Showers On A Sunny Day

This last weekend I spent the night at my in-laws house because I was hosting a baby shower for one of my long-time friends. The hubby stayed home to do homework, so I took the kids so that they could spend time with grandma and papa. Grandma really missed the kids and was excited to watch them. Before the shower, Papa decided to let Uriah ride the lawnmower with him. I didn't know how Uriah would handle it at first...

 ...but I think he had a good time. If he had stayed on for a long time, I bet he would have fallen asleep. Now that Uriah is a little bit older, Papa likes spending time with him and taking him outside and showing him things. That makes me happy.

I was running around on Saturday, trying to make sure that I had everything I needed for the baby shower. This is the cupcake cake I ordered from Wal-Mart. I am absolutely in love with their butter cream frosting, and even though they pile it on, I can't help but want to eat more and more of it. The cupcakes were chocolate, and very yummy. 

This is a cute little banner I decided to put on the wall. My friend (whom I was throwing the shower for) has 3 little girls, and this will be her first boy, so I was excited to get everything decorated for a little boy.

 I made chocolate covered strawberries for the shower. I made them the night before and couldn't help but sneak a few while I was dipping them in the chocolate. They were very very good, but they are even better when the chocolate is warm! (^_^)

This was only the second time I had made cream puffs. I made some on Thursday night to practice and then I made these on Saturday morning. I still have yet to get the size right, but they were delicious. You can pretty much fill them with anything, and the chocolate drizzle on top just adds a little more flavor to the "puff" part.

I'll tell you what...balloons are the universal party decoration, and I LOVE balloons.

I thought that this gift bag was really cute, so I decided to take a picture of it.

The guest of honor, me and the other shower guests. There weren't a lot of people that came, but we still had a good time and the food was great! There were even leftovers, which I had no problem sharing with the in-laws and my kids when it was all said and done.

After a hectic Saturday, I drove home, unpacked, and decided I was going to sit down and finally do some digital scrapbooking. I tried it once when I first got Photoshop Elements, and I just hadn't found the time to do it since. Well, Saturday night I told my hubby that I was going to go into the study to scrap and I didn't want to be disturbed. After about an hour, this is the page I finished scrapping.

I am very pleased with this page. I had to remind myself how to use Photoshop and all of the tricks I had forgotten, but considering, I think this looks pretty good. It will be the first page in my series "Uriah's 2nd Birthday" and I am currently working on scrapbooking all the other pictures I took from his birthday party. Digital scrapping is so much easier than scrapping by hand, and although I do like to scrap by hand, it saves me a lot of cut paper on the floor and sticking and glue and messes like that. 

Yesterday I stayed home from work, mostly because I just wanted to take a "me" day, and because I got 0 chores done while I was away from home for the weekend. So after sleeping in until about 8, I got up and got down and dirty and cleaned the entire apartment, did all the laundry and cleaned all the bed sheets, and I even put AWAY all the laundry, so yes, I started and completed every chore I could think of. I got done with that at about 3 in the afternoon, and after I got cleaned up I went to the store and did some much needed grocery shopping, which only took me an hour. It's a miracle how quickly you can get through the store if you don't have tag-alongs! When I got home I cooked dinner, cleaned the dishes, and relaxed. My house was still clean, and that made me feel so good. I hope I can keep up with my chores so that I have more free time on the weekends. This coming Saturday, I am hoping to can 100 apples and turn them into apple pie filling. We'll have to see how that goes!

Falling Into Autumn

You know Fall is coming when the fair comes into town. I always love going to the fair, just to walk around and look at all the neat crafts and things, but this year my hubby wouldn't go with me, so I bribed my brother and sis-in-law into coming with me. I also brought Uriah and we had a great time. We took Uriah to the petting zoo and he got to feed some goats. He LOVED that! He loved looking at all the animals.

Uriah wasn't very excited about feeding the goats at first, but once his auntie helped him, he didn't want to stop.

Uriah found a cage full of ducks. He kept pointing and saying, "Look! Ducks!"

They had little goats wandering around the petting zoo without being caged up. One walked up to my stroller and started munching on the straps. Uriah loved feeling their tongues on his palm.

McKee's Pets had puppies up for sale, and they would let you pick one out and hold it. This picture almost makes me wish I had the money to buy Uriah a puppy (^_^)

We had a really good time at the fair. We got chocolate covered strawberry kabobs and they were absolutely delicious! I hope they have them next year because I will gobble them all up. If you want to have a meal at the fair though, you'd better bring a lot of cash. I got a cheeseburger for $7 and it didn't have anything on it..just the meat, cheese and bun. I definitely won't make that mistake again.

This coming Saturday I will be hosting a baby shower for my long-time best friend. We have been friends since kindergarten. She has 3 little girls, but she is finally going to have a baby boy! I have been waiting for her to have a baby boy for a long time, so that I could throw her a baby shower. I handmade her invitations and this is what my favorite ones looked like.

I made 32 invitations in total and I still have enough paper to make 8 more cards, but I used up every last button that I bought and I think they turned out very nice. There were some that I wasn't proud of, but I worked hard and I know my friend will appreciate them.

I haven't really picked up my camera as much as I usually do (you wouldn't know with all the pictures I have posted!) but I knew I would be missing a big picture opportunity if I didn't catch this...

Jordyn doesn't watch the tube very often, but when you get something on that she likes, this is what she does. She sits and sits and sits and stares and stares and stares. I think it is so cute when she pays so much attention to the TV like that. Good thing she doesn't do it very often.

With us living in a bigger apartment now, I realized that the bigger the space, the bigger the messes that can be made. Uriah would dump out his old toy box and every single toy in it would hit the floor and get spread around. Well, I decided that was that, I was tired of picking up everything! So....

...old toybox...

new toybox!

I saw this toy organizer at Wal-Mart and I decided to give it a try. It sure has been nice! Instead of dumping all the toys out, he only pulls out the bin he wants to play with, which is usually the train or car bin. It has really kept the mess down in his room and made it easier for us to clean up at the end of the day. And the bottom row is Jordyn's toys, and now that they are organized he doesn't bother them anymore. Oh, I love my toy organizer! 

Last Month: In Pictures

I decided it was time to upload the pictures I've been collecting over the past few weeks.

This is Uriah's first picture in our new apartment. He was having a good time running around to the open boxes and pulling things out of them.

Jordyn loves the new carpet in our apartment. It is fluffy and she can grab it with her little fingers. I love her big, blue eyes and her cute, round face.

Uriah got caught with his finger up his nose. He really doesn't pick his nose. Embarrassing as it is, he sees mommy and daddy doing it and he tries to do it, but he never actually picks anything.

Uriah is my little ham. He loves to have his picture taken, and whenever I get the camera out, he always has to be right in front of it.

We caught Jordyn standing up in her crib for the first time, and now she pulls herself up to everything. I think it is so cute when I go into her room and see her standing there, jumping up and down, waiting for me to get her out.

This is Uriah's "cheese" face. In other words, this is the face he pulls when I say, "Say cheese!"

Jordyn loves to take a bath. This time, I poured in some baby eucalyptus bath stuff because she had a pretty bad cold and I was hoping it would help her breathe better. She is a big splasher and she just can't hold still in the tub!

Uriah was jealous that Jordyn was in the tub and he wasn't, so he started playing in the bubbles from her baby soap.

My happy bathtub girl.

Playing together in the bubbles.

Last Saturday we had an "end of the summer" bbq at my mom's house and I decided to make kabobs (which I had never made before). They sure did look pretty!

Some of them were pork and some of them were chicken. The rest was red, green, orange and yellow peppers and pineapple tidbits.

This is what they looked like on the grill. I couldn't wait to try some!

When they were almost done, I made a special sauce and spread it over the kabobs, and voila! They were very tasty, but a little dry. We were trying to cook some chicken breasts at the same time and I think the kabobs got a little overcooked, but they still tasted good. The sauce made them taste super good! I can't wait to make some again.

Uriah and Jordyn's Papa just had his 50th birthday celebration. I bought the kids "grandpa" shirts to match the "grandpa" shirt that we got for Papa. Jordyn's says, "My finger may be small, but I can still wrap grandpa around it!"

Uriah had taken a long 3 hour nap at Papa's 50th birthday bash and woke up just in time for cake and to get candy from the pinata. Uriah's shirt says, "My grandpa has more tools than yours!"

I asked Papa to take a picture with the kids so that we could see all of their new shirts. Uriah wasn't very happy after waking up from his nap, but I love this face that he gets when Papa gives him a big, wet, sloppy kiss.

We had a good time at Papa's 50th Birthday Bash. Uriah and Jordyn are their only grandchildren (so far) and they love them very much. Uriah and Jordyn have amazing grandparents on both sides and we are lucky to have them all so close to us. Well, we had a relaxing, yet eventful weekend, and now it's back to work.

Fun At Papa's

Gamma and Papa watched Uriah and Jordyn the other day while mommy did some shopping and they had a really good time. Papa emailed me some pictures of their play date and I saw that Jordyn got to ride her first tricycle.

"Get your hands off of my trike!"

"Don't mess with this biker crew!"

That's my boy, tough enough for a trike! (^_^)

Look at her leaning into the turn-vroom vroom!