Pin the Goggles on the Minion

When I started typing the title of this post it said, "Pin the googles on the minion" apparently google rules my world.

Anyway, I took a piece of poster board, sketched out a minion and then had Ryann color it in. She did pretty well staying in the lines.

 Then I cut out some "goggles" and made them look like eyeballs so that each kid could take a turn playing at Cara's party. 

 Rich was in charge of the blind fold and spinning the kids around. Most did pretty good but a few were too scared to play the game. 

 After they all got a turn I told them to take their goggles and put them anywhere they wanted on the minion. I love that at the age of 3 they don't have a firm concept on winning. If you made it to the wall and it stuck on the wall you had people clapping for you. 

It was so much fun, no party poopers, no whining, no pinata, no messy ice cream. Just Cara and an fun group of 3 year olds. 

Happy Birthday Cara Kay

My little sweet baby girl is 3 today!  Wow. That went by in the blink of an eye. She is loud and stubborn and imaginative and not very sneaky. She loves watching TV and movies. Her favorites are Despicable Me, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and basically anything else Ryann forces her to watch. (Being the baby and not being able to work the remote control yet Cara usually watches whatever Ryann is watching since we don't have to turn on the TV for them anymore.)

Cara doesn't care to much what she wears every day. She did ask to wear her clothes that "wiggle" (as she shakes her hips) for her birthday party yesterday. I figured it out that she wanted to wear her hula girl outfit that Grandma and Grandpa Great got her for her birthday. Because hula girls wiggle their hips.  But usually she doesn't care what she wears. 

She hates getting her hair done and that often stops me from doing it, but I still insist most days. 

She weighs 25lbs and is 3 feet tall. She has strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes, and is working on her letters. She can count 1-10 in Spanish and usually to like 26 or 27 in English. She knows her colors and shapes and she loves candy... all kinds of candy, but plain chocolate is her favorite. 

Ryann and Cara really are best friends. They fight but more often they play. They scheme things up and when they get in trouble Cara squeals and protests, while Ryann usually just runs away or cries. Cara is good at sobbing on command. She hates to be alone so she usually requests that someone takes her potty when she has to go... just because she hates being alone!  She is perfectly capable of going and wiping, but she is always making excuses like, "I'm too little to get on the potty by myself."  This girl needs a baby in her family because then she would learn that she isn't "too little" to do anything. 

Immediately after we put her to bed she gets out of bed 2-4 times in order to go to the bathroom again. She takes an average of 30 minutes to eat her dinner each night. This is a huge improvement from the hour she was taking about 5 months ago. She would rather drink milk than eat, but we have started limiting her milk at dinner so that she will eat more. She is getting more adventurous in her eating habits. She likes mushrooms now and she eats a lot of spinach. Apples are probably her favorite food besides cereal and that girl can pound away the cereal. She will eat 4 or 5 bowls of corn pops or fruit loops or some other ridiculously unhealthy cereal in a sitting. Nothing she eats compares to the amount of cereal that she can throw down. 

And those pictures are some random ones from today. Today was a fabulous day and I am so happy that my sweet girl had such a great day.  Thank you everyone for making it so special.  Thank you to Grandma and Paca for the sweet book. We read it and I cried. 

Yeah so I am a little emotional today... Cara growing up and I had to say goodbye to one of my best friends who is moving away. How come grown ups have to move away? I thought that was something that only little kids had to deal with.  Boo on that. I am not a fan. 

Despicable Me Birthday Party

When the kids sat down to eat their lunch I asked them to say Happy Birthday to Cara. At the end Cara tells them all they need to say it louder. Excuse me bossy pants. 

The kids had a blast today at the party and I think one of the hits was Uncle Lee as the mad scientist/ inventor... Dr Nevario (?). Anyway, he had a bubble gun and had fun chasing the kids around with it. 

Which of course when you are an uncle you let your niece chase you right back with it. That is what any good uncle would do. 

 

 Here are some of the kids eating their minion cupcakes. For the rest of the party they had juice boxes, hot dogs, chips, some candy and a lot of fun. 

Morning Pictures

Sometimes when the girls wake up really early in the morning... like today... I send them down the hall, farthest away from my bedroom, so they can go color. Ryann colored about 5 pages that she printed out from the computer (on her own) and then taped them up to her wall. 

 Look at how long Ryann's hair is getting! Time for a haircut from Auntie Devyn I think.
Whenever we do Cara's hair in just one ponytail we say we are doing her hair like "Addie."  We say it is Addie hair because Addie always has her hair in a back pony tail and my girls hardly ever wear their hair that way. 

 I am not sure what Cara was so excited about in this picture, but it just makes me laugh when I see it. 

Ryann and Pegasus

Ryann loves her baby "Pegasus" from Grandma Mingo. She usually calls him her "peggy" 

No More Thumb

Ryann and I have recently been talking about having her stop sucking her thumb.  Do you remember when she told me that she would stop sucking it when she turned 8?  Yeah, I know. She was a pretty little determined girl.  Anyway, a friend of hers just got her ears pierced because she stopped sucking her thumb and Ryann thought that was a great incentive.

I told Ryann that I would look for ways to try and help her stop sucking her thumb. I found some help from facebook about books they can read or gross stuff they can put on their thumbs. I then asked Ryann what she thought would work and she actually said if her thumb tasted yucky she wouldn't do it anymore.

I decided to go local rather than ordering something from Sweden or online, so I stopped at Walgreens on Saturday and I picked up this little beauty.

I painted her and Cara's nails with it. I told Cara she was going to stop sucking her thumb too... and a typical redhead she promptly said "NO. I like to suck my thumb A LOT!" And she has continued to suck her thumb every day even with this stuff on it. She doesn't suck her thumb nearly as much as Ryann did, but she still is sucking her thumb.

Anyway, back to Ryann, the first night was pretty rough for her. Every night since has been a little rough, but I am so proud to say that she isn't sucking her thumb at all anymore!  She wanted to do it and she did. Every once in awhile she asks me to paint her thumb again because she is afraid she will suck in the middle of the night without realizing it. But every night she puts her silky far away from her and she goes to sleep lying on top of her hands or with her hands underneath her pillow. It is so precious to see her try so hard to accomplish something and actually do it.

Yes, I know she is 5 and it is about time that she stops sucking her thumb, but it has been her best friend. It has been her companion and something she has done every day to calm and comfort herself. The past couple nights she has come in once or twice to see if I would hold her and cuddle her back to sleep. I let her come into bed 1 time a night but the other times I am making her go back to bed after we say a prayer together that she will be able to fall back asleep without sucking her thumb.  By next week I think the urge to suck her thumb will be gone. Also since she isn't sucking her thumb she isn't asking for her silkies anymore. I knew the two were related, but I didn't realize how dependent they were on each other. Awesome. Killed 2 birds with one stone.

I am so proud of my Ryann for being such a hard worker and accomplishing this goal she set out to do.

She still hasn't talked about getting her ears pierced, I think she wants to wait until she really knows that she won't start sucking her thumb again and she is confident with herself.

Minion Beanie

Here is my first attempt at making a "minion" beanie. Cara saw some when I was browsing online and she just begged for one. Since I wasn't going to shell out $15+ for one, I ran down to walmart, bought myself some yellow yarn for like $2 and went to town.

It is so easy to please a (almost) 3 year old. 

Happy 8th Anniversary

So these are the only cell phone pictures I snapped tonight. Rich and I were able to sneak away for a fun dinner at a local restaurant. We ate way too much of course and then topped it off with dessert.

This was the best dessert cannoli I have ever tasted. Usually they are not very sweet... uh this one you could tell had tons of sugar. Delicious. So much for eating healthy. I guess anniversaries count for cheat days.

I am excited for my new travel mug especially made for tea, and Rich is excited for his new survival strap that he gets to order.

Happy Anniversary. What a wonderful, hard, tough, trying, emotional, exhilarating, loving, crazy, silly, funny, and amazing ride it has been. I love you with all my heart.

Sunday Best

I like to let the girls pick out what they are going to wear. They pick out their own clothes almost every day and Sunday is no different.

They looked so dang cute (almost) that I had to take pictures. Ryann was wearing her cowgirl boots and Cara had her church socks pulled up high as they could go.

Other than that they were priceless. Well, I guess even like that made them pretty dang cute.

Now if they would just hold still for a picture.

Or smile for a picture. Is that too much to ask??

Happy Baby Shower

Here are a couple bits from the baby shower that I co hosted for our wonderful friend Heidi. We played some fun games and had a good time.

The punch was a pinterest find.... as was the glasses and the cute straws.

This baby stroller fruit serving bowl was amazing. Delicious too.

Cute cupcake toppers that I found on etsy.

And here is Heidi and I. I never noticed how puffy my hair is until I see it in a picture. I guess I need less bob and more straight? I will work on that. Haha.

Heidi is 32 weeks and having her baby girl Emery. We are so excited for her and we have been waiting very patiently for her to make her way to this sweet family.

Evening Walk

I took a break from baby shower stuff (I am co-hosting a baby shower tomorrow!) to take a walk with the girls.

So of course I brought my camera and both girls wanted their pictures taken.

Cara wanted help more than she wanted her picture taken. She had climbed on top of a wall and wanted me to help her walk down it. After I snapped the picture I did.

Ryann just thought she was fabulous climbing up to this fence at the neighbors.

I love our new place and I love the fun evening walks we go on. The weather is still pretty nice, but not for long!!

Party Planning

I am not much of a party planner. But thanks to pinterest and etsy and amazon and craigslist I am a freakin awesome party planner!

Well, of a 3 year old's birthday party.

Cara requested that her birthday party be Despicable Me...

http://www.pluckymomo.com/2011/03/despicable-me-party-invites-decorations.html

So I made these cute invites.

Then I found a giant minion on craigslist.

Then I used my Amazon gift card from Easter to buy 2 posters, a small minion, and a couple other things. Rich is going to download the soundtrack when he gets home tonight.

And then I found THESE for party favors!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/93940932/despicable-me-bottle-cap-necklace-party

I also picked up some dog dishes for the "food and water" parts.

Oh and I have so much more planned. I can't wait for her party. It will be so much fun!

Anyone flying down for it?? Anyone??

Remember this??

This is my Cara Kay when she turned 2. I can't believe how fast this year has gone. She still fits into these clothes too.

My 3 year old just his 25 lbs. That seems a little light weight for me. Well, I guess we will see what the pediatrician has to say about that. But until then... look at this stinkin cute mug she had last year!!!

Family Night

Tonight for family night we dropped off some treats at a friend's house then we came home and played pretty pretty princess. This is a classic picture. I am smiling for the camera, Ryann is checking out everyone else, and Cara is wrapped up in herself. Ah- to be a mother, 5 year old and almost 3 year old.

Seriously? I am about to leave the terrible TERRIFIC twos???

Here is Ryann with a silly pose. Below she is posing like a princess.

Cara Kay is just all smiles.

Forever Horse

Ryann is always pretending to be a horse. She decided that a silkie would make a perfect saddle and then we could just tie Buzz around her.

I kept having flashbacks of me getting Zach to ride on me when he was little. Oh me oh my.

She is her mother's girl.

Bathtime

It has been awhile since we had bathtime pictures. Here are the girls in a bubble bath when I had just taken their hair out of braids. I think it is time for haircuts!!!

Notice the ponies in the background? Yeah, they are everywhere.

Never Enough Pictures

How come we never take enough pictures of the girls WITH other people. Like I don't think I have very many posed pictures of Grandma Mingo and the girls. Well, here is to change and making sure the girls grow up knowing that there are hundreds of people in their lives that love them.

Poor Cara

Cara always seems to get the raw end of the deal... like take this picture- she has to eat a hard boiled egg for breakfast... wahhh. So Sad.

But Ryann gets to eat peeps for breakfast... I guess I must love her best.

But seriously, pictures taken different times of the day and Ryann has only eaten the head off 1 of her peeps. The rest are getting hard sitting on our counter.

The Hunt

Ryann and Cara hunt Easter Eggs differently. Always have, and I am sure they always will. Ryann searches out more, she looks for the one she wants and sneaks over and grabs it.

Here she is searching and finding her eggs.

Then she gets the eggs and looks through them all, waiting to decide what candy to eat. Ryann is a take it or leave it kind of candy girl. She will eat it if she wants, but never really eats it just to eat it.

Now Cara is another story. She sees an egg, screams "I SEE ONE!" then goes charging straight for it. She often beats out Ryann because she is pure adrenaline going to get that egg.

She is persistent. She looks and looks and looks until they are all gone.

Candy is serious business for her. She grabs a piece, eats it just because it is candy, and then if she doesn't like it then she spits it out to the closest person who will take it.

I think if she had it her way her candy would have been entirely gone or thrown away by now, none of this save stuff for later game.

Tulips

Yesterday morning we spent Easter Breakfast with our friends. I was trying to get some cute pictures of the girls so I had Ryann sit by the tulips. She loved them and smelled them and petted them and just was so excited that she even started drawing a picture of them.

Cara, not so much. She hated them. When we got home she slept for 2 hours. I think she would have liked them more if she didn't get up at 5am.