictures of the process.

The Eggs

The Dye for the eggs

Caroline, Sammie and Drew making a mess.

Drew totally enjoying the process.

Sammie concentrating on completing the process just perfectly.

Here is a video of the kids dying the eggs. Get ready to laugh

Pictures to see

Kelly Purkey came over to the house on Sunday to take some pictures of me and the kids. I have not been able to see all of them yet but here are two posted on her blog. Just click on the link and it will take you to the exact post.

http://kellypurkey.typepad.com/its_me_kp/2008/03/show-tell.html

Thank you Kelly!

I met Kelly while working at Windy City Scrapbooking. Kelly moved to Utah to work with a Scrapbooking Vendor as a designer but now she is back in Chicago. Kelly has many accomplishments in the scrapbooking world. She is a designer for many vendors and occasionally writes articles for Creating Keepsakes Magazine. So to have her take pictures of the kids is an honor for me. I never get pictures of me and the kids so I am totally excited. As you can see she is amazing.

Okay... that is all for now. I have a busy week at work this week. In Chicago Creating Keepsakes Magazine is hosting a Convention for scrapbookers 366 attendees this year. And the store will be open late till midnight from Wed to Sat. So I am working 5 - midnight every night that we are open to help out. So I will be beat by Sunday.
I am just excited to see who comes to the store to visit while the convention is in town. I know my favorite scrapbook celebrity is coming to the store tonight Ali Edwards. So okay.... enough about me and my world of scrapbooking. Enjoy! :)

Caroline and her teeth...

Here is a video of Caroline and her two teeth. It took forever for her teeth to come in. Now they are sprouting like weeds. Poor thing is constantly teething. So here is my little "snaggle tooth" daughter.

Enjoy.

Sammie is feeling better.

Just a quick update with Sam. She is doing much better. She is feeling a million times better and she is even playing with Andrew much more than before. They are both having a blast.

By the way did you get a chance to the the lunar eclipse on Wed night. I did...it was amazing to watch the moon turn a nice orange glow. Tried to take pictures but it looks like a small orange dot in a black sky. So that is all.

:)Sesil

My Creative Outlet...

week 1 background
Originally uploaded by cr8n00

So I am taking an online class on different techniques on backgrounds. This is more of a mixed media type of project. I thought this would be a great way to incorporate my scrapbooking with my painting. So I will keep posting the progress of the painting. Just wanted to let you see.

Hey Mom...See I am getting back into the painting. Hope you are having fun in the Phillippines. Hi Cousins, Aunts, Uncles and other family friends on the other side of the ocean. :)Sesil

Sammie

Poor Sammie has a major ear infection. Did not even know it. Her hair is always covering that side of her face, she never complained that her ear was hurting or anything. We thought she had a supper runny nose while she was sleeping. Did not know it was discarge out of her ear. Super GROSS.

We got her medication for everything last night. After on dosage in her ear she says "Look Mommy, the puffy went away in my ear." Poor thing.

We are on the road to a health Sammie! Just wanted you to know. :)SESIL

Caroline can say "hi"

Could not resist. Here is Caroline saying "hi"
Have a great day. ;)Sesil

Long update...

Sorry I have not been able to post in a while, there has been a ton going on here at the Cratin household. First of all we have been all sick at one point or another. So the kids have been at home with me most of the month. Here are some of the activities that we have been doing this month.

We are back to the window painting. Here is a video of the beginning process then the pictures of the final product.


The final product

We also stamped some valentine's cards and sammie even made some for her classmates.

Okay.. then Caroline is walking with her walker. Here are some pictures.




The kids flying pasted Caroline


Okay... That is all for now. I am tired, and still sick. Sammie has a dr. apt tonight at 7:15 to let us know if she has the flu or not. She has had a high fever for the past two days. they think it is the flu. Here we go again. :)Sesil

Sledding...

Here are some videos of the kids sledding the day after we get back from Texas. Enjoying the snow!!!





hope you enjoy them as much as I did. I will be updating the blog look soon as I figure out how to do it. :)Sesil

Texas Overview

We made it home! Wow… What a great trip to Texas. But we are glad to be home. There are so many things that we did while we were in Texas I will recap some highlights here.


Christmas was great. Unfortunately, everyone was sick. We decided to just have not to have the annual party at the house because of the kids and because we were all sick. Besides all the sickly people in the house we still were able to celebrate together as a family and had a great Christmas dinner.










*The kids got haircuts while we were down there. I was so proud of Sammie because she 1.)Let Lynn (the hair dresser) cut her hair 2.)Blow-dry her hair 3.) Took a picture with Lynn and gave her a hug because she liked her hair cut.
Andrew was great too. He sat in my lap while Lynn cut his hair.








The kids absolutely loved playing in the back yard. It was such great weather. (They were able to run without jackets and I didn’t have to worry about them freezing to death.) Here are some pictures of them playing outside.

we can can-can

check it out. Hope you like it. ;)robert

cut and paste in and it will take you to the video.

http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/view/bJdfLeXpsGFiLH6ZzpksMNr4

Happy New Year!

welcome 2008!
I started off the new year with a bang. I was in bed asleep new years eve at 9:00. Yep you heard it 9:00. I was planning on being in Houston at a New Year's Eve party at Jen and Dave's but they decided to call it off a week prior due to Jen's high blood pressure. Good thing they did because they had ALTON JAMES on Dec. 31 around 5:5ish. Congrats yall!

The trip so far is going good. I have been busy making fleece hats and panchoes for everyone. Mom is getting ready to head out to the Philippines and the kids are having a blast.

Caroline is crawling and wants to walk like her brother and sister. Caroline loves to watch them run around and play.

Drew is trying to talk. Every now and then he gets going and you can understand more than Ah oh..Dada..Mama...Baby..Ball...light..cat and thank you. We are working on it.

Sammie is just talking away. The other day she was watching some talk show or criminal show like court tv or hard evedence and saw a jail. She comes up to Lola and says "just like time out for sammie and drew". Mom had no clue what she was talking about and I walk in the room and see there is something about the prison life....just like a very long time out for adults. I cracked up. Never thought about it that way.

She just learned the days of the week and askes everyday.....what day is it? CraZy little girl. At least she is learning.

That is all for now here in Texas. I will try and keep yall updated. The weather here is about 30 so much better than in Chicago 2. So glad to say....warm wishes from Texas!!!

Love ya,
:)Sesil

Merry Christmas from Texas

Wow... we made it to Texas. What a wild ride that was.
Now that we are all here we are all sick. Sammie started it all, she had a crazy cold and congestion, passed it to Andrew then the rest of us got it. Andrew got it so bad we had to go the doctor here in Texas and get antibiotics for him. So he is on medication and the rest of us are on over-the counter meds.

We have had a good time while here in Texas. We got to go out and hang\ out with our friends Heather and Daniel. It was good to hang out with them and catch up. Thanks yall.

I just wanted to wish everyone a great Christmas and a happy new year. Here is our holiday card to everyone! Love ya. (If you have not gotten your card in the mail I am still working on it. Just call me a slacker.)

Window paintings

Sunday Sammie was sick all day so we decided to keep the kids from school on Monday. So to keep them busy we painted the window. It was fun so here are the results….
Drew presents….”Corn”

Sammie presents….”pumpkin”


And I just wrapped everything up with “fall”


Here is the whole window



They just blob the paint on the window and I just went and added the circle and lines to Sammie’s picture and drew…I just added the other side of the corn for him. Caroline observed and supervised the painting of the window. She is a great supervisor. I think we will start painting the window once a month and see our creations grow. The kids love to paint on the window. They think it is fun. (At least this way we know that the window will be washed at least once a month. )

By the way... Sammie is fine, she just had a little stomach bug and she is as good as new now.
See yall soon.

SESIL

here are the pictures of the kids after we finished with the window. Proud little painters.

pirate pillages loot "aaarrrrrrrr!"

This pumpkin is NOT happy!
Another successful raid of loot and treasures!

The Devil made me eat 22 pieces of candy!

So off to the burbs for halloween, we took Moo, drew and sweet carolina out to Marie Amatos house to celebrate! As you can see Sammie was one cute little pirate, she would swing her arm and tell you "aaarrrr!". Drew is sporting his best devils costume , very scary! And sweet Carolina was a little pumpkin , but when she got too hot we took the pumpkin body off and she turned into a carrot stick. I'm pretty sure sammie and drews pediatrician and dentist would not have been happy about the evenings food choices....none were on the food pyramid unless the pryamid consisted of massive amounts of lollipops, chocolate , popcorn and an occasional starburst. The only thing they did not consume was pure sugar, which i'm sure they would have, had it been offered! Hope you all had a safe and fun Halloween!