Martha Stewart you have nothing to worry about

We are FINALLY getting around to painting our kitchen... 2 years later. Hey that's what happens when you have 2 kids, household projects get put on hold. But back to the painting. It didn't take us very long to pick the color, but now I'm second guessing myself. It's a little darker then I anticipated, but I'll make my final (dis)approval when it's all done. Let me tell you though, painting is not fun. It quite frankly is a pain in my ass. Well the trim work anyways. My hand hurt after about 20 minutes. (FYI- it's this ladys first time painting... anything besides a piece of paper) By the time I got to a higher spot on the wall, all the blood drained from my arm so not only did my hand hurt, but my arm as well. And the dear old hubs stuck me in the 2 corners that nobody really sees becuase obviously I'm inevitably going to screw something up... thanks for the faith! haha.

I am anxious to see it all done (in about another 2 years) and excited to finally decorate the kitchen. I'll post some after pics so you can see her all gussied up. But I tell you what, Martha Stewart has nothing to worry about, becuase I'm never painting anything again. Well at least not without a lot of complaining!

10 months!

Holy cow I cannot believe we've made it to 10 months already!! Time to start plannin this lil ladies' 1st birthday party! (we all know how much I love a good party). I can't believe Hadley's gettin so big. She's got 3 (almost 4!) teeth, is just about walking (I'm scared for that accomplishment), and is dunzo with the baby food and cereal! She's still quite the little messy monster when she eats, but it's a lot easier for me to get stuff done when she can feed herself. And in case any other Mama's out there read this, I've found that the best thing to help her with her teething is frozen strawberries. I put it in one of those mesh things that she can hold onto and VOILA! She's good to go for at least 10 minutes.

Her greatest accomplishment in my opinion is sleepin through the night! That makes for a very happy mama. We still occassionally wake up once, but for the most part we're down for the count at 8:30 until 7:30 or 8! She's also quite the little chatter box and loves to play with Gracen. That is definitely the best thing about having 2 kids is that they entertain each other quite well. And apparently they find Mom pretty boring!

So anyhoo, happy ten months Hadley Jean!

Can't get enough of those cheeks!

Love that lil lady bug booty!!

Anotha bachelorette bash

This past weekend I had another bach. party to attend. I know, I know, I am turning into a party animal! Not really. We headed down to Wichita Friday night and our girlies woke us up at the wee hour of 6 am on Saturday. Yay! not. So it was a rough start to the day. We attempted to go to the zoo to kill some time in the morning, but A) we didn't bring the stroller to make sure we had room for the eleventy billion suitcases it requires to travel with 2 small children. and B) it was sort of expensive if you're only going in for an hour. So instead we headed to McD's for some breakfast and over the the Mr's bro and future Mrs' house.

Around 1:30 we headed out to the lake with lots of adult beverages in tow. We were supposed to have a boat and 2 jet skis but the boat broke down or something or other so we just had the 2 jet skis. Which was a bummer for me bc I'm still wearin my glasses and I was not about to A) lose them in the lake, or B) go out there blind as a bat. But I did float around in the lake a lil bit.

Around 5:30 it started thunder and lightning so we headed back to Susie's house to barbecue and open some gifts. It was quite humorous. (the gifts that is). One of the things she did was to name all her lingerie, and then on the honeymoon her new hubby gets to pick what she wears just by the list of names. I thought that was a neat idea. Then they asked her some questions to see how well she knew her future hubs and everytime she got it wrong she took a shot, and everytime she got it right she got to pass one out. Let's just say she was more than tipsy before the game was over. Haha.

By the time all that was done it was around 9:30, and this lady had been up since 6, drunk in the afternoon and in the sun for a couple hours and was pure exhausted. So I headed back to my hubs and babies and went to bed. Some of the other girls stayed and went to the bars. I would ordinarily have loved to go, but when you have to wake up early the next day to 2 sassy ladys demanding things from you, you think twice.

Overall it was a great time, and quite humorous. Hope Susie had a good time! Can't wait for the wedding in 2 weeks!

Susie made me take a jello shot- let's just say there wasn't much "jello" to the shot

the whole group-too bad we're all exhausted and in jammies at this point!

ViVa LaS VeGaS!!!!!!!!!!!

This past weekend was a girls trup to Vegas for my sister Stephanie's bachelorette party. It.was.awesome. It was definitely some long days of traveling, considering we were literally only there for 48 hours, but totally worth it. My 2 favorite part of the trip were definitely rhoulette (sp?) and the buffet!! I came out even on the gambling, not bad for a first timer I'd say! And we found a D-licious 24 hour buffet for $40. That's 4 meals for $40. In Vegas. I'm talking 12 courses. Definitely a steal. Here's a few pics to commemerate.

We stayed at THE Caesars Palace, and it was unfortunately not the "real" haha

Steph opening her gift from me. PURE CLASS.

Just a GLIMPSE of the yummy buffet. You should've seen the desserts!

limo ride!

Nothin like a little champagne to get the trip started right!

When I was actually winning! At one point I was up $100

The fabulous swim up casino/bar at our pool!

It was such a great weekend, seems like we were hardly even there, can't wait to go back!

Weekend in Wichita

Yes I know it's been awhile since I've blogged, but it's very hard to keep 2 kids under somewhat control, keep the house in decent shape and feed 4 hungry people, and manage to find some time to blog when I'd rather be sleeping. Ha!

This past weekend the hubs didn't have to work on Saturday so we went to visit his sister in Wichita. Saturday morning his 2 nephews had a swim meet, so we went to watch. It was super hot outside, but luckily we were sitting in the shade and with a slight breeze it was nice to be outside. Gracen happily played away with her cousin Lola, while Hadley desperately tried to escape chilled out max in her stroller.

Gracen had a BLAST playing with Lola. They played dressup for just about the entire time we were there. Loves princesses, and shoes and dresses. They were quite amusing to watch together.

Saturday night I got to see a bunch of AX's! It was soo good to see everyone, and we had an awesome time singing karaoke. Definitely need to see those ladies way more often. Shout out to K Mo who said she reads this but never leaves me any comments!

Here's a few photos of the kiddos playing, but I didnt bring the hunk of the DSLR to the bar, so no photos of karaoke, I know I know you're dissapointed.

they found a puppy to play with at the swim meet

just playin on the playground

look at those chompers!

LOVES the princess dresses

such turkeys!!

hadley was not going to be left out of the fun!

My little imagineers!

Seriously sometimes I forget the power of the imagination. Having kids really brings you back to a time where your imagination is at its finest. Honestly, I get WAY more excited about toys then my kids do. There current favorite toys include: the dishwasher (not going to be a fav when they're old enough to do the dishes!hah), the big boxes diapers come in, and an oversized plush chair. I'm not even kidding you. For Gracens birthday in April we bought her a Barbie 4-wheeler, powerwheel thing, and I was CERTAIN she was going to go bananas over it. Nope not a bit, she's scared of it! By the time she likes it she'll prob be too big. Good one Mom!

This morning while Hadley was napping I took Gracen out on the driveway to play. I drew her a hop-scotch on the driveway and she was seriously jumping around on it for a half hour. THIRTY MINUTES. In kid speak that's like an eternity. The only other thing that can capture her attention that long is Dora. And don't even get me started on Dora! She has all these other toys to play with outside and all the little lady wanted to do was jump.

God bless the imagination!

I LOVE this pic! She's mid air and was getting so mad I was trying to take her pic

This is Gracen's chair she got for Christmas 2 years ago with her name embroidered on it, and she loves it. So does Hadley haha, and Gracen gets SO mad when Hadley's playing on it!

LeT's CeLeBrAtE!

I love birthdays. And within one week, we've got 4 birthdays! Mine is June 25th, Matt (Steph's fiance) is the 28th, my Dad's is the 30th and the hubs is July 2. So instead of trying to make it out to celebrate 4 times, we headed to Lawrence Saturday night to celebrate all 4.

Gabe's brother and his new wife live in Lawrence, so they were nice enough to watch the girls while we had an adult dinner. We went to Teller's where the food isn't kid friendly, so we're very greatful they weren't busy! The food was yummy, minus I had the steak and asked for medium to med well and it came out charcoaled (but hey im pretty picky about my steak). They had delicious drinks, drool worthy appetizers, I could barely eat my entree.

Afterwards we headed to Sylas & Maddy's. It's a homemade ice cream shop on Mass St and it.is.awesome. After so much great food and drinks at dinner I didn't know if I'd be able to eat any ice cream, but once you're in there you just can't say no. I had the strawberry cheesecake, in the smallest size possible, and it was PLENTY. They also have a shop in KC in Prairie Village, and the story behind them is really neat. So if you're ever in Larry town or PV, and in the mood for ice cream, I highly recommend it!

All in all another great celebration! I LOVE my birthday!! (And of course the other 3's too ;)

Golden Birthday

I've been waiting to post this until I got my pictures from my sister, but she seems to be taking an eternity, so I suppose I can just add some pics later.

This year was my "Golden Birthday". Now up until literally 4 or 5 months ago, I didn't even know what this meant until my lovely sister informed me. And thank goodness she did or I might have missed mine!

I had a GREAT birthday. Me and the girls headed to KC on Thursday night (previous snow cone posts), and Friday didn't really do much. I got to see my friend Cassie who lives in the great city of New York (Queens to be precise) and I'm dying to get to visit her, but glad I got to at least see her in KS. After that we headed to the ol' 'Bees (applebess) for a family birthday dinner with the girls, my brother and sister. Gammy was working so of course the service was horrible (just kiddin gams! it was awesome!) The only thing that could have made that better was applechimicheesecake. But that's a whole nother blog post. After din we headed to my dads for some Dairy Queen ice cream cake, delish.

Saturday we just hung out until Gabe came to town and we headed to the Sprint Center to see Michael Buble. AWESOME. It was seriously one of the greatest concerts I have ever been to. Even Gabe said it wasn't horrible. Ha. He was so funny. He started off saying how he came down to P&L to eat before his concert and everyone was watching the US in the World Cup. He'd never seen so many people passionate about something they don't give a shit about. Everyone was rolling. He was so uncharacteristically funny that it made the show that much better.

After the concert we headed over to P&L, and I was DYING to go to the piano bar. Unfortunately no one we knew was there, and the people we did know out for Suzanne's bach party had already been there. I will get there someday! But I had a blast. I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in far too long, danced outside, and basically sweated to death. But it was worth it! Afterwards we went to IHOP before heading home. Yum.

All in all it was an awesome birthday!