Dyeing Eggs!

The Saturday before Easter, we set up the girls to dye Easter eggs. I loved dyeing eggs as a little girl, and this is a tradition that will continue for so many years! Even when my brother and I were older, and  newly married, we would dye eggs! 

My mom bought dye cups, where all you had to do was add a little vinegar and water, and the color would appear. It was easy having the little cups with the dye pads at the bottom. We layed out a towel to protect her table and decided to lay the dyed eggs in a muffin tin to dry. I hate punching out those little cardboard holes that are on the dye boxes.

We only bought a dozen eggs to split between the three girls. MC and A were able to dye 3 each, and G dyed the rest.

The girls had so much fun!

DJ got in the action and showed the girls how to dip an egg in two colors.

After baths and after the eggs dried, we let G pick out stickers to put on them.

She also received a build a bear dye kit with glitter, and we let her use those on a few eggs too. She picked out three to go home with Amelia, and then decided on her four eggs, and MCs four eggs.

We put the baskets out waiting for the Easter bunny to arrive!!!

Charles Emerson Designs~ I won!

I was so excited to get on my blogger Saturday night and read two sweet comments from readers.... One, of which informed that I had won a giveaway over at Pinterest Told Me To! Sheaffer announced the winner on Thursday, and i'm a daily reader of her blog, but I guess I didn't read down far enough to get the news on Thursday!

I was so excited to win a $50.00 credit to Charles Emerson Designs! If you've not heard of CED, be sure to check out the website! Charles' jewelry has beautiful pieces and at affordable prices!!!

This is what I chose.

The Dorthy

The Chevron

The Alexandra (in black)

One of my favorite things about Charles Emerson Designs is that they accept Paypal! I ten dot have an opinion that my paypal funds are "extras" and every so often I splurge on things for the girls or myself.... looks like i'll be splurging on myself a bit more often!

Thank you so much to Erin and Sheaffer for the giveaway!!! I cannot wait to receive my jewelry pieces!

Good Friday & Saturday

The girls and I drove to my parents house on Good Friday. I had originally planned that we would leave the night before, but I just wasn't packed & ready. They were out of school on Good Friday, so it gave me the excuse to take the day off!

Meggie and Amelia had so much fun playing together! These girls are going to be trouble as they get older!

My brother cooked us dinner Friday night~ homemade chicken alfredo~ from scratch y'all!!! I'll be sharing this recipe later this week! Let me just say, it put Olive Garden to shame.

Saturday was rainy, and my mom and I were going to look at furniture for Addy's room, but decided not to go anywhere.

G and my mom made cupcakes Saturday afternoon.

I did actually sneak out to Hobby Lobby and Wal-Mart and enjoyed a little mommy break!

My mom was brave and let G ice the cupcakes too! Thankfully, she thought it was too hard and decided she would rather just put the eggs on top.

MC played while G decorated.

We had a relaxing Saturday morning and afternoon, which doesn't happen too often at my mom's house since we're always on the go there!

Preschool Easter Parties

The girls celebrated Easter at their preschool the day before Good Friday. I feel so blessed that they attend a Christian preschool, and one that celebrates Easter! I heard so much on the news about schools not celebrating Easter, and not having Easter eggs or Easter bunnies, but calling it "spring eggs" and having "spring bunnies" and that just makes me sad.

G's party was at noon, so I was able to go on my lunch break, and then MC's party was at 3:00, so I went right after work to catch the last little bit.

G's class listening to the rules for their egg hunt.

Waiting by the steps for the go ahead to hunt eggs.

G's class

Racing to get eggs!

After the egg hunt, the kids went back to their class and divided out all of the eggs evenly between them. Each child received 11 eggs.

After the eggs were divided, they went to their table to have snack.

They had cupcakes, carrots w/ ranch dip, and pretzels.

G really enjoyed the icing!

She picked up this hat out of the home living center, and insisted on wearing it the rest of the party!

I was taking a picture of G and her friend L, and one of her classmates was a total photo bomb!

After their snacks, they were allowed to open their eggs and choose one thing to eat. G chose a candy bracelet!

I missed MCs egg hunt, but made it in time for their snacks. 

MC was a little fussy. I think it's because their snack time was pushed back and she thought I was going to take her home before she had a chance to eat anything! 

Her class enjoyed fruit, goldfish, pretzels, and cheese.

One of the little boys has a baby brother, and MC kept going over to the baby and saying, "baby, baby"...... She loves babies!

We had a fun day celebrating Easter with their school!

Our Favorite Books

I'm linking up at Kelly's Korner again for "Show Us Your Life". Today's theme is Favorite Kid Books.... we love books in this house, and I always make sure to give the girls a book on Christmas and Easter, and their birthdays. My mom is also good about buying them Halloween, Thanksgiving, or other holiday books! Needless to say, we have an overflowing bookshelf upstairs in the playroom, and both of the girls have books in their own bedroom.

We try to read to the girls every night before bed. DJ and I even read to Gretchen when I was pregnant with her! This is the very first book we bought when I found out I was pregnant with a girl and the book we would read to Gretchen.

I absolutely love this story, as it's all about two parent bears who wanted a baby, and how the baby grew inside, and then the baby came home. It's just such a sweet book.

Now that we are a little more busy with full time jobs, two kids, and our third on the way, reading is not something that happens every night, but it does happen most nights. I've started to get the girls on the couch before bedtime and the three of us read a book together, and then they go to their respective rooms, and we'll say prayers with each of them separately. 

Here are a few of our favorite books:

Ladybug Girl is about a brave little girl who thinks finds heroic things to do while her parents are busy in the house and her big brother is playing with a friend. I recently bought "Ladybug Girl at the Beach" for G~ she received it in her Easter basket~ but we haven't had a chance to read it.

Fancy Nancy is another one of my favorites. I don't think Nancy could be any more fabulous! She loves to be fancy and explore and loves dogs. We have several Fancy Nancy books and G received another one for Easter! 

I was first introduced to Fancy Nancy when I was pregnant with Gretchen. I received two of her books at a baby shower, and they were signed by the people who gave them to me. It was and still is one of my favorite baby shower gifts that we've received!

When I was pregnant with MC, I was given a Fancy Nancy baby shower because we were so in love with the books! 

.........

The next two books are fun for all ages, and I really like to read them to my therapy kids and to my girls.

We have several of the "If You Give a ________ a _______" books. I think "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" is the original book, and it's fun to let kids draw what they think would happen if they gave a mouse a cookie, and then serve cookies and milk as a snack! It also teaches cause and effect.

And, I can rave and rave about several Dr. Seuss books, but this classic is my favorite! It's great to read to your baby because of the rhyming sing-song pattern in the words and teaches your baby intonation of our speech. It's also easy for kids to memorize to feel like they are reading themselves, and it has several sight words and it's easy to predict what words will come next due to the rhyming and patterns.

And, if you're looking to expand on this book, there are a gazillion pins out there for you! 

I read this book every year to my speech kids as well, and plan an activity to go along with it. This year, I gave them a template of the Cat's hat, and we wrote vocabulary words on the lines and listened for the words in the book.

Thanks so much for stopping by my little nook!

I hope you've enjoyed a peek at some of our favorite books! Have you read any of these?

Playing Catch Up

I discovered a few pictures on my camera card earlier this week, and figured I needed to share them!

We actually left for Branson on St. Patrick's day, but I still wanted to make the day fun for the girls. I decided to fix them an easy breakfast since we were leaving early, and decided upon Lucky Charms, "gold coins" (banana slices), and green colored greek yogurt. The girls loved their breakfast!

I also surprised them with more 'gold' on the drive, by packaging up dried pineapple slices for a snack.

When we came back from Branson, my parents came up. My stepdad trains labrador retrievers for duck hunting, and he had a hunt test about 45 minutes from our house. It worked out perfectly that they could come up for a few days. MC and papa really bonded while he was here:

G actually told my mom that she doesn't understand why papa actually comes because he's never here when he's here! (The last few times they've visited, he's had hunt tests.)

DJ and I also decided that we needed to start with the transitions for MC before baby A arrives in July. Our first step was getting her to sleep in her toddler bed. DJ took the front of her crib off on the Friday of spring break.

The first two nights she did surprisingly well! She layed right down like always and went right to sleep. 

But, Sunday and Monday nights and the nights to follow were not fun! It took several nights of her crying and us trying to help (unsuccessfully)  for her to sleep in her bed.

There were several nights where we found her sleeping on the floor behind her bedroom door. G also decided to sleep on her floor one night- but, at least she had pillows and blankets!

When we left for Easter at my mom's this past weekend, MC still wasn't doing well in her big girl bed. I was super nervous coming home, but thankfully she's done great!  We've only had 1-2 minutes of her fussing, and then she's out! 

After the first week of bad nights, I later found out that she had two top teeth coming in, and I think that's why she did so great and then so horrible, and now so great again!

Our next obstacle, will be getting rid of her "dee dee" (paci) and i'm not looking forward to those fussy nights!

G's Recipe

The girls and I got home a little after 4 last evening. I decided that I would go upstairs and work on a few bows. MC went upstairs with me, and G decided to stay downstairs to color.

MC and I came downstairs around 5 so I could put dinner in the oven. Much to my surprise, G informed me that she had cooked dinner for us.

She brought us to the kitchen, and I found this
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She had gotten out her cookware, and found her ingredients in the fridge. She added grapes, fruit snacks, grape jelly, and ketchup.

Both girls actually ate it right up! Yes, I let them eat it.

On the bright side, G had put all of her dirty dishes in the sink, and put all of her ingredients back into the fridge. She had also spooned the individual servings into each bowl. I'm kind of proud of the independence she showed!

The last two mornings, she has poured herself a bowl of cereal and fixed a glass of water for her breakfast. She also had fruit snacks yesterday morning. DJ and I don't typically give her fruit snacks for breakfast, but since she did it all herself, we let her!

So, do you think you'll be trying out this recipe?

A Bunch of Nonsense

I can't believe that it's Tuesday and that it's April 2nd! Wowza~ March totally flew by! This month is going to be just as crazy, but i'm ready for the ride, because that'll mean one more month of work, and one month closer to summer, and two months closer to baby A arriving!

This past weekend the girls and I went to my parents house for Easter. DJ had practice on Saturday, so he came down Saturday afternoon. The girls were out of school on Friday, so I took the day off, and we left around 9 Friday morning.

We got to my mom's just in time for lunch and just hung out. My brother needed to run an errand, so I went with him and drove, so MC could nap in the car. Afterwards, he read my mind and suggested that we get ice cream from Sonic. MC was awake at this point, so we got her out of her seat, and shared our ice cream with her- she was so happy!

Girl did not want to go back in her seat though when it was time! I can't imagine not being able to wiggle around for the 4 hour drive, and then the other hour that it took to run the errand.

I'll upload more pics from this past weekend over the next few days. I haven't had a moment to go through and edit them, let alone look at them!

MC and I decided to play hookie on Monday, and she and I stayed one more night with my mom. We headed home Monday and she slept almost the entire way. It was heavenly.

After the girls went to bed Monday night- we put them to bed early, because they were still so exhausted from the weekend- DJ met the equipment manager and TUs sales rep (who DJ had worked with at Arkansas State) for dinner. I wisely used this time to start playing catch up on laundry, and then to work on some orders.

This "mommy's girl" bow is available on my Facebook page now. I think it's perfect for Mother's day!

I also did this shabby rosette headband and barefoot sandals set! Both will fit a 6-12 month old, and i'm selling the entire set for only $14.00

I keep telling y'all how much I love mustard yellow.... and chevron.... and this boutique bow combines my love for both.

Swoon.... it's only $6.00

When my mom was here over spring break, we purchased this lemon fabric to make a dress for G. I fell in love with the fabric, and MC's birthday is pink lemonade theme, so G will wear her dress- i'll post about it as soon as the weather warms up and I can get a good picture of her in it- plus, I haven't had time to make a headband.

But, I have enough of this fabric to make a bib and burpie, and I totally want to! So, if you want to order a bib and burpie out of it, then let me know and I just may give you a discount, or free shipping, just so I can have an excuse to make the set!

Hope y'all are having a great Tuesday! I feel like it's Monday since I took off yesterday and I know i'm going to be playing catch up at work and home all week!