Sunday Afternoon

Today was a gorgeous gorgeous sunday! It's so nice to have church first thing in the morning so that we have the whole afternoon to spend together-not to mention that it's not in the middle of lunch or naptimes (which we had for 2 years straight!). Since Bobby's in his final year of school, this semester is intense and he is SO swamped. It's been a difficult couple of weeks for us adjusting to life without daddy (& husband!) so Sundays are really a MUCH looked forward to day. After naps today we decided to go over to first dam and feed the ducks. Tyler got to do this for a fieldtrip in school last week and Kylee's been wanting to have her turn to feed the ducks ever since he got to go. It was SO fun to spend a few hours together today! We can't WAIT till December so we can get our daddy back! (for a couple weeks anyway :) ) I can do it I can do it I can do it!

Friday Funnies!

Haaaaappppyyyy FRIDAY!!! I thought I'd kick the weekend off with another round of Friday Funnies to get myself (and you of course) off on the right foot on this beautiful FIRST day of FALL! So grab a treat, take a seat and get ready to...

Enjoy my friends! (all pics can be found on my Have a Laugh pinboard on pinterest!)

















Now go have a good day and laugh a little will ya!!! Who knows WHAT ill's you'll cure :)

I'm so excited to put my Halloween stuff up I can barely stand it and my kids are BEGGING me to do so, so I think this weekend it's all going up cause I just can't wait any longer! I'll be posting pictures, tutorials, ideas, yummy treats and more on my craft blog HERE soon so be sure to check it out!

Kylee's First day of Dance!

To say that Kylee LoooVveS dancing would be a serious understatement! She has been waiting to start her dance class since I first signed her up earlier this summer. When Tyler started pre-school a couple weeks ago and her dance class still hadn't started yet she was having MAJOR jealousy issues. I tried to keep her occupied while he was at school with trips to Hobby Lobby and JoAnns, but somehow my craft addiction wasn't entertaining enough?? We were both pretty ecstatic that her class started last Thursday and she, with empty princess backpack in tow, is absolutely smitten by her darling teacher Mrs. Ruth (pronounced by Kylee-mwiss roof). Mrs. Ruth is fantastic with these little 2&3 year olds and Kylee wanted to be by her side (or mine) the whole time! :)

Since Kylee doesn't do so well in new situations (reference: threw up on her nursery leader her first sunday) I thought I'd stay and watch all her classes-they're 30 minuets-, but she did just fine and I think she'll do even better if I'm not there. Every time there was a pause, or a transition to a new thing she'd run over to me and her teacher would have to coax her back to the floor.

Other than that she did so so so great and followed all of the teachers directions to a "t"! She was the only one that sat in her "seat" without wiggling or standing up or wandering around the room and she LOVED twirling and spinning during their "free dance" time. The teacher ordered some ballet shoes for her, but they still weren't in yet so she's just wearing her black sparkly shoes. They're a little big on her so she kept having to stop and fix her shoe, so hopefully this week they'll be here. It was so fun to watch and I'm so excited that she loves this time that is just for HER!
(pictures taken on my phone)


1. Making Pizzas (how they stretch :) )
2. Blowing up the circle till it "pops!" (Ky's the one holding the teacher's right hand)
3. Playing with different musical instruments (she's the one to the right of the teacher)
4. Doing spins and twirls
5. Mrs. Ruth getting ready to read them a story (she's the one closest to the camera on the end...I love that she's sitting with her toes pointed :) )
6. More twirls!

I really want to make her a tutu especially for dance so that the next 'to do' item on my agenda, oh I need more hours in a day!! Hopefully she'll continue to love it and enjoy being able to do her very own thing without Tyler!

Pinterest Funnies!

So today I was just really in the mood to laugh, so I turned to my good friend Pinterest and sure enough she came through for me. I stole-aka re-pinned- these from my friends on pinterest so don't be surprised if you recognize them! Enjoy!

(You can find all of these on my Have a Laugh board if you want to re-pin them too!)


What?! For reals.


Bingo.


Booyah.



Simply delighted. It's what I live for ya know.


Nuff' said.


Ha ha love it!


My husband is THE worst at responding to texts. The Worst!


No words needed. Love.


Amen!


Ha ha!


So true, so true.


parenting at its finest.


...just sayin'

Now go enjoy your weekend and don't forget to laugh because after all...

See ya next week! I have so so so much in store for you...EEEK!

Love Note

So sometimes I'm a snot. What?! I know, I'm a little surprised myself. But I'm dealing with it. Accepting it. Admitting it. Overcoming it? I wouldn't go that far, but maybe learning from it? Yes. Now I'm trying to learn from it. Being a snot is unattractive (obviously) and annoying at best and I'm learning that the only thing being sassy (the nicer way to say being a snot...I'm trying to help myself out here a little) does is make me UN-happy.

Over the last month or so I've made a really, really BIG, conscious effort to stop being a sass. I sometimes literally bite my tongue to keep from saying something hurtful or avoid making a comment that I know will send us into a 2 hour heated debate. This is especially hard when I {KNOW} :) I'm right and can't stand to just let it go. But I AM trying and I AM learning from my mistakes and I DO have a husband that is patient and shows me love when I DON'T deserve it.

One morning, after an especially *sassy* night, I found this love note it my bathroom drawer after the hubs had already left for work:


What you can't read that?! You don't speak computer cheec? (pronounced shee-k...like geek mixed with chic. Get it? Like the girl version of computer geek? Oh my gosh I'm so cool. Did I totally just start a new word?!) Ok fine...Let me help you out...


Still no? Really? Okay I'll decipher for all you un-computer cheec's. :) It's a QR code, which I'm sure you've seen EVERYWHERE. Back of magazines, newspapers, even my Taco Bell cup had one! They are codes that, using the QR code app on your smartphone(which we just recently acquired due to the non-stop begging of my husband...and we were up for new phones), allows you to scan the image using your phones camera which then gives you a message, takes you to a website, leaves you information about a product, etc. My dear sweet little husband wrote me my very own personal QR code, printed it out, and left it in my drawer(the poor thing just can't help it, he's a computer science major :) ) that, when scanned by my phone, read this:

I was really glad I was listening a couple days beforehand when he explained to me how to use the app!!!(cause sometimes during computer geek conversations I tend to tune out :))

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so while doing both I taped it up on my bathroom wall to remind myself how lucky I am to not be married to a snot!

I love Bobby for being the opposite of me in almost every way, for not being afraid to be himself and for loving me-and showing it-in his very own, unique way, but most importantly for abiding by this:

{source}

Dry Erase Quiet Book

This project was first done by Autie from icandy homemade while guest posting here and then Cheri, from I am Momma Hear Me Roar, did one herself that you can find here. The second I saw it on IAMHMR, it went into my 'DO THIS ASAP' file in my head (this was back before the convenience of pinterest-seriously if you are not pinning yet you NEED to be...let me know I'll hook ya up!)

So seeing as I needed some cute scrapbooky looking design for the front of my book, (I mean could I possibly take a plain quiet book to church?! I know right.) I called up my momma, aka the scrapbooking EXPERT, and asked if she wouldn't mind stopping everything she was doing and make me some adorable scrapbook pages for my kids new dry-erase quiet books. She didn't disappoint:

Seriously this woman kills me with the amount of talent that comes out of her teeny-tiny body. I LOVED them and my kids pretty much think they're the bees knees at church as they carry around their very personalized "shhh books"-as my kylee calls hers.


I picked up the binders from Walmart and I chose these ones that had this plastic pocket on the front inside cover. They work PERFECTLY to hold their dry erase crayons (about $4), erasing mitt (that comes with the box of crayons), and snacks, stickers, etc. We're trying to cut down on the amount of snacks we're taking to church since the kids are getting older and don't need food to keep them quiet anymore :), so they know they've got 1 pack of fruit snacks each and that's it. Surprisingly they haven't complained once...too many other fun things here to keep them occupied!


The front of the book has several pages of Christ, scripture stories, pictures from The Friend, etc just slipped into sheet protectors, (set of 25 for $3-4) that they look at during the sacrament portion of our church meetings.




Kylee's favorite primary song is Popcorn Popping so I had to add this picture in her book!


The dry erase crayons work awesome on the sheet protectors and wipe off in a snap so they can re-color every page as much, and as different, as they like!


They LOVED seeing color pages of themselves in their books too!


These were just pictures uploaded to picnik and edited using the pencil sketch tool.




After all the coloring pages are some different magnet activities they can do (for some reason my kids are really into these types of things right now). I found these on THIS website and there are SO many great ideas for boys and girls.


I used a magnet tape roll and just cut the magnet to the size I needed and used less than a roll for both these books. The magnet is stuck directly onto the paper which is then slipped inside the sheet protector, and the magnet on the back of the individual cut up pictures sticks firmly to the magnet on the paper through the sheet protector. Does that make sense? I guess I'm just trying to say that you still get a good magnetic pull through the protector even though one magnet is underneath it.


This way you can change around the pictures and magnet activities in your sheet protectors without having to worry about wasting magnets or ruining sheet protectors that you can use again for a different picture.


For each magnet activity I placed all the loose magnet pieces that go with that particular page in a ziploc bag punched into the top 2 rings of the binder so that pieces don't get lost or mixed up-so far it's worked out great to do it this way!


I also went ahead and threw in a notebook into the back of each of their binders for more drawing and whatnot but neither of them have touched them yet.


I like that the binders also have a short pocket on the back cover to slip any papers they may have got from primary/nursery so we don't have to worry about leaving them under benches, using them to make paper airplanes (that would be the daddy :) ), etc. since we have sacrament meeting last.


It's SO nice to only have to bring 2 simple binders to church with us instead of an overflowing bag of over-used toys, messy snacks, broken crayons, loose papers, and forgotten Kleenex's.


I also really love the versatility that this allows. We've used these for 4 sundays now and they have not climbed down off the bench one time. This book easily occupies them for the hour long meeting and they're usually still begging to use them once we get home (which is a NO!). Buuuttt if they do start to get bored of certain pictures or coloring pages or out-grow the activities, I can easily print new ones off and slip them in and Wam-Bam we've got a whole new quiet book!