Avoiding The Signs

When things are calm and quiet in our home, someone is usually into something...
Well, in this case the culprit just so happened to be Chayse. 
She loves to toddle off and vanish in our house and make a grand entrance once she reappears.  Or more frequently... once she is caught getting into whatever has been keeping her away and intrigued.  Well, this is what I walked in on when she went unseen and unheard for a few minutes...

The toilet bowl was full of an entirely new roll of toilet paper, which she had strategically unwound and piled as high as possible! (after dividing it into three sections, we finally got it down and flushed!) Needless to say, this is why we only purchase the generic brand, and splurge only in our bathroom- where the TP wasters don't wander!

Caught red handed!! Look at that bowlfull!

I have yet to determine if she just enjoys the thrill of putting toilet paper in the potty, or am I totally in denial that my youngest is ready to be potty trained?  She has been saying "toot-toot" quite frequently while grabbing her diaper... Ok, I am avoiding the signs at all costs! The diaper-less phase is such a dread for me! Right now, Sloan is obsessed with every restroom except those at home.  Restaurants... Target... Kroger... and any other location we would have to lay the seat with toilet paper, use our elbows to push open the doors, and our feet to flush!  Gone are the good ole' days where I am able to do my shopping or eating and wait to change the diaper in the car! But, I'm sticking to my guns and postponing the potty training for Chayse until she can at least tell me when she has to go! (So, that buys me a little time at least!)

On another note... We ate a cantaloupe from the farmers market, which was amazingly juicy and extremely delicious!!

The girls devoured the entire half all by themselves...

This makes me wander why my cantaloupe did not grow this year?  For that matter, why can't we be just as successful with any of the fruits and veggies we are growing? Our garden is just not performing so well for some reason.  Perhaps I was too confident in beginners luck!

The only watermelon in the garden... 

Is now, no longer in existence. It was thoroughly attacked by some sort of nasty gnats and eaten way too early.

My 3 stalks of corn are sprouting (although its not enough to germinate the kernels... they are still fun to watch grow!)  My tomatoes are dying, my pumpkin vine is very sparse, and what I thought were cucumbers growing...

turned out to be a large weed!!

On the other hand... my roma and cherry tomatoes are still somewhat cooperating, my one pumpkin is holding on for dear life and somehow my pepper is still growing strong!

Speaking of the backyard... we are finally putting in a fence!! If the weather cooperates, we will start tomorrow and hopefully cage in the girls around back so they don't wander the neighborhood, or worse... run in the streets!

Let's hope it's at least a start in the right direction to keeping those gals at bay!

Party Hoppin

The most difficult part of having a blog is choosing which part of our life I am going to talk about... and not to mention weeding out the pictures and finalizing which ones to actually show.  I would love to show all of them! But, to spare you from overloaded, I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

This weekend was great!  What weekend isn't good?!  Although this one was a little crazy with the bombardment of birthday's! Sloan and Chayse are quite the socialistas!!

We had two different 'pink' parties, a 'build-your-own sundae' and 'tie-dye' party, and finishing off with a dinner party!

The theme for all parties seemed to be very creative, with some major risks, which I am glad were not at my home!  Several toddlers with hot pink paints, ice-cream varieties, sundae toppings, and tie-dye are not my top choices on ways to keep the house clean... obviosuly those mom's are much braver than I am! I say that now, but when the girls birthday's roll around- i'm sure i'll be getting myself into a similar mess...

Chayse was enthralled with making her own princess crown!  Quite different than dad's normal 'don't mess up the house' routine!

Sloan was frantic with the pink paint, 'glue' as she called it- and was a little crazy when we had to share it.  Later, she hunted it down and continued with her obsession.  If I was a good mom, I would get her some at home... only to think otherwise when Ryan would find out, and have to clean up all the paint spills!  To save our sanity, and our marriage, maybe we'll hold off a while on purchasing some!

Chayse's masterpiece!...

 
and only one of Sloan's!... (The other has mounds of pink paint- which is still not dry!)

Chayse, of course, was mesmorized with the idea of food being on a necklace! (her two favorite things... food and accessories!)  Life could not get any sweeter! 



The build-your-own sundae was another big hit! Sloan's eyes were much bigger than her stomach!  But I can't blame her... it did look very tempting!

Chayse forgot the bowl, and dug into everyone elses!

 
As for the tie-dye... If the kids clothes made it through the sundae bar, they were garbage bagged to prevent dying of their own clothes...

 

The final product of sloan's (with nothing left to dye) and Chayse's (with green).  Sloan finished her's and moved on to Chayse's while Chayse was toddeling around, trying to figure out how to open the lid on the dye.

and of course, we didn't think about covering their feet...

The last party (dinner party for T.T. again) was a hit, even though the birthday girl did not show! She claimed she was a little under the weather, although we know "houdini" was curled up in bed reading a book at home! On my birthday, I would rather being doing the same thing though!

All in all, we had a great weekend! My favorite part was being able to finally capture a last minute picture of the girls and me (with everyone looking at the camera!) Everyone looking AND smiling would have been pushing it, but I'll keep trying!

Well, so much for keeping it short!

In La La Land Yet Again

In my own little world I invisioned my first 'official' blog to be an entertaining excerpt of our life, to capture your interest, get you hooked and beg for more!
In reality: Day 1 of my blog is going to be just like every other day in my life! Completely different than what was originally planned! Why would I think otherwise!
Since the first real blog was suppose to have an upbeat and positive ring to it, I won't focus on the morning's earlier mishaps.  I'm overlooking the coffee grinds seeping into my coffee, getting soaked walking to my office without my umbrella and discovering that Sloanie and Chaysie had swiped my full tube of lipstick and changed the cars interior to splotches of hot pink.
Instead I'm going to talk about what a wonderful rest of the day I did have.

Today is my sister-in-law's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNT T.T.!! (Aunt Traci)!!

(These are my cute nephews Trey and Brady- with T.T!)

My mother-in-law fixed T.T.'s favorite good ole' southern homecooked meal. Fried steak, (i'll have to add this recipe later- b/c it was soo good!!) mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, mozzeralla with tomatoes, fruit, bread and of course a delicious strawberry cake! (Lunch will be good tomorrow!-I have no shame in eating leftovers!)

Before we ate, the kids enjoyed picking some blackberries off the neighbors bush...

Obviously, by the ones Chayse was picking, she's not too sure on her colors and doesn't really understand, "only pick the black ones"!  No matter the color, ripe or not, she still enjoyed them!

Needless to say, this explains why there were no blackberries in the fruit salad!

To top off a wonderful day, I'll leave you with one of our favorite late night quickies. 
S'mores!! (microwavable smores more precisely) 

It just doesn't have as nice as a ring to it as the fire roasted ones on a stick... and not to mention, it's not at all comparable.  But, when its 90 degrees out, and its miserable just thinking about a fire- it is a great chocolate fix!

It's nice to switch it up between the chocolate chips (we use dark chocolate) and peanut butter cups. We usually use the large marshmallows, but the mini's were on hand.

Pop in the microwave until melted (only about 20 - 30 seconds)

DIG IN AND ENJOY!!

Well, Here Goes... Catching up on the Sugar and Spice of Our Life

I am so excited to get the ball rolling on our family's blog! This will not be a project like most of mine, which nonetheless start off full force, and slowly fizzle away as my life goes on with other new projects at the time. This one however, will be for absolutely good reason! This is my most recent attempt to keep everyone (and myself for that matter) updated on the goings on and moments I've luckily caught on camera of our little handfuls. I am obsessed with those adorable gals of ours, and love talking about them, and catching them in the act of whatever they have gotten into. I have so many stories, and pictures I capture throughout the week that I just don't know what to do with them all! So, hopefully this will be an abundance of wonderfully useful information (and photos nonetheless) for your enjoyment, with hopes of keeping everyone as up to date and entertained as I am with our family. Please stay tuned and up to date with whatever mischief they have at that particular moment in time by staying in touch and hopefully enjoying the sugar and spice of our life!


To catch us all up to speed, lets rewind just a little…

Sloan has just turned the big 3! I never knew what a big deal three was until she was approaching it! Getting rid of our "Bobi's" (paci's)- for both Sloan and Chayse, using the big girl potty and wearing big girl panties, changing into a big girl bed, and going to preschool in the fall! So much to take in for such a little one! Imagine the stress! I can’t even take in the changes of all the diva’s costume changes throughout the day, much less the drastic measures of so much going on in her little life!

Anyway- Sloan is obsessed with Tinkerbell, so of course we had a Tinkerbell appearance at her Tinkerbell birthday party! And what an appearance she was too! Aunt Laine (“Bugs”) has a children's costume company called MemoryLaine (check it out here and on FB) and she was a huge hit! No surprise there though!!

For our patriotic side…

We went downtown for the 4th of July Parade this year. Now, this was quite an adventure for us, as we rarely venture outside of our normal comfort zone of Granma Gigi’s house and loud restaurants we can get away with destroying. However, it was worth the risk as Aunt Bugs was performing Karaoke for the first time with an audience.

A definite sight to see- and I’m still debating on if I can say the same about how it all sounded! Ok, honestly, I will admit- I think she did an amazing job for her first gig- and she definitely had the look down! No surprise there though… She always looks the part for whatever she has ventured into! Aside from her singing debut, she was the “fly girl “L.A. Licious Laine” – (she used to live in L.A., which comes in handy for promoting!) All in all, she was a huge hit, and she did great! And most importantly it was a great time had by all!

I think Chayse enjoyed it the most as her two favorite things are eating and dancing. She tried a corn dog for the first time and she took one bite, looked at the dog and stared… then said, “yyyuuummmm” (one of her only words that we can recognize!), and then dove in for round two… and three… and four….

Our neighborhood pulled out their first “4th of July Parade” so of course we partook! Although, I failed miserably to put to use the decorations I had purchased the day prior.

But at least Sloan let me pull her hair back so the rat’s nests were somewhat disguised… there was no way I was tackling that mangy, tangled, dried yogurt crusted, messy hair day she had going on that day, as she would have never let me step foot near her with a brush in hand ever again! But, if I do say so myself- they both sure do look cute in their patriotic colors- and of course, it’s not just because I’m biased… they just look absolutely adorable!

Moving on a general note… They are both all over the place all the time!

At some points, they love to dress up, which is great, unless its when they have come across my jewelry drawer... Chayse loves playing in all of my jewelry, then Sloan gets mad and pulls it off of her because she wants some pieces too, then Chayse yells... and the battle starts... However, if I could just get organized enough to move my bracelets and necklaces to an unreachable place for such small destroying hands, at least one war would never begin!

They go from dressing up and wanting to look soo pretty, to the complete opposite spectrum of doing whatever they can to avoid staying clean at all costs! It’s an endless battle, to which I recently have accepted the fact I am always going to round the corner of the drive, pulling in from work and spot them running around, with clothes on if it’s a good day, (and hopefully other than their jammies!) and immediately spot the crusty yogurt staining their clothes, hands and face on top of being covered in the purple syrup from the popsicles, which is also dried in their hair. I have completely owned up to knowing my kids are never going to be prim and proper, let alone clean on a daily basis. I’ve decided letting them do their thing, as long as they are safe and happy, which makes for a Zoloft free place for us all!