baptism invites

Hannah is getting baptized this weekend. She has been so excited for this day for months and months. And since we have no family where we live (although we are lucky to have a few coming to town) I wanted to make sure that the people that were important to Hannah knew she was getting baptized. So, I made this invitation and had them printed on to postcards for her to give to her primary classmates, teachers (school and church), friends and other instructors (dance, piano, etc). She was so excited to pass these little invitations out. My hope is that since we can't have all her cousins there to celebrate her big day that she will be surrounded by friends that will make this important day all the more special.

Cute boy

Okay, I need to post this now that Graham is 5 month old. I wish I could say time was flying (and it is), but he is the worst sleeper at night that sometimes to be honest he isn't getting old fast enough. But then I look at pictures like this and I realize that I will miss him being so little, so I try to enjoy it as much as I can (even through the sleep deprivation).

Some things about Graham:

He has found his voice. There is a lot of screaming and squealing. You can tell he likes to hear himself and he is trying to figure it all out. He even does it at 5:00 am... better than crying, right?

Because he is the youngest of 4 kids, there is always excitement and attention, so when he doesn't have it... he wants it. He gets upset when no one is with him.

I love the way he looks at me. You can just tell that when he sees me, he gives me this smile like I am the most important person in the whole world. I sure feel loved and that is one thing for sure I will miss as he gets older.

He loves to grab his toes and suck on them. It is so funny and one of my favorite things to watch him do. I have to admit, something I help him out and "feed him his toes."

He only takes a pacifier when he is going to sleep. And he sucks on his thumb/fingers but not with any consistency. Sometimes i wish he would commit, but maybe it will be good because I won't have to have get rid of anything in years to come.

So, that is my little update about our Graham. I love taking his picture... he is so darn cute!

Pinned and Tried

So, I figured I would share some of the goodies I have pinned from Pinterest and have actually made. There is so much out there - that I figured I would start trying some of them and see if they are worth keeping. Friday has become "dessert testing day". Something my daughter and I can do together while the boys take a nap.

Now, I realize that opinions are all subjective and if I say there are good, you might disagree (that always happens to me when I make desserts other say are the "best in the whole wide world" and then I think to myself "what were they thinking... not that good".

But if you value my opinion :-) you might want to at least give some of these recipes a try and see for yourself.


The first one is Butterscotch Marshmallow Bars. I really liked these. They remind me of blondies with a bit of chocolate. I would say these are great brownies to make when you need a little something sweet. I wouldn't make them to take to a party (I wouldn't say they are that WOW-worthy... but they are good and definitely hit the mark when I needed a little sweet something-something.
CONSENSUS: KEEP PINNED


The next thing I tried. Salted Caramel Pecan Bark These two were good. Probably more just okay. Now you can't really go wrong with pecan and toffee, but I think I have had better with saltine crackers. And I think I would have preferred more toffee and less graham cracker. But again... still good enough to snack on during the day.
CONSENSUS: DELETE PIN

So, there you go. I am slowly starting to go through all the dozens and dozens of yummy "pins" I have collected and actually make some of them to see what is worth keeping pinned.

PS - the images come from the blogs that I link for the recipe. The credit goes to them!

Preschool Teacher gifts

I can put these gifts on my blog because i know my daughter's teachers don't know about this blog. This is not original, it is all over Pinterest, but it is a good one. I included a Jamba Juice gift card inside.
The saying says "Thanks for sparking my creative juices this year." FYI - I got the cups at Target for $5 in their summer section.

My daughter's elementary teacher is getting a different gift, but I have to wait until the end of school, because i think she does know about the blog :-)

Here is the tag I created, just download or drag it to your desktop and it is yours to use.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to my mom. For being the best mom ever. It is interesting to see how motherhood evolves (now that I am one) and I love recognizing the different stages of evolution of my mother. She was the "do it all" mom growing up. Then she evolved into a mom that set the example of the important things in life that we as kids needed to know and recognize. Then she evolved into the mom that showed her concern and love almost daily as I became a mother myself and had all the trials, difficulties and good times as a mother. She is there to help me through it all. Now, of course she is more than those things and more than those qualities at any given time. But those are the things I remember most of her now that I look back and think of her great example to me. I love my mom and am thankful for all she does and has done for me. I hope to be that good of a mom to my children when they look back at me and my mothering through the years.

Teacher Appreciation Week

I decided to try some new cute gift ideas for our teachers this year. Sorry, if this is late for some of you. But hopeful you can tuck it away for new year :-) Here is a recap of what I did for Teacher Appreciation Week.


Monday's gift - Potted Tulips. I let Hannah pick out the flower she wanted to give and she chose tulips. I got the label from here.



Tuesday's gift - Flashlight. I made this one up. I found the flashlights at OfficeMax for $3.00 and thought perfect. How couldn't use a nice little maglight flashlight.



Wednesday's gift - my favorite. It is a pringles can made to look like a pencil. I filled it with teacher items and a few fun treats. Here is a link to the tutorial.




Thursday's gift- Post-it note Apple Dispenser. I saw this and thought how perfect. It is an apple and it holds post-it notes. Hannah' drew and wrote her a nice note to go with it. This one was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but I only bought it for one teacher and thought what the heck, why not? I was in a good mood that day, so I went with it.

Friday's gift. Mug filled with treats. I love the initial mugs at Anthorpologies. I think they are the perfect gift, so for the last day. That is what I got. So darn cute and practical. They are $6 a mug. For Anthropologies, I feel like it is a great deal. Something in the store that is relatively cheap and it is so cute. It is my go-to gift for just about anyone! I buy a lot of these.



You might think I am crazy spending this much on teachers. Now granted I have only one kid in elementary school and a preschooler. I didn't get each teacher all the gifts (since my preschooler only goes MWF), so I could spend a little bit of money on some of the gifts.

But my philosophy when it comes to teachers is.... they do so much for our kids and they get paid so little... I am more than happy to spend a little bit of money on them. They deserve it!!! And I hope it brings a smile to their face and shows them just how much I appreciate all they do!

Oh, and my daughter begged me to give something to her student teacher since it was her last day. So, this is what I came up with.

The day to day...

I have to be better at writing this stuff down ... so here are some funny things in our day to day life.

Ella loves to play with Graham and do "tummy drums' where she uses his hands to drum his own tummy.

Jakes has been saying 'yes sir" every time I ask him to do something.

Hannah got braces and an expander and they are not being nice to her. I feel so bad for her. They hurt and it is so hard for her to talk, eat and close her mouth. i thought she was a messy eater before... it is so much worse now.

We are potty training Jake. It is going pretty well. But he is so funny about the things he says when he goes. like "that's a big one" and "push the button" (use your imagination on both). And he loves picking out his underwear each day.

Graham is so ticklish. Every time i dress or undress him, he tilts his head to the side and smiles so big. You can tell he is on the verge of laughing because it is so ticklish. If I touch around his armpits for a prolong period of time, he laughs and giggles.

Ella graduated from speech class. She no longer needs speech and I am so grateful she has come such a long way since the day we started speech 2 years ago.

Hannah got an American Girl doll for her birthday. I have never heard/seen her so excited. She just squealed and squealed with delight every time she look at her new doll. And all we kept hearing was "I love her. I love her" all night long. Hannah has always loved dolls, so it was a no brainer to get her a AG doll and it was worth every penny!

While Graham is nursing, he loves to sneak his little thumb into his mouth. It always finds its way into the corner of his mouth. I keep telling him there isn't room for both :-)

Arts & Craft Party

Hannah's 8th Birthday party was an arts and crafts party. There were so many great ideas on the web, so here is my take on those ideas and how I put the whole party together with all the fun details. The entrance when they walked through the door had these lanterns. Lanterns are so cheap now ($1 a piece) that I was able to have fun and use the whole rainbow to create a colorful entrance. This is a good website with tons of colors and sizes. Also, since it was an arts and crafts party, each girl needed their own apron to keep the mess of their clothes. I got the aprons at Oriental Trading Company and then glittered their names onto each one.



The first station was a self portrait station. I made fun frames out of card stock and had the girls draw themselves using colored pencils, markers or crayons.



The next station was Picasso Pops. I got the idea from here. I crushed hard candies and kept some whole like lifesavers or Jolly ranchers and let the girls create their own creation. I didn't know how well this would go over, but it was the favorite among the girls. They loved seeing how their creation turned out after they melted in the oven. They really liked this! As a side note, I stuck the warm lollipops into the fridge to harden them up super quick. Worked like a charm.



The last station was the canvas painting station. Each girl got a canvas and were to paint a cupcake. I placed a collage of different cupcakes in the middle of the table for them to draw inspiration from. it was so interesting to see how each girl painted. Some hardly did anything and some painted every square inch. I got the canvases at Michaels (7) 12X12 for $15 on sale. The perfect size and price!



For the food, we did an ice cream sandae bar and cake. I had the ice cream be the "blank canvas" and the toppings were "colors and supplies". The cake was the 8 layer rainbow cake that is going around the web right now. Here is a great tutorial. The cake was "the masterpiece". I made pretzel rods dipped in colored melting chocolate for "paintbrushes" and the drinks were "creative juices". I had some chips too as "paint chips". Just too much fun with the food.




I used paper chains out of construction paper for the decorations with different arts and crafts items I cut out of my Silhouette that I hung from the ceiling. You can see the end result of the self portraits... too cute.




I made rice krispies paint brushes for the girls to take home. Each girl also got a bag to put all their artwork in plus all their goodies. I got the back from Oriental Trading company. I didn't pay very much for them, but I can't find them on the site right now.


I made awards out of cupcake liners. Each girl got an award for the cupcake painting. The awards were like "most eat-able", "most picasso-like", "most use of paint", "most artistic and so on. We presented each girl with an award and put it on their canvas painting.




It was a great party and so much fun to watch the girls be so creative. I would highly recommend this party theme for girls 8 years of age and older. Now onto my next birthday party.... it looks like we are going to "infinity and beyond" for the next one.

Birthday Girl

For Hananh's birthday this year, she got an American Girl doll. When she opened her up there were squeals of joy and those squeals lasted for about 15 minutes. All night, I kept hearing "I love her. I love her". Emily (her new doll) has been with us everywhere we go. She prays with us, eats breakfast with us, she watches movies. I love when you pick out the perfect gift and this year that is exactly what I did -- good job mom!



We had hannah's birthday party this weekend. It was an arts and crafts party. It was a lot of fun. The perfect party to have with a bunch of 8 year olds. I asked her what her favorite part of the party was and she said opening the presents (of course) and handing out the awards we gave each of the girls for the canvas art they painted. Here is her sister getting the "most like picasso" award. That painting is supposed to be of a cupcake :-)



The details of the party coming soon.

Hannah's Birthday

Today is Hannah's birthday. She is 8 years old. What a joy she is to our family. She is so sweet, always happy, enjoys life and everyone in it and has a very tender spirit. She is smart and a wonderful sister to her siblings. I could say so many wonderful things about her, but I will post what she has said about herself. We love you so much Hannah and are proud of the wonderful girl you are and the young woman you are becoming.