Hanging around

Here are some pictures of us hanging around and playing.
Ryan purchased a Honcho last summer and it was all in pieces. It has been a project that him and his brother had been working on. A couple of weeks ago they mounted the cab to the frame and wanted us to come and see. Brooke was so proud of her daddy and looked so cute in her pig tails. I think this is one of the cutest pictures I have of her!


One day I decided to change out one of the swings on our swing set to a hanging bar thinking that Brooke would show interest and like to hang from it. Well, she had no interest at all, but Heather loved to hang from it and I was impressed that she could hold her own weight.


We went a played at the park one day after school and the girls went crazy. We were the only ones there and they played for about an hour and were still not worn out. Momma was tired so, I convinced them that we needed to find something to eat so we could leave the park with out a melt down.



A week later we went to a play date at a gymnastics place. This is the girls having a blast in the foam pit. They loved it. Both girls were running all around the place climbing on all the obstacles, jumping on trampolines, and walking the balance beam.

We have been trying to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and spend a lot of time outside.

I recently started taking a bible study at my local church and I have had homework to do most nights of the week. I usually do it while the girls are playing. Brooke has started to notice that I'm reading my bible book (as she calls it) a lot more and one day I caught her reading it and singing the song Jesus Loves Me. I thought it was so precious I had to capture it on video! Click her for a link to the video. Sorry, the video is a little dark.

Girls weekend!

I had the pleasure of taking my first girls weekend since having kids.
I took one of my good mom friends from Longview, Michelle and we met up with two of my good pharmacy school friends in Frisco for relaxing and shopping. After we all arrived on a Friday night we enjoyed a fun mexican dinner talking and drinking fancy margaritas. It was so much fun to catch up. After a good nights rest, we headed to the spa for a variety of treatments. I got a pedicure and manicure.


Then after we ate lunch we headed to IKEA. I went crazy buying stuff to organize the girls playroom. That store was insane, but for me was a must stop! I can't go to Frisco and not stop there. Actually it was my first time in that IKEA. Then we headed to a few more shops and the mall. After a yummy dinner, Michelle and I headed back to Longview. It was a short, but much needed visit. It was so refreshing to have some "me" time and not have to worry about the girls, hear any whining, or be woken up at 6am on a Saturday. I owe a huge thanks to my parents for watching the girls and letting me enjoy the weekend. Ryan was busy on call and barely even noticed that I had been gone.

I think this needs to be an annual get together!

Brooke's Famous

Brooke loves to watch Sprout, which is the PBS preschool channel. Everyday they have a birthday celebration for all the preschoolers celebrating their birthdays. Brooke loves to hear them sing the birthday song. So, I made her a card to mail in this year. We gave it to her the day I mailed it in. She loved it. For Sprout to consider it be televised it has to feature their favorite Sprout characters. Some of her favorite shows are Sesame Street, Calliou, Dress Chica, and Zoobomafoo. I'm not sure if hers will be featured because I don't think it made the 2 week cut off time, but we will still watch to see her name scroll across the screen. If you want to watch, they have several showings in the morning and evening. The one we usually see is around 5:20 pm. Here is a link to the Sprout site that has her card featured. You can click on her picture and see a blown up version.

Projects

One of the reasons I haven't blogged much is because my time lately has been taken up by projects. I have been busy with several projects. I will share a couple of my recent completed ones.

Jonathan and Stacy got an idea to build a frame for the girls playhouse as a Christmas present. Originally we were thinking about using fabric to cover the frame, but it just didn't play out well in my head. After a few days of thought and looking at all the left over boxes from Christmas, I came up with an idea for the roof. Just use cut up cardboard and glue cut up strips of sturdy felt for shingles. That brought me here:
Then I didn't know what to do about the sides. On a trip to the hobby store for more felt, I spotted some foam boards and the light in my head came on again! I can zip strip these to the frame for walls! As this was not a foreseen idea, I didn't measure the sides and just picked up as many foam boards as I would think I would need. When I got to the cash register, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that these foam boards were discontinued and shouldn't have been on the floor to sell, but it was their store policy to give them to me for free since I had already selected them! Let me tell you, I walked out of that store with 16 free foam boards! I felt like I was being watched every step of the way to my car and I kept on waiting for someone to chase after me and tell me to return them! I later learned at another store they cost around $6/board. I feel sort of like a thief, but legal. It turns out, I only needed eight to complete the sides.

Next, I had to figure out what to do about the door and what to cover the triangle area above the door. I let my mind stew over this for a few days. I was in walmart for something else and I thought of looking at the kitchen curtains. I thought they would be the perfect length. It turns out I was right and at $7 they were the perfect price. I also bought a matching valence in hopes that it would drape nicely around the top to fill in that triangle area.
So, this is where I was now:

Now for embellishing the design! I used green card stock to cut out grass and stickers to make flowers, butterflies, and lady bugs.

We even used the cut out squares from the windows to make stars for the inside ceiling.

Here is the final playhouse.

Project #2:
Pinterest idea
Brooke's valentine card
I got this idea off of pinterest. I like the illusion of her holding the sucker. This was hard to get the picture right (it is hard to get an almost 3 yr old to position her hand just right), but once I did it was a very easy project.

Heather 15 months

Heather is so active and wants to do everything like her big sister. Not limited, but including going potty (which she has coincidentally done 2 times), pushing around the step stool and climbing up to 'help' mommy, dancing, playing chase, and coloring. She still loves to laugh and act silly. I love her happy personality. She is trying to learn to dance by spinning around and kicks up one leg, and it is so cute to watch.

Heather loves to flip through books and read. She loves animals and anytime she sees them she gets so excited! She is not afraid of any animal, so I will have to keep an eye on her. She loves to take off her shoes, socks, and any hair accessories. She is trying to use her fork and spoon. She can drink out of a cup with no lid (minimal spillage with supervision). She loves to antagonize her big sister! Anytime she catches wind of something Brooke wants, she will try to steal it and run away as fast as she can giggling the whole time. She loves to play peek a boo.

Heather is learning a lot of words. In addition to mommy, daddy, dog, rain, she can now say, cat, bath, cheese, boo, and sis (for Brooke). She can roar like a lion, baa baa like a sheep, woof like a dog, meow like a cat, and moo like a cow.

Heather has been having a series of on/off diaper rashes for the last 4 months. The last major one was right before Christmas and it was so horrible it lasted for 2 weeks with bleeding blisters and required 3 visits to the doctor. I have been trying to figure out what was causing these rashes and had eliminated several foods, changed brands of wipes and diapers (even went with organic no chlorine plain diapers). None of these things worked. After our first visit (over the Christmas Holidays) to the doctor for this, he had us change her to lactaid milk and decrease the amount of lactose she was getting. After 3 days, I saw no improvement and the silvadene (burn cream) didn't seem to be helping. So, he gave us a compounded diaper cream and also suggested trying a gluten free diet. I headed to Drug Emporium to stock up on gluten free foods. Finally, her rash got better. After being on the GF diet for two weeks, I reintroduced gluten. No rash. Great, it wasn't gluten causing her diaper rashes. So, next on my list was to reintroduce lactose. Well, the nursery workers at church this past Sunday did that for me, not on purpose. Sunday night she had another horrendous diaper rash! So sad she has another rash, but at least we figured out what was causing these horrendous diaper rashes!

Heather weighs 19lbs, is wearing 18 month clothes, size 5 shoe, and size 3 diaper. She also has 6 teeth, her two front top and bottom and two of her top molars.

2011 Brooke Christmas Program

This year Brooke performed in her school Christmas program. She is on the second row toward the right in a red shirt with striped pants! I was very impressed with her. She knew her songs and practiced them for two weeks. She is the only one in her class that sang both songs despite multiple distractions! This momma is so proud of her "Big" girl!

Updates

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post. We have been extremely blessed and busy this Christmas season! I'm going to tell about our last few weeks through pictures!


The first weekend in December we went to Santa Breakfast with Jill, her kids, and Stacy, Nonga, and Jason.


Jason trying to give Heather a big kiss.


Waiting to sit on Santa's lap!




After eating breakfast with Santa we headed to Danville Farms in Kilgore. We always like to get a real tree and this is our second year to get one from Danville Farms. The room we display our tree has no other furniture except a digital piano. It is a huge room with 14 ft ceilings. So, our tree needs to be substantial to take up space and look nice. Danville Farms had a lot of trees but around the 7 ft range. Anything larger was sparse except if you wanted a precut NC spruce tree, which is what we decided to get.

The hay ride around the tree farm.

Trying to find that perfect tree. Although pretty, notice how Ryan is taller than most of the trees.


Heather had fun playing with the tree bailing wire while Brooke and daddy decorate the tree.

I tried and tried to get a picture of both girls smiling at the same time! Those with kids understand this difficult task and this was the best picture I got!



This is my new pinterest project for this Christmas season. For those that have seen my house, I have no lack of wall space to hang a card holder, but I think that with out anything else on the walls it looks a little odd to just have a card holder out in a vast space of white wall. I know I really need to work on decorating and hopefully next year I will be able to focus on that. So, for now I took a piece of ribbon, fastened it around my cabinet doors, spray painted clothes pins with green glitter and hung my pretty cards.


The girls having fun pushing their cousin Jason around in the wagon!


I have been infected with the crafty bug and I can't seem to find a cure except making and baking projects. It started with homemade hand scrub and lotion for teacher's gifts and progressed to rudolph cake balls for Brooke's present to her classmates and snowman cupcakes for her class party, Christmas popcorn gifts for the auxiliary teachers, to now I'm making some homemade vanilla extract for some friends as gifts!


Rudolph cake balls ~ another pinterest idea....dangerous site for those infected with the crafty bug!



Brooke at her party excited to eat 2 cupcakes!

The snowmen cupcakes. I'm glad they made the trip from home to the party!

Stacy wrapped this box and put a cute bow on it to take some pictures of Jason. She thought I might like to use it for my girls before she threw it away so she brought it over and we tried to get some pictures these are the two best.



Brooke was being a stinker and kept on wanting to turn around backwards so I had to act fast when she did face the front to capture a picture.
The next night the girls had more fun unwrapping the box and destroying their playroom with paper strewn all over the place.


I loved hearing the giggles as I washed the dishes! Here are the girls playing in the once wrapped box!



The other day my mom and I took the girls to the mall to sit in Santa's lap. I wanted to take a few pictures of the girls in their pretty Christmas dresses before we left. They were both in such a sweet mood and loving on each other. It makes my heart melt when they act this way! I know they will be best friends for life!


We have adopted an "elf on the shelf" this year. Brooke named him Sparkly and he has been spotted all over our house. Amongst the usual suspect spots (i.e. mantle, Christmas tree, gifts, light fixtures...), he has been performing tyrolean traverses, climbing the brick wall, making art, and eating our ginger bread house!

It has been fun coming up with new places for him to hide each night and Brooke loves to look for him in the morning.

We wish everyone a joyous holidays and pray that you all get to spend it with people that mean the most to you! I want to wish you and your families a Merry Christmas!