Best Buds

When I first became a mommy, I was entered unchartered waters by myself. Non of our friends from high school or college had kids yet, or really even had plans of kids anytime in the near future. So I was the loan man on the totem pole. Thankfully, I have an amazing sis-in-law who already had a kiddo and stayed home too. She was nice enough to let me come over for "playdates" and to invite me over when she had playdates with her friends:) So thankful for that.....otherwise, mommyhood would have been very lonely for a while! That being said, in the last almost three years, I have met some amazing women and mommies who have become some of my dearest friends and biggest support system. Liz is one of those women. Our boys are only a week and a half apart. We met at MAPS at church when our boys were just 4 and 6 weeks old. We were in the same group and already had so much in common with our little bundles:) I think we were both just praying that first meeting that the boys didn't wake up and scream and disturb everyone else, lol. Regardless, that was the beginning of a great friendship (well I can only really speak for myself here:)).....for both parties involved....us, and the boys. Liz has become one of my dearest friends over the last three years, and these two boys are the best of buds. Whenever I tell Eli he gets to go play with his friends he is instantly saying, "I see Grey....I love Grey." It just melts my mommy heart to see the friendship of these two boys. Since they are the same age, they are always in the same class at church, and it's the reason Eli gets excited to go. He talks about his "best bud" all the time, and is so bummed when it's time to go home from playing with him. So much fun to see this little relationship grow and change! And I know that I'm very thankful for the friendship I've found in Grey's mommy, and thankful that our boys just happen to like each other so much (may have only been slightly forced when they were babies and Liz and I made the boys play together, lol).

This is the best picture I could get of them at the zoo together a couple of weeks ago....they are 2 1/2, I considered this a success!
And because she's just so darn cute that I couldn't leave her out of the post to, here's a picture of Kamdyn enjoying some time to roam at the Tiger exhibit. This girl is all drama, and about as much drama as I can handle, but she sure is adorable:)

The sweetest table ever!

I have been wanting to paint Eli's train table in his room since the day it was built (about a year and a half ago!). I always figured I'd get on it and make the top of it super cute like train tables you can by, with trees and bridges, that kind of stuff. More time passed and I figured I'd just end up spray painting it or something. I at least wanted to make it one color and get rid of the plain plywood look. There's nothing wrong with it being plain, it serves it's purpose, and Eli never really seemed to care, but it just wasn't very fun looking or pretty (by mommy's standards).

So when I saw my dear friend, Amy's (you should really scroll through and check her desk out....it's amazing!), old desk re-do, I was in love. I decided that I needed that kind of makeover on Eli's table and asked if she'd help me paint it. Thankfully she agreed, because if it had been up to me to get it going and done, it never would have happened:) The idea of starting it kind of overwhelmed me, but I sure wanted it painted. So she and her little boy came over last week so the kids could play and we could paint. We somehow actually managed to get quite a bit accomplished, which was pretty amazing because my two kiddos were kind of being nightmares! Kamdyn only wanted me to hold her and Eli was having a VERY hard time sharing his toys with Griffin and was sent to his room in tears many many times. I didn't think we'd ever get anything done! But, it's amazing how much you can finish in a short amount of time with two people.

This project still isn't done, but it's done enough for my liking for right now. I told Amy it was like the never ending project:) Everytime I get done with one thing, there's another little detailing issue I have to work on. I still want to do a little more cleaning up and touching up and add some "water creatures" to the water on the top. Maybe next week:) After 2 days of this work, I was ready for a break! Enough of my rambling about the table, I'll get to the pictures of the "finished" product.

Table before paint: isn't it beautiful. My personal favorite touches are the juice and drink stains on it:) It definitely needed a little TLC and a coat of paint!
In progress....where we left it when Amy and Griffin had to leave for the afternoon. Not too shabby and looking sooooo much better all ready. The zebra side is my absolute favorite (wish I could say I did that part, but I can't take any credit, that was all Amy's brilliance)

Shot of the other side half-way finished
Finished (for now) product. I painted part of the top with chalkboard paint. This is the first time I have ever used this stuff and let me just say it is SO cool. I want to put some of this somewhere in the basement when it's finished (maybe in the office/scrapbook room) for the kids to write on. I wasn't ever really sure it worked very well, but it does. It dries super fast too which is very nice/



There you have it.....like I said, I still have some more I want to do on it, but for now, I'm satisfied (at least for another week or so). It is a drastic improvement from where it came from. Give it a little more time though and the perfectionist in me is going to want to see it all finalized and cleaned up:). Thanks for the help Amy, couldn't have done it without you!!!

Happy Easter!

Hope you all had a great Easter Sunday. We had a great day (other than Eli actually making himself sick from not eating any lunch and sneaking a few too many eggs). Mark and Mary invited all of us, including both Erin and my families (proper grammer??), for lunch. It was delicious as always and the kids had fun running around like crazy. Eli can't get enough of his cousins! Kamdyn had had her fill of them:), but then again, that girl is just WAY too sensitive and likes to have her own personal space. I have a bazillion pictures to share, and maybe some day I will share them with you (as it is, it's a miracle I even got 2 uploaded to here.....blogger was being very slow and picky!). Eli had a blast doing the egg hunt and cleaned up very nicely. Easter is getting almost as bad as Halloween! They got so many jelly beans....I sent Brian to school with a very nice "Easter care package" to share in the teacher's lounge:) I don't want all those jelly beans and m&m's sitting around our house! For now, here a few pictures of the day....

Yes, this is probably the best picture I got of the two of them. Eli refuses to look at the camera, EVER (wonder where he got that from:)) Kamdyn is getting to be that way too. Way to many other interesting things to look at than mom and her crazy camera! I was just happy to get them sitting by each other. At first, Eli would have nothing to do with it. All I wanted was one decent picture....guess I will have to settle....we were lucky to get Eli to put his tie on.
Cousin picture: May not be the best one I have, but it is sure funny. Quite the mess getting these five crazies to pose for a picture. Kamdyn was raving mad because Wesley was hugging her:) See what I mean about personal space?! At least Eli was looking at the camera this time....

One Petite Little Munchkin

I know I've said it before, and this probably won't be the last time, but Kamdyn is one petite little girl. I know she's tiny, but it is always confirmed when she goes for her well-baby checks. I mean seriously, she's 15 months old, and can still easily fit into 3-6 month clothes. Most of her "warmer weather" clothing right now is 6 or 9 month stuff. Crazy! Eli was in 12-18 month stuff before he was even 1. So it's so weird to have a kiddo on the other end of the spectrum. Glad our petite one is the girl:) If it was the other way around, Kamdyn may be beating her older brother up! We went for Kamdyn's 15 month check last week. She had to get three shots which she was less than pleased about. I think getting two is bad enough, but three is just torture. She was so ticked off. I'm thankful that kids don't remember much of their childhood because they are sure poked and picked on an awful lot. As usual for her, she measured in little:)

Height: 27 1/4 inch (3rd percentile)

Weight: 18 lbs 9 oz (3rd percentile)

Head Circumference: Don't remember what this was (too lazy to look @the sheet downstairs) but I know it was in the 50th percentile. Her head is the biggest part of her!

She may be later, but she's a crazy little girl. Full of energy and lots of drama. So much different from her brother (however, he is plenty dramatic for me sometimes!) Good thing she's so cute and I just love her so darn much:)

It's a.......

For those friends and family who haven't heard yet.....we are having another little boy.

We got to find out on Wednesday. Brian, and a lot of others, were guessing I was having a girl. Brian was really hoping he'd be right:) Mainly because he guessed right with both Eli and Kamdyn and he was hoping to have a perfect record....instead he had to settle for a 66% success rate in guessing the gender of our kids. Still impressive. Pretty sure I was wrong with both Eli and Kamdyn and never really committed to a guess this time. We are beyond thrilled. While a girl would have been fun to even out the numbers in the family, little boys are so much fun. Besides, Brian is happy because now his little princess has a brother on either side of her for protection:) Not real sure how she's going to like having two brothers and her sandwiched in the middle, but mommy and daddy are pretty pleased about it! Besides that, we will save a lot of money with a boy. While I enjoy boys clothes, it's so much easier for me to walk away from! Besides that, I have three tubs of clothes from Eli that will be set in the perfect season for passing on. Score!

Truly, we are just thankful for a healthy baby. Our sonogram technician said that he won the award for the most active baby she had had. He was all over the place. Every time she'd try to get a good picture of him, he'd move. It was funny because we've never really had any problem finding out what we were having. I always thought it would be fun to not find out this time (this is our last one people!) because we already have a boy and a girl. But when I got the due date of August, I decided that I didn't think I could be patient. I wanted to know if we would have absolutely everything we needed (our case with a boy because Eli was an August baby too) or get some stuff for a girl since Kamdyn was a winter baby. Besides, I love cleaning out stuff, and I just wanted to get rid of the tubs of baby clothes we didn't need. So, once we decided we wanted to find out, I kept thinking that this would be the kid that would be stubborn and have their legs crossed and make it impossible to see. When we told the sono technician we wanted to know, she started looking. But she couldn't see anything at first because the cord was between his legs. I'm thinking, "great, this will be the kid we are forced to wait:)" She was eventually able to work around it enough to see that we did indeed have a little boy. Pretty exciting stuff! Now we just get to wait around to meet him. I can't wait! It will be so fun to see if he is a spitting image of his daddy and brother, more of a mix of both Brian and I, or more favoring of me like Kamdyn. And you all only have 20 more weeks to wait to find out his name:)

PS. Sorry about the crummy pics....I'm far to lazy to edit anything in photoshop to make them easier to see:)
Part of what you are seeing here is the cord, that's why he looks so crazy:)

A New Wreath

Doesn't my creativity when it comes to blog post titles astound you all?! I always try hard to come up with fun, catchy titles for all of my posts, but usually all I can come up with is the obvious (and boring:)). The same is true for my scrapbook pages. I will sit and try to think of fun titles for my pages, and all that ever comes to me is just the obvious...i.e. a trip to the zoo. Lame I know. But unless there is a website or blog out there that gives you titles for every event known out there, my titles are probably not going to get any more creative or catchy. I know you all think I'm so creative, but truthfully, I just steal my creativity from others who truly are creative and copy. Give it my own little twist. I'm just a good crafter:).

Anyhoo, I'm off on a tangent. Let's get to what this post is really about. I made my first (for us and our house) wreath this week. I've seen so many cute wreath ideas out there lately and have been wanting to do one for us for a long time. I love the idea of having a wreath for every season or holiday, but really I'm way too lazy to make or buy that many different wreaths. So really, this one I made will probably be up year round. I might try to add something different to it for each season, but more than likely, this one will stay up until I get sick of it or make a new one. Good thing I'm totally in love with the one I made right now. Maybe that means I will be happy to have it stick around for a very long time. I was pretty proud of myself and the outcome....it was my first attempt at making rosettes (I've been wanting to do this forever too and have just never gotten around to it). My friend, Mindy, always makes these super cute wreaths to sell and she inspired me. So I finally go some stuff and got to work. Here's the finished product....and probably what you will see hanging on our door for years to come:)

PS. This was really fun and easy to make, so if anyone needs a fun gift idea for a present or something, let me know and I'd be happy to make you one:)

From the mouth of babes

Having kids is very entertaining, for a number of reasons. The older Eli gets, the more and more he says. He is actually a very verbal and a great talker for 2 1/2. It's just that most of time that many of you see him, he is surrounded by his cousins, and ALL of them are much louder and more outspoken than him. But the things he says and does around us are halarious, and he just cracks us up. It's not always what he's saying, it's just how he says certain things that is funny. So I thought I'd put a few of the funny things he says for all of you (and for my memory so someday I can look back at this list!)

A couple of weeks ago Eli was asking Brian to build him a new train track (FYI, B is always the one who has to build new tracks. I tell him this is his fault:) He started building really nice, big, elaborate tracks a long time ago, so Eli very quickly learned to favor daddy's tracks over mommy's very fast non-elaborate ones). I told Eli if he wanted a new track, I was going to build one. But nevertheless, when we got home, Eli wanted daddy to do it.

E: "daddy, I want new track."

B: "Eli, mommy's going to build you a new track."

E: " Oh come on dad, give me a break! You do it!"

Seriously, where do kids get this stuff. Give me a break isn't even a phrase Brian or I use much around here. Too funny:)

Whenever Kamdyn is crying Eli comes up to me and says, "Mommy? Do?"

I can never quite figure out if he's asking me what I did to his sister, or what she did to herself.

Yesterday Eli was lying on top of Kamdyn. She was not enjoying this game nearly as much as he was and was crying because she wanted him off. As I come around the corner...

K: "Eli, stop laying on your sister. She doesn't like it, that's why she's crying."

E: "No mommy, I lay on sissy!"

(Too bad Kamdyn didn't have a say in this fun little game! It's tough being the little one sometimes)

One of Eli's favorite songs by far is Isty Bisty Spider. I have to say though, I think his rendition is my favorite...

E: "Bisty spider, watch (his way of of saying washed) ew out! Came sun, all the rain. Bisty spider, watch ew out! ".....over and over and over again. The best part about this song when he sings himself is that he is cracking up the whole time, and he usually has is sister going too.

Eli is a crazy boy (again, I know some of you doubt this because he is so calm and serious when you see him. I just gotta say, it's not his true personality around home:)) He is always running around like a maniac. I couple of weeks ago he was running circles around his train table. First he hit his leg.

E: "Ouch mommy, I hurt knee."

K: "I'm sorry babe, go slower next time."

30 seconds later....he hits his foot on the table

E: Ouch mommy, I hurt sock." :)

Whenever he hurts himself, he just comes to me for a kiss and says," I hurt me." Pretty cute. Even funnier is when he gets onto Jake for hurting him...."ouch Jake, hurt me!" (usually said with a very serious voice)

Funny stuff. I can't wait to see what else he comes up with next. And before I know it, Kamdyn will be there saying goofy things right along with her brother. At this point in her life, a few words would be fabulous:) I forget how hard it is communicating with a one year old. It's hard enough with a two year old, but man, at least he can kind of put a complete sentence together (however, his two year old sentences would hardly help him pass an english class.)