The 4th of July - 2013 Edition

My sweet friend Chelsea moved away last year... I was sad... real sad.  But she moved back to her hometown where her fabulous family and fiance live.  She is getting married later this year (I'm pumped about the wedding!).  So I forgive her for moving away, since those are good reasons - but they don't make me miss her any less!  Anyhoo, one of our favorite things we used to do together is hang out at her family's lakehouse.  I've got tons of awesome memories from the weekends we've spent there, so when she suggested getting together this year with her family and mine I said yes in a heartbeat!  We actually brought our camera and took pics but I have no idea where it is so iPhone pics will have to do.

We took this pic just after telling Milo we were going on a 4 hour car ride - he's thrilled. LOL!  He's got his "What you talkin' about Willis" look on his face.  Priceless!

I would say we spent 99.9% of our time that weekend swimming/floating...

Cady and Chelsea

Jumping off the rope swing...

Matt

Cady (I don't have any of the pics of Gage on the swing but he jumped about a million times!...)  :(

Hanging on the dock...

Milo and Chels

Me trying to keep the two of us cool!

Walking around the neighborhood while Milo enjoyed wagon rides...

And we also spent lots of time playing yard games... Ladder ball, corn hole, washers, frisbee.  We had so much fun with ladder ball that we bought our own set when we got home!

It was a fun, exhausting, sunny packed friend-filled weekend!  We can't wait to do it all over again!

Happy First Birthday Milo! (Ice Cream Party)

We decided on an ice cream themed party for Milo's First Birthday.  And I was determined to have this party on a bit of a budget.  It's hot here in Texas during the summer so ice cream, cold drinks and a kiddie pool were a necessity.  I ordered the invites off zazzle for super cheap.  I had spent over $50 on invites when we had our Christmas party last year so I knew I would be going the cheap route this time... i.e. I ordered 15 invites for under 10 bucks.  I don't have a cute real pic, but here is the crappy computer pic I took to send Matt for approval.  The actual ones turned out adorbs!

********
Quick pic of the ice cream table (click pics to enlarge).  We've used that silver tub for just about every get-together we've had.  It's great for icing drinks, but this time I packed it with ice and loaded it up with a few types of ice cream.  I bought a few toppings like chocolate syrup, fruit and some sprinkles.  Colorful plastic bowls, plastic spoons and yummy cones were pretty much all we needed.  The table cloth is a remnant from a sewing project.  The napkins and bowls were on clearance at Target.  Cady and I made several garlands out of scrapbook paper and string we already had - so cute!

********
The biggest splurge was probably the Nothing Bundt Cakes for an extra special dessert!  We love Nothing Bundt Cakes!  Everything they make is fabulous.  We bought the mini cakes for everyone and a mini bundt for Milo to eat.  We used the same scrapbook paper to cut out circles and put stickers on them with "1" and "Milo".  We then stuck them in the cupcakes with a toothpick.  A mini garland made out of the scrapbook paper topped Milo's smash cake.

********
There were tons of friends that stopped by to say Happy Birthday to Milo.  We weren't sure how he'd react to everyone, but he was great!

********
First Cake!  The excitement from the visitors and sugar rush from the cake caused this kiddo to crash just as the last person was leaving.  He couldn't even stay away to open presents so after a long nap, he woke up to a living room full of gifts to open!

Milo was blessed with clothes and games and toys and water toys.  What a great birthday!

********
And because we weren't spending a ton on this party, we made our own Thank-You cards.  Everyone loved them and I wish we had made a bunch more just to send out in the future.  We took some pics of Milo playing in the pool, used our photo editing program to add some text and then printed them at Kinkos on a light card stock.  We had four different cards.  These are the pics we used, I had them printed and then cut them out of the paper leaving enough to fold behind creating a card (I was able to get 2 cards on each page of light cardstock).  I picked up a box of colorful envelopes for $5 (We only needed like 20 but it came with 50 so we've got left over for the future).

It was a fantastic First Birthday!  And it proves you don't need to spend a ton of money to have a cute kid party.  

Still here!

I was just trying to remember the last time I wrote a blog post... Well, it's been almost 3 months! Yikes!

Milo will be 11 months old this week.  Where has the time gone?  I need to go into supersonic mode and plan his first birthday party!  We do have a theme, but that's about it.  I need to order stuff and and get some good lists going.  Speaking of Milo... What's he been up to lately you might ask?  Lately he's been:

Listening to Daddy play the guitar...

Driving...

Standing...

Eating my laptop cables whenever possible...



Learning to play the drums...



Grocery shopping in his PJs (While his Sis dances in the background)

Yelling at Mama to get out of bed...

Relaxing while watching the ceiling fan...

Eating with a spoon (sorta)...

What's Cady been up to?  She finished up basketball and started track.  Then she finished track and is now finishing up her last month of 7th grade.  She has field trips and concerts and all sorts of fun stuff coming up.  We also signed her up for a week long music came this summer.

Running the 800 meter...

Posing at the start line...



Napping with the dreaded cat...

Being silly with Matt at the Winspear (we were there to see 2Cellos)!

Winspear...

Winspear with Mama!

Getting 2Cellos autographs - the show was fantastic!

So that's a quick synopsis of what's been up.  Gage has been away at school and won't be home until end of May.  He did come home for a few days at Easter but I don't have any pics of that!  Oops.  He is finishing finals this week and heading to Belgium next week for a mission trip.  We are SO proud of him!  I'll be glad when he gets home for the summer so that we can all spend some time together!

A trip, 8 months and some Sci-Fi

How goes it Muggle fools?  I thought I'd check in and share some  insta-happies with you all.  Here's what's been happening since my last post:

*****

Milo has developed an affinity for Little Einsteins.  If you haven't seen the show, well, it's riveting.  He laughs and squeals when it comes on.  We even have it set up to record in our DVR - that's serious.  It's right up there with Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Survivor now. 

*****

I had to go to Kansas City for a week... It was very sad... I had never left Milo for more than a few hours and now I was expected to attend some dumb old corporate conference and leave everyone for 5 days.  It was awful... I cried... a lot.

*****

 But at least Matt and Cady wrote me lots of letters and hid them in my suitcase!  This made me happy!

*****

But then it was unbelievably friggin' cold and that made me sad again...  It snowed and snowed and even got down to zero one day while I was there!  This was the last day I was there... I don't have a screenshot of the 5 days before this!

*****

I did get to eat some yummy food when I was in KC.  I ate out A LOT (every meal...) and charged all that expensive ass food to my corporate card so that made me feel a little better!

*****

When I came home Cady was thrilled to see me... haha!

*****

That weekend was Super Bowl weekend and we decided to have some friends over.  Because Syd smelled like old garbage with rotten fish breath, we decided to give her a spa day... at home.  She doesn't look happy "during" the bath but as you can see she was quite smiley afterwards!

*****

Our friends Vanessa and Woody watched the Super Bowl with us.  They hadn't seen Milo since he was a couple of months old!  They were also one of his first visitors at the hospital when he was born so I needed to make sure I got a pic.

*****

Hmm, what else?  Milo got a new ball...

He can do mad tricks with it... the kid has skills, just saying.

*****

He also got a new book... he can read it all, I promise.

*****

And he also got some new bath toys.  Wait, I'm starting to sense a pattern... Is he spoiled?

No way a face that sweet could ever be spoiled! ;o)

*****

Last weekend we headed out to the Sci-Fi Expo.  It was an amazing display of freaks and geeks - and just plain weirdos!

Milo may or may not have gotten this new inflatable Spider-Man... ok, he's totally spoiled!

Best Part?  Cady and I got to see a real Dalek!  And boo on you if you don't know what a Dalek is.  You can't be in our Doctor Who club.



*****

This boy turned 8 months (not pictured... I turned 38 - wth?!)  He is the cutest Mardi Gras partier everrr.

*****

And Cady played her final b-ball game of the season.  She did great and really enjoyed it but I'm happy she won't be quite as busy anymore!

That's my girl shootin' a free throw.  I'm still working on beating her and Matt at H.O.R.S.E P.I.G. (Horse takes fooooooorrrreeeeevvvveeerrrrr - we have resorted to playing PIG)

P.S. Lent has officially started and we have decided as a family to sit at the table and eat together more often.  We eat together nearly every night but it's generally in the living room while watching whatever is in the DVR.  Our goal is to sit down to dinner at least twice a week - no technology.  It'll be fun, way easier than giving up whiskey and Dr. Pepper like I did that one year; THAT was brutal. 

P.S.S. Today is Valentines Day.  I'm going to call it a success because I not only ate the chocolate that I had purchased for Matt and Cady, I'm also in the process of eating the chocolate that Matt gave me. 

P.S.S.S. Matt and I have started training for a triathlon.  We actually get up at 5AM and work out on some days.  It's tough but we are working hard.  Therefore, I'm going to try and eat less chocolate.