Happy Birthday Aaron

Yesterday we celebrated Aaron's 29th birthday.
I made a fruit salad and crumb cake for breakfast, then we met Aaron at his work for lunch and for dinner we went to Texas Roadhouse. It's easy to celebrate his birthday with food. He said he didn't want any gifts, so we had to eat yummy food!
Taylynn and Preston also made him a cake rather than a card, Preston's was blue and Taylynn's was white. They were pretty yummy!

We also celebrated last friday by going to the Melting Pot. It was half Valentines and half birthday dinner.

It was romantic and wonderful, we missed the kids but we know keeping our marriage top priority is best for them.

Happy Birthday to the sweetest man I know!!! I love you!

Pictures

I found something on Pintrest that I just had to recreate! All you need is a backless frame, some wire, nails, mini clothes pins and pictures.

I got this frame for a quarter at an antique shop that was closing....SCORE!!!! I painted it white because it was gold. It took like five coats because it kept turning pink....can anyone tell me why? This isn't the first time I have turned a frame pink when it was meant to be white.

Anyway I had some tiny nails so I nailed them in the back and wrapped the wire around them to make a tight line across the frame.

I stained my clothes pins, to give it a more vintage feel.

For the pictures I use Picasa and made a 4x6 collage with two pictures so when I printed they were smaller and I just cut the pictures out. I made the pictures all different sizes. Does this make since??

I was really happy with the result, soon I'll be posting new pictures of the living room and kitchen. A lot of work has been going on!

If you have any Pintrest creations you can enter them on Christiana's Pintrest Challenge, but do it quick, it end tomorrow! Go here to find out more.

Valentine Party and Valentine Popcorn

Since Taylynn's school party was on Monday and we were still traveling back from Louisiana she missed the Valentine party, but her teacher had a special time picked out for Taylynn to have her own Valentine party with her classmates.

Taylynn and I made some yummy popcorn for her neighbor friends and classmates. It was super easy and something I found on pintrest. All you do is pop the popcorn, make sure all the kernels are removed. Pour melted chocolate over the popcorn and stir. I used Wilton's chocolate disks rather than coloring my own chocolate. Before the chocolate begins to cool spread over wax paper and separate as much as you can and let it cool. Once it is cool you can mix up the batches if you are making more than one color. Then enjoy! It is so yummy! We used ours for Valentine treats and added a little label. The lighter popcorn is pink, a very light pink.

If you have any pintrest creations you should enter them HERE for a chance to win a gift card! Or if not at least go look at Christina's blog and all the cuteness.

So on Friday was Taylynn's Valentine party. We made cookies the night before to take to her friends. It was really hard for me to resist not taking decorations, special drinks (with those cute red and white striped straws) and Valentine games for the kids to play, but I didn't. I held back!
I did dress everyone up for Taylynn's special day.

Louisiana

Last weekend we took off and headed to Louisiana to visit my Grandparents. We left Thursday and picked my mom up in Arkansas and spent the night. Then, early Friday morning we headed to Louisiana. The drive went much better than I expected, everyone did really well.

We had the best time and I was really excited to share some of my childhood memories with my own children. One thing we did, that I had never done before was go to the Krewe of Janus parade. My grandma and paw-paw were in the parade so of course we had to go. They got all dressed up in their 50's style and they looked so cute!

It was really cold outside, we were all freezing, but once the parade started we were to busy having fun we didn't even know it was cold out! Actually I had no idea what kind of parade this was. I expected a typical Topeka parade, but no this was a Mardi Gras parade. I should count how many beads we picked up and caught, but that would just take too long. Preston was so excited to catch the beads, he caught on quick to waving your hands and saying me...me! Taylynn just sat back and picked up the ones that were on the ground, they both got a lot.

These floats were amazing, but the one with my grandparents was the best.


When we got home Taylynn and Preston spent a good hour just playing with the beads. I never expected to be coming home with all these beads. Now what to do with them?

The rest of our trip was just as much fun. We just spent some good time with my Grandma and Paw-paw and we got to see my Great Uncle Dan.

We also took the gator out a few times and made some stops by our trails

Preston really enjoyed spending time with Paw-paw. He helped him build a fire and Paw-paw even let them roast marshmallows in the fire place.

Miss Alayna has stolen GG's heart

And Chandler got lots of love too. He found his toes while we were there and seem to want to eat them.

He also found his street sign.

Four Generations

Thank you Grandma and Paw-paw, we had the best time!!!!
Oh, I did want to share I received more than beads on this trip. My grandparents gave me some goodies. I am so excited to add some of them to my home. It makes it so special.
Thank you Thank you!!!! Love you Grandma and Paw-Paw

So behind

I have been going through pictures and realized I have missed some events that I wanted to blog about. So this is kinda a catch up post, mainly with pictures.

We went to a hockey game sometime in January and had a great time. I loved seeing Preston and Taylynn get so excited when the team scored a goal. We met Jason, Brighton and Alyssa there as well, so it was fun family time too.







We also had a MOPS playdate at Going Bonkers, Taylynn and Preston have been asking to go back since then. I think I am going to take Preston sometime on our date and go. It would be a workout for me :)

We spent Super Bowl with our friends Grant and Amy along with some others in our church. I had to dress the girls in their cheerleader outfits, poor Preston felt left out, but he was wearing a football shirt.

We do this thing called "Cheerleader" it's my way of preparing the girls for some stunts and it's a good arm workout for me. They stand on our hands and balance. Alayna won't let go just yet, but Taylynn and Preston can do it without holding on.