tea party at lulu's

Yesterday we got to go to a tea party! Lauren's little sister, Reegan, has become a good friend of my girls and yesterday was her 8th birthday. We were all invited to come celebrate with her at Lulu's Tea Room. It is set in an old yellow house and I am not sure why I didn't get a picture of the outside of the house! Each room is decorated in a different theme and we got to have our party in the butterfly room - green and pink - just perfect for a little girl's birthday party!

The birthday girl. Isn't she beautiful?? :)

All seated around the cute table! Austin is a little boy that Lauren babysits. He looks thrilled to be sitting at a pink table with a bunch of girls all wearing dresses, doesn't he? :) He ended up moving to a table with my baby, Lauren, and me. :)

Little sister, Reegan, with big sister, Lauren.

My little man looking oh so handsome! :) Before we left the house yesterday morning, he had stuck a play gun in his pocket and Mommy said he looked like he was from the 1940's! :)

While we waited for our food, there were plenty of things to keep the kids occupied. The little girls got to have their drinks in tea cups. There were plenty of sparkly pink wands to go around. There was even a stack of hats and gloves to try on!

Ok, so the kids weren't the only ones who had fun with the hats! :) This is Catrina, Reegan and Lauren's mom, looking very lovely in her hat.

My baby entertained himself by eating the lemon's off of our drinks! I will be interested to see if his tastebuds change eventually - for a long time now he has liked lemons and pickles, and just last week we discovered that he loves flaming hot Cheetos!

The two boys of course found a better use for the magic wands and promptly turned them into swords! After a few minutes the "fight" took a turn for the worse and they all of a sudden decided they didn't particularly like each other. Austin would say, "I don't wanna look at him!" as he gave a thrust with his "sword". To which my baby would say, "Don't hit-uh me!" (He has a funny way of adding 'uh' to the end of his verbs ...not sure why...)

Finally the food came and it was VERY good!

Very happy after a fun pary and a yummy lunch!

My baby and his favorite "LaLa". :)

Happy birthday, Reegan! :)

st. pat's day and abby's visit

Ok, I was going to do a post about this week and the things we did for St. Patrick's Day, however, I just uploaded a bunch of the pictures to my Facebook page and don't feel like typing the exact same things here....SO! check out my Facebook album to see how our day went! :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=233323&id=729430647&l=3e73fbf452

You don't have to have a Facebook page to view this album, although I'm guessing most of the people that read my blog do. Just click on the link and it should let you view the photos.

happy st. patricks day!!

A longer post about today will follow later..... :)

jonathan is two!!

Today is my "almost nephew", Jonathan's second birthday. I cannot believe it has been two whole years since I was at the hospital waiting to hold my best friend's first baby! It is so much fun to watch him grow and change each time I get to see him. Shannon had his little party on Saturday. Can you guess the theme?? :}

Bouncing balls with Gram. He did this for hours. Literally. At least two!

Taking turns with Pappy. Gram and Pappy are Dave's parents. It was good to see them! :)

When it was time to open presents, Jonathan had been having so much fun with all the balloons and balls that he didn't even want to open any presents! When Shannon asked if he was ready, he shook his head and said, "Ball!!" and held his hands out for Gram to throw another ball!

Eventually he got into the present opening. A musical card helped. :)

Auntie Catherine (Shannon's sister) gave him this very fun xylophone - an instrument he can actually play! I gave him a very chubby harmonica and recorder for Christmas and he hasn't quite gotten the idea of blowing into them - he just puts them up to his mouth and hums! :}

The yummy food! Sausage balls, spinach balls, a cheese ball, oreo balls, cupcake balls.... have you guessed the theme yet?? :)

I found the idea for the basket ball and the baseball in a cupcake book that I have. The tennis balls I saw online. I wasn't sure how to do a soccer ball but Catherine was the genius that figured that one out!

Thanks to Rebekah for the Oreo balls recipe again! They are so easy to make and always turn out soo yummy! :)

Auntie Catherine holds the cupcake with the lighted candle for Jonathan to blow. Evidentally, Jonathan thought this was pretty funny. :)

Blow!

Mmmm! Good cupcake!!

A verry good cupcake! :) I think he had a great day on Saturday. I know I had a great time celebrating one of my favorite two year old little boys!!

playground fun

Yesterday my girls had their homeschool classes all day so my baby and I got to hang out together. While I love having all three of my kids around, I do enjoy my days of one-on-one time with the baby. Since the weather was so beautiful, we went to the church across the street to play on their playground. We are taking advantage of the playground in this warm, before-spring weather as much as we can right now because as spring brings beautiful weather it also usually brings families of bees and wasps that love the playground as much as we do!

There are several things we like to do when we visit the playground. There is a huge field of grass in front of it that is perfect for kicking around a ball without worrying that it will go in the street or parking lot.

The switch from trying to stay warm in freezing cold weather to running around in the 80 degree weather with the sun beating down just around noontime wore him out! So he had to stop and rest a minute.

Kiki took the opportunity of her toddler sitting still for one minute to tickle him!

He loves to ride on these horses - they bounce up and down and from side to side. Yesterday, however, his spot of choice was right here in the middle! :)

The swing is probably his very favorite thing to do at the playground. He will very happily swing for 30 minutes at a time!

Next, he wanted to try out the "big kid" swing. Right here he is saying, "Go away, Kiki! Alone!" Which means he wanted to do it all by himself.

So I walked a few feet away to the little picnic shelter and sat down in the shade and just watched him swing "all by himself" for a couple minutes. He thought it was pretty cool.

Pretty soon he hopped off the swing and trotted over to join me in the shade. Here he is sitting and pondering. A moment later he said, "Star song, Kiki." He has always loved music, even when he was teeny tiny, so while we cooled off a bit, we sang some favorite songs. It is so much fun now that he is big enough to try to sing along with me!

Happily listening to Kiki sing.

Goofy, sweet, and wonderful! Little boys are so much fun! :)

the swing

I realize that in these pictures my children are actually twisting in the swing rather than actually swinging...but the joy is the same! :) Swinging always reminds me of the poem my mom used to quote all the time...

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside -

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown -

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)

A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods (1913)

lucky

My little house is quiet tonight after having Lauren and her younger sister Reegan here since Thursday. Their parents were out of town this past weekend so they came to hang out with me. I love having people in my house with me and we had a great weekend together. Here's a little bit of how our weekend went...

Friday night Lauren and I babysat all the kiddos together while my kids' parents went out for the night. We had a pajama party complete with a movie and frozen hot chocolate (SOOO YUMMY!!! Wendy said it was featured on Oprah a while back. It is most delicious!). :) Not sure what's up with my oldests' smile in this picture! Ha.

My baby loved having the attention of all five of us girls! :) He loved getting to join right in on the pajama party...and got chocolate all over his pajama shirt! He and his sister obviously enjoyed the frozen hot chocolate very much as you can see from their mouths.... :}

The movie was followed by a spontaneous dance party during the movie credits.

Saturday we enjoyed getting out of the house in the beautiful sunshine. We went first to Lily's Bead Box to make necklaces and bracelets, then stopped at the Cupcakery that is right next door. We each chose a delicious cupcake and took them to the World's Fair Park to eat. Then we headed up into the Sunsphere!

I have lived here for 25 years and had never been up in the Sunsphere - and neither had Lauren and Reegan! It was funny feeling like a tourist in my own home town! :) The view from the observation deck was neat though. I think I'd like to go back up at night and see all the lights!

Our car is somewhere in the parking lot next to the art museum. :)

Take a boat down the river here and you will get to my house in just a few minutes! :)

That evening, Shannon text me and said she and Dave had a gift card to a restaurant burning a hole in their pocket and attempted to bribe me into coming to watch Jonathan while they went out to eat. She promised us ice cream and cookie dough and said it sounded like a perfect movie night situation - we were already planning to watch a movie anyways, so we figured it didn't matter which tv we watched it on and headed over. It's doesn't usually take a ton of convincing to get me to come see my "almost nephew" anyways! :)

Jonathan was in his jammies when we got there and we got to play with him for a few minutes before bedtime.

Reegan and Jonathan invented a new version of golf. She would set up the bowling pins while Jonathan stood at his post by the wall.

Then Jonathan would come over and knock the pins down! :)

All of this was a lot of fun and other than a few typical sister squabbles every once in a while, we all got along fabulously well. There was one other little friend though that caused a bit more excitement than I would like! A friend from her church had given Reegan a hampster last Sunday and so she brought him with her. Lucky is a Russian Dwarf Hampster and as we soon found out Friday night, they are very well known for being able to squish their bodies flat and squeeze through very small spaces! We were down at my girls' house and at around 9pm I ran up to my house to get something real quick and happened to glance in at Lucky's cage and there he was just wiggling his little nose at me looking pretty darn cute. About an hour and a half later, Lauren took some things back up to my house and came running back down saying she couldn't find Lucky in his cage! I went back up to check and sure enough, Lucky was gone!! The cage door was closed properly and there were no obvious places for him to get out. We had no idea what had happened!

After searching with a flashlight and even letting one of the dogs in to sniff him out, we figured he was gone for good (oh great! running around my house?!) and even went to the pet store to see if we could get another one. That is where the very helpful hampster guy informed us that Lucky's particular breed is known for escaping and being the most aggressive (biting, etc.). He said he would rather be bitten by any one of their snakes than that kind of hampster! (!) We decided to wait on getting a new hampster. Thankfully!

Late Saturday night, the girls were both asleep and I was brushing my teeth. I felt something against my toe and at first thought a lid to something must have fallen on the floor. Then I thought wait...that couldn't be...??? Sure enough!! There was Lucky right at my feet! I knelt down to try to pick him up but he was too fast for me and scurried back into a TINY hiding place right above the baseboard under my cabinet in the bathroom. I can't really even explain where the hole was - it was definitely somewhere I would NEVER EVER have thought to look!!

I went to get some of Lucky's food and after two tries of coaxing him out of hiding, I finally caught him and quickly placed him back in his cage. It was a bit of a rush to actually find him and catch him again - and then both girls were asleep and there was no one to be excited with me! :) Happily, he stayed in his cage the rest of the time (We put a blanket over his cage whenever we weren't in the house after that!) and is now safely back at Reegan's house!

He is awfully cute, isn't he? Those blue bars are the ones he escaped through! I think if he was mine (which he wouldn't be...) I would name him Hudini.... :}