The Big 3-0

This past "weekend" I said goodbye to my twenties and hello to my third decade here on this earth.

Wait...I have COMPLETED 3 decades so I'm saying hello to my fourth decade here on earth. Yeah, that's right. I blame pregnancy brain.

On May 17th at 12:18pm I turned 30.

A few people asked if I felt 30. If I wasn't pregnant I probably would have said "no." However, since my pelvis feels like it's being pried open (tmi?), my right hip keeps threatening to pop out of socket, and I cry every time I drive for more than 10 minutes because I pulled a muscle in my shoulder a month ago and it only hurts when I drive---the answer is "yes. I definitely feel 30." (for the record I DO love being pregnant most of the time and am super grateful for this little baby boy)

This weekend was crammed full of Family Time, Lunch Dates with Friends, Dinner with my best friend (yep, Dana, you've been dubbed), A Movie with Marcus, Ice Cream Dates, a Pedicure, a Lunch Birthday Celebration with Family (to also celebrate my Dad's and brother's birthdays), Cake, Cookies, Did I Say Ice Cream? And why did I type all of that in caps? ...

Me and my Lukimus (who is going through a "mommy hold me" phase)

Anyways- point is. Pretty awesome birthday weekend. I feel very loved and blessed to know so many wonderful people and add this weekend to our mini-vaca last weekend and this has definitely been the best birthday ever.

Of course it can't be ALL butterflies and rainbows. Apparently yesterday was also National Toddler Temper Tantrum Day...or at least according to Luke it was :/

Here are some pics to document my turning 30th.

Dinner with Dana. I had the fun idea of each of us writing 30 things that the other person doesn't know about us and we went through the list. It was so interesting to learn new things about each other. For instance, one of mine was "I like the smell of turtles" because I had a pet turtle as a little girl and I thought it had a sweet musky smell. Then I added out loud "But it's been a while since I sniffed a turtle..." and noticed the waiter was standing right there. He got a weird look on his face and walked away hahahaha. I'm pretty sure he's never overheard someone say that before! 

So if you have a dear friend that you know well ask them to write down things you don't know about them---it makes for a fun dinner date! Dana's birthday was the day after mine so we celebrated both of ours by eating "the wall of chocolate cake."

Excuse the poor quality photos and oh my I want that cake again...

Pedicure with Friends

Graeter's Ice Cream with Marcus (coconut chocolate chip...yum!)

"3" was the theme of the weekend. Turning 30 with 3 boys and entering my 3rd Trimester!

Here's to another decade of watching my babies grow, love, laughter, tears, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, falling deeper in love with my husband, winning, losing, growing, and every up and down that comes to us in life. 

Crayon Art and Ellie's Birthday

Nathan's best friend, Ellie, had her birthday party yesterday. They recently moved an hour away (sniff) so we were excited to drive out to their (beautiful!) house and see the whole family.

They now live by a lake in a house on a hill in the woods. Their front porch looks like a cracker barrel porch complete with wood rocking chairs. It's all kinds of lovely and I'm so happy for them that they found a house near Jonathan's job (the husband). But I do miss having them near! (none of my other friends are allowed to move away okay?)

For a birthday present I decided to attempt crayon art. I got the idea here. 

You see...I'm a pinterest mooch. I don't actually have a pinterest account (For good reason, if I did I fear my family would never see me again. Later I would be found in my spare upstairs room with 3rd degree hot glue gun burns on my fingers and scraps of ribbon in my hair, dead of dehydration. Death due to craft frenzy.) But I often see things other people post where they got the idea from pinterest and I'm like "oooh, I can do that too!" which is in a way still pinteresting but shhh...I've convinced myself otherwise.

Anywho.

I made this.

It was easy.

Here's the steps...

1) Glue crayons to canvas (or paper) (I used Elmer's glue)

2) Tilt down at an angle

3) Use blow dryer to melt crayons

4) Realize that this is fun and your poor child will never ever have an unmelted crayon to color with again

5) Decide you are making this easy craft for every child's birthday here on out

6) And you're done!

It takes a few minutes before the crayons start to melt but once they do it goes fast. I used the hair dryer on hot heat but low air setting.

Looking back I wished I used more greens but I didn't have any more.

Oh...and...

7) Put finished art project up and away so your child doesn't decide to take a crayon and color on it leading you to adding another crayon and trying to melt it to cover up the crayon drawing by the 4 year old without destroying the finished project. Yep. That happened.

I bought the paper flowers at Michael's Craft Store and then used pretty scrap booking paper to cut out her name and glue to the canvas.

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We had a great time at the party! This is Ellie's little brother Eli (he is 4 months older than Luke) Nathan was so excited to see him! (sorry for the poor photo quality)

Blowing out her Barbie cake.

Nathan and Ellie!!

Happy 4th Birthday Ellie Belly!

Star Wars Party: The Cake and Presents

(Sorry there are so many photos! I kept trying to figure out how to make a photo slideshow- not like a movie and not like powerpoint- but one that you get just click through. I couldn't find a program that does it so if anyone knows of one- let me know!)

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I posted here about the decorations and food that was served at the co-birthday party we held in honor of Marcus and Luke.

We had it at our house and ended up having almost 50 people come! It was a bit crowded but we were grateful to be so loved by so many people.

The day before the party- Luke's actual birthday! 1 year!

The Birthday Boys!

I wasn't sure what Luke would do with his cake because the only time I've given him anything containing sugar was a little piece of cookie the day of his actual birthday (I did find out that daycare gave him a cookie once though) I'm not sure why I've been more strict with what he eats (limiting sugar, no cow's milk, etc) Maybe because my oldest is so picky so since Luke will eat anything I'm wanting to make sure he continues loving fruit and veggies right now. But he did enjoy his cake and didn't seem to mind the 100 eyes watching him!

His reaction when I took it away.

Here's some of the kids enjoying their food. We had 14 kids at the party!

I didn't see Luke and Marcus open most of their presents. I decided to sit and just talk with friends and let Marcus and Luke enjoy opening presents together. I have no idea who got them what though so I don't know if I'll ever get thank you cards out- oops!

(This hat sang and flipped around- so funny- Marcus' mom got it.

Marcus was a good sport and "modeled" it for us!)

His favorite present is a taxi my mom got him. I remember always wanting a little car like this when I was a kid! He loves this thing. The picture on the top right cracks me up!

Darth Vader(me) versus The Red Halliday- the fight is on!

Ooooh and Darth goes down. Victory for The Red Halliday!!

One more post soon about the piñata (which was so much fun) and the bouncy house- and of course more pictures. I like pictures. Can't you tell?

Star Wars Party: Decorations and Food

Luke's 1st birthday was on August 24th and Marcus' 30th was August 26th. Both are pretty big birthday milestones so I decided to have a big party at our house to celebrate them both.

I'm usually a "clean the house and throw a few last second streamers and balloons up" type of gal. I might put a little thought into a party but I wanted this one to be different. I wanted to put more effort into it and make it extra special. I wanted it to be a little more planned out and "put together."

First up- theme. I couldn't come up with one so I asked on facebook and my clever aunt suggested Star Wars---perfect!!! The whole "Luke I am your father" thing? Just perfect. And what a fun theme to decorate with! So many options.

I spent a little time online looking for ideas (avoiding pinterest because I have yet to jump on that train) and began to accumulate some things I thought I might have time to put together. My main conclusion was some people have way too much time and money to put into parties. This one lady even sewed custom chair covers for her son's Star Wars party! I knew I couldn't put together anything spectacular but that I might be able to pull off something fun and memorable.


This is the end result....

(I actually didn't get around to decorating til an hour before guest arrived! We ended up finishing our landscaping the day before the party (which included REplanting about 40 plants!) so my house had been neglected and I wore myself out cleaning at the last second! Otherwise there probably would have been more decorations- some stuff I had bought I didn't even have time to use. And in the chaos of getting everything ready I didn't get pictures of everything)

Decorations

I had this vision of turning a little section of our living room into this "space scene" complete with a starry background and hanging stars and a yellow Happy Birthday sign. In the end I kind of had it half completed and only had time to sloppily cover one wall. Oh well- it was still fun!

Food

The night before we all sat down to make "light sabers"- pretzels covered in melted chocolate. We were going to make blue as well but I didn't realize that adding the food coloring would make the chocolate firm up quickly. (The store had green chocolate already but not blue so I bought vanilla chocolate and blue food coloring) It was pretty humorous for Marcus seeing me mix the melted vanilla chocolate with blue food colorings and it all of a sudden start firming up and the spoon got stuck!

 

The cake. Oh the cake. I was hoping this cake would make it to my house in one piece. I don't have good luck with ordering speciality cakes. The one for my baby shower was ate by a dog (owned by the sister of the lady who made it) The one for Nathan's 4th birthday party was dropped by the person making it. So I was just planning on a boring cake from a grocery store but my mom talked me into ordering one and also paid for it as a gift to Luke and Marcus (thanks mom!) It was so cute and SO yummy! The top tier was strawberry and the bottom tier orange. I didn't get pics but we also had vanillla and chocolate cupcakes with yellow icing.

We also had pizza but I didn't get a picture of that because well...it's just pizza.

Stuff:

Paper Stars- I hand made them based on the video from this website. I didn't have paper long enough so I taped strips of paper together. Each one took maybe 5 minutes.

Cake- from Sweet Stuff bakery in New Albany, IN

Crochet Yoda/ Princess Leia- made by my boss

Darth Vader candy dispensors- my mother-in-law found them at Cracker Barrel

Death Star Pinata- I bought a soccer ball pinata and spray painted it grey

Star Wars table cloth and other decorations- Party City

Yoda Soda- it was SOOOOO yummy! I'll have to make this for Christmas as well since it's green. I just added two small containers of lime sherbet with two 2 liters of sprite. Best punch I've ever had! Everyone loved it!

I'll post more pics from the birthday party soon. It was such a fun day!

Luke's First Year Video

We had a blast yesterday at Marcus' and Luke's Star Wars birthday party and I can't wait to share the pictures soon. For now here is Luke's first year video I made for the party. As I made this I realized how many special moments I captured on my iphone and not my other camera so please excuse some of the low quality pictures. But it's the moments that count right?

Happy Birthday Luke!

My nephew Cayden

2 years ago today I became an aunt. Well, techniqually I became and aunt when I married Marcus because he was already an uncle to Nick (who is now 18) But 2 years ago I really felt like an aunt because my brother, my only sibling, became a father and we all fell in love with this little blonde headed sweetheart, Cayden.

Cayden 11-17-10


Saturday my mom had a birthday party for Cayden at her house. I don't get to see Cayden very much. I haven't seen him in maybe 6 months or more. So I was so touched when he greeted me at the car and wanted me to pick him up. I told him we were going to go inside and sing happy birthday and as soon as we opened the door I heard Cayden's little voice sing "biiiirthday, haffy biiiirthday" The house was noisey from all the guests so no one else heard him sing at that moment except me. I love this little guy!

Here are some pictures from the party.


My brother, Chad, meeting his nephew Luke for the first time.


Nathan and his cousin Cayden.


Cayden switched hats with his Daddy.


Silly Grandpa!


Me and Lukey.


My mom and her three grandsons (Nathan 3, Cayden 2, and Luke 3months)
(Cayden weighs more than Nathan although Nathan over 1 1/2 years older- eat kid eat!)


Cayden and Me!


Happy 2nd Birthday Cayden!

...we are blessed to have you in our family...