Kendra Turns 2!

Happy Birthday to a crazy, fun, sweet, charming, busy, adorable little girl! 

 I made her an Elmo shirt for her birthday and she won't take the thing off now! 

 Bad lighting here, I know, I know, but we put the 2's and K's up all over the house and I put a sign out front that said, "This evening brought to you by the Letter K and the Number2!"

 My mom cut out and painted this Elmo for Mikayla's birthday party 5 yrs ago.  Kendra developed the same Sesame Street/Elmo obsession, so he made another party appearance.

The thing about Kendra is she's cute and funny and she knows it!  She does whatever she can for a laugh and was cracking me up playing with the balloons, pretending to blow them up and squealing when she threw them at me.

I made an Elmo cake and the fuzzy textured frosting was so much easier than trying to make the frosting smooth on the eyes and nose!

She got a cute little play market/fruit stand from Magaw and Papa and loves it!

Yeah, tried to take a pic of Kendra with her party friends.  Epic fail.  5 two yr olds all conspired against me and decided it was NOT happening!

She opened her presents and the kids crammed in so tightly around her I could barely see what was going on!

She beamed and looked at everyone around the room as we all sang "Happy Birthday" to her and right on cue at the end of the song she bent over and blew those candles out in one breath!

Mikayla, Cole, and Riley got to sit at the big kid table--up at the bar.  They loved having their own area and chatting together.

Megan and Gracie and their very red frosting mouths.

 The kids were enthralled and fully entertained(and quiet!) during Trent's magic tricks!  They were in awe of his awesome magicness and tried guess after guess as to how he got the quarter through the back of his head and out his mouth.

 After the party, Kendra put on the new Elmo shirt that Karam got her and danced and sang song after song on the table.

 Quite the entertainer!

We love you big girl!  Happy Birthday and keep on being cute and sassy!

Guest Bedroom Update

I added a little vinyl above my craft station.  I have all my ribbon stored in a plastic rain gutter hanging on the wall--thank you Megan K. for that idea!

I added some family pics from the last year.  All our siblings and their kids are pictured on this wall.  I love to look at it when I go in there.

I added the chocolate brown pintucked bedding from WalMart that I am in LOVE with and made a few throw pillows.  I just covered a few old couch pillows we had laying around with some fabric I was given.  I love that the flowered fabric pillow matches the girls tops in the family photos also.  A little side bonus!

I rolled the fabric rosettes and hot glued them as I went and then just hot glued them to the pillows.  So simple, so cute!  I just love the look of the room now.

Grasshoppers!

 Trent got to coach Mikayla's soccer team this year.  It was a fun learning experience that's for sure!  Weekly practices and games are a lot with 2 kids playing socer, but we love to keep them active.

 Mikayla and her coach.

 About to score her first and only goal of the season!

Mikayla's sideline cheerleaders.  It sure was fun having Dad for a coach and it was nice that Magaw and Papa could come to so many games now that we live just 30 minutes away.  I had to make Mikayla play this year as I signed her up and told her she was playing.  She grudgingly did, and of course, loved it!  Same thing happened with swim team and with jazz dance too.  She has to be prodded a bit, but then she just loves getting out there and being active.

Da Bears!

Megan played her first season of soccer and loved it!  She may be the smallest on the team, but she runs as fast as any of them and will run for the entire game or full hour of practice!  She is a little running machine.

She had fun, learned more about the game, loved all the running, and wants to play again next year!

Here she is, mad to be pulled off the field for a break!  Each kid gets rotated out every few minutes to keep them being tired, but she would get upset, she just wanted to keep playing!  Love it!

Craft Fair

My friend, Trina, and I went to a craft fair a few weekends ago.  We each brought our wares and sat in the 90+ degree heat sweating it out and gabbing all day.  We didn't sell a ton, unfortunately, but we had fun together!  She had all kinds of bows, hair accessories, and girly tutus and such for sale.

I had nursing covers, covered wipes cases, and decorative holiday plates for mantel decoration for sale.

Trina has an 8 yr old girl, a 4 yr old girl, and an almost 2 yr old girl.  How awesome is that?  She also has a 6 yr old boy, he's completely outnumbered when we get together!

I still can't believe these didn't sell!  I started at $10 ea. or 2/$18, after an hour or two it went down to $8 ea. or 2/$14.  Finally, I went down to $6 each or 2/$10!!  Seriously?!  I think they're cute, but obviously the crowd shopping crowd doesn't share my taste.  Oh well!

Do Not Try This At Home...

 Somehow, some way, Mikayla got the shoulder strap of her seatbelt wrapped around her torso in a knot.  As we're driving on Hwy 99 she says, "my seatbelt's too tight."  "You have permission to take it off and redo it," I said.  Seconds later we hear whining and complaining and I sigh and decide to risk my life by climbing over the seat, across the fruit loop-ridden floor, dodging books and socks strewn about to get to her.  After a minute of fidgeting, I tell Trent to stop the van because I can not undo her belt and it's only getting worse.

 He pulls over and we survey what she's done and think if only we can lift her body higher, the seatbelt will reach the magical clicking point where it will let loose and give us the slack we need.  'Tis not so.  Every time we moved her it racheted tighter and tighter on her torso closing in on her ribs.  She was screaming and crying in between struggling to breathe.  I propped her up on my legs to relieve a little pressure and we frantically tried to figure out how to undo the strangling, malfunctioning belt.

 Fortunately, a car was pulled over just ahead of us and on a whim I asked Trent to see if the driver might by chance be carrying around some tools in his SUV.  Hallelujah, the man had a wrench and a screwdriver!  He and Trent ripped off the rubber insulation, pried off the panel surrounding the seatbelt, unscrewed the hardware holding the seatbelt up, and of course, all this movement caused it to rachet a few notches tighter causing more screams of pain from the poor 7 yr old.  Finally, they got the belt out of the vehicle panel and we loosened the knot til she could wriggle free.

 The aftermath.  The seatbelt STILL won't loosen up.  It is racheted tight and for some reason locked internally.  We took the vehicle into Kia to be looked at and they said they need to order a new seatbelt since it malfunctioned so badly.

 The next day her abdomen still looked awful.

Poor child will definitely be sitting upright and not moving while in the car from now on!

Happy Halloween!

 Our too cute tiger, Rajah, complete with loud "rahrs" and gnashing of teeth--though with such a sweet smile she was hardly fierce.

 Jasmine was decided upon by Mikayla months ago.  She actually chose our family theme and was so excited to be Jasmine and found her costume online and everything.  Unfortunately, due to a sugar overload at school of cupcakes, donuts, cookies, fudge, and candy, she had too much of a tummyache to do any trick-or-treating!  She put on a good face for a half hour and then asked to just go home and pass out candy.  Poor girl!

 And our little monkey, Abu!  Quite fitting for this little climbing, scampering, curious little thing.  She called her costume her "ooh ooh ah ahh" since that's obviously how monkeys sound.  She wasn't sure what was going on at first at our church's trunk-r-treat, but after a couple cars she said, "chich-o-cheat" without us prompting her and knew that meant more candy to be plopped in her bag.  She'd smile a big smile and say, "day-doo," and then scamper on to the next vehicle.

 Naughty little monkey would sneak a sucker out of her bag and wrangle off the wrapper before I had a chance to see her do it in the dark!  sneaky sneaky!

 She thought trick-or-treating was a blast and had no fear as she walked up to each door in the dark, knocked, and opened her bag saying "chich-o-cheat" each time.  Soo cute!

Here we have Aladdin, Jasmine, Rajah, Abu, and I am Jasmine's mom that you never see in the movie.  I had to come up with something because the girls told me I should be a big, fat palace guard and well, that just didn't fly.  Thank you sweet children...