Bird? Plane? No! It's Mosey-Man!

Official toddler. He’ll be 15 months old next week and for some reason the big 1 5 makes me think of him much older. It wasn’t even 65 weeks ago that I was holding him on my chest sobbing for joy; 65 Saturdays we’ve enjoyed together. The biggest change from 12 to 15 months has been his speech. He loves talking and every once in a while you know what he is saying. Every weekday morning it’s “bah-bah” (bottle) and “nah-nah-a” (banana) while we shuffle around the house getting ready for work. If it were up to Moses he would eat 5 bananas a day but we has only recently reached his max of 3 whole ones earlier this week. It melts my heart when I’m rolling over at 7am to the sound of his voice in the monitor yelling “daddy, dad, dad, daddy”. Daddy, Dorry (his teacher) and surprisingly chicken are the clearest words he pronounces. ball, ducky, and a few others are becoming popular. Wednesday in the yard playing he was complaining I wouldn't come pick him up. I kept telling him to get up and come see me; in response instead no (like he normally would) he was saying “no-ey” “no-ey” in the most whimpering voice. I quickly realized we are no longer allowed to add "ey" to the end of everything! Not only does he talk more but he also understands 10 times as much. At night I’ll tell him we’re going to take a bath or let’s get jammies on and as quickly as he can, he’ll run into his room (or bathroom) and stand ready for me to undress him. He also loves playing where is your nose, where is your eyes game and loves showing me his teeth. This morning he informed me where his hiney and wieney are....o they grow up so fast :)

Mid swing at the park

Our favorite 6pm spot: the back porch!

Another big step he's taken is eating with a "big boy" spoon...as you can see, peas are not very easy to lift from bowl to mouth.

His favorite face to make when I ask him to "smile at the camera"

He loves reading, the outdoors, shooting hoops, throwing balls (or anything really), crawling around bridges (aka your legs) in the bathtub, looking outside the window waiting for dad to come home, pulling down anything he can find to make music, dancing, and acting wild. He is out of control but we love him.

The nut cases I live with!

The Birthday party unwrapped!

Even though it was a few months ago people are still asking me about Moses’ 1st birthday party and details of the decorations, menu, and cupcakes! Instead of replying on Facebook and e-mail to the same questions, I’ll just spell it out in a post!

Theme: I have always loved jungle theme before Moses was born so it seemed obvious. We wanted the atmosphere to feel like you were at a Post/ campsite stop during your safari. Plus there was a lot of play on words, colors, and decorations that went a long with the familiar theme.
Decorations: Large rolls of paper are the best! My wonderful mother cut leaves and rolled strings of brown paper to look like vines. We placed the vines/leaves sporadically throughout the house to make each room tropical. We also made (too many) tissue paper and clothes pin butterflies to add a pop of color on the vines. You can use the same brown and green tapped on the wall to magically create trees.

Not great picture of Mo but you can see the cake/drink station and the butterflies

In the family room we transformed the fireplace into a tent simply by tacking up a rolled up tent.

We also wrapped a large frame with burlap and created a “Missing Explorers” board. I found pictures of some of our younger party guest and used Photoshop to create flyers. Instead of using their given names we gave them names like “Ima Goner” and “Ben Eaten”. It was cute and amusing for the parents to read.

Food: Play on words was a big part of the menu. We wanted tasty food for the adults but still keeping with the theme. We printed name cards for each item with a play on words: “ants on a log” (PB and celery), “beetle wings” (potato chips), “Nile River water” (sweet tea), “Elephant tusk” (chicken salad croissants), and the list goes on.

We also had a separate area titled “Cub Grub” for the babies at the party. We served gold fish, animal crackers, cheese, pb&j sandwiches, lunch meat rolls ups, simply foods that were one year old friendly.

Activities: We knew before hand we would have a wide range of kids (ages 10 months to 6 years old) and we wanted each age to have fun. In the front room we had foam safari crafts and coloring for the older kids who wanted to sit and play. (To be honest I thought this area would be a bust but so many little girls love this stuff! The table was packed the entire day!)

Since the party took place in January it was too cold to play outside. We were able to bring in my mother in law’s Bounce House into the dining room to create hours of fun for the older kids. This was a huge hit because they could act crazy and wild, but still be warm inside.

For the babies we set up a tunnel and toys (seen in above picture) so they could have a place to crawl around and be out of the way of the older kids.
Cupcakes/Cake: Like most first time parents, you want the 1st cake to be great! I found these adorable cupcake ideas in Hello, Cupcake and knew right away this is what I wanted to do. Unfortunately cupcakes cannot be baked or decorated too far in advanced and thankfully my sister stayed up into the wee hours of the night with me creating lions, monkeys, and elephants.

They make it seem so easy but there were so many details! In the end I was very happy with them but you would have to look in that book to find step by step instructions.

The rest of the cupcakes were piped with green icing for grass and pretzel sticks with foam green leaves iced on top for trees.

The idea for his smash cake came to me literally two hours before the party. We already purchased Zoo Pal plates for the kids and I used the monkey face as my inspiration. I rolled his hair in chocolate sprinkles and colored white icing for the cake details. The plate gave me a great boarder and monkey ears.

Heavy Boots

Sometimes I want my days to consist of me + Kindle + down feathers (and possibly an ice Passion Tea Lemonade). Its tough when you have everyday life (work, dinner, cleaning, family) mixed with wants (decorate, organize, shop) mixed with needs (keep on top of school, wake up at 7 am everyday) mixed with desires (alone time, exercise, endless energy). Some days I wake up and don’t know how I do it, and how I can do it tomorrow. When are the days going to consist of 30 hours so I can do more than the minimum and not be exhausted by 10pm.
I’m 90% sure I’m doubling up on school the rest of year to finally be finished in the fall (ahhh) (well the first part of “finished”) and that scares me. Will my house always be a few picture frames short? Will I ever loose weight? Will I ever finish a good book? Priorities…but where is the How To on making my Priority List perfect? I can’t do it all and some things have to suffer, but am I picking the right things to suffer?
Slow down and savor was my “resolution” but I’m not really sure when that resolution turned from possibly to YEAH RIGHT.
Me things: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (book), daylight after work, Pandora (music (life savor)), Tegan & Sara (music),Weeds (show), Eclipse hype (I think I even need to say), girlfriends, grande Caramel Macchiato (Starbucks, nonfat milk), * and **.




Disclaimer: Today I just needed to be wide open, 100% feelings. I promise to go back to updates and pictures and joyous thoughts.
* and ** = Davy and Moses. I feel like I ALWAYS talk about them. We all know I love them but their names didn’t belong on this list.

girls weekend gone good

I’ve returned from The Land of Sin! No, not my internal sinful nature, but Viva Las Vegas! Our plane left Wednesday afternoon and I was laughing with family by 10pm. The excuse for our trip was my cousins wedding but the weekend extended much further than the I do’s. We laughed, sight seed, danced, drank, shopped, cried (happy and sad tears) and caught up. I have not seen most of this family in at least three years, and even then the time was short. Family is so important to me and being able to sit and chat made me realize I cannot let three years go by again without seeing them. This time was a girls trip, next time I’ll bring the family and hopefully be able to see new additions to the family (yes, already baby talk the day after the wedding!). I can’t wait to post an update with professional wedding pictures, but for now here are a few snapped throughout the trip.

In front on the Bellagio before the water show started

My FAVORITE ceiling in the entire world. Chihuly glass.

The resemblance is scary, esp when they start to talk

Reheasal dinner, stuffing our faces with AUTHENTIC mexican food!

It NEVER rains in Vegas, except when we try to take a picture

Last night I made this little concoction in place of real tropical rice that was so off the wall according to Davy I had to write about it. I was really in the mood for a tropical/mango rice to go along with our seafood but couldn’t find any simple “heat and serve” versions of it. Instead of buying seasoning and real fruit to chop up for a 1 person serving, I just used one of Moses’ tropical fruit cups and 90 second long grain wild rice. That’s right, heating up the rice, place in bowl, opened a fruit cup, plopped it in the rice (juice included), and viola! The quickest tropical rice ever! And I’m not gonna lie, it was great! Another way to eat my baby’s food :)