Wall Art

When Kaylee was born, I was pretty anti-pink and I decorated her nursery with blue and brown. But since then she has converted me and now just about everything she owns is pink.  (Not that I have much of a choice in the girl's department). So I have been looking for ways to incorporate a little more pink into her room with my limited budget. I got this idea from my super crafty neighbor and immediately wanted to make  my own because I loved them so much. With just a little scrapbook paper, tissue paper, and a lot of glue, here is my finished project!  

 

I am in love with them and they are probably one of the cutest things I have ever made. However, I should learn to stop making things (or stop being so hard on myself) because even though I like them, every time I look at something I've made I just see things that I could have done differently to make it better. But they were a lot of fun to make and I would definitely do it all over again. Thanks again Amber for letting me steal your idea!

Happy Anniversary!

Thursday was our 4 year anniversary. As you probably know by now, as much as he tries (and tries and tries!), Richard cannot surprise me. He decided to skip class and come home early to surprise me with flowers. He rode the bus home and was going to hurry and run to the store before I saw him. When he got off the bus, he saw that our window was closed so he jumped in the car and started driving off. At the exact moment he drove past our window, I opened the blinds and saw him driving away- what are the odds??  So I knew he had skipped class but didn't know where he was going. He ran to the store and accidentally locked the keys and his phone in the car and had to call me and have me come rescue him instead of coming home to surprise me with a bouquet of flowers. Poor guy! I still did get my flowers, which Kaylee quickly claimed as her own.

 After we picked him up, we went and walked around the Park of Roses where we went on a date last November.

 

 

     We really wanted a picture of the two of us and decided to see if Kaylee could take a picture of us.  After quite a few of these

she finally got us in the frame and was pretty excited about it.  

However, I think we created a monster because now anytime we bring the camera out she asks to take a picture by herself.  ~sigh~

It was beautiful but both girls were pretty grumpy so we didn't stay as long as we wanted to.  Then we dropped Kaylee off at our neighbor's house and went to the most un-romantic restaurant in the world because we are cheap and had a coupon. In fact, it was so un-romantic I am slightly embarrassed and won't even tell you where we went :) We have eaten there before and liked it but had to go to a different location and it was super ghetto and the food was gross. So we were pretty disappointed but it was still nice to go out together. We ended the night by watching The Vow, which is the first chick flick that I have liked in a really long time- wahoo!  It was an interesting day and we didn't do a lot of the things that we have tried to do on the other years, but all that mattered was that we spent the day together!  It has been an amazing four years and I am so glad I have this amazing man to spend eternity with!!

Getting Bigger Every Day

McKenna is getting so big!  She is now five months old, has two teeth, sits up REALLY good (with some support) and started the new adventure of eating rice cereal!

Kaylee is such a little mommy to all of her friends and recently that has transferred to being a little mommy to Kenna as well. I think she finally realized that McKenna is a kid like her instead of just a thing attached to mommy's arms and now wants to constantly hold her, feed her, burp her, give her toys, etc. Which is great except for now I have to watch them very closely!  Before, I never worried about leaving Kaylee alone with McKenna because she mostly ignored her but now I am a little nervous about it because she is really good about sharing everything with her. 

 What a great big sister to have!!

We will not be visiting Cleveland again

The Idea: Help out a friend taking his boards by getting a cavity filled for free, and do something super fun to celebrate me turning the big 2-5.

The Plan: Drive to Cleveland on Friday, stay overnight in a free hotel, get my tooth fixed, and then eat out, explore the city, tour a chocolate factory, see Lake Erie, maybe go on a hike and visit the Museum of Art and party until we are exhausted at which point we will head back to Columbus.

The Execution: Let's just say that nothing really went according to plan....We did leave on Friday afternoon but the A/C in our car broke a few days ago and it was HOT. We gave the kids a bag of ice to play with to keep them cool and somehow made it on the 2 1/2 hour drive. We made an unscheduled stop along the way to visit Grandpa's Cheesebarn where Kaylee and McKenna made a new friend

Our hotel room was really nice and McKenna didn't waste any time getting comfortable on the big bed.

 

 We ate dinner and then headed out to explore the city. Overall I am not a fan of Cleveland. It felt like a run down version of Las Vegas without any of the flashy lights to distract you from how nasty it is. It just felt DIRTY everywhere (in fact, when we got inside Kaylee had random black streaks everywhere from touching things. YUCK).  Everything was pretty ghetto and rundown, and everyone stared at us like we had two heads instead of two kids. We were quite the novelty- a little suburban family walking around downtown Cleveland with our double stroller. We walked around for a while and saw some pretty cool sights

 

 

The longer we walked, the more grumpy Kaylee got and I thought she was just tired. However, she threw up in her mouth and when I felt her forehead I could tell she had a fever. So we hurried back to the hotel and tried to get everyone to bed. I knew Kaylee would have a hard time falling asleep in the hotel because we didn't have a crib for her but we were counting on her staying asleep once she fell asleep. And she probably would have if she hadn't gotten so sick. She had a high fever and couldn't breathe and was just miserable. She couldn't sleep, which means none of us were sleeping and Richard finally made a 2:00 am run to Walmart to get her some medicine, which only worked for two hours until she woke up again... We were planning on starting on the fun activities first thing in the morning but instead spent the morning watching movies while the kids finally got some sleep. I headed off to get my cavity filled while Richard took the kids to a nearby mall where McKenna cried for most of the 3 hours I was gone. By the time he picked me up, all of us were exhausted and feeling so crappy that we decided to just forget about my birthday and get home. Kenna screamed for at least the first 30 mins and we stopped multiple times to try to calm her down before she gave up and finally fell asleep. By the time we got home it was almost bedtime and we had a really hard time getting the kids to bed. On top of everything else, my throat was swollen and hurt so bad that even though everyone in my family called to wish me a happy birthday, I couldn't talk to any of them because it hurt too much to talk. I was almost in tears because it was such an awful birthday. Luckily, Richard ran to the store to get me some cake and ice cream and we sat outside to watch the full moon and then ended the night cuddling and watching a movie. At least my night ended the right way but I think this might go down as my worst birthday ever. We will definitely have to have a makeup day and do something fun because we can't just leave my 25th birthday like this. Who would have thought that Grandpa's Cheesebarn would be the highlight of our trip?!? :) Needless to say, we will not be visiting Cleveland again anytime soon.

The Rules

#1: Ignore the text from your friend telling you about the amazing deal she found
#2: Call your husband BEFORE you go spend money on said deal so he can talk you out of it
#3: Don't take more money than you want to spend
#4: Go by yourself to avoid peer pressure
#5: Go at a reasonable hour of the day when your reasoning skills are more intact

Yup- I broke every single one of the rules last weekend.  I can't resist buying things for my girls, especially when it's dirt cheap. But I was a PRO at rule #6: Forget how much you spent and enjoy your spoils!