big hair party

You remember how I have crazy friends right?  Crazy awesome, that is.

Eve’s birthday was a few weeks ago, and so we decided to do another crazy top model photo shoot for her party.  This one’s theme… BIG HAIR!

There was a lot of teasing, crimping, and hair spraying going on.  The end result was some awesome 80s hair band big hair.

We thought Eve (the birthday girl) would have made an awesome Victoria in the twilight movies… as per this photo.

And we also thought Tami looked an awful lot like Bella in her photos, so we may have had a little too much fun photoshopping her pics.

 

All of this sweet action was made possible by the sexy Wendy of blue lily photo.

Here is a pic of the braid Lauren made out of Wendy’s hair later… I think it is awesome because it looks like yarn roving.

And last but not least, here is the red headed barbie cake I made for Eve.  I’m sure Wendy has some much better pictures of it, but I aint got the kind of time to wait for her to get them to me, so you get to see my awesome iPhone one.

halloween

Carmen was a homemade tinkerbell fairy thing.  Not my best work… but she still looked pretty cute.

Here she was for her preschool party:

I really liked the eyelashes… which she yanked off 5 minutes after she got to school.

We carved some “punkins”.  Carmen’s was tinkerbell of course, and I made Moseley’s a pac man inspired jack-o-lantern.

We headed up to Huntington for the Black’s Halloween party.  We forgot the green eyelashes so Carmen shared some of Kaia’s orange ones.

Look how awesome that gnome is.  And the pic doesnt even do it justice, because you cant see Kardiff’s swagger while he was wearing it.  Cutest thing ever.

Of course the night of Halloween Carmen wanted to match Kaia, and wouldn’t wear her green shirt, only the black “underneath” one.  Whatever.

Here is Carmen holding up my adorable little shark… in all his rolly glory.

Ah… that dimple!

Mose didn’t really get the trick’r treating thing. And I mean, how scary can you be when you are strapped into a stroller covered with a blanket?

Thrilled.

However, when we got back home and the kids all dumped out their candy to survey the goods, he got to roll around in it like it was money.

He was making all the kids so mad by putting all their candy in his mouth with the wrappers on.

Yeah. put a nice camera in my hand, and the only thing I can get in focus is the bucket.  Fail.

Oh well, someday I will learn how to use a real camera… Until then I will leave the picture taking up to my talented friends.

mermaids

I don’t think there is a cuter bunch of beach bunnies out there…

I can only imagine the trouble this group is going to cause when they get into high school.

Oh and if you are wondering what Carmen is eating, it is a giant pink mallow.

photos by Ashley Moffat, thanks Ash!

so you think you can dance with moseley?

Yes, yes we did.

(if you don’t watch/like the show, or you don’t want the “magic” ruined for you, stop reading now… this will be long and detailed)

I signed up to get tickets for SYTYCD a month or two back, thinking that it was like american idol… and that I had to sign up for tickets a year or two in advance.  That way I would get to go next year and I wouldn’t have a nursing baby at the time we went.  Well, I guess not because last week I got the email saying I did have tickets if I wanted to sign up.  I really love that show, and even though Moseley is super young, at a whim I signed up anyway.

I wanted to see the group performance, so I just hit the 8:30 am taping, without really thinking it through much.  Yeah, so 8:30 is the time you have to be there, but there is a line… oh and we live like 2 hours away from LA.  Like I said, didn’t think it through.

We ended up staying the night in Huntington, and waking up at 4:15 to get ready and drive up to LA.  We got there around 6am, to the CBS studio. We asked the gate person where to go and she pointed to one random dude, standing on the corner and said “that’s the line right there.”  Oh, so I guess you don’t have to get there that early, but since we don’t live in LA we would have had to beat traffic anyway… so there was no way to avoid the early wake up.

Turns out that one random dude had been there since 4 am because him and 2 friends had flown in from Kentucky the day before!  Wow, now that is dedication.

Anyway we had Moseley with us in line in the stroller because my cousin Holly who lives 15 min away, was coming to pick him up right before they let us in.  Well, they started to let people in 15 minutes early, so I was panicking that they wouldn’t let me come in with Moseley there… Until the guy that worked at the studio “Mike” took a liking to the baby.  He thought Moseley was super cute and told me that he would still let me in if my cousin got there soon.  Right then she pulled up, I threw him in her car, and dashed inside.

We had to check in our cell phones, so the only pictures we got were outside in line. 

The way they let people in was not random at all… They put our nice but rather plain looking friends from Kentucky in one row to wait, and thanks to my hottie friends and having a cute baby, they put us in another against the back wall.  They ushered all the “cuties” (i.e. 14 year-olds  in mini dresses that were supposed to be shirts) to the row we were sitting in, and all the normal looking people to the middle section. Oh and PS why are there so many mothers out there letting their teenage girls wear skirts that short?  Don’t they even love them at all?

Anyway we got to be right up front.  Wade Robson was the choreographer so he walked and stood right by us the whole time… It was awesome!

I guess the reason why that opening group number is always so perfect was because they record it about 10 times from different angles and edit out when someone drops a fan, or their hair piece falls out, or they just plain forget the steps.

It was really cool seeing it from such a close perspective.  Way better in person because you get to see all the small details.  I guess I thought when we went, that we would go see a basic run through of the whole show, and if they messed up, they would re-do that one part.  No, they do it over and over  until it is perfect and when the camera is off almost every one just becomes normal people.  Everyone was joking around and talking in between takes, and after every take, people would run out to retouch makeup, give them water, and hold a little fan on them so they wouldn’t get too sweaty for the next take.  The people who’s personality I thought were the coolest were Randy and Jeanette.  They were right in front of us, and they were laughing and doing movie one liners, and talking to the crowd the whole time.  Randy was so funny because she would always yell out something funny after they said clear.  Like after one she said ” Oh man i totally had snot running out of my nose while the camera was on a close-up of my face!”  It was also funny seeing her get her leotard double stick taped to her butt.  And at one point some girls in the audience yelled ” We Love You Jason!”  and she goes “he’s single too” and then someone yelled ” what about Brandon, is he single too?” and she says “Yeah, but he’s batting for the other team.”  Then she got this shocked look on her face when we all laughed, because I guess she didn’t realize that we could all hear her.

I thought the guys were all basically really boring and serious.  They didn’t do much between takes.  Brandon is TINY!  He looks huge and muscly on TV, but in real life he is toned, but he is as short as randy, so he is just a little guy.  All of the dancers were basically tiny.  Jeanette was the smallest, and VERY flexible.  Even Ade who is the tallest was probably no taller than me.  They are all super ripped.  Kat Deely looks like a cartoon.  She is SUPER skinny and all her features are exaggerated. She looks semi-normal on TV, but she has super skinny legs and arms.  Super tall high heels.  Big lips and eyelashes, a skinny face, and big messy hair.  She never messed up once.  Mary Murphy looks the same, although not as loud in real life, it think they must mike her up super loud for the show.

When you go in for the morning taping, you are automatically guaranteed a ticket back in for the afternoon one.  Since we found out black eyed peas were playing, there was no way we were going to miss it.  Our friend mike found us in afternoon line again and took a picture of Moseley with his cell phone, and throughout the rest of the night we saw him walking around telling people that it was his son, and showing them the picture.  He also winked at us and reassured us we would get a good spot in the later taping.  So Moseley ended up being  our little lucky charm, because we were right up front!  Black Eyed Peas were awesome!  They were so good.  And it was cool because before they were ready to tape (which they do an hour before the actual live show starts) they were just walking around the stage looking at people and smiling.  Fergie is HOT!  Will-I-am is kinda weird.  He kept trying to fix his hair incessantly, which on camera during the song it looked like he was being funny, but when they weren’t even shooting, it was like he had OCD or something.  The whole process was way more relaxed than I thought it would be.  Then when they started  the song the whole place went bonkers!  It was really fun, and it seemed way more crazy with the confetti than it looked when we watched it back on TV.  So fun, I don’t think we could have picked a better day to go, even if we’d had a choice.

There is an hour in between the musical performance, and the live show, so they have a comedian come out and entertain everyone while we waited.  He played a game and gave away prizes.  Which Shannon got pulled up for and won a Starbucks gift card ha ha!  He had been talking to us and we told him we were moms, and had 13 kids between the 4 of us.  When Shannon got up there he said “Whoa, where are all these HOT moms coming from?”  Which she was.

The actual live show, was the most boring part for me, and plus the 3 hours of sleep the night before were catching up to me, so I was kind of ready for it to be over by that point.

Even though Moseley was kind of our ticket in, I would definitely wait until I am no longer nursing to go back again…  The having to find a place for him and being on your feet ALL day was a little too hectic and tiring for me right now.   I do want to go again next year for sure… but I am leaving the kiddies behind.

All-in-all it was super fun, and a great time with my girls.

orange county fair

We took these photos in one of those booths I love, at the fair .  I look weird and almost exactly the same in the first 3.  Plus I look super white next to my husband, who looks like a different ethnicity.  I was trying to get Moseley (who is baffled… and pooing I think) to look at the camera (hence the no change in my pictures).  However I would like to direct your attention to how beautiful my little Carmie is.  Dang, she is soooo cute!

I love these goofy pictures because they happen so fast, you really never know what to expect from them.  Plus there is a certain quality to film that can’t really be duplicated digitally.

We had a great time at the fair.  We got to eat tons of sweets, and deep fried goodies (which to be honest, is 90% of the reason I go anywhere… it’s the food).

The kids went on tons of rides, played games, looked at baby farm animals, and got all sugared up.  We saw some pigs that were 2 days old an just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.  Luckily, the mom was there to remind us what that adorable piglet would one day turn into.

We decided to spoil the heck out of the kids and give them pretty much whatever they wanted (some of that was forced on me… but we will revisit that topic later in this post).

We watched a hypnotist show… which was funny.  It reminded me of one of the first times I met my husband.  Long before we were dating.  Apparently I gave him “the best hug he’s ever gotten”… I must give good hugs:).  Me and a group of girlfriends went to a UVSC dance where they were having a hypnotist show.  Of course we all got picked to go up on stage… So one of the first memories my husband has of me is acting like a total weirdo in front of all our closest friends, and hundreds of other people.

Ok so here is the 411 on Hypnotist shows.  You go up there, he “hypnotizes” you, and then starts to tell you to do the crazy crap we all know and love.  Some of you may be wondering if it is fake or not.  Well the jury is still out on that… It is fake, in that you know exactly what is happening to you and could stop at any moment if you wanted to.  The reason people don’t stop is because they know if they do, they will get sent off the stage, and will miss a perfect opportunity to perform on stage and act crazy… with no social repercussions.  “What? I was hypnotized”.  The reason I’m not sure if hypnotism is real or not, is because some of the stuff I myself was doing is not the kind of thing that I would normally do.  I am not the type of person who likes to be in the spotlight.  And Never would I do that embarrassing stuff (dancing like n’sync, or having my tongue stuck out of my mouth for a few minutes) in front of the UVSC meat market crowd, yet, that night it didn’t seem like that big of a deal.  Maybe hypnotism is just like having a few drinks to take away your inhibitions… without the booze.  So, that is they only reason I think I may have been hypnotized.  Plus, my friend Kat was doing some crazy crap, that I have no idea how she did it.  She was yelling at the guy in “Chinese” for like 5 minutes, then he grabbed her up in his arms, “put her to sleep” and was flopping her around like a rag doll… I don’t know.  Not really typical behavior of us.  But I do remember thinking the whole time “Man, we are totally getting away with not being hypnotized”, until I realized that was what everyone was doing too.  So there you go,  my theory on hypnosis. Anyway back to our regularly scheduled program…

Daddy and Carmen won the super slide race.

I was trying to get Carmen to smile while waiting in line for the bumper cars…

Nice, umm… let’s try that again…

Yep… impossible.  This fake one was the best I could get out of her… Oh well still funny.

They HAD to ride the ponies… it was one of the biggest deals of the day.  Carmen got to ride Shorty (whatta shawty?) AGAIN this year… Need proof?  I’m sure you do.  I wrote about it in last years post.

She was really giggin out about riding the ponies.

So at aroung 10 pm we were all getting tired, but Lauren still had 22 tickets left.  She decided to let Kaia try to win a goldfish… which she did.  Then obviously Carmen wanted a gold fish.  I very plainly said NO, because I knew I would be the one to take care of the dumb thing… and then it would not be, because I can hardly ever remember to water my plants.  Then it would die, and I would have the guilt of killing a living thing on my conscience.  But nooooo.  “Aunty Lauren” has to give my kids whatever they want (or what she thinks they would want i.e. Moseley+cotton candy) So of course she went ahead and got Carmen a goldfish too.  I tried to convince Carmen to give it to Kody but then she looks at me with puppy dog eyes and says “I don’t wanna give it to Kody”.  Then in the parking lot I tried to convince her to “leave it at the fair, so it can have fun” and then she said “No… if we leave it here, it might die”.  So there we were, back to the guilt thing again.  Sooooo, yep… here we are.  The proud owners of a fish.We had to go get fish food anyway, so we got the goldfish a little friend while we were there.  Carmen named them “Leaver and Fatty”. 

The name “Fatty” is self explanatory with the size of the small one’s belly,  and “Leaver”?… Who knows where she got that one?

All I know is, if Fatty turns out to be Preggy… and we end up with like 50 of those things in there… I am going to take her up to Huntington beach and “Leave ‘er” (and all the spawn) in Lauren’s bath tub…

*Update* Yeah… Those fish are already dead.  We tried, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

baby shower

My super awesome friends threw me a baby shower.  Wendy had it at her beautiful home, and made me her specialty- Crepes.  MMMMMmmmm… bananas and nutella in a crepe… so delicious! Picture pages ain’t all she does folks!  Eve made the adorable hand knit decorations and party favors in orange and green, so cute!

All my closest friends gathered to celebrate the coming of my new baby boy.

They all pitched in and got me the one thing I really needed the most… A double stroller.

I hate being the center of attention but it was really worth it because I also got some other really cute baby clothes, and baby stuff that is super cute and will come in very useful for this new baby.

I am pretty excited to see him in this…

So thanks hunnys! You are the best.

struggling

Since I had my girls weekend last week, Lee decided he needed a guys weekend as well, and since his cousin (that he hardly ever gets to see because he is a military doctor) invited him to Mesquite to get some good hookups for golf… he jumped at the chance. Unfortunate timing, I would say, since I am in my last month of pregnancy and this baby is already so huge… but I let him go, none the less.
He is still there, and I haven’t had any signs of labor so far… so that is good. And Lauren’s husband was out of town too, so she came to stay with me just in case I did go into labor, I wouldn’t be alone. We got baby sitters both nights and went out to dinner and movies, which was really nice because I don’t know the next time I will get to do that for a while.
On the flip side, I seem to have lost my mind yesterday because I cant seem to go two seconds without getting hurt. Last night before we left, I was chasing my dear sweet 2 year old who refused to listen to me, down the stairs and slipped, landing right on my back and falling down a few steps. Luckily I didn’t land on my belly… but I did get pretty bruised up trying to catch myself on the railing (which didn’t work). I was ok enough to still go out, especially because that would be a lot less work sitting in a movie than it would be to chase Carmen around some more.
Then I thought the drama was over until I was rummaging through my purse this morning looking for my keys while walking to the front door to lock it. Unfortunately I was so flustered from trying to get that same dear sweet 2 year old ready for church and loaded in the car, that I forgot to look for the small step leading to our front porch. I then kicked it as hard as I could with an open toed shoe, and being top heavy as it is, went right down… hard. Once again I must have angels looking out for me because I didn’t hit my belly. The brunt of it was on my hand and knee, and when I realized what had happened I was laying on my side with the contents of my purse spilled out next to me.
Lauren was not fortunate to see either of these embarrassing feats of acrobatics, lucky for me, because I’m sure they would have been a sight to behold.
Needless to say, I am not feeling so great now. I feel like I have been in a car accident, which is really just wonderful because being at my huge pregnant state, I was already having a hard time getting around with all my joints aching all the time. Now I feel like I cant even move. I probably shouldn’t, since I cant seem to stay on my feet anyway, but that doesn’t make for such easy parenting.
I took a nap after our super early church ended. Carmen woke up an hour after I fell asleep, which was definitely not long enough of a nap after all that commotion. So I just thought I would put a show on in my room, and let her watch it while I slept a little longer. Not a good idea, since I really was exhausted. When I fell back to sleep it was like I took a sedative, and I had no idea what Carmen was doing. I woke up to see her standing next to my bed with white all over her face, holding a spoon. She said “Ice cream” as she ran back out of my door, but I thought surely she had just gotten a small container of yogurt out of the fridge right?… wrong. I staggered out to open the door to my bedroom to find the entire carton of ice cream sitting on the carpet and her and tiger helping themselves to a Sunday treat. Awesome.
I need Lee back here… I am losing it. And unfortunately as soon as he gets back, he goes right back to work. I don’t know how I am going to make it through the next few weeks.
I went to the doctor on thursday, and she said she will strip my membranes this Friday to see if that will get things moving. If that doesn’t work, I am going to probably be induced the week after that.
I have been so nervous about the actual labor and delivery, I have forgotten to be nervous about having 2 kids to attend to. And after this weekend of such sweet obedience (sarcasm, if you can’t tell) from Carmen, I am in for a real treat. Although I guess the reason I haven’t been stressing about that as much is because I am the type that feels like if I have my physical strength back, I can accomplish anything. It is just making it to that point that worries me, because I literally have no physical strength left anymore, and that just does not work with Carmen. She is way too strong willed, and smart. She knows if she can make it under the table or behind the chaise lounge, I can’t get to her to do anything about her behavior… and she’s right, I can’t. And there is only so much that can be done with threats. I guess you can never really appreciate your health and strength, until it’s gone.
Anyway so yeah, that was my fun, and not so fun weekend.
Sorry about that long post… rant over.

girls weekend

I have this really awesome group of girl friends. 

We have sewing night every other week to escape mommy hood for a few hours.  We pretend to sew or do other things crafty but really we just get together to gab.  Once a year we do a sewing night on steroids and ditch our kids and husbands and go away for the weekend.  This year we went to Huntington Beach.  Eve couldn’t come this year and we really missed her.

We ate lots of delicious treats,

did pedicures,

read magazines, and talked until the wee hours of the morning.

Here we are trying to make the cankles go away.

Since no houses in huntington have AC, my ankles were like coffee cans almost the entire weekend.

We got to watch a bootleg copy of Twilight on DVD, and yes Edward is still swoon-worthy even when he’s a little fuzzy. 

Then me and the other preggos almost put ourselves into labor by shopping all day.  It was really fun, and exhausting. I think every mom needs a weekend away to remember that she still a fun chick and not just the maid.  I am so glad I have a group of down girls to do that with.  I really love my beautiful, funny girlies.  We were even told by one of the store clerks that we should be on a reality show.  I agree… I am always super entertained by the antics that go on.

Luckily Chantel sent me these pictures so that I had something to document the weekend with, because of course, when Lee went to get a new battery for my camera, the dude gave him the wrong one.  So still no camera for me at the moment.

new years eve

We headed up to Huntington to spend new years with Dave and Lauren. We played games and ate good food, it was really fun.
Bartering stink beans is surprisingly more fun than I previously imagined, although sitting on the floor to play cards is no easy task for this pregnant body. Everybody else also joined in a game of spoons, but they were playing with it plastic kiddie knives. I decided between the lunging forward and pulling something, and the accidental belly stabbing possibilities, I had probably better sit that one out. It sounded like an accident waiting to happen. It was fun to watch everyone else panic though.

Most of the other couples that came also had little girls in the toddler range.  Which made for a fun night for Carmen.  But we quickly learned that it is very hard to play cards on the floor with one kid or another plowing through the circle every few minutes.  That, and we learned that you should never have that many little girls in the same house without having enough princess dresses AND matching princess high heels.  We had more than one meltdown about not being able to find Carmen’s “other princess shoe”.

The girls had a lot of fun together.

They also looked very cute when they finally settled under Lauren’s quilt to watch a movie.

Luckily Ashley managed to get these pictures because I am horrible at remembering to bring my camera and take pictures.

We poured some warm martinellis and watched some fireworks through a big tree, it was a really fun night :).

frick!

I finally go to post and wordpress is typing my letters backwards… Fate doesn’t want me to blog.

Ok since it is now working I will give a  recap of the past few weeks of no posting.  It should probably be 3 different posts, but I just don’t wanna.

It was thanksgiving, which means I hosted my (count ‘em) 4th thanksgiving dinner.  Remember I have only been married 5 years, so I am a veteran by now I think.  I am huge and tired right now, so I gave all the hard cooking jobs to Lee’s mother and sister Mignon.  The stuff I did make turned out good, so that was a relief.  I did not however have the energy to take a single picture the whole time Lee’s family was in town, so whatev.  No pics of delicious turkeys or anything. It was really fun to have them visit.  But having that many people in my house is pretty good birth control… Not that I’m not already pregnant, but it pretty much reaffirmed that I want a small family, and therefore this will probably be my last child. (if I have anything to say about it, but how much control do I have…really?)

We visited the beach a lot while they were here and Scott took some really cute pictures of Lee and Carmen, so here they are.

Since then I have been nesting like crazy.  I have been going through and trying to organize all the baby clothes that Lauren is letting me borrow, thank you Lauren!  She is a life saver. I really don’t need anything for this new baby, other than tiny diapers, and a double stroller (which is probably something I don’t really need, right now anyway) I finally switched Carmen into her big girl bed and converted the toddler bed back into a crib.  She is still adjusting to this new state of affairs… As soon as I set up all the crib bedding, she opened up one of the drawers in the changing table, pulled out a binky, climbed into the crib, pulled the quilt onto herself and said “I’m the baby”.  So… this should be fun.  But all in all I am feeling really good. I actually feel prepared, which is such a huge relief for me.  If I could just get Carmen 100% potty trained, it will be smooth sailing.

Then today amidst the thousands of loads of laundry I was trying to catch up on, I went on a little bit of a baking spree.  While Lee’s family was here they taught me how to grind my own wheat, which is actually much better than I previously imagined.  So I made us some whole wheat waffles, then I wanted to use the rest of my flour to make bread.  Now, I consider myself to be a pretty competent cook, I love to bake and I think my stuff usually turns out really good, but for the freaking life of me I cannot bake a decent loaf of bread.  I don’t know what my problem is, I have tried so many times, and every single time I am disappointed.  I think my problem this time was that I didn’t let the bread rise long enough, but I have let bread rise too long in the past, so I figure I just don’t have the touch.  I just want to drop kick the two loaves I made today.

Anyway, since I was so bummed about my sucky bread skills, and since lee has been begging me to make him these cookies I decided to whip him up some of these million dollar cookies.

Million-Dollar Caramel Cookies

(Makes 4 dozen)

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar, plus 1 Tbs
• 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 1⁄2 cups flour, plus 1⁄4 cup
• 3⁄4 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 Heath candy bars
• 1 bag Rolo chewy caramels

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. In a medium bowl, beat butter and sugars until fluffy, then add eggs and vanilla and beat well.

2. In a separate bowl, mix 2 1⁄2 cups flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture a little bit at a time and blend well. If the dough feels too sticky, sprinkle in a little extra flour. Cover and chill dough in fridge for about 30 minutes.

3. Chop Heath bars into small pieces. Place in a small bowl and toss with 1 Tbs sugar.

4. Once dough has chilled, wrap a piece around each caramel, forming a 1-inch ball and covering the candy completely. Dip top of the dough ball into the candy topping and place on parchment-lined baking sheet.

5. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes. Cookies will look quite soft, but do not overbake. Cool in pan slightly, then move to a rack or the counter to finish cooling. Store in a covered container.

These kind of made up for the bread fiasco, at least I got to eat caramel.

Now that I am all caught up on blogging I am exhausted and will leave you with this one last nubbin of cuteness from Carmen.

Carmen: “What’s that?” (pointing to my protruding belly)

Me: “It’s a baby.”

Carmen: “That’s not a baby, it’s a tomato!”

Then she laughed like it was the funniest thing she’d ever said.