Sprinkles...again

You'd think that I'd have learned by now that I cannot turn my back on my children. Now Matney has learned to open doors and nothing is safe. So why didn't I blog Tuesday? Because I was cleaning sprinkles out of the carpet. AGH! I don't know when/how they got a sprinkle container out of the pantry and to the playroom where they took the lid off, poured them out and went wild trying to get them into their mouths. There were sprinkles everywhere and they are so tiny that even vacuuming multiple times hasn't gotten them all up. If you come over and are ever hungry just head to the playroom carpet!

 

Why no Monday blog?

Hmmmm, why didn't I blog Monday?

Remember when HK went to Matney's Christmas party at preschool and learned to eat "reindeer food" (uncooked oatmeal)? She still loves it and eats it with from bowl with a spoon. However, this particular day the girls thought it would be fun see if they could use it as reindeer bait in the kitchen. It didn't work. They caught a not so happy mama instead. Just so you know, it takes longer to clean up a kitchen full of reindeer food than write a blog post!

Easter Morning

The Easter Bunny (and the fever germ) came to see us Sunday. Since HK wasn't feeling good we spent a fun day together at home. These are some quick pictures from our Easter Bunny visit. The girls were very excited to wake up and see their baskets and some small gifts. Matney is in love with her Tinkerbell dominos and they both were excited about dress up princesses and HK's train puzzle. I was very excited to be busy in the kitchen boiling eggs while Jared had to get the puzzle together. Next year the Bunny better be smart enough to check the box and not bring any gift with so many pieces!

 

Can you see HK's basket this year? It's a robot!

Egg Hunt

I took the girls to an egg hunt at church and they had a great time. That actually isn't totally true. HK had a great time, Matney had a great time until the Easter Bunny came bouncing out of the woods and she tossed her bucket and ran toward the parking lot screaming "I hate costumes!". Bless her sweet heart! She knows that there are people under big costumes like that but she still hates them. I finally caught her, calmed her down and promised that we didn't have to get close to the bunny. Once she learned there was a possibility for candy she decided to keep hunting eggs.

I think she thought her basket was too heavy. PS- the eggs were all empty!

Another group picture fail!

I know they are my kids but you have to admit they're cute! The hunt was awesome, the little kids got out first and had 10 minutes to collect eggs. There were hundreds on the field so no one had to fight and there was plenty of time for pictures. At the end they took their eggs to a special table and traded the empty eggs for huge bags of candy and small toys. I thought this was such a smart idea because the kids enjoyed it and there was no fighting for eggs. We had such a good time!

Laughter through tears is the best medicine

Who recognizes that line? "Laughter through tears is the best medicine" is one of the best line from one of the best movies ever - Steel Magnolias. And I take it very seriously.

Every time I was at my Grandmama's, even after I turned 30, she rocked me in this rocking chair while I made her promise that this would always be mine. I am happy to report that, a year after she passed away, I brought my chair home. Right now I am sitting in the middle of my living room, in my chair, and I don't care at all that it doesn't fit or match! We have all spent many hours in it in the two weeks it's been here. Every time I see the girls sitting in it I tear up - so thankful for the memories of my Grandmama that I have but so sad that she isn't here any more.  

Grandmama would have spent the last year laughing every day at the crazy things these girls get into. So I can't help but chuckle at them and wipe my eyes thinking of the Steel Magnolias line and hoping that when they are 30 I'll still be rocking my girls in this same chair.

Happy Birthday Girls!

The birthday party for the girls was a SUCCESS! Even better it didn't involve any clean up from me. 

And despite the lack of work on my part I'm still exhausted so I'm posting pictures and going to bed.

The girls had their pick of any theme they wanted as we walked up and down the rows of Party City and they picked Strawberry Shortcake. So cute! We had another wonderful cake from a woman we know from church. I just told her the theme and let her do whatever she wanted. I think it turned out super cute and the girls loved it.

This is Matney when she looked into the place and knew it was really party time. Is she not so sweet?!?!?

Halle Kate chased bubbles much of the time. She was so happy!

This is one view of the room they played in - kids everywhere!

Parachute time - one of their favorite activities.

Going under!

We tried to get a group shot of everyone - what was I thinking?!?!? We can't get a group shot of just the four of us. Still I remember liking to see pictures of people from my parties when I was too little to remember so maybe the girls will enjoy seeing some of the people that loved them when they were little too.

Happy Birthday Matney and Halle Kate! (Matney did have 3 candles but you just can't see the third at this angle.)

HK has been practicing her blowing for a more than a month since she saw Matney blow out candles.

Cake on the fork and cake in the hand!

Cheese sticks, grapes, veggie sticks and cake - great dinner!

That's all folks!

How to travel with kids

This post is really for me to use to remember and for a few people who have asked me about our trip to TX. Jared can tell you that I seriously stress about travelling anywhere that requires an overnight stay. The only way for me to be calm is to be organized. For TX I had lists going for a few weeks that got condensed to these few pages the night before we left.

 These aren't easy to read unless you blow them up but basically I had a sheet for each bag we took. I got the main lists of what needed to be packed and anytime I put an item into a bag I wrote it down on the appropriate paper. I also went to the dollar store and bought a box of quart, gallon and 2 gallon zip lock bags. Those were fabulous. I was not being helpful to the environment but all the bags and a Sharpie were super helpful in organizing little things like bows, socks, etc.

Then I kept a running list of what still needed to be gotten/packed so when I went to bed the night before the trip everything on the first set of lists was crossed off (meaning it was in a bag) and there were about 5 items (Matney's pillow, medicine, etc) that were on a list to make sure they got packed as we walked out the door. It worked great. There wasn't really anything I packed we didn't use and I didn't forget anything we needed. I should totally type these for next time so that I don't have to ever think that hard again!

Texas!

I haven't posted on the blog or FB for a more than a week because we have been in TEXAS (and I didn't want our house to get robbed!). We went to see all of Jared's family and had a fabulous time. Despite everyone being sick the girls did great traveling and we were spoiled rotten while we were there! I don't have time to do a huge post but here pictures showing some of the highlights of our trip.

And before you even see the pictures you should know how loved and taken care of we all were. Everyone who hosted us went out of their way to make sure that we all had all of our favorite foods, comfortable places for each of us to sleep and fun activities to keep us busy. I am positive we left a house full of glitter and sprinkles at the lake (and cookie crumbs from the entire dozen cookies I ate. They brought my favorite sugar cookies from a nearby bakery and I didn't share well at all!).  And poor Aunt Vicki will be finding holes where rocks should be and teddy bear cracker crumbs around her house for weeks. She will not be finding many Jordan Almonds though, I ate all those too. What can I say? It was a great trip! Anyway, thank you for taking care of my girls. They loved each of you and we were all sad to leave. Please know that we've got a bedroom for you in GA anytime!

Thank goodness for nice strangers. Here are my girls fighting over a chair in the airport while a nice lady next to them tries to break it up. Ha!

HK loved watching the planes while we waited to board.

Here's my crew sitting in their seats. See that look on Jared's face? I get it a lot. This particular time I think he was saying "Don't you even think you're going to sit across the row and leave me with these two girls".

We stayed part of the week at Aunt Icki's, only a few miles away from Jared's grandparents. She has a beautiful house with coloring books, crayons, teddy grahams, a dog, cats, horses and she she loves the girls like crazy. What more could two little munchkins ask for?

Matney loves to collect rocks. HK played with the horses and M walked around putting rocks into a bag every morning.

After some time with Jared's Dad's side of the family we headed to the lake to see the Matneys. They hadn't seen the girls in almost two years and were very impressed by HK's wildness extraordinary energy! They'd gotten the girls Color Wonder markers and glitter pens and we were a shiny, glittering crew by the end of the first day.

We celebrated Matney, Aunt Connie and HK's birthdays. The girls got to decorate their own cakes with sprinkles. They went nuts shaking the jars and there were sprinkles EVERYWHERE! Good thing they each got their own containers.

The lake was still cold but they had a pool for the girls. I would have bet money that HK would have spent hours in there and Matney would have been scared but the opposite happened. Aunt Connie spent hours helping Matney up and down the slide while HK watched from the porch.

HK also spent lots of time terrorizing the dogs. The picture below is a perfect example of what the weekend was like for the girls and puppies. She HK running and poor Luke running faster? They (the dogs) did really well with the girls and our kids loved them.

Those two look like trouble, don't they?!?!?

Happy Birthday time!

Look who got her own raincoat! A "poppa dots" raincoat and a new baby doll make a happy Halle.

The girls got a whole week with Daddy. They are more Daddy's girls now than ever before!

Wake up, Sassy!

I am so mad that we didn't take lots of pictures we should have taken, Aunt Connie was already gone when we took this one. I know several of you took pictures when I didn't have our camera out. Will you please email me some? Stay tuned for Part Two!