My baby is a BIG BOY!!!

So Dave has been pestering me forever about getting Bobo's hair cut. He is just my little baby and I wasn't ready. Well this weekend we decided it was time, its so long it started curling up around his ears and stuff. So we headed out to one of the kids hair cut places! He wasn't very happy, but he was a pretty good customer. And does he look SOOO handsome!!

Before... yeah it was long :)

All done!!! :)

Menu Planning Monday!

I just did a bunch of grocery shopping this weekend so I have more options :) Now to put them into action :)

If you are coming to visit from orgjunkie, please stay and look around! I would love feedback!!

Alright, on to the menu!!

Monday- Leftovers

Tuesday- Potluck at PRIDE class (making pasta salad)

Wednesday- Pork, maybe kabobs on the grill? yummo!

Thursday- Spaghetti with meat sauce, green beans and garlic bread

Friday- Homemade Pizza, yummmmyyy its been a while!

Saturday- All day pride class, probably going out to eat afterward with the kids

Sunday- Meatloaf...man I love meatloaf :) With corn and mashed potatoes!

Scrapbooking...

I love scrapbooking... I love looking at scrapbooks. I have a horrible memory so I love looking and having the memorabilia to take me back and remind me of those milestones.

Its incredible to compare the pictures of my daughter and my son from when she was his age. They look like twins! When Little Miss was born, and before that, I was big into paper scrapbooking. I had a whole room dedicated to it. But as my life changed, so did my time for scrapbooking, or rather lack there of. So I turned to digital scrapbooking, I really enjoyed it but after a computer crash and loosing all of the elements I had downloaded, I got discouraged.

Today I decided that I just can't keep not documenting the important things in my family's lives. I read about an idea where the mom scrapbooks each month for their child. "2 Months" then "3 Months" each a two page layout. I can handle that! I could probably get caught up with Bobo in a weekend or two. If there is more to scrapbook and I feel like it, fine, but if not I won't let myself become overwhelmed.

Little Miss has 3 scrapbooks a few inches thick that only goes up to when she was 9 months old. I felt the need to photograph EVERYTHING (I still do!) but then to scrapbook EVERYTHING. It just isn't practical, I don't have the time to do a layout for each set of cute pictures I take.

Anyway...lots of rambling, but expect some layouts soon! If I don't post them, gently remind me :)

Here are that I did about a year ago of Little Miss :)

Diaper Cakes and Turning One

My neighbor and friend, Marcie had a baby shower 2 weeks ago for her little baby boy Diego who will be arriving very soon! I decided to try to make a diaper cake. I watched a few youtube videos and I think it turned out great! I didn't take a picture of it with the bottom, I forgot. Dh cut a circle out of cardboard and wrapped it in shiny silver wrapping paper (thanks babe!)


But all in all I think these make a great gift! Its practical and cute. Her nursery for the baby is jungle themed so I tied everything into that. Everyone liked it :)


Now... Turning One...


Turning one typically means lots of changes. In our family this includes ditching the bottle. With Little Miss we did this right at one... for Bobo we were a little afraid that he wasn't ready, but I thought that if I didn't just do it, it would be much harder to get rid of later. So, Sunday morning he had his LAST bottle. WOO HOO! With Little Miss, turning One meant being able to turn her car seat to face forward...well once she hit 20 lbs. We won't be doing this with Bobo. His car seat can hold a rearfacing child until 35 lbs (which is typical for convertible car seats) so we will be keeping him backwards until then, or at least until he is close to that weight. For more on my thoughts of car seat safety, go here.

My little baby is becoming my little man. I swear he has grown since his birthday. Something else that came was two new teeth! We thought he might be teething because of the amount of drool he has had, but I didn't see any. (Drool is typically the ONLY sign my kids show when they get new teeth) Yesterday I noticed them though, in the back! One on each side of the top. Big boy!

The Mystery Bag

Well it appears as if my wonderful husband is a bit blog shy. I had left these few things for him to blog about but he hasn't done it. LOL So here I go....

I learned to recycle gift bags from my mom. Why throw away a perfectly fine bag when you will have to buy another one soon anyway. When we lived in Michigan my parents and I passed this orange iridescent gift bag back and forth a dozen times. It became quite the joke. So, its no surprise that almost all of the gift bags I use were given to me at some point.

I was getting ready for Bobo's birthday and I noticed this gift bag sitting on my dresser. I had just been digging through the bags trying to find one for my friend's baby shower, so I figured I pulled it out then. I put a few of Bobo's gifts in this bag and the tag caught my eye, "5/25/09 Happy Birthday with lots of hugs and kisses! From Moca and Aita" (see picture below). Now this was weird for a few reasons... first of all, it had been written only about a week before and the fact that we don't know anyone named Moca or Aita! I have NO idea where this bag came from. I don't remember getting it in a freecycle batch since we have been doing that alot lately, and we definitely didn't receive it from anyone. Bobo's tonka truck was sitting there, I thought maybe it had been returned or something and a gift bag was stuck to the bottom of it, but we bought that before the 25th. So... anyone know someone named Moca or Aita??? Help us solve the mystery!!! :)

Dave's Other Lost Post

Texas is hot, like you didn't know. Our neighborhood promised a pool and rec center when we bought our house over 2 years ago... there is nothing to show that it was no more than bait to get people to move in. I don't think we will see a pool here as long as we live here anyway. Luckily, we have access to the pools where I do my summer camps, but sometimes driving out there isn't an option when I am by myself with both kids. So DH headed to Academy and got the kids a little pool for the back yard. We have a little slide that is too small for Little Miss and still a bit too big for Bobo so she uses it to slide into the pool. It is helping us beat this hot weather and keep in good spirits when we play outside!

Our Fun/Insane/Great WEEK!

This week was one that I was excited for, but dreading at the same time. We had ALOT going on and it seemed to all fall on this week. First, it was my first week of summer camps that I am teaching. I am teaching 4 this summer so this was the first. On top of that, it was our second week of pride classes, one of which was a 4 hour class, instead of 3. Little Miss had her dance recital on Saturday which included two rehearsals, one on Friday and one Saturday morning, and then, of course, Bobo's first birthday. And to top that off, Bobo had a cold all week! So yes, very very busy week in our household! It did leave us with some fantastic pictures though :)

First, Bobo's Birthday... My baby is one. I just can't believe it was a year ago that I was terrified because he was in the NICU, now I'm terrified that he will eat me out of house and home!

Lets start with the cake fiasco! I ordered a cake from Randalls, I went to pick it up and it was HORRIBLE I should have taken a picture... it looked like Little Miss made it... more like Little Miss could have done a better job. She offered me a lower price and I told her I just didn't want it. This put me in a bit of a panic. Dave reminded me of a cute cake we saw at Walmart so I drove all the way back over by our house to see if they had it....they didn't. They had this one below but it was mostly yellow and white. The bakery lady offered to add some blue to make it more boy-ish...well... she didn't lie. She definitely added blue... I felt obligated to buy this mess of a cake simply because I thought that I was out of options. I called Dave and he suggest that I go to Marble Slab and get an ice cream cake... I should have just done this in the beginning. That cake was beautiful! So yeah, the kids ate the mess cake and the adults ate the yummy ice cream cake :)

We were singing Happy Birthday to Bobo and I was trying to keep his hands away from the fire... yeah that didn't last very long. A second after this picture was taken he reached up with his other hand and...

Screaming baby.... I wasn't sure if it was more of the pain or because we all gasped and stopped singing. Either way he was happy once he got his cup cake...

He loved his presents :)

Yes we ate first, the pictures are just in the wrong order :)

Our Birthday Balloon Release. We started this with Little Miss's first birthday as something fun to do. We haven't had anyone email us if they found it, but its still fun :)

Little Miss's Dance Recital...

What a beautiful little mermaid :) They danced to "Under the Sea" from the movie The Little Mermaid. We weren't able to video tape the actual performance, but I taped the dress rehearsal.

Little Miss and her friend

Little Miss and her friends!

Mommy and Little Miss afterwards

Daddy and Little Miss

PRIDE Classes

I think I am acutally going to come out of these classes learning quite a bit! One of our assigments was to do a "genogram" I hadn't ever heard of it, but apparently its a real thing! Here is a sample of one. Mine of course has names, and then birth and death dates and places.

We have another class tomorrow, I am acutally looking forward to it :) Just not the drive downtown in rush hour traffic :)

Its interesting the things you find out. I had no idea my grandfather was born in North Dakota. I just figured he was from Michigan like the rest of my family on that side. My mathernal Grandmother was a huge help :) She gave me all the information I needed on my mom and dad's side and I called my step-dad for the info on his side.

On a side note - my dad died when I was 12, so when I write refering to my "dad" most likely I am talking about my step-dad who has been in my life since I was 9... but around here he is mostly refered to as PaPa :)

Cleaning out the closets

Ok, it isn't an understatement when I say our house seriously lacks storage! The only closet not in a bedroom is our pantry in the kitchen. Whoever designed this house must not have much stuff. I must say that we have been very VERY blessed with people who have passed on alot of their unneeded things to our foster care efforts. I have been putting things wherever I can, but 2 days ago, someone donated a fantastic dresser so I was able to move some things around. I also did some reorganizing and purging. Here are the befores and afters of the metal shelves in the closet of the will be foster children's room.

BEFORE

AFTER


Still lots of junk but there is space to add more things and alot of the trash is gone :)


We also had a bookshelf in Bobo's room holding diapers, wipes and things, and now we needed it for storage. I don't have a before picture of the books as they were all over the house, but now we have a nicely organized bookshelf!
BEFORE

AFTER

PRIDE Classes

Last night we started our first of 8 PRIDE classes (Parent Resource for Information Development Education). I can tell already this is going to be an interesting journey through this process. Just as of last night, I can see that my thoughts and feelings and expectations are changing. For instance, I had subconciously vilified the birth parents of the kids in foster care. Now I can see that there are so many reasons and circumstances that lead up to a person's children being taken into custody.

I can't remember if I said this before, but we do plan to adopt a child at some point in our journey through fostering. We had planned to adopt younger than Little Miss, but now we are thinking that this child that we add to our family may not necessarily have to fit into this little box we have planned for them. I think if we keep an open mind (which the trainer encourages) we could come out adopting a child that is completely different than what we had planned and they could be a perfect for for our family.

My biggest fear, and really one of my only fears, is how I will cope when it is time to send the child home. I know that is a big reason why alot of people won't foster. I simply don't feel that the loss that I will experience is grave enough that I shouldn't offer my love and care for a child in their time of need. I CAN make a difference and I am willing to sacrifice my comfort for them.

I do also want to say thanks to all of those who are supporting us in this decision and those who have donated so many things to us already to help us prepare for these children!

Yeah... I'm a big Twilight nerd.... I know it... if you know me personally, you know it too :) Here is a trailer for the new movie, New Moon! Can't wait :)

Bobo Says "Bye- Bye"

So, I think what they say is true, that your second child doesn't talk as much or as early as your first. Little Miss has been a chatter box since day one, and her vocab now is much higher than your average 3 year old, but Bobo has decided that words are overrated :) As of yesterday, he began waving and saying "buh-bye" at the same time. Sometimes its more "buh-buh" but still, we get the point :)

My little man is getting so big! His birthday is less than two weeks away! Wow, how time flies!

On another note, I have a funny Little Miss quote to share. She informed me a few days that "worms go into a raccoon and turn into a butterfly" At first, I was a little lost, then I realized she was saying cocoon :) Too cute!

Monday Menu Planning

Happy June, Everyone! I love the month of June. It used to mean getting out of school and summer break. Now it means longer days, more family time, and grilling out! Our move to Texas two years ago left us with extremely hot summers, but we do still enjoy them ... as long as we can safely return to our A/C!

Monday - Hamburgers on the grill, light summery pasta salad (some sort of pasta, Italian dressing and an assortment of veggies) and corn

Tuesday- Tacos (we didn't do these last week!)

Wednesday - Hotdogs on the grill, some fruit in season, chips

Thursday - Leftovers

Friday - Bbq ribs, on the grill, with potatoes and green beans

Saturday - Peanut Chicken Salad (again, we forgot this last week!)

Sunday - BBQ Chicken

As you can see, some of it is a little vague, I am going to go to the store today to pick up the rest of the items we need, then I can update things like "some fruit in season" LOL