Matney (old) Birthday

I will probably move this post back to March in a week but for now I'm posting some old pictures. These are from Matney's birthday weekend. There were so many things they had for Christmas that I saved gifts for birthdays. Here are the girls opening their Tinkerbell bags- they had movies, dolls and purses inside. They were so excited!

 After opening their gifts we went to Panera Bread. Matney LOVES the cinnamon crunch bagel and HK LOVES LOVES LOVES their tub of plain cream cheese. She seriously can eat almost an entire tub in one sitting.

 Then we headed to Discover Mills. An indoor mall in the shape of a circle. The girls enjoy running around - especially the Bass Pro Shop because there are fish and all sorts of stuffed animals. They also enjoy a ride on the pink bus.

Then we rose the carousel. The girls had never been on this particular one before. Matney loved sitting in the spinning tea cup but HK was not a happy camper. She is scared of the horses and there wasn't a bench like at our normal mall. She was one mad rider!

 See Matney on the tea cup with Daddy?

 Happy girl- above. MAD girl - below.

Shew! We all made it. This was a super fun day for all of us and we were excited to spend Matney's birthday with her!

Matney is THREE!

I have such a hard time believing that my baby girl is three! Matney had a fun filled birthday weekend even after a hard time waking up! Once she realized birthdays involved presents she perked up quickly. We had so much stuff left over from Christmas I didn't buy any gifts except a kiddie camera. She loves taking pictures with my camera so I knew this would be the perfect gift. I was right!

She spent all morning taking pictures of everything in the house. Then we went to an indoor play place she likes. We let her pick the activities for the day and she wanted to go to the park but it was too cold. My brave girl went down the tallest slide.

Then we went to the mall for pretzels, trains and carousel rides. I know I am their mama but are these girls not so ridiculously cute? I love them! And yes, Robot goes everywhere with us these days.

Later we went for a pizza dinner and came home for more presents and cake. HK even got a matching new ballerina outfit with Matney. They were so excited!

Matney got a pedicure kit. Both girls are obsessed with having "sparkle toes" and fingers. I am constantly painting tiny nails with glitter polish. For some reason soaking their feet scared the girls so I volunteered to show them it was not scary.

Matney got flower decals for her toes.

Geez, I that darn icing mouse got into the cake again. Every cake in our house for more than a few hours always gets destroyed! Matney opened her gifts from Jared's TX family. HK was never far away from the activity. In this box Matney wanted to color on her new princess pad but HK was eyeing that cute raincoat from the moment it left the box.

She wore it the first day everywhere we went - from 8:30am- 8pm with a two hour break for a nap. I will be purchasing her a raincoat in her size as soon as I find one!

We ate cake for days until I threw the rest away. And the princesses have invaded the house more than I knew possible. Ariel and Belle are M's favorites. She ran around today in her new Belle dress with her Belle doll. So cute!

Matney and her princesses are happy girls right now. Thank you to everyone for loving our girl!

Misconception

There is a common misconception that stay-at-home moms and kids stay at home but we are always running somewhere these days! Honestly, despite how hard it is to get us ready and out the door in the mornings we all prefer to be on the go. Mondays are normally my "catch up" days. I regroup after the weekend, make grocery lists, do laundry, etc. Tues and Thursday Matney goes to preschool and HK and I are on the run until we pick her up. We're back just in time for naps and after the girls wake up and have a snack it is 5pm and we're working on dinner. Wednesdays we go to Bible Study and Fridays are our favorite. We normally meet friends at one of our favorite play places and then have lunch somewhere. Sometimes we bring our own and sometimes we take the kids to Chickfila or McDonalds. We all love Fridays! During the week the mornings fly by, then we get home so that the girls take naps, we have dinner and then wait for Jared to get home. Then we hang out with him while he eats and head upstairs for books and bed. The world is spinning too fast!

Speaking of too fast, Matney is going to be 3 a week from today. I don't even have words to explain what that feels like. Three is old, not like the thirty-one old that I am but the "geez, having a three year old makes me feel like I should have this parenting thing down by now and I am not even close and all my hair is going to be gray before she's five" kind of old.  One thing that will not cause gray hair this year is parties. In the past we've done birthday parties here and I've stressed about invitations, food, decorations, etc. This year I got smart and we're having it at one of the places they like to play and we're combining both girls' parties into one. When I looked into renting a place I realized that as expensive as it seems it is cheaper than feeding 20+ people at my house twice...and WAY LESS STRESS! So, since the girls are too young to understand a calendar this year we're doing one joint party in the middle of April. Ahhh, can you hear my sigh of relief? We'll let the girls choose what they want to do with Mom and Dad on their actual birthday - pretty sure next week I'll be at a park, the pet store and the mall for Matney - and then have a big party at a place play for all their friends. Perfect, right? I'm thrilled!

Here are some random pictures off my phone. Most of these were today. Matney has learned that since she's not in diapers when she screams "I need to go potty" at 6am I'm going to have to get her out of bed. And once she's up there's no going back to bed. I can make her get back in bed but she's singing and carrying on so loud that she's going to wake up HK. The only thing worse than one kid awake at 6am is two kids awake at 6am! So, Matney gets up and comes downstairs and my schedule is off for the rest of the day. Motto of 2011, be flexible, remember? Sigh. After playing for hours at three different parks today HK still decided she won't take a nap, Matney was wound up after preschool so it was me and two cute girls from 6am-8pm. AGH! I am finishing this post and going to bed!

Every morning, every.single.morning, the girls demand to be ballerinas. Actually HK comes screaming "rina-rina" with her shoes and tu-tu. I know they have to be cold but they don't seem to mind. I wouldn't care except that getting them dressed is like dressing a wiggling octopus. Having to do it twice, once to be a "rina" and once in real clothes is a real pain! But goodness they sure are cute!

 HK loves cream cheese on a spoon. Strange I know but food is such a struggle with her that we let her eat almost anything she wants!

When the girls were supposed to be napping they were really having fun making a giant mess on my floor and climbing on the table.

After the climbing/mess incident above I decided they needed out of the house before they destroyed anything else. See Matney climbing up the stairs? She's so easy. See Halle Kate headed up the big, unstable ladder. She's so NOT easy!

Shew, it's been a while

I sat down at the beginning of 2011 and made a lots of lists- house chores, kid related things, workout schedules, family events - and I promise blogging was on there. Clearly, I'm already behind by February. Sigh. That is the way life goes, right? Part of my motto for this year is "be flexible". Time management/accomplishing tasks as a mom is so much harder than I ever imagined before I had children. We want our girls to know they are our priority, I want Jared to know that he is a priority, and, let's be honest, I need some of my own time. Since there are only 24 hours in a day and we all require sleep there is not enough time to do it all. I spent most of last year always frustrated about what wasn't getting done and I was often grumpy. I am going to spend 2011 trying to work on better ways to manage my time and, at the end of the day, focusing on what gets done. I saw this quote on one of my favorite blogs last week -

"Give yourself credit for finding Lego Man's hair. Little acts of caring matter more to your kids than getting through your to-do list." Ann Pleshette Murphy

So, I am going to keep blogging but it may be after dinner, before laundry and during bathtime...all while I make sure that the little mermaids in the tub have their favorite bubbles.  

For now, here are some random pictures from the past few weeks -

 We tried some rutabaga fries. Yuck. Stick with normal potatoes!

 Jared's office gave the attorneys IPads. Jared hates it because it means they expect him to be working even more from out of the office than he already does. The girls LOVE the games!

 We've done a lot of dancing.

Monkey Kim, one of my best friends, came to hang out for the day. She had the girls doing yoga while I made lunch.

 We tried to learn to share the Elmo bed. It didn't work well!

 I took HK to a new play place and put her on a treadmill. I was hoping she'd burn off some extra energy and not climb everything at home. That was a total FAIL!

 We proved that small children can sit down to to eat. This lasted at least 5 minutes. Impressive, right?

 The girls love play dough!

Sometimes, if you bounce too much, you need to rest.

Matney believes that if MoMo is in town the mall, pretzels and a carousel ride are a must. Apparently MoMo agrees!

Matney LOVES to take pictures with my camera right now. HK had been eating strawberries just before M snapped this one. Can you tell?

What's the problem?

What's the problem with this picture? Hmmm, the girls are snacking on healthy nuts so that's good right? How about "HALLE KATE GET OFF THE TABLE!"? AGH! This wild child has been making my blood pressure do crazy things since she was born!

Rock Stars

These girls are destined to be rock stars! They got the most obnoxious Disney princess singing microphones from Santa. Thanks, Mr Claus, you know I love anything that lights up and makes noise. NOT. They love them though and, when paired with sunglasses and cute girls, I think you're looking at future pop stars!