Early Birthday for Mommy!

 My birthday (and my brother Justin's and Grandma Carolyn) is on the 9th. I'm going to be 29, boy how time has flown! Makes you think about how you spend your time and what you want to do with these short blessed lives the Lord has seen fit to give us.

A precious moment with dad and son.

 

My birthday present from Chris came in today!

This is exactly what I wanted! (I might have given him a subtle hint...and a link)

Good bye old hair dryer hello fancy new hairdryer!

This hairdryer is supposed to dry your hair faster than a normal hair dryer, which as a mom of an active toddler and a super cute newborn getting myself taken care of quickly is essential.

I contacted a photographer about doing newborn pictures of Ethan and birthday pictures of Alison!

She charges for a newborn photo shoot and you get 15 edited pictures and she said that if I do Alison and Ethan at the same time I can mix it up a little and she wont charge me extra (like 10 newborn pictures, 2 Alison and Ethan pictures and then 3 birthday girl pictures.

Her pictures are beautiful so hopefully it all works out and we can have some lovely pics of the kids!

My Beautiful Family

Chris home for some lunch.

I made him a little something while he played with the kids.

Ethan checking out his sister

Sister checking out little brother

I had some nice quiet time during naps today and finished the embroidery part of Alison's birthday crown!

All that's left is to attach some ribbon or elastic to the back so she can wear it, I haven't quite decided which.

Speaking of birthday, Alison got an early gift that we will be marking on the big day!

We picked up the most beautiful growth chart to track the kids growth.

Here is a close up of the bottom of the chart which is a tree covered in all sorts of little things.

Alison has really been having fun pointing out all the little animals.

The upper part of the chart. Beautiful.

Ethan likes to keep mommy up really late!

The nice part about that is I get some quality time with the little guy bad part: its makes for a sleepy morning for mommy!

Here is a picture of him as we play on a nice soft blanket on the floor.

It's me, Mario!

Ethan with a mustache curtsey of uncle Justin.

Little man is growing up fast!

My Pampered Chef Party!

I signed up to host a pampered chef party in my apartment and it went really well. Not only do I really enjoy hosting parties, hosting a Pampered Chef party is really easy. I bought the ingredients and Ed, the consultant made the food. I bought some wine and made a little cheese and cracker plate as well but for the most part this was the easiest party I've ever thrown. The best part is I get a free cutting board out of it and if I end up with enough sales I get 60% of some of the stoneware, which is pretty neat.

This is Ed setting out the food he made. I helped pick the recipes!

We picked a white chicken chili and an apple nut ring, I thought they both sounded very "fall" and delicious.

It was really good, here are the recipe links: Chili and Apple Ring

They were both cooked in the "deep covered baker"

This is Milly one of my 'Typhoon Friends' She has a 3 week old daughter named Charlize.

This is Kayla she also has a 3 week old daughter, her daughter's name is Audrey.

Kayla lives on the floor above us.

Ethan and I wearing our matching outfits

Ethan at 6 weeks and Audrey at 3 weeks, yep Ethan is a big kid!

All the moms getting the babies laid down for a baby line up. 

Here are Ethan's friends. We lined the kiddos up by age.

Ethan, Payton, Abe, Charlize and Audrey.

Overall it was a really great party and a great experience for my first time holding a product party.

Click here to take you to the website if you want to order something: 

Host Meredith Pampered Chef site

My party closes out on the 10th.

Happy Halloween!

We had such a fun Halloween this year! Alison and I dressed up as characters from the classic Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland <3 of course Alison as Alice and I dressed up as the white rabbit.

Ethan got to be a little monster this year! Daddy didn't dress up but he did wear his Ghost Busters shirt!

Ethan's little monster shoes.

Ethan stayed at home with daddy (he slept through Halloween) and Alison and I met up with our friends in one of the other apartments.

Cutest little Alice in Wonderland I've ever seen :)

(Alice in wonderland was also the theme for Alison's first birthday)

You can't see it but I made a little pocket watch out of card stock and taped onto my shirt, can't be the white rabbit without a pocket watch!

Alison dancing

 Alison with all her friends! She was too excited to stay in the line up very long.

Taking the elevator up to the 9th floor to start our trick or treating!

Alison made it all the way down to the third floor before she was ready to go home.

Knock-Knock!

Alison and her friend Emily

Alison thought getting candy was pretty neat!

Alison said "Thank you" to everyone who gave her candy.

Checking out Audrey a 3 week old who lives on the floor above us.

Chris manning the door and handing out candy.

Alison and her friends Mrs. Michelle and Michelle's daughter Hadley.

Alison came home with a lot of candy! She was pretty picky about what candy she would eat, something I am not complaining about. She was pretty worn out by the end of the night but we told her she could eat as much candy as she wanted tonight because the Halloween Fairy was going to come while she was sleeping and collect all the uneaten candy. I read an article by a dentist that recommended doing this because it's better to let your kids have a big sugary night than to dole it out and expose their teeth to sugar over a long period of time. (PS you can see my pocket watch in this picture!)

Alison in some warm comfy pajamas cuddling with little brother.

I love cuddling with my kids on the couch.

The End

Me Time Projects!

I might be more proud of this little box than I should be.

Alison got a new pair of shoes and by carefully peeling off the stickers from the bottom and putting scrap book paper on the lid, I got a pretty pink storage box!

Here is the pillow case dress I whipped up for Alison,

I still need to find a craft store so I can put a button on the back.

I got the embroidered pillowcase at a church thrift store in San Diego.

Sunday Funday

Today we tried out All Souls church. I really enjoyed it and Chris seemed to like it as well. One of our neighbors in our building also went to check it out (Coach Carl from soccer practice and his family, other Alison is his daughter) it was nice having another family there that we knew. 

All Souls is an Episcopal church and this was my first time at one. I also found out that Episcopal is what the hubs was baptized in and that he went to an Episcopal church when he was little until his mom got too sick to go. We have been married for 6 and half years and you would think I would know that, lol. So it was like coming home for him. I enjoyed that it was traditional, it felt like 'church'. The sermon was about forgiveness and my neighbor and I both thought it was delivered well. I have been looking up all sorts of different kinds of Christian churches trying to find one that would fit my family and after a lot of thought, study and prayer we decided to try being Episcopalian. We are planning on going back next Sunday.

After church we met up with Mike, Rhonda and some other friends for breakfast at the O-Club, yumm yumm! Alison loves the pancakes there. I wish I would have taken a picture of the kids at church before Alison got pancake syrup all over her dress lol. She looked so lovely, I had her hair fixed (which never last very long as she really enjoys pulling out her pony/pig tails) and a pretty pink dress with a little apron with roses on it....but after breakfast she had syrup all over her front and she had pulled her hair band and bow out....she was a mess lol. Well at least I can keep her looking adorable for an hour or two! Anyways we came home and first thing was clean up Alison.

The rest of Sunday was spent relaxing and hanging out together!

Alison reading one of our new books, I have had my eye on The Wonder of Lullabies  for awhile now, probably close to a year but at $25 I kept putting it off but lucky for us Nova Natural put it on sale so I went ahead and ordered it as I am really tired of singing the same lullabies over and over. The book comes with a music CD and is just lovely. Alison loves reading the words while the woman sings the songs, she also likes to sing the songs from the book on her own and its pretty cute some of the melodies she comes up with! I am so glad I finally got this book, if I had known it would go over so well with Alison I would have done it a long time ago!

Ethan still in his church clothes. He managed to keep them clean through breakfast and didn't mess his hair up one little bit! Ethan loves being in his swing. Its in the living room where we spend most of our time and he can watch what everyone is doing and I can keep an eye on him from the kitchen.

The other day at the exchange I found this wonderful little creamer, it was marked down (a little less than $3) and I thought it would make a wonderful 'water pitcher' for Alison's kitchen. It was handmade in Poland. I love the blue and the dainty little yellow flowers. Alison started playing with it as soon as she saw it.

 

We are still in the process of unpacking so little things are coming to surface and today it was the little tea tea set Grandma Carolyn gave Alison, she got the tea set on a visit to China.

Alison loves to play tea party!

For Christmas, we are giving Alison creative things like some beeswax block crayons, window crayons, and and some Glob water colors. Glob is pretty neat, they are "botanically" crafted, meaning they are made out of fruit, spices, flowers and vegetables. So when Alison paints with Basil Green she will actually be painting with basil (and some other ingredients) which will hopefully open up a world of learning opportunity and spark her interest in where color comes from (maybe we will even try to make some plant paint with strawberries and other colorful fruits and veggies). Waldorf Schools like to do watercolor wet on wet painting and tell stories while children paint to help inspire their work which I think is fantastic. "Painting with Children" is a book I have seen floating around the Waldorf world and have only heard positive things about it and as I have never done wet on wet painting I did what I normally do, got a book! 

Ethan changed into his comfy stripped outfit (doesn't he look handsome in blue? *proud mama*)

Close up of those pretty blue eyes.

My 5 week old baby is in a 6 month outfit by the way, lol. I have one big little guy!

Alison at 6 months