These Are The Days

Happy 4th of July!

A busy day we had yesterday and I took time to put my feet up and read a book (finished it!) rather than post during the little bit of nap time!  YEA ME!  But here we ALL are -- dressed in blue for BLUE DAY and celebrating the 4th in style!

 

We had a good day that started off with blue pancakes, blueberries and blue yogurt!  We ate all of our meals outside yesterday (which helps with clean up for the messy boy) b/c it was so nice out.  It has been overcast but the tempurture has been really comfortable and no bugs!  The kids enjoyed breakfast!

And so we cleaned up and tried to take a few BLUE DAY pictures...

And then we headed to run a few errands go to the Fountain Park in a nearby town.  It was wonderful!  This place is such a neat place especially for toddlers.  The water was never more than 5 inches deep and had lots of climbing and playing places -- gorgeous rocks and flowers.  A true find.  The kids had a super time and it was really fun for us too.  We'll be back for SURE!

I especially enjoyed a pond they had with fish squirting water and telling Bella to catch the water or lick the water.  It was so stinking cute and I was lucky enough to get a couple of fun pictures like this...

 

So cute!

Our morning was fun-filled and like I said while the kids napped and daddy did yard work, I rested.  the "overlap" (the time both kids are napping at the same time -- the time I try to get as BIG as possible each day) wasn't more than an hour today but it was still nice to relax for just a little bit.  The afternoon and evening were pretty uneventful.  The daddy and I cooked dinner together, then made ice cream cones for the kids and sat outside on the deck some more.  We've spent a lot of time out there lately and its a nice place to hang out.

Hope your 4th of July is spectacular!

Who IS it?

Who is that knocking at my door?  Someone delivering my "mother of the year" award?  I won't hold my breath waiting but I will say, it's been another STAR SPANGLED DAY of fun at our house today.

First off.  I slept in.  Yep, you read it here.  I neglected my run this morning in favor of sleeping in.  My husband graciously said "you should take today off from running and getting up at 6" and tucked the covers around me while the fresh cool air drifted in promoting good sleep.  Ahhhhhhhh.  Sweet glorious sleep.  Up now at 7 (which really IS sleeping in these days) and my day had more of a lazy start and I just rolled with it.  The kids are sleeping later these days -- likely b/c they are getting to bed later b/c of summertime fun.  So, I did my thing until 8.  After that, the fun started.

We snuggled and such, had milk (Luke dumped a full diet coke on the floor, ahem), played puzzles and woke up.  Soon I was off baking our morning art project and gathering the WHITE outfits.  We had a nice breakfast then got to it.  We started with frosting cupcakes.  I took the liberty of handling Luke's...

Then Bella had a tray of 3 cakes in front of her to decorate.  She could barely contain herself for decorating ONE before she needed to get her hands on it and chow down!  I handled the rest...

And they turned out pretty good!

 

YUM.  Since I'm on a diet, I've given many of these away to the neighbors -- LUCKY them!  We got dressed for the day in white shirts and blue shorts for each kid and they look so fresh and cute.  Now, I know some of you were concerned with the white but actually that doesn't bother me.  Surprisingly, I'm not the mom who cares about messes or dirty clothes.  I KNOW!  I surprise myself too!  Really though, I like to see them get dirty and really ENJOY themselves.  Everything cleans up and its just not worth sweating over.  Do I spend a lot of time cleaning up after messes?  Yep.  But I'd do that regardless so I might as well let them at it with gusto!  A CUTE shot today!!!!

 

I mean for real.  Could you die?  then Luke could barely contain himself and two seconds after the shot I took THIS one!

Look how proud of himself he is!  That boy is a for sure, all out, no stopping him, no holding him back, all american BOY!

After all of this excitement we busted a move to the park and walked down the street to join a friend at the playground of the elementary school.  The day turned super nice after a string of cloudy and cool days here so it was SO nice to get out and about.

I failed to mention this morning that I am attempting to teach the kids the Pledge.  Yep, of Allegiance.  I had to Google it b/c I haven't said it in ten years and didn't want to teach them wrong (gasp!).  Bella mostly enjoyed putting her hand on her chest and saying "Liberty and JUSTICE for all" with lots of enthusiasm.  We'll keep working on that and see what happens.  Have I told you about the Sound of Music yet?  I need to video that.

ANYWAY.  Headed home and made lunch.  I was pretty proud of myself today and Bella was SUPER interested in lunch for a change.  Maybe it was the lure of the tray of cupcakes sitting in front of her but I like to think it was my handi-work.

Whew!  I'm bushed!  But really, the stuff we did today wasn't hard and it was really fun.  It helps to put frame work around a day that can sometimes get monotonous.  I can't promise afternoon snacks of stars and stripes but I can promise lots of hugs and more time for play.

Now, time for Mommy to put her freshly painted red toes up and relax.  Any bets on whether that will happen or not?  ;)

A Tribute to Easy Street.

My bff Ashley has a friend Sidney (am I spelling that right?).  She and Sidney wen to college together and Sidney has a blog called "Life on Easy Street" (I'd link it but it is a private blog, invite only).  I don't check it too often but when I do I always feel...shall we say...a bit lacking in the mother category.  Sidney most certainly doesn't have an EASY life.  She has a crazy, busy, hectic, wonderfully BUSY life with 4 children 4 and UNDER!

However, each time I visit her blog she has things in order and most importantly having TONS OF FUN.  She is constantly having wonderful projects for the kids, arts and crafts, themed days of the week and so forth.  I visited the blog today and immediately called Ashley.  I asked Ashley when "Sidney's "mother of the year" award is set to arrive and when she will be crowned for sainthood.  We pondered Sidney's parenting success for a bit.  Mind you during the conversation I made the kids breakfast (an actual breakfast as opposed to a frozen waffle kind of breakfast that is the norm), Bella had a time out for a meltdown while eating yogurt, Luke created a monumental mess of tragic proportions, I sorted coupons and finished organizing a closet -- mutli-tasking at its finest.  But throughout that we contemplated Sidney's parenting success and set forth with our own plan (an easy version of course).

So Sidney, this is in honor of you.  You inspired us to create good activities for the kids, themed weeks of fun (if I can) and to document it along the way.  I'm not sure how well I can it but I'll give it a try.

With it being July 1, I had already decided to dress the kids in some form of "Red, White and Blue."  Ash and I decided to make each day a color leading up to the 4th.  So today was RED day.  I managed to get the kids dressed and a photo together to document RED day!

 

SUCCESS!  They are BOTH looking at the camera and one is even smiling!  A BANNER day!  I was pleased with just this for the day!  Yippee!  While getting dressed we marched around the house while I attempted to teach the kids "Yankee Doodle Dandy."  Bella was responding to this song and Lukey loved following us around as we marched.  And honestly, it cheered us all up.  We'd had a rough morning (with the meltdown from Bella)  and singing and dancing lifted our spirits!  Perhaps this is why Sidney does this sort of thing?  I might be on to something!

Buddy was looking to cute and so handsome.  Even with a mimi in his mouth.

Then we headed to the grocery store and did our thing there.  They were awesome there today and we even had fun.  (Thank you Rainbow for giving us a cookie and to Luke for giving the lady his charming grin and making her melt into a ball of goo right there in the bakery).

Headed home, tempted by the Arby's "Free wednesday sandwich offer" (On wed Arby's offers a sandwich of some sort with a drink purchase -- FYI.  They don't serve coke products so that helped make my decision!)

Once at home the kids love to "help" unload the groceries and this is a fun family time.  Then I drew Bella a flag (in honor of the theme of course) and asked her to color it!  That was EASY and FUN for both of us and she loves to color.  We might have more coloring projects in our future this week...stay tuned.

 

 

 

Nice job Bells!  She did this in her "handy dandy notebook" that her Daddy made for her. :)

More fun things for the week might be:  coloring, making stars, frosting cupcakes and using sprinkles, sidewalk chalk, bubble fun, a little stroller parade or wagon parade or sorts and more singing and marching for sure!

So Sidney, thanks for inspiring me.  I know you are soo soo busy in your daily life yet you make it a priority to educate, play and show your kids interesting things.  You inspire me to do that more in my daily life.  Some days are harder to do special things like this but I hope to make more opportunities to make simple things more FUN.

Tomorrow I hope to share "white" day as well as a fun recap of some things we did this weekend!  Happy JULY!

Creative.

I cannot tell you how often I long to do something creative.  Maybe that is why I'm always grabbing my camera because it is a quicker way to quench that creative thirst by capturing just the right photo.  But I like to get my hands dirty so to speak. Touch photos and paper and pretty stuff and make it all come together and look pretty.  I scrap booked with my neighbor and good friend in May but since then all of the stuff has remained packed up and put away.  Meanwhile, the photos still keep piling up!  Many weeks I'll think "maybe I'll have time to scrapbook" this week.  And the week goes by without that form of creativity.

And I miss it.  I think that I used to think that stay at home mom's had all the time in the world.  I guess b/c as a working person you already have to go to work and do that sort of thing as well as allof the things it takes to run a home and a family.  I thought as a SAHM I'd suddenly have all of that time, to do stuff.  Well guess what -- I do do stuff.  Just not a lot of the fun stuff!  Suddenly replacing that old job is a brand new one and one that isn't very predictable I've come to find out.

No less, scrap-booking is a hobby I love and also love that I can do it when I want and how I want.  So yesterday when I had a bit of time I sat down to play and "get dirty."  I quickly whipped out 3 layouts (I'm also a super fast scrapper which helps) and IT.FELT.SO.GOOD.  Here they are.

And my new favorite of all time..

 

Ok.  Maybe not all time, but in a long, long time.  I often lay out my layouts to look at and see before I scan in.  I like to leave them out so Mike can see them too.  He came upstairs last night and said "I LOVE your new layout about Bella, it's perfect!"  What a sweet sweet thing to say and a huge compliment after a good reward of scrap time.  A good day.

Happy Monday.  I hope you get to be creative in your days too.

Strawberry Fields

Wow.  Picking strawberries was an awesome experience.  Seriously, it was a wonderful 20 minutes!  I picked strawberries SUPER fast.  Strapped Luke to my back and continuously fed him berries, showed Bella how to pick up and we cranked it out in record time.  I knew it was move fast or end up empty handed.  Bella did awesome for about 20-25 minutes then was bored.  Our conversation went a little something like this:

Bella:  "Mama, let's get outta dis place."

Me:  "What? You wanna go?  Are you done?"

Bella:  "Yip.  Get me otta deese bushes, I all done."

I know better than to argue with that sort of logic.  I decided to pick for a few more minutes as quickly as I could then wrap it all up.  We ended up picking 12 lbs on our own and I bought another flat that was already picked.  So, roughly 20+ lbs of strawberries were bought yesterday!  Whew!  Here are some photos the friend we went with took...

 

What did I DO with all of those strawberries you might ask?  Well, I'm not up to making my own jam yet although i was tempted to TRY it.  I'll save that for next year (as this will be a new tradition for us!).  Instead I gifted some to our neighbors, washed and cleaned and ate some, made a fruit salad, had strawberry shortcake last night after supper and ALL the rest I've cleaned and properly frozen and stored to pull out as needed!  I'm VERY proud of my FIRST strawberry picking adventure!  And let me tell you, they are SO DELICIOUS.  Luke loved eating them in the fields -- and the juice, ran down my neck!  He was so stinkin' cute with strawberry juice all over his face!  Bella doesn't care for them too much.  She tried a couple and spit them into our basket so i asked her to stop "trying them" since we knew she didn't like them so much.

So, I encourage you to try it if you have the opportunity.  Way cool.  Next year I'll pull out my Martha Stewart skillz and see what kind of canned goodness I can create...

Off to enjoy a rainy Saturday!

Back when we were at Grammy's house...

Was going through some of my pictures and found these cuties of Luke I took last week while at Grammy's house!  Look at the cheesy CUTE smile on this crazy kid!

Love that chubber boy!  This is the look he gives when yo just talk to him -- he lights up!  Even if he's down and out, when you talk to him and focus on him, he cheers right up.  He's a good boy like that.

And I had these from my mom and I having our "white trash front yard baby pool" day ... It WAS hot.  I'm just sayin.

We are SUPER classy.  Just in case you were in doubt.

Yesterday we played with the sprinkler ball that Grampy got Bella.  Lots of fun and lots of pictures to post tomorrow.  Also headed to the beach today for more sun and sand action and pray for success tomorrow with the strawberry pickin'!

Happy DAY!