Catching Up

Falling down on this blogging thing again, aren't I. Well here's why (at least the excuse I'm using, ha) - we've been sick, again, ugh. We were healthy for about 3 weeks there, since this post, it was wonderful, but I guess we couldn't last that long during cold and flu season :-/.  Thankfully, the kids came down with a pretty mild cold this time, besides Kaylie getting an ear infection :(, but it also attacked Josh, my parent's, Gigi, and myself - really threw me for a loop. Still not back to normal yet, but getting there. So the best of for the past week or so. . .

*Enjoyed showering Sarah & baby Aubrey with love at the Irvine Spectrum, with lunch at Cheesecake Factory and shopping - love shopping with the girls, it never happens. Melissa is my fashion coordinator, she picked a cute new sweater/scarf/earring combo for me - thanks Mel :)

*Valentine's Day has been postponed due to sickness and general craziness. Hopefully it isn't postponed until next Valentine's day, guess we'll see about that.

*Girls' night at my house last Friday, what-what!!! A night of many of my favorite things: tasty treats, delicious drinks, fabulous friends, polished piggies (toes, ok maybe a stretch, but I had the whole alliteration thing going on, cut me some slack) - what more could a girl ask for :)

*A few photo/video "best of's" from the past week:

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Enjoying their new art center on a sick day. 

Our beautiful Kaylie :)

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This is the face we get every time we tell Kaylie it's nap/bed time. 

Every. Time.     and I love it :)

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Practicing T-ball :)

I'm melting. . . .

So lately there has been a melted crayon art craze on Pinterest. Or at least I've been crazed about it, because I think it's really cool. I've tried several now and here is what I've learned: I need to keep practicing. Not as easy as I thought it would be. I've tried the glue gun, hair dryer and oven methods. Glue gun method is probably my fave, has the most texture of all the methods, lots of overlap, pretty fun. I'm looking forward to trying the rain picture using that method. The hair dryer I had M try with me - made a few mistakes, I think. I peeled the crayons and super glued them onto the canvas. Once the crayons started melting they fell off the canvas. Fail. The effect was pretty cool before they fell off - the colors blended together and went a little crazier with the force of the hair dryer, which was fun. So if I try that method again, I'll leave the paper on - hopefully the crayons will stay on with the super glue that way. We'll see. The oven melting method was pretty straightforward and simple. I left the wrappers on the crayons and glued them to the canvas then placed in the oven at an angle - the crayons melted/dripped straight down which I liked the look of. The thing I learned with that: I had taped a heart on the canvas so that the crayons wouldn't melt over it, I wanted to have a heart void left on the canvs, thought it would look cool with crayon melted around it. But I don't like how the crayon melted around it and pooled at the bottom. Next time I would just try to add the heart later (I added a felt heart, which would have gone on top of the melted crayon just fine). So I might try that one again too. Good thing crayons aren't too terribly expensive :-P

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<3 <3 Our Valentine's Mantel <3 <3

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Oven Method - Oven was set to about 225 - I have big glass beer mugs behind the canvases to keep them upright (and the canvases are on a cookie sheet lined with foil) First pic was just entering the oven, second pic is about 5 minutes in, third pic is about 10ish minutes in - would have looked REALLY cool without the hearts :-/

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The first method I tried (and loved) - glue gun method. I bought a mini glue gun, had to remove the back part of the gun where it pushes the glue in (where the glue goes in, part of what pushes the glue through) because the crayons wouldn't fit through. Peeled the crayons to put them through. Not sure how many crayons I used, maybe 10ish?

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The Hair Dryer Method (the worst failure, my bad) - I peeled the crayons - shouldn't have done that. It was looking kind of cool (kind of crazy too) - but then the crayons fell off and that was that.

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Hopefully I'll have some wonderful, beautiful versions to show you in the not too distant future :)

An Octopus & Cake Pops

Has a week already gone by? And no post! How dare I. SO here we go :) My favorites of the past week. . . Went to Legoland last Thursday and we took Grandpa along for the first time. M & K loved showing him around, taking him on their favorite rides. As bad as last Wednesday was, Thursday was just so much better. I'm in a Tuesday Night Women's Bible study, and this past Tuesday we had our final meeting of Beth Moore's Breaking Free - a truly amazing Bible study, I highly recommend it! It was a great night with some great friends, and delicious oreo cake pops to boot (if I do say so myself ;-) ha). Wednesday we had fun meeting up with AJ & Miles at the Sea Life Aquarium. What fun! And you're all caught up. Pretty average week, but fun none-the-less, and here are a few of my fave pics from the week :)

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M & K before church - we need to get new family photos! 

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I'm going to try an attempt an art piece I saw on pinterest which involves
an umbrella (hence the umbrella in the pic). . . don't think this pic will work for
it after all, but I just love the expression on their faces so I had to post it :)

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M & AJ checking out the octopus at Sea Life.

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The octopus was so active, really cool to see!

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Those delicious cake pops I was talking about. Yum!!

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Excited to see what this next week will bring!

Today.

So as I'm writing this, I'm exhausted. I've cried way too much today. Ugh. Matthew is such a fun boy, who loves to be silly, crazy, funny, active. . .my favorite little boy ever, seriously. . .but he also has a strong will and defiant streak, and some days he just seems to have it in for me. Today was just one of those days. Despite dealing with that, and being on edge all day (darn hormones, makes me all weepy), I couldn't just keep us all holed up in the house, we needed to get out and go to Trader Joe's. We get there, we're shopping, he's giving me some attitude along the way, I'm trying to just get through the store. I've got most of my grocery items already in the cart, Kaylie is sitting in the cart as well - we get to the freezer section, I turn to get Mac & Cheese from the freezer (hands off the cart) and all the sudden Matthew has climbed onto the side of the cart which topples over on top of him taking Kaylie and the groceries down with him. It felt like I was frozen for hours, but of course it was just seconds - I didn't know what to do first, do I get Kaylie out? Or pick up Matthew? Try to put the cart upright? Pick up my groceries? Kaylie was sideways in the seat so I go for her first, had trouble getting her feet through the holes, someone had to help me. Someone else helped Matthew up, others picked up my groceries, righted my cart, and one woman just put her arm around me as I held Kaylie and just bawled. Matthew stared at me in shock, I think. I'm thankful there were so many helpful people around, and that people didn't just stop and stare. It was quite embarassing. Kaylie cried for awhile, just because it scared her - she was fine otherwise. I was thankful there was that woman who stood by me with her arm around me, who encouraged me, helped me to feel like my world wasn't really falling apart (when after the day I had totally felt like a possibility - again, darn hormones).  She had 2 little girls of her own, right around my kids ages. Once I collected myself we finished shopping. I still had to bite my lip to keep from crying all the way to the car. Oh well. We are all okay, we got home safely.  

What made it better happened just before bedtime. Matthew had Cubbies (Awanas for preschoolers) tonight, so I had a little breather from my little man. He came home in SUCH good spirits, he was so happy to see me, so bright and cheery, no hint of earlier attitudes. When he was climbing in to bed he grabbed me and gave me a great big bear hug (he is not much of a hugger, so I love all the hugs I can get from him) and he told me he was so sorry for the cart falling over (i had warned him not to climb on it), for his attitude, etc, and he was so sincere - he doesn't often seem sincere. I apologized too, we forgave each other, it was a really good moment. A redeeming moment for the day. A good night's sleep should help make everything better too ;-) After a day like today I'm reminded, this too shall pass - the days are long, but the years are short - I will try to focus on the good parts, the Kairos moments of each day, as long as I'm allowed to vent every now and then, ha!

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Here are a few photos from the week, to add a little color to this post:

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Our little Dragon & Pretty Princess playing dress-up :)

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Arts & Crafts - Sock puppets!

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Rubios with my beautiful little girl :)