20 year high school reunion

Now before you go and thinking that I'm that close to 40, let me clarify, that this was my husband's 20 year reunion!

Justin moved to Shreveport, LA his sophomore year of high school and went to a small private prep school there. Their claim to fame is that they are the ONLY school that has Snoopy as their mascot.

We packed up the kids and headed to Louisiana for the weekend. The boys favorite thing ever is to spend the night in a hotel room. They think it's the coolest thing. We, however, get the worst sleep ever, but we're making memories, right?

Of all weekends, the weather was freezing while we were there and we had an outdoor event planned for everyone to meet each other's families.

My children didn't seem to complain about the weather. And Landry is quite the rule breaker when it comes to the grass.

Later that night we had a grown up night. It was great to see everyone again. Most of them I hadn't seen since their 10 year reunion. There is one thing about people from Shreveport, they are some really sweet people.

The boys are already missing the hotel and keep asking when we get to go back to a hotel. I didn't realize how fascinating hotels were!

Pumpkin Patch 2012

The pumpkin patch...it's something that is just party of our schedule. Who cares if we have soccer games, we've been out of town, or  if I've had 7 photo shoots in 8 days while working full time.

Pumpkin patches are a priority status when it comes to scheduling. No matter how exhausted I am, we make sure to squeeze it in because that are my favorite pictures of the entire year. The kids don't even have to be looking and they're still my favorite because of all the fall colors.

 I have a slight obsession with all things fall related.

Don't EVEN get me started on pumpkins. If it even looks like it could be made of pumpkins, chances are that I've probably tasted it.

 

We have an frozen yogurt place called Orange Leaf WAY too close to our house and right now they have Pumpkin pie frozen yogurt. It's quite embarassing how many times I've been in there in the past couple of weeks and even more embarrassing how many times I tell myself Do not be tempted, Do not be tempted, as I drive by.

 But I digress. My best friend Angi has wanted family pictures and I thought the perfect background would be the pumpkin patch and maybe I could even get someone to snap a few of my family.

My kids always love the pumpkin patch and that's why it's so easy because when I'm busy snapping pictures of one of them, the others are off running and having a blast.

We piled all of our kids in the back of the old pick up truck. Dang, I wish I had this truck for some photo shoots. Too bad, this one is only available during October.

I was a procrastinator and waited way too long to order Landry an embroidered pumpkin shirt so I took a crack at it and made one. Don't look too close at the stitching but I still think it turned out super cute. It's probably the cute girl wearing it that makes it look even cuter. Here is she is with her bestie, Rylan.

The boys were sporting their ties that I bought for them. I actually learned how to make those too but these were bought, I went the easy way.

It was so much fun to get together with Angi and her sweet family. The funniest part of the evening was that we decided to go out to eat afterwards and agreed on Mooyah's Burgers. Well apparently, there are two Mooyah's Burgers within minutes of each other and we went to separate ones. Oops. Can you tell that we've got a lot on both of our plates?

I love looking at the pictures through the years of our little ones at the pumpkin patch and love even more that it's become a tradition. 

A Kentucky visitor

We had a visitor at the beginning of September. Gram flew in to celebrate Landry's 1st birthday and I'm the slacker that just now getting around to posting about it.

She came the perfect time for me. I was so so overwhelmed at the beginning of the year and needed an extra hand. Dinners were cooked several nights and she was nominated to be on my party planning committee. She was a lifesaver!

  Miss Landry loved all that attention and loving that she got from Gram. 

We took a moment to enjoy the birthday present that we got for Landry. Her very own swing on our play ground. I think we made a good choice.

 

I needed a weekend like this, just family and time to just play. Life has been so insanely busy lately. I soak up every moment that's like this because I want my life to have more moments just like these.

 It seems like since we bought the swing for the kids, our playground has gotten a new level of attention. Campbell has FINALLY learned to swing by himself since starting Pre-K. I thought I was going to see that boy belly swinging forever. So now it's a race to the swings after school every day.

Sister even took a ride down the slide for the first time. I think she'll be out there running around with her brothers in no time.

 This was my favorite picture of the day. I love Julie's face in this and my allergy-ridden Nolan having a sneeze attack mid picture. He's usually the one who's looking away because of his over-reactive allergies when I'm looking for a nice family pose.

Thank you Gram for all that you do. You have no idea how much a cooked dinner can do for an overworked and exhausted mommy like myself. We can't wait until your next visit!

Nolan's 7th pARTy

I've been dreaming of this art party for years, long before Pinterest. Of course, Pinterest only fueled the fire and upped the bar to make me feel like I might be the cheapest mom on the planet.

Nevertheless, an art party was made for Nolan, so I was so excited when he said he wanted one. Although on the day of the party, it looked as though our theme was "Noah's Ark" with the torrential downpour that happened all.day.long. There goes the playground idea.

The hard thing about art is that kids either do it in 20 seconds or they take hours, but I think it kept them occupied just long enough. The favors were fun to make and it was the perfect time of year with school supplies. Bonus!

Of course, Justin made the tag that said, "Thanks for making my birthday a masterpiece." The little crayons were actually erasers and I think they were the most excited about those rather than the paint.

Double bonus that the art theme went perfectly with using the same banner and bright colors as Landry's rainbow party. We had another amazing cake that did not disappoint that was created by a speech teacher at my school. She is so talented.

 The kids went nuts when we cut into the cake and they realized it was rainbow colored, perfectly going with our bright paint theme.

I stole the Rice Krispie paint brush idea off Pinterest and the kids loved them. All the letters that were used for the canvases were cut from my Cricut, of course.

 

The easels for their nametags were just popsicle sticks that were already painted from the Dollar Tree that I hot glued together.

 

 I stole the idea of the beret and the mustache from my dear friend, Andrea, who also had an art party for her daughter. See, I'm just full of original ideas, huh? By far, this hat and mustache were the hit of the party to make our masterpiece photos complete.

Once the kids were done painting, we peeled off the stickers to reveal their names in the negative space, a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. 

Although, not all the kids were a fan of the mustache, even sweet baby Blake played along.

Our friends are officially the most wonderful people to get out on such a nasty day to make it to Nolan's birthday. They helped participate in the art party because I definitely needed some parent involvement on this party since there was so much to do. The babies just played and Landry worked on her grocery store feet getting nice and dirty.

 

And these poor girls are just forced to be sisters because there are just too many stinky boys in our families. 

And in perfect McDonald fashion, right when I lit the candles, Nolan bumped into a friend and his front tooth started gushing blood.

We quickly dried up his tears and my Nolie Polie smiled with pride as we sang him "Happy Birthday" and I tried my best to hold it together. 

Next was opening presents and don't worry, Nolan's not angry in the photo below. That is his I'm so happy, I could hug your face off expression.  The beret was a nice touch for the photos, especially with the front tooth gap. 

Priceless.

I pretty much summed it up to be the worst party in the books after our torrential downpour with no kids being able to play on the playground, the front tooth gushing blood, and balloons that were laughable they were so small. 

But on the way home, with his toothless lisp he tells me, "Mommy, you deserve snuggles because you threw such a great party." 

And that's why I do it, folks. 

I'm so grateful to this little boy that made me a mama for the first time. He made my dream come true and I've been smiling ever since. He'll never know how he changed my life for good just by entering this world seven years ago.

Look who just turned ONE!

Well, I couldn't help but take some pictures of my beloved birthday girl for her one year old photo shoot. I've had a couple of practice rounds taking some one year old pics so I was excited to get some of my sweet Landry Kate.

All was going pretty well with the photo shoot. Sister was bringing out the oober cuteness factor.

 

And then our first mishap happened. Just as I put her in the basket, I had really cute balloons attached but they flew away before I even snapped a picture. 

 

No big deal, she's so adorable she didn't even need balloons to make her picture cute.

 

 

She was clapping to "If you're happy and you know it" like it was nobody's business.

And we even snuck in a picture of all three looking at the camera at once! Key word: "at once" It's a miracle!

But then things turned south pretty quickly. We decided to give the cupcake smash a second try thinking that it was maybe just a fluke that she didn't like it at her birthday. She gave it another whirl but seriously, this girl doesn't like cupcakes but she sure can tear up a bowl of ice cream.

 

Shortly after these pictures were taken  fussing and fit throwing began and bright pink icing was E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E. 

Our white high chair looks someone with bright pink lipstick just made out with it. Oh well. It made for some sweet pictures. 

All in all minus the balloons flying away and the forced feeding of sugar we did to our child, the first photo shoot was a success!

Soccer mom x 2

We've been fighting it for about 3 years now. Nolan started playing soccer and we'd tote Campbell along to the games and chase him all over the field as we "watched" Nolan play. Campbell wanted to play so badly and we just kept promising him that when he turned 4 he could play.

Wellll.....he's 4.

Dang, that was a quick 4 years. And now that toddler that I used to chase at games is in uniform and holy cuteness he looks adorable in it.

 

We had a feeling this little guy would be our athlete but we didn't expect him to be the first one to score this season and within 30 seconds of the game starting. He scored two goals in his first game and last week he scored six. This boy was on fire and playing some good defense too! 

 

He is living and breathing soccer now. He completely copies what his coach says (who is so wonderful and patient) when he plays soccer at home and can't wait for practice and games.

 

Nolan is playing soccer again as well. Yes, two boys in soccer.  And no, I don't know what I was thinking. Nolan was on the same team with the same kids for years and we were undefeated. Well this year it seems like everyone disbursed and so it's all new team members. I think Nolan and one other teammate are the only ones that have ever played soccer. So I think we're going for the "Bad News Bears" record this year. It's all for fun, right?

Justin somehow got roped into being the coach. You know, because we don't have enough to do.  He feels bad when the team loses that he's somehow a bad coach. But I just remind him that Nolan will have no recollection of his wins/losses, only that his daddy was the coach. Nolan doesn't seem to mind the losing record. He's having fun. 

I've got my trusty crew on the sideline helping watch the games. 

 

After Campbell's game we went on and on about how proud we were of him and he said, "Let's talk about it some more." So as insane as I think I might be trying to work full time, get two kids to soccer practice and having games all day on Saturdays, I know that it's the right thing. It's getting them active, building their confidence and giving us more time together to spend as a family.