A real post

We are just about all settled into my parents house. We moved in about two weeks ago so that we can save some money to buy our own house. And since Lori got married the end of May, they had three extra bedrooms, that they so kindly let us move into. Zach and I took over the room that Lori was in and my mom moved her sewing stuff into her pantry room so that Madie could have her own room. My dad is in the process of adding on to the house so that there is more room. He is making the pantry/sewing room bigger and their closet bigger (which my mom has always wanted). Since he is doing that he knocked out the wall between the closet in the pantry/sewing room and our room so that our closet is now twice as big as it was before. We are super thankful for the extra storage space that gives us.

Now that we are all settled and I finished the scrapbook I made for my dad for Father's day (which I'm going to try and get pictures of on my other blog in the next few days) I can finally start on the projects for the craft exchange people signed up for several months ago. Sorry for those who signed up on mine, I didn't forget about you. Something is coming shortly.

Madie gets funnier and smarter each day. She is little miss independent! She loves to drink out of a regular cup. If she sees one she points to it and does her little "I want that" dance (which means that she bobbs up and down). Once I hand it to her and takes it over to the fridge and holds it up like she wants water in it (my parents fridge has the in the door water and ice dispenser). Yesterday she was ok with me filling it up for her but today she decided that I needed to lift her up so that she can do it herself. She loves the "Once there was a Snowman" song. She saw a snowman in one of her Elmo books yesterday and pointed to it and said "man" and started moving her hands up above her head and dancing. She wanted me to sing it to her and do the motions with her. So we did that a couple of times and when I started singing it and doing the motions myself, she grabbed onto my hands so that I could help her do them. I thought it was so cute.

She gets so worried if her sippy cup falls over. She thinks that means that it spilled, which is sometimes true, but not always. And if there is a towel near by she will go get it and pat it on the ground like she is cleaning up the mess. It is so funny!

This was before we moved from our apt. She was carrying around the pool toy and the next thing I knew she was sitting on the bathroom floor wearing it and clapping.

There is so much for Madie to explore here. She loves the backyard!!!!! To the point that we eat breakfast out there and sometimes dinner because apparently its not enough to just go play outside three or four times a day. Zach was trying to work the sprinkler and Madie decided she needed it. At one point, she was grabbing on to it and trying to take it away from Zach.

She has discovered shoes. She tries to put them on by herself, but can't and so she gets mad and then gets even more mad when I try to help her put them on. Sometimes, though, she will just bring a shoe or two to me and sit down so that I will put them on her. These were the two that she picked earlier tonight.

I put her hair into a little pony tail for the first time on Saturday. I don't think she has quite enough hair yet. It's plenty long enough, it's just really thin on top still. But I thought she looked cute.

Here is a picture of her first big head injury. She has become quite the little monkey and feels the need to climb onto everything, and when I say everything, I mean everything!!! She was standing on the seat of the little picnic table and fell head first onto the concrete. I didn't freak out, I just called Kristi to see what I needed to do or look for. This picture is actually from a couple of days after it happened, so the bruise was almost gone. It healed really quickly though, I was surprised it only took about a week for it to go away.

Madie made Grandpa's day a couple of Sundays ago. She sat on his lap to read the comics. Yes, that is a slotted spoon she is holding. She thinks she is a little chef and likes to get the spoons and spatulas out of the drawer in the kitchen.

We watched Madie's friend Ethan about a week ago. They really enjoyed playing in the backyard and taking turns on the slide, which Madie has figured out how to climb up and go down all by herself (the going down part she has had mastered for quite some time but the climbing up, not so much).

I thought this was a really cute picture of Ethan.

Here is Madie's new room. I think I would like to go through and paint purple butterflies on the white part of the walls.

Here is a close up of her curtains.

I will post pics of our bedroom once I have our curtains done so you can get a better feel for what it looks like. But in case anyone is super curious, three of the walls are cream and we have a chocolate brown accent wall and the curtains are a dark sage, along with the dustruffle (once I make it) and the body pillow.

Stampin' Up's Last Chance List

Stampin' Up is putting out a new catalog in July and so that means they are discontinuing some items in the current catalog. Check out the list here: http://www.stampinup.com/ECWeb/CategoryPage.aspx?categoryID=310. Items on this list can only be ordered until June 30th and if you order through me you can get the preferred pricing. Let me know if you are interesting in anything or if you would like to host a party anytime. If you host in June you can earn extra hostess benefits (and who doesn't like to get extra FREE stuff?!?!?)!!

New Entry Coming Soon!

I promise that I haven't fallen completly off the face of the earth. We have been super busy the past couple of weeks with helping for Lori's wedding and moving. I will probably still be super busy for the rest of this week, so the beginning of next week a real post is coming. I promise!

Party time! (picture overload)

Madison had her first birthday on Friday! We celebrated on Sunday with some of my extended family and then had a party for her on the 16th. It ended up just being Ana, my mom, Lori & Justin and Kristi's family, but we had a good time. For the Sunday party I made her an Elmo cake and an Elmo cupcake. I knew that if I just put a whole cake in front of her she would be very upset when I took it away but I didn't care if she ate a whole cupcake, so that is why I did both. She got some super cute clothes and some stacking cups and a touch-and-feel book (thanks, Wendi, Madie loves the book). It amazes me how quickly she learns things, it only took a couple of times reading the book before Madie knew where to feel on the pages.  

Here is the cake from her Sunday party

For her Saturday party, we had pizza and cupcakes and went swimming. Madie wanted nothing to do with the pool at first but she slowly warmed up to it. We took her again tonight and it didn't take as long for her to stop screaming (despite what the post date says, it is Monday night now). For that party I made several of the sesame street characters. I did Oscar,  Grover, Cookie and Elmo.

And because I didn't want to make 2 1/2 dozen sesame street characters, this is what I did with the rest:

Madie enjoying her Elmo cupcake

She wanted to share :)

Madie wanted to play with her toys as soon as she opened them, of course, and couldn't care less about the clothes she got (however, I am very greatful for all of the cute clothes she got). Thanks, Kristi, for the super cute Elmo farm play set.

Thanks Grandma 'roney for the animal zoo. Madie and Katie had fun with it before it was even out of the box.

Here are just some random pics from the two parties...

We don't call her "crazy auntie lolo" for no reason :)

Madie got this balloon from Kristi and Jenny and Katie, who stopped by on Madie's birthday to sing to her :)

This one's not from her birthday parties, but I think it is funny. She is really into climbing on things lately, including people, and she managed to climb onto me while I was laying on my side the other day. 

This is Madie's new church dress. It was originally going to be for Lori's wedding but then she changed her colors so Madie got it for her birthday. We got tons of compliments on Sunday about how cute she looked.  

I'll have her stats tomorrow for her weight and height and all of that. She says several words: mama, dada, birbir (which is bird), pupu (which is puppy), ball, no, uhoh, woah, up, and today she said home. She also waves hi and bye and can tell you what a monkey says. And get ready for pacie-free pictures. We try to only give it to her at bed time, since we switched carseats on Friday she no longer gets it in the car, but don't always. But we lost both of her pacies and I was planning on taking them away when we move in a couple of weeks anyway, so I was not going to go buy new ones tonight. She did fall asleep without any crying, surprisingly, so hopefully it won't be too terrible after all (although she gets shots tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes).

Cute pics

The other day Madison decided to squeeze behind her elmo table. I thought it was super funny and so I took some pictures and they actually turned out to be really cute shots of her. (And the shirt was made for her by my friend Paula as part of the previous blog craft exchange (see post Giving Makes the Giver Happy). Thanks, it turned out super cute!)

The last one is my favorite. Her face just cracks me up!

Ok, I guess I'll admit it.

I've never really felt like a creative person. Several people lately have made comments to me though about how creative I am. I guess I just don't see it since I usually take my ideas from someone or somewhere else. I realized the other day, though, that I almost never copy an idea in its entirety. There is usually some tweaking that goes on. After making these cupcakes, though, I felt creative. For Madie's birthday I want to make her an Elmo cake, since she loves Elmo. I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it look as cute in frosting as it was in my head. I saw on a food network challenge recently someone make a cake of Sully from Monsters, Inc. and he used this grass tip to make the fur and I thought that would be way cuter than using a star tip to make Elmo. So I went out and bought one. This was my first round. The second round I did the nose a lighter orange so it shows up better. I thought they turned out way cute and I knew I must not have done too bad when I showed one to Madie and asked her who it was she just laughed and reached out for it. She knows its Elmo and that's pretty much all that matters. For her birthday I'm going to try and do several of the Sesame Street characters. I'll post pics of those. 

I didn't feel like making 2 dozen Elmo cupcakes so this is how I decorated the rest. I stole the idea from a cookbook, but they rolled the edges of sugar cookies in sprinkles. 

Sorry the pictures are upside down. We have been really trying lately to get Madie to fall asleep on her own at nap time. She is doing much better, she only cries for about 10 minutes, usually, and then it out. This is how I found her the other day. I thought it was a pretty interesting position. She is laying across her crib the short direction with her leg bent and pushed up against the edge.

Then Zach put her down on Saturday while I was getting my hair cut and this is how she fell asleep. 

Madie's new favorite thing is to help me clean. She loves to carry around the swiffer. She bangs it on the floor and sometimes even drags it across it.

Oh, and despite the pictures on this post, my child really does wear pants. 

Easter Egg Hunt

The Saturday before Easter, Madie went to her first Easter party at my parents' house. All of her cousins were there. She did pretty well, despite the fact that it was nap time for a decent chunk of the party. The kids all ate some mac & cheese for lunch, hunted for eggs (inside since it had been raining and was all gross outside), decorated cookies and took turns hitting the Easter pinata. 

Madie giving her new bunny a kiss. 

Madie with most of her cousins and their new stuffed animals.

And the race is on...

Madie got sidetracked on the way to the hunt by this 5 gallon bucket. She thought she would see if her basket fit inside of it. 

Taking a break from trying the eat the egg to play with the dog. She spent more time at the door near the puppy than she did looking for eggs.

For some reason, Madie decided that she needed to crawl under the step ladder and sit underneath it for a while. 

Madie wasn't too fond of the pinata but she did enjoy walking around with the candy hanging out of her mouth.

On Easter morning, the Easter bunny had brought Madie a new Elmo movie. She went right for it and after unsuccessfully trying to open it, did with it what she does with everything - put it in her mouth.