Shopgirls

After we were done with all our partying last Saturday we had some shopping errands to take care of. I needed some new jeans to replace some that had been ruined so Brent entertained Lilli while I shopped and tried on some clothes.

When I first saw this picture I thought she was picking someone's pocket!Those creepy mannequins at Old Navy are a favorite of all children.
They always find a quiet corner and play some ball while I shop.
Afterward we went to the mall to walk around. I don't even remember the last time we've been to the mall, probably right around Christmas. We're just not big mall people and the only thing we ended up buying was a Build-A-Bear for Lilli. This is her first one and they really aren't terribly expensive. We got her the cheap $10 bear, no add ons, and then at the end I decided to let her choose between two $8 outfits. So with tax we got out of there for $20, which really isn't bad for something like that.
She still got to make lots of choices along the way, so she never felt left out from all the other junk in the store. She named it "Teddy". I know that's pretty unoriginal, but considering we have 4 fish named after princesses and one cat named after a Disney character I was pretty surprised by plain old "Teddy".
And here she is Sunday morning in the new Spiderman PJs I got her on clearance for $5 at Old Navy. Super cute!!!
Princesses and Super Heroes, kind of sums her up!

Happy Birthday Brayden!

On our birthday party marathon Saturday on the 18th, our second party of the day was down in Brentwood at Shipwrecked Playhouse. The day actually worked out quite well for us, Ella's party was from 11-1, we ran home and Lilli had a nap, and then Brayden's party was from 4-6. Brayden is one of Lilli's school friends. He is quite the character, always quick to make sure she knows I have arrived and he is certainly one of the "livelier" ones who I see sitting in the "special thinking spot" quite a bit.

Shipwrecked Playhouse is an indoor play-place, great for the preschool set with the play kitchens, dress up clothes, dolls, trains and other smaller toys. I also like that they don't have open play during party times, so it's just the party kids there playing together.
She remembered it from Finn's party a couple of months ago as soon as we got there. She immediately wanted to put on one of the dress up dresses.
For me, the highlight of the party was when Sebastian (the little boy in the middle) ran up to birthday boy Brayden and took his special pirate hat and just started running as fast as he could. You can imagine that didn't sit well with Brayden and he took off after him and tackled him to get it back. I was very glad my child had no part of the situation.
Brayden's cake
The birthday boy blowing out his candle. I think he blew it out about three different times while we were singing to him!
They had the little blowy things on all the tables. That would be my child repeatedly blowing it in Elizabeth's mom's face. Over and over. And that would be my husband just taking pictures of everything happening and not telling her to stop.
Oh yes, pretty sure she saw Brent taking pictures.
And then they hit the motherload! Underneath the slide they have a television! What in the world??? All those things to do and they have to stick a TV in there! One of the kid's older brothers was tall enough to turn it on, so for much of the rest of the party they were under there watching some cartoon.
Happy third birthday Brayden!

Happy Birthday Ella!

Last weekend (the 18th) we had a busy dance card of birthday parties. First up was Ella Kate's first birthday party. Lilli loves making birthday cards for her buds, so she made this one for Ella. It's a picture of Ella on the outside, and she wrote her name. She did that completely by herself, with just Brent writing it on another piece of paper for her to see what letters make up her name. On the inside I think she drew a picture of herself and signed her name.Ella's party was for family (and a few couple close friends) at the country club of a family member's subdivision. Julia had a painting project for the kiddos to start the party out with as everyone arrived. Using painter's tape you spell out their names and then let the kiddos paint the entire canvas. Once the paint is dried you peel off the tape and it has their name on it in white.
Lilli gets way into her painting projects and did a great job painting the whole thing. We set them off in another room to dry and I completely forgot to grab it on our way out but I'm sure it turned out cute! When I pick it up from Julia I'll post an after pic.
The proud family!
Party food spread.
After we ate it was cake time. Check out the paparazzi mob!! Now that's some pressure.
She loved her cake and picked the whole thing up and gnawed around on it for quite a while. That's probably one of (if not the) best cake reactions I've seen! And trust me, we go to a LOT of parties.
Brent was snapping some pics and Junior wanted to get right up there with him and was snapping along. She loves to take a picture or two hundred with my phone.
The view from Brent. She does a great job framing up.
I still can't believe she's already one!
Present time! Otherwise known as all the big kids mobbing Julia and opening all the gifts while Ella occasionally got to see one of her new toys.
Cupcakes and apps. This girl loves her apps.
Before we left we attempted the still elusive good pic of the four of us. Still it hasn't happened. I stole this one off of Adam's pictures of the party. At least Lilli is giving her a good hug and not strangling her!
Happy Birthday Ella Kate Roses!

Valentines Day 2012

All of these pics are from Feb 12-14th.

That's probably about the coldest it's been all winter, so I ended up putting Pippin's sweater on him. Santa brought him a new one for Christmas this year since his other one is several years old and it's gotten smaller and he's gotten bigger as I've washed it. So this was the first time he had gotten to wear it and little sis was all about stuffing his pockets with her toy robots. Then she got mad when he went outside to do his business and (of course) took her robots with him. I really don't even understand why it has the pockets, other than for human sibling torture!The day before Valentines we finalized her gifts for teachers and friends. For friends we made a little bag with their Valentines, some candy and these lip whistles. They're really hilarious and she had a blast playing with hers.
We did the same mix of cookies, chocolate popcorn, and dipped marshmallows for her school teachers as well.
And then put their Valentines in the front window of these boxes.
Here's a close-up of the Valentines we ended up doing. There were a ton of cute ideas on Pinterest, but I really liked this one since her nickname is Lilli-bug. And she loves bugs so much. I ordered a big thing of plastic bugs from Amazon, we printed the template off the internet and then attached the bugs with double sided tape so they'd still be usable for all the kids. And then Lilli signed her name at the bottom (isn't she doing a great job??? She can also write Mommy now too!) She picked out each bug she wanted each kiddo to have.
Then so you wouldn't lose the bug I put them along with the whistle and candy inside these little goodies bags, and also let her pick a traditional Valentine to tie it up with (I had Thomas, Shrek and Wizard of Oz already around the house). She used my three hole punch to punch each card and then I tied it up with ribbon. She also put everything inside the bags, too!
I always leave for work first, so after I was gone Brent and Lilli blew up a ton of balloons and decorated the kitchen for Valentines to surprise me!
Unfortunately helium and our house don't mix well in our house, so they looked like this when I got home. Oh well, it's the thought that counts!
Lilli is super excited about the gourmet popsicle maker Brent got me. I've wanted one for a while, and now I just have to clean out more junk from our freezer to make some space for it! We're going to have having a lot of fresh and healthy popsicles this summer!
Even though they lost their "float" the balloons have still been enjoyed a lot, and still are.
And that was our Valentines 2012!

Dog Treats & Sweets

These pics are from February 7th-11th.

A lot of days she's been taking her Bible to school with her. I think she really likes how it fits in her pocket so well! She has to leave it in her cubby all day but that doesn't seem to bother her.

This was the time period when I got really sick and was home for several days. In the evening my buddy kept me company.Overnight on Friday we got "snow". Sadly this is the most accumulation we've had all year.
We already had an appointment to take Pippin to the vet for his annual check-up, so we went in the flurries over to the vet.
For some reason she just loves going to the vet. Actually Pippin does, too. He was wild and crazy the whole time and they have a difficult time checking him out because he's working to lick them so hard!
Dr G gave him a full exam and looked at a couple of little lumps that have popped up the last few months. Only one of them looked potentially concerning to her, so we're dropping him back off sometime in the next few weeks to go ahead and have all of them removed, and have his teeth cleaned. They did more extensive than normal bloodwork on him, because of his cancer from last year, and everything came back normal! All his iron and other metrics were all perfect!
Afternoon nap. Not even sure how this could be comfortable!
That night we went out to eat at Cori's Dog House. Their kid's corn dog was massive! It was our first time there and overall it was really good. They literally have any and every type of hot dog topping you could imagine.
We made some white chocolate Valentines popcorn for her teachers. It's very simple popped popcorn with white chocolate melts and sprinkles. I also threw in Valentines M&Ms, candy corns and made some heart chocolates with molds.
We also dipped some Strawberry Marshmallows in Valentines goodness!
We wrapped it all up in bags and ribbon. One of my goals this year is to use more ribbon! I think between Lil's birthday and Valentines I've emptied about 5 spools already!
And then we put some Valentines cookies and the popcorn in little boxes and attached the marshmallows on top.
They turned out so cute!!!

So glad it's the weekend! It's been a long and busy week and I am looking forward to the weekend and maybe getting some rest.

Super Bowl & Super Outfits

These pics are mostly from Super Bowl weekend, Feb 4-6th.

We ran several errands that weekend returning leftover things from Lilli's birthday party. I will probably never run in to Party City on Super Bowl weekend again. Crazy!!! I never realized so many people buy so much junk for the Super Bowl!

We've taught Lilli she can pick out something to buy if it starts with "$1." So a lot of times she'll go through the store telling us the different prices of things and classifying it as something she can or can't have. At Party City she found a little Tinkerbell purse on clearance for "$1." so she got to buy it. She keeps the receipt in the purse and we also gave her some pennies for it too. Then we added in some cotton balls because we got tired of hearing it jangle around. IHop - We forgot how great their food is.
Making homemade pizzas at home. She really, really likes pepperoni and will eat it straight. And cheese.
Measuring Tinkerbell. Can't get too big in that skimpy little outfit!
Cheesing for the camera - it does occasionally happen!
For the Superbowl we went to our class' party at Tim and Wendy's house (or from Lilli's perspective we went to Zach and Audrey's house!) I made some buffalo chicken bites (pretty good)
we made football brownies (big hit with the kids)
and then more Football strawberries since they were a big hit at Brent's work. I also did some football Chex Mix in little individual football cupcake holders but we had already packed it in my travel bag when I remembered to take some pics.
That same weekend we decided to give Lilli her own little Bible. We have a couple she's been given for various things but have always kept them up on a shelf. Since they don't have pictures I really didn't think it was something she would be all that excited about but we were totally wrong. She's been attached to her "little pink Bible book" ever since and it is not a rare occasion for her to take it to daycare with her. Her teachers have told me she's been telling them a lot about Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
I think she thinks she is big stuff with it now! The funny thing is Brent and I pretty much never have a real Bible out - I use an app on either my Kindle or Iphone, and Brent uses a Bible app on his Iphone, so real Bibles have pretty much been phased out at our house - except for her!
Interesting fashion choices - you'd be amazed how often she wears her tutu on top of pretty much anything.
Happy almost Friday!!! I wish the weekend weather would be as nice as today's weather is! Of course if I had it all to do over again we would not have let Pippin out in the backyard all afternoon as he found something that was most certainly dead and rolled all around in it. Oh springtime!