The Lily Pad

Today my lovely assistant Madelyn is going to show us all how to make a gingerbread house using a milk carton, icing, graham crackers and candy. 1. Spread the icing on the milk carton to stick the graham crackers to. 2. Taste the icing. This is the renowned "Spread a little, lick a little" approach. 3. (not pictured) Carefully stick all of the graham crackers to the milk carton. 4. Add candy and sprinkles. 5. Use icing to add peppermints. Or just lick it... 6. Ta Da! Your house is complete, sit back and admire your handy work...and be glad nobody is going to live in crooked little house. Notice in the background that other kids had a significant amount of help from their moms. I am proud to say that other than sticking the graham crackers together and adding a small twizzler embelishment that was eluding Madelyn, she did all of the smearing, decorating, and eating herself. After you have made your house and eaten too much candy and icing, you may need to call a doctor about...

Since about her second day of life I have called Madelyn my little puddin. It varies based on my mood, sometimes it's puddin head, puddin pop, puddin poop, you get the idea. The other day she spent some time in the drop in day care and when I went to pick her up, her hair was plastered to the top of her head like a bad toupee. When the workers saw my confused face, the explained that during snack they looked over and she had a huge glob of pudding on top of her head and was still eating as if nothing was wrong. They tried to clean it out but can only do so much short of sticking her head under the sink. So I wet a papertowel and attempted to get her head a little less goopy because we were meeting friends for a Christmas expo and were going to be out in public. My attempts were not very good and the following hairstyle was the end result. Add in the snowflake face painting and the red nose she insisted on having (as in wouldn't leave the chair until her nose was red like ...

I just watched the results show for SYTYCD and I think I need to boycott the show...but actually I should boycott America because they're the ones that voted. Warning...spoiler. I love Legacy. I have a huge crush on him and his dance style. I think he is one of the best dancers I have ever seen. I like the rawness of his talent, I get tired of seeing the over perfected moves and leg kicks, and feminine movements from the men. Don't get me wrong, Jakob is awesome and Russell is great and has that same raw feel, but there is just something about Legacy. I hate to think that Ryan made it through because of Ashleigh, because I am really tired of his stiff chest, wiggly hips business. He seems very fake to me and I just don't like his style. I think it's just the stiffness that comes with ballroom dancers and that is fine for his style I guess...I just don't like it and I don't enjoy watching him. I loved watching Legacy. I will miss watching him next week. ...

Proof of fall...on December 1. Leaves on the ground...see, just like fall. Nevermind the fact that it is was most definitely warm enough for us to be out in the leaves barefoot without even and hint of a chill. Cute little pigtailed dumplin playing in the leaves. We had a whole lotta fun crunching them. I am so screwed up with my dates and seasons and my internal calendar. Back in November somebody said something about not meeting until December and I said "Wow, we're gonna skip a month of meetings?" Yeah. It feels like October to me. I know we did Halloween and Thanksgiving, but the weather is screwing me up! How am I supposed to think Christmas when leaves are just NOW changing color and falling off the trees? That is September/October weather. Thankfully we'll have a nice shock of cold, winter weather in a few weeks.

Since I have been feeling and being crafty lately I'm going to start showing off some of our fun. I'm not really one who is concerned with age appropriateness for parent supervised crafts, so alot of things come out really fun. I also do crafts on my own without "assistance" and I'll show some of those off too. This is our fall themed craft, we had friends Paige and Emmalyn over to play with the salt dough and make a nice floury mess in the kitchen (seriously, Madelyn was the messiest, Emmalyn wasn't interested, and Paige did awesome!). We made salt dough leaf prints which I found on That Artist Woman. I didn't get any pictures of us rolling, patting, and "stamping" because salty doughy hands and cameras don't mix. After painting, while drying. What happens when toddlers meet paint and watch Mommy "paint on her face" each morning. After the coat of Mod Podge for sealing and shinyness. Madelyn painted two leaves and her handprint...

Yesterday started off well enough, a happy mommy and happy daughter woke up, snuggled, had some breakfast and read a book or two before I decided that we were going to go out and have a fun "date day" of lunch, shopping and hanging out. We showered and Madelyn started dressing herself. With a little difficulty...and not very weather appropriate clothes. You can't tell in these pictures but her shorts are actually on upside down. As in the waistband was at her knees until she tugged so hard she basically turned them inside out. After suggesting 5 different outfits, we finally agreed on her sweet little madras dress and purple chucks. It's such a cute outfit we had a little photo shoot. I did not pose her. Please remember this sweetness in a minute. We loaded up in the car and drove up north to shopping and food. We talked about our shopping plans on the way and Madelyn watched Robin Hood. Since we had gotten a later start my plan was to eat lunch, then walk ...

Before: Before: Before: (see that little had creeping up?) Cute Diapered baby in Mommy's shoes w/ a monkey having nothing to do with the Before's or Afters, just too cute to not include. After: After: Take the above pictures, duplicate them about 20 times and add in a sweet little voice saying "cheese" and you have what happens Every. Single. Time. the camera comes out. Please excuse me if there are no pictures of the pumpkin head until I win this battle. Cause as long as I'm fighting it, most of the pictures on my camera are like the second one. Hopefully she gives in soon cause I'm not. :)

No, really they are. I promise. OK, maybe not. They are kinda scary with the swirly water and the body waste and loud noises. Oh, but they are kind of like an amusement park ride for you poo! Yay! Rides are fun. See, potties are totally fun! Yeah, we're potty training in our house. It's going OK, but when you have a very busy toddler you end up saying "Do you have to pee pee?" and "Let's sit on the potty" a million times a day and the peeing in the potty happens maybe twice because it's much more fun to pee in your pull up (or training pants) 30 seconds after you sit on the potty. Yesterday we had a great morning potty wise and needed to go to the commissary so I got Madelyn on the potty right before we left, drove the 20 minutes to the store, took her into the potty as soon as we got there and both times nothing. I knew it was coming because she had orange juice on the drive over. We get through produce and 3 aisles over and I hear the tinies...

I have a really hard time blogging daily huh? Day 9 - I am thankful for powdered soup mixes like onion beef or vegetable, they add so much pep and flavor to simple dishes and the vegetable soup mix is AWESOME for spinach dip. Day 10 - I am thankful for all of the Marines that have served, are serving, and will serve this great nation of ours. I am thankful for the Marines that have fallen fighting for what they believe in, fighting so that my family, friends, and strangers may continue to enjoy the freedom and security that we have today. It is because of Marines and the job that they do that we don't live in a war torn nation and that I am able to share my opinions with the world. Happy Birthday Marines! Go check out Amanda and see what everyone else is thankful for.

On Thursday I developed a sweet little scratchy throat cough, on Friday it wasn't much better, but no worse, a sip of water was enough to calm it down most times. Apparently wine is not so good for sweet little scratchy throat coughs and turns them into big nasty mean barky hacking coughs that result in loss of voice and the need for a glass of water in the middle of your supposed to be relaxing massage. Luckily I did make it through the ball and most of Saturday morning before losing my voice completely. It's a good thing cause I had dancing and chatting to do at the ball. Now, for a little catch up on 27 days of Thankful. Day 6. I am thankful for people who own boats. I love boats, I share this love with my Daddy, and seeing as how I am unable to afford the kind of a boat I would love to have (think yacht not row) I am thankful that there are people out there who can afford the kinds of boats that I enjoy looking at so that I have something to look at and dream about. The vi...

Today I am thankful for cool, fall-like weather. I love the crisp little bite in the air that fall brings in the morning and evening with the toasty sun warming it just enough mid-afternoon. This is one of my favorite seasons, I love breaking out the cooler weather clothes and snuggling under blankets to watch tv. This morning I loved that we were able to comfortably wear long sleeve shirts all day without roasting.

In my blog hopping I have stumbled upon lots of blogs that I thoroughly enjoy and today I found Amanda at Serenity Now and she is doing a project where you blog about something you are thankful each day leading up to Thanksgiving. I LOVE this idea! Check out the reason behind the posts here and join in if you're feeling froggy. I am 3 days late in starting so I will list 4 things I am thankful for today and get all caught up. Sometimes it's the little things that we forget to be thankful for so I'll be focusing on the small, the silly, and the thing that just brighten my day and my life. 1. I am thankful for my husband. He really compliments me and puts up with my shenanigans. Actually I think he enjoys my shenanigans which makes me all that more thankful! His schedule is hard right now and we don't always take the time we should for one another but when you strip away all the outside pressures, he always supports me and is there for me when I need him. 2. I a...

Crazy Hair! Getting ready to get lots of candy. Mother-daughter witches Even in my big burst of creative energy I just didn't seem to have it in me for a creative Halloween costume so storebought we went. What does it say about me that of the toddler costumes, I found a witch to be the lesser of the evils when compared with overpriced Disney princesses, leopard print kitties, and devils? We had a great time and Madelyn loved her hat! She was so cute. We went to Pumpkins at the Park and made a treat bag and a spider web with a spider. She waved and talked to everybody as we walked around in the heat. Then we met up with friends to go trick or treating and Madely was a champ! It took her a few houses to get the hang of it, but she ended up doing great and was so excited everytime somebody put candy in her bag. Now Im just afraid that she'll expect candy everytime we go to visit somebody.

Yesterday we set out to go to Pumpkins at the Park and halfway there we decided that we'd just drive on down to San Diego because Chris had a Marine to visit and I thought that we could just go to Boo at the Zoo. So off we went. It was a gorgeous day, Madelyn was napping in the car and I used my super duper navigational powers to get us from the 15 right to the zoo. Nothing could stop us. Notice anything? Yep. There was no "Boo". We looked everywhere but unfortunately did not find any Boo at the Zoo. I asked the information booth lady and she looked at me like I was crazy...as did the membership lady. Chris is convinced that I just made up Boo at the Zoo in my crazy little brain and we spent the afternoon walking around laughing at the lack of boo at the zoo. We had a good time and played in the childrens zoo and saw the polar bears and rode the skyfari, so it wasn't a total waste. On our way home we passed the Del Mar Fairgrounds and there was a large tent set up...

On Saturday we had a few friends over to celebrate Madelyn's second birthday. We had a great time and here are some of the pictures. The kids in their birthday Mickey Ear hats Yummy cupcake! Opening presents The gift boxes (and other crafty thing I've been doing) More presents (blogger is being difficult so the pics are a little out of order)

As I previously mentioned I have recently caught a crafting bug...unfortunately I also suffer from project startitis so I generally don't finish ANYTHING I set out to do. BUT I am very pleased to say that in the past two weeks I have FINISHED 3 crafting projects that were pretty involved. Two of them are for Madelyns party tomorrow so you don't get to see until the Birthday After Party. Here is the one I can share: I got this for $3 at the craft store, some 79 cent paint and one sheet of pretty paper for 50 cents. I wanted something to hang our jackets on by the front door so they could stop laying on the sofa table or floor. Here is the completed project! I finished and got it hung just in time for the temperature to rise to 104 degrees! Woohoo! I'm so glad I have a place to hang our jackets for those chilly 90 degree days. In other news, almost one year to the day of living in the same area, my dear friend Denise and her family moved out here! We had a great wee...

There's an ongoing tradition with Chris and his need to have food within 5 minutes of us arriving at any type of outdoor attraction, zoo, theme park, fair, pumpkin patch, you get the idea. Usually it's popcorn, but sometimes it needs to be a hot dog or something more substantial. It seriously happens EVERY SINGLE TIME, you would think that there wasn't any food outside the gates the way he sniffs it out and has to get something. I go along with it because if I deny food early on then he focuses only on getting food and we will tour the snack stands before actually enjoying the park. It's ridiculous. Last week we went down to the Wild Animal park and not 30 feet inside the gate Chris started scouting out a bag of candy in one of the little shops. We were standing in the shop scoffing at the price of a bag of gummies when he looked over at the large glass square machine that was blowing around white fluffy stuff and asked "What's that?" When I told hi...

1. In support of my friend I am posting my own story of sadness and medication - the short version. We'll start with living in 4 states in 12 months, leaving the city of my daughters birth, leaving the coast with all of our friends and family on it, to move to one of our most favorite places, Southern California. Then we'll add in a little separation anxiety, mix a dash of loneliness and a situation that left me with less than desirable kidney function and you start getting a little sadness. Shake it all up with having to stop nursing my daughter abruptly so that I could start medication for said kidneys and you get crazy. I started really sliding downhill after I finished nursing and nothing seemed to make me happy. I blamed Chris, and then he fixed what he was doing to make me sad and I was still sad. So off to the doctor I went for my little prescription of zoloft and off to the therapist I went to figure out what was causing it all. We decided that having so much change in ...

The whole time I was in Asheville I drove my parents car which has a gas gauge that looks something like this: When I returned to CA and back to my own car I had to get gas right away because our drive back from San Diego had left me on empty and the idiot light on. Not wanting to overpay or drive on base, I just put in $15 to get me through. When I got in I was amazed that my $15 had gotten me 3/4 a tank of gas! After several errands over 3 days I didn't seem to be using any gas and was amazed that after a month I had forgotten that my car gets pretty good gas mileage. It wasn't until I had driven all over town, up to Temecula and all over town there that I realized that my gas gauge looks like this: Guess my $15 didn't do as well as I thought! **For my slower readers, you know who you are, the F and E are on opposite sides. So what I was reading as almost full was really almost empty.