Mom duty

So I was all set to sit down and write a blog post about the five days my husband was gone last week and how I learned that just when I thought having to haul in my own firewood every day was the worst thing about his absence I discovered that it was in fact sleeping with my 11-year-old daughter who literally moves like Jagger in her sleep, when I peeked in at the new amphibian habitat (pond included) that my oldest son created today for the salamander he found in the woods and brought home, and saw that the thing is FOR SURE dead in there.

Gross.

Mom duty trumps blogging once again. Operation "dispose of dead salamander and destroy all evidence" is now in progress. Wish me luck.

Monday Confessional

PURCHASED.

That's right. Advance tickets.

All day Twilight movie marathon. 

AND the Breaking Dawn part 2 premiere. 

On opening night. 

With 200 screaming teenage girls.

For the measly cost of $15.00 and all of my pride. 

Sometimes a girl just gets talked into doing crazy things by their friends. Or in this case, friend, who shall remain nameless but who's initials begin with MY BEST FRIEND JANA.

(Or perhaps it went more along the lines of casually being asked if I wanted to go and immediately responding, "oh my gosh YES. I would LOVE TO!", it's hard to remember...)

InstaFriday

Oh, Instagram. You make all my sad cell phone pictures look just a little bit prettier, and I love you so!

 My painted pumpkin is still looking good! It will be so sad to throw it away when it starts to go bad.

Our post office is awesome. They play classic cartoons in the lobby for kids to watch while parents do their business. Russ and I have been selling some stuff on ebay for a friend so I've been a frequent flyer here lately!

 Cheering on my niece's varsity volleyball team. They are off to districts and so fun to watch!

Peanut butter cookies ready to go in the oven. I don't know what it is about Fall... I want to bake all the time!

Kendall woke up early last weekend to surprise Russ and I with breakfast in bed, just because. She scrambled eggs with ham & cheese and served it on toast with a yogurt side... so thoughtful and actually quite delicious! LOVE that girl!

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your fabric hair! We switched out Cooper's dresser so his old one was in the living room for an afternoon. It didn't take long for it to be transformed into a tall tower that Rapunzel needed to be rescued from.

Unfortunately, neither of her brothers were very interested in stopping their lego play to be her knight in shining armor so Rapunzel sat up there for quite a while.

The brown boot brigade! My friends Cassi, Nicole, and I all showed up to prayer group in our brown boots so we had to snap a pic.

It's a girl thing.

 A little Pad Thai lunch date with the Blakester while out running errands. I'm going to miss his company when he starts school next year!

Russ and my brother in law, Dave, are in Eastern Oregon on a hunting trip this week so Kelly and I are temporary members of the hunting widows club. We had ourselves a little dinner party last night, including sparkling cider and creamy lemon squares for dessert, it was fabulous!

I should be clear that my sister cooked dinner. I make toast when my hubby's out of town.

 Miley anxiously watching out the car window for her "kids" to get out of school. She is such a great family dog.

And that's it! Looking forward to the return of my handsome husband this weekend and probably a bit
more baking! Happy weekend!

 

Weekend partying ( the good kind)

So yesterday was an overshare... aaawkward! 

Note to self: don't write Monday Confessionals at almost midnight when you're mind isn't fully in the game. You will not self-edit properly!

Today I'm keeping it clean and pretty: party pictures! And not just any party pictures... fancy cake and anniversary dinner party pictures!

First up is the baby shower I attended Saturday afternoon. My cousin Dawson and his wife Anna had their first child 6 weeks ago, and as they live out of town, this was the first time a lot of the extended family got to meet sweet baby Reagan. It was a fun family mini-reunion!

I didn't take my regular camera along, but I had to whip out the cell phone when I saw the amazing cake (and mini-cakes!):

It was made by a family friend and her teen daughter and I'm thinking they need to go into business. I just died over the ruffles on the base layer of the main cake!!

That's my cousin Dawson above on the right, with baby Reagan - who's looking like she wasn't too sure what she thought of me. I promise you, I didn't sneeze AT ALL around her!

And this is Anna, Reagan's gorgeous mama. (In the middle... that's my sister on the right in the fabulous knitted scarf. Don't be confused because she's trying to steal the baby.) Because we don't get to see Dawson and Anna (and some of the other shower guests) very often it was an extra special time. I love family! (Oh and the cake was gooood.)

Know what else I love? Grown-up parties with no kids! Wheeeeee!!! That's what happened Saturday evening when we attended a special celebration dinner for our dear friends, Doug and Sarah, who renewed their vows for their 20th wedding anniversary.

 Awww, aren't they the CUTEST? I won't lie, I shed a little tear!

And THIS was the beautiful dinner decor:

Sarah did it herself, fancying up the pond house on the back of their family farm for the occasion.

We were even served a three course meal by a catering staff! It was delicious... just look at me, I was caught licking my fingers in this shot, it was that good! (You'll have to excuse my bad manners, how did I know there would be photographic evidence?)

It was a fun date night for Russ and I... surrounded by friends, most who have been happily married 10+ years and some plenty more, seeing what we have to look forward to ourselves (13 and counting!). Go, marriage!

Monday Confessional

With a head cold comes phlegm. It's a fact.

A disgustingly gross, disgusting fact.

So Friday afternoon I was still sneezing after a week-long cold and fully aware of potential phlegm issues when a friend walked over to chat through my car window after I pulled into the school parking lot to pick up my kids. I envisioned the absolute worst, a surprise sneeze resulting in a slimy projectile hitting my front windshield for all to see.

("All" being the friend talking to me, because really it doesn't matter if it's an audience of 1 or 100, the desire to DIE ON THE SPOT would be the same.)

Luckily this did not occur. (The projectile part. The sneezing happened twice.)

Great story so far, right? I can see you all... "why is she even writing about this subject in the first place? Because like she already mentioned, GROSS".

I'm sorry. It's just that it seemed a little ironic that later that evening when my family took a meal over to another friend's house, I didn't think about the potential hazards at all... and then proceeded to sneeze up an indecently large specimen right onto my daughter's hand in the middle of dinner! And I'll tell you something: an eleven-year-old handles this kind of situation neither graciously nor quietly.

WHY DO THESE THINGS HAPPEN TO ME???

Pumpkin pinterest party

Remember the pinterest party I blogged about a while back? With all the amazing food?

Well this month's pinterest party was all about painting pumpkins. And obviously it was a popular idea because 31 ladies showed up to get their painting on. It was a pumpkin MAD HOUSE!

Besides paints and brushes there were stencils and stamps, lace and ribbons, glitter, metallic rubs, and hot glue guns. And there was STILL amazing food :)

My sister and I went for the argyle/chevron look so popular on pinterest right now and we were pretty happy with how they turned out - us being amateur painters and all.

(As apposed to our non-amateur painter friend, Ellie, who created this masterpiece!)

Shay and Cindy co-hosted again. They are a fabulous team who even went door to door in their neighborhood putting invites on doors. I think 3 or 4 neighbors came! Go team Shady!

(Oh yes, I came up with that all on my own!)

Check out the owl on the left. ADORABLE! There were so many cute finished looks but because mine took so long to finish (save time and buy a white pumpkin, people!) I missed getting pictures of a lot of them. I was too busy blow drying my pumpkin in the kitchen.

Seriously, don't be like me!

It was really fun getting a little crafty with girlfriends. Looking forward to the next party!

Costumes, rain, and other weekend doings.

So to update you on the praying mantis situation, no it did not escape in the house. It escaped back into the yard where it belonged, with a little help from yours truly, while no one else was home.

It had to be done.

Interestingly enough, not a single child has noticed it's disappearance yet and it's been two and a half days.

And that's why I know what I'm doing around here.

In other news, the rain has finally come to our part of the Northwest, a lot of it, (the forecast for today was, and I quote: "a.m. showers and then rain". Ha!), and we enjoyed a weekend of watching football and the BBC's Sherlock in front of the fire while eating homemade chicken and dumpling soup and berry crisp. Well that was the fun part of the weekend at least.

There was also firewood cutting, sweeping wet leaves off my wood floors twenty times a day because we have 42 billion on our lawn right now and no one in my family seems to notice that they're bringing half of them inside every time they enter (we even managed to track a couple into church yesterday morning!), and the painful two hours I spent directing my children while helping them (read: making them) clean sweep their rooms because all of a sudden I just couldn't stand it anymore.

Does yucky weather do that to anybody else?

Anyway. The BEST part of the weekend was helping Kendall and her friend Hannah get ready for a costume birthday party they were invited to on Saturday night. I think I had even more fun than they did... I mean, c'mon, I got to do hair AND makeup!

The look they were aiming for was Pippi Longstockings and "80's punk girl". As interpreted by two 11 year olds.

(The girls colored their hair with wet chalk pastels. Very messy to apply but also very temporary... a key point.)

I can tell you that there is nothing in the world giddier than an eleven year old girl in makeup and neon hair, except for a mother who enjoyed herself way too much helping them achieve that look.

Seriously, look out world. I have the makings for a show-worthy stage mother.

InstaFriday

Oh look, it's 4:10 pm and I'm just sitting down to blog. I've been up to my armpits in small children and making grape juice all day... a combination I will admit was not very well thought out. Alls well that ends well though, my ending being 8 large jars of grape juice!

Here's the proof, along with a few other things from the week taken on my cell cam.

Getting crafty at last weekend's Scrap Around the Clock. The page I'm holding was one half of the ONLY double page layout I did all weekend. Running a scrapbooking event doth not a scrapbooker make! (I still love it though :)

 Cute fella worshipping at church last Sunday.

Cooper caught this guy outside and he is now temporarily a member of our household. Probably against my better judgement.

Did I ever tell you about the time my kids caught a tree frog and brought it inside to live, only to lose it in Kendall's bedroom? And we didn't find it till the next day?

Good times.

A successful "quiet rest time" in bed instead of napping. Successful because Blake actually stayed quiet and didn't get out of bed until I came and got him an hour and a half later!

 Picking grapes off one of our arbors.

 Full bucket!

 Getting started...

And... done!

This was just from one bucket picked in about half an hour. Might just do some more tomorrow :)

Happy weekend!

Two boys sleeping

The way my two boys (here nicknamed Bert & Ernie) sleep says a lot about their personalities:

Oh, Bert.
So organized. So neat. So methodical.
Notice the perfectly lined up stuffed animals.
Straighten the comforter when you get up and you're good to go!

Now take Ernie on the other hand!
Disaster. Tornado. Mess.
Comforter, pillows, and who knows what else all on the floor.
Huddle up in a ball if you want to stay warm under that one twisted blanket!

Oh, Bert & Ernie, you boys crack me up even when you sleep.

Scrap Around the Clock recap

Our Fall 2012 Scrap Around the Clock was our biggest yet. 58 attendees, including 15 first timers.

Word just keeps spreading!

It went soooo well too, if you don't include the part where I took off half my big toe nail carting in two cases of water. And don't even ask me how I managed to do that... I'll just say it took a lot of talent considering I was wearing socks and tennis shoes.

Our awesome crew consists of (left to right): Annie, Kelly, Linley, myself, Karyn, & Gaylen. We have a lot of fun together and make a good team.

We also have the best caterers IN THE STATE - Angey & Amy (pictured here with my mother) who did another over-the-top amazing job.

My personal favorite was the individual banoffee pie cups. Banana & homemade toffee sauce? I'll take three please.

And our favorite vendors all returned, including the darling Sarah of sariejune. I just can't keep away from her store... which is why I now have 3 of her necklaces, 2 flower pins, a dog leash, 3 totes, and about 4 scarves!

 Getting to hang out the whole time with my sister and Mum was just the icing on the cake.

A cake that takes me about 48 hours to fully recover from. Phew am I tired afterwards! I'm already looking forward to our next event in April 2013 though :)