Birthday Project

Amelia has been very much getting into the arts lately. So loves to draw, loves to color, and especially loves to paint. So I figured she would love an art easel. I shopped around for a few, the ones I could afford were all out of stock, the ones I couldn't afford I didn't like quite so much, so I decided to make one. After scouring the web for a few ideas I finally settled on this one, and set off for Home Depot for supplies. I didn't quite follow the outline perfectly, I had to make a few alterations here and there, but after a few very late nights this is the result:

The wood of course was bought from Home Depot and luckily they cut the wood for you for a very small fee. The chalk board is an old picture frame that I had that I just painted the frame and then spray painted the plexi-glass with that chalk spray paint stuff. The art supplies are all from IKEA. There is a roll of paper on a dowel in the middle of the frame that we can just pull in front of the chalk board.

She loves it!! She's had quite a few hours of fun with it already, plus paint on the couch and carpet...we might need to set up some rules. :)

She's "free"!!

Our sweet little girl is now 3 years old!!! Gosh, it's hard to believe. It's sure been a fun few years though. And to celebrate all our joy, we threw a party! Amelia said she wanted a dinosaur party, I wanted to do something more feminine, so we compromised with this:

Dinosaurs and pink frosting!!

Ring-around-the rosies...

The kids had a hard time bringing themselves to hit the pinata, after all, we do all try to teach our kids not to hit. But once the candy fell out, everything was cool again!

All the fun birthday guests. Thanks for coming and making her day pure bliss!

Good Morning Sunshine!

You could probably ask any parent and they would tell you that when their kids wake up it's the best time of day. They are happy and excited to see you, all smiles! Well, that's my Joel. He loves it when Amelia and I barge in when we hear him squirming after his morning nap. This is how that usually goes:

Good morning sunshine!!

Love those red rosy cheeks!

Amelia gets so excited to see him, she's just gotta climb in with him.

And he loves it!

(I love this photo, classic in our house at the moment.) Amelia yelling a song and Joel blowing raspberries. Yep, that's my kids.

And then, this happens. You know the saying, "It's all fun and games until some one gets hurt."? Yeah, well, that usually happens about this time.

But Joel is a good sport.

Making a visit to John Rogers State Park

A friend of mine told me about this great state park up near Santa Monica that had proper polo games. Well, anyone that knows my daughter knows that she is fascinated, no, obsessed with horses. She LOVES them. So, of course he had to go and check it out. My brother and sister-in-law came along to explore. Warning: To anyone that may come and visit us in the near future, we just might take you here. We thought it was awesome!!

Proper Polo Game!! This was pretty cool to watch.

After the game, we followed the hiking trail, and this is what we found. Isn't that view awesome?! And the trail was stroller friendly (thanks for being the muscles Brad! :))

This is how getting Amelia to take a picture goes:

"Amelia look at the camera."

"Come on honey, just smile."

"Don't make me count to three!!"

"Forget it, go play with Josh."

Joel was happy to be along for the ride.

"I think, if you squint real tight, you can almost see our house."

"I love my food!!"

Now that Joel is into solid food, this is a common site around our house. He likes to spit/do raspberries and food ends up EVERYWHERE!!! I'm not kidding, EVERYWHERE!!! He's spit food on the wall, across the table, all over the person feeding him (Amelia tried to feed him once, he spit on her, now she won't even go near him when he eats. :))