Lately...

this is what I see when I look down.

And it makes me want to yell, "Sweet children, you know I love you more than you could possibly imagine, but GET OFF ME!!!!!!!!"

*sigh* It's been an off day. Everyone else has those too, right? Please say it's not just me.

Happy 26th Birthday Sweet Husband

You're pretty awesome.

I hope you had a good day.

We love you. :)

Potty Training

No, not Beckett (yet) but rather Reese. She has been potty trained since her second birthday a year ago, we are still working on making in through the night. How old is a child supposed to be before they are able to hold it all night long? I'm struggling on what is normal or how we can help her not wet the bed.

We try not to let her have a lot of liquids before bedtime, we take her to go to the bathroom once before we go to bed around 10:30 pm and again when Wade wakes up around 5:00 am. This has seemed to be working, but only if we take her twice during the night, once doesn't cut it. We even bought her some special princess underwear to wear only to bed to maybe entice her to stay dry. We stopped using diapers when she turned 3, a month ago and there's been a lot of changing and washing of her sheets! Any ideas or suggestions???

Oh and the cake balls, Wade thought they were amazing but .....ehhh.... I thought they were alright. Don't get me wrong, I still managed to shove about 3 dozen into my mouth in two days, but I'm already envisioning different flavor possibilities. Chocolate + coffee, strawberries + dark chocolate, caramel, lemon, key lime...... oh wow, this could be bad. :)

And as I was blogging about the cake balls the other day, a small somebody (who was watching a movie) got too impatient and decided to dig her little fingers into the cooled cake and have a little snack. There was a trail of red cake crumbs from the kitchen to the living room, Hansel and Grettle style. It forced me to vacuum, which desperately needed to be done anyway.

(And man does this song uplift me!!!!!!)

Red Velvet Cake Balls

I'm making these today, only with white chocolate. I'll letcha know how it goes!

I'll post soon about out new renovation project, which is still on the drawing board, but Wade thinks he will be able to complete it in... oh.... about 2 weeks. At the end of August FOR SURE. ;) All right, babe! Let's see what you can do!!!

Good-bye July, Hello August!

Beckett sleeping + Wade and Reese running errands = coffee cup in my hand, getting ready to go outside to read a book ALONE. Ahhhhhh, sweet summer. :)


And yes, Reese did get her ears pierced yesterday. It took about an hour and she was hysterical. I felt like the world's worst mom. (And the looks from the people passing by didn't help! Why, oh why, do they keep that chair right in the front of the store!? They should hide it in a back room or something.)

Dear Reese,

When you have a sweet little girl some day and she asks to get her ears pierced when she's 3, don't let her. TRUST ME.

Love, Mom

Have a great weekend!!!!!!! :) :) :)

Walking and....

Look who's walking!!!!!!

We've been practicing a lot lately, and he's at the stage where he can do it, but it's faster (not to mention safer!) to crawl. Whenever he walks to me, he gets going so fast that instead of just coming to a stop in front of me, he will just fall into my lap.

Also, notice anything different??? ;)

Too Funny!!!!!

For only $20, this Hug Me Pillow can be yours from Overstock.com!!!!!
I seriously can't stop giggling when I look at it. :)

Our new "Clab Hose"

** UPDATE: I took Neighbor Girl to the library with us this afternoon and she said, "Liz, you're really nice. And I like your shirt." She might have been just sucking up after what happened this afternoon, but it did make me feel like I did the right thing instead of scolding her. With as much time as she spends here, I hope I can be a positive influence on her. Oh, kids. :)

Original Post:

Little B got a new armoir from R+M this weekend and it was the perfect size to build a little fort! Or a castle. Or a club house. It changes frequently. :)

So yesterday with a cleaver and a little duct tape, I hacked away at this box for the kids to play in. It's a little ghetto, but way cute. They played out there for almost 5 hours straight. It's nice to know that if we ever become homeless, I'll be able to provide us adequate shelter!

But today, laughter turned into tears. I let her play outside with Neighbor Girl and Friend, but totally spied on them the whole time to make sure everyone was playing nicely together. Turns out they weren't. For some reason, the girl's claimed the playhouse as their own home and Reese's home was in "the cage" in the backyard behind all the outside toys. She seemed a little sad, but was tolerating it so I didn't say anything. They were playing "let's pretend you are [......] and I'm [.....] okay now it's two hours later and we [......]" and so on.

Then I noticed that they were trying to "lock" Reese out of the house by putting up their shoes in front of the door so that she couldn't get in. Then Neighbor Girl starts YELLING at Reese, telling her to "get me that shoe", "gosh, she never listens" and "now go home!"

(I took a picture of it to show Wade. Ha! strange I know.)

I about lost it.

Reese slowly turned around and started running toward the house bawling, so sad. I came outside and just hugged her while she cried. Having just saw what happened, I told her to go inside for a minute while I talked to Neighbor Girl. Instead of yelling at her (like I wanted to) I put on my teacher hat and asked her what happened and how important it was to not leave anyone out, especially when your at someone else's house. After that they all played well together and seemed to have fun. But it seriously made me so thankful that I get to stay at home w/ my kids to teach them those little lessons on a daily basis.

But MAN was it hard not to just CLOCK this little girl for making my child cry. Ahem.

Backyard Swimming

I love Mondays. As long as it's warm, every Monday I pull out the inflatable pools and we splash around all afternoon. And I open up the invitation up to other moms that we are friends w/ in the area. It's fun because we usually get a bunch of kids crawling/running/toddling around getting wet, blowing bubbles and munching on snacks. And we always have popcicles afterwards. :)

It's just so summer!

Happy Monday!!! :) :) :)

Money-Saving Tip II

Movies!

Having two young kids, we don't get the chance to get to the theater as often as we used to back when we were dating. (Not to mention that it's almost $10 per person now, geesh!) And we very rarely (okay, never) buy DVDs from the store to add to our collection. But we do like watching movies, so to save a little money we do a couple of things.

1. We borrow movies from friends. It seems like everyone else besides us has a pretty decent movie collection, so we just ask to borrow one or two at a time and then remember to return them!

2. We rent movies from the library. Our library doesn't have all the newest releases but it's definitely got some good classics. This is where we get all of the movies Reese watches. They've got a TON of kids DVDs. My problem is making sure they get back on time so I don't rack up fines!

3. Redbox. If you've got one in your area, seriously take advantage of it! They are only $1 per rental per night, which beats Blockbuster and Netflix. And if you know a promo code, you can get them for FREE!!!! Try it out. I don't think we've paid for a movie with Redbox yet. When you go to check out, type in either DVDONME or BREAKROOM. At Walgreens, use DVDATWAG. It will only work once per credit card, but if you've got a couple different cards you can use it on each one. Go to this website for more codes for free rentals.

Have you met...

my friend, Christina?

She's pretty awesome. She lives over on the East Coast, so we don't get to see each other very often. :( We met back in 2004 down in Orlando while doing our internships for Disney World. She ended up being one of the 12 (yes, 12) roommates that I had that year in our 4 bedroom apartment.

Getting matching (just kidding) tattoos in Cocoa Beach, FL in 2005.

At my wedding in 2007.

She's got an infectious laugh. She's gorgeous. She's got the biggest heart and genuinely cares about people she's known for only minutes. She and Reese share the same birthday. She's the girl you want to go out with because no matter what you do, you know you'll have fun. She sends me stuff from Starbucks. She's a beauty queen and a tram driver.

Like I said, she's pretty awesome.

I told her I was going to post a couple of pics for her of Reese, so here ya go Aunt Kiki! We love you!

.

(Seriously. Are those not cute or what!?!?)

Berry Crisp

We are back from another busy weekend! Mondays at our house this summer have been full of putting the house back together, naps, and just recovering from the busy weekend. Mondays are also usually our backyard pool days (but not today since it was only in the 70s) but I'll post about that later.

But right now, here's the spur-of-the-moment dessert I made this afternoon!

A friend of mine brought over a bunch of cherries last week. I really needed to use them up before they went bad so I found a recipe for cherry crisp online, only I added blueberries and strawberries since I didn't have enough cherries. It's pretty tasty so I'm guessing it's not going to last very long! Tomorrow, the kids and I are off in search of tahini, which we need to make hummus!

Fresh Cherry Crisp

4 cups pitted sour cherries
1 1/2 cups white sugar
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
In a large bowl, combine cherries, 1 1/2 cups white sugar, and 4 tablespoons flour. Pour into 9x13 inch baking dish. In a medium bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups flour, oats, and brown sugar. Cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over cherries.
Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until topping is golden brown.