Epic Mom Fails

I have had two very epic fails this week.  The first was on a very busy day I had to run to Costco to pick up some invitations that I had printed and a poster that I made to go in Emma's room.  It was the craziest experience, and we looked like peddlers because it was raining and I didn't get a cart because I didn't want to put kids in a wet cart.  So I carried a 23lb. Sarah in the baby Bjorn in to get the kids lunch (hot dogs) and pictures.  It turns out the pictures weren't ready :( so we headed off to get paper cups (which we did need) so I could go get cash to buy us lunch while we waited.  Sarah Miss Grabby Hands grabbed everything in sight since she was facing out and eventually a hot dog hit the ground. Lucky for us it stayed wrapped up.  So we finally did eat, get the pictures and the poster for Emma's room, and made it home to put Sarah down for a nap.  The epic fail was when the poster was carried upstairs by a helper and left in little Sarah's path for when she woke up.  It was mangled and now has huge creases in it.  Boo!  I was really upset not only because our day was so very crazy but also the cost to reprint.  FAIL #1!

The second one was I was helping do decorations for a Bridal Shower.  I made a banner and printed it out (including reprinting half of it because the print ran out of card stock).  I started cutting it out and then had whiny, hungry children so I stopped to feed us all some lunch.  I then cleaned the kitchen up with Sarah downstairs and came up to hear "Mom don't come in the playroom."  First clue that something was amiss but I honestly just thought she was cleaning up the toys and wanted to surprise me.  "What are you doing?" I say to Emma.  "Nothing Mom."  "Nothing naughty I hope."  "Nope" was the reply so I tidied up a bit before going in to see the rest of my banner on the floor being cut out by a four year old.  "Oh Emma" I yelled with great disappointment.  Which was followed by the four year old running to her room crying.  She thought she was going to surprise me with how helpful she had been.  I followed her and consoled her hurt feelings, and we talked about when it was and was not okay to do surprises and help people.  I didn't know what to do and would have had to recreate the whole thing because I only printed it as I went and didn't save it.  So instead (she does have awesome cutting skills for a 4 year old but it still looked like a child cut it) I decided to make the flags a bit smaller and recut the sides.  It did work out in the end.  FAIL #2!

Benjamin's weeding

Benjamin is desperately trying to earn money for an ipod.  He is very into weeding to earn money.  At first our deal was 5cents a weed, but then when he could pull enough to earn like $5.00 in one hour it got lowered to $2.00 an hour.  Here he is with his cub scout quarter collection but we took it apart to add it to his now growing savings account for the ipod.

Latest Project

The closet in this house is different from the closet in our old house.  It has sliding doors instead of being able to walk in.  The kids couldn't reach the bar to hang things up, and I didn't want to put hooks on the wall because it isn't very deep.  So I was perusing pinterest and looking at all the wonderful mud rooms.  Drool!  Our garage is extra deep and has a great wall right by the door that I knew would make the perfect place for a mud room type locker system.  I found a few awesome ones but was not willing to spend the kind of money to buy them or have something custom built and really let's face it we are not the DIY kind of people who can just build in ourselves.  So I turned to Ikea for inspiration.  

Before:  Storage before in the garage with shoes cubbies and bench drawers that were too small to fit everyone's shoes in.  Benjamin's wouldn't fit and were suppose to be in a bin but never made it in.

 The after!  We used an Expedit shelf on it's side with plastic baskets for shoe storage.  A Lack shelf on the top and fabric bins to store umbrellas, hats, gloves, scarves, and Sarah's ergo.  Then we got a board and hung hooks on it.  I am so very happy with the result.  It looks so clean and fresh and most importantly it so very functional.  No more coats thrown on the closet floor or shoes cluttering the floor in the garage.  Hooray!  I (heart) organization and practicality.    

Jacob's 3rd Birthday

Happy 3rd Birthday to my little Jacob!

We celebrated his birthday on Sunday morning for the most part when Dad returned home from meetings and right before we left for church.  He opened his presents of new art supplies, a Buzz Lightyear watch, walkie-talkies, a giant coloring book, a new Superman sweatshirt, and money from both Nana and Papa and Grandpa and Grandma.  

Then in the evening we had some friends over for dinner to help celebrate.  We did a planes theme because the day before we hired a sitter for Sarah and everyone else went to the movie theater to see the new movie "Planes."  Orange is Jacob's favorite color and it is a good thing that Dusty was orange because it fit right in.  Here are some pictures of the decorations and dinner although I never got a picture of everyone from the party.

Happy Birthday little guy!  We are so happy you are growing up to be such a big boy!

Birthday

I celebrated getting another year older with my little family over dinner and cake.  Here are few pictures of the evening.

 And lastly here is a picture of my present that I picked it out myself:)

Emma's Room

Emma's room is the only one that is almost all the way officially decorated.  I do have one more poster that I made that needs to be printed and framed, but I'll just add a picture to this post when it is done.  The room was already gray (with one crazy peach colored wall but luckily I was able to match the paint color and just paint the one wall to match the rest of the room), and I didn't want to repainted it.  I figure it can go either way for a boy or a girl so we'll keep it that way.  One reason I don't want to paint the rooms specific to a person (Emma was desperate to have pink paint on her walls) is because I don't know who will share in the future, and I don't want to repaint in a year if the girls share instead of the boys. She did get plenty of pink and bright colors though so she is happy!