Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Awkward

- my inability lately to correctly write down medical appointment info on my calendar or in my cell phone. Three times now in the past couple of weeks, THREE TIMES, I have messed up and either showed up at the wrong time, on the wrong day, or not at all. (Yesterday I got the right time but was a day late. And a dollar short.)

- losing my wedding ring after putting hand lotion on in the car in town yesterday and back tracking my entire day to search parking lots with my daughter, calling the places I stopped to leave my info in case a kind heart turned it in, only to come home and find it on my bathroom counter. Right where I left it. (In my defense, I would like to chuck my daughter under the bus here and at least partially blame her, because while I honestly couldn't remember if I'd had it on or not, she swore she saw me take it off when I put on the hand lotion. SWORE.)

- Coming to the realization that my nine year old is about to surpass my multiplication math skills and he's not even in the fourth grade yet. Ouch. 

Awesome

- the encouragement I received from the comments on my WIWW blog post yesterday. I can't really describe how much they meant to me. I love my blog friends!

- turning a failed trip to town with Kendall to visit the eye doctor into a shopping excursion and lunch date at the Great Harvest Bread Co. instead. I had so much fun with that girl! I also picked up a couple of cute cropped cardigans at Old Navy, which never would have happened if I'd showed up on the right day for Kendall's eye exam, so all's well that ends well, I say.

- The Ocean Trilogy movie marathon I had myself the past couple of days. Although this could technically qualify under the awkward list since I was caught and majorly eye-rolled at by my husband when he found me still going strong at 2 am in the morning. But gosh, I love those films, so I'm sticking with awesome.

Weekend accomplishments

Memorial Day weekend is officially over and the final countdown till the end of the school year and the beginning of a more godly hour to wake up at in the morning has begun. Only 8 school days left!

I'm not exactly sure what is going to happen in those eight days because I'm pretty sure it's not going to be much school work, as my kids have already brought home several workbooks, saying that they're finished with those subjects for the year, and are all done with homework too. Instead they have things planned like ice cream parties, trips to Oaks Park amusement center, a school-wide fair day, and the likes, which leads me to believe school could be out now if those pesky state-mandated official number of required school days per year weren't in the way. Psshh.

But we had a nice little taste of what summer will feel like over our 3-day weekend and enjoyed ourselves immensely, spending most of it outdoors, either down at the river at our place on Saturday, across the river at our friend's open house BBQ on Sunday, or at my parents enjoying a family and friends BBQ on Monday. 

Where I had to take this picture of the cupcakes my sister made because you will just die at the cuteness. 

How adorable are they?!! 

We were celebrating my nephew's 2nd birthday and enjoyed these instead of a birthday cake. Which is something I think every mother throwing a kids party should consider doing because I can tell you from experience that it's a lot easier to hand out cupcakes then slice up and serve a cake with 20 children hovering around you asking if they can please have that one particular piece right there with the extra candy on it? 

But back to the river.

Russell was soooo excited to have a free day to take his chainsaw and weed-eater down to continue clearing up our property back there and packed up the kids bright and early Saturday morning to head off. I, on the other hand, enjoyed myself a leisurely morning of peace and quiet before joining them mid-morning when the weather had warmed to more than 60 degrees, and we ate a picnic lunch and played until mid-afternoon. 

And by played, I mean this. Russ cleared brush,

the boys made forts,

 and Kendall and I got our READING ON. 

Oh, and critter catching happened too. 

Hello, froggy. Too bad I didn't have my macro setting turned on to get your face more clearly.

And too bad I didn't take any other pictures from the weekend. Because besides all the playing we did, a lot got accomplished, including a large amount of tractor work on our property on my husband's part and a lot of treat making, movie watching and napping on mine.

Nothing like setting yourself some weekend goals and getting 'em done.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends as well :)

InstaSaturday... again

In order to blog about your cell phone pics of the week, it is important to not leave your cell phone behind after you've worked out at a friend's, and then leave it there all day. 

Just a tip.

Now that we've been reunited, here's what went on this week!

 I became a pro at homemade iced coffees and have been drinking one almost daily.

 Blake played in the bathroom sink with his toys for two solid hours - imagination at work! He has been doing this for at least a year now and it's still his favorite activity of choice. 

Kendall and Cooper built a pretty cool Lego houseboat together. And didn't kill each other.

 The temperature plummeted and we fired up the wood stove again. Get it? Fired... up...

 I watched it rain out the window for 3 days straight.

 My favorite summer show started up again - yea!

And Russ and I went out on a date night last night - double yea! Red Robin, coffee and Ben & Jerry's ice cream at the mall, and a movie. Easy, fun, and not too spendy since we'll be celebrating our wedding anniversary in only two weeks.

Now we're headed down to the river out back for a day of play. Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

I'm linking up here

A Pinspired baby shower

My sister Kelly and I threw a baby shower this week for our friend Annie and basically stole every. single. idea we used from Pinterest.

Let's take a little tour, shall we? 

Here comes trouble sign - stolen copied right off Pinterest thanks to my sister's mad photoshop and printmaster skills. The shower invites matched. 

Balloon entry - pinspired.

Flag banners (also above the dining room window and in the living room) - pinspired.

Veggie cups with ranch on the right - pinspired. (Cute menu made and framed by Kelly)

Mini-fruit pizza bar - pinspired. (And total hit! Pilsbury refrigerated cookie dough + chopped up fruit + a simple frosting of marshmallow cream & cream cheese = easiest dessert ever.)

Lime & yellow flower arrangement - pinspired.

Clothesline with onesies to decorate - pinspired. (And seen at another shower I went to recently... I immediately loved the idea of doing this instead of playing the more traditional shower games.)

This was tons of fun! We had pre-made shapes to trace (all pinspired) but several ladies got creative and made up their own design (see below). With double sided fusing it was as simple as picking your fabric, tracing and cutting the shape and quickly ironing it on the onesie on the ironing board set up in the corner.

Custom BBQ man made by our friend Tracy, in honor of Annie's husband who runs his own BBQ catering business.

Unique onesies for baby Timothy! (Please note the bottom center design. Kendall traced the cute star and made her own shooting star trail coming out of it. It was adorable. Until she decided, in classic 10-year-old girl style, that it needed more. Hence the "interesting" addition of a large piece of  fabric with a swaddled baby on top of it!)

The happy mama :)

And some of the lovely ladies present. 

Hosts - I'm liking how I look extra tall with my wedge booties next to Kelly's bare feet.

It was a fun night! We were really pleased with how everything turned out, even though we didn't go to great lengths decorating-wise and kept it pretty simple. I love simple! 

and I love Pinterest :)

I enjoy a little glue gun action

Please excuse the lateness of my blogging this morning. I am in a Nyquil induced fog and among other things, can't be trusted to play Draw Something with any amount of accuracy or skill at this moment. Sad.

I also just made 36 feet of this...

And am in the middle of baking my fourth batch of sugar cookies for the day.

That's right... a baby shower is in the works, and it's going to be awesome! Stuffy head cold and all.

Be prepared for buckets of pictures in the near future ;)

Some things that happened over the weekend

Between yard work, shopping with my sister, a niece's birthday party, church, Sunday lunch at the in-laws, and two kid sleepovers, it was a pretty full weekend. Here's a few things of note that happened in between...

- I went to a garage sale and bought myself some new-in-the-box bumpits. Of bumpit fame.

They were only a .25 cents, so I thought what can it hurt to try, right? Except so far I've tried and failed. But given that I normally spend 5 minutes or less styling my hair, the failure can only be attributed to lack of trying for longer than 5 minutes. I will keep you updated if I achieve bumpit success.

- I watched the movie The Grey with my husband. Yes, the grisly killer wolf movie with Liam Neeson that I'd heard nothing good about. And I'll tell you, there is nothing good to tell. Don't watch it. And don't start watching it with the idea that you'll just go to bed if it's too scary, because while it WILL be too scary, you won't be able to make yourself leave until you find out if anybody is going to make it out alive, and all you'll end up with is the urge to smack the film's writers on the head, and another animal to add to your "deathly afraid of" list. (Mine includes cougars and bears. And now wolves.)

- I made these donuts with Kendall and her friend, Molly.

Ingredients: refrigerated biscuits, vegetable oil, and sugar.

It was actually my first foray into the world of deep-frying, and even easier than I expected. (Obviously, seeing as that really all I did was supervise.) They were yummy too! Which is how I ended up sneaking almost all of the donut holes while the girls weren't looking. Shhhh ;)

So, with the exception of my massive bout of ill-judgment in the movie-watching department, another fun weekend went down in the books. Happy Monday!

Insta...Saturday

(Oops, Friday got away from me.)

Here's what we've been up to the past week, as told by my cell phone.

Alright, this was from the week before last but I forgot to add it last Friday... our final bible study of the school year, enjoyed down at the river. Beautiful setting, no?

My Mother's Day weekend at the beach. Gorgeous weather, candy store, ice cream stop, and relaxing on a blanket in the sun when I got home. 

Cooper, in the middle of telling me 1000 jokes. He likes to memorize them and then tell as many as he can really fast before you get tired and say you've had enough. My fake laugh has had LOTS of practice ;)

Kendall and her friend Katie being ninjas. Which I was just fine with until they locked themselves in the boys bedroom, popped out the window screen, and escaped ninja style, leaving a locked door behind with no one to open it!

Ninjas! I tell ya....

Blake's first framed artwork. A basketball hoop and basketballs. Right now it is being proudly displayed in the middle of our dining room table.

And now... scenes from the garden.

 My lilac bush and one of my colorful flower gardens. Oh, they make me happy!

Aaaannnd, evidence that I can NOT be trusted to move old stone garden fixtures.

On the left we have what was once my lovely stone bench, now legless and footless, and on the right we have my birdbath, which I was just trying to move a couple of feet! Darn crumbly concrete...

I'm gardening some more and hitting a few garage sales today, hope you're enjoying your weekends!
Jodi

Linking with Jeannett here:

Here, kitty kitty...

At Cooper's baseball game the other day Blake was introduced to baby kittens for the first time in his life.

"Owwww! It's hurting me!"

As you can tell, it was an instant love connection.

Sometimes I'm irrational

I have about 62 reasons why I want to be done having kids.

VALID reasons.

The unfortunate thing about being a woman is that sometimes you can look at a picture like this...

and forget all those reasons in a single second.

Awwwwwww! Cutie patootie sweetheart!

Dang nostalgia for causing me to look through old photos on my computer!

P.S. this little confession doesn't need to get to my husband's ears. He only pesters me on a WEEKLY basis for one more baby and doesn't need any more fodder! 

'twas a happy Mother's day

Actually it was a happy Mother's day weekend, as I spent it at the coast with some of my very favorite mothers!

We were at our church's annual ladies retreat and our conference center sat right on the beach. In between sessions and dining and shopping we spent plenty of time down there (I even got up at 7 am Saturday morning for an hour long walk/pretend-run. This was unprecedented behavior, people!)

 My roomies (minus friend Andrea who was still out shopping): Diana, Kelly, myself, Tricia, Sairaina, & Jana.

This was one FUN group of ladies!

 My sister Kelly and I.

 My two sisters-in-law Cara and Tricia.

Kelly and I with Mum (who leaves in one month for her 3-month-long hike of the Pacific Crest Trail... waaaaaah!)

Tricia, Cara and I with my mother-in-law, Teri (Cara's mom).

Pretty awesome that I got to be with so many of the wonderful ladies in my family, huh?

Like I said, I had a GREAT time.

Then I came home to a clean house and a very-happy-to-see-me family who presented me with this:

And my Mother's Day was complete.

I heart my family.