I've decided that Halloween is much more stressful as a parent than as a kid. You plan your kids costumes for months until they decide right before Halloween that they want something different. And then the costume is WHITE so you have to be worried all day that they're going to poop on it, and they don't fit as well in their carseats when they have tutus on, and they don't want to wear their tutus because they are scary, and talking all week about being a zebra is apparently much more fun than actually being a zebra, and then when you finally get them to trick or treat they don't understand what's going on and they try to go inside the houses of the people that are giving them hand-fulls of candy.
But they look cute, darn it.
Happy (late) Halloween from our little bunch!
Mike, Sheriff Callie, zebra one, Spiderman, a witch, zebra two, and the Hulk.
My cousin, Melody, threw her daughter, Chloey, an amazing pink lemonade birthday party.
The decorations were adorable! I loved the display of her monthly photos.
Lila enjoyed the display of candy.
The food was delicious, the usual at Melody's house.
Melody let me contribute some macarons for the occasion. I did Pink Lemonade Macarons, lemon zested shells with lemon buttercream and lemon curd in the middle, Raspberry Ganache Macarons, chocolate shells with dark chocolate ganache and raspberry in the middle, and Strawberry Macarons, strawberry shells with strawberry buttercream.
The rest of the desserts were absolutely adorable!
Look at Chloey's little cake.
She ate it very daintily.
And remember this pouf from awhile back? I made a few for Chloey's play room.
Lila generally did a good job and didn't try to steal any of Chloey's awesome presents. Except for the balloons...and she insisted on wearing two tutus to the party...that are each size 12 months.
Even leaving the party was fun because the party favors were super cute: take home pink lemonade.
Happy Birthday sweet Chloey! My girls are so lucky to grow up with a cousin just down the street!
When we were dating in college, I always went to visit Johnny in North Carolina for the Fourth of July. We thought we'd continue the tradition and take the girls to visit Grammie and Grampie this year. Now, for some odd reason there are no direct flights from Kansas City to Raleigh, so we had a connection in Baltimore. Not a big deal, thought we.
We got to the Kansas City airport around 10:30am for our noon flight. Got a nice coffee, a blueberry muffin. You know, just living the life. I will interrupt here and say that Johnny told me Olive was dressed like a clown for this flight.
We arrived in Baltimore around 3:00, preparing to get on the quick 45 minute flight around 5:30pm. Lila and I decided to stand in line at the airport Chipotle while Johnny and Olive held down a table for us, making friends with an elderly couple going to visit their grandkids in California. While in line, Lila informed me, "Dat yady yooks pretty in her hair brush." I translated for the woman, "My daughter thinks your hair is pretty." We ate our dinner, and checked the departure monitors, noticing that our flight was delayed an hour. Bummer, but no big deal. We went to find our gate and settled down for a bit. At this point, it started hailing really hard. I suppose that should have been a red flag.
Rumors started floating around the gate area that there was a bad hurricane along the East Coast. Fabulous. Before we knew it, the flight was no longer delayed until 6:30 but was now 8:30. A girl sitting near us was growing angry and decided that she was going to go rent a car and drive to Raleigh. "Anyone who wants to can join!" she declared. Johnny and I thought about it briefly, but then decided the five hour drive wasn't worth it; our flight would get in around the same time anyway. Ba ha ha! It's funny, now.
So about three hours into our layover, Lila was really doing an excellent job. She traded off her time between playing on the iPad, pretending with her Disney princess dolls, watching cartoons, and running around in circles. Johnny decided to take Olive on a walk to see if he could get her to take a nap. While he was gone, Lila was squatting on the floor, looking at something, and then whined to me, "I have to go tinkle!" Now this was odd because Lila is not totally/anywhere near being potty trained yet, and she had a diaper on. So I kind of said, "Ok well just go," but I looked at her and realized that she had just gone and it had somehow come out the side of her diaper and completely soaked her leg.
I asked some nice ladies to watch our stuff, and I ran Lila into the bathroom. Johnny had taken the diaper bag and the stroller, so I literally had nothing to cover Lila's butt with. I stripped her down and held her as covered as a could and waited at the entrance of the bathroom in order to flag Johnny down. He showed up pretty quickly and handed off a new Pull-Up. Unfortunately, all of Lila's clothes were in a checked bag getting rained on outside (Fast-forward: I'm OCD about packing and put all of the girls clothes in labeled Ziploc gallon bags, so even though their suitcase was COMPLETELY soaked, all of their clothes were dry. Take that Southwest...and the hurricane.), so Lila had no clothes. Johnny then went on another walk around the airport with the new mission of finding child pants.
Meanwhile, Lila ran around the airport in just a Pull-Up.
After about 30 minutes, Johnny finally returned with the only child pants in the entire airport.
"Crabby in the Morning"
Though happy with our new pants, our happiness was soon dashed when we realized that our flight was being pushed back to 10:30 and then 11:00. We continued to hang out at our gate which was conveniently located by one of the airport bars. This location provided interesting companionship in the form of old people who had had too much to drink. Remember the old couple from dinner? Well that man sauntered over from his Bud Light at one point to check on Olive and actually kissed her on the head. Now I'm not overprotective of my kids with strangers, but I think that might have been a step too far. There was also an older woman who insisted on holding Olive for a few minutes while regaling Johnny with tales of her bad back and bronchitis.
By 10:00, we had one diaper left between the two girls, Olive still hadn't slept, and I was entertaining Lila by walking up one moving walkway and back on the other one ("Tick tock it's yike a clock Mama!"). It was at this point we realized that if we had rented a car at 4:30 we would have been in Raleigh already.
We FINALLY got on the plane at 11:00 and took off around 11:30. Both girls slept on the short flight, thankfully, and I was patting myself on the back for surviving a harrowing layover without a single meltdown, Lila or Mommy. As we landed and I was pridefully unclipping my little angel from her carseat, Lila totally lost it. I mean went bananas. It was almost one in the morning, and she was completely hysterical. She sobbed from the airplane to the baggage claim to the car, "I don't want to get in dat white car! No fank you! No fank you!", to Grammie and Grampie's house. It was almost two in the morning by the time I got her in her bed. At this point Johnny and I are whisper yelling at each other about where the other one put the diaper bag and so on.
Long story short: we survived. So if you ever have a two year old and a baby on a flight that connects in Baltimore, I suggest you bring an extra pair of pants.
We just got back from a fabulous weekend celebrating Johnny's sister, Suzanne, getting married. Suzanne wanted family to be very central to the wedding so the reception was at their cousins' house and the ceremony was at the adorable church across the street. My pictures are far from comprehensive, but I wanted to share some of the gems that were captured by the various people who stole my camera.
Suzanne sent all of us bridesmaids a paint chip with four shades of poppy and allowed us all to pick out our own dresses. For living hundreds of miles away from each other, I'd say we did a pretty good job.
Suzanne was totally calm, cool, and collected the day of the wedding. She even took time out from getting ready to read to Lila distract Lila so she wouldn't wander off and fall in the pool.
Suzanne and her mommy were super generous and let us all get out hair and make up done. Suzanne also got us those cute robes.
While all the girls were getting ready, the boys were finishing up a few jobs around the house...like holding Olive and wiping her spit up with a dish towel from the kitchen. Sorry about that one, Chrissy.
Uncle Ike did a fabulous job of hanging lanterns.
Suzanne found such a good girl to do all of our hair.
Her finished product.
Super cute.
Aunt "Worwen" getting all dolled up.
Lila and Olive got to be flower girls in the wedding. Suzanne found these dresses on Pinterest and had me make them for the two girls. They were super easy, so I might add a little tutorial later in the week.
Olive only had to change her shirt once after puking all over my poor father who was holding her during the ceremony.
Lila actually kept the dress on for multiple hours without trying to rip it off.
This is my favorite picture of the whole day. Suzanne asked her daddy to pray with her before walking down the aisle, and Lila plopped down right in front of them to watch.
We refrained from taking pictures during the ceremony, but I will proudly say that Lila walked down that aisle all by herself and threw flowers petals on the floor like a pro. Tonight when I asked her what we should pray for she said, "Aunt Suzanne's wedding." I said, "Sure we can thank God for Aunt Suzanne's wedding. What else should we thank Him for?" She responded, "That I fro flowers." Amen to that. I'm just glad she waited to melt down until the pictures afterward. Post meltdown, Lila sat on the floor and re-threw the petals, asking the ring bearers to pick them up while she supervised.
There was a large military presence at the wedding since Suzanne and her now husband are both in the Navy, so Johnny got to wear his uniform and participate in the sword arch after the ceremony.
I was too busy wooping it up to take too many pictures of the reception, but I did happen to catch a shot of cousin Joe after he caught the Gaters garter. He's single ladies!
Alex and Suzanne! We love you both! Thank you for including us in such a beautiful weekend!
PS. I don't have any pictures of Aunt Louann and cousin Shana, but they worked their butts off in the kitchen all weekend making AMAZING desserts for the reception. I wanted to give them a little shout out...I suppose I could have drawn a picture of it.
I'm finally getting around to blogging about Lila's birthday party thanks to the fact that my girls are taking very long naps due to an exhausting trip to the doctor today for check ups.
The day of Lila's birthday party began with her walking around the family room completely tangled up in the balloons Daddy bought her for her party. She is climbing the stairs in this picture because the second she saw me with the camera she declared, "I see it!" Luckily the balloons slowed her down quite a bit. I think I might have something here...
Once we untangled Lila and got the balloons dispersed throughout the house, the party could begin. I tried keeping things small this year after filling our house last year with what seemed like 150 little girls in costumes, so we just had my extended family and a few friends over.
Lila wasted no time in chowing down on the chips and guacamole.
The rest of the menu included pulled pork, brisket, Zarda baked beans, Jack Stack style cheesy corn, green beans, and chips. Lila was in hog heaven. Pardon the pun.
For cake, Lila requested a blueberry cake, so I used an old recipe of my parents' for a lemon blueberry cake. It was definitely labor intensive; especially the part where I decided I didn't like the color of the icing so I scraped it all off, got my hair cut, went to the store for more powdered sugar and blueberries, told the girl scouts at the store that I couldn't buy cookies because I'm counting calories, drove home, and re-iced it. Lila also chose a Costco red velvet cake as our secondary cake...because you can't have too much cake. You can tell from the video that she was pretty excited about the cake.
Lila got lots of great gifts, including a baby doll who she has named "Baby Chloey" after her cousin Chloey. But her favorite gift at the party was her new princess Cozy Coup from my parents. The first thing she asked me when she got in the car was if I could turn on the music.
Olive was a trooper and didn't even get jealous or anything...unlike me when Jessie received a brand new Fischer Price cassette player with TWO microphones for her birthday while I was looking like a chump with only a ONE microphone cassette player.
Her big family par-tay is on Sunday, but she had fun today going and getting a hot chocolate for lunch and Winstead's for dinner. Since Lila has become so verbal lately, I decided to start a little tradition of asking her questions every year on her birthday...so here they are:
How old are you? I two (holds up three fingers).
What's your favorite color? I yike purple.
What's your favorite food? I yike rackaroni...pizza...
What's your favorite TV show? I watching Daniel Tiger.
What do you want to be when you grow up? I be Grandmommy.
What's your favorite book? Caterpillar.
What's your favorite song? I yike Milk song!
What's your favorite animal? I yike polar bear. I yike penguin. I like giraffe...beary beary yong necks.
Who do you love? I yike you!
I also tried to ask her who her best friend was, but the jury is still out on that one.
Lila did a very good job sitting through the first part of the service.
Olive wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but she stayed awake for the entire thing.
Our pastor, Tony, did a wonderful job baptizing her, and he even included a few bible verses where the word "Olive" is used. Lila did a great job too. She waved to everyone and only tried to sit down on the stage once. I think she gets her love for the spotlight from Johnny.
My grandmother and grandfather were both able to attend, and my grandfather was able to come up front and pray for Olive.
We were very grateful to have so much of my extended family there to support Olive and her walk with Christ.
Thank you to our church family for agreeing to come alongside her as well!
