My husband is a 12 year old

Often when people ask how many children I have I tend to reply "three" because Tom tends to fall into that catagory. Ok, so I only birthed two, but I seem to find myself trying to convince three kids why having halloween candy before dinner is not a healthy choice instead of just two, etc.... There are so many situations where I just shake my head and look at my husband and say "you know better," such as the situation with the fog machine, or, most recently, everything that happened with the blank firing machine gun in the backyard (please don't even ask!).

Just the other day we were on a family trip to Wal-Mart checking out bikes because Christmas is coming up and William is quickly growing out of his old bike and I needed to see what size he could ride now (sans training wheels, of course!) to give Santa the heads up. So William and I are checking out the bikes and Tom is off looking at something, comes back and declares he's found what he wants for Christmas. What you ask? See picture below:



It's the Nerf Vulcan Machine Gun. He says that he wants to set up an obstacle course in the backyard and pretend it's like old school American Gladiators where one person trys to run to get to the end and the gladiator trys to hit the person with balls (or in this case, nerf thingys). William is really looking forward to this.

All this is great, but here is what he tried last night that has made me post about my husband. I was so exhausted last night that I gave the kids a bath, put them to bed, and crawled to the sofa to chill in front of the tv. We found a really interesting documentary on discovery health about the tree man that was actually pretty cool, but I still fell asleep about half way through. Well, I had been resting my head on Tom, and somewhere between me falling asleep and the end of the show he had gotten up without waking me up. Well, I finally woke up about 10 o'clock and he was moving my arm for some reason. He whispers "shhh...go back to sleep." I immediately knew something was wrong because he never tells me to go back to sleep. It's usually "if you're going to sleep, do it in your bedroom." Stuff like that. Anyway, I sit up and look around and notice a bowl full of water next to the couch. And then I realized why he was moving my arm. He was trying to stick my hand in the warm water to make me wet my pants! Who does this to their spouse?!? He said he just wanted to see if it would actually work. I tell ya, William has a built in best friend for life with Tom!

Holiday Fashion Shoot

Just wanted to post some pictures of our latest photo shoot! (My favorite is the last one.) There are more, but I just wanted to post a few.

The Incredible O'Briens

The O'Brien family was an ordinary family. Two kids, a house...or so everyone thought. Average family by day, super crime fighting heroes by night:

Happy Halloween!

An extreme case of Count Choculitis

On Monday the crew fixing our house finally finished! Hooray! We have a brand new 30-year roof (I never knew there was a difference in roofs, but now I am an expert), all new ceilings, new paint jobs all around, new light fixtures, etc...The most exciting thing is that we are no longer rockin' that mildew-y death smell from all the water damage! I never thought I would be thankful for damage from a hurricane, but it allowed us to update our house all around without costing us thanks to our wonderful homeowners insurance. (Let's give a shout-out to USAA woot woot!) So all the things that Tom and I wanted to do are now done, I didn't have to do any of the work, and it's all done in a week! Now is the time Tom will get the call that Lincoln's ready to move us, right? (no complaints if they did!)

Then there's Natalie...last night I went out for a late night G.N.O. to see a movie. When returning at the awful hour of 1am, Natalie was up sitting on the couch watching something on financial planning (Tom out cold in our room.) I asked "what are you doing?!?" She's all "watching tv." Who knew that a three year old was concerned about her financial future? Well, I walked her back to bed. She was up again at 3am, 4am, and 6am (didn't go back to sleep after 6am!). This is the second night she has done this! What is going on with her, besides, perhaps her love of financial issues? Any advice out there to get this girl to stay asleep in her bed? I've never had an issue with her sleeping in her room before and especially getting up over and over again!

I think I threw up in my mouth.

Oh, my sweet Natalie!

I had just got out of the shower this morning when Natalie strolls into the bathroom. I had just finished brushing my hair when she looks up and asks me what I'm doing. When she notices my hairbrush she gets really excited and asks if she can brush her hair. Of course she can! That girls hair could be brushed a thousand times a day, but since she's cursed with her mother's wild hair, a thousand brushings wouldn't really help (the above picture doesn't even show her at her worst.) But she takes my hairbrush and goes on her merry way, I assume to her room where all her hair accessories are.

A few minutes later, as I'm finishing brushing my teeth, Natalie show back up in the bathroom and gives me back my hairbrush. This is how our conversation went when I noticed her hair was not only brushed, but also wet.

Natalie: "I'm done, Mommy."

Me: "Oh, your hair looks so beautiful! Wait...why is your hair wet? How did you get your hair wet?"

N: "Oh, I used potty water." (turns to leave)

M: (grabbing her) "Wait, what!?! You used water from the potty to brush your hair?! You put my hairbrush in the potty?!"

N: (not realizing the problem here) Well, yeah Mommy!"

M: "Binky! Potty water is yucky! The potty is only for poo poo and pee pee! Not mommy's hairbrush!"

N: "Oh, ok mommy. Sorry mommy."

I think I need a new hairbrush.

My practical joke finally worked!!!

(This photo is of Natalie checking out a gator behind glass.)

So a few days ago I made a post about our new family pet. I had said that we got an alligator to replace our pet goldfish. Ok, it was all a big joke and let me tell you why!

My wonderful mother and father have an intense fear that since we live in the swamps of Louisiana we can be eaten by an alligator at any given second. Ok, so I'm exaggerating a little bit but they do fear one of their grandchildren becoming a tasty mid-day snack for some hungry gator. To be fair, we do live in gator country, but they stay in their homes and we stay away from those homes!

A while back our family was visiting the New Orleans zoo and at the cajun country exhibit they keep a huge 11 foot gator. While there I took a picture with my cell phone of this gator, making sure to keep the walls of the structure out of the picture. I then sent this picture to my mom's email address with the caption "look what my neighbors found in their backyard this morning!" While I thought this to be hilarious, my parents did not.

So, when my neighbor and her son (the one who a few weeks earlier had a gator take a bit of his hand) showed up with a baby gator I couldn't resist playing a prank on my parents once again. It was just coincidence that the kids were in the bath at the time, and no, I didn't put the gator in the bath with William. They really don't have any teeth yet, but I'm still not a huge fan of putting potentially dangerous animals in a bath with my children. Anyway, Shane took the baby gator back to his home in the swamp and we are still without a pet. (Tom and I also think that having a gator as a pet might be illegal, though I'm not sure.)

Anyway, I don't know how often my parents check this blog so we've been patiently waiting to hear from them, leaving that post up as if it were real. And finally, the email came today. To quote, "Please tell me why an alligator?" and when I responded that my prank finally worked the response was "Dad and I both say 'not funny' to the alligator trick."

Ahh.......all in a days work!

A couple pics from the evacuation

I have a few extra minutes so I thought I would post a few pictures from the evacuation.

This is just outside of Beaumont, Texas on our way to Houston. As we were driving through Orange County, the call came out to evacuate the county, so we got hit with that traffic, too. My husband enjoys a good challenge, so he drove across the grass to this service road and we drove for a good while passing up all that traffic. He is such a sneaky man!
While in Houston we did a little bit of everything! This is Natalie at the Houston Zoo petting a goat. Binky loved this goat and I think she wanted to bring it home with us. I don't think Los Shephitos would have enjoyed that.

Tom begged me to take this picture! The meercats were hilarious. We could have watched them all day! (Hey Connie! Can you say Mr. July?!?)
And...this is what we came home to. Well, it's actually in our next door neighbor's tree, but I think it's a great picture!