purple

If you follow my other blog at all, you have already seen this picture:

This is my friend, Laura, and her little girl, Leah. Laura was Shannon's friend first. They met in college. Then we were both bridesmaids in Shannon's wedding and hit it off. THEN I went to Laura's wedding...which is where I figured out that she was marrying a guy who I had known growing up - we were both homeschooled. I didn't know him very well...but his family's name was one that most people had heard of before. So since then she has moved here and we get to hang out every now and then. :)

Anyways, Leah just turned one last Tuesday and I got to go to her little party. Laura had everything set up and decorated SO CUTE!!! I am totally doing the food like this at my own child's first birthday party!

Teddy bear pb&j sandwiches, applesauce, raisins, crackers, goldfish, cheerios, fruit loops, bananas, and baked chips! So perfect!

Sand buckets with each child's name on it and little treats inside for "goodie bags". Oh yeah, and a balloon tied to each one too.

Since it decided to rain on Tuesday, Laura had Leah's water table set up inside their sunroom. The dress that Leah is wearing was SO CUTE too and is from Rebekah's website, DolkaPots. (Go check it out! A portion of each item they hand make and sell goes to support a family pursuing adoption.) Of course, since Leah loves to splash, the dress didn't make it too long before getting soaked! :) And one year olds are constantly moving so I never did get a picture of her straight on to get the full front of the dress... :}

Aiden was there to help celebrate and all the kids loved this bubble blower!

Aiden, being the typical boy, just HAD to check out how that thing worked! :) That's exactly what Mr. Happy would have done at his age.

This little girl thought Dave (Jonathan's dad/Shannon's husband) was just fabulous. She helped him study his cell phone for a while. The little cutie on the right reminded me of another friend's little girl when she was that age - blond curly hair, sweet chubby baby face...cute!

Jonathan found this doll stroller/walker and decided it was a mower. He "mowed" the carpetgrass for minutes going around and around the coffee table. Then, when he decided it was break time and needed some fruit loops to munch on, his mower turned into the perfect size chair! :)

Next it was time for cake! A pretty purple cake made by Miss Leah for Baby Leah. (Conversations tend to get confusing when both Leah's are around!)

This is what Leah thought about cake:

1~ Hmm...what's this?

2 ~ Um. There's stuff on my fingers...

3 ~ GETITOFF GETITOFF GETITOFF!!!

4 ~ Not so sure what I think about this stuff.

5 ~ Ah! I know!!

6 ~ Yup. That's better. Now get me down from here!

I think she had a great time at her first little party overall! She loved this musical Elmo card...those glasses stayed on about 2.5 seconds - just long enough for me to get a quick picture. But that tiarra stayed on for a very long time! Impressive. :)

Oh, and don't you just love her baby rolls on those little chubby legs?? :)

Happy birthday, Leah! Thanks again for letting me come help celebrate, Laura! :)

names

To keep a little bit of privacy here on my blog, I don't usually put the names of my kiddos. I have wanted and needed to come up with names for them that are better, more descriptive, more fun and creative than "my oldest", "my middle child", and "my baby/toddler". BORING!! I love my friend, Mrs. T.'s nick names for her kiddos - Einstein, Peace, Love, Spunky, and Thunderbolt! But I just could never come up with the right names for my kids.

Until I recently took some of my toddler's clothes over to Leah. I ran across one that used to be one of our favorites - first of all, it was so soft and comfy - the perfect shirt to snuggle up in when a random summer bug hit. My toddler called it his "happy shirt" ...because it had Mr. Happy from the Mr. Men Show on it. Did you ever read those little books?? There are so many of those characters, it just hit me last night that there are three of them (ok, so really there were many more and Wendy, if you go here and scroll down through the list, you'll know which other ones I could have picked for which child...! lol) that could easily fit my three children! So...for all future reference to my three, here are their nicknames!

What do you think?

aiden downtown

Today I showed Leah and Aiden some of my favorite spots downtown. Our first stop was at the UT Gardens and Leah asked if I would take some pics of Aiden while we were there. This is just a sneak peak at the photos... :)

He's such a cutie!! :}

Thanks for a fun afternoon, Leah! Next time we need to do it with the guys.

april fools!

My kids think April Fools day is great! Last year I did a lot more than this year. This year I had a random cold and had zero energy. But we did do a couple things.

This was the note I found on the kitchen table when I came down in the morning. It was the first april fools that my middle child came up with all by herself.

Very clever. :) Except that it sounded like a heard of elephants was running around upstairs above my head.... ;)

This is what I let my kids have after lunch...

I found this idea here...one of my favorite go-to sites for fun and easy crafts and ideas. My kids thought this was hilarious. It's really just a wrapper you print out and put around a box of Reece's Pieces. :} They couldn't wait to show mommy and daddy when they got home.

This next one was one I had seen on the above site but wasn't planning on doing...until I realized we had just a bit of chocolate left over from making our Oreo balls.

Spilled chocolate in the kitchen...oh no! Oh wait...! :)

April Fools!