Oh, the Joys...

This is for all you mamas out there who I know will appreciate this story. You all remember this story from JoAnn Fabrics, right? Today, we were that family yet again, but it was even worse. We were at Target (my happy place...at least until I had my second child). Now, I learned this trick from my SIL with 5 kids, that a child with popcorn and a drink is a much happier child at Target and makes me more able to peruse the aisles for as long as I want. This has worked great for like 3 years, or since Lily was old enough to enjoy popcorn. Not a bad investment for a measly $2 (used to be like $1.15, but whatever). Anyhow, because of this, I usually get the kids a popcorn and a drink, sometimes an Icee if Lily asks really sweetly. Well, she asked, and I let her get a blue Icee. We walked a bit, I had given Ava a cup of water and she was none the wiser that her big sis had yummy, sugary goodness in the back of the basket. I grabbed a couple of cute clothes (for myself) that were on sale. We walked. Lily, then offered Ava some Icee. Sweet, right? Yeah, I thought so, too...they were doing great passing it back and forth for a while...until, that's right, here comes what I am sure you all saw coming a mile away...Ava while passing to Lily in the back of the cart spilled the still about 3/4 full bright blue Icee on top of the clothes I had grabbed. Lovely. Well, now I have to buy these, but first I wanted to try to rinse them off before the Icee had time to really sink in. So, we found a nice red shirted lady and told her we weren't stealing the clothes, we just needed to rinse them off in the bathroom. At this point, the kids knew they were in big trouble. They sat completely silent while I was in the bathroom rinsing and muttering, "I cannot believe you guys did this." We left the bathroom, thinking the worst was over. Oh, no. There were no less than 6 red shirted Target employees cleaning up the blue drips we had left across the ENTIRE store. Niiiiiiiice. They even had to have one of their special little Target pep-talk meetings to delegate people to clean it up. So, now, that I am completely certain Target will never allow me and my children in one of its stores ever again, we try to leave. I then, of course, have to explain to the cashier why all the clothes I am buying are wet. He was training someone and made a big deal about not touching the clothes, fine, you don't want to get wet, I'll bag them. Then, as we're leaving, I hear him say to his trainee, "I always make sure not to touch wet things, because, you know, they say 'It's blue slushie,' and it's really their kid's pee." Awesome. No, I do not let my kids pee on clothing I am thinking about buying, we save that until it is paid for and at home, thank you very much. I mean, really, what kind of experience has this man had that he ended up with some random person's kid's pee on him? And, who let's some stranger touch something their kid had peed all over? Just, please, never let me be that person!

Classic Pooh Baby Shower

Last Saturday, I co-hosted a shower for my SIL and Baby Annabelle. Carey is doing the nursery in a Classic Pooh theme and we wanted to stick with that for the shower. It was so much fun! It is really hard to find Classic Pooh decor, so we had to get creative! Anyhow, here are some pics:

Prize bags, Honey Pot favors, filled with Teddy Grahms, and some of the games we played.

Honey Pot favors.

Sweet Honey Tea, Piglet Pink Lemonade, and our beehive cake. Oh, our beehive cake.

Let me tell you about this cake. My SIL, Krysten, and I put it together. I saw one on You-Tube and had to make it for this shower! It's sooo cute! There is a great video on how to make the fondant bees, and the marshmallow fondant itself, here and here. Now, I was a little worried about this being too much for us. Neither of us had had any experience with fondant or anything that fancy. But, it was sooo easy! The fondant was not too hard to work with once we figured it out and the cake turned out great! It is 6 layers, 2 square ones on the bottom and then, the hive itself is layered with yellow cake and brownies! For the domed top, we just cooked some cake in a round glass dish. It took awhile, but it gave the hive the right shape. Krysten stacked and shaved the hive into the right shape and then, she iced it and piped a little bit on the hive to give it some texture. So cute. I love it. It was almost too cute to eat.

Our super cute clothes line, sorry for the bad pic.

Close up of the blanket I made Carey. It's a rag quilt. This really is the easiest quilt ever. I highly recommend it for anyone who is wanting to attempt a quilt, but is a little nervous about it...just make sure to not snip the edges on you lap and cut holes in your favorite pants...

My other gift to Carey was this sweet onesie. A for Annabelle, but look at the back...

Ruffles! I cannot wait to see this on that sweet baby bum! This was also a super easy project. Here's the tutorial.

Ahhh, the ruffles. There will be more of these. They were so fun!

The diaper cake is from my MIL. I put it together for her, though. It was so much fun and turned out super cute!

The flowers on the cake are all hair clips. Here is one I made for Lily. These are super easy, too! I am all about super easy. I plan on making more of these for the girls, too. Here's the tutorial.

Here is the lovely lady, herself! Though, this picture does not do her adorable baby bump justice! Congrats, again, Carey! Can't wait to meet your sweet baby!

10 Things.

1. Crafty blogs...really blogs in general...I am wondering what I did with all my time before I discovered blogging.

2. Hot bubble baths.

3. My sweet 10 year old niece who we are "taking care of" this week (really, she is pretty much just playing with and cleaning up after my kids, willingly cleaning up...it's amazing, we are so not giving her back).

4. MOPS!

5. Lily's amazing 3 1/2 year old imagination.

6. Baby showers.

7. Ava's four tooth grin...she's getting her canines, so this will be gone soon :(

8. Foot rubs.

9. My sweet hubby (without whom, number 8 would not be possible).

10. Getting to sew sweet little baby thing for Baby Annabelle! Can't wait to meet my newest little niece, just 3 more months!

Some Pictures from the Last Week

Here are just some random things from the last week. The first few are of Ava with her Elmo doll this morning. She loves Elmo so much. This doll sings a little song and she was pressing the button to make him sing over and over and over again and singing along with him.




The next picture is from our first day back at MOPS. Both girls got new princess backpacks (1.99 at Sears, thank Kim for the great find!) and were super excited to get to use them.


I can't remember where we were going, but the girls were so funny sitting on the steps, I just had to get some pictures of them. You can't see it very well in the pictures, but Ava had "piggies" in her hair. She makes me laugh because she will beg and plead for me to put her up and then, pull them out as soon as we get into the car! She's so silly!

Pretty in Pink

Today, it came to my attention that both girls had extremely long, sharp finger nails (actually it probably came to my attention yesterday when Ava cut my forehead with her fingernail). They needed to be cut. I have learned with Lily that the best way to get her to be still and let me cut her nails is to bribe her with nail polish. Of course, I then had to extend the same offer to Ava. So, we all ended up with pink finger and toes nails. The girls thought it was so cool (especially Ava).

Conversations with Ava

Wow, can't believe that she's old enough to be having "conversations."

Today, at MOPS, I had my hands full of bags and we needed to go upstairs, so we decided to take the elevator. Lily pressed the button and we got in. Ava, however, was taking her sweet time walking to the elevator, so, I said, "Come on, Ava. Get in the elevator." Then, she stopped right where she stood and with this absolutely petrified look said, "NO! ALLIGATORS!" Huh? Ohhhh...elevator, alligators. I guess when you're 20 months old, they can kind of sound the same. "No, Ava not alligators, elevator." I tried, in vain, to convince her that there were no alligators, but still had to drag her kicking and screaming into the elevator.

Lily, Lily, Lily

"Daddy, sometimes I pretend my toothbrush is married...to another toothbrush."

Classic Pooh nvitations

Well, I spent my day putting together Classic Pooh invitations for the shower. I'm sure you are sitting there going, "With only 2 weeks to do this thing why on earth would you hand make 23 invitations?" I have to say I searched high and low for Classic Pooh invitations. There are about 30,000 different variations of Winnie the Pooh out there and my SIL has chosen Classic for her nursery. There are, however, no Classic Pooh invitations to be found. Anywhere. So, I decided to make them...back before I knew I only had 2 weeks to pull this thing together. Fun, fun. Anyhow, here is my first attempt.


Not bad, but very bland. No color at all. So, I spiced it up with some scrapbook paper. I desperately did not want to take the kids to the store today, but I didn't have enough of any one paper to make all the invites, so we ended up with lots of different ones, scraping together all the supplies I had on hand. I think they turned out cute, and, more importantly, they went into the mail today! Yay!


This one is my fave. I wish I could have done them all like this. I think it's super cute.


I must mention just how bad I am at tying bows. Man, oh man, I am rotten at it...it was not fun tying a bunch of teeny tiny little bows...not fun at all, but it was worth it in the end. The little bows do ooze cuteness, and I am all about cuteness :)

Ahhh!

I think I mentioned that my SIL, Carey is pregnant with her first baby. A baby girl! Yay! Anyhow, my mother-in-law, sisters-in-law and I are throwing her a baby shower...in 2 and half weeks. When did we pick this date? Yesterday. Are we insane? Yes. So, please forgive me if posts are scarce over the next few weeks. I have a billion things to do! Not to mention I am planning on making her presents...hmm...I better go and get started on...well, anything other than blogging! Take care!

Some Random Things...

I've just a couple of silly little things from the past few days. First up, we walked outside to the care the other day, and Lily, as usual, had run ahead and waiting for Ava and me. Here is what we found. Lily just chilling on the back bumper. Cool as a cucumber. She made me laugh sitting there all prim and proper, ankles crossed and all. She is getting so big.

Next up. My little girls are horrible about picking bug bites. One bite could last for months because they never allow it to heal. Lily was the worst about one bite she had on her forehead...she had it forever! Now, Ava is following in big sis' footsteps. She got a bite last week on her arm that she has opened up multiple times (usually in the backseat of the car where I can't see her picking) causing her to look like something out of a slasher movie. It is amazing how much that little thing bleeds! Anyhow, in order to try to let the darn thing heal, we resorted to desperate measure. Check out the band-aids...



Lastly, a couple of pics from a walk we took last night. The first one is not a great pic, but I just love it when they walk around holding hands. It's just too sweet. The second one is a car seat that someone had thrown out. The girls both decided they had to sit in it. So silly...



That's all for now! Hope everyone has a great Labor Day Weekend!

Crusin'

I mentioned that last week Nathan and I got to go a cruise sans kiddos. I am very blessed with extremely generous in-laws who really enjoy going on cruises! My mother and father-in-law were kind enough to take Nathan and I along for a 4 day cruise to the Bahamas! We had a lot of fun! It was only the 2nd cruise I have been on. The first cruise I went on, Nathan and I got pretty queasy the first night due to some rough seas. Thankfully, this cruise had smoother seas and my MIL got us some wonderful patches to help with sea sickness! I highly recommend these if you are worried about getting sick on a cruise!

Anyhow, I brought my camera along with the intention of taking lots of pictures of Nate and I and my in-laws and, well, I so didn't. I mostly got pictures of stuff I thought the kids would enjoy, lots of animals and such. But I do want to document the cruise on the blog, so, sorryahead of time for all the animal pics :)

The first day of the cruise took us to Coco Cay, Royal Caribbean's private island. We did a little snorkeling...didn't see much. Although, we did see a puffer fish which was pretty cool. Coco Cay has one are called Iguana Lagoon. We say about 15 large iguanas hanging out on the rocks in this area! They were very cool! Lily loves these pics.



One fun thing on the cruise was the towel animals our cabin stewards left for us every night. They are so cute! My MIL and I even went to a class to learn how to make them. So fun. Here are a couple they left us:

Stingray

Bat

The second day of the cruise, we went to Nassau. We headed over to Paradise Island via water taxi to check out the huge resort, Atlantis. It was very cool. I would love to be able to take a trip someday and just spend some time at this resort. It was so pretty. They have all these neat aquariums that Nate and I walked through. I got some more animal pics for the girls (of course).

Lobsters!

Nemo (a.k.a clown) fish.

Seahorses. I thought these were really cool.

Eels.

Shark!

Sea turtle. They had a tank with about twenty of these. So neat.

Ah, and here is the one picture I remembered to get of us...on our last night there. Not the best pic, but I figured we should have some proof we were actually on the cruise :)