Snuggle Bunnies and Forts

I have not been posting much lately because the last few weeks have been a bit of a blur.  Johnny has actuarial exam number four coming up next Friday, so every ounce of extra time that he has is spent with a calculator in one hand and a composition notebook in the other.  That means that I've been pulling a little bit of extra mommy time, and oddly enough, things just don't seem as funny or interesting when you're working overtime and screaming about not sitting on the baby's head for the fourth time in one day.

We have had a few exciting things happen in the last few days, though.  Little Guy has started crawling, and it's just about the cutest thing in the world.  By pushing with his left leg and pulling with his right arm he can get just about anywhere and eat just about anything in reach.

We have also broken out our snuggle bunnies, or as the rest of the world calls them, "footie pajamas."  The girls like to hug each other for "cozy hugs" and rub each other's backs.  You may notice that we have also stopped fixing Lila's hair.



Lila has never been a huge fort fan, which depressed me because I love making forts.  Thankfully, though, Little Sister is a huge fan!  She is taking after her Aunt Jessie who started a fort building club at Barstow in high school.  I think there was a picture in the year book.  She might have been the only one in it.  The picture and the club.  Anywho, Little Sister is currently reading books in her fort that has taken over a large portion of the kitchen.  But since we got rid of our kitchen table, it's not really a problem.

All of our curtains have also become hiding places, our couch and coffee table have become gymnastics apparati (spelling?), and the gate at the top of our stairs has become a tennis net.  I'm not really sure when this little baby...

turned into this big girl...

but I kind of like it.

Wearing White After Labor Day

Lila has been on a sock kick lately (no pun intended...ba ha ha).  She's worn the same purple pair for the last two days.  I made her remove them today, so she upped the ante and insisted that she wear two pairs.  She also insisted that she wear shoes.  Unfortunately, none of our shoes fit her with two thick pairs of socks on, so we had to look to some of our too-big hand me downs from the Roses.

Lila got lucky and found some high heeled white patent leather shoes to make this lovely combination.



The best part is that you can tell she feels very beautiful.



Rachel: "Lila, smile!"
Lila: "Smile!"

 

The Last 20 Hours

The last 20 hours have been directly from hell.  The kids are suffering from Grammie withdrawal (Grammie and Grampie visited over the weekend), two out of three kids are sick, and somehow "No!" has become about 70% of the girls' vocabulary.

Assuming that I too will be sick in the near future, I was determined to get all of our clean laundry put away...something that never happens.  We seriously live out of the dryer.  Johnny got mad at Little Guy the other day for barfing all over him, and I said, "Why do you care?" Barf is pretty standard around here after all.  Johnny responded, "This is my last clean pair of pants!" Anyway, after an hour of trying to get Little Guy to take a nap this morning, he finally fell asleep.  At this point the girls were both screaming, so I gave in and put on a movie...on continuous play.



I actually got three full laundry baskets of clothes put away AND put Little Sister's sheets in the wash...something I can't remember doing in the recent past. I think we'll go to Chik-fil-A to celebrate.

Announcement Aftermath

Apparently not everyone in our family is pleased about the new addition.

 

Baby Hutson 2.0 Gender Reveal

 

Aunt Sarah's Shower

My good friend Sarah is getting married in less than a month, and this weekend I had the honor of throwing a little kitchen shower for her!  All of our best friends from high school as well as their moms were able to come, so it was a fun reunion and a great opportunity to give Sarah some much deserved attention.

For lunch I served a cranberry walnut salad, fancy macaroni and cheese, a variety of mini sandwiches and a large fruit salad that my girls have single handedly finished.



For dessert I served lemon and raspberry macarons, peanut butter bars from Janey Currey's recipe, and salted caramel mini cheesecakes.



Everyone was really generous with their gifts, and Sarah was able to complete a lot of items on her registry. 

It was also fun to meet some of Sarah's college friends and hear stories about her caaraaazy college years.

For party favors, I got my friend Sarah from Sarah's Sweet Shoppe to make these adorable KitchenAid cookies.  She always does an amazing job.

Now, I didn't get to participate in all of the bachelorette weekend festivities due to my delicate condition and the fact that I like to go to bed around 9:30, but getting to see all of my high school besties this weekend was wonderful.  We can't wait to see Sarah walk down the aisle in October!

Labor Day Music

Two years ago we went to the Kansas City Symphony Labor Day performance at Theatre in the Park.  Who knew that two years later we would attend again with four children in tow to watch Uncle Mitchell perform with the youth symphony!

Can you see him? Top row, third from the right, red hair, trombone.



The girls loved the music almost as much as they loved the grapes and apples that Granddaddy brought...and the apples that the kid next to us brought that Lila stole and then ate.  

Kids' preferences are funny.  We can already see that Little Sister is going to be a great athlete (or at least greater than anyone with my genes would be).  She loves to throw and catch balls and run really fast.  Lila, on the other hand, loved listening to the music last night.  She was always the first one to clap.  She also liked to keep the beat by waving her hands and dancing with her arms over her head.

It was really cool to hear Mitchell play also.  I mean, who knew that he was good at stuff?