Loads of videos of our cute kids

 We were eating pizza for dinner one night. Meagan loves to make up random songs...kind of like me and Justin. This is her "ode to cheese".

 Then Justin came home from work and got in on the action. These guys crack me up.

 This is how Seth learned to walk. Turns out we didn't need a walker after all.

Here are some of his first steps. Thank you small stool for teaching him how to do it.

 Here's Meagan's 7th birthday party. She wanted a blackforest cheesecake for her birthday. Who am I to deny the wishes of a 7 year old? The kids mostly just played outside while the adults talked and ate. My kind of party.

 Alright you. Stop growing so fast.
















                          And finally, I got a new haircut.

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Cleanse and Purge! ...and catch up.

Alright, catchup time. I've got so much cute stuff to show you. 

So, since Christmas I took this sweet little picture of Seth enjoying his new tricycle. Man, they've come a long way in tricycle design. It's so convenient to steer it with the handle. He absolutely loves riding in that thing, if you couldn't tell.

 

Next up is the treasure chest I Spy bag I made for Christmas. That one was fun to make.

I've been busy with getting organized in my house. Every Christmas when we bring in the onslaught of new stuff we just got...I've got to figure out where to put it. So it was time for a purge. 

I went through all the girls' dress-ups they don't wear much and put them in a box in the top of their closet. I'm so sick of finding toys and dress-ups all over the floor that they didn't even play with. Useless cleanup time. Then, I went through all of their old clothes they've grown out of and bagged them up to take to Twice As Nice. It's a second hand store here in Tucson that will buy your clothes from you and resell them. Unfortunately they only took a small stack of the five bags I brought in, so I still have most of them in a big storage tub in my kitchen. arrrrr..... Someone please tell me their method for choosing which clothes to buy off you and which ones to give back with a huge stamp of disapproval and a frownie face. Man, there was some seriously cute stuff in there they didn't look twice at. Does anyone want girls size 2T and 3T clothes for just about every season? Cause it's yours for the very low price of FREE!

I did get to organize their closet though. I got some of those hanging shelves for their shoes and the clothes they wear that aren't dirty but would otherwise wind up on the floor. Man, what an awesome idea I had for that. ;) Their room has been a lot less messy after installing those bad boys. Plus it also has a hanging bar midway down so short little Candace can hang up her dresses all by herself. Fantastic! It got my cleanse-and-purge juices all flowing.

Next room up for organizing was...mine. My sewing area, to be more precise.

I got those frames for $2.50 in those sweet little bit-o-heaven bargain bins at the front of Target. I finds so much good stuff there for cheap it almost makes me want to cry...almost. Just a little paint and mod-podge over the hot pink and lime green colors that graced those little gems and I got a list for all my sewing/crafting projects I want to do and a peg board for pinning up sewing instructions, fabric measurements, etc. Plus I finally got a little pen caddy to catch all the tape measur-er thingies and scissors that always got lost under the sea of unfinished projects. Wooh, feelin' good. And if you look closely, yes, Elaina and Reina, I'm planning on making you some sweet, styling new diaper bags. And if you order in the next...month, maybe...you can pick the colors and size you want. Don't delay! By the way, if anyone else wants a diaper bag, just let me know. ;)

The next thing I've done is whipped out these bad boys. Well, more like sweet, innocent, young princesses. That's Cinderella and Princess Peach (from every Mario game ever made). I've been promising them these dresses for Christmas, birthdays and before the end of time. I finally did them.

 Whew, one more item checked off my project list. 

 These next two I did a few months ago. Finally got around to getting a frame for Meagan's school pictures. I kind of want to do something about all that white, but no ideas have jumped out at me yet.











 Plus, here's a plaque that I made assembled. I've been keeping busy.

Let's see. What else do I have? Oh yes. New dishes, finally. No more mismatched, broken, incomplete different sets for me...well until the kids break some of these. Or me. I'm pretty clumsy when I'm pregnant or hormonal. Does anyone else just love square plates? Yeah, me too. Candace was so excited to use the new plates. She may have been as excited as me. I don't know.

 Here's a little valentine's love for y'all. My sweet hubby got me these.

...and I made him these.

AHAHAHA! Good ol' heart shaped sugar cookies. Gotta keep the romance alive, you know. Yeah I stole the idea off some other mom's blog. Which brings me to my next point. I'm seeing where all you cute ladies out there are gettin' your awesome ideas from. Blogs and Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I CAUGHT YOU! I was flipping through my latest BHG magazine (just got a subscription a few months ago, awesome) and saw something I was admiring at someone else's house a few months back. Then I realized, this isn't the first time I've caught someone cheating by getting their ideas from other awesome sources. It's alright, I mean, I'm cheating now too, I guess. I'm just sad I didn't have these idea factories at my disposal years ago.

Alright, now for this next picture, don't adjust your monitor. Your eyes are fine. You are not seeing double.

 Seth sure loves his daddy. This was a complete accident. I noticed it when he was holding Seth that they were dressed just alike.














Helping me with chores. That's Seth's favorite spot in the kitchen. And by favorite I mean next favorite spot after his high chair while stuffing his face.

He doesn't like it when I move him away from the dirty water while I'm loading that thing.

Stay tuned for some really cute/funny videos on my next post. I figure I've been at this long enough for now.

Walking and mashed pototoes

Seth is finally walking! He's pretty funny because he sticks his hands out like he's trying to grab someone to steady his little feet. He'll only go 5-10 steps, fall down and then start crawling. Oh well. At least it's progress.

So tonight at dinner we had mashed potatoes. Candace looks at me with a pained expression after eating some and says, "Mom, I couldn't swallow that junk of potatoes". Justin and I cracked up. We can't laugh in front of her though because she thinks we're laughing at her. We tried real hard to bury our faces in our hands. Apparently "junk" means "a whole lot of something". Maybe they are trying to say "chunk", I don't know. Justin was trying to make a face at her right before she said that and without evening breaking her stride she saw his face and stuck out her tongue. Not even a smile or a giggle. What a character. I love our little sweeties.

Christmas Nativity and a Texas Christmas

Before we left for Christmas, Meagan volunteered to rake the leaves. What a sweet girl. It's not too hard to get her to help out when we're working.

See those chairs? They use them to climb the tree. Pretty ingenious. I just hope they don't fall out of the tree and hit those bricks.

We went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving, and again for Christmas. But, this time we spent most of the time in Houston with my family. It's a 15 hr drive to Houston so we usually stop over at the Paul Hotel in San Antonio. ;) We were only there for a few days, but we got to put on a Nativity. Justin's mom has accrued quite the collection of costumes. They're gathered from the Philippines, India and Cambodia, thanks to Dad's, Josh's and Justin's missions there, respectively.

In order to make it a little more interesting I've put the pics and videos on a little presentation slide show...thingy...

Unfortunately the videos were too big so I had to break it up.

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I'm really glad we got to do that. I think it helps the kids recognize the real meaning of Christmas.

Christmas morning was fun too.

Opening stockings

Here's the I Spy bags I was making. They love to play with them during church. (yes!)

Successful project. Thank heaven.

I had a lot of leftover charms that I filled the I Spy bags with so I decided to get them a charm bracelet to put them on. Meagan loves jewelery, as you can see.

Candace...not so much.

Sethy boy was sweet enough to show me his train. He's really not old enough to appreciate it yet. All in due time, my boy.

Hooray for warm fuzzies!

Good thing I got them some warm stuff. It got cold while we were there and I didn't pack much warm stuff.

Happy girls. The Nintendo DS was invented for long car trips. Thank you modern technology.

I made a weighted blanket for my dad too. Hopefully he'll sleep better at night. He loves lavender...go figure.

Here's little Breannah's weighted blanket.

And here's where the other I Spy bags went.

Probably my favorite moment of the day. Candace went to find a "quiet spot" to enjoy her new story book reader...in the laundry room. What can I say, we've got a lot of family and they're not exactly quiet enough for a little light reading.

Birthdays

It's a few days post birthday, but it's the first chance I've had to write about Seth's birthday on the 8th.

Candace loves to take pictures with my camera, even though she has her own. I think she's been deleting some pictures. She deleted one I know I took but couldn't find. Luckily I was able to just take it again. I've also found some pictures locked. Not sure how she does that but I can't delete them or get them off the camera when she locks them. So after Candace worked her magic on my camera one day she showed me two pictures I have never seen before. Somehow they must have been on the camera hard drive instead of the memory card or something. I have no idea how they came back but I was really glad to see them.

One year ago

Seth's Birth

 

What a sweet little man. I knew we had taken more pictures of him but I never saw that many. Thank goodness.

Now one year later, THE BIG ONE!

 

Man, he's gotten big. And, since Seth doesn't have a preference, the cake was my choice. It was brownies.

What's better than brownies for your birthday, you ask? Brownies covered in almond cool whip, sliced strawberries and fudge topping, that's what. Oh goodness they were good. Seth thought so too.

He was pretty tired so he kept rubbing his eyes, hence the chocolate in his eyebrows. Had to throw him in the bath (his favorite pastime) before present time.

He doesn't really know how to use a hammer. But he does like to bang and make noise, which is the whole point of this thing. He kept trying to bang with the handle on the colored pegs. He's a sweetie.

I've finally finished a couple of my homemade Christmas gifts. This is a weighted blanket. It's supposed to help you sleep for those who like to sleep with heavy blankets on them but without all the heat. It's filled with poly beads so it's washable. Great for little girls who like to get blankets dirty with lots of use.

This is one of several I Spy bags I'm making for some sweet little girls in my family.

 They're filled with the same poly beads as the blanket, along with some little treasures to "spy". Now I need to finish up the other 5...sigh.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? That's what I keep telling myself. I've got one week to finish what I can, then I'll have to take the rest down to Texas with us to finish them up. I don't want to do that when I'm on vacation. I just need a good block of undisturbed time (yeah right, do I ever get that?) to knock out a bunch of them.