Leaves!

Last weekend the weather was unseasonably warm. When I say warm, I mean like almost 90°!! Crazy! So I decided to do some yard work rake leaves to take pictures of Elena playing in them!  :) She had a blast, and I ended up raking the leaves over and over and over again!

As you can see in the faces below - there was a lot of happy screaming going on!

We decided to also take advantage of the nice day and head to the park later on. Dominic got to try out the swing for the first time! I think he is a fan! Elena was ecstatic that she got to push him! :)

The weather has been colder and colder since then so I am really glad that we got outside to enjoy it!

 

Spooky Jammies!

I got D and E matching skeleton jammies this year and just have to share with you how adorable they look in them together!!

 

3 months!

Hard to believe but this happy little guy is officially 3 months old today!!

Besides doing a fantastic job of growing - here is what is new this past month:

He is sleeping through the night! From about 9pm - 7am (YAY!)

He is eating a TON! We are definitely going to have to start rice cereal soon!

He usually puts away 6-8 oz a bottle and right before bed usually has 10 oz!!

He has just started grabbing things, especially his blanket.

We have introduced him to the exersaucer and he is a fan! He loves being able to stand by himself.

He smiles all the time - and usually that involves a tongue sticking out!

He likes to play pat-a-cake.

If you raise his hands above his head and say ''touchdown" he always smiles really big.

If his big sister is in the room he intently watches everything she does.

He has started to coo and "talk'' to us.

He will laugh out loud if you really get him going. Best.Sound.Ever. 

He is ticklish on his sides of his belly, inner thighs and feet.

Had his first cold this past month. There is nothing more pitiful sounding than a little baby cough! :(

He loves it when you sing to him.

He finally has a room! (More to come on that!)

It has been a great three months but it has gone by so fast! I am really trying to slow down and enjoy the little moments with him because before I know it he will be going off to preschool like his sister!



Bootanica {2012}

This year for Bootanica it rained almost the whole week before the event, so the activities were moved inside. It was also supposed to keep raining all that day too. Elena and I decided to go but we left Dominic behind for some Grandma/Grandpa time. She dressed as a ballerina and I was glad we got to use her dance costume again! We started out with some face painting! Elena has never done this and was pumped! She really wanted a butterfly design but they were only doing stamping because of the number of kids that were in line. She still loved it!

She decorated a treat bag, listened to a spooky story, played a few games...

She also had fun with this silly spider! These pictures crack me up!

It was so crowded and noisy inside that Elena really just wanted to get outside and go see the flowers. So we ventured out -- the rain held off the whole time we were outside! Yay!

There were more fun activities outside too - a fortune teller...

The musical maze... 

Planting seeds...

And as always her favorite thing - the fairy houses! She loves them!

Then we ventured through the gardens some more.

We made a stop at the butterfly house and she wanted so badly for one to land on her. 

Surprisingly a kid with a butterfly on his hand let this butterfly walk on to Elena's hand! I think it was the highlight of her day - she was so excited!!

Then she got to touch another animal...gross! :)

 Finally she made a fun little crown before we headed home for a nap.  

It was a fun Mommy and me day to spend with my girl!

Pumpkin designer.

Ever since Elena's class went on a field trip where they got to pick out a pumpkin, she has been begging me to carve it! So finally one night I caved and told her to draw me what she would like it to look like and I would carve it for her. Check her out!! I was impressed! :)

Then we got to work. I even made her take out the pumpkin ''guts'', she had fun but kept telling me how gross it felt!  

I tried to get as close to her picture as I could...

 

 She thought it was great! This was a much more fun way to let her be involved with carving a pumpkin!

Now she is begging to do the big one sitting on our porch.... :)

Chunky Monkey.

In case you were wondering, Dominic is not slowing down any with his growing!!

at 11 weeks last week he was 15lbs 11oz - 97th % 

and 25 inches long - 95th %

 He isn't even 3 months yet and he is almost into size 6 month clothes!!!! I love my chunky monkey!!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Robert also had a birthday last week too! I took the opportunity to try out a new Pinterest recipe for his cake! :)

 ♫ Happy Birthday to you... ♫

 This Lemon Bar Cake was a hit! Elena and Robert gobbled it up (and I even liked it even though I'm not a big lemon fan!) It was super easy - just mix 1 package angel food cake mix with 2 cans lemon pie filling. Literally that's it - mix together then bake at 350° for 25 minutes. Now that's my kind of baking! :)

 Our budding photographer took a picture of us for me. Nice work!

 Little man couldn't enjoy the cake, but he enjoyed some "super baby" time instead (as we like to call it). 

Look at this real laugh! He's even scrunching his nose! :)

Happy Birthday Babe! We all love you so much!

Happy 39+20!

I am not saying that my Mom is old,...but the only candles we happend to have on hand just happend to add up to her age this year! What are the odds? :)

Love you Mom!!! 

Elena kept sticking her finger in the cake, so we decided to join in!

It was tasty! Thanks Dad for holding Baby D while we dug into the cake!! (Don't worry, we saved him some!)

Happy Birthday Mom/Grandma! We love you! (and yes, we are definitley holding down Elena's hands here!) :)

Art Party {behind the scenes}

I looked and looked for some sort of rainbow outfit for Elena's birthday party but couldn't find anything! So I decided I was going to be brave and make it! I am so glad that I did because I love how it turned out and it was so inexpensive!

First I decided to go with a rainbow tutu - thanks to Pinterest I found this tutorial and went from there. I decided to do sections of colors instead of mixing them all together so you would really get the rainbow effect. The tulle cost about $6 and my mom happened to have the elastic in her sewing bag!

Next I new I wanted something with rainbow material on the front, maybe an E or a letter 4 or something. I set out to find rainbow material to make this happen. After a trip to every.single.craft store in Wichita I came to the realization that NO ONE has rainbow pattern material!! What is that about?? So once again I got brave and decided I would make my own rainbow material. After a long discussion with the fabric lady we had a plan. Take strips of my 6 colors, use wonder-under (makes fabric iron-on) to bond them to a random scrap of fabric, then use the new material that was created and use wonder-under again to attach the material to the shirt. (yeah - it was a little complicated!) But it worked!! Well, sort of - the strips I cut were so small that some didn't have enough wonder gu on them to stay so I ended up having to use fabric glue as an extra reinforcement. (hey, it only needed to last one day, right?) The fabric scraps were a whole $1.50, I found a clearance t-shirt in her size at Old Navy for $2! The wonder-under stuff was about $6 but I had a 50% off coupon! So her whole outfit was barely over $10! I was pumped at how cute it ended up, especially for the price! I was afraid to free hand the number so I just found a font that I liked in Microsoft Word and printed it out bold and really big - perfect!

Dominic had fun hanging out with Grandpa while we were working on all this stuff!

Next I tried my hand out sewing a little bunting to put on top of the cake. I simply cut triangles of felt and started sewing right along the top added each color as I went. Easy peasy! (and for me to say anything is easy on the sewing machine it must be true!)

 I had to get a couple pics of the rainbow cake coming together - it really wasn't that hard at all. I am so glad that my Mom and I decided to give it a whirl instead of spending a ridiculous amount of money for a bakery to do it. Yay us!

and here is the final thing! I love that it looks so simple on the outside...

but is so colorful and fun on the inside! :) It makes me smile just looking at the pics!