Happy Founder's Day!

Yesterday Derek kept saying Happy Founder's Day to me. I kept telling him he was a day early........he was actually referring to the house. A year ago we weren't quite homeowners yet (that will be June 2) but we were busy painting a soon to be home -- and I mean the entire thing! It was a crazy weekend.

He also said Happy Founder's Day to me this morning. As it was 7 years ago today that we were married! We have been through so much in the past 7 years. Of course we have had a lot of downs but I can honestly say it's been mostly ups. We've had to spend a lot of time apart but the saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder" is absolutely true. In those 7 years we have been blessed with two amazing little girls and now we have a little boy on the way. We have travelled probably more than a lot of people do in a lifetime. We've been to so many places it would take forever to try to think of them all and make a list (I should do that sometime though!). And Derek has been to even more places. We have lived in 4 different states in 5 different homes. We continue to make new friends who live all over the world.

Yesterday we actually had someone volunteer to watch our girls so Derek and I could go out and celebrate our anniversary. I took her up on the offer and said we would just be gone for an hour or so to go out for dinner. She said to at least stay out for 2 or 3 hours. So, I picked a bit of a fancier restaurant for us to go to. We went to Paesano's.......not the one on the riverwalk, although that one would have been a little more romantic because the Riverwalk is probably one of the most romantic spots around here, but we wanted to stay a little closer to home. This place was still very nice and the food was great. We hadn't had good italian food in quite a while. We asked what was good and our waiter told us their speciality was the Shrimp Paesano -- so that's what i ordered. It was superb! Derek ordered Fettucini Alfredo w/ Chicken and it tasted great as well. Derek told our waiter it was our anniversary and he brought us the dessert menu and let us pick whatever we wanted! We were both already stuffed but couldn't pass up dessert. We narrowed down our choices and then asked the waiter what his favorite was and one the ones he told us was on our list.....so we went with that! Something like Cinnamon, Carmel, Banana Toffee Bread Pudding. This was a first for me. I had never tried Bread Pudding before because it never really looks all that appetizing. I must say it was so good!

Shrimp Paesano!

It was a good and much needed date night. And a nice quiet dinner where we could just talk with no interruptions! Afterwards we went...........shopping! haha. We had some extra time so we wanted to go and get some portable dvd players for the upcoming trip. We also went ahead and got a bunch of fruit for Allie's class party on Thursday!

Happy Anniversary to US!!

Happy Birthday Allie! ~ The Art Party

Allie and her friends!! (from L to R: Evelyn, Caroline, Devan, Emma, Avery, Addison, Abby, Brianna, Allie, Ethan, Kayla, Lorelei)

Waiting for the rest of the friends to arrive. Play-Doh and Painting to keep them occupied.

Birthday Girl busy creating a masterpiece.

Little Sis concentrating on hers (notice she is sucking her tounge)

Caroline, Evelyn and Abby keeping busy

Addison and her work of art

Brianna can do it with her eyes shut!!

Mr. Ethan getting started on his colorful fish

Beautiful smile from Lorelei!

Kayla Li working on Allie's birthday banner

Devan working on the banner.

Time to eat - Pizza, rainbow goldfish, rainbow jello, veggies & dip. All yum-o!

The huge cake

The 6 layer ROYGBIV cake

A closer look at the jello. Yes, it tasted just as good as it looks! (it's okay to brag a little, right?!)

All in all, a successful birthday party. Allie was thrilled to be able to hang out with her friends. What Derek and I loved was that Allie wanted to be of service to everyone. She wanted to deliver the plate of cake and ice cream to each person, hand out the goodie bags, give each guest a balloon etc. She didn't even take a pink or purple balloon -- with so many balloons they were the first to go -- but she didn't care. She wanted everyone to be happy. That's our baby girl!!! Can't believe she's going to be FIVE!

Art Party Sneak Peek

Allie is having her birthday party tomorrow. She is SO excited!! Her birthday isn't actually until June 21, but we'll be in Indiana and she wanted to do something with her friends. We went a little overboard, I think. We're having the party at an art studio and I'm making the cake. I don't know why I bother with cakes. I am not a baker at all. They never turn out how I envision them. This cake is no different. I am currently baking it, but it's a LONG process as it's six layers.

Anyway, this is what I have done so far:

Goodie bags - Art smock, crazy straw, button candy, airhead, paint, wooden cutout to paint, paintbrush, crayons, stackable colored pencils, stickers to color.....and a personalized Thank You from Allie.

Rainbow Jello - decided to do this thinking it would be easier than cutting up a bunch of fruit. WRONG! This took 2 1/2 hours b/c i had to let each layer set. As you can see, that still wasn't even long enough b/c the layers started to mix in with each other. Again, not what I envisioned but will probably look better than the cake.

The Things They Say

Yesterday as we were driving home from school I overheard the following conversation between Allie and her friend:

Penelope: Ethan comes back to school tomorrow! We're going to pick him up and take him.

Allie: Yeah.

Penelope: Do you like Ethan? Are you going to marry him when you get older?

Allie: (shrugs) [she has 'married' him several times in pretend weddings already

Penelope: Oh, well I'm going to marry Armando. Who are you going to marry Allie?

Allie: Ummmmm.........I'm going to marry Nikolai or Ethan.

I just found this conversation very funny. They are WAY to young to be talking about this stuff!

Just A Swingin'

Yesterday was a busy day of shopping. We managed to take a break at Brakenridge Park so the girls could play on the playground for a while. Here they are swinging. It scares me to death with Derek pushing Avery so high. I'm afraid she's going to let go and fall off! And look at Allie pumping all by herself!

One Tough Cookie

This little girl is SO tough. I guess she needs to be since she seems to be extremely clumsy. Whenever she falls she might cry for a few seconds, but no matter what, she jumps right back up. She fears almost nothing. That's a little scary sometimes. Despite her clumsiness she is very athletic - already at 2 1/2.

Now because of all of those reasons listed above she is always covered in bruises, cuts, and scrapes!! And I  mean from head to toe! It probably looks pretty bad when we're around strangers. I tried to get some close up shots of her worst boo-boos but they didn't really turn out.

Look at those cheeks! Just like her Momma! Notice the scrape under her eye -- from the neighbor's dog. Of course you can't miss the cut on her forehead from the Mother's Day Incident.



This doesn't look quite as bad. Over the weekend we saw the neighbors outside and Allie wanted to go give her friend an invitation to her birthday party. So we ran outside because we had been trying to catch them all week. Well, I forgot Avery didn't have any pants on (potty training -- and it's pretty much a success now - FINALLY). I couldn't get her to come back inside! The girls decided to do races in the road and Avery joined in. She runs pretty fast for a 2 year old, but like I mentioned, she's very clumsy. And she tripped over her feet and skinned up her right leg from her knee to her ankle! She also got a good scrape on her other leg. Good golly girl!

Avery is also always covered in bruises around her knees because she runs as fast as she can towards her bed and trys to jump up on it. She always hits the wood on the side!

Anyway, I just wanted to document this. Now here are a couple more pics of her.

excited to be playing with the chalk!

Misc

Just going through some pictures, this one was from around Easter, Avery is sorting her candy.

L.O.V.E

"New" Kitchen. We had granite counter tops put in last Thursday. It was a full day of installation. The project was stalled for a little bit because they brought the wrong sink and had cut out the countertop for the wrong sink as well. We ended up settling with the sink we didn't necessarily like and got an extra $200 knocked off. We have a lot of countertop space and we think we got a great deal on this so we are happy and really like how it turned out. When Avery walked in the room she exclaimed, "We have a new kitchen!" So cute.

Our first meal in the "new" kitchen. Buffalo Chicken Salad. This was SO good and simple too. We just chopped up a bunch of lettuce and spinach, cucumbers, celery and that was the base. Then I baked chicken covered in Frank's Hot Sauce along with some salt  & pepper and EVOO. Cut up some onion and put it on top and baked it in the oven. This was even a winner for Derek and he does NOT eat salad!

Lost Lagoon

Today we went to Sea World -- just to the water park though. We were surprised when we walked outside to head there and there was a nice breeze and wasn't as hot as we expected. Worked out great though because the water park wasn't all that crowded while we were there. By the time we left at 1:45 it was starting to get packed.

Gifts for our Mom's

Derek and I worked together this year on making something for our Mom's. I think they turned out super cute and now I want to make one for myself!!

Happy Mudder's Day!

Aww, my kids are the absolute best! I don't know how many times I've heard the phrase "Happy Mudder's Day Mom!" today. They are so, so sweet. Allie planted a flower for me in a little flower pot and we are enjoying watching it grow. She was so excited about it she couldn't wait to give it to me -- she gave it to me Friday. She also made me a really cute card. Derek and the girls also got me a card from the store that is super sweet and a nice flag to put out front in our yard. They had intended on making me breakfast this morning but that didn't happen............around 7:45 this morning Avery was running from Allie because she had her lipgloss. Avery tripped over one of our large pillows that was on the floor and smacked her head right onto the corner of our nightstand. As soon as I picked her up I was covered in blood and it was already caked in her hair and running down into her eyes. We grabbed some gauze and took off for the ER. Of course we were there forever and they decided that she didn't need stitches -- and just glued the cut back together. Pictures below (warning they are kind of graphic).

What an unforgettable Mother's Day!

Teacher Appreciation Week ~ Day 5

Today's idea was to simply let Allie's teachers know how much we appreciated them so.........this is what we did:

Attatched on the back was a gift card to everyone's favorite store, Target.

Playdate Fun!

Penelope, Allie, Ethan, Emma, Avery

Penelope - 4, Allie - 4, Ethan - 5

Emma & Avery - 2 (their b-days are only 2 days apart!)

Teacher Appreciation Week ~ Day 4

Boooring! I was too lazy to put any effort into today's gift. The theme we were working around was "Thank you for supplying my mind" and we were going to get them some new school supplies for the classroom. The possibilities for this were endless. We decided on some new stamps because the Writing Station is Allie's favorite place to go. At the Writing Station you can write, color, stamp, use stickers etc. We got a strawberry stamp, an ice cream cone, and 2 alpahbet stamp sets (one uppercase and one lowercase). Hopefully they enjoy it!

Looking So Grown Up

Teacher Appreciation Week ~ Day 3

Thank you for planting the seed of knowledge in our daughter! We just bought some pink tin "planters" and a package of flower seeds for each teacher with that little note.

Teacher Appreciation Week ~ Day Two

We knew we wanted to make a sweet treat for Allie's teachers today, but we weren't sure what. I found a cute idea here while searching the web on Sunday.  Brooke, of The Crafting Chicks, made it sound a lot easier to do than it actually was. I had such a hard time making these! My Oreo's kept falling apart or coming off of the toothpick so mine don't look nearly as good as hers.......but I did it, and they taste good.

I totally forgot about packaging these for the teachers. All of her ideas were so cute! Luckily, I went rummaging through our craft room (which is never used!) and I found some stuff. I think they turned out pretty good. I could only fit 4 of the "apples" in the jar, but that might be a good thing. I saw a couple other students with some sweet treats for the teacher today too! (box of candy, suckers, cupcakes)