Presents

I just love getting presents in the mail even when they are for giving rather than receiving :) and even when it won't be given or used for about 6 months and even when I'm not the one doing the giving...

Laurie Berkner Band is coming to town the day before the Little Miss's birthday so it seemed like the perfect Christmas/Birthday gift for her from grandma Handy.

She will still be to young to see anything but a bunch of paper if she were to unwrap them but the show will be awesome for our little Dancing Queen!

(and P.S.thanks Marci for the heads up so we could get the tickets!)

Lemon "One"der cookie with the Little Miss

Ahhh I can't wait until I can have both my girls in the kitchen with me baking cookies and cakes and all sorts of goodies :) I can just envision all the sticky messes we will make lol

We got our first taste of it on Monday :) while supper was bubbling on the stove I decided to try out a quick cookie recipe that one of my friends had pinned...(it was this recipe for reference)

The recipe for the cookies couldn't have been easier...one box of lemon cake mix, one tub of cool whip and one egg (hence my nick name of the "one"der cookies...)

The best part of this though??? The Little miss helped out!! It was so much fun :)

The Results?

Were yummy, chewy, lemony goodness :)

Quiet Toys :)

I've been working for a while on some "quiet" toys for the Little Miss to play with on the way down to TN and so far I have a grand total of three completed...yep out of all the ideas in my head and all the projects I have started a total of THREE completed...ah well she's not getting them until we set off so they are nice and new and interesting so there's not really a rush on them so I'm pretty happy to have any completed at all lol.

First up we have an I spy bottle I first saw the idea for this on Pintrest :) and I love how it turned out...grand total ~ $3 - $1 for the bag of rice and $2 for a cool set of thumb tacks I ran across in Staples that were famous world icons (big Ben, Statue of Liberty...etc) that I just couldn't pass up...

I dyed some rice a hot pink color and then went to my box of "someday" objects...you know, the cool extra buttons that came with a sweater, that awesome pair of earrings where one went missing but someday you would find the other so you couldn't part with the one you still had, that charm bracelet you had in 7th grade, the hair clips you wore to prom...those objects...and poured them in a water bottle with the rice, shook the bottle up, glued the top on to prevent a mess of catastrophic proportions and there you have it!

Next up Marble Mazes! I found this one some where blog hopping and then again on Pintrest... lesson learned from this one? I totally cannot sew...like at all...but practice makes perfect right? good thing these aren't going to be sold or given as a gift, but but they will do the purpose for keeping the little miss quiet (I hope...) actually I think I am going to keep these in my purse so I can pull them out when we are grocery shopping when she starts getting fussy... total cost for this project? $0! I cut up her crib bumper and used some other fabric that I had laying around :)

And last (for now) but not least, a magnetic color matching game :) I got the idea for using paint sample cards for the colors from (SURPRISE) Pintrest, but I made up the rest as I went along...Total cost for this project? $2.10 (I had to buy a full box of magnets, but I used so few of them I couldn't justify the cost of the whole box on just this one project so I did a per magnet price :) ) Paint samples were free, ribbon I had and the block came from our basement renovation scrap pile :)

Since these "toys" will be used in the car I wanted to make sure all the pieces were attached, so I grabbed some ribbons and glued them to the magnets.

All three came out pretty well I think hopefully they will do their job and keep the little miss entertained! More to come soon (I hope...)

2 Month and 18 Month Stats

Ooops looks like I totally forgot to post this :( ah well guess better late than never lol

The Little and Littlest Misses had their 18 month and 2 month appointments last week, here are the stats!

The Little Miss is weighing in at 26 Pounds now and 32.5 inches tall putting her squarely in the 75 percentile for both

The Littlest Miss is weighing in at 11.9 pounds and a whopping 24 inches tall putting her in 75th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for height!

Kinda sad I never recorded the info for the Little Miss when she had her well child checkups, but at least we are doing it now! Plus our new doctor gives us a sheet each time with their stats and what shots they got so we can put it in their books (which I should really get started...) it's kinda neat!

A-Z Toddler Travel Tips

Since Pintrest wont let me Pin this... due to no usable images... I'm putting it here...

A-Z Travel Tips

It was one of *THOSE* days...

Sunday was one of *THOSE* days...you know, the perfect summer ones? :)

We decided to go down to the town park and purchase a set of pool passes so we could go down there whenever we wanted and make some use of those swim lessons we were taking the Little Miss to. Okay, and so we could take a dip too when ever we wanted. It felt kinda like a right of passage in this whole parenthood thing to me :).

There was plenty of shade so we parked the Littlest Miss in the shade where she spent most of the time sleeping the day away. Daddy and I took turns trying to get Little Miss to go through the sprinklers at the water playground or into the pool.

We had no luck for the most part with the sprinklers but after a while she warmed up to the kiddie pool, it was only 1 1/2 - 2 feet deep so she could walk in it (holding our hand of course) and after she saw another little girl about her age walking laps she decided she was brave enough to give that a try. We walked a lap then she would go up the stairs run out and see daddy, come back do another lap and repeat :)

We spent a couple of hours there and the Little Miss was having a grand old time but finally we had to declare it far enough past her nap time that we had to stop for lunch and get going.

After that we took a nice long drive and gave the Little Miss time to sleep. We drove down through Tatcher Park and Thompson's Lake. We stopped at the Education Center down between the two and grabbed some information so we can come back with the girls, turns out they have some pretty awesome things going on. On the way home we stopped at a Farmer Market and picked up some peaches to munch on and some corn, potatoes and garlic scapes to have with supper.

We ended up having Steak, corn on the cob and potatoes with garlic scape butter for dinner and then watching the newest Torchwood installment to wrap up the day. The day wasn't with out incident, toward the end the Little Miss was extremely cranky before bed time and the Littlest Miss can't seem to decide what bottle she wants to drink from and gets VERY cranky a well, BUT it couldn't cancel out the greatness, I think it just makes us realize how wonderful the day was even more :)

Happy Anniversary!!

On June 23, 2011 Matt and I celebrated 4 years of marriage. So incredible to believe how very far we have come since that day...

We make it a point to get down to the park where we had our wedding and take a picture every year on or around the 23rd

Here is this year's picture :)

The stream was still pretty high after all the rain we have had and it was pretty chilly, but not icy and not up to our waists so it was still doable lol...

After we got the picture taking out of the way we played around and had some fun...

The little miss didn't care at allllll about the cold water, she loved being in it and she LOVED throwing the rocks in it. Don't know if it was the splash they made when they landed, or the fact that we were actually LETTING her throw something, but she was having fun :)

And seriously? It's just incredible how much she has grown since last year!

And we couldn't let the Littlest Miss get away with out sticking at least a toe in...

very much unlike her sister...I don't think she cared for it at all :)