Jill's Baby Shower

We have been very excited for Jill & Geoff that they are expecting a little baby boy on June 25th of this year (Jill's birthday!). In fact, Mandee and I decided to throw a shower for Jill along with a couple of other friends, Bailey & Tracy. So, on March 21st, we showered Jill at Mandee's house in Orange Grove. It was pouring rain, but with the valet service that Mandee's dad provided, everyone made it in dry and we had 45 people or so in attendance. We played Daddy Knows Best where we asked Geoff questions prior to the shower for Jill to also answer. We also had everyone complete some baby wishes and advice cards. Jill got tons of lovely presents and everyone was very happy for her. I still need to send these pictures to Jill, but here are a few from the fun day!

 

 

Weekend in Austin

The day after Grace's birthday, we met the Powell's in Austin at the Huey's House for a long friend and kid weekend. We arrived Friday night. The Huey's live in a large, beautiful home in the Steiner Neighborhood in Austin. They have a fabulous backyard where we spend the majority of the weekend. The weather was gorgeous and the kids had a blast! There were 7 kids total ages 22 months thru 5 years. We cooked out, went to the Austin Zoo, celebrated Grace and Becks' birthdays with a St. Patrick's Day theme, and had a bit of "find the leprechaun" game going on all weekend for the little ones. Most of you have seen it on my Instagram, but I created 6 different notes that the kids would find throughout the weekend starting with a book about the leprechaun and instruction to look for him so they could get his pot of gold. We used shamrock confetti to show the leprechaun had been around. They got green jellybeans and had to search for his hat and wear green all day on Saturday. They made magic pudding (pistachio) when they mixed milk with the magic powder. They had to hunt for gold coins (chocolate) and just had a really good time, although they did not find the leprechaun! I got the ideas from my expert Kindergarten teacher, GG! On top of that, we just had a really good weekend with our friends and got enough visiting in without any major kid accidents. At this time in our lives, that is a win! Here's a few quick pics:

 

 

Grace's 2nd Birthday Party

So, as Grace's 2nd birthday approached, I went back and forth deciding whether to throw a birthday party or not or just have a little family party with us at home. While Atticus loves being the center of attention for events like birthdays or Christmas, Grace hasn't been like that. In fact, at Christmas, while all of us opened gifts, she went back and forth between the living room and GG's room to watch some Paw Patrol and back to eat a cupcake and then maybe to open a gift and so on. She was happier doing her own thing and if we tried to force her, she wasn't happy. So, I didn't know if giving her a birthday party would be fun for her or not. At the last minute, about a week before her birthday, I decided I would do a small one anyways. So, on her actual birthday, March 12th, a Thursday, we threw a party. I decided on a Minnie Mouse theme. We ate lasagna, cold veggies, and pizza. We had cupcakes and cake. We opened presents and let the kids play all night. We had a few friends over including Chris, Katherine and Olivia; Kirsten, Jonathan, Katie, Katerina; Russell, Sarah, Austin and Aubrey; and Travis, Rachel and Lillie. It was a great group of people and even though it was a Thursday night and I was afraid this would throw a knot into people's normal weeknight schedules, they all came and we had a really good time! And the best part of all? Grace was in her element! Only once did she cry and that was when I was holding Olivia. But, as soon as Katherine picked up Grace, she was happy. She just thought she needed attention too. I'll tell more through the pictures below...

First, we took some porch pictures in her little outfit. I happened to give her a fruit roll-up right before. I made her t shirt.

Then, I have some pictures of my decorations and cake and cupcakes. I saw the cake on pinterest and decided to try it. I had to bake 4 9 inch round cakes to make a double layer face with ears. And then I piped stars all over it in icing. I was super proud that it looked like Minnie. The hardest part was mixing the colors and using way too much food gel coloring! Also, the bad thing about black icing? When you eat it, it turns your teeth and lips and mouth a shade of purplish black. Oops!

We opened presents and Grace was gifted some really thoughtful things.

 

 

 

 We sang happy birthday which she ended up loving! She liked to be sung to and liked being the center of attention; I was so surprised!

It was a really fun evening and Grace played and had a good time and was never unhappy on her birthday! I was so glad! By the end of the evening, she was a disheveled little Minnie Mouse mess, but she was also officially a 2 year old.

Happy 2nd Birthday Grace Caroline Seidel!!

How Atticus Finds Dinosaurs in Everyday Life

So, normally you probably would not think that dinosaurs have a lot of relevance to what we talk about and do each day. But, lately at our house, dinosaurs are talked about a lot. And somehow they find their way into every conversation. Here are 2 of our conversations today:

When I picked Atticus up from preschool and was putting him in the car, he showed me a picture he colored with chalk of Jesus and the last supper:

Me: So what is this picture about?
Atticus:  It's a picture of Jesus and the last supper.
Me: And what did they do at the last supper?
Atticus: Well, the bread was the body and the wine was the blood. It was just like the meat and the blood in dinosaurs.
Me (attempting to get back on track with the Bible story): Okay, what happened after the last supper?
Atticus: Well, Jesus died on the cross.
Me: And why did he die on the cross?
Atticus: To wash away our sins. And then God sent the flood because everybody was sinning and that is how some of the dinosaurs were killed; but not all of them. God only put the little dinosaurs on the ark but the really big ones like the meat eaters were killed.

*So, he may have mixed some Old Testament and New Testament towards the end there, but I'm always impressed that 1) he is learning so much about the Bible! and 2) he somehow still gets some dinosaur talk in there...

Our other conversation came before naps when I let him pick a sweet from the basket of accumulated sweets. He found a Cadbury Egg! This must be from last Easter and I have no idea how I ever missed it because in case you didn't know, Cadbury eggs are my favorite Easter treat. But, anyways, he found it and I actually agreed he could eat it, although I wasn't sure it would even be good (turns out - it was fine!). So, I tried to convince coaxed pleaded with warned him that he might not like the center (my favorite part!). He started to eat it and said:

Atticus: Hmm. This is good! It's like a dinosaur egg! Ooh - this gooey part is like the blood in a dinosaur!

I had no response. If that doesn't turn me away from eating Cadbury eggs, nothing will. But, I thought it was too funny that he was just eating a little treat and his brain was still saying "dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur".

Goals for March

So, I follow lots of other blogs and some write down their monthly goals. I know to write them down is one good way to make sure you are on track to accomplish them. So, here are mine for the month of March.

And here are the details of those goals.

1. Wake up before the kids 3x a week for "me" time. So, one perk to being a stay at home mom to kids who are not yet in school means that I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to get ready for the day. I typically don't set an alarm and don't wake up until Atticus comes into our room to crawl in bed with us - which could be at 6:30 or even 8:00. So, on average, I get out of bed at 7:30 every morning. But, recently, Atticus and sometimes Grace are not taking afternoon naps. So, my "me" time to be lazy or be extra productive has gone away. So, I am telling myself to get up in the morning earlier and do what I need or want to do. But, I do love my sleep, so this one will be a challenge. But, it's a challenge that I know I will LOVE if I just get my rear end out of bed when that alarm goes off. And I know my wake-up mood will be better too with the kids. Some days, I just need more than 1/2 a second before I have little children's voices in my ear needing breakfast or cartoons or whatever else.

2. Read 2 books: one for fun and one for study/improvement: I love to read. And, I have a stack of books that I bought after Christmas to read. And I just attended a book party where I got two more new books to read. So, I think I need to start making an extra effort to read. I prefer fiction novels for fun reading. But, in the past couple of years, I have also started enjoying books on self improvement or just study/thinking books. I'll let you know at the end of the month which books I chose to read.

3. Scrapbook 4 layouts. I love to scrapbook. I love putting some of my one million pictures I take, on pretty paper with lots of accoutrements. I also love keeping caught up on my scrapbooking in chronological order. But, I am always behind. In fact, I've never met a scrapbooker that is caught up! So, I tend to get lots done when I go on a retreat or weekend to do nothing but scrapbook. But, when I get home I always tell myself that if I just do a page here or there, I won't be so behind. So, my goal is 4 layouts for the month. I will be kind of shocked if I accomplish this goal. But, I'm hopeful. And it's one of my favorite things to do, so it shouldn't be hard. But it can be hard to prioritize fun things like this when you are a stay at home mom. :)

4. Prepare 2 meals per week. So, since we've been married, Vic has been the cook in our house. He likes to do it and it just works for us. Even since I've been a stay at home mom, although I do get into streaks of making dinner for us, Vic typically is the one to come home and make dinner. I'll make casseroles or marinate things or put things in crockpots here and there, but Vic is still the main food preparer in our house. And many times this is because we eat off the grill and Vic just always does the grill cooking for us. Or certain things, like roasting vegetables can't be put into the oven until he walks in the door, so it ends up that he is the one to just do that as well. And while he doesn't mind, it works better for the kids if we eat at 6:00 or 6:15 and we can't always do that when Vic doesn't get home until 5:45 or 6:00. So, I'm going to make 2 meals a week for the  month.

5. Write down spending amounts daily on our bathroom mirror. This habit has worked really well for us in the past. When we take a dry erase marker and just keep a running total of what we are spending and how much of our budget we have left, and write it on our bathroom mirror where we both see it constantly, we do a better job of sticking to our budget. We have a really busy month ahead of us with lots of traveling and we will have more expenses than usual. So, we will try to remember to do this daily so we spend wisely.

Okay - that is it! I'll post a summary at the end of the month to see how well I did and decide if it was beneficial to me to decide whether to blog monthly goals in the future!

Prayers, Back update, and Grace's words

So, I have a few quick things. The first one before I forget has to do with Atticus' prayers tonight. So, first you should know that he had a rough day of behaving well on a consistent basis: lots of back talking and growling at me when I wasn't doing what he wanted. Unfortunately, earlier in the day, I told him I had a new book for him that I wanted to give him this weekend. I've had it for several weeks now and it's all about...you guessed it...Dinosaurs, and tells you where they lived and is super cool. Anyways, I wished I hadn't said that I had one because not only did he ask for it over and over and I have to remind him his behavior would indicate if he got it this weekend, but I think it made him just act worse. And I don't know why I did that. I like to reward him for acting good in a situation or for a day and I like to prepare him for the reward so he remembers and acts good. #bribery. I really think that is ok at this age if I use a normal amount of time. But, why did I tell a 3 year old who doesn't even understand 1 minute vs. 1 week that he could have something in 3 days? Dumb, Sarah.

Anyways, he really wants that book. So, tonight in our prayers, we finished up and we did the method of me saying a line and him repeating. (sometimes, he will just say it all or I will say it all or we do this repeating method). I was about to leave the room and he said he had something to add to the prayers. It went like this:

"Dear God. Thank you for the food. Please help me to be really nice. Please help me to have a lot of kindness and be really nice to Gwacie. And please help me to have a lot of kindness so I can get that dinosaur book. Amen."

That stinker. And then as I walked out the door, he looks so stinking cute as he says "I love you." But then he follows it up with, "I hope I dream about dinosaurs tonight." with that adorable, completely naïve and honest little grin on his face.

Also, I want to give a quick update on Grace's words. I swore she said "dinosaur" last night. She kept bringing over dinosaurs and roaring at me with them while I would squeal and run. But, she kept saying "di-sau". I kept listening and am willing myself to believe that is what she was saying. When I finally asked her to say "dinosaur" though, she would just say one of her regular sounds. But, I'm going to keep watching. We have also been reading a Dr. Seuss book called "Mr. Brown can moo, can you?" and without realizing it until just tonight, I have decided it's a fabulous book because it has so many sounds in it (tick tock, boom boom, splatt, whisper, etc.) and she is into repeating them and is getting better and better at it. Woohoo! She is also getting good at pointing to body parts. Just this week, she has added (to her current repertoire of eyes, nose, teeth, ears, hair, bellybutton, fingers, and toes) chin and muscles and she will put her little arms up as if she is flexing. Yay Grace!

And finally a quick update on Vic's back. So - Tiffany! you were right on track with a back plan! Thank you!! He met with a PA in a neurosurgeon's office yesterday afternoon who prescribed a weeklong prescription of an oral steroid and two pain medications and then prescribed him physical therapy 2 - 3x per week for 4-6 weeks. They want to see him back in 4 weeks to see how he is doing. Of course, Vic was hoping for a quicker fix and isn't thrilled about taking even more time out of work for appointments that often (his work schedule is very hard to schedule those kinds of things and he'd already done lots of appointments with the chiropractor). But, we are super happy that surgery is the last option, as far as this office was concerned, and hopeful that we have as much luck as our friend Tiffany did with physical therapy. He still has an appointment scheduled for a 2nd opinion for next Thursday with an orthopedic surgeon. We are really hoping it is the same opinion because we would feel better that this is the route it will take to fix him! Oh and better yet - the PA said "good luck on your race" for the big Texas Independence Relay race Vic and 11 other guys are doing at the end of March. Woohoo!

Okay - just had to get those updates in. Later!