a celebration

Today, we celebrated The Mayor's 4th birthday.  Although his official birthday isn't until Tuesday, the party was today.  And to say The Mayor was excited would be a huge understatement.  It was so much fun seeing his excitement.  This is the first year he really understood the whole birthday thing and having a party just made his year.

When he woke up this morning, I brought him into the kitchen to show him his birthday cake.  "Lightning McQueen!!!" is what he yelled.  He couldn't wait.

His party was from 10AM to noon which was perfect.  We had the entire bounce house place almost to ourselves for the first hour and just when it started to get a little crowded, it was time for us to move to the private room for food and cake.  It was awesome.

The kids had such a blast running around from bouncy house to bouncy slide to ball pits to the wave slide...It was 80 minutes of non-stop running and fun.  After the group photo, we took all the kids into the private party room and passed out the pizza.  It was eerie how quiet 14 kids were.  Seriously, you could literally hear a pin drop.  That is how hard they played...they were too tired to do anything else but eat.  After we sang "Happy Birthday" to The Mayor, the kids enjoyed the yummy cupcakes and cake.  This took us right to noon and then it was time to go home.  I was shocked both kids made it home without falling asleep.

When we got home, The Mayor opened his gifts.  He was so excited with each gift he opened.  He wanted to open each toy and play with each toy immediately.  We kept telling him to just make it through the pile and then we could play with them all.  It was stimulation overload!!  Just how a 4 year old's birthday should be!

The birthday fun will continue tomorrow morning when we take The Mayor, Love Bug, MeMe and Big Daddy to our favorite doughnut shop for breakfast, and then right through until Tuesday when I bring cupcakes for his class and have a special dinner for The Mayor that night.

I can't believe my baby is 4.  I guess my baby isn't a baby anymore.

the kids dancing

the crew!

crazy week

I can't believe it is Wednesday night.  Where has my week gone?  My little guy's birthday party is Saturday and in 2 days my house will be filled with family...just the way I like it.  But I have about a million and one things to do before this second and party time Saturday morning.

Signing off until Saturday when I will have pictures and a full-blown birthday party report.

My boy is going to be 4!  How did THAT happen?!

pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere

Today was our 4th annual trip to Burt's Pumpkin Patch.  We started early at our house at 7:30 and D made breakfast for everyone.  After breakfast, we loaded up and headed about 45 minutes north to go to the pumpkin patch.  The weather was perfect.  Sunny, clear skies and a little cool.  This is our 4th year in a row going and we now have it down to a science.  We get there as soon as they open, get in line to buy the hayride tickets, ride the hayride, pick out pumpkins, pay for the pumpkins, load the pumpkins in the car, go back into farm and have a blast.  We avoid all lines and by the time the farm is getting really crowded, we have done everything, paid and already taken 250 pictures.

We were done at the farm a little after 10:00 so we headed back home and all went to lunch together.  Thankfully we do this trip as a family because when we attempted to leave the farm, our car battery was dead.  A quick jumpstart from J and Meega and we were on our way.  We had to get jumped off again after lunch and ended up at the AutoZone to buy a new car battery.

We were home before 1:00 and all exhausted.  Everyone took naps and after naps, we went Halloween costume shopping.  The Mayor will be Lightning McQueen's driver for Halloween...he is absolutely precious in it.  Still need to find Love Bug's...but she should be pretty easy.  We are thinking Minnie Mouse.

After shopping, we came home and lit a fire in our new fire pit.  It still isn't complete but it was done enough for us to sit around it, roast marshmallows and eat s'mores.  The kids had an absolute blast.  They were excited to be outside while it was dark, sitting in front of a cool fire and eating chocolate, marshmallows and crackers.  Pretty much a dream come true for a 4 year old and 19 month old.

Looking forward to another gorgeous day tomorrow and a week that promises sunny and clear skies and fall like temps.  Perfect.

PopPop, Mamie and Love Bug

Love Bug and Bennett

Us!  And yes, I wish I had taken my sunglasses off

The Brocks

cuties

how we roll

my sweets

chillin' in the pumpkins with our popcorn

sharing with our sweet cousin

the 3 amigos

Love Bug on the tractor

Bennett

The Mayor

love

I love how she is looking up at him

yummy s'mores

making her "big eyes" by the fire

he rocks my world

I love D.  And I want my kids to know, when they read this 30 years from now, one of the many reasons I love D is because of the little things.

Meega had invited me to attend a Thirty-One party with her tonight.  After the party, I needed to run to the grocery store to get some food for breakfast in the morning.  We are heading out for our annual trip to the pumpkin patch in the morning, and D and I invited the gang over to our house and D is making breakfast before we go.

Meega and I went to the grocery store at 10:00 tonight and by the time we got home it was 10:45.  She helped me bring the groceries into the house and D was already asleep.  But he had laid out all of the gear he needed for the breakfast, had pulled the plates for The Mayor, Love Bug and Bennett, and even put out our spare booster seat for Bennett.  The pots and griddle were on the stove top and his spatula was in the spoon rest.  He is so cute.  I love him.  I didn't ask him to do any of this...he did it on his own.  I love this man.  I love that he loves our family and is excited about the day and got prepared.

Tomorrow we serve breakfast at the Shirley House of Pancakes at 7:30 and then we roll out at 8:00.  Can't wait.

all grownup

It is sad to say, and it is probably true in most households, the master bedroom is usually the last room to be decorated.  Think about it, it is usually the last room anyone sees so it is usually the room the least amount of effort is put in to.  Which is sad.  It should be our sanctuary.  So over the last year or so, I have slowly been working on our room.  The first portion was the bedding...and now I am on to accessories.  For the past 4 years, the accessories in our room have been pictures of The Mayor and Love Bug.  And I LOVE my kids, but I want to move the kids out of the master bedroom.  Without getting too personal, D and I just shouldn't be looking at pictures of the kids above our headboard or on our dresser when pulling out our PJs and socks.  So today, I moved on to making our master bedroom all grown up.  

For the past 4 years, we have had 3 11x14 frames over the headboard with black and white photos of The Mayor from when he was 6 weeks old.  Today, they came down.  And I purchased two gorgeous glass candle scones and a large metal scroll piece.  I L-O-V-E it.  Seriously, I sat in our room for hours this afternoon just looking at our wall.  I feel so grownup all of a sudden.  And...I also found bath mats that I love!  Why I ever shop retail is beyond me.  I went to Homegoods today and found these Ralph Lauren bath mats...which are AWESOME...and are about 1/2 the price of what I was going to pay for subpar bath mats that I was going to purchase yesterday from Target.  And the metal pieces above the bed were all purchased at Hobby Lobby and all of them were 50% off.  I could EASILY decorate my house just from Hobby Lobby alone.  How I am just now stumbling on to this masterpiece of a store is just beyond me.  

Once I find some curtains for the master bathroom I will feel like our space is done.  It is slowly becoming our space...and I love that.

our awesome bathmats...how awesome are these??

our grownup bed...LOVE the metal pieces

stumbled onto this awesomeness at Homegoods today...it would look A-MA-ZING in our master bedroom...sadly, not in the budget :(

three dollars worth of happiness

We have lived in our house for 8 years.  This is the longest I have ever lived in one house my entire life.  Since moving isn't an option, I am trying to come up with new and cheap ways to fall in love again with my house.  Today's obsession was the master bathroom and the remedy was bath mats.  I don't know...sometimes I really wonder what the heck goes on in my head.  For whatever reason I woke up this morning with our bathroom on the brain and just knew if I could find bath mats, it would totally transform the room.  

I loaded the kids up and we were off to Target.  And I found bath mats but nothing I really loved.  But then I also thought we needed an area rug in the bathroom and then a large round cream distressed table...yes, our bathroom is that big.  It is single-handedly the biggest waste of space...ever.  I found a great rug on clearance but it wasn't quite perfect for the bathroom...and I didn't want to get it just because it was a great price.  So we left the bathroom area with no bath mats and ideas just swirling around the brain.

We wandered down to the Halloween section to see if any new decorations that I haven't already looked at and/or already purchased had ended up on the shelves.  Nothing new.  But thank you to the great people at Target for not only putting Halloween decorations up a month ago but also putting out some Christmas decorations.  And I will thank Jesus for the next one...for blessing me with a son who is as obsessed with Christmas decorations as I am.  He ran to the same silver Christmas tree that he has run to the last 5 visits to Target and kept telling me to look at it.  He asked over and over if we could get Christmas lights and if we could put up his Christmas tree.  I told him no (but secretly wished we could) and stumbled on to some Halloween lights...for $3.  Compromise.  I grabbed two boxes and have now ghettoed up the windows in the kitchen.  Most people would wrap them around the deck or their staircase or put them in the bushes.  But not us...because we want to see them all of the time.  So they are wrapped around my cornice boards and windows in the kitchen.  And all of the lights are off in the house so we can sit here by the light of the orange, green and purple awesomeness.  

so proud of his lights

poor Love Bug still eating her dinner in only the light of the Halloween lights

firepits

Just when I thought we were done...D comes up with another plan.  We are loving our new backyard but D wanted to add one last touch...a firepit.  He has flattened out a section of one of the flower beds, is almost done building a retaining wall, has made the firepit and is deciding what to do around the firepit (pavers or gravel).  He has worked like a dog this weekend and is about 90% complete.  By next weekend, we can make s'mores by the fire.  Obviously, there will be pictures posted...but not until it is complete.  What a transformation our backyard is.

We had a great week.  The weather was perfect and the week was filled with tennis for me and playdates for The Mayor and Love Bug.  This week I need to get working on The Mayor's birthday party...it is less than 2 weeks away so I need to get my act in gear.  I can't believe my boy will be 4!