St. Patrick's Day

Preschool has really upped the holiday game around here because all of the kids talk about things like leprachaun traps and stuff.  That being said, the older the girls get, the more fun it is to really go all-out because they love it and remember it.  So this year, the girls each made a leprechaun trap the day before, with skittles to try and lure him in.  We had a leprechaun visit our house on St. Patrick's day.  He decorated in green, left a rainbow with a pot of gold (rolos) at the bottom, brought us special green lucky charms, died our milk green, hung green balloons and streamers, left notes in green window markers on our mirrors, and filled green goodie bags with green things for each girl (like green applesauce, green juice drinks, green bows/headbands, and green pringles, and a green glow stick).  Ryan even "caught" a leprechaun- but he got away before we could see anything but his little footprints in Ryan's hands. ;)

 We couldn't catch that sneaky little leprechaun, but he left a note with his goodie bags for the girls!

March little things

One of Lucy's and Claire's favorite things to do with Ryan after work is "Buckin' Bronco."  I think the name speaks for itself.

 My varicose veins have gotten worse with each pregnancy, and this time around it has been pretty out of control on certain days, where I can't even stand for 10 whole seconds because it hurts so bad!  Looks like my legs got beat up!

 "More matoes, Mom!" is something I hear all the time from Claire.  She LOVES tomatoes.  This particular day I made mac and cheese but all she wanted for lunch was a big, juicy tomato I had in our fruit bowl.  I cut it up for her and she asked for more.  So I cut up a second one, too.  She still wanted more but that was all we had.  So the only thing she had for lunch that day was two big tomatoes.  She doesn't get it from her mom, that's for sure!

The high school drama club has a fundraiser every year where they put on a princess and prince party for preschool aged kids.  We took Lucy and Claire and they got to see princesses, get a makeover with real makeup, eat cookies and punch, and do a little princess crown craft. Claire ate one of her cookies on the way home and was a little upset about having frosting all over her face- but she still loved the cookie! :)

 On March 14th, it's 3.14, or "pi" day.  Ryan, being the pie lover he is, wasn't going to let it pass without making some delicious pie.  He made a homemade strawberry pie with whipped cream.  I am not even a big pie person and I loved it!

We had a fun week-of St. Patrick's day play date with a bunch of mom's from church one day, and we were supposed to bring some kind of green or festive food to share.  I brought this fruit rainbow that was totally devoured before we left!  I think I need to make this more often because all of the colors and options were fun!

 Claire can hardly wait any longer for baby brother to come along, and one day during preschool I found her sitting in the bop pillow in front of the bouncer playing music for and talking to her baby.  Such a sweetheart!

 Jill Neeley and I found a wreath on pinterest we both loved, so we got together one Monday night and crafted while watching the Bachelor finale.  This was about the craftiest things I've done in the last 10 years.  Or ever.  I like having a little something on my door though!

Lucy had another routine dentist appoint, which went great again.  Her teeth and gums and everything are perfect and she has great spacing.  Since Claire is now on our dental insurance, we were able to squeeze her in at the same time for her first dentist appointment!  She was quite a bit younger than Lucy was for her first one, and was obviously a little more apprehensive about it.  But she sat on my lap in the dental chair and let them brush her teeth, look at them with the mirror, and put fluoride on them.  Both girls got a baggie with new toothbrushes, toothpaste, and flossers, as well as a balloon, and a coin for their little toy machine.  They were so happy and Claire was pretty proud of herself.  We really found the best dentist around!

 Claire is so funny because she likes to brush her teeth all by herself.  She has a hard time spitting into the sink though, even with the stool.  So she will pull herself up and hang here like this while brushing her teeth.  It isn't until she's done and I hear her shrieking for help to get down that I realize she's even up there!  I thought this was so funny as I watched her for like 2 whole minutes doing this one day, without any clue that anyone else was there watching.

Lucy and Claire were begging to have Chloe, their babysitter, come over one weekend.  So I sent her a quick text and a few minutes later, Ryan and I had a date for that weekend!  We ended up going to Easton and having dinner at P.F. Chang's, stopped by See's chocolates where we each picked out a few for ourselves, then did a little shopping for some new comfy clothes for me for after the baby, and followed it up by running a quick errand at Target.  It was such a fun, relaxing night with great conversation and the girls had fun at home, too.  We are so glad we ended up doing this!  Our little photographer, Lucy, took these pictures of us before we left.  Claire didn't want to get out of the picture.  Once we got a decent one, Lucy insisted on a picture with just me, which I happily obliged!

Big girl bed and a shared room

We planned on moving Claire into a big bed in Lucy's room when the baby got here, so baby brother could take the crib in the other room.  Well it just hit me one day that time was short on getting that done before the baby comes, especially knowing there would be a transition period of sorts.  So I hopped on Craigslist to look for another white bed frame for Claire's bed, assuming I would just get another random white one.  Much to my surprise, there was the exact same bed that I had gotten Lucy on Craigslist two years ago!  So I jumped on it and bought it and now their room probably looks a bit cuter than it would have with non-matching beds.  The first few nights were rough.  Claire just LOVED being in that room with Lucy and in her own big bed, that she couldn't settle down.  We kept hearing her say over the monitor "I so cited!  I really cited, Lucy!" along with some giggles (fyi, "cited" means excited).  But after about 3 hours of keeping Lucy awake, and Lucy crying from it, we would go get Claire and put her back in her crib, which she did not want at all.  She kept saying "I can't get out my crib!" and was pretty scared to go back in by herself.  Well, after 2 or 3 nights of that, things finally started to get better and she knew we meant business when we told her to lay back down and be quiet!  Now they are about as good as they are going to get, I think.  It's so nice to have this all worked out before the baby gets here!

Church Baby Shower

I have such great friends here in Columbus and a few of them from church had a baby shower for me- Brianne Castle, Jill Neeley, Kristen Little, and Katie Gardner.  They spared no details and it was super cute, all green and blue with a mustache/bowtie theme!  We ate great food, played some funny games, and I got spoiled with a lot of great stuff!

 Brianne made this edible arrangement!  Incredible (and delicious)!

Valentine's Day 2016

Valentine's Day was on a Sunday this year, and I was sick so I didn't go to church.  But Ryan took Lucy and Claire and we even did a heart french braid at the top of Lucy's head (which I don't think yo can totally see from pictures.  We gave the girls a couple of small things to say we love them and we had a nice dinner together in the evening with a delicious strawberry cheesecake trifle for dessert!  I love my little family!

 Kisses!!

Lucy made me these cards in preschool and it was the best I had seen her write thus far, so I not only loved the thought but was so proud of her progress, too!  The front says Mom at the top and Lucy on the side, and I love you on the inside.

Texas trip!

Since we have free flights this year, we wanted to take one last family trip before baby comes, and we decided to go to Texas since we had never been there and it sounded fun and different.  So we went to Craig and Devaun's from February 6th-10th. We got to Austin on a Saturday and went right to a really cool park for a delicious picnic lunch made by Craig and Devaun.  We walked around and looked at the natural springs that you can pay to swim in.  We thought people were CRAZY for swimming in that thing because it looked so cold, but when we walked down and felt the water ourselves, we realized how warm it actually was!  We then let the kids play on the huge, fun playground there.  Afterwards, we went and got ice cream at Amy's ice cream, which was so good.  After that, we went to the capitol and gave ourselves our own tour.  Next, we went by the University of Texas football stadium (Devaun's future place of higher education) to check that out for a few minutes.  Then we drove towards their home in Killeen and stopped in Round Rock to eat at a really good burger place called Hopdoddy Burger.

The next day was Sunday, so we went to church with them and then came home for naps and relaxing.  It was Super Bowl Sunday and Craig and Devaun had a ton of good food planned for us.  The girls loved making homemade pizza with them, and we had a million other good things to eat, too.  We played outside in their yard a little bit and enjoyed the sun for a bit!

Monday, Devaun had to work, but Craig took the rest of us to San Antonio to go take a boat tour of the Riverwalk and to see the Alamo.  Both were really interesting and fun.  The funniest thing happened though, when we were pulling into the parking garage.  Craig joked around about how it was on fire because of some dark smoke coming from the top.  Well, a minute later as we ate lunch in Craig's car in the parking garage, a fire truck pulls up outside right in front of us.  The next thing we know, bunches of people are gathering across the street from us and taking pictures with the phones.  Then employees all start leaving and we are just sitting there laughing and wondering what to do because we didn't hear any sirens or warnings.  Just then a golf cart filled with firemen drive right by us heading up to the top.  We got out of the car and realized the ground was wet and when we opened the door to the stairs in the parking garage, there was like a waterfall coming down from all the water the firemen were using.  So there really was a fire!  A policeman saw us get out of the car and told us we couldn't walk out to the street and that we had to go through the mall and out the other way.  As we were talking, the elevator doors randomly opened and it was packed with about 7 firefighters in it who just stared at us and didn't move, but let the doors close and kept going up.  So we went in the mall which had an alarm going off and it was filled with smoke, and as we were going down the escalator we had to stop for a second because a handful more of firemen were coming up past us.  Everything turned out okay, but all of these isolated events were pretty humorous to us.  We spent several hours between the Alamo and the Riverwalk, and they just started letting people out of the parking garage as we were done.  Good timing!  We drove home and stopped to eat Rudy's BBQ on the way back, which we all loved, but it was especially funny to see the amount of ribs our girls could throw down!

Tuesday, we hung out around Killeen and went to say hi to Craig at his office and check that out.  We couldn't stay long because he was busy finishing up a wisdom tooth pull, but it was fun to see where he is at everyday.  We met up with him at In-N-Out for lunch and then went back to Craig and Devaun's for naps.  After naps, we took the girls over to a park right by their house and stayed there for a while to play until Craig got home.  We ended the night by going to eat dinner at Dead Fish Grill, which was located on a beautiful lake with really pretty views.  Ryan and Craig ordered frog legs for an appetizer and Lucy got brave and tried it herself!

That pretty much concludes our trip because we flew out of Austin the next morning!  It was so fun to see a new place.  Texas was just how I pictured it!!

At Zilker Park, which was incredibly huge.  We couldn't even see the whole thing!

 Barton Springs, which is in Zilker Park.  This would be fun to swim in in the summer, but we heard it gets pretty crowded!

Amy's Ice Cream

 Downtown Austin.  We tried to rent some awesome swan paddle boats here, but the last one had just been rented out and it was way too windy to do them very well that day.

 The State Capitol.

At Hopdoddy's Burgers.  This place was crazy crowded!  We had to wait like an hour just to get inside the building.  It was worth it though- so good and pretty unique and trendy.  Awesome burgers, fries, and shakes.  Lucy took this picture of Ryan and Craig while waiting for our food.

 Craig and Devaun spoiled the girls with these gifts, and Lucy and Claire were over the moon about them.  Candy, notebooks, bubbles, lipgloss, etc.!

Lucy and Claire thought it was so fun to make pizza with them!

 On the Riverwalk boat tour.  This was pretty fun and relaxing too.  The weather was great for it too!

 This was the beautiful view from the restaurant we ate at the last night.  We got there right as it was getting dark, so we didn't get to see it for very long, but it was so pretty!