The Big 2: Night Before and Decorations

From the 900 or so pictures of her birthday party I've starred about 87 that are my favorite, so I figure it's going to take a few journal posts to get everything on here that I want to remember about Lilli's 2nd birthday party!

We have had so much ridiculous snow lately. On Thursday afternoon it started snowing around 3, and came in very quickly - by the time I got in to get Lilli at daycare and came back out my footprints were already covered, and when I called Brent to tell him he needed to leave work it hadn't even started snowing there and by the time he got home we already had an inch. After dinner that night he took Lilli out to play in it, I think we ended up with between 1-2 inches that night.Of course the major downside with that one was that overnight a lot of it turned to ice, and it was much a much slicker snow than the previous ones we've had (that one made snow #5 for this winter - two in December and three in January at that time). Lilli's daycare was going to open two hours late (9 am) so I ended up just taking her to work with me so Brent wouldn't be so late to work. It's not far for me, and we were already up and getting ready when we found out about the delay. She had quite the time marking on my papers, visiting, messing with my computer and phone. And she even turned off my computer once. Good times.
"Bad" weather usually means my office will close at 3, so I lucked out by getting out even a little earlier than that and got a batch of strawberry cupcakes made that afternoon. Later that night Lilli (and Brent and Pippin) helped me make the butter cupcakes. I think all the extra help is probably why the strawberry ones tasted better.....
We were up really late most night that week cleaning the house (finishing the upstairs reno as well), and were up until about 12:30 Friday night getting everything decorated. Since her party started at 10 there wasn't a lot of time for last minute stuff on Saturday. I had a tough time at first coming up with a "theme". I looked into a few places to host a party, but they're all so expensive and I knew I wanted to serve lunch which means you're usually pigeon-holed into their prices for overpriced pizza since most places won't just let you bring in what you want. One place even charges $1/juice box which is just robbery. So we decided to do it at our house and focus on great food so I instantly knew I wanted Blue Coast Burrito to cater it. We all LOVE Blue Coast and Lilli can literally eat an entire small burrito on her own. From there I surfed around a few party websites and got some fun ideas to make it into an entire Baja style theme. Not having a lot of free time meant I didn't really get to go nuts with it, but I did find some great decorations that went along with the idea from Party City online, and luckily for me they were all 50% off - probably leftovers from last summer!
We had flowers hanging up and down in the hallway in most of the doorways. And with all the cold weather it really has warmed up the house!
I used Lilli's train table (it comes with a top so it can double as an activity table) and our coffee table as the craft tables. We covered them with plastic tablecloths and then were able to wipe them down for lunch-tables for the Kids.
Pippin wasn't impressed by the little games from Oriental Trading. I wasn't either.
One craft was a little flip flop frame and we printed out pictures of each child off of Facebook so they could actually make the frame. The other craft was a little monkey with sunglasses.
Brent came up with the cute idea to put the party horns in some of the bright colored pitchers I already had, and then I grabbed some tissue paper to stuff it with and make it look a little more decorated.
On Saturday morning I used the window markers we have to decorate the front door with #2s. Lilli LOVES to write on the front door and was so mad I wouldn't let her "help:. But the sun was also in her eyes and she was overreacting a little. Ha!
Our house! All decorated for the party and ready for our guests!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILLI !!!

Today was our sweet girl's actual birthday. I already feel like I've celebrated it about 15 times already!!! Brent and I took off to do fun things around town with her since all the bigger kids would be in school (hopefully, since there's been so much bad weather lately!)

We started out this morning with a breakfast of peppermint chocolate scones. I bought some pretty pink and white daisies for her yesterday that made the table look so pretty with all her cards around!After that we went to Monkey Joe's around Rivergate. It's a fun indoor bouncy place. Lilli LOVES to jump and is constantly just hopping around anywhere and everywhere, so as soon as she saw what was around her she just RAN! Of course MJ is fun for kids of ALL sizes.


We bounced for about 2 hours and the poor thing was getting so tired she couldn't climb any of the slides anymore but she did NOT want to go. And it was so nice because it really wasn't crowded at all since it was a school day. We had to carry her out kicking and screaming. From there we had lunch at McDonalds and she enjoyed a chicken nuggie Happy Meal. She is THE slowest eater, so we'd been there nearly an hour and she was still slowly eating her lunch so we made her take it with her in the car.
But the poor thing passed out eating her fries and last nuggie. Of course she perked right up once we got home and spent an hour talking in her crib before she fell back asleep to finish her nap.
After she woke up and had some blueberries for a snack we let her open some presents. This gorgeous handmade bunny is from our friend Stephanie (not babysitter Stephanie but our work friend Stephanie). It is SO precious!!!! She sent it home with Brent last Friday and it was so sweet of her to think of Lilli.
Pippin and Lilli picked at each other the whole time she was opening her gifts. She kept whacking him with the boxes and he'd shove her right back. Crazy kids.
We were going to have Noshville for dinner but for whatever dumb reason they are only open during lunch on weekdays, apparently. So we went over to Rotiers instead. The waiter was so nice and didn't even charge us for Lilli's dinner, and also gave us some free fries. While we were trying to place our order with him she kept ordering things (clearly we eat out a lot, ha!) so he got so tickled he told us he'd take care of her and bring her whatever she wanted for free. Then she kept talking to another waiter who asked us if he could bring her a milkshake but sadly we had to tell him no thanks since she can't have lactose.
Afterwards we kept up our tradition of taking her back to Baptist and showing her the babies born on her birthday. We told her what we were going to do on the way over and she was SO excited. She ran off the elevator and up and down the halls yelling for babies - and was really disappointed that we were only going to look at them through glass! They did wheel one by as we were standing there and put him in the lights by the window, so thankfully that did satisfy her. There were only 4 babies in there and the floor was incredibly quiet. I've heard they can get extremely busy but we've never seen it like that.

Our last promise of the day was taking her to get some donuts. She's never had donuts that we know of, but she was pretty stinking excited about it, and was MORE than happy to pick out what she wanted - chocolate with sprinkles. And she was so cute and friendly there that they pulled out a hat for her. We really do end up with a lot of free stuff with her around. And much to their amusement she did actually wear it for a few minutes. We even got to watch some donuts being made before we left.
And the WHOLE ride home she kept asking for her donut. She can get a one track mind about something and talks the ENTIRE time we are in the car - the ride home (about 5 miles) consisted of a)begging for donuts, b)screaming for an ambulance that went by, c)asking to see another fire truck (some firemen were in KK getting donuts), d)worried about Pippin going night night, e)talking about the traffic light colors, f)telling me to dance to songs on the radio and then just repeat that over and over and over again.
So needless to say she was more than happy to come home and finally enjoy her donut. And of course feed half of it to Pippin.

Birthday Eve!

I can't believe this little Munchkin is going to be TWO years old tomorrow!It really seems like just yesterday that she was wearing this same little dress on her first birthday, and it swallowed her alive!
We've had a great pre-birthday weekend, a major perk of a Monday birthday. From her friends party on Saturday on it's been all about Lilli all weekend!! I've got about 900 pictures from her party to go through and pick out my favorites, which is going to be really hard to do!
I think she had a GREAT time! She had 10 of her closest buddies and their parents there, and we celebrated Baja style with lots of summery decorations, crafts and Blue Coast Burrito catered the lunch. And it was GOOD!
Between presents from grandparents and friends she's been playing with new stuff all weekend, and today she got to go to "Big Girl" church for the first time - when you're two you get to leave right before the sermon and go to a big room where they have puppets and skits and singing. As we headed over the daughter of one of her Sunday school teachers was watching for her and Lilli ran right up and headed off, never even saying good-bye to me. They said she had a great time and squealed every time a new puppet came out and even helped "shush" the older kids who were being disruptive. Ha!! We really weren't worried about how she'd do - she literally runs to Sunday school every week and never looks back so this really isn't any different.
And tomorrow we're going to take off and just play all day -maybe go to a Jumpy Place since we've never done that before or there's always good ole Chuck E Cheese. Here's hoping that Metro actually goes to school tomorrow so the big kids will all be out of the way! And we'll continue the tradition of taking her back to Baptist so she can tell the new babies born on her birthday this year Happy Birthday. (Actually this afternoon she was singing Happy Birthday to herself while she was eating some more on her cake. She didn't have the words right AT ALL, but you could tell that's the tune she was singing.)
Tonight we stuck with our annual tradition of going out for Mexican food on her birthday eve. The night before she was born we ate at the Las Palmas downtown, and we went back last year the night before her birthday as well. That's seriously the worst of their locations (dirty + awful services) so after last year we decided we'd just stick with that chain so tonight we ate at the one on 8th/Franklin Road. It was ok and Lilli enjoyed her food, but we really like the Mexican restaurant in our neighborhood better so next year we may just eat "Mexican".
(*And yes, she was eating a piece of bread in the earlier pictures - that's what we get for having her help put up the groceries every week before Brent snaps her Sunday pictures. She also has a little lizard in her hand, and in her Mexican rest picture there are two little frogs on the left side. We are ALWAYS having to take little animals/dolls with us everywhere we go!!!)

Meals and Chores

We do all our grocery shopping on Sunday mornings after church (a mega benefit of going to early and then Sunday school). We work together to get everything on the list as fast as possible and get out of there because I absolutely hate grocery shopping. One of us works as the runner and the other pushes the buggy with Lilli going aisle by aisle. And that works well for us and we do get out of there pretty quickly each week.I do all my meal planning on Saturday each week for the following week. I've found if we don't have a plan then the evenings are NUTS. I've got a few quick meal cookbooks and use a lot of websites to come up with fun stuff to eat each week. One of my other main goals for 2011 is to eat down our pantry!! If World War 3 ever strikes then you could probably come over to our house and eat from our pantry and fridges until order is reestablished to the world. So this year I'm planning at least one meal each week to eat down something that's been in there for a while and just needs to be used up (like 15 cans of tuna or seasoning packets from 2007.)
I think I'm going to start posting my meal plans for the week just so I can go back and find recipes more easily. Since I use the web so much we'll make something once and then never be able to find it again which is so frustrating!

I don't plan specific days for things which helps us stick with the "plan" better - some days you are just in the mood for some things more than others. We get everything on Sundays because we do not make mid-week grocery runs!!!

This week:

Chicken Spaghetti - We actually made this one Sunday night and it was good! It didn't need to bake as long as the recipe said, and I was out of Cream of Mush so I used Cream of Chick and it was just fine. I also cooked the onions and peppers with my chicken in the skillet, which I also think helped with the flavor.

Garlic Chicken Wings (this one uses up a pantry seasoning packet for wings)

Chicken Suiza Burritos - We made this one tonight, super easy and so good! And Lil loves burritos so we made hers with avocado as directed and added rice (since we all love rice). I grilled my chicken on our George Foreman, but other than that followed as directed. Def a keeper and got 3 thumbs up in our house!

Tex Mex BBQ Turkey Tamale Pie
Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Soup
Slow Cooker Pepper Steak

I'm also trying to use my slow cooker more often, there are so many websites out there with crockpot recipes for every night of the year and I would be more than happy to come home and have dinner already cooked for me!! Just let us know what night you're coming over for dinner and we'll have some extras!

Since Lilli LOVES to help with dinner we've started giving her chores. Right now she has 3 chores each night - she sets the table with napkins, sets the table with forks, and then is responsible for letting Pippin lick the spoon we use to scoop his food out of the can with. He probably hates that chore!! She LOVES doing her chores:

Napkins:


I love that she is sneaking cheese off her plate. The chicken spaghetti did take FOREVER to cook (30 mins bake + 15 minutes bake), so we were really late eating and she was starving. We had ALL been sneaking some cheese.

Forks:



She really does need to learn to NOT RUN WITH FORKS.

Best Buds

Last night we went out to Party City to pick up a few things for the party and Brent was following Lilli around with my camera while I shopped and videoed this.



Cracks me up how personally she takes disorder. Too bad she doesn't feel that way with toys around her house.

Brent said this dress somehow looks like something Jethro from Beverly Hillbillies. I didn't believe him until I did a Google search myself. Oh well, I still think it's cute, and I guess some designer at BabyGap was inspired.

Someone has a case of the Snowman Blues. This is all that's left of the snow in our front yard, finally. Most everything melted on Saturday.

Say cheese!She threw a fit until we let Pippin out there with her. And she chased him all around the yard trying to give him a hug.
Something tells me he was not in a hugging mood.
But she finally caught him on the porch.
And he humored her for a minute.
Cracks me up every time I think about the TONS of people who told us Pippin would be on the back-burner and not get any attention once she was born. HA!

Happy Birthday Micah!

This morning we went to Micah's 4th birthday party. Micah is Levi's older brother, so of course we had to go to his party and be 2 for 2 for their family parties over the past year!

First the kids just played around with some of their toys. They all played so well together, so many times there's just always that "one" kid that's horrible and has a parent who lets them run wild, but this group just plays so well together. There's Haven, Taylor, Levi and Luke and Lilli was in and out of my lap.Micah's party was a Toy Story 3 party, so Lynda had little crafts where you made foam Buzz Lightyear wings. That's Sarah and I helping Callie and Lilli make their wings. Lilli had a great time with it - especially using glue and stickers! She loves art projects.
They had Jet's pizza (yum - first time we had that since we don't have one nearby!) Afterwards Micah blew out his candles
and of course we all got to enjoy some yummy cupcakes!
Afterwards the kids ran around some more and Lilli wanted to go upstairs where some of the bigger kids were playing in Micah's room. It was a 10am-12 party (like Lilli's will be next weekend) so you could really tell when the kids started getting tired around naptime, HA!
So of course once Lilli saw Luke climb in and get comfortable she was next. And that was pretty much the signal that it was time to go home and take her own nap, in her own bed.
Poor thing almost made it home before she fell asleep, passed out with Belle in her lap. She just started melting in the car on the way home so I had to break out a paci. She only gets them now for sleeping, so once it went in she was OUT.
We had a great time at Micah's party and I can't believe next weekend we'll be celebrating Lilli's 2nd birthday!

Let's go to the Mall!

Kind of a boring week around here. I didn't go to Atlanta but a couple of people I work with still left yesterday, some are coming back early and others next week. Oh well, there's always next time in July! Yesterday morning our alley STILL looked like this - it's just not melting! Thank goodness Brent shoveled us a path across the deck a few days ago! I walked to the library at lunch with a coworker and several blocks were still so icy we had to hold onto fences/building to not slip.Tonight we went to the mall! (Insert Robin Sparkles video here! ) We can't go to the mall and not sing that song - from our fave show How I Met Your Mother. Any show we actually name our child after a character from must be good! Lilli's name comes from that show and we got Pippin's name from Lord of the Rings - one of Frodo's hobbit friends - the curious one - is named Pippin.

First we had dinner at Kalamatas, yum-o Greek! Lilli gets the Chicken Gyro pocket off the kids menu.
Belle came with us, but in order to stay ever so slim and fit in her princess gown she doesn't get to eat.
Then off to the Green Hills Mall! I had some things to return to Gap, so Brent and Lil played in Pottery Barn Kids while I shopped Gap. I don't think she ever made it past the (overpriced) dolls and (overpriced) strollers. Until she made it to the SUPREMELY overpriced kitchen sets. Seriously, some of their fake appliances are more than real appliances.
She had fun playing in their fake grocery stand. And it's 20% off - I'm sure that makes it only like $200 or something!
However we are thankful for places like Pottery Barn where she can play for HOURS and Gymboree where they have couches and a TV for the kids so I could shop and spend my Gymbucks while Brent played in the Apple Store.
Every trip to the mall ends with a visit to the fountain and a temper tantrum resulting from a) not being able to sit on the wall and play in the water and then b)having to eventually leave the fountain. We are the meanest parents ever.