Busy

Life is so busy at the moment. The weekend flew by much to quickly. I didn't have as much time as I would have like to have at home and then it was Monday. Ick.

Monday I had to take my poor Mom to get ANOTHER spinal injection. She is just not feeling well, say a prayer fo her if you will. It was nice to get to spend the day with her though. The kids sure do love their Grammy.

Today, Dylan had preschool in the morning and London and I did some running around. I'm trying to redo their bathroom, so we were out trying to pick up stuff for that. It was not successful though. I'm not sure what I am looking for really, but whatever it is, I can't find it. Then, we had lunch with Daniel, which is always a great treat. After all of that it was time to pick Dylan up. The kids played around the house for a bit, then I put them down for a nap. I thought they would sleep for an hour or so, but they both slept THREE HOURS! We shall see how tonight goes. Hopefully, better than expected! haha!

Bosses Day and Birthdays.

Today is apparently Bosses Day, which I have thoughtfully been planning out for weeks now didn't think about until last night. I didn't have time to run to the store last night though, so I decided I would go gather a few goodies this morning and drop them off to Daniel over his lunch hour.

I didn't want anything over the top, because his office and two bosses are extremely laid back. Both bosses are avid coffee drinkers, so Starbucks sounded like the most logical gift. I didn't want to just send gift cards though, because I hate giving gift cards. I know a lot of people like them, they do make life easier, and I am probably one of the few people (other than your sweet old Grandma) that refuses to buy them as presents, but it just is what it is. So, I opted to do a little "Starbucks Basket." I got them each a bag of coffee grinds, a box of the new VIA instant coffee to try, some nice chocolates, and a travel mug. I thought our little packages turned out quite cute. I meant to snap a picture, bud didn't get to because I was doing everything last minute and running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

For the hubby's lunch break, we took our good friend and Danie's co-worker, Rob, out to lunch for his 30th birthday. We love Rob to pieces (although that probably not how Daniel would word it) and I was delighted to be able to spend his birthday with him. A bunch of our other friends/co-workers joined us and we had quite the lunch celebration!

Daniel isn't going to get off until 7 tonight, so that gives me a little more than 3 hours to bum around and not do much get a little house work done. Hope ya'll have a great weekend, and GEAUX TIGERS!!!

Face Lifts, Cleaning Up, Live and Learn

In the spirit of Fall and all the festivities that come with it, I gave my little blog a bit of a face lift. I think the warmer colors feel much more appropriate for the season. What do you think? I'm still not extremely happy with the banner, but I'll fix it soon(ish).

My poor car needed some attention pretty desperately also. Lets just say that my car wasn't even looking like its original color any more. Yikes! Not at all good. So, I had the bright idea of just running through this local car wash. Its great because before you go through the automatic washer, there are four guys that hand wash the car. It takes like five minutes to have a sparkly car. Great idea, huh? Apparently not where London is concerned. She was so freaked out by the whole thing and cried for most of it. I felt horrible, but there wasn't much I could do. I just reached back and held her little hand and sang her songs, which did help, but she was still so upset.

Live and learn. I now know that I can not take London with me when going through the car wash.

Here is a picture of my princess when she is NOT upset. :)

Pumpkin Patch 2009 (Trip 1)

Oh, Pumpkin Patch, how I love you so!!!

Every year I look forward to the pumpkin patch. We have gone to the same one every year since we have lived in the Dallas area. Even since moving further out from the city, we make the 45 min drive just to go to THIS pumpkin patch, even though there are quite a few to choose from closer to home. I think its part my sappy spot for tradition that does not allow us to move to a closer patch, but its also a large part that this is simply the best one, ever.

Entry is free and so are all of the many of activities they have for kids. There is so much to do! You can have your kids face painted, let them run through a huge hay maze, have them enjoy 5 huge inflatables, play on the play ground, and of course, enjoy all of the many beautiful pumpkins that have. There are also vendors at the top of the hill that sell all sorts of cute stuff. And lets not forget about the yummy food that is delightfully festive, such as kettle corn and hot coco. The owners make their money from selling their pumpkins, haystacks, and corn stalks. Sure, the pumpkins cost a good bit more than you would pay for them at Walmart, but it is so worth it. Even if they didn't have all of the fun activities for free, I think the magic of going into the field to pick YOUR pumpkin is worth the extra money all by itself. We take the kids several times during the month of October and buy at least a small pumpkin everytime. We wait to get our big pumpkin until closer to Halloween.

I took a ton of pictures while we were there, but didn't THE shot that I was hoping for. I desperately wanted a picture of the two kids sitting together in the field of pumpkins to frame. It did not happen. I may have to try again, but I promised Dylan that the next time we go, I will not take pictures the entire time, "You can have a couple of pictures, Mommy", is what he told me! I did get a couple of cute ones of them individually though. Here we go...

Dylan and London in the "Pumkin House"

Dylan so enjoyed the huge slides and jumpy houses!

My little pumpkin in the wagon. I dreamt about how wonderful this would be last year! And it was every bit as magical as I had hoped for!

My other little pumpkin. I adore how excited he is about Holidays and festivities this year. It makes it so much more special. This is also something I have been waiting for since he was a baby!

This picture just makes my heart happy. Daniel is the most amazing Daddy! Our kids adore him as much as I do.
This hay stack was pretty huge. I din't know Dylan was going to jump until it was to late. Daniel was taking the picture, so he saw the jump coming and it didn't faze him. haha! He is really the cool one. I do love these two pictures.This is the closet I got to a good shot of the two of them. They were just done. We were past nap time for London and Dylan was ready to get back to playing. I guess it isn't an awful one. And I just love the two pumpkins in it to pieces and pieces!



*Just say y'all know, I have always called Dylan "Pumpkin" and London too. Its not just in theme of this post that I refer to them as that! :D

What a Wonderful Weekend and the State Fair!

Ahhhhh. There is nothing better than a great weekend. I mean, a great week is good, but a great weekend is the best! Mainly because the weekend involves more of my handsome hubby. Almost five years of marriage, I still can't get enough of that man! Okay, enough sappy crap stuff.

Friday night we came home and just enjoyed hanging out together, watching tv and eating popcorn. I love lazy nights on the couch! On Saturday, we took it easy the first half of the day and then we took the kids out for a special treat. First we went to Dylan's favorite place in the entire world, McDonald's. This is an extra special treat, because we NEVER go eat there. I just can't bring myself to eat the nastiness. But that day was all about the kids, so McGross it was. You would have thought we took him to Disney world, he was so excited. After we finished with that, we headed over into Dallas for the Texas State Fair!!

Both kids loved it. Dylan, of coarse, loved riding all of the rides and he also loved the petty zoo. We got to pet a baby giraffe, a GIRAFFE!!! Never in my life have I pet one of those! It was pretty cool. We also saw a baby joey in his momma's pouch. I think that was another first for me. London's favorite part was either the yummy food that she would normally not be allowed to eat, you should have seen her little eyes when I gave her a bite of cotton candy!, or else all of the pretty lights. She had a big time watching her brother do the rides. She would wave and cheer for him and get SOO excited. It was really cute. We rode one ride together as a family. I thought that London was going to love it, but she did not. She HATED it. It did go a little faster and higher than I had thought it would and she is still pretty small for rides. I hope I didn't traumatize her!

Here are some of Dylan's ride photos:

On Sunday, the kids slept in until 8:30!! London NEVER sleeps this late, so the fair must have really taken it out of her! haha! So, we missed our normal service for church, but we did catch the next one. After church we headed over to a local sandwich joint and had a yummy lunch. Then we took the kids to one of the pumpkin patches around here. I look forward to the pumpkin patch every year, but I was especially excited to to go this year as a family of four for the first time!! More to come on the pumpkin patch tomorrow!

Hope y'all have a good day.

All Better!

My sweet mom is feel almost all better! She went home today after hanging out with us until about 2. While we were still hanging, she and I took the kids and went to a fabric store in town. She is getting ready to make THE CUTEST little shirts that will be perfect for turkey day! I can't wait to share when she has them made!

We have some very fallish weather here this weekend! I can't believe how cool it is. I almost feel like the kids need a jacket. I decided that a light sweater will work better for now though. I plan on running to the store in a bit to load up on apple cider, hot chocolate, and marshmallows. I can't wait to curl up on the couch for a movie with my family with a warm drink, so warm popcorn, and maybe a slice of warm pie! I'm also making potato soup tomorrow for lunch.... what can I say?!? I'm feeling the festiveness of fall!

We have a very busy, very fun weekend planned! I think I am most excited about the Pumpkin Patch. It will be London's first trip ever! Happy Fall, y'all!

Hello, My Name is Carla, and I am a bad blogger.

Sorry, friends. I mean to be a great blogger. Honestly, I do. I WANT to be. I just don't know when my life took off being so busy, but boy it sure has. Maybe it has something to do with having two kids who are both newly one and five years old! Some days we leave the house at 8am for Dylan's school and don't get home until dark. There is just a lot of running around, play dates, family dates, and just stuff going on. I do plan to come back SOON with London's birthday post. She had a great one!

For right now, I am sitting in an outpatient surgical center waiting to have my much wanted boob job. No, not really. I am sitting in an OSC, but its for my mom. She isn't getting plastic surgery either. I'm not even sure if she would. Hmm, I'll have to ask her about that. Anyways, we are here for her back. I don't know all the medical terms of what is going on, but basically she has a bulging disc in her spine and they are giving her an injection of pain meds into it. She has been in intense pain for two weeks now, so we are extremely happy for her to be having this done. We were not extremely happy at 6 am this morning when the alarm clock went off with orders for us to jump out of bed. But it is going to oh so worth it.

Later today, I am going to take my mom back to my house, where she will spend the night with us. Dylan is sooooo excited that Grammy is spending the night with him. I'm pretty excited to have a girl's movie night too. I plan for us to veg out on the couch, watch chickflicks for hours, and eat lots of popcorn. *Bliss* I can't wait to get home and see my babies and handsome hubby either. I spent the night with my mom last night because she lives about an hour away from me and had I not spent the night, I would have needed to leave my house before 5 am to have her here on time. No thanks. This was my first night EVER to be away from London Paisley and my first time to spend the night away from my entire family too.

I only was away for one night, but I really can not wait to get these cuties in my arms!

Happy First Birthday, London Paisley!

I can't believe it, but she is one years old today!

There will tons more pictures and stories to come, but I wanted to make a quick post today for my Birthday Girl! Mommy loves you as big as the sky, my beautiful princess!

Kelly's Blog Hop! Baby GEAR!

Kelly is hosting a Blog Hop devoted to baby gear this week. And since I have a little on that is just one day short of being ONE YEAR OLD!, I have a good bit to contribute in way of likes and dislikes. I drew on the advice of other mommies with both London and Dylan for what we would use and not use, so I hope this is helpful for somebody!

What we loved and used often:

1.Swing. You can NOT skip out on this one, in my opinion. Both of my babies used there swings a ton for the first four to five months of life. I don't even know what we would have done with out our swings. Both times, I bought Fisher Price swings. I think its just a great brand. Also, I did the papasan swing both times. Perfection.

2. Bassinet. We used ours as her bed for the first four months of life. She slept in our room right there in her little bassinet and it worked out great. With Dylan, we were living in a two story house and we used his bassinet for downstairs naps. Again, this is a can not live with out item.

3. Excersaucer. There are tons of different types of there. For Dylan, I had the old fashion stationary one with a spin around seat and activities on it. He loved it and spent tons of time in it. For London I did one of the new jumpy ones. There are these new ones that have the seats spins around, there are lots of little activities AND the baby can jump up and down. Brilliant:

4. Walker. These disappeared for a little while because of all the safety issues with them. I think they are like anything else, you should not use them as a baby sitter. I couldn't even find one with Dylan and we were fine with out it. They are making a comeback now, so I did get one for London. I got it for her when she was seven months and would put her in it while she and I were in the living room. She loved it and it really helped to teach her to move her little feet in a walking motion. I will say, that I do NOT NOT NOT recommend the Disney Princess walker at Walmart. It is total garbage and fell apart WITH her in it (thank God she was not hurt) the day after I bought it. I took it back and bought her a super cute green Jeep brand walker instead and we loved it. She'll have nothing to do with in now that she can walk on her own though!

4. Play yard. I used Dylan's for his downstairs nap once he outgrew his bassinet. So, he used his everyday. London just takes naps in her crib. But we did get a lot of use out it for days out at the pool or park this summer. When it was nap time for her, I would move it into the shade and clip a little fan onto it. That worked out brilliantly for us. We also use it as her bed anytime we travel. Because I knew she wouldn't use it daily, I didn't get one of the big ones. I got the "travel" size, and its perfect for how we use it.

5. Boudreaux's Butt Paste cure ALL diaper rashes. Its the only thing I have ever put on either of my babies bottoms. It smells really good too. I give this with ever baby shower gift I give. It is just a must, must, must!
My dislikes and things we did not use much:

1.Boppy. I will admit that London Paisley has always been a chunky monkey and her little legs were hard to get in and out of it. Other than that, if your baby isn't so chunky, I bet you would use it more. We used our on and off for a couple of months.

2. Diaper Genie. We just don't really need to use it. Its not hard to take your pale of diapers out to the big garbage can every night. If you live in an apartment or somewhere without the garage trash can, I would recommend it though.

3. Wipe warmer. I bought one both times and very used it. My babies didn't mind the room temperature wipes. haha!

4. Full size Double Stroller. Dylan had just turned 4 when we had London, so we just didn't really need it. I still got one though. haha! I think I've used it twice. If you have a little one that mostly walks and a baby and you do want a stroller system that can fit both kids, I would recommend on that has the standing platform for your big kid. Once I realized we didn't need the full sized, I figured we really didn't need the other either though.