April 6 – Hubby’s birthday
April 8 – Dad’s birthday
April 12 – Hubby and I’s anniversary
April 13 – My birthday
April 14 – Zoey’s birthday

So, let’s add that up… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… 5 “Celebration dinners.” Add in a birthday party, usually the weekend after Zoey’s birthday… And by May 1st, our entire family has gained 10 pounds and we are down for the count! But hey, we get it all out of the way and the rest of the year is a breeze. Except that, by mid summer, we are all jonesing for some birthday cake!

So every year, since Zoey’s first birthday, I’ve had a ton of fun designing her birthday invitations. I got the idea to design a 4×6 invitation and print it on photo paper, kind of similar to what you would get if you ordered specially made invites online. So cute, so fun and so easy. I love it.. I feel like I am CREATING something and it’s something my girls will always have to look back on.

This year Zoey is having a Hello Kitty themed birthday party. Because she loves and adores Hello Kitty? Nope! Because it was on clearance ;) Mama is being thrifty and taking avantage of the fact that she has a 3 year old who doesn’t really care what kind of themed party she is having. When Zoey sees the Hello Kitty stuff, she’ll be SO excited.

And the last two years, just for fun:

Now, I pretty much followed the recipe to a T on the link above. I made 8 batches, since I had 8 different tubes of food coloring. To make the process quicker, I went ahead and measured out the dry ingredients into small cups ahead of time. 8 of them. It took a while but it made the actual cooking go by a LOT quicker.

The only thing I would recommend about doing this, especially if it is the first time you try making your own Playdough, cook it long enough before removing it from the pan! How do you know when it has been long enough? When it is no longer STICKY! And is getting tough. The blue was the first one out of the pan for me and I had to put it back in the pan and heat it back up when I was done with all the other colors. I learned my lesson! Whenever I would knead the blue, it would leave blue dough on my hands… Which basically means it is NOT done. It was also a LOT softer than the other colors. After eating it up again, it thickened and became perfect!

I stored individual colors in plastic baggies and put all of those in an airtight plastic container. It’s a LOT of dough, so I only give Zoey a few small balls at a time, to avoid her mixing all of the colors together since she is still young.

I feel SO proud that I actually did a homemade craft. I am a CRAZY AWESOME crafter IN MY HEAD, which never translates well to real life. But I imagine doing all of these amazing crafty, learny, homemadey things, they just never come to fruition.

“Good job Daddy! Wow! A triceratops!” (It was not a triceratops, it was a t-rex)

Well, I AM A CHANGED WOMAN. Times have changed and I’m moving on up in the craft world. SO WATCH OUT, PINTEREST, I’M ON TO YOU!

Except, the sidewalk is only a momentary excitement. Until Z realizes there are FLOWERS (WEEDS, ahem) all over the yard. Like, COVERING the yard. I should do something about them, but I don’t want to break my child’s poor heart, you know? So that is why there are weeds all over my yard, NEIGHBORS. Zoey smells these flowers and talks about how beautiful they are. She is more than happy to pose with her flower. When I took that picture up there, she said “Mommy, take a picture of my flower!”

and when I asked her to smile for the camera, THIS is the pose I got. Which is screaming ATTITUDE.

Oh age two! And I hear three is worse??? Yikes. She’s a couple of weeks away from 3. I have to be honest, ever since her language has expanded and we can communicate easier with her, there have been FAR less tantrums and outbursts. She hasn’t been on time out in several months, which says a LOT. I think between 18 months to 2.5 was the most difficult year we had.. A lot of misunderstanding between us AND her and a lot of tantrums.

This one here? This 14 month old little girl? She is crazy and all over the place with the walking now. She’s getting better and better at it and often tries to RUN, which usually ends up in a faceplant. Those little chubby legs can only go SO fast. She pretty much loves to follow Zoey around and do whatever she is doing.

Like racing to the end of the driveway. Laughing absolutely HYSTERICALLY. Zoey slowed down so she could keep up with her. I was holding my breath, waiting for the faceplant. Then I was yelling to turn around before they both went stammering into the street. They had a blast. They always have a blast. Always. We are lucky that we still haven’t reached the fighting/bickering stage. Maybe a little whining here and there if someone has a toy that the other wants, but no real fighting. They have a blast together and Kiera will usually do whatever Zoey asks her to do.

But I know this bliss wont last forever. So we’re soaking it up while we can.

Zoey ran around and played with sticks and leaves. The girl didn’t even really get onto the playground but once. She is content just being outside.

Kiera took a car nap. Ooooh the dreaded car nap! A short 20 minute nap and that’s IT for the day. Ugh. So we drove around and then came home and the girls played together. They had soooo much fun, it was the highlight of my day.

I am in the process of deleting 5,000 photos and videos. Because my camera has been so laggy and my 32GB iPhone is almost out of space. I’ve been downloading and backing up and trying to empty my camera roll for the last 2 hours. It is still an hour or so away from being done, but it is happening. SLOWWWWWWLY. But surely.

So, don’t ever let your camera roll completely fill up. Because you’ll regret it. And punch yourself for not dealing with it before it became out of control. So for now on, I am going to back up and delete my camera roll every other month. Because this? Is a few minutes away from driving me batty.

A few instagram photos from my camera roll:

Today I set up a small kiddie pool in the back yard, I filled the water table up and I took the lid off of the sand box. We let the girls free and they had a blast! It was sooo hot sitting out in the sun and even with a lot of sunblock, Gene had to take K inside after an hour and a half or so. Her shoulders were looking pink and I didn’t want my baby to get sunburned or dehydrated. Is it SERIOUSLY March?! I don’t understand how it CAN be. This weather is insanity.

I have yet to turn the A/C on this year though.. and I am holding out strong. I just feel like turning the air on before April is, just, well.. wrong. On so many levels. Mother Nature is clearly pissed off about all of the energy we waste and pollution and over-full landfills and, well, we need to do something to make her happy because I don’t really like it when she’s on the rag. So, everyone go recycle your aluminum cans and try to make the woman CALM THE EF DOWN, ALREADY.

I didn’t really take any good pictures this weekend. Tried to live in the moment and not worry so much about getting the perfect shots. It was nice. Saturday morning I went to check out the new Dunkin Donuts with my BFF and then we went and did some thrifting. My big find was a $0.54 pillow form, still in the plastic packaging! Woot woot. I plan to crochet a slipcover for it. In lots of pretty colors. Totally excited about that. Saturday night my mama watched the girls while Gene and I went to see a movie (Jeff, who lives at home) and then to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. What a fantastic date night! We haven’t been able to do that in so long.

The girls are doing great. Zoey is turning 3 next month, which just blows my mind. She’s talking left and right and using sentences. Making it a LOT easier to communicate with her. Kiera is finally walking and saying a few things here and there. Both love to play with each other and haven’t had any fighting (…YET). They are both so cute and so amazing and just getting more and more fun to be with. I can’t even believe I am a mama, let alone a mama to two beautiful little girls. What a lucky lady I am, for sure!

I’ll update more about the girls with some pictures next time. Right now I am going to go crack open a beer and sit down with a little Frozen Planet. Bring on the Frozen Tundra! Because OMG it is like, 100 million degrees in this house.

I’m hoping to get back into this blogging thing. I always say that though, don’t I?

So, the ONLY snow we got was early January. Malinda and I ran into Sam’s Club to buy some party stuff for Kiera’s birthday party and when we walked out, it was FULL ON BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. Sideways blowing snow, TONS of it. Huge puffy flakes. There was just enough of this 2 hour snow to cover the ground and by the next morning there was nothing left. THAT was our Winter. Right there, one evening, for two hours. Winter over. The end. Here comes spring.

So anyway, since we have had such wonderful temperatures, Zoey has been able to play outside for extended amounts of time lately and she is LOVING it. The girl will wander the back yard for hours, as if she has never been out there. Pulling hand fulls of grass, playing with wood chips left over by a tree stump we had ground up last summer, going down the slide, playing with toys, chasing the dog. She loves the outdoors and is very Tom Boyish when it comes to that.

Kiera, however, is still not walking and I can’t let her outside. The backyard has rocks, dog poop, dirt, WOOD CHIPS.. All things she would LOVE to add to her list of Things I Will Eat. She stands at the window, watching Zoey play outside, yearning to be out there. Hurry up and walk kid and you can go out there!

Kiera turned 1 on January 19th. We had her party on the 14th. She is such a sweet baby girl. She has had 7 teeth for about 3 months now. She says “dada” mostly, SOMETIMES “mama” and her new word is “Buh!” which means BOOK! She loves books and doing anything that her big sister asks her to do (within reason, obviously) (and by asks I mean DEMANDS). Kiera is my big girl, she is currently 24lb 7oz and 30.5″ tall. Her weight and height are both in the 90th percentile and her head is ALMOST in the 90th. The doctor thinks she will be about 5’9″! Crazy.

Zoey is doing great. McBossyPants is her usual nickname, and attitude. She loves to order Kiera around because Kiera is still at the age where she actually does what big sis tells her to. I’ll be interested to see how things are a year from now ;) Zoey is talking up a storm, new words and phrases every day. She started using “I” and “Me” correctly. She is getting tall and skinny. I think she is around 30-32lbs currently. We just turned her car seat around to forward facing a week or so ago and she loves it. She can see everything now, kick Mommy’s seat and see what kind of treats Mommy and Daddy are (or were, I should say! Darn!) sneaking in the front seat. No more secret ice cream consumption!

I set out to learn to crochet, for the second time (Tried in 2010, it was an EPIC FAIL) around and this time it clicked! I’ve been crocheting since early to mid December and I’ve been having so much fun. I really, really love it and it feels great to have a hobby. I made a baby blanket for a dear friend, a baby blanket for my cousin, a baby blanket for a family friend and I’ve made Kiera a blankie for her crib and Zoey a blanket. I’m working on a blanket for myself and a cupcake scarf, currently.

This is the blanket I made for Zoey. It took FOREVER. Hours and hours and hours of work. Tiny stitches, LOTS of them. I finally finished it last night, after about a month of working on it off and on. I really love it and I hope Zoey does.

This is the blanket I made for Kiera. It’s a small “blankie” with lots of holes in it. Thinking safe for crib sleeping, here. It’s so soft and cuddley. The perfect size for my little monster. I make something bigger for her when she gets around Zoey’s age :)