Hello!

Yes!  We are all still alive.  I didn't mean to take a 3 1/2 week blog break.  It just sort of happened.  I guess writing about our week just wore me out. ;)  So since I've been checked on by multiple friends and family members, I figured I'd jump on here and give an update.

• Life got busy when I ended up with 4 Thirty-One parties in the span of 2 weeks.  3 of those were done on Facebook.  That is a really fun way to party.  It's also really easy after you do the prep work.  However, the prep work took me many nights to pull off.  I did a lot of research, came up with a script that I liked, found pictures to use, and had to make videos to go with it.  That made that two week time period even more busy.  The good news is.... I MET MY GOAL!  I am super excited about that!  I am already all registered for conference.  My hotel room is reserved and my flight is booked.  I would have wanted to go anyway, but I really wanted to go this year because it's the 10 year anniversary of 31 so it's suppose to be all that more great.  They say that if you attend the conference, you will increase your business by 40%.  I'm hoping and praying that is true!

• Things wrapped up with MOPS.  We had a good last meeting and then things were set in motion to start planning next year.  I've already attended one steering meeting and gotten to meet some of the moms I will be working with.  I really love the ladies in our MOPS group.  They are all so genuine, nice and giving of themselves!  We also had a family fun night. This was an event to register early and invite perspective moms.  We have to cap our group out at 130 because of childcare and as of the Family Fun night we already had 91 registered.  It's going to be a great year!  We also had a MOPS play date last week, and we have a moms night out tonight.  Joining MOPS was one of the best decisions I have made!  We are going on a leadership retreat in a few weekends from now and I am looking forward to it. (EDIT: As of this morning we only have 16 spaces left. Wow!)

• I've talked on here many times about how I am on some Facebook buy/sell/swap type of pages.  It's basically like going to a virtual garage sale.  Well one of the kid pages that I liked to visit was having some drama with a bad admin.  I sat back and watched.  I had a friend that was affected by all the drama, but I didn't think it was my battle to fight.  Long story short, I made a very respectful comment about a situation and it got deleted.  So I went to the "good" admin and just wrote a message saying enough was enough.  One thing led to another and message after message back and forth... and she deleted the bad admin and 4 days later I was the new admin.  After the bad admin got deleted, people were coming out of the woodwork saying she was mean to them or banned their friend, etc.  It was CRAZY!  It's all good now, though.  It is a group of 4300 people, so that keeps me busy in my spare time.  I enjoy it though.  I was upfront with her about my time commitment.  My daughter and family come first.  I help out when I'm available, but don't stress out when I'm not.  The other admin is really sweet and we seem to have a lot in common.  Our families are actually meeting for dinner this weekend.  So a bad situation turned good and I may have made a new friend!

• We were gearing up to be on the hunt for a house and then we found out that just wasn't going to happen.  Since our condo hasn't been rented for over 2 years, and we took a big loss on it the first year (sitting empty for so many months and the flood), they are offering us a VERY small loan.  To the point where it wouldn't even be worth it.  So that bummed us out, but we're trying to believe that there is a reason for all of this.  So our plan is to hopefully find a house to rent come August.  Either way, we are NOT staying in our current place.  It was a last minute emergency decision to move in here.  The apartment itself isn't too bad, but the street noise is awful.  So we'll be looking for a house in a few months.  Just under different terms.  Out renter's lease is up in August too, so hopefully she will be re-upping.  She's been a really good renter!

• Michael's job is going well.  I'm not sure if I mentioned it here or not, but he got placed back under his first boss.  He really likes her, so this wasn't a bad thing at all.  He also got moved from a cubicle into an office.  He does share it with another guy, because their work sort of goes hand in hand.  He likes the guy and having the office... for the most part.  A lot of people are coming in and out all day long to talk to the other guy, so he does sort of miss the quiet of his corner cubicle.  But it's still a good thing!

• Olivia is doing well.  She's growing like crazy.  Mainly, her feet are growing like crazy.  We bought her a pair of size 7 sandals the day or two before Easter.  The sandals were big on her feet with plenty of room.  Her toes are now hanging off the edge.  It's insane.  So in 2 months we have now moved to size 8's.  I am hoping that these can at least get us through the summer, but I'm doubtful.  We wear sandals down here until late September/early October.  The rest of her seems to be staying close to the same.  She's still wearing all of her 24 month/2T summer clothes.

That's really about all.  I have pictures and posts to write all the way back from late April.  I will try to get on that soon!  I can't believe Olivia will be 2 in less than a month!  We are gearing up for a BUSY June!

A Week In the Life--Saturday and Sunday

We had a whirlwind of a weekend.  That is not usually the case.  There are a lot of times that we don't even leave the house, but we were on the go this weekend.

It started out slow on Saturday morning

Riding

Flying

and stringing.

We had a birthday party that we needed to attend, so we started getting ready.

Michael had to run to work (long story), so that spun things into a whirlwind of crazy.

When he got back we ate lunch on the run and made the 50 minute trek to attend our "Ohio friends" birthday party.  It was at a splash park.

It was pretty cold on Saturday.  The high was only 70.  I packed Olivia a suit just in case it ended up feeling hotter than I was expecting (that happens to me a lot her in TX), but I was fully intending on skipping the water fun.  However, when we got to the party Olivia really wanted to get in and Michael really wanted her to get in.  So I gave in and changed her clothes.

We got there a little late, which is why it doesn't look like many kids are in the water.  A lot of them were already trying to warm up.  Olivia kept saying it was "cold water", but then she'd run right back in.  Our friend John kept saying she was "so brave" and "fearless".  That isn't her norm.  She's usually pretty cautious.

She lasted about 10 minutes.  She had fun, but then it was time to have cake and dry off.

We let her have a few bites of our cake AND let her enjoy her first ever Capri Sun.  Watch out! :)

There was a pond at the park and she liked going down and looking at the ducks.

 After the party we headed over to our friends house and visited for a few hours.  Since it's sort of a long drive we like to make it worth it.

The party was right in the middle of nap time, so it was Olivia's first time trying to skip a nap.  She did great, but as soon as we got in the car to head home, she was out.  Unfortunately for her, mommy and boppa were starving, so we stopped for dinner after about 20 minutes of driving.  She was super crabby at first, but then did fine.

We just played with her when we got home.

After she went to bed, I worked on some Thirty-One stuff and Michael watched a movie.  I know it seems like I do a lot of 31 stuff.  I actually don't.  There are some weeks where I do absolutely nothing.  But I have 3 to 4 virtual parties coming up on Facebook.  I've never done one of those before, so I had to do all the prep work--writing the script, finding the pictures, setting up the events.  Hopefully it will all pay off! :)

I don't have any pictures from Sunday.

We went to church in the morning.

We spent all of nap time making videos for my virtual parties.

We played with Olivia in the afternoon.

We headed out for some cheap dinner and drove around looking at different areas to see if we'd like to live there.  We have a few months left before our lease is up and we are trying to figure out what our next option is.

Our evening was much of the same.  We both went to bed exhausted.  Needless to say, Olivia and I are having a lazy day today!  We may still be in our pajamas....   :)

A Week In the Life--Friday

Our Friday started out the same as always--rushing around getting ready for The Little Gym.

Our class is at 9:30.

Miss Christi wasn't there, but her sister Miss Jamie was our sub.

This is her helping Olivia through one of the skills of the week. 

She had to hang from the bar in front of her and then turn in a circle and do a hand change.  I've mentioned before that she's not great with hanging (which is why Miss Jamie is holding her and walking her through the steps), but when she got done she started clapping for herself and said, "YAY! I did it!"  She doesn't know she can't hang! ;)

After class we headed to Target.  I had to pick up a few necessities.  I'm also in charge of putting together a basket from our table for the MOPS family fun night.  I started shopping for that.

As soon as we got home, she went to play... She didn't even bother to take her shoes off.

She played with all sorts of toys by herself until lunch.

Then, as usual, lunch and nap.

Cutie pie!

After nap she watched a little word world.

Then we had to take something to the office,

so we extended it into a walk in the "big car".

She was not thrilled with coming inside, so I thought we could play on the patio for a bit.

Our outing was brief because it ended up being a little colder than I thought.

Despite our short time out there and my efforts to keep her away from the water table, we needed a change of clothes when we came in.

She played with her instruments while I got dinner ready.

After dinner, her and Michael played with her instruments some more, had a picnic, played with her stars (the gears) and spent some time doing ABCMouse.

Our night was pretty much our usual--Olivia's bedtime routine, and then TV on the x-box and surfing the web.  Our Friday nights are exciting around here.  Don't be jealous! ;)

A Week In The Life--Thursday

It has been in the 80's the last couple of days, but today's high was suppose to be in the 50's.  How ridiculous is that.  This is May... in Texas.  As I type this it is 42 degrees outside.  Ay yi yi....

So the crazy weather + the only day I had nothing on the calendar = staying at home all day!

Olivia asked for breakfast pretty much first thing.

Then we just had a lazy morning of play

Usually her people and animals end up all over the place throughout the day.  Last night they got picked up and put on the shelf.  She ran over and said, "Oooh, so many friends!"

After playing with her Little People it was time for a tea party.

Which led to "cooking" in her kitchen.

We did a puzzle and then got her dressed for the day.

I got her all set up with some coloring and then I started doing a good cleaning of the kitchen while she was confined to her high chair!

She colored three pictures and then did some stickers.

As you can see, she's no longer worried about the stickers overlapping.  Now she overlaps them as much as she can.

She did one water color page

Since I had the art basket out, I went ahead and did a quick little intro of the scissors.

Then she spent about twenty minutes whining.  She asked for lunch pretty early.  I started getting it going, but she just wanted my attention.  She briefly fluttered from blocks to her magnetic letters to her train stacker, but mostly she stood at my feet trying to get me to move faster or something.

I am finding that the older she gets, the harder it is to have days where we just stay at home all day.  It's like she knows from the very beginning that it's going to be an "at home" day and she immediately turns into a high maintenance attention seeker who has suddenly forgotten how to entertain herself. Ugh.

Lunch!

 She was a little happier with food in her belly.  She climbed up in the chair and started reading reciting the five little monkeys book---over and over.

Hallelujah, we made it to nap!  She made up for yesterday's poor nap by giving me a little longer of one today.

I spent nap time finishing up cleaning the kitchen (including scrubbing the floor), showering (yes, in the middle of the afternoon) and then being lazy watching Friday Night Lights and surfing the web.

After nap she spotted the file folder games that I had worked on.

This is her saying "Is that a "G"? Noooooo" until she found the right letter.

She did great at the letter matching.

She really wanted to do this one because of the animals.  She's not great at number recognition though.  She can count and do one to one correspondence type things, but she only knows a few of her numbers.  So I ended up just sort of walking her through this one.  Then she did part of a shapes one and lost interest.

We spent the rest of the afternoon just playing with the same old things.  We had a little music party.  We played with Elmo and her babies. She revisited her Little People.  She threw her ball around and rode on her little scooter thing. I had put it in the garage, but recently brought it back up thinking she may want to scoot around on it after riding on the open gym toys.

I was convinced that since it was such a long day, I was going to have to use the TV as a babysitter in order to make dinner.  Shockingly, she was perfectly happy to play with Mr. Potato Head the entire time.

After dinner she played with Michael and then he gave her a bath.

She loves to climb on our "big bed", so we snuggled in there for a bit.  She likes to pretend to go to sleep.  She tells us "good night" and "sweet dreams" and then starts fake snoring.  She's such a funny girl.

I brought a stack of books in and we just laid there reading until it was time to do her night time routine.  My favorite part was her prayer.  Usually I pray the same prayer and have her try to repeat it.  I say it in first person so that when she repeats it, it is like she is praying.  I figure this is the best way to teach her how to pray at this age.  Well, tonight she had her own prayer... and it was nothing like the one I pray, but still super sweet and memorable.

She said, "Thank you God for this day.  Thank you God for my friends.  Thank you for my light.  Thank you for my babies.  Thank you for myself. Amen."  

The first two lines she learned at MOPS.  The rest, she made up along the way.  I couldn't help but laugh at the "thank you for myself".

That pretty much sums up our day.

A Week In The Life--Wednesday

WOW!  We had sort of a crazy day today. At least I feel like it was a little crazy.  It's probably not going to come across too crazy in this blog though.  Needless to say, I am tired!  The fact that this blog is even happening is a miracle! :)

Our morning started out as usual.  We had MOPS to get to, so we quickly got ready and Olivia ate breakfast.  I feel like no matter how much time I allot myself in the morning, it is never enough.  Hats off to all of you Mamas who have to pack up your kids every morning and get to work.  I think I'd always be late.  Either that or getting up at 4 AM to get started. :)

I paused in the middle of getting ready to see what Olivia was up to.

She was just rocking her babies. I love that she can entertain herself. :)

We headed to MOPS (and arrived on time!) and enjoyed our morning.  It was our last one of the season. :(  But there are already lots of summer activities planned, which is good!  I have been blessed to sit at a table with some pretty great women.  

As soon as we got home it was time for lunch and then nap.

My entire nap time was filled with doing different 31 things.  It wasn't meant to be like that, but one thing after another just kept popping up.  I am working hard to meet my goal by May 23rd!!

Olivia's nap was on the shorter side today.

She now wakes up and immediately asks for "orange juice and a snack!".

She has decided that our ottoman (that is pushed in front of the TV to keep her away) is her little table.  She always takes her snack there and then starts eating.

Next she played with her peek-a-boo blocks while I did a few more things online.

The camera was sitting on the arm of the chair.  She came over and grabbed it and pretended to take a picture of herself.  She said, "Take picture with your camera"... so that's what I did.  Cutie!

Since I was sitting in my chair on the computer, she thought it was time for ABCMouse.

So I obliged.

After that we read books, played with her Little People, sang some songs, rocked some babies and explored with some finger puppets.

I started picking some things up and trying to organize my kitchen counter and she asked for Word World.

This is what she does... she goes and gets the remotes out.

Since she hadn't watched any TV yet this week, and it was about time for me to start dinner, I went ahead and put it on.  ((It's seeming like she always gets her way in this post, but that really isn't the case.  I do say no sometimes.  I promise!))

She ran over, climbed up on the chair and waited patiently for the x-box to load.

She watched Word World while I unloaded and loaded the dishwasher.  I feel like that's all I do most days.  Prepare food.  Serve food.  Clean up after meal.  Repeat.  Thankfully, my dear husband called and asked if I had started dinner yet and if I wanted to go out to eat.  Folks, this is my love language! :)  I don't even care where we eat.  I don't have to cook and clean up? Yes, please.  As I've mentioned, we have been pinching pennies lately so we rarely go out to eat.  This was a treat!

We met for dinner and caught each other up on our day.  

Olivia does great at restaurants, so that's always nice.

When we got home, Olivia ran around outside for about 10 minutes.

There is a bunny that is always around our front door. This is her asking where the bunny went.

When we got inside, Olivia requested that Michael read her some books.

They also played with her stuffed animals and toy food.

I messed around online and tried to catch up on all of the things I missed during the day.

We did Olivia's bedtime routine.

Michael did some work and I did some 31 training. Then one of my recruits wanted to talk to me about some 31 questions she had, so I spent a half hour talking to her.  It has just been a 31 kind of day!  Like with most things, when it rains it pours I guess.

Now it's time for bed.

Are you bored with my week so far?  I suddenly feel really weird sharing my boring life, but now I'm committed....

A Week In the Life--Tuesday

Our morning started a little earlier than yesterday.  I sat and enjoyed a cup of coffee while talking to Michael and Olivia ran around drinking her milk and enjoying that she got to see her Boppa before he left for work.

Next up was breakfast.  Olivia had my "go to" breakfast for her--oatmeal with half of a banana, pumpkin and cinnamon mixed in.

We got showered, dressed and our bags packed.  We headed to our friends house for a play date.  We made a pit stop at Wal-Mart for some water shoes!

We spent the morning enjoying some outdoor fun.

Don't be confused by Olivia's look--she just takes a little bit to warm up. :)

We came home and had lunch.  Then she played for a few minutes.

Then it was off to nap.  I caught up on Facebook, sent a few emails, made some phone calls and then just relaxed.

I love nap time, but I love seeing this pretty little face after two hours too!

And then this is what she did when I said it was time to change her diaper.  She's a goof.

Do you think she has enough stuffed animals in there?!?

Snack was a green monster! Mmm!

She played with various toys by herself for about an hour.

I cleaned up the kitchen and did the dishes, worked on some file folders I'm making, stopped to read her a book a few times, and picked up a few things around the house.

After about an hour she started getting antsy and a little whiny--usually from being bored.  When this happens, I try to play with her.  This is usually when I will pull out one of our educational toys or things that I keep up in her closet.

I recently made her a letter matching game (more on that in another blog), so we decided to give that a shot.

That lasted about ten minutes and then we moved on to building towers.

That lasted about another ten minutes.  Then she asked to do ABC Mouse.  So that's what we did.

I got to working on dinner and Olivia went back to playing! :)

After dinner I headed out to run some errands.  You know--fun stuff like laminating some file folders, buying a birthday gift and replacing my broken curling iron.  Oh, and I got a hair cut.  It's not my favorite thing to do, but it had to be done.

When I got home I dyed my hair.  Also, not my favorite thing to do but it was way over due.

Such a fun and exciting day, huh? ;)