Sunday Snaps

A few pictures from last Sunday....

We've been soaking up all the sunshine we can lately and loving Daylight Savings time. For Sunday lunch we ate out on the deck. She wanted me to eat on her little table with her. Pippin is a huge fan of that!!! We grilled out some burgers and dogs. For dessert we had these WhoNu? cookies that I had picked up at the grocery with some coupons. They are actually really, really good and packed with all kinds of vitamins. At Target the night before we had picked up a slightly bigger ball for her to practice soccer with. She has a serious kick!
And takes the game of ball quite seriously!
This little dress is so adorable! I got it new with tags just a few weeks ago. It's a cute bubble shape with these big flowers on the bottom. The tights are a new thin tight Target just put out. Perfect for spring! She loved this dress so much she wore it all day - nap time, and then to church that night!
Looking all kinds of "big girl"!

Hope you all have a great weekend!! Our brackets are already so blown up with some of today's upsets. I guess I can go ahead and pack up Lilli's thick Memphis pajamas. We won't be needing them again! And for the first time I didn't pick Duke going all the way, unfortunately Dad did so I think he may be ending up near the bottom with Lilli this year. She's got some unusual picks this year that just may pan out considering how today went. Perhaps picking based on mascot may be a better method!

5 Pins for Pat

I love, love, love Pinterest. It's really exactly what I've needed to get organized with parties and party planning, presents and all the holidays. Since I'm only a few days behind in blogging I thought I'd share my top five St Patty pins I've marked this year.

I love this lunch idea and made something similar for Lilli's lunch tomorrow (pics to come later). I modified the ingredients and some of the look, but I thought it was so clever! I always cut her sandwiches into fun shapes (I have a dinosaur sandwich cutter and a princess one) and she'll ask me specifically for a dinosaur sandwich so I know she'll be excited tomorrow!

Source: lisastorms.typepad.com via Rachel on Pinterest

I'm really into subway art for my kitchen right now. I printed several for Valentines and then several others for St Pat, and even had Brent make me a custom one. These are all free printables and he has such a great color printer at work that the cost to me is nothing for some constantly changing art!

Source: eighteen25.blogspot.com via Rachel on Pinterest

Of course Lilli has to have a custom skirt! I ordered this from a different shop than my usual haunt, she's been getting pricier and pricier so I'll likely only be using her for special occasions. This skirt was really affordable AND I was able to buy a matching dress for her baby doll!

Source: etsy.com via Rachel on Pinterest

We made this easy little craft for both her church and school friends. Just a little printable (we used normal paper and it worked fine and is much cheaper than card stock) stapled on a Ziploc baggie filled with Lucky Charms. Kids love that cereal so this has already been a big hit with church friends. I'll have pics of ours when I post on St Patty's day.

Source: ishareprintables.com via Rachel on Pinterest

I think this craft is so cute and I'm planning for us to do this tomorrow! It would be neat to do year after year and watch her hand grow.

Source: meetthedubiens.blogspot.com via Rachel on Pinterest

You can follow my entire St Patty Board here, I've got lots of cute crafts and recipes pinned!

Ready to Travel!

When I was searching around about free bus day, I came upon National Passport Day news on the local county clerk's website. We've been meaning to get passports for quite a while now, and have just never made the time to all go together. For Lilli to get a passport, we have to both be there, and with government hours it's just not easy for us to get it all together at the same time. So having everything open and supposedly ready for people on Saturday it was really supposed to be an easier time for us to finally cross this off our list, too. Of course like most everything government run, the entire thing was a mess when we got there around 10:30 Saturday morning.We filled all the paperwork online and had everything together, so two separate ladies in the paperwork room just sent us straight across the hall to the photograph line - which was ridiculously long, even though there weren't a ton of people there. The hangup seemed to be the printing of pictures and how long that took. There truly was only one guy there who really understood the process, and while we were waiting in the picture line and he came and got all our paperwork straightened out and didn't seem too pleased we'd been sent to the line without having someone check our papers! I think we waited in that line about 45 minutes. Thank goodness for Iphones and apps!
They pulled you back in groups of ten for pictures, so when we finally got pulled back we were the first three in line, and Lilli was first to have her picture made. This will be her passport photo for years to come:
I'm thinking she's going to regret that one! Of course when I was having my picture made she was feeling a LOT more photogenic. Figures!!!
Once we had the pictures processed the check out line was incredibly short, so in hindsight the whole thing would have been very fast if we just went to Walgreens for the pictures instead. Oh well, I'm just glad to have it crossed off our to-do list. We don't have a definite travel plan, but we have been thinking about a Disney cruise, and since travel laws are so strict now we just really need passports to be able to jump on any last minute deals.

At least I was excited to cross this off our list.
From there we ended up at Hot Diggity Dog for lunch. The place was packed, and they have some nice outdoor picnic tables for eating. We're big fans of I Dream of Weenie and also Cori's Dog House , and this place is still really a #3 for us. They have a great menu with lots of good combos, but their hot dogs were really a little small and dry, and they don't have any kind of kids menu. I loved all the toppings on them (I had a Nashville dog with slaw, pickles and the works - the other one is a Texas Chili Dog) but really it was just a bit dry. And our total for the three of us to eat hot dogs was $17 - pretty ridiculous considering how cheap hot dogs are.
Lilli was pretty happy about the hot dog gummy candy they gave us. And the staff there was very nice.
She's all about making grouchy face these days.
We decided to let her skip afternoon nap and she helped me work in the yard all afternoon. We got my garden all cleaned out from the winter weeds and ready for springtime. In doing so I ousted several earthworms that she was MORE than happy to adopt.
It did not take long for two worms to end up being five worm (pieces). And then for her to wonder why her worms wouldn't wake up.
It's going to be a fun summer!

The Wheels on the Bus

I will be one of the first to admit we do some pretty random things. I try to stay really current on everything going on around Nashville so we can sample the city as much as possible, which is exactly why we moved out of the suburbs and to downtown several years ago. Pretty much every week I have someone messaging me and asking for restaurant recommendations or for things to do with their kiddos. But our Friday night activity has got to be one of our weirdest to date.

One night last week while I was cleaning up the kitchen I heard the mayor on the news talking about "Fareless Friday". To encourage Nashvillians to try public transportation, bus fares would be waived all day and you could ride as many times as you like. Lilli LOVES buses, and is always wanting to ride the bus. They come within a block of our house, and there's been many a fit about us NOT riding them. So, we did some research and tried to figure out a route from our house to go out to dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. The challenge came in in how to just get the route to cross over instead of going up and down streets, and I was pretty set on having dinner at Calypso Cafe. The routes provided by Google maps still had us walking half a mile and only riding the bus for two blocks, which seemed totally pointless. BUT, in looking at the bus route closest to us, we noticed it came right past our house, went up through Inglewood, and then turned and came back right by our house. So we decided to just hop on, ride a loop, get off the bus, and get in our car and drive to dinner. Pathetic, but true.So our clever, college educated and professionally certified minds spent at least half an hour sorting this all out, then headed down the block to wait for the bus after checking what times it comes through various points. There's actually not a bus stop sign on our corner, but we've seen people hop on so we figured we'd just flag it down since it has to stop there anyway. Of course once we stood there waiting and waiting we realized we'd been looking at the 5:30 am times, not pm. Geniouses. So we waited and waited and ended up waiting just over twenty minutes before the bus came. In this time we realized how many people just stare at people waiting to ride the bus. Craziness. We did have one car load roll down their windows and ask where I got Lilli's skirt. HA! She is always so fashionable. When it finally got there, we hopped on and it was SO full we ended up sitting near the front. In addition to the driver, there was another employee riding (I guess an assistant to help keep the peace) and he asked us something about where we were getting off. So, I told him we were just taking a ride for a loop since it was free day. When we said that we got "the look" from a LOT of people on the bus - people who obviously were taking the bus because they can't afford cars. Thank goodness it was packed because otherwise I think a few people might have killed us. But then it got worse because he called out for the driver to stop the bus - so at this point the ENTIRE bus is staring at us and wanting to kill us. He explained this was their last trip of the day and they were headed back to the garage, so we wouldn't be able to ride a loop. I don't think he was all that familiar with the route because I explained it comes back down on the other side of the street and that's where we were planning to get off. The driver confirmed that and we were off again. Thank goodness because we would have died of embarrassment if we got kicked off after just a block.
Lilli had such a blast riding the bus, watching all our familiar places we go buzz by. She kept saying he was going fast and squealing a lot. And since everyone else was getting off on the stops as we headed through the neighborhood it wasn't long before we totally had the bus to ourselves. The workers warmed up to us because she was enjoying it so much and said it had been a crazy day and every bus had been packed all day.
After about twenty minutes they dropped us off on our corner and the bus headed back to the Garage. Lilli had SUCH a good time and said she couldn't wait to tell her teachers on Monday, ha! And then the rest of the weekend every time we saw the Shelby/Porter bus we told her that was "our" bus. Because we have two cars and parking is so easy and typically free to come by in Nashville we've never ridden the bus here - which is just crazy because when we travel we always take public transportation. But truly, it's not that economical for me - I work three miles from home and bus fare would cost me $3.40 per day. I know I don't spend that much per day in gas!
Of course Lilli is already wanting to ride it again! Next time we'll be a lot more prepared and actually figure out how to take the bus from Point A to Point B without somehow still having to get in our car. Pitiful.
It's March Madness time! Guess who Lilli is cheering for???

Painting, Playing & Plants

I can't believe it's already Sunday night. Although there was one less hour in the weekend (boo). Why can't they take away an hour of work???

We had a great weekend and pretty much crossed several things off the to-do list. These pics are all from just random week nights last week.

We like to do some painting, most every week. Most always on bath night!!For Show & Tell this week she took her Lorax. Pretty much every kid I know has seen that movie! They are raking in the money. Of course before a day at school she had to give him some Goldfish for energy.
She's semi obsessed with moving her name from out to in, and in to out each day. She also wants to move everyone else's names. It is a great way for them to learn each other's names and spelling. She was upset this morning that on her Sunday school paper they had misspelled her name (Lily - the traditional spelling). That's probably something she is going to have to deal with a LOT! The "please tattle here" picture on the door also cracks me up. I imagine a lot of things get directed there.
Making faces with Daddy.
All the trees in our yard are starting to bloom and she wanted to take one bud to school. They put it in water and it bloomed out nicely!
Brent surprised me with flowers one night last week. Of course someone was rather partial to them herself!
Hope you all had a great weekend!

Sunday Snaps

These pics are from this past Sunday. For some reason she was feeling a little extra spunky!

Making her "mean" face. Which also looks a lot like a going to the bathroom in the front yard face, ha!Making a cute face. Her hair is really growing in so much thicker now! It's crazy to me how much she's changed since last January when she first wore this dress, especially in how much her hair has grown in!
With her horse and Nemo purse she can go anywhere!
They play a lot of ball at school so she wanted to play soccer in the front yard. She has some serious form!!
But there just may be some anger issues when it comes to playing sports!
"SOCCER BALL!!"

So glad it's Friday and maybe we can get a little extra sleep tomorrow morning!!!!

Acupuncture, Ice Cream and Sunshine

Only one of the three things in the title happened today, and it's not ice cream or sunshine! But since I went to my first acupuncture session by myself I don't have any pictures and was too busy enjoying the relaxation to whip out my phone. So instead there's some Lilli pics from the last week instead. I am so close to being caught up!!Pippin thoroughly enjoys the combo of purple Ariel dress and bright green tights.
One night last week we went out for Jeni's ice cream. It's easily the best ice cream around. Everything is so fresh and different and they have actual good tasting sorbets for Lilli and Brent (since they are lactose intolerant). None of that orange junk that most places serve for the lactose intolerant folks. I got a Butter Cake and Lavender scoops, and Brent and Lil had Riesling Pear and Lime Cardamon. It's all SO good.
The only use we've gotten for snow boots this year is stomping bubble wrap. Sad and true.
Last Saturday was a little chilly, after all the tornadoes moved through, but it was so sunny that it really didn't feel bad. Lil and I went all over the neighborhood while Brent worked on fixing his brakes.
Buzz Lightyear even went with us on our walk.
Her outfit choice cracks me up. A Dora dress with leggings and a Ralph Lauren jacket, with pink sparkle shoes. She is so destined to be Donald Trump's apprentice one day!
So much energy!!!
She wanted to go to "the real park". I guess the private school playground next door wasn't cutting it. I greatly prefer not really having to deal with other kids! But we took her to Shelby Park, where of course we had to deal with other kids and the fact that some parents in our neighborhood just drop their kids off and leave. I can't imagine just leaving Lilli and heading on my merry way! We didn't stay too long before we came home for lunch. For some reason "the real park" is on her mind a lot lately and she keeps telling me grandma and grandpa are going to come and pick her up, take her to the airport, and you would all fly to the park together. Just let me know when the flight leaves and she will be packed!

Right after work today I had made myself an appointment for acupuncture. Acupuncture is proven to help with a lot of things and I've got no fear of needles or trying new things. There's a great community practice (East Nashville Community Acupuncture) in our neighborhood that also makes it affordable by practicing in more of a group setting, like they would do in China. And it's on a sliding scale so you just pay what you can afford, and you can stay and rest as long as you like. Before I went back in the group room I was able to talk to the doctor in a private room, and then she took me into the large group setting where they had about a dozen comfy recliners. She put needles in my head, arms, hands, legs and feet and then left me to rest for as long as I wanted. It's a strange thing to describe but your body starts to feel somewhat heavy and you just sort of drift away into a deep relaxation. The needles don't hurt a bit, and the only ones I even felt going in were the ones in the arches of my feet. Most of the people in the room fell asleep, so they do suggest you bring earplugs if snoring disturbs you. I may have drifted off a time or two, but with it being a new experience for me I know I wasn't quite as rested as others. It was incredibly nice being in a room where all I had to do was stretch out and relax!! They did share that a woman fell asleep for five hours a few weeks ago - their current record. When they say you can stay as long as you want they truly mean it! I've had massive sinus problems the last week and I can say my head does already feel clearer and I am definitely feeling more rested and relaxed tonight. It's not a one time thing, so I'll be going back once a week for several months, at least. And that's the great thing about the sliding scale - most private practices are $60-90 per session and there's no way I could spend that versus $15-$35 per week - that's basically one meal out.

Brent did Google how to do acupuncture at home but thankfully decided their prices were not worth the needle investment for him. Whew!!!