Happy Mothers Day!

Yesterday we celebrated Mothers Day and Grace's 3rd Birthday. It was a wonderful and special day and I'm so thankful to have such a wonderful family full of love. My mom came down Saturday afternoon and we were able to go shopping just the two of us. I don't remember the last time we did that! I found the most gorgeous shoes in the world, and at $110 I'll be waiting until they are about 80% off to consider buying them. I looked for dresses for the wedding and came home empty handed. I am now thinking I'll just buy some very cute shoes to go with the dress I have.

When we got home Grace opened her presents from my mom, and she read the kids a story she got about Grandma's house. It was very sweet. Grace seemed extra tired all day and so I kept a close eye on her, and when she coughed some during the night I knew she might be catching a cold. She seemed better in the morning once she got up and about, but shortly after we arrived home from a wonderful Mother's Day service at church, she went downhill. She was exhausted and just under the weather.

We grilled chicken and burgers and ate at around 1:30, then did cake and presents. We had almost whole family here: the five of us, my parents, my brother and his wife Shannon, my grandparents (all three!), Gary's parents, and his pap. Birthday's with kids are SO much fun. She got some cute clothes, pj's and of course toys. The toys are already out of the boxes and scattered all over the downstairs. She doesn't need a thing so I have no idea what we will get her! Last night I just had to laugh as the favorite activity was using the princess cleaning set and the squirt guns to clean the house. They were "spraying" the windows with the squirt guns, and scrubbing them and the floors and walls with the cleaning set. It just makes me laugh how much Grace loves to help. She's such a girl already. She is devastated if I don't let her help me clean the floors, the windows or fold laundry. I dare hope it continues as she gets older, but I don't count on it. :)

Even though she had a wonderful time, Grace begged us for a nap when everyone was gone, about 4:30, and she was burning up with fever so I let her. At 6 we made her get up for fear she would not sleep at night. She was past ready for bed again at 8:30 though, and slept fitfully all night. She seems to be past the fever now but does still have a slight cough. I"m not sure if the lack of fever means she's on the mend, or the Tylenol is working. :) The kids aren't too much trouble when they are sick, it's just part of life. I felt so badly that she was so sick. I considered letting her nap around 12:30 for an hour and probably should have. She only wanted cake to eat anyways, she could have gotten up, had some yogurt and bread and then cake and been fine. Oh well. I knew having an afternoon party would be hard on her because she so relies on her naps. I also knew though that if I did it any other time, not everyone could come. I was very upset when everyone left and I realized that I had not gotten the family pictures I wanted. I did convince Gary to do a couple with our camera's timer of the five of us so I do have those.

Esther is doing wonderfully. We're at the end of nursing I fear. Within a week I doubt she'll nurse at all and I know I will miss it. With Tyler i couldn't wait to be done. I love the benefits of nursing and value it highly, but I really don't enjoy it per se. With Esther, its another sign that my last baby isn't so much of a baby anymore and it's so hard. She's still a baby, but the time is going far to quickly for me. I hoped she'd say "ma-ma" for Mother's Day but- no dice. She is really rolling now- both ways, and doing some stealth scooting. we never quite see her turn or scoot, but she ends up across the room very often. Operation "keep the toys in the playroom and away from Esther" is in full affect now.

I also have to comment on my poor Gary. We started watching Lost this winter- in fact it may not have started until after we moved here, which was only 3 months ago tomorrow. We are now all caught up to current episodes and poor Gary barely knows what to do with himself in the evenings now. Last night he checked facebook, checked ESPN (what a waste of 3 hours he spent watching the Cavs last night. Blah!) and then just kind of sat there like "what do I do now?!" I hope the weather warms up this week like it's supposed to so we can continue to tackle the yard work... After a full week of poison ivy on my arms, and now legs and neck, I'm ready to spray the you-know-what out of the plants in the flower beds!

My last post got cut short and I never got back to it. I wanted to comment on two new "hobbies" of mine as of late. Couponing is very time consuming and stressful, and somehow fun. I spent too much buying things that were a good deal- but not great - the first couple weeks. I now am working on only buying things that are a great deal (like 24 cent lunchables), and continuing to shop some at Aldi. It's just so much less stress to be able to get about 90% of what I need in 30 minutes and I know I can get out the door with a FULL basket under $100 and it'll last two weeks easy. This leads me to baby food- I forgot how much I loved it! It's time consuming and messy but SO much better with my beloved stove and dishwasher. :) haha! I get a great sense of accomplishment when I can make healthy food for my family, and especially my babies. I had forgotten just how much of baby food is actually water. It shocked me when I baked 4 sweet potatoes that I had to add probably 2 or more cups of water to it to get it purred. I did get more than 10 meals worth of food out of them though. I don't recall how much exactly, but I think I got three trays which would be 36 ounces= so at 3 oz a meal ( more than we use since I generally add a cereal mixture to her fruits and veggies or combine them) that's 12 meals. I was also excited a couple weeks ago to find avacado for 49cents each. Esther LOVES them! I got about 5 meals out of each one. Then I was even more excited Friday night when I got avacado's for twenty five cents a piece! They were fully ripe but I knew I had salsa at home and viola! Cheap guacamole!

I had wanted to talk about spiders too- where do they come from!?!? We have SO many! I need to take an entire evening and hide in the basement with the shop vac- it's just unbelievable to me the cobwebs we accumulate in this house- ESPECIALLY in our ancient basement! We do spray Home Defense inside and outside once a month. If you know of another trick beyond that- I"m all ears!