Tommy's 2nd (and 1st) Birthday

When Tommy turned one, we really had our act together.

I made an allergen-free birthday cake out of ingredients like brown rice flour, tapioca flour, potato flour, Ener-G egg replacer, rice milk...

It actually turned out tasting great, very moist, much to my surprise.

We made homemade pizzas.


Tommy had his first bite of real cake, and he was LOVING IT.


I want to kiss those lips.


Even back then, he liked Daddy more. Check out this video:

Did you see how pissed he got when I wanted to hold him? I WAS the one who slaved all day in the kitchen over that silly cake...just sayin'...

This year we couldn't get our act together, and poor Tommy knew it.

You can see the horror in his eyes when he saw his birthday cake.







Wait for it.







TA-DA!


Look out Martha, that is a dairy and egg-free chicken patty and tater tots piped with ketchup.

And here's the video of him blowing out his candles, please ignore my annoying, nasaly voice and just focus on the kids.

Once he figured out we were singing to him he calmed down. I think I have a budding pyro on my hands, he kept grabbing for the candles, and what was up with that crazy-baby face shaking before he blew out the candles at the end?

Maybe I'm onto something with this allergen-free cake idea...

This Year's Easter

Each Christmas Brandon and I wake up early so we can see the kids come barrelling out of the hallway with surprised looks. And each Christmas we wait...and wait...and after an hour of waiting we try to make a lot of noise so the kids will hear, and it never works.

We were hoping the same would happen this Easter, so we slept in. And wouldn't you know they were in our room at 6am begging us to get up and see what the Easter Bunny left.

There were window clings to let us know he had been here.

Do you have an Easter basket tradition? Brandon's family has always hidden baskets so a lot of the fun is searching for yours. That wasn't a tradition in our home growing up, but it's super fun so we've adopted it for our little family.

These are precious, primarily because of Brandon's Easter enthusiasm in the background.



The Easter Bunny even went to McDonald's and scouted out a MyLittlePony Khera's been wanting for a while.

She loved her dresses.


Tommy loved his peeps.


We changed his shirt about 27 times that day and finished a bottle of Shout treating all of the candy drool, ketchup and jello stains.  Teething and candy are not a good combo.


The girls tore open one of GJ's famous brown paper packages.


Khera's Zhu-Zhu pet nibbled through most of the presents, they were thrilled to be reunited.


Elle's was the only one not pilfered.


Here is Tommy with his Peter Pan book, one of Daddy's childhood favorites.

I love it when he plops himself down in my lap with a book and shouts "REE!"

We're still waiting for Elle to take off her jewelry.

She is looking SO old to me...

Khera had to immediately call GJ and say "Thank You", she's so thoughtful like that. She even dialed the number herself.


Part of the reason I started this blog was to be able to look back at our lives when the kids were young. I scoured my portable hard drive looking for pictures from past Easters, and I remembered about a year ago I made a horrible error and DELETED.OVER.A.YEAR'S.WORTH.OF.PHOTOS! (record stops) You got it, all the birthday, Christmas, Easter, summer photos--GONE FOREVER. Excuse me while I try to avoid hyper-ventilating.
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OK. It can always be worse, right? Well, some still remain in my memory, but after having 3 kids, those memories are very foggy. My remote hard drive Grandma is not available to see if she backed me up on 2007-2010 Easters (she knows what a ditz I am), I guess that will have to wait until next year.

Since we were up at the crack of dawn we decided to hit up the 8 o'clock mass.  Got the kids ready, packed up bribery items, loaded everyone in the car and headed over to church...and...there was no 8 o'clock mass because there was a sunrise service.  We went for a drive, and all the while the girls whined that they didn't want us to get lost, so we went home. I have no idea where this fear of getting lost is coming from??? We headed back at 9:30am and as usual it was standing room only. Anyway, I managed to get a couple shots of the girls, but Tommy did not cooperate.

Khera's the queen of goofy grins.



We did not absorb much of the homily at mass because we were busy herding the kids around the lobby, to and from the water fountain, bathroom, out to the courtyard, etc. I can't wait to be able to listen again, it has been SO LONG, and I really need to hear those words every week to set me straight and give me focus.

Ms. Moore, Khera's teacher, sent this cute Easter poem home last week and we thought we'd share it.


Tommy's birthday fell on Easter this year. So stay tuned for 2nd Birthday post with a recount of his 1st birthday. I hope you all enjoyed time with loved ones this Easter holiday.

We joined a club

A Shuffleboard Club!
Not really, but I've always wanted to say that.
Friday night is family night at the St. Pete Shuffleboard Club, it was free and we LOVED it.


It has a great view of downtown,


And is right across the street from the Coliseum.


Here are some shots of our fun little Friday night.


Khera loved it.


Elle loved watching.


She also enjoyed retrieving the disks.


Even Tommy got the hang of it.


He also enjoyed carrying and stacking the disks.


Tommy is above following rules, I guess that comes with the "terrible-two's" territory.

I'm pretty sure that also means no lollipop sticks on the court too Tom-tom.

As luck would have it, Tommy ended up dressing appropriately for the evening. They had several radio flyers for little tikes to play on.


My sticky little aviator.

We ended up timing it perfectly because shortly after this shot the melting began, so we packed it up and headed home.

The shuffleboard club was awesome, it's a great spot for a double or quadruple date. You can even take coolers with snacks and drinks, we will definitely be back soon.

An Impromptu Easter Playdate

We watched our buddy Travis on Good Friday and the girls each invited their friends Sophia W. and Sophia F. over for an Easter Playdate. We planned on having an easter egg hunt, the girls hid the eggs (probably all in one place) and they quickly got bored and took the playdate into their own hands.

They dressed up like princesses and climbed up into their royal tower...

Rapunzel's plan was to let down her golden hair.


They tried to spot prince charming.



But all they could find was a mean dinosaur.


At first he was very scary.


And frightened the princesses away.

Travisaurus is a lover not a fighter, and discovered being mean isn't all it's cracked up to be, so he quickly turned into a "nice" dinosaur.

We had a pizza party.


And then a lollipop party.

Tommy kept Andi busy blowing bubbles.

Mystery lollipops are the best.


Andi is still blowing bubbles.

Tommy is still screaming "BUB!"



And because pizza, lollipops and popsicles weren't enough, we had these yummy cookies too.


Sophia snagged a ride on the tree swing before leaving.


After the Sophias left, or rather ran for their lives in fear of sugar overload, the kids had some quiet time and watched Shrek on the beanbag together.


That was so much fun, we can't wait to do it again. This summer is going to be sweltering, it was nice to have an adult conversation during the daytime get the kids together to play, they always have a blast.

Tommy's New Obsession and Lots of Frocks

Travis, Tommy's idol, stopped by last weekend to give him an early birthday present.  And he's been in love ever since...

with his new golf starter set. He learned "GOLF" faster than any word besides Jell-O.

He's been working on variations to the traditional golf game, like golf-yoga:


Testing the implications of one shoe on one's handicap:


Using basketball techniques to improve his short-game:

**Mom moment - doesn't he look so cute in his new duds, he looks like a mini-B, of course I'm not biased at all.

While he's been playing golf, I've had some meetings with the Easter Bunny. The bunny isn't so excited about giving gobs of candy this year and would like to give the girls some dresses instead. So the EB has been cranking out a number of summer dresses...


Ones with ruffles on the bottom...


Pintucked hems...

Psst: I think the Easter Bunny wants them to wear the white ones to church on Sunday.

Madras...


And one other Kayce Hughes (Lilly Pulitzer's niece) inspired dress:

EB's thinking about adding pockets, she'll have to see if that will fit into her gruelling schedule this weekend...

OH, and my baby is turning 2 this weekend, sniff sniff. Thank goodness he's still a little man otherwise I might be sobbing instead of sniffling.