Princess Makeover Video

Ethan Making Brownies

This afternoon I decided to let Ethan make brownies all by himself. I was only taking pictures. It was a lot of fun and took about twice as long as if I was doing it. I practiced patience and fighting the urge to take over. I even let the pan go into the oven with batter all up the sides, knowing it would be more to clean later. However, I wanted them to be Ethan's brownies.
Ethan also had a great game today at Upward. He scored twice and one time Papa Barry and Seth were standing right there with us to see it. What a moment for the little guy. He is so sweet and such fun and our lives would be boring without him around.
Enjoy the step by step of Ethan making brownies.

Aubrey's Princess Makeover

Today we took the kids to Downtown Disney to get Aubrey's Princess Makeover, compliments of Grandma and Grandpa for her birthday. She LOVED it! She sat so still and let her Fairy Godmother pull and play with her hair much more than she would ever let me. She never said "it hurts" even one time. Ethan also got the Cool Dude package because we thought it would be fun and it was only $7. The funniest part was when the stylist pulled out the hair extension for Aubrey to see and it scared her. Unfortunatly, we did not catch it on the video. Here are a ton of pictures, I actually had to delete some, there were more. Derek is working on the video footage and hopefully, it will be up soon. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for a great birthday present.

Aubrey's Birthday Party

Last night we had a few people over to celebrate Aubrey's birthday. She dressed in her Cinderella dress for the party. I cheated a little with the cake and used a kit for the castle. I did not want to do all the details of the princess faces. We had an explosion of a 2 liter all of the kitchen and a little on the cake, but all was fixed. Aubrey chose not to eat any cake and just had ice cream instead. Aubrey loved her presents and is at a great age for birthdays...so excited about everything. We had a great time and enjoyed a little Rock Band before the night was over. Bruster also had a good time by getting into the trash and eating some hot dogs.

Valentine's Day

I like Junior Mints and had seen heart shaped ones in honor of Valentine's Day. I told Derek that was all I wanted this year. I had no idea how hard it would be to find them. He went around everywhere, but finally found the last two boxes for me. He also gave me some beautiful tulips. Derek proposed to me on Valentine's Day in 2001 and I am still glad that I said yes!
Friday night I spent the evening decorating cakes. This one was for Laura's baby shower. When I went to put it in the car on Saturday morning, there were little white dots all over it. I have never had that happen before and of course I am my worst critic and I was pretty bummed. Oh well, they can't always be perfect.
This is Aubrey's castle cake for her party this evening. I cheated some this year and got the kit to make it. She loves everything princess and when I started looking at what I wanted to do cake wise, I did not want to do all the details of the faces, so this was what we ended up with. She loved it.

Aubrey and Daddy. You can't really tell by the picture, but her shirt said "Daddy's Little Valentine" on it. Let's keep it that way for a lot of years!

Bath Toys

Aubrey had some birthday money so we got some new bath toys. Our old ones were starting to get yucky, so it was time to start fresh. This is a cute little water slide by Mommy & Me that was about $10 at Walmart. You put batteries in it and water actually runs down it. Ethan was even having fun with it.


This little doll is adorable and I would recommend it to anyone with a little girl. We have it in the shower and Aubrey LOVES it. There are two foam dolls and a bunch of clothes to put on them. The best part is the little bag it comes with to put them all in. It was from Target for around $12. A great buy!

Aubrey Turns Three!

Yesterday was sweet Aubrey's Third birthday. We were lucky enough to share it with my extended family in Michigan. My Aunt Judy made adorable princess cakes for her that she loved! She opened presents and had a great day. While opening a present someone said there was more inside and Grandpa said "a hundred." Ethan picked up on it right away and exclaimed, "You mean 100 dollars!" It was really funny and we all just laughed. Aubrey is a such a cute age where she really enjoyed her birthday. What a treat to be able to share it with everyone. We flew home last night and both kids fell asleep on the way to the airport. Ethan was not very happy to be woken up and would not push Aubrey's stroller, so my Grandma helped us get to the check in. After some pizza and waking up a little the kids were fine. It was a late flight and they were both exhausted from the weekend, so they both slept on the plane. We arrived on Orland around 10pm and got our luggage and were on the shuttle to go to our car. This is where the fun began! Aubrey has still sleeping and struggling to get comfortable on my lap. The driver said we would leave in 5 minutes, so I was trying to soothe Aubrey and get her comfortable. Without any warning, she sat up (facing me) and threw up ALL OVER BOTH OF US!!! It was horrible. The nice driver got us some paper towels and I took her off the bus to the trash can and tried to clean us up a little. I had a sweater on over a shirt and both were soaked. I did the best I could and got back on the bus...we had to get to our car. I apologized profusely to the poor people on the bus with us. Luckily, she only got the two of us and not the floor or anyones luggage. Let's just say it was the LONGEST shuttle ride ever! The man dropped us off first and again I apologized to everyone, but really what could I do. Aubrey was so discusting that I did not want to put her in the stroller to go to the car becuase then I would have to clean that too. So, I opened the suitcase and got out her jammies that were on top. Right there at the shuttle drop off I stripped her of her clothes and put her pajamas on. I had two suitcases to pull and Ethan to manage the stroller to the car and nowhere to put her nasty clothes, so I left them right there on the bench. Ethan was mortified! It was 11pm and nobody was around. I told him that it was fine, I was going to come and get them after we got to the car. He was sure we would get in trouble and that somebody would take them! What, I assured him that nobody wanted those clothes. After a little convincing, we made it to the car and I found a bag to put her clothes in and swung around to pick them up. The bus driver pointed out a bathroom there that we could use. So, I went in a stripped down and put my pajamas on...there were the first thing I could find and I was not about to dig around in the suitcase. We were NASTY! So, I stripped down, even my underwear was soaked and got cleaned up. The worst part was the bathroom was OUT OF SOAP! How discusting! I was not about to stop at 11:30 at night in a rest area or anything so I got the wipes out of the car and wiped us down the best I could. At least we smelled better. The drive home was long, but at 1:00 am I finally pulled into the driveway without any more incidents. First thing I did...took a shower! It was a very eventful end to our nice trip. Aubrey was fine and is today, so the verdict on her getting sick is too many sweets. The little birthday girl drank more Coke and ate a lot of cake this weekend and combined with less sleep than normal, she just could not take it. The joys of being a mother! Now, I just laugh and am thinking of the postitive things.
1. It did not happen right before we got on the plane.
2. It did not happen on the plane.
3. She did not throw up on anyone else. Ethan kept saying how glad he was that she did not get him.
4. We had clothes to change into.
Our clothes are washed and life is back to normal at our house. They were so nasty I considered just throwing them out, but she was in her birthday girl shirt that she needs to wear for one more party on Sunday. These are the last pictures today, I promise!

MI Snow

The kids had a great time playing in the snow while in Michigan. Here are the pictures. Lots of pictures today!

Mom's Birthday

The kids and I went to MI for the weekend to surprise Mom for her 60th birthday. Her birthday was on Thursday, but my Dad's cousin was getting married on Saturday so she would be in MI for the weekend. We decided that all of the kids would come to the wedding and surprise her. My aunt picked us up at the airport and then we surprised her when Mom got to the house. Laura's flight was later, so she joined us at the restaurant. Mom was very surprised and she did not think that either of us were coming. I sent her a Grandma sweatshirt in the mail as a little decoy to really make her think we were not coming. All the kids went together and we rented a house at Hilton Head in the summer for a family vacation. She loved it! My dad's family all met us for dinner and then we went back to my Aunt Judy's house for dessert. She makes the best desserts around! We were getting ready to pack the kids up and head to my Grandma's house for the night when Harold gave us a scare. He blacked out for a couple minutes and we thought he might be having a stroke. We called 911 and sent the kids down to the basement to play. Thankfully, Harold came out of it and seemed just fine. He thought he was taking a little snooze. The paramedics still wanted to check him out at the hospital, as he had had heart surgery this summer. The kids watched him ride on the stretcher and thought all the stuff was pretty neat. The firemen were really nice and gave the kids cute little teddy bears. Harold had to stay in the hospital for a few days to run tests, but seems to be doing well. We missed having him around though.
The kids got to play in lots of snow and had a great time. We went to Kathy's wedding on Saturday and again, had a nice time. Ethan loved dancing with "the boys." Ethan spent the night with them, again, he loved that, while Aubrey and I had a restfull night in the hotel.
There are lots of pictures, so enjoy!

Aubrey's Birthday At School

Aubrey was VERY excited about her birthday today at school. She got to pick out this little bear from Ms. Tina's birthday box.
Singing Happy Birthday to her. Can you see the sheer joy on her face?
So sweet!
Licking off all of the icing. Only one kid in the class actually ate the cupcake. Everyone else just had the icing!
He little preschool class.
After we went over to the church to share the rest of the cupcakes. She again was VERY excited about her birthday cupcakes and passing them out to everyone. What a fun age to have a birthday. More festivities to come....

Aubrey Making Cupcakes

On Sunday Aubrey will turn 3! I can't believe it. She is taking in cupcakes to preschool tomorrow in honor of her birthday. I let her choose what she wanted - Care Bear papers with pink icing and purple sprinkles. I let her do a lot of the work. Here are pictures of our baking experience. Notice the skirt....
This was her first time cracking eggs. To my surprise she did not get any eggshells in the bowl. I assisted with cracking the egg on the side of the bowl to get it started.
Dumping in the oil.
I took over after the picture as I could envision her lifting the mixer and batter flying everywhere.
The best part - licking the beaters.
Placing the papers in the pans.

I made the icing and frosted the cupcakes while she was napping.
I thought the sprinkles would be easy enough. Well, it turns out the holes in the top where too big for the tiny sprinkles and they POURED out. I think she used the whole bottle on just a few cupcakes. Luckily, I placed them over a cookies sheet so we shook the excess off onto the bare cupcakes and then used the reserve in the cookie sheet. Surprisingly, the clean up was minimal.
Our finished product
Does this picture make you nervous?
Yep, you guessed it...her foot went right into one of them. Thankfully, it was only one.
Notice all the sprinkles on the cupcakes and the empty sprinkle bottle.

100th Day of School

Tomorrow is Ethan's 100th day of school and he needed to bring in 100 things in a large Ziplock bag. The creative juices were just not flowing very well, so we settled on M&M's we had left over from Christmas. I gave Ethan 10 cups and he put 10 M&M's in each one.
Filling the cups. I went back and counted them all and there were only a few mistakes.
Trying to dump the cups into the bag and dropping some on the floor for the 3rd time. We came up with a new game plan of Mom holding open the bag while he poured them in. Much better...he only dropped on cup into the bag and we just laughed.
The finished product ready to take to school tomorrow.

It's Not Working!

Aubrey was finger painting this morning a picture to send in Grandma's birthday present. She kept saying, "It's Not Working!" and it took me a little while to figure out what she meant. The finger paint is the wonderful No Mess stuff from Crayola, but it takes a few minutes for it to show up on the paper. As with everything currently, Aubrey wants something and wants it now. She was frustrated that she could not see her work right away. She got over it though and did several pictures with the paints.
She did not draw much, the smiley face is mine, but did lots of little dots everywhere.
Her finished product. You can't tell from the pictures, but she is wearing "The Skirt" again today!