PJ Day at Brusters!

Yep, we did it again.  This time we brought captives…

It just so happened that PJ Day was the same day as Ceili Rain’s birthday.  I would like to think that Bruster’s knew about CeiRai’s birthday and chose that day  for PJ day purposefully to help us celebrate..  She thought so at least.  Papa and Grandmere were able to come up for the weekend.  They opted out of the PJ day and chose to actually buy their ice cream.  Who knew that people actually do that still!

Bryant gave up trying to get his ice cream and settled for a sock.  That’s what you get if you don’t wear your pjs!  We don’t buy ice cream on PJ day!

Some people in our family like to wear their ice cream with pride.  It’s like a symbol of pure yumminess.

and cuteness!

So, Josiah got some “Purple Dinosaur” ice cream on his shoe.  I didn’t realize this and the next day he was getting them on and showed me his purple on his shoe.  Being the wonderful mom I am, I started in lecturing him about the reason we don’t write on anything but paper.  He smiled and quietly said, “It’s from my ice cream.  I have a purple dinosaur shoe.”  I had to shut up then and just giggle.  That was too cute!

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Happy 2nd Birthday Ceili Rain!

So, yes, we celebrated Ceili Rain’s birthday this month.  I still don’t think she had a clue what was going on.  But now she associates things with her “biffday.”  You know, important things….chocolate cake, chocolate icing, ice cream, presents.  She’s going to have a tough time when we get to others birthdays and she’s not opening presents.  But she did have a wonderful day.  No massive party.  I’ve learned now, to save those for when they ask for them!

I’d like to say that after my elephant fondant success that I ventured in to ladybugs and made the cake topper.  But that would be a lie and I try my best not to lie.  But, I did find it at an extremely reasonable price on Etsy at a great shop by KidsCakes.  I ordered it about three weeks in advance and it got here the day before her birthday!  The owner was amazing to work with and customized the colors to match the plates and napkins I had bought (on sale mind you).  Ceili Rain loved it.  We used the leftover polka dots from Tracy’s shower to finish off the decorating.  Zoe and Ceili Rain did those.

I have my eye on some adorable robot designs for Bryant’s first birthday!  I love that you can get their name on there….and she even fit Ceili Rain on her topper!

That’d be a chocolate cake with chocolate icing for our chocolate lovin’ princess.  And guess what…she only ate a little bit of it!  That’s alright…more for me.  It’s justified…I did all the work to get her here.

Okay,s o she had a little pre-party taste testing for the icing.  That may have contributed to the no-need-for-awesome-chocolate-cake time.

Chefs in training!

Check out the waves in the hair!  Yep they’re back.  I’m not at a spritz, gel, and scrunch method.  It’s wavy and a little curly and it works (no, I’m not pregnant).

 Blow out the candles!
And open gifts!

Happy Second Birthday to our littlest princess!

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Absent

This story of absence is nothing short of well, interesting…

It all started when I requested that Papa and Mark work on the front flowerbed while they were visiting a couple of weeks ago.  They obliged…somewhat happily.  However, they didn’t have time to finish it completely because we were celebrating some special little princess’s two year birthday. 

The Before:  That pile of rocks is our altar.  We really need to get into the New Testament during family worship time!
Papa “working” hard!
The Helpers!  We chose this project because we knew that everyone could pitch in…and they did!

This is the side of the house that connects to the front bed.

So, that left the finishing touches to be completed by us the next weekend.

We got to work bright and early on Saturday morning.  Everyone really pitched in.  We saw a ton of lizards (yay, they eat mosquitos…the more lizards the happier I am…as long as they don’t come inside), frogs (they eat bugs too…stay on little frogs…outside), and a snake.

Trust me.  He’s in there.

Yeah, a snake.  Just lounging around in one of our azalea bushes in the front yard.  One of the azalea bushes in the azalea bed that we were clearing out and Mark was throwing lyme (lime?  whatever…the acid neutralizer stuff). Mark threw some lime and then jumped back a few feet.  We got out our handy dandy google and realized we weren’t dealing with a poisonous snake.  Just a little garter snake.  However, they eat lizards.  I like my lizards (outside), so I knew we were probably going to need to kill him.  But first, I wanted the kids to see him.

So, after several attempts, Mark was able to pin him down with the shovel while I picked him up.  Whether we were going to kill him or not was not questioned after that as we realized he was hurt in our jaunt to get him out of the bush, so after letting Ceili Rain touch him (the only one who wanted to), Mark took him off to the side of the house to give him his final resting place. (Sorry Jacie…but it was better than letting him suffer)

It just so happens the place Mark took him was where our cable line was buried.  Just so happens that cable line is the same cable line we use for internet and our landline phone service.  Just so happens that it’s not buried very deep.  And, as you can guess, it just so happens that when Mark sent the snake in to utter darkness, he sent our internet and phone in the same direction. And, we learned all of this on Monday when the cable repair guy came out and found the cut line.
 
Oh well!  He was super nice and did a quick great job fixing it up.  He greeted Mark at the door telling us he liked our bumper sticker (about abortion being wrong and such).  That was a nice visit!

And now you know why I did not post on Monday!

But hey, we got a nice cleaned up low maintenance flower bed…and I got my azalea bed cleaned out and mulched up.

A side view.  I’m going to add a couple of more plants to even it out but that won’t be until the big nursery near here has a warehouse sale and I can get them for dirt cheap…haha..dirt.  cheap.  I’m so funny.
Ahhh…what a little landscaping fabric and mulch can do for a yard!
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Nighty Night

“This bed’s too small,”  said Goldilocks.
“Oh well!  I’ll make do!”
(That would be Ceili Rain’s version of closing her eyes upon my request)
Yes, we’ve had a princess turn two but right now, for some crazy reason, I’ve signed up to do a work-at-home-mom fair the first of April.  I haven’t done any “official” work with my “business” in who knows how long.  Might as well jump in with both feet.  But, I believe it’ll come along.  I’ve got to get my inventory stocked up and dust off my sample cards so my blog posts are going to be sporadic for a week or two until I can get everything ready.
Hopefully, I can get her birthday pictures up soon!
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Birthday Celebrations

At the end of February, we visited with Ge and Granddaddy.  Not only did we get to visit with them, but we also got to visit with Aunt Yaya and her family.  Well, Aunt Yaya is no longer Aunt Yaya.  Ceili Rain has changed her name to Aunt Chocolate.  That’s because Aunt Yaya (er, I mean, Aunt Chocolate) keeps Ceili Rain well stocked in her favorite dessert in the whole wide world.  In fact, when we came back home, Ceili Rain was playing with a present Aunt Yaya and family gave her for her birthday and Liam asked why we had so many pieces.  I told him it was because Aunt Yaya gave them to Ceili Rain for her birthday.  Ceili Rain turned to me and said, “Choco Mama.  Choco!”  Oh right, Aunt Chocolate, not Aunt Yaya.

So, while were there we got to celebrate two birthdays.

Cousin E is 10!  I still can’t believe he’s that old.  All of the kids made cards and placemats to help celebrate.

He has such a great sense of humor and is almost always smiling!
 Then we celebrated Ceili Rain’s birthday (with Raffie the Giraffe of course)!
Granddaddy helped with the candles (I’m almost certain I flipped and saved this picture…oh well).
No help needed to get the presents though.
Her surprised look!
Bryant decided that Uncle Jay hung the moon.  Every time he saw him he’d start kicking and try to jump out of our arms to get to him.
I mean really, who couldn’t love a face like this!?
The kids, as usual, enjoyed the pond (really, I did flip and save the pictures…what’s up?!?)
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Time to Get Out!

I couldn’t stand it anymore.  Our streak of beautiful comfortable weather has just continued and continued.  So, one day last week, we escaped for lunch and a trip to the locks.  Where we live there is a man made canal.  There’s a beautiful area that is where the locks are and the gatehouse for the canal.  It really is truly beautiful. There’s a bike/walking trail that runs from the gatehouse to the end of the canal too. k We’ve never biked it all the way, but we have gone down some of it.  It’s truly gorgeous.  The kids enjoyed being able to breathe fresh air and play on the playground and I loved the scenery.

Just chillin’ in the swings.
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One Leg At a Time

Little Miss is learning to dress herself.  She chose this lovely ensemble of pj pants with her dress that was already on.  We are quite proud.

She’s also very interested in using the potty (yep, all mom talk eventually leads to this topic).  She’s not in full “training” yet but she is going quite frequently and loves the reward of chocolate!

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Contest

Alright, so I’ve gotten a couple of good comments about the This Picture, so I thought we’d have a Caption Contest.

You have until Next Friday to come up with a good caption for this picture:

The winning caption will get their own personal bag of HopeSuds.

What is HopeSuds?  Well, as we speak, the blog that I stalk like all get out because I’ve never met them…yet and her life is just a mirror of mine with one less child (for now) read has it’s writers in Uganda adopting their daughter!  She and her husband created HopeSuds to help fund their adoption.  Hopesuds is all natural laundry detergent and, in my personal opinion is wonderful!  We purchased several to give as Christmas gifts.  Ya know, because we have dirty friends and family.  We also got some for ourselves and I truly enjoyed it.

So, caption away and by Friday, midnight, our family will decide who the winner may be!    And, while you’re brainstorming about the best caption ever, click on over and pick up some HopeSuds for yourself.  Lora Lyn is blogging while in Uganda and from her posts, God is definitely at work, although it takes some time to see it through all the tears.

I will count the two posts that were left on the previous day’s blog too!

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