I heart Faces-BABIES!!!!

It's no secret that I love newborns. I love the way they smell. I love the sound they make when they are nursing. I even love the sound of their cry. I did this newborn shoot awhile back and couldn't pick my favorite, so I let my girls pick. I saw my friend Sarah's blog this morning and had to join in! (Sarah and I went to middle school together in Kansas. We are both PK's!)

If you love babies like I do, then please waste many hours drooling over them at I Heart Faces blog.

Time for Tea!

My sweet Olivia turned five last month. She is such a girly girl and wanted a tea party.

We set up in the backyard. I used yards of fabric I had for the tablecloths.

We invited our girly friends.

It was the cutest thing I have ever seen. All these little girls knew exactly what to do. They sat and chatted and mixed their tea.

Marvin wore a tie for the special occasion and doubled as the butler. :)

I made these flowers out of napkins and I found the tutorial HERE.

I made these cupcake toppers in Photoshop and had my mini helpers cut them out. I got the cute vintage tea cup graphic on my favorite blog HERE, The Graphics Fairy. If you look closely, the teacups have Olivia's name on them.

I got all of the tea cups and saucers from the Goodwill for 50 cents. That way they had real tea cups and I didn't care if any of them got broken. But I have to say, all these little girls had really good manners. See those little salt shakers? They actually had sugar in them and everyone had their own sugar shaker. By the end of the party, the girls were just eating sugar straight from the shaker! So cute!

I made real crumpets. If you have never made crumpets, they are delicious! Kinda like thicker pancakes. We spread lemon curd and raspberry jelly and then cream on top of that.

Olivia had a great time and enjoyed her friends. Thank you to all her sweet friends that joined us. Happy fifth birthday, Livi!

Take some time to breathe

The month of May really kicked my bottom. (I only say bottom 'cause the other word is not the one we use in our house.) So much happened and when you have small kids it makes small events take so much more energy. You all understand, right?

When I first started blogging I NEEDED to blog. I needed to know I still had some brain cells. I needed to feel like I was speaking and someone without temper tantrums was listening. We've been busy with our first child in school, MOPS, I photographed my first wedding (yay!), and normal life stuff. Blogging became just one more thing on my long list of things to do. I have missed it and will continue to post more.

Lane graduated from Kindergarten! She did so good and I am so amazed at what they learn in a year. The first year you send your first child off to school can be hard on you. We had to adjust to having a separate schedule for one child. I couldn't just volunteer in her class whenever I wanted because I had other small children that I couldn't take with me. She had to ride the bus and I worried if she got to class ok. The year is finally over and we have a few months off to breath. Next year, two kids in school. I can't believe that have gotten this big already!

In May, Josh and I had our 8 year wedding anniversary. Marriage is not boring, that's for sure. And don't let people tell you that you will get tired of waking up to the same face everyday. I love waking up to that man's face every day.

Olivia turned five, and Addy Mae is completely potty trained. So we have just been taking a little time to relax, play with some rolly pollies, and breath.

(Olivia and Addy on a field trip to the Aquarium with Laney's class. This is the same Aquarium that is shown in the movie Crazy Heart. It was filmed in ABQ.)

Summer Book Club!

I had this fabulous idea for a summer book club! After researching some books, I've finally made the book choices and I hope you all like them too. If you've already read them, will you still please join us in the discussion?

We are going to read one book a month and have one meeting a month to discuss the book. If you don't live in my area and want to join along, I will post discussion questions here on my blog and post pictures from our book club meeting and you can give your input in the comments at the end of the post. Now, to introduce the books:

June's Book

The Help. I haven't read it yet, but have heard a lot of good things about it. It's set in the Civil rights era in Jackson, Miss. A young white author and recent college grad returns home to write a book. She decides to write a book, a compilation of stories from the help, the mistreated black women who raise the white children.

The meeting for this book will be on Monday, June 14th, at 7:00 p.m. That gives you 3 and a half weeks to get this book and read it.

I got this book at Costco. This is the most expensive of the three books. I wanted to keep it under $15 a book. I'm sure you could also get this book from the library or buddy up with someone else and share the cost of the books. I will be happy to loan my books out as soon as I'm done reading them. (At the end of the post, I'll talk more about where you can purchase the books.)

July's Book

This is a book I kept eyeing over and over again at Costco. I did a little research and heard some good things. It's a series of letters, back and forth between the author in the story and other people in the Society. It's set in war times. Some say books written in this style can be hard to follow but I've heard this book is well written. It sounds interesting and if you would like to read more reviews, check them out at amazon.

The book club meeting for this book will be on Monday July 12th at 7:00 p.m.

August's book

The Red Tent. This is a book that was recommended to me by two of my book worm friends. Both of them said this was their favorite book of all time. I've wanted to read this for over a year and haven't yet. Some of you may have read this before. I can't wait to read it! Go over to amazon and read the review for this one also.

The meeting for this book will be on Monday, August 9th at 7:00 p.m.

Where to purchase books:

I purchased The Help and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society at Costco. The Red Tent I got at Barnes and Noble for $15. I got all three books for $36.98. However, if you order all three books from www.amazon.com at the same time, you will get free shipping. The cost of the books at amazon are, The Help $13.72, The GLPPPS is $5.99 (paperback), and The Red Tent is $10.20. It's $29.91, if you order from amazon and you'll qualify for free shipping. Not to mention they come right to your front door!

Details:

Book club will be at my house. If you want to join, email me or facebook message me and I will send you my address. My email address is (staples underscore michele at yahoo dot com).

I choose 7:00 p.m. to give the moms time to feed their families and get little ones ready for bed. My children will be here, but my husband is going to keep them locked up in the other room to watch a movie. (Not literally locked up.) Kids would never be banned and it would not be a huge deal if you brought them, but you might enjoy yourself more if your children were not in attendance. I need a monthly baby fix, so please bring your squishy babies for me to hold.

Snacks, drinks and coffee will be provided. Book club is open to anyone, if you would like to invite a friend. I just need to know how many people will be coming.

Please, please join me in food, fun and semi-intelligent conversation!

(I had to spell check intelligent.)

Michele

Wordless Wednesday

To all the Mother's Who....

These were my gifts from Laney. One she made at school. I am so thankful for a homemade gift that someone else helped her make! The other gift Laney made at home, holed up in the playroom. Scroll down for a close-up.

That would be q-tips and cotton balls wrapped in tampon string. She said they were to put in my purse, in case I need to clean out my ears sometime. She didn't have any rope to tie them up, so she used "those thingies". Don't you just love being a Mom!?

Meet Marvin

We got a dog. We are technically fostering him, but we are pretty sure we are going to adopt him. We just need to take him to the vet and make sure he's healthy. We went to an adopt-a-thon this weekend to just "look" at puppies. Josh has been wanting a basset hound but we were still up in the air about getting a dog and maybe waiting one more year until the girls were older. The basset hound rescue was there and we went over to pet them. Josh spotted Marvin, Marvin spotted Josh, it was love at first sight.

He's a basset hound/beagle mix. He's 18 months old and fully house trained. I don't think we could have found a better fitting dog for our family. He's the perfect size, not too big to knock the girls over and not too small to get squashed by the girls. Marvin loves the girls and the girls love him. He's very patient with them and lets them love on him. He sleeps in our bed or Olivia's bed at night. He's already been dressed up like a princess and a jedi.

He's awesome on a leash. Laney walks him to the bus stop every morning. Marvin hears when the girls wake up and goes in to kiss them. I can't even tell you how calm he is.

Addison was a little scared of Marvin the first day. She wouldn't get off the furniture without being held. So Josh calmly and slowly introduced them and showed her that Marvin won't hurt her. (She saying, "No Daddy, he bite me!")

He started with a leg touch. She freaked and then laughed.

And now she's on the ground petting him and sitting next to him!

She's still a teeny bit scared if he sneaks up on her or jumps on her bed.