It's been a hard days night: March 2010

Monday, March 29, 2010

We're having a....

I debated if I would blog this or not. I'm not one to shout things from the rooftops, but decided I would anyways!

Today we had an ultrasounds done at the hospital. Nothing was wrong, it was just checking to make sure everything was looking good and everything did. The baby is measuring right on target with my due date of Aug 16th. We also got to see what flavor baby is coming to us! And....it's a boy!

We kind of already knew that, but this was our serious confirmation. Our OBGYN doesn't have the best reputation at getting things right!

We're excited to be adding another little boy to the mix and I look forward to redecorating a room. We think we're going to move Bud into his own room (our current guest room) and let Mo and the baby be together. This would mean we could put off buying bunk beds!

Here are two of the shots we got today. The first is of his 2 little feet!

This is a profile shot:

Friday, March 26, 2010

Spring break fun...

N8 and I have tried to plan a fun family outing/vacation for us over the last couple of years during Spring Break. Nothing huge or far, but hopefully fun! This year we debated a few different ideas: San Diego Zoo, San Diego Wild Animal Park, Legoland & the LA Zoo. After looking at pricing/hotels/etc we decided on the LA Zoo. And as it turns out we have great friends that had free passes through their membership! So we got into the zoo FREE!!!

We drove down on Wednesday morning and must have hit the zoo at the perfect time. At many of the exhibits the animals we out and about! Here are some of my favorite shots from the day:
The Flamingos

The Rhino

The Gorilla!

And the rest bench

That evening we took the kids to TGI Friday's for dinner. I asked them what their favorite animal of the day was. Emma loved the meerkats, Bud loved the different cats & the wild african dog, Mo loved the all the different monkeys.

After dinner N8 had scoped out a awesome treat for us. It was a place called Yogurt Zone (they don't have a website!). They have locations in Woodland Hills, Encino & Porter Ranch. There are places like this popping up all over. It's a self serve frozen yogurt shop. Lots of yogurt flavors, lots of topping and you pay by the weight! The kids LOVED it!

On Thursday morning we were off to IKEA! We're still figuring out how we are going rearrange the kiddos, but we did know of a few things we needed. Plus the kids love playing while we shop!

After that we headed to the mall to a surprise! They knew we were going to the zoo but we had another fun thing planned. Especially after we got into the zoo for free. We took the kids to Build-A-Bear! It was so much fun. Luckily the nice employee let us know that there was even a coupon at the Easter Bunny in the mall!

So the each picked their "bear"-Mo is actually the only one that got a bear. Emma got a cat and Bud got a dog! Then it was off to stuffing, washing and dressing! When we got to the outfits we just could not resist. Bud ended up with an Obi-Wan Kenobi outfit (with a light saber!), Emma got Cinderella and Mo got a cute t-shirt!

Now it's time to get put back together and ready to finish out the school year strong!!
Happy Spring Everyone!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

family values craft...

In my blog stalking I came across the cutest idea for a sign with words to describe your families values. Kierste over at Brown Paper Packages made a darling version that I then modified to meet my own needs.

I started out by shopping around at our local thrift stores for a canvas. I knew I could find one cheaper than buying one new. I found that you do NOT want to buy "artwork" at our local Goodwill. The cheapest one I found there was $29 for an 11x14 ugly piece of work! I was able to find this one for $5 at DART. It measures 15x20 inches. Wal-mart also carried blank canvas.

When I got it home I painted is all black!
Then I started picking out all of the papers I wanted to use. They don't all necessarily match, but I think they all coordinate. Some of the paper I used was from a 6x6 fat book, so my top strip measures 2 1/2 x 12 and the short strips are 2 1/2 x 6.

After I knew where I wanted each of them I started modge podging them down.Be generous with your modge podge! You want to make sure that each strip is stuck down well. Continue to lay out and stick down all of your strips. Once there all down, do another quick coat over the top just for good measure!

Then let you canvas dry. I was somewhat impatient with mine and only let it dry for about 30 minutes or so! While it was drying I chose my words and cut my vinyl (I used black). I used a variety of fonts, but they all fit in the 2 1/2 x 6 inch strip of paper.

I also added some little vinyl flowers to jazz it up. Then I applied all of the vinyl and it was done! I love how it turned out. I put it on a wall that the kids see while sitting at the kitchen table. I hope to make these words a part of our family discussions during dinner.

If you don't have access to a piece of canvas a wide piece of wood would work great for this project too. Also if you don't have access or don't want to use vinyl, you can print from your home printer onto your scrapbook paper or use paint pens to write your words.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Going, going, gone...

Out of my 3 kiddos, only one has had a serious bink addiction! For Mo it's been since the beginning. Right off the bat he was sucking a bink while hanging with his friends:

or just chillin'

But as of this last week, we are bink free!! We started with only night time use and have now made it to no bink at all! I can understand him and see his goofy smile without a bink in the way-yeah!!!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Come flutter on over....

Today we had a birthday party for Emma. After discussing different "theme" ideas with her, we settled on butterflies. She thought it would be cool to have a butterfly cake and I thought I could come up with enough activities surrounding butterflies.

We started out with a butterfly coloring page. It's always interesting to see how different children approach coloring. Some of the kids were done practically as soon as they sat down, while others could have stayed for another 10-15 more minutes!

We always seem to do a "Pin the... on the..." activity. This time is was "Pin the antenna on the butterfly"!

A few other crafts:

I'm going to do another post about these ones!

and it was on to some presents. We were struggling with ideas for a fun gift for Emma. We wanted something that would get some use, not noisy and was somewhat practical. We decided on a mini-trampoline! She loves it and so does everyone else.

And cake! I had grand plans when it came to the cake, but instead this is what she got, a scary version of a butterfly! I called it my own version of a Cake Wreck!

At least it tasted good!

If I ever do another butterfly themed event I'm totally making these instead! They're super cute!!

They're from here.
It was a great birthday party, followed by a pretty lazy day, Burger King for dinner and Monsters vs. Aliens was the movie for the evening!
Happy Birthday Emma!!

Has it really been 5 years!!

Who knew what 5 years would look like!!

Happy Birthday Emma!!