Baby Shower Day!

Well after almost two months of preparation the Big Day finally arrived. Yesterday was Baby Shower Day at my house for my sweet friend Whitney. There is nothing like the word "shower" to us girls that triggers a "To Do List" a mile long. Over the past two months I have painted the den, study, three hallways, trim, and planted flowers all over the yard. My sweet husband worked like a dog on Friday afternoon and Saturday in the yard trimming trees, shrubs, grass, and making sure everything out there was as green as possible. Then there were the inside chores for him like installing a new bathroom faucet and fixtures, hanging a few pictures, and helping me clean the house. On my list inside the house were the usual cleaning of the blinds, windows, and baseboards along with all the weekly cleaning. I have to say that there is nothing like getting all of the Spring cleaning out of the way to let you relax and enjoy life. I just love tackling a "to do" list.

What could be better than an afternoon of laughing with your favorite girlfriends and celebrating a new arrival...not much:) All of my precious friends, who were hostesses, did a wonderful job with everything. The success of the shower was definitely a team effort. It was so nice to be able to meet Whitney's family who made the trip for the shower. The baby gifts for Kennedy were so sweet...they always take you back to when your children were about to arrive and what an exciting and blessed time in your life. I just love looking at all of the tiny little baby things, it seems like so long ago when I was there now. Such fun!

Thank you Whitney for letting me have the honor of hosting your shower at my home...it was a real honor:)

Racing Party!

On Saturday the girls and I went to a fun Birthday Party for their friends Jonathan and Jared while Daddy went to work some taxes. The party was at our church gym and they had everyone bring their favorite ride-on toy. Kaylee took her scooter so she would not run over the little ones with her big bike and Campbell took her battery operated ATV. Both the girls were very excited about all of the activities. My friend, Shana (the Mom), had so many fun things planned and she is so wonderful with children. I have a blast just watching her interract with the children and get so excited herself. She had a tubing system rigged for the children to race hot wheels in, races on their ride-on toys, a pinata, hot dogs, and a yummy cake she made herself.

Campbell was the perfect example of the race between the tortoise and the hare at the party because her ATV just could not keep up with all
the faster self operated ride-on toys. (I think it needed charging.) Here they all are at the start of the first race. I would have a picture of Campbell at the back of the pack but I was too busy laughing. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was suppose to be at the front of the pack. Of course, she was thrilled when everyone clapped as she crossed the finish line. That is all that matters, right?

Kaylee is the more competive one so far so she was always at the front. I was very proud of how considerate she was of the younger children and she was thrilled that her friend "M" was there to play with.


The party was a huge success!! When it was time to leave Campbell left screaming because she was having too much fun! After we got home and she realized they could still play outside the crying stopped and the smiles returned. I just love sunny days with mild temperatures. We have to soak them all in before the heat of summer is upon us.

A Little Catching Up to Do...

Last Friday Kaylee had the day off from school so we decided to have some fun planting flowers in the yard. I had promised that the girls could help me pick out some flowers, so the day before we all went to Lowe's to pick out our favorite colors. I think that we ended up with every color imaginable. This picture is when we first went outside to begin the adventure. After about 10-15 minutes both girls had pretty much lost interest. Kaylee was frustrated because it took too long to dig the holes deep enough for the flowers and Campbell just wanted to pull the flowers out of the containers, forget about the roots being in tact.

So Campbell decided to go and get her shopping cart with her baby in it and a grocery sack to help pick up sticks that she found in the yard. At least she was being halpful and staying out of the street:) I just thought that she was too funny loaded up with all her loot. I think everyone who drove by thought she was pretty funny too because they all had smile and were laughing. After Kaylee and I finished the first flower bed I realized that we did not have enough flowers so we all loaded up and went back to Lowe's for some more flowers. At least it was a beautiful day to be outside because my 2 hour project was turning into a four hour project. By the end of the day I was digging the holes and Kaylee was putting the flowers in the hole while Campbell played.

Here are my two favorite helpers at the end of the planting day. If I had been in the picture you would have seen one dirty Mom from the digging and getting dirt thrown on her from my two girls trying to dig deep holes. We did make some memories and in the end we got everything accomplished. I would definitely say the day was a success! (I will have to take a picture of the flowers later, so far even the ones with minimal roots have survived.)

A Few Milestones

Well I am finally going to get around to posting about a few happenings in our house over the past few weeks.

First I will get you up to speed with Kaylee's happenings. She came home from school with another treasure chest with a little baby tooth in it last week. That makes tooth number 5 that she has lost since school started. I cannot believe that she has grown and changed so much since the first day of school. She is very proud of the fact that she has lost the most teeth in her class so far and she has 5 gold dollars from the Tooth Fairy:) The things that children get excited about are too funny.

Kaylee is doing great on her reading. Her favorite school day if she had to pick would be Library Day. She usually returns home with some kind of animal book which reminds me of myself at her age. When I say animal book I mean one about taking care of a specific animal or information about the different breeds of that animal. We all end up learning a few facts before the next Library Day:)

This week they had some standardized testing Monday -Wednesday. Kaylee got in the car Monday telling me she had to go to bed early and I needed to cancel her dentist appointment. There was an important note in her backpack I had to read and follow the directions. (The teacher had sent the standard note about getting to bed early, eating a good breakfast, and if you have any doctor's appointments then you need to change them because there will be no make-up testing.) My girl is such a rule follower:)

I also had a substitute tell me that Kaylee was a huge help and a real sweetheart. I asked if she was too helpful because usually that is teacher code for she told me everything I was doing wrong. But she said no Kaylee was just very helpful and let her know all of the daily routine. I hope she is always so sweet to subs:)

The next big event is that Campbell is potty trained!!! Her sweet teachers kept telling me that she was going when the other children went to the bathroom and I noticed that she was staying in the same diaper all day so I decided before Spring Break to try the Pull-Ups. Well she did great, even when we went to my parents' house and she did not have one accident...not even at night. So when we returned home we made a big deal about being a Big Girl now, she was so proud! We still have a whole package of Pull-Ups that we have never used. I am so glad that she turned out to be as easy to potty train as Kaylee. Now if we could just get rid of the paci:)

Also Campbell has recently changed her name to "Rachel" because we have been taking care of my friend Rachel's son, Mason, occasionally since she went back to work. Campbell loves Mason, some times a little too much. She has even named her pink baby doll Mason and carries he/she everywhere. Here is a picture of Mason the doll in the baby swing I pulled out for the real Mason. She is such the "little Mommy" these days. We cannot leave the house without baby Mason, her purse (with keys, make-up compact, 2 cell phones, 2 baby bottles for Mason, baby's lovie, and her juice), and now we have added a note pad to the mix.

One final Campbell story is from when Cary was putting her to bed last night. They were talking about Jesus being born. Campbell chimed in with, "There was no room so he had to sleep on a table!" After a little smile Cary told her he slept in a stable. I can definitely see where she would get the two confused:)

On a different note our portable DVD player that we only use in the car on out-of-town trips and the rest of the time it resides in the playroom bit the dust. It has been fairly traumatic for Kaylee because she likes to watch a movie every now and then and draw the characters from the screen. She is a really good artist! Then there is Campbell who only wants to watch Blue's Clues lately which is not on Kaylee's top 10 things to watch all day so that has caused some meltdowns by Campbell. I finally broke down and got this today...



Needless to say the girls are very excited that they have a pink Princess TV, the screen is bigger than 8 inches, and there is a wand remote. (At least they will be pleased until they realize this one does not fit in the car.)


Hope you are all having a blessed week!

A Facelift!

Check me out now! I had Jennisa hook me up with a "new do" and I love it!! There are a few more things that have changed around our house in the past week but I will have to post on those tomorrow...right now I am too tired. Thank you a million times over to Jennisa and Theresa for making blogging more fun. (Theresa did the awesome header.) Both of these women are very sweet and patient. A real pleasure to work with. I cannot stop smiling everytime I see my new look:)