What's New Around Here

These days it seems that while not much is happening, I am always busy.  Busy with laundry, cooking, carpool, church, family and yet I'm busy with the same things as usual.

But then I stop to think about if we have had an "unusual" events and realize....yep, we've had a couple of out of the ordinary things here lately.  So here goes with our list of not so ordinary happenings lately.

1.  Ella cut her own hair.  Her hair had never been cut before so I was horrified and heartbroken.  She cut her baby hair.  One night she went to the bathroom one more time before husband put her and the boys to bed.  I was busy feeding and changing Ava.  About 30 minutes later I went back to the "big kids" room to get on to them for being out of bed and having the light on and gasped when I saw Ella.  When I finally got the story out of her, I learned she found a pair of scissors in the bathroom (leftover from when we were working on putting up new towel bars) and decided to cut off a chunk of her hair.  What was she thinking?  Then to cover up the evidence, she threw her hair away.  Like that would keep me from noticing she had cut her hair.  Not a chance!  She is now extremely sorry she did this and keeps telling me she will never cut her hair again.  Thank goodness!

 Here is a shot of the chunk she cut off.

And here she is post do it yourself hair cut.  She now has bangs.

It could definitely be worse.  A family friend who is around my sister's age gave herself a haircut when she was 3 or 4 and ended up with a mullet.  Thank goodness Ella only ended up with bangs.

2.  My parents were in a car accident and my mom ended up taking a ride to the emergency room in the ambulance because of chest pains.  Thankfully her heart was fine and, after taking x-rays, they found she hadn't broken anything.  They released her and she went home to take it easy for a day or two.  She hasn't told my grandmother about the accident and doesn't intend to.  It would just worry my grandmother terribly so for any of you who know my grandmother....please don't mention this to her.

3.  I love my boys, I really do, but I sure wish their aim would improve, particularly the 3 year old.  I am tired of cleaning up the yellow "moat" around my toilets.  Monday morning was bathroom cleaning morning and I discovered "moats," fresh ones,  around the toilets in both bathrooms.  Gross!!!  Since John David was at school I knew the culprit was Harrison.  He got some first hand experience in cleaning up after himself and he didn't like it too much.  Hopefully it was a lesson learned and he will aim a little better next time.

4.  Ava has turned into a climber.  The other night Husband was giving the big kids showers in the master bathroom while I cleaned up the dishes from dinner.  He had taken Ava with him upstairs for the shower time fun.  I finished the dishes and came upstairs before Husband had finished giving all the showers.  When I came upstairs I saw the light was on in the guest bathroom.  I stuck my head in the door to make sure no one was inside before I shut off the light and discovered this.

Yep...baby girl on the toilet.  She was standing up when I first discovered her but then dropped down to her knees to play with her toys.

I think here she is saying "What mom?  What's wrong with me climbing onto the back of the toilet to get a rubber duck and a plastic cup?"

5.  I received this in the mail.

My new embroidery machine.  I have wanted one for a while and am so excited it is finally here.  Exciting things are afoot here in Glamourous Housewife land.   I am in the process of starting my own business with my mom and a friend of mine.  We are going to be selling all sorts of cute and personalized items for both children and adults.  Children's things like hooded towels for summer fun at the beach, hair bows, tutus, clothes and all sorts of painted items including one of a kind art canvases, door hangers, pictures frames, and all sorts of other adorable things.  My new embroidery machine is part of our business plan and I am so excited to get started.  I will keep all of you updated on our progress so be on the lookout very soon.

So that's it.  Five out of the ordinary happenings amidst all the ordinary glamour of my housewifely duties.  I have a saying over the door in my kitchen "Never a Dull Moment," and boy is that the truth.

A Good Substitute

So it is Lent, that season of the church year that commemorates Jesus's 40 days being tempted in the wilderness.  Its purpose is to prepare you for the joy and rebirth of Easter.  It lasts from Ash Wednesday until Easter and was traditionally a period of fasting for members of the church.  Today many people "give up" some "luxury" for Lent, and what people choose to give up varies widely from chocolate, to alcohol, to meat, or take on an additional observance like reading the Bible, attending prayer groups or Bible studies, or any number of other things.

I usually try to give up something for Lent that makes me a better in some way, whether that is eating better or behaving better.  I have given up sweets, soda, and, back in the day when I was working full time and had quite a potty mouth, cursing.  I will say that giving up cursing was by far the hardest thing I have ever given up for Lent.  Now that I have children and am no longer in the working world I don't use language like that so it wouldn't be a sacrifice for me now, but it definitely was back then.

This year I have given up desserts or sweets.  I typically do not have a huge sweet tooth like other members of my family but I love ice cream.    I will admit that since having children I think my love of ice cream has only increased.  At the end of a very long stressful day with four children a bowl of ice cream makes it all seem so much better.  And of course the second it becomes Lent and I officially give up sweets, I only want that ice cream even more.

Husband gave up chocolate this year.  Not all sweets, just chocolate.  I told him I thought that might be cheating but he and my mom say it is realistic.  You give up something that will be hard but not impossible to accomplish.  Since husband has a huge sweet tooth and really loves chocolate I guess it isn't cheating.  Husband also says I am just jealous that he can still have ice cream and dessert just as long as it isn't chocolate.  Maybe he is right, but I definitely won't tell him that.

Anyway, my interpretation of desserts/sweets is pretty broad.  It includes all regular desserts (ice cream, cake, pie, brownies, cookies, you get the drift) as well as any candy, whip cream, and donuts.  This year that meant no candy for Valentine's Day, no whip cream on my Starbucks latte, and no Sunday morning donuts.  Muffins and things like banana or pumpkin breads are excluded from my definition of sweets.  I consider those breakfast breads rather than dessert.  They are a pretty good substitute when you are needing something to fill that sweet craving.

In keeping with my "muffins are breakfast breads not dessert" statement, I have made muffins for breakfast twice since Lent started.  The first time I made the yummy apple muffins I blogged about previously.  This week I came across a recipe in a Southern Living from last April for Strawberry-Lemonade muffins and since I love strawberries I thought I would give them a try.  They were a hit at our house.

Don't they look yummy!

All that strawberry goodness inside.

Here is the recipe (taken from Southern Living magazine April 2012)

2 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
1 (8 oz.) container sour cream
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 Tbsp. Lemon zest
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups diced fresh strawberries

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine four and 1 cup sugar in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture.

2.  Stir together sour cream and next 4 ingredients; add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Gently fold strawberries into batter.  Spoon batter into lightly greased 12-cup muffin pans, filling three-fourths full.  Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup sugar over batter.

3.  Bake at 400 degrees for 16 to 18 minutes or until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool in pans on a wire rack 1 minutes, remove from pans to wire rack, and cool 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

It's Nice to Be Back

Ahhh!  It's nice to be back in modern times.  We have been without internet access at our house since last Thursday and I feel like I have been living in the stone ages.  It has actually made me a little worried that I am too dependent on the internet.  I mean ...

• I get almost all of my news, both real news and fun, people.com news, from the internet.  My one "real" news watching comes in the morning when I check the morning shows for the day's weather.
• I do all of my banking via the internet. 
• I use email and facebook more than once a day just to check in and see what is going on with my "friends."
• I write my blog and catch up on those that I follow.
• I check Pinterest (my husband's most hated website ever because it gives me so many "project" ideas both for me and for him)
• I "research" things, medical, religious, political, random off the wall interesting facts.  Husband is the king of useless trivia and we are always looking up random tidbits of information just out of curiosity.
• And I will admit I play random games on the internet...like bejeweled or hidden objects games...in the quiet moments when everyone is napping and I'm not cooking, cleaning, or working on a project.

Being without internet for those few days was rough.  Not so rough in the news and facebook/pinterest world, but what I found most irritating was not being able to look up the random things when husband and I were talking over the weekend.  Thankfully, we are back up and running with a new, hopefully more reliable provider that treats their customers better.  

In talking to a friend on Sunday and telling her how we had been without internet for a few days and were switching providers, she laughed and told me I needed to blog about my recent experience with the customer service reps so here goes.

We have had our internet through a major, non-cable, provider for the past couple of years.  We really haven't had any trouble with them until recently.  I mean, every once in a while we would have to reset the modem because for some reason or another the internet wasn't connecting, but those instances were few and far between and resetting everything always fixed the problem.  But ever since the Christmas snowstorm the internet has been going out constantly.  I was resetting it 5 or 6 times a day basically every day.  After I reset things it would work for an hour or so and then go out again.  It was extremely frustrating.  Since other people I know around town who also use this provider were also experiencing issues with their internet I just figured there had been some damage with the storm and it would take a little while to get it all fixed.  

The morning of Ava's birthday party I got up to finish a few last minute items including printing the tags for the party favors.  Since I needed to download the owl picture I used for the bags wouldn't you know it that the internet wasn't working and resetting it didn't seem to make a difference either.  I kept getting a DSL Fail message when I tried to connect.  Finally I called technical support and spent over an hour on the phone with their representative.  We went round and round with the tech support person about what was wrong and what lights were lit up on the modem.  She had me unplug the wireless airport we use and plug the DSL line directly into the computer.  That fixed nothing.  Then she has me turn everything off, unplug it, plug it back in, they resend the signal, etc., etc., etc. over and over again.  Nothing worked  During this long drawn-out process she tells me I must have a virus on my computer.  I tell her I highly doubt that is the problem for two reasons 1.  We have a mac desktop and there are not too many viruses targeted to mac computers and 2.  We had just, within the past week, had a computer scrubbed and updated by the geniuses at the apple store.  I was 99.99% sure we didn't have a virus.  That's when I got some weird error message while trying one of her fixes that said it couldn't process my request because malicious content had been detected.   That was when things got good.  When I read her the error message, she told me that wasn't an error message that could be generated by the Motorola modem and I must have been going to suspicious websites.  She then point blank asked me if I had been going to porn sites because that was a suspicious and malicious website and that was likely my problem.  I was so shocked she was accusing me of looking at porn that I didn't get offended right away.  I explained to her that I was the mom of four small children and didn't have time for porn.  I don't think she believed me.  She was adamant that nothing was wrong with the DSL line or the modem.  After that, I gave up on getting the internet working with her help and hung up.  I ended up going to my parents to download the owl tags for the party.  

Eventually, husband was able to get the internet working again (I think he has the special touch) and I actually thought it was working better, or so it seemed.  I was only having to reset the modem once or twice a day for the past week or so which was such an improvement over what it had been I thought things were finally getting fixed.  No such luck.  When it went out and stayed out last week I put husband on the job.  NOTE: I am much nicer and more patient when dealing with people on the phone like customer service representatives.  Husband however is awesome at getting things done.  He is better able to get through to people and get them to do their jobs than I am.  So when I am getting nowhere in dealing with people, I call him in to do the heavy lifting.  

On Saturday husband called technical support again about our lack of internet and this time the customer support person was even more clueless than last time, if that is possible.  No one accused us of frequenting port sites this time, but the woman just couldn't understand what our problem was or why we were upset.  Husband started off the conversation by telling her that he was ready to switch our internet service to another provider if she couldn't get the issues resolved.  This time, instead of the problem being from our frequenting porn sites, she determined the modem had burned out and was no longer functioning and we would have to buy a new one from her.  She almost wouldn't take no for an answer.  She kept saying, "I'm going to place that order for your new modem now," to which we would respond, "No, I do not want to purchase a new modem."  Eventually, she caught on to our displeasure and the fact that we were looking to switch services and asked if she could call back in 30 minutes to give us time to make a decision.  That was when I got on the phone and told her we needed a few hours to investigate our other options for internet service.  Before hanging up she promised she would call me back in 2-3 hours.  During those 2 hours I called and switched our internet service to our cable provider, and while I am not a huge fan of our cable provider, their customer representative knew his products, available packages and pricing, and was able to answer all the questions both husband and I could think up, all without accusing me of being a closet porn addict.  

So we switched.  It was easy and so far (knock on wood) we haven't had to reset the modem even once and it has been up and running for 16 whole hours.  And just in case you were wondering, that other DSL representative that was supposed to call us back never did.  Shocking I know.  Maybe she was too busy looking at porn.

I don't keep track of how much I blog about one child or the other.  Not really.  I just tend to write about what is going on in our lives.  That means, whoever does the funniest, cutest, most insane thing gets talked about on here.  But sometimes I feel like that leaves little Ava out of the fun.  Since she isn't talking and getting into trouble she doesn't make it on to the blog as often as the others.

So today is all about her.  She is so stinking cute and has such a sweet and cute personality.  She definitely brightens my day.  I thought you out there in blog land might need a little day brightening too.  So here is some cuteness for your Wednesday.

Getting a ride from her main man

Ride 'em cowgirl.  She loves the rocking horse!

Already a star and so "popular" she is recognized at the grocery store means she has to wear her "shades."

Hope she added a little cuteness to your day.  Happy hump day everyone!

Her First Date

Ella has now been on her first, official date....with her Daddy.

The dance studio where Ella takes her ballet classes had a Daddy/Daughter Valentine's Dance the weekend before Valentine's Day.  Ella was so excited about it and begged to go after Ms. Sandy told her about it in dance class.  It was a fundraiser for the studio to raise money for a new floor.  The girls were to dress up in their fancy dresses and bring their daddies (or granddaddies, or uncles, or some male companion other than a boyfriend) for some dancing fun.  Mother's with sons taking dance classes were allowed, but the rest of us moms were asked politely to stay away and let the daughters and their daddies have a special day.

I wanted Ella to really enjoy her date with daddy and feel extra special so I order her a small corsage and a boutonniere for daddy.  She got to wear one of her new "fancy" dresses, her silver cross necklace, her charm bracelet, and even a little make-up.  Don't worry, nothing major, just a little powder and lip gloss.  She did ask the next day when we were getting ready for church if she could wear make-up again.  I told her no that was only for very special occasions and that she didn't need make-up she was already pretty.

Here they are, all dressed up and on their way for their very first date.

An I love you kiss

They had so much fun.  Ella couldn't stop talking about going to the dance with her daddy.  Such a special time for Daddy and daughter.  

Got King Cake

Happy Mardi Gras everyone.

Hope you are enjoying some King Cake today.

Tonight is a Gumbo Cook-off at church in honor of Shrove Tuesday and what is a Mardi Gras celebration without King Cake.  Two friends and I made these delicious looking and tasting (we might have had a tiny taste test just to be sure they were ok) cakes for the party tonight.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Birthday Bash!

Last weekend was little Ava's first birthday bash.  I went all out and had a blast putting it all together.

The theme was owls.  I have never had a theme for a first birthday before and when I started working on this party I didn't have a theme in mind.  As it tends to happen, I found these adorable owl invitations on vistaprint and the theme just grew from there.

My favorite thing about the invitation, other than the absolutely precious little girl in the picture, is that Ava is wearing her owl shoes on an owl invitation.  

Apparently owls are all the rage at the moment so finding owl "stuff" was a breeze.  I actually didn't buy too much, but got inspirations from what I found out there to make my own decorations.

I got my color scheme from the invitation as well as the owl theme and made a personalized "Happy Birthday Ava" pennant banner.  I love how it turned out and thought it was so much fun.  I'm going to be making many more of these.  One for each of the "big kids" definitely, but also some for various holidays like Easter, Christmas, Valentines Day (although given Valentine's Day is this week it will be a next Valentine's Day project).

Here is the banner in process.

And here they are finished.  I did two separate banners.  One that said Happy Birthday and that said Ava.  We hung them in the two doorways into the dining room.

You can't tell from these photos, but in keeping with our owl theme I sewed little silver owl beads on the tip of each pennant.

I also made tissue paper "puffs" in our party colors to hang from the ceiling.   I loved these too.  I will definitely be making them for future parties.

This is a close up of the puffs that hung over the dining table.

And here is the cake table...pre-cake.  I have since moved these puffs to decorate the corner over the glider in Ava's nursery.  They were too cute to just throw away.

Table decorations.

And a close up of the vase

I took the vase pictures after the party was over (I didn't have time before) and things were cleaned up.  For the actual party I filled the bottom of the vases with white navy beans, added water, and then added a few drops of blue food coloring so the water and the beans turned teal.  Inexpensive and easy.  I like that combination.

The owl pinata.  We didn't fill it with candy and have a free for all.  She's only one after all.  We'll leave the pinata smashing for a future birthday.  Our hoot owl guarded the basket of party favors. 

The party favors were another thing I didn't get a chance to grab a photo of before the party and there weren't any left overs.  I'm a fan of party favors that are edible or can be used up, like bubbles,  rather than little plastic  toys and stuff that just seem to clutter up my house.  So...for Ava's favors I made a huge batch of chex mix, bagged it up and added an adorable owl tag that I found on pinterest here and customized to say "Thanks for coming to my party.  It was a HOOT!"

And here is the cake.  

And the smash cake all for Ava

No I did not make these myself.  I wish.  Actually the wife of one of husband's law partners does cakes as a hobby and after seeing pictures of some of the cakes she has done I asked her if she would be willing to do Ava's birthday cake.  I think they came out really cute and were really delicious.  Thanks Kristin.  The cakes were awesome and you rock!  

Unfortunately Ava had come down with a little stomach bug on Friday before her party and she definitely wasn't feeling 100% on her big day.  Because she wasn't feeling well she hadn't been eating much and I wasn't sure how she would do with the party and the cake.  Baby girl is a trooper and was actually pretty perky for the party, considering she was under the weather, and she did enjoy a few bites of cake.

Here is her first taste.  

She was a little unsure, but she soon got into it and enjoyed a few bites of cake before heading back upstairs for another nap.

Here is a shot of her a few days later after she was over her tummy bug enjoying some leftover cake.  You can tell she is really enjoying it.  Nothing says yummy like wearing bits of chocolate cake all over your face.

This past year with Ava has been so much fun.  She brings such love and joy to our family.  I am so blessed to be her mommy.

Happy Birthday again little one.  I love you.

So Ava's first birthday and birthday bash are in the books.  Now it's on to planning the "big kids" birthday bash....if they can ever agree on a theme.