This past weekend I was able to drive to Boise and visit with my mom for a few days.

We had so much fun doing what we do best...watching movies, eating, shopping (I performed a wardrobe intervention on my mom!!!) She took me to this amazing nursery that has got to be the best nursery out there....it is unbelievable and the pictures do not do it justice. We had fun just wandering through the endless aisles and rows of gorgeous flowers and trees and plants, and as you can see we also had fun posing for pictures. I love the two pictures of us being attacked by the petunia. Ever went to sniff a petunia and it wrapped itself around your nose??? I could have a blast at this place, although I wouldn't know where to even start. There are so many different types of plants, and they each have different needs to thrive. I'm overwhelmed at the prospect of landscaping our land when we build our house. I am recruiting my mom to come and help me because she really loves this kind of stuff (I do to, but she has loved it longer than me). Anways, I had a really fun time, and the best thing I bought with all my shopping was an Il Divo CD. Boy oh boy.....they are quite the group!!! Notice that they are my new background music :)

I took Riley to see the fire truck today! He was a little scared at first and did not cooperate very well for the photo moments I was hoping for. He was actually in the truck when the fireman sounded the horn, and about had a meltdown because it was SO loud. It was pretty funny! Afterwards some of us went to Hogi Yogi and got a little treat, and let's just say when Riley and the little girl in the picture get together....the silliness and hyperness abounds!

Last night we cut Riley's hair, and it took us forty-five minutes to realize that our clippers were CRAP and to run next door and borrow the neighbors which are not crap! I wasn't intending on buzzing his hair, but I had made so many mistakes with the scissors and our crappy clippers that we had no other option, but I think it actually looks pretty cute. Now that I know how easy it is to buzz his hair with a GOOD buzzer, I will probably keep doing it. At the beginning of this hour of haircutting, Riley was REALLY good and cooperative. But once we hit half and hour, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth (by both Riley and I) and by the time we were done Riley looked like a hairy little monkey with all his fallen hair on his back, and he was begging for Ben to wipe his tongue off with a rag which Ben had been doing during the last half hour.

This picture has a funny story with it. The other day Riley was in time out on his chair, and when time out was over and he was getting off his chair, somehow the chair hurt his leg. So of course, the law demands that the time out chair must now go to time out. I could see the wheels turning in Riley's head as he tried to figure out how to put the time out chair in time out. Well, he picked up the chair and put it in time out in the bathroom. After a minute, the chair had to say sorry to Riley and was then able to be returned to its corner :)

TO SPANK OR NOT TO SPANK?

When I worked at Walmart, I saw a few too many kids being smacked or spanked HARD by their parents (Walmart can be stressful!) that I decided I would never spank my child, no matter what. Wellllllll....there have been a few times lately when Riley has really tested my patience and made me reconsider. The other day I was at an ourdoor shopping place, and Riley took off and was lost to the world for several minutes. I would finally find him, and he'd take off running (and LAUGHING) and literally he was on one side of a building and I was on the other and we ran around in circles. People were staring. Now, if I were a spanker, this would have been an EXCELLENT time to spank. Today Riley locked me out of the downstairs bathroom while he played around in the toilet with marshmallows. By the time I got in, he had his hands immersed in marshmallow soup in the potty. Then as I lifted him up he shook his hands and got nice toilet water all over the place. Before I knew it, my hand landed with a spank on his diaper padded bottom. This did not hurt him at all (in the chaos I don't even think he realized he had been spanked!) but I realized I need to decide...to spank or not to spank? Are there times when spanking is good? But do I really want to deal with the guilt??? Any advice out there, since Riley is testing his limits and seems to be having FUN at it? The time out chair works for most things, but half the time he thinks it's a game to sit in the cute little chair until the buzzer dings.