Friday, July 23, 2010

Ellyse's friend party

Happy 6th! Welcome to the Chaos!!

We had a Princess and the Frog themed friend party for Ellyse's 6th bday this year. They played in a kiddie pool in the back yard, went down a cool slide thingy - much thanks to Mammy - opened gifts, played games, and handed out gummy frog's with a Tiana ring attached.

Plenty of little helpers. :)


In between all this madness, we managed to play the classic game leap frog and the last leap was into the "pond" (kiddie pool). We also played Tiana's restaurant relay where the girls had to work in teams to hold trays of play food and run back and forth the fastest. They had a blast but my little 6 year old had a bit of a problem realizing that she can't always be first. EVEN on her birthday.

Where's the cake you ask? We he ell... let me just tell you. I made two cakes for E's family party and let them cool on the stove whilst I helped out at young women's. I came home to find that Allie, AKA The Destructor, had herself a little snack. With her hands. So, we scrapped that one and had to make another one.

THHHHHHHEEEEEENNNNN, I wasn't going to make another cake so I purchased some pre- made cupcakes from the store for her friends party. I again left them on the counter while I attended to Ellyse. Allie grabs the entire package of cupcakes and brings them to me to show me how fabulous they are and in turn starts to lose her grip on them. They slid and slid and slid till EVERY. SINGLE. CUPCAKE frosting was mauled and mangled.

Seriously.

Big breath in.

Okay Allie, let's count the score here. Cake v. Allie = Winner, Allie Cupcakes v. Allie = again, she takes the cake. ha, ha.

Hoo boy, I tell ya, we had NO IDEA what we were getting ourselves into when we ordered her.

In all seriousness though, I love both these girls with all my heart, no matter what fiasco we're currently going through and am soooo glad to have them in our lives!! Cake or no cake, they rock!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Happy Birthday to the one who made me a mommy

Six years ago today, I became a mom. And boy, was I so totally not prepared for it! I was basically in panic mode for about the first 5-6 months but it was all soo worth it to be able to have my sweet sweet girl Ellyse!!

Last night I surprised her with decorating her room with some crepe paper and balloons and candy hung from the ceiling. I did frost her cake and then realized I need to keep it fresh until Friday night. uhhh, okkkaaaay, Jason came up with a pretty creative idea of how to store it without it getting too much air. Note to self: DO NOT decorate the cake until the day of the party!!!

No judging on the cake. I was working with a horrible tool and so you get what you get. Or in this case, Ellyse gets what she gets.

We managed to wrap up the gifts late last night and I knew as soon as she saw them, they'd be mauled so I snapped a pic then.Today, she's getting her choice of dinner, plain chicken with cherries on the side. :)

And tonight she gets her friend party. It's so fun to be 6!!

We're all too happy to have her in our lives!! Happy birthday Lesee!

The 3rd of July

Because of the holiday falling on a Sunday, most of the state celebrated the 4th on Saturday the 3rd. Annnnd we had Monday off as well so it became a bit of a 3 day celebration for some. Unfortunately, not for us. We did our partying on Saturday.

The morning began by enjoying a waffle. The girls and I then decided we wanted to go be a part of the parade in Clearfield. We got ready and helped out Starstruck with their "float." Ellyse and Allie were able to ride but E wanted to throw candy and in order to do this, you have to walk the entire length of the parade. You're not suppose to get on and off the trailer. So, she stayed on the trailer for the most part of the parade until the end where we broke the rules a bit and let her get off and throw a bit o candy and show off some of her amazing kartwheel skills. ( If any of you saw me making a fool of myself... well, all I can say is... guilty as charged. It's a parade people, you gotta keep the energy up. )

Later, we met up with the Woods for a birthday party and were able to take in Toy Story 3. Very cute!

That evening we got together for a bbq, volleyball ( my favorite part of the day! ) and some fireworks. I stole this pic from Darby. Thanks Darb! Check out the teams. Jason, Lance, me and Jimbo against basically the Read's and the Brady's. It was a bit of a slaughter hee, hee. Considering they only had one player taller than any of our players. We had so much fun laughing it up!! I love me some good volleyball!!!

Fun day with the fam! Love this holiday!!!
I tried to get a non posed picture of their faces watching the fireworks but as you can tell, someone knew about the camera.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Prayers

I think praying for someone you don't know is never a bad thing.

A friend of mine's, friend is is need of special prayers. As a mother, I can not imagine how difficult this could be to deal with. Please pray for little Preslee and the Sullenger family.

Go here to read about it.

Thanks!

Friday, July 9, 2010

Indian Trail Hike

We made it up to Indian trail this year. Sooo beautiful! E and A came with us this time and E was such a trooper! Always the leader of the pack and way ahead of us most of the time......until she fell....twice. Then it became I hate this mountain! Why did we have to go up this mountain? This is the worst mountain EVER. I'm never going up this mountain ever. again. (hee, hee) We had to let her know that we don't just give up when we fall down. We pick ourselves up and get right back at it. She didn't really like hearing that. But how could she not get back up this mountain? Check out how beautiful it is.






Jason spotted quite a few critters around. We were able to catch a couple on camera. They scare easy so I used the shadow of my finger to point to him. See.

Then, when we got to the bottom again and thought all was well, we came across this guy.

We looked at him, he stared at us. We looked for an owner, nope. We began to panic a bit. He kept staring. We rethought our path. Then, thankfully the owner started talking to him. OH thank heavens.. we seriously thought it was a wolf for a minute. Nothing like that to get your to your target heart rate.

Nice hike. If you haven't been up it...GO!! You're totally missing out on some amazing views!

A nice game of Cowles baseball....

For Father's day evening, the Cowles fam got together for a picnic. Afterwords, we enjoyed a rousing game of baseball.





As the mean mom that I am, I drug (literally) Ellyse onto the field to get her to at least try it. I actually had to bribe her with a slurpee to just try it once. Daddy helped her bat and I ran around the bases with her. To my surprise, she really liked it. However, she wanted me to run the bases with her all the time. I guess I thought she was good on her own and after I made her do it by herself, this is where I found her. Pouting.

I'm soooo mean.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Hair

For most of my life, I've had my hair in pretty much this same style with it being short and long or even different colors at times.
However, in 2008 I decided to chop it all off, and go to this style.
Much thanks to my friend Jessica who does an awesome job!! I liked it a lot but now, I've added a little different flare to it. We added bangs and it's suppose to have spikes on the crown but I'm not able to get it to look decent enough yet. So, this is what I get.



And up until I changed my hair in 08, I don't remember EVER having as crazy looking hair as I do when I wake up except with these shorter cuts.



I just had to take a picture of it because of how much it makes J and I laugh in the mornings.

A good old fashioned back yard evening...

Usually, we head out to eat on weekend nights. Jason's family has done this for years. We like it and have incorporated it into our family tradition too. This particular Saturday night though, we got home from grocery shopping a little later than usual and the girls were dying to play in the water. With the weather being like it has, we haven't had too many opportunities up until this point. Jason and I both caved in and let the girls set up the kiddie pool in the backyard. By about 6 the pool was finally blown up and ready to go. The girls were dressed in their swim garbs and they hit the pool asap. They played and played, jumping on the trampoline and into the pool.

We didn't want to make them get all dressed up again...alright, alright so I didn't want to have to get them all gussied up again, to go out; so Jason went and got some yummy pizza from a local pizza place that we love and we ate it with swim suits as an optional dress code. We hung out in the back yard and sat in the nice breeze.
It's funny because the girls play in the pool every once in a while however, this being a weekend night that we're usually out, we were "in" and I already had blocked out that time for family. I was just able to sit and relax and not worry about the laundry or the activities the next day or whatever. I just enjoyed our back yard and the beautiful weather.
Guess who else made it even more fun?

The ice cream truck!! Da, da, da, da!!

I have many memories of the ice cream truck going around my grandma's house when I was visiting there as a kid. I'd always get so excited to see it, even if I didn't get to purchase anything. It was just so different from where I grew up where we didn't have things like that around. Jason noticed it had the tune of "Praise to the Man" blasting from it. I don't remember that ever being the case when I was a kid.
Anyway, after walking bare foot across the street to the correct side of the road, the ice cream "mini van" (there's another big change from what I was used to as a kid) came by and stopped and we got the girls their ice cream. We didn't really have a huge selection to choose from because of their prices. Some were like 2.50 or more. Uh, hello. The store is just down the street. I guess that's what we get for the convenience of it.We had bought ice cream bars from the store earlier that day so Jason and I had a bar to eat as well. I just wanted the girls to have the "experience." We all ended up switching popsicles because everyone kept changing their minds. I had to convince Allie that she couldn't have both the chocolate and the sour one she'd chose from the truck. Somehow, she just didn't want to give one or the other up. Hmmmm, I wonder where she gets that from? She ended up with mostly chocolate however. A woman after my own heart.
Jason sprinkled the yard and sprayed the weeds as we all just hung out. I had to capture the moments with camera, cause that's what mom's do best.
I have to say I don't think I'll forget that night. Nothing special or extravagant but soo much fun! I love my family!

Allie and me


Turns out Ellyse is a pretty good shot, even if mom forgets to turn the flash back on.

Memorial Day 2010

I really love me some time to see the beautiful colors left all over the grounds of the graveyards on Memorial Day! I miss my loved ones as well! But I couldn't be more happy to have all these loved ones in my life!!!




Twinners

Grandma D gave Ellyse some new pajamas in a bigger size for an early birthday present. I may or may not have forgotten to send pj's to their house one night. She had a smaller size that she gave to her sister and suddenly, we're seeing double.