Glucose Test

Yes, it is that time in the pregnancy.  The Glucose test.  Yummy!  Actually, it isn't all that bad. I just end up getting super tired toward the end of the hour that I have to sit there.

It was actually kind of neat.  About 5 minutes after I drank the sugar juice, baby boy started break dancing in my tummy for a good 20 minutes.  It was the first time in this pregnancy that I have actually seen my tummy move and not just felt it.

Can't wait to meet this little man.

Oh and at 25 weeks I have only gained 15 pounds compared to my normal 20 - 25 pounds.  That is super exciting especially after a feeding frenzy weekend.  Ha! Ha!

Payton's Birthday Markers

Do you know that feeling when you wake up and hear a noise and think, "NO!!!"  Ha! Ha!  Well, Sunday after church and after I had put Lincoln down for a nap I told Dave that I had to lay down.  I was so tired.  Little did I know he was going to do the same thing without setting up something (a movie...anything) to entertain Payton.

I woke up to the sound of water running.  Why is the water running?  Did Payton go to the bathroom and wash her hands?  I sit up from off the couch and see that Dave is passed out on the other couch and realize that the water still hasn't stopped running.  I go into the bathroom to find Payton sitting on the counter with the sink full of water and her feet and hands in the sink.  I blink a couple of times and ask what she is doing?  And here is the conversation that follows...

P:  I am trying to get the paint off of my hands and feet.
Me:  Paint?
P:  Yes.
Me:  What paint?
P:  The paint on my hands and feet.
Me:  No, what paint?  Were you painting with your little Rapunzel paint set?  The paint bottles from yesterday?
P:  No, the markers I got from Mamo. 
Me:  Where were you painting?
P:  I got it on my hands and feet.
Me:  No, where were you painting.  In your room? the kitchen? your bedroom?
P:  The family room.
Me: (hand her a towel, shut off the water, and drain the sink)  Dry off your feet and come out to the family room.

Ugh!  I go back out to the family room and find the she has been drawing with the markers on the drawing pad that Mamo got her.  So not a huge deal except for the fact that each pen has a marker on both ends and she has taken the caps off of the majority of the markers and just thrown them on the rug.

Me:  Payton, you really need to ask before you get your markers out.  And you need to put the cap back on one before taking a cap off of another marker.  Plus you should be doing this in the kitchen so that the ink doesn't get all over the carpet.  (Dave wakes up and comes to a sitting position)
P:  I tried to ask Daddy but he wouldn't answer me...

It was one of those situations that could have been a lot worse.  She could have drawn on the wall or the furniture or me...  Ha! Ha!  As it turned out she didn't get any ink on anything but the paper and herself and she was trying to clean up after herself.  Why did I get so upset?  I think it was just the thought of what could have happened.

Poor kid, Happy Birthday, we are all going to take a nap.  Ha!  Ha!

Payton's Family Birthday Party

Dave has started the tradition of taking the kiddos out to breakfast for their birthday.  Both Payton and Lincoln really look forward to it. 

Dave took Payton to the "Breakfast House" or Holder's Country Inn for breakfast where she enjoyed chocolate milk and chocolate chip pancakes.  What more cold she ask for?

And yes, she somehow got out of the house without without getting dressed or having her hair brushed.  Sheesh!

Tonight was Payton's Family Birthday Party (and Dave's).  We had family and a few friends over for some kid friendly activities and dinner.

I am including this picture because I think it is hilarious and it was taken at the party while the kids were running around playing.  He is so cute!

Anyway,  since we were sticking with the Rapunzel theme and since Rapunzel loved to paint I bought some little canvases for the kids to paint.  I got this idea from Pinterest.  I cut shapes from contact paper and used them as stickers that the kids put down on their canvases first, then let them go to town painting.  So now instead of having just a blob of paint on the canvas there will be a shape of a tower or sun or both in the middle of the blob of paint.  Ha! Ha!  I thought it was genius. 

For dinner we had chicken and/or tri tip, salad, fruit, bread, Italian potatoes, etc.  All very yummy if I do say so myself.  :o)  After dinner we did S'mores.  I found this idea on Pinterest to use little clay pots lined with foil to put charcoal in and then your guests can roast the marshmallows right there at the table.  Dave said this turned out to be the hit of the party.  Everybody loved it.  Yay!  Here are a couple of pictures.  Again, Lincoln ran into the house with S'mores all over his face.  Had to take a picture.

Present time!  She was so excited.  What child wouldn't be, right?  Ha!  Ha!  Tonight Julian read all her cards to her, it was so cute.  At first she was really paying attention and then after a while she just started ripping open the presents with Julian trying to keep up with reading the cards.

The reaction my mother was hoping for...

Lincoln LOVES Julian and Damian.  They are some of the only boys that are as rough as he is.  Lincoln was having a blast playing with them and followed them around all night.  Ha! Ha!

Cupcakes!?!?!  Yes, we still did cupcakes after the S'mores.  You have to put a candle in something.  Ha! Ha!  Besides I never miss an opportunity to sample on of Jen's creations.  :o)

Happy Birthday Payton!

Payton's Birthday Party Play Date

Payton's Birthday Party was today!  She was SO excited to have her friends over to celebrate.  All morning I kept hearing, "Mommy, when are my friends going to be here?"  So cute!

The morning went pretty smoothly because of setting everything up the night before.  Basically I just had to make sure Lincoln and Payton didn't mess with the party stuff and set out the food.  Ha!  Ha!  I have to remember this for the next birthday party.

We had three activities for the kids to participate in.  Here are some of the kids making paper lanterns.  Totally forgot to even pick up my camera until Payton was already done with this activity...Bummer.

 Sidewalk Chalk Drawing.  Sadie working hard at her masterpiece.  Ha! Ha!

Unfortunately, I didn't figure out how to use the flash on our "fancy" camera in time to take any pictures of the kids doing the Pascal Bean Bag Toss...Sniffle.

Lunch.  I am so grateful for our front courtyard.  When the weather is nice it is truly an extension of our house.  We just opened the french door and people were able to come in and out. This is so nice especially with so many people at our house.

Present time.  I will describe it in two words...Mass Chaos.  Ha! Ha!  One day I may figure out how to keep some kind of order.  Oh well, everyone was excited to see what she got.  It was so cute, Payton's friend Lia read all of her cards to her. 

Cupcakes.  My awesome sister made the cupcakes for Payton's party.  They were super yummy and I made sure to enjoy one white one and one chocolate one.  Shhhh!  Don't tell anyone.  Ha!  Ha!  Since my sister was short staffed in the kitchen this week we agreed that I would come up with some kind of cake topper.  Thank goodness again for my Silhouette and a very nice person that created these toppers and had then available online for free.  :o)  I thought they turned out cute.

Jen did make one cupcake special for Payton.  Isn't Pascal cute!  She told Payton not to eat him or the frying pan and that they would not taste good.  Well, she decided to try them while we were handing out cupcakes to all the other kids and mommies.  It was so funny when she saw that I had noticed a bite out of Pascals head.  She said, "Mommy, I ate the frying pan and it was really good!"  Whatever.  LOL

Me...Dave saw the picture and automatically made fun of my head tilt and cheesey smile.  Ha!  Ha!  Whatever, that is just me.

Gotta love pictures of kids eating cupcakes.  Ha! Ha!  Lincoln looks like he got busted.

It was a super fun day.  It was so fun to hear Payton so excited and having such a great time with her friends.  It made all the work...and clean up worth it.  :o)

Payton's Birthday Party Set Up

This has been the first birthday party that I have actually taken the time to prepare for and do things little by little in advance.  Sure, I wish I would have started some things a little earlier and I wish I had been able to do a few other things that I just ran out of time to do but overall I think it turned out really well and Payton had so much fun.  Goal attained!  :o)

After many weeks of flip flopping on party themes I finally got Payton to settle on a Tangled theme.  I should have just started planning for it a few months ago because she has been talking about having a Rapunzel party since her last birthday.  However, she would change her mind on a theme after going to any ones birthday party because she had so much fun at those parties.  So indecisive...

First off I worked on the decorations.  Pinterest is awesome and dangerous at the same time.  So many ideas...

I loved the idea of decorating with lanterns and banner flags.  It turns out that my Silhouette came in real handy for this project.  Ha!  Ha!

I made a template and painted the lanterns before I rolled them.  I love the way they turned out!  However, if I were to do it over again I might have put two papers together to make them bigger around and to give them a design on the front and back.  I would also have used a darker color of paint so we could see the design on the floating ones better.  Oh well, woulda, shoulda, coulda...

I used the lanterns as centerpieces on the tables, decorations on our hutch and side tables, and hung a bunch from the ceiling hopefully making them look like they were floating.  When I started hanging them the night before the party, Payton walked into the room and said "Wow, look at all the lanterns!  This is awesome."  Then followed that statement with, "Hey, where are the boats?"  LOL

My sister in law Ashley helped me out with the banners.  My first run made me want to shoot myself.  I used a thinner scrapbook paper and it took FOREVER to peel it off of the cutting mat.  Fortunately, the thicker card stock was a lot easier.  Thank goodness!

Next up...Games!

I decided to have three activities that the kids could rotate through.  I knew that there were going to be a lot of kids and that there was going to be a wide range of ages so I tried to plan accordingly.  :o)  I am so fortunate to have the help of my mom, grandma, and friend, Tracy, to help man the different areas so that I can float around.

The three activities I choose were a Pascal Bean Bag Toss, Sidewalk Chalk Drawing, and Lantern Making.  When the kids participate in each activity will get a prize or party favor.

For the Pascal Bean Bag Toss game they will get a sun cookie.  Yes, I did paint Pascal on that box.  I impressed myself since I have no artistic ability at all.  Ha! Ha!

I wish I had taken more time to do the cookies or more specifically taken more time to look up decorating ideas. I couldn't find the cookie cutter I wanted in any of the stores and had to order it online.  The cookie cutter didn't get here until Tuesday night and the party is on Friday.  So I ended up making the cookies on Wednesday and decorating them on Thursday, with the help of my sweet husband.  Over all they turned out cute.

For the Sidewalk Chalk I bought big buckets of chalk and put them into little baggies that can be handed out to each of the kids as they come out to draw on the sidewalk.

For the Lantern Making Activity I cut out different shapes that the kids could glue onto a paper that we would make into a lantern.  Didn't take a picture of my example laterns for the table...  I found these little paint favors to hand out as they finish their lanterns.  I thought they were cute and both Payton and Lincoln have used theirs twice since the party.

Food...

I have a friend that makes her own cake plates from plates and cups that she finds while thrifting.  Can you say Pinterest?  :o)  They are so cute!  Anyway, I wanted to find a way to display the food that looked nice but that was not expensive and that would be easy to store when I was done until needed again.  Now I am in no way comparing my creations to hers but I did use her basic idea.  Ha! Ha!

I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of serving bowls, trays, little bowls and champagne glasses.  With a little experimenting I made my own serving pieces by hot gluing little bowls and champagne glasses to the bottom of the serving bowls and trays.  I really like how it turned out and I like that I can just pull the bowls and cups off to make storage easier.  They were definitely not as sturdy as my friends but worked great for this purpose and after two days of gatherings we had no catastrophes.  LOL

Our menu is Cobb Salad, bread, and fruit for the mommies and then for the kids Peanut Butter and Jelly or Honey Sandwiches, cheese and crackers, fishy crackers, pretzels, and fruit.  My mom was a BIG help in prepping all the food.  We did all the chopping, cutting, and sandwich making on Thursday so all I would have to do was set it out before the party.

Oh, and I found the little Rapunzel figurines on Amazon along with the cookie cutter.  I thought they looked cute on the food table.

All the preparations were complete and I was crawling into bed about 2 in the morning the night before the party.  Excited to see how it goes!