As Close As We're Gonna Get

In case you couldn't tell from my previous posts, my husband is pretty close to prefect. But there's always been one thing that I wished he could do for Audrey's sake. And that's play the guitar.
She loves music and I always wanted a husband that would play lullabies, sing alongs, and Disney songs to our kids, around the house. And of course the only guy I ever dated that didn't play, is the one I married. Go figure. But he never has much spare time so learning is pretty much out of the question. So I hit YouTube and found a video of his doppelganger performing his version of a song from The Little Mermaid. I think this is as close as we're gonna get.

Princess Tea Party

Today we had some of our AMMG friends over for a Princess tea party.

I made some toddler friendly changes to a tea time meal...Nutella, peanut butter, and chicken salad sandwiches, apple juice instead of tea, Pirate's Booty, strawberries, blueberries, and grapes, two flavors of popcorn, and of course cookies.


Two Snow Whites, Rapunzel and Cinderella.

After tea the girls played with every toy in this house.

They were in the living room, Audrey's toy room, the game room, the ball pit room, and Audrey's bed room. Every toy got a turn.
But eventually the sugar high wore off and all these princesses headed back to their own castles in their royal carriages for their naps.

The Wizard of Oz

We took the girls to see a children's production of The Wizard of Oz this week. It was a lot of fun. The play was only 45 minutes which is perfect for this age. Plus, the girls were able to get in on the action. They played munchkins, Audrey danced with Glinda the good witch, and they even pretended to be trees at one point. Gray was reluctant to join everyone else on the stage but she was an awesome tree from her seat. Too cute! I wish I could have taken pictures but that's normally frowned upon on a theater.

Afterward we headed over to Freebirds for some grub.

These girls could eat Mexican food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.


As we were leaving someone asked Johanna if the girls were her triplets.
I know Audrey doesn't look anything like me but it never crossed my mind that someone would think Audrey belonged to blond haired, blue eyed, fair skinned Johanna. Guess she figured I was the nanny, since you'd probably want a nanny if you had triplets.


Jo made this triplet a flower out of foil. Audrey thought it was the coolest thing ever.

When we got home Johanna's college room mate (and now my friend) Jane brought her kids over to play. That meant I got to love on the new baby, Noah.

It was a good day.

Little Pig Little Pig Let Me In

Audrey comes from a long line of builders. My grandfather, my father are contractors, and my little brother is a civil engineer. I think Audrey caught the builder bug.
Last weekend during Barker's soccer practice Audrey decided to put on her backpack and explore the woods. She started collecting sticks and eventually had a pretty good pile. Another girl, older than Audrey, offered to help her build a house of sticks. Audrey would collect and hand them to her. And she'd place them way up high above Audrey's head. It was Audrey's duty to arrange all the sticks with in her reach. At the end of Daddy's two hour practice she was quite proud of the 'house'.


Sure, it won't stand up to the big bad wolf but it was nice for me. I didn't have to chase or entertain her for those two hours. I just got to sit back and watch her build. Sorry the pics aren't great but they were taken with my phone. I didn't think I'd need my big camera. Oops.

Valentine's Day 2011

We had the most wonderful Valentine's day this year! And that's saying a lot cause I live in quite the lovey dovey house hold with a ridiculously sweet husband and daughter.

To start, Audrey was out of school so we were able to attend my Arlington Mom's Group's party on a gorgeous day.

A few days before a lot more people were added to the list. The more the merrier. Problem was, I had only bought for a certain number. And the count was now up to 19 kids! Whew! I couldn't make 19 gifts bags and I didn't want to go back to the store to start over so I just threw together 19 Valentine's cards from stuff I already had laying around the house.


The cards said 'XO Love, Audrey' and had a treat tied to it.


After making treat bags for Audrey's school I was burnt out on crafts so Audrey's cards weren't very cute, but luckily 2 year olds don't care what the candy is tied to!


...excuse the hair, she was just out of the shower...

Then I gave Audrey her gifts. She got shoes and a shirt.


Pointing out Ringo, of course.

I didn't take many pics at the party but basically the moms made crafts while the kids ate a feast and lots of sugar. (Whoa! Did my Arlington mommies bring it! Everything from Chik-fil-A to heart shaped strawberries and everything in between.)


I let Audrey have part of a cupcake as her dessert but Gray didn't think that was enough sugar. At one point I looked over and watched Gray take this sucker out of her mouth and swipe it down Audrey's tongue a few times before putting it back into her own mouth! ha!


Cam is sweet enough

That night my husband said the most romantic thing I've heard since he told me I should retire before Audrey was born. As my Valentine's gift he took me to my favorite store, H&M, and said something along the lines of 'We have dinner reservations so thanks to traffic you don't have much time. But pick out whatever you want and meet me at the register.' We both sprinted to the kid's section and picked out for Audrey some more shoes (if you're counting, that's 3 pair this week, the girl loves shoes) two shirts and a dress. Then I loaded down my arms with anything I could carry for myself and set some kind of record in speediness that dressing room. It was so much fun! It was like Pretty Woman... minus the whole prostitute bit...complete with escargot. It was a great night, but every night is great when we're together.


Audrey's school was canceled the day of her original school party so we had a make up party today.

Ms. Tracy's son was sick but Elizabeth was there to sub. She was smart enough to give the kids a banana and small cookie during their party, after they decorated bags to hold their sweets and cards. And boy were there sweets! Whew. They didn't eat any at school, so we're going to be rationing Audrey's treats out every now and then...after she pays her candy tax, of course.

Hope everyone had a day filled with LOVE!

Precious Prints

My friends Rene and Nicole own a company called Precious Prints.
http://www.preciousprintsonline.com/index.html

I had them over Saturday to make clay impressions for some of my friends and family. I can't wait to see how they all turn out!

Audrey was glad to have so much company to play with all day.

She loved squeezing sweet baby Quin.


He was all smiles at just 7 weeks old!

My younger brother and his wife brought my niece and their dog over to have some things made.

Callie


It's only the second time Rene and Nicole have made a dog impression but they said Scout was prefect and it's going to turn out great!


It was nice to see everyone and I can't wait until all the orders are done!

Sweets For My Sweet

Well, as usual I put off my home work as room mom until the last minute. I needed to make treats or cards or something for Audrey's Valentine's Day party at school. It's scheduled to take place in oh, 9 hours or so. So is 5 inches of snow. But I knew if I didn't make these, sure enough the storm would miss us, Audrey would have school and I'd have to get up at 5am to make Valentine's cards. So here I am. After midnight. 8 hours until school starts. It didn't take long to make them but I got home late tonight. I went to Ernesto's with some of my friends here in Prosper for a meeting to discuss a reorganization of the Mom's group.....also known as swirly margaritas.

Anyway- I've got them done. I took a little glue, a little paper, and some romantic Valentine's Day type music from Cee Lo and The Beastie Boys. Ok, maybe not romantic but whatever. They're done. Gift bags and cards for her 5 classmates and her teacher.

Ms. Tracy gets home made apricot jelly. Audrey's classmates get a card with a lollipop attached that says "Happy Valentine's Day to my sweet friend" simply because I couldn't make my brain work well enough to come up with anything clever and I couldn't very well say "Happy Valentine's Day Sucker" so I made the lollipops look like flowers....sorta....if you hold it far away and squint and have had a swirly margarita. And lollipops are sweet. So there you go.

They also get gift bags containing a ball, raisins, heart shaped stickers, mints, fruit snacks and a tiara for the girls.

Tripp's is sans tiara.



I made one for Audrey too so she didn't feel left out.

And no, I don't have that steady of a hand so I used the heart shaped cookie cutter Rebekah gave us at the wedding shower she threw us over 4 years ago. I bet she had no idea how much use that cookie cutter would get. I've used it to made cookies, sandwiches, pancakes and tonight, Valentine's Day cards.

Oh! And Beastie Boys are done. Now it's onto Ray Lamontagne's You Are The Best Thing, which is one of my many slow dance in the kitchen with my husband songs. Everybody's got those, right? No? Get one.

Snow Angel

Yet another snow day here in Prosper.
I have no idea how much we got. 8 inches, maybe more?

Audrey loved throwing snow balls. Truth is, she loves playing in the snow all together. We didn't let her out earlier in the week because it was so cold. But today it was in the 20's so we decided to bundle her up and let her have a go of it. She would have stayed out there all day. To get her to come back inside Barker had to offer her hot chocolate. I don't think she knew what it was, but she was excited nonetheless. But when I gave it to her, she decided she didn't like it and wanted orange juice. Fine by me! She hasn't yet had chocolate milk so I really didn't want to have to start that bad habit thanks to Barker's offer of hot chocolate.



And Barker took his typical pictures of our snow covered house. I can't believe how commonplace snow is becoming.



I was shocked when I awoke this morning and saw the patio table under the porch. Barker asked 'Wanna grill tonight?' Doubtful.

I'm glad Audrey is enjoying all this snow and we've loved having Barker home all week but I'm so not looking forward to our electricity bill next month : ( It's normally anywhere from $80 to $200 depending on the time of year, which isn't bad for a house the size of ours, especially considering all of our windows and rooms that are two stories. But I've got a terrible feeling we might triple our average bill this month. Bummer.

Wonderful bad weather days

What a beautiful weekend. Sunshine and then some. Saturday Audrey and I went to my friend Staci's house for her son's first birthday party
then came home for our monthly dinner with Barker's college friends. Barker made a Semolina's favorite and Shannon even had a king cake shipped in! I love our friends!

Sunday was also gorgeous so Audrey and I went to Barker's soccer practice in Dallas, followed by Mattito's for dinner. Yum! But by that point it was too late to go to the store. Barker had been to Sprouts that morning but there were still a few items we needed.

Then on Monday while Audrey was at school the sun disappeared. I decided to go to the store in case the weather ended up being as bad as they were predicting on the news. Barker made a grocery list and I added about a hundred items to that list. I also bought Audrey Cinderella and a few new toys to help avoid cabin fever. Going to the store turned out to be a good call. Since Barker's job mainly depends on school districts being open, he ended up going to work Monday, then being off for the rest of the week! Yay! Yay, yay, yay, yay, yay! I haven't been so excited in a long time!

After two days of schools being closed most of my friends were beyond ready for their kids to go back to school, and to get out of the house themselves. Severe cabin fever was spreading. I, on the other hand, was stoked! No cabin fever here! I have loved having Barker home all week. He went through our garage freezer and made all kinds yummy meals like enchilada lasagna, pulled pork, green chili stew, pork chops, and even a coffee cake for Audrey. And she has been peaches and cream! No where near restless. We've had a blast. Barker even looked at me Wednesday night and said "You're so much fun." I don't think he's ever said that exact sentence to me before. (He says he has.) He calls me beautiful, funny, awesome, smart, and delusional on a daily basis. (Yeah, he exaggerates a quite a bit, except for the delusion part. That's fairly true.) But I can't recall him ever just stopping what he was doing to say "You're so fun" before.

We also gave the house a good scrub. I did the usual laundry and ironing. We read. We downloaded tons of new music. I reorganized our closet, and did a mud mask. Barker ran 17 miles this week, mostly inside of course. I ran zero miles, in case you were keeping score. Barker beat me at Scrabble, twice. Audrey cooked up all kinds of goodies for us in her kitchen and practiced her counting skills on everything from play money to magnets and even her daddy's toes. She also did a lot of dancing and got to stay up until nearly 9 a couple of nights. Tomorrow I think I'll get a head start on the Valentine's treats for Audrey's school and playgroup friends. I also stumbled across some old pictures this weekend.


Audrey looked at me like I was crazy when I told her they were of her Pop and myself, many years ago.

It was a wonderful treat to have Barker at home all week and I'm so thankful that he has an understanding boss. I'm always a bucket of nerves and I can't imagine how stressed I would have been if Barker had needed to try to get from our house way up here, to his office in Carrollton, and back again every day. They don't exactly sand the country roads in Prosper. So I was beyond grateful that Barker was able to stay here with us, warm and safe all week. We've had wonderful bad weather days, or as they call them at Audrey's school 'little gifts from God.'