And all the mommies say "oopsie"

So today was a generally great day. A friend mentioned last night that today is national waffle day. So my husband, who is practicing being the opposite of harsh {thanks to a great sermon} woke up early and cooked so I could wake up to waffles. Then we had a friend come play so Silas was entertained for free. This afternoon I connected with my next Noonday hostess and was encouraged and reminded why I do what I do. Ayden had his first solo and ensemble competition, which did my music mama's heart good. But then  IT happened. The big ole moment. Balin, my sweet six year old,  came flying through the room on his tippy toes, Happy as a clam. He snuggled in for a hug and said this " I'm SO glad the adoption is happening this weekend!!!"  {cue the sound of screeching tires}. 

                      Say what? 

My darling one. My sensitive sweet boy who every. Single. Night. Prays for his future sister. Who every. Single. Sunday. Asks his class at church to pray for the adoption, has heard us talking about a trip this weekend to our agency and misunderstood our agency orientation as our actual placement. As I told him his error he wept. Big ole weepy tears. {with plenty of snot}. He was so sad that we would be going away and returning with NOBODY. Especially not a sweet somebody wrapped in pink. 

 So this mama of three homegrown who's expecting an import needs to know... HOW MUCH do you tell the kiddoes? I kinda feel my error here was in not telling him enough. He didn't understand and the reality is that even though we have pink shoes and a cradle and clothes are starting to find their way into "her" closet... This could be a long wait. And I have not adequately prepared his tender heart for that. I wonder if I've even prepared my own. Hopefully we will get through that wait together. 

A new day, a new year

The past few weeks have been getting tough. Summer does that, you know? We get a little too cozy with one another, and way too far out of our routines. Needless to say the boys and I are ready for school to begin... Tomorrow!! My brain is extremely single minded. I think it's one way I adapted to having ADHD over the years. I simply can not handle too much on my plate. When we move I try to step up our involvement outside of the home a little bit at a time. This summer was the exception. All of a sudden we are "all in" in many areas. I've joined Weight Watchers, which has been fantastic. It's working! Partly because we also joined a gym. Because the gym is costly I actually go so I feel less guilty ;). The hubs and I have both stepped up our volunteering at church. On top of that I've thrown myself completely into Noonday. I adore the work I get to do with Noonday, but it absorbs almost all of my brain space. All of it. So even though we are going through the motions of buying school supplies, new shoes, haircuts, meet the teacher, I feel a bit caught off guard tonight. First day eve. My big guy starts intermediate school. Lockers, A B or C lunch, changing classes 7 times a day, and orchestra. Um, what? And my middle guy, all of 6 years old starts first grade, which he still says " firthst."  Last year first day came shortly after we moved here. Getting them dressed and our the door was a victory. I love making a special day extra special though so after bedtime tonight the hubs and I took 20 mins to throw together a tablescape to make tomorrow morning feel a bit special. Simple breakfast tacos and chocolate milk will seal the deal. Then it's party time for mommy and Silas. We are so ready for this semester! 

Simply Home {room for supers}

We are in! We have all our belongings in our new home and I am head first into the boxes. My goal when we move anywhere is to get the kids rooms situated as quickly as possible. They need their stuff where they can find it so the transition is as smooth as possible. New houses are confusing enough without their rooms feeling unfamiliar. ( Sy woke up and got lost the first two nights we were here. Nothing like finding your baby bawling in the kitchen in the dark at two in the morning.) This morning I got the final picture hung in the littles room and it is finished! This is my favorite room I've ever done and am so happy with how it turned out!

Paint: Behr brand Cumberland Fog
Curtains: eclips kids thermal panels that I sewed and extra piece on.
Bedding: pottery barn Batman and Captain America sheets. Flannel quick quilts by Meme Simply.

Birthday for a 5 year old

Our sweet Balin turns 5 (!) on Friday. We share this week full of birthday with many friends so in the planning stages we realized we needed a unique theme with a less than usual time slot. While pondering themes I came across some Curious George themes and was reminded of one of the boy's favorite little books Curious George Makes Pancakes. In the book George goes to a carnival that raises money for the local childrens hospital. While there he takes over the pancake griddle and becomes the best ever pancake maker. Pancakes. BINGO. A Breakfast pancake party, to which we decided to add pajamas to make it even better. Here are some photos and details in case you want to throw your own!

Invitation: I scanned the book I was using into my computer. Then using Paint shop and Power Point I covered all the words and then added the info for the party in a similar style as the book lettering. As this is art and published it is copyrighted. This was for personal use only and I have no sponsors on this blog. Just FYI. I also purchased 9 copies which you can do here.

 

Food: The pancake theme was the easiest ever and inexpensive. We bought a large bag of pancake mix, grapes, strawberries and bananas at Sams. We also had leftover blueberries from blueberry fest in the freezer. Next to the fruit we served syrup and whipped cream. Cocktail sausages in the crock pot provided some protein and we were set. I served two types of juices, milk, coffee and water. We set up a griddle station in the kitchen and my sweet husband spent the entire party flipping pancakes.

Decor: I wanted to go with the carnival theme as much as I could, and surprisingly there was very little in the way of curious George merchandise available. We used red and white streamers from the dollar store to cover a wall in red and white stripes. I then (thanks to agirlandaboy.com)added a string of blue balloons across the wall. We lined two tables up so they would center Balin against the balloon wall and covered them with dollar store picnic themed plastic covers. I also found yellow paper tickets there which i tore apart and scattered around the table. I set the places with a yellow paper plate and yellow cup turned upside down. A Black piece of construction paper turned it magically into a yellow hat! In the center of the table I placed a banana hanger basket and filled it with bananas. Along the length of the table I placed Curious George Books and voila! Table and background done.

Along another wall I made a string of lights fancy with cupcake wrappers and hung another string of balloons. The way they hung around a white Adirondack chair made a perfect photo corner so we staged the presents there.

Favors: To thank our guests I packaged up easy, sweet little cupcakes in dollar store favor boxes (from the wedding section). These got dropped into a carnival striped cello bag and finished with a George Sticker. The guests (each family) also received a copy of the book Curious George Makes Pancakes That I added a special cover to. I used the same blank template as the invitations but the type read "Here is a book for you to read that says Thank You for celebrating my birthday with me!" This got printed the same size as the book and double sided tape holds it on, but can be removed if the family wants.

All in all we had a great time! The birthday boy was happy, the guests left smiling and there were no major faux pas. We did forget to hang/ decided to hang the little carnival pinata we bought a little too late and some guests already had left, but it was not a very exciting pinata so I forgive myself that one, ha! We are now happily enjoying a quiet afternoon playing with his loot and not having to clean cake crumbs off the floor. I can not wait to show you the cake I made for our friends party this evening! See you later!

Very special day part 1

Today we rejoiced with OUR church family as we formally joined in membership. We are honored to be a part of this family that seeks the Lord, teaches consistent reformed, accurate theology. ( you won't get the lie that Jesus wants you to live in comfort and financial blessing here). They have embraced us and all of our quirks and we are thrilled to be involved and actively serving here. We also baptized all of the boys. It has been quite a journey from not understanding infant baptism ( done from a reformed Presbyterian view/ which is that baptism is the sign an seal of our covenant relationship with God for us and our children. I still don't think I'm comfortable enough to go into any more that, but for my other Christian friends who don't practice this know that we do not believe baptism to be salvitic. We are saved only by the Grace of the blood of the lamb.

Acres of Texas Wildflowers

Acres of Texas Wildflowers

Yellow beauties strike a pose.
Black-eyed Susan like a sweet kiss,
Chocolate flower, Yellow primrose,
Huisache, Nettle, Coriopsis.

Flowery Whites are making merry.
Magnolia is a famous bragger,
Dogwood, Yucca, Dewberry,
Bishop's Weed and Spanish Dagger.

All the Blues like sky and sea,
Bluebonnets a nice surprise,
Bachelor Button, Scurfy Pea,
Plum and Bluebells, Baby Blue-eyes.

Wild Reds will bowl you over.
Indian Paintbrush, wild esprit,
Ocotillo, Crimson Clover,
Prickly Pear and Redbud Tree.

Crazy colored quilts fanatic,
When they bloom in wild array,
Nothing could be more dramatic
Than Texas in a grand bouquet.

BuscadorDel Palabra

Simply Party::{Balin's 4th part 2}

A well planned party will A {Celebrate celebration} B {Organize Celebration}and C {Inspire Celebration}. All of this to bring Joy. Joy and thakfulness for what is being celebrated and Who gave us celebration in th first place. Our precious Balin, who is a gift from a good and knowing God, requested crabs and pirates for his 4th birthday celebration. I obliged. I went a little crazy at the dollar store, but they had a huge selection of tiki and pirate themed items. I wanted every child to feel fully outfitted as a pirate so I got hats, compasses, maps, hooks and of course eye masks. I then planned activities based around the idea of being pirates. Lets try this in a list...

Pirate Party Activities are in red

Commissioning : have a treasure chest set up with all the pirate fare- hats, eye patches, maps, hooks ect. as your guests arrive. This takes the place of loot bags at the end of the party, as your pirates gather their loot along the way. For an additional activity your pirates can make their own hooks by poking holes in the bottom of a black plastic or paper party cup and then inserting a gold or silver pipe cleaner through with the inside end balled up so it stays put.


Ayden's pirate party 2006-wasn't he so cute?

The dollar store had hooks this time so we went with that. I made some brown burlap loot bags to carry their stuff in and finished off their look- for those willing- with hypoallergenic brown eyeliner "mustaches."

Kate- the pirate Princess



Balin and his friend Jacob



Pin the Treasure on the Map: Found at the dollar store, a stick on the wall version of pin the tail on the donkey. All of the kids had fun with this one,even the big ones! We used a scarf to blindfold the big kids rather than the paper mask it came with.

Treasure in the sand: Again, a repeat from Ayden's party, we buried treasure in the sandbox and the kids had to use shovels and sifters to find it. tip: keep a list of what you buried :-).

Rescue the Ducks: I consider this game a FAIL. We filled a splash pool with water and originally planned to float rubber duckies.  The set up was that a crab shaped beach ball was keeping the duckies prisoner and the kids had to use scoops to get the duckies to float to them and be rescued. Some duckies would have gold coins attached under them. Hot glue doesnt stick to rubber duckies and oriental trading company duckies dont float upright. We also had the uncomfortable moment when the birthday pirate stripped down to his skivvy's and jumped into the pool. oops.

Pinata. Easy time taker because it can go as long as you let it.. just make sure little guests and birthday boys get to go before big kids. you know.. to avoid tantrums. And chocolate on a hot day is a bad idea. but I knew that and didnt send toddlers to gather melted chocolate bits out of my grass. right.

We tied our games together with a bigger story. The crew of pirates would earn a clue with each game that would ultimately direct them to the treasure (the birthday presents in a treasure chest). I printed pictures from the Graphics Fairy and wrote the clues out.. they were something like this:

The treasure you seek grows warm in the sun...

Beyond Grassy plains your treasure remains...

What you seek lies under the great Oak...

To find the treasre of our tale, look behind the wishing well!

The clues were intended to be easy for my 4 year old and younger pirates. We have one giant oak tree in the backyard and an ugly wishing well thing (joys of renting). After the fourth game they came in and were fed provisions. While they ate my husband snuck the treasure chest out back and put it where they could find it. After they had their snack they found it and then came in for cake. While they ate cake he opened gifts.

There was a little time for playing after that, but most guests were ready to leave by then. All in all it was a fun party! It lasted right at 2 hours which I feel is perfectly appropriate for a four year old's backyard party.

Simply Party:: {Balin's 4th part 1}

Four years and 1 day ago I was pregnant with my second baby. I went in for a Dr visit and got the best birthday present of my life. She sent me into the hospital! We stopped and had icecream with Ayden to celebrate first, and then took him to a friends house where he spent the night. The next afternoon I was holding my sweet babe.   This weekend was a BLAST. We celebrated Balin with a so- much -fun pirate party. (Ahoy!) Here are a few details in case you want to throw your own!

There is nothing I enjoy more than a planned party. Kids tend not to get  bored. Your house stays clean (at least the parts you want to keep clean) and everyone has a better chance of going home happy :-). Pirate themes are super easy for summer birthdays, and we had good fortune by finding tons of favors and props at the dollar store!
 For today I'll give you just the food.

First:the cake. The cake is always the center of parties I throw. I'm learning new methods all the time, and really think any one of you could actually make a better cake than me.... I'm just crazy enough to do it! This was a three day cake. The first day I baked the cake and dirty iced it. I used chocolate cake mix (duncan hines) nd then made my own banana cake mix for the "lid".. recipe will come in another post. The icing was banana butter cream, which I tinted yellow for my four year olds sake. The second day I made marshmallow fondant and then layered four sheets of cake for the base. The top sheet got a square in the middle cut out to make a place to store all the treasure. The treasure is, of course, the best part! We used Hershey's pot of gold chocolates and chocolate coins my husband bought while in the big city at a World Market store. I threw in some unwrapped ring pops and clear jewel toned jelly belly's for fun. Balin wanted crabs, so while I was making the red fondant for the "leather" strap I gave Ayden a ball and he made crabs. Request completed. As far as snacks go I had the party starting at 10:00 am. I knew parents might want kiddos to have something on their tummys before cake so we made fish shaped pb&js ham and cheese triangles and lots of fruit. I served chicken salad premade at the H.E.B (the rotisserie one, so good) on croissant "shells" for the grownups. Pinterest showed me a pirate watermelon fruit bowl. Goldfish finished us off!

For my basic table settings I used mostly items I already had. Under the cake I used a tan sheet and layered it with brown (non sparkly) tulle. I tore some holes in the tulle to look like netting. I had the conch shell laying around and then surrounded the cake with ground up Graham cracker to look like sand. On the snack table I just threw down a strip of burlap, used serving trays from the dollar store, set out the pinata when we were done and called it complete!

4th of July