Best Kind of Jewelry…

FREE plastic beads of all sorts of colors!

 

Our family headed to downtown Pensacola yesterday to watch (take part in, can’t really just watch) the Mardi Gras Grand parade! WE HAD A BLAST!!!! We loaded the girls up in the wagon, packed a picnic and claimed our bead catching spot 1.5 hours early. We also met up with our awesome friends Maddie and Kristen to have a little family date.

A Mardi Gras tradition is the king cake. Long story short, there is a plastic baby Jesus inside one of the pieces. I picked up a yummy cream cheese flavored king cake from the local bakery. We all had a piece while waiting for the parade to start, but no one found the baby. I later had it in my piece I ate today. The girls enjoyed the sugar non the less.

Karl and Reese decided to find a spot back away from the crowd, while Brady and I manned the fence. It worked out so that we had our special bonding time individually. Reese really enjoyed herself. She liked wearing the beads, and opening the candy she caught immediately, at one point she was in the middle of eating a moon pie, then was tossed more chocolate. So she threw away her moon pie so that she could eat the chocolate. She also liked collecting the beads that went over peoples’ head and landed at her feet. Towards the end I grabbed her and held her on the fence, and she scored a Donald Duck doll (of course while sucking on a lollipop)!!! That was the grab of the day!!! Look how cute she is dragging around all her loot! When asked what her favorite part was, she answered ‘lollipop’!

Brady really enjoyed observing all the people and of course begging people for more stuff. Brady has always soaked up attention, so when people would come directly up to her and put necklaces on her because they thought she was cute, Brady was in heaven. She constantly put her hands out asking for beads at every float. But between floats she would take off all the beads she was given and place them in her bag and then assume her position to ask for more. She did take a few moon pie breaks as well. She talked about the parade for hours afterwards. Even started throwing her loot around the house, pretending to be on a float.

Look at all the CHEAP PLASTIC BEADS we now have in our possession…I know you are jealous!

Part of the Job

The girls were up early this morning, 4ish. Karl, being the awesome dad/husband that he is, was up with them.

 

On the way to Brady’s preschool, Reese fell asleep in the car. So that I wouldn’t waste gas driving all the way home, I parked in a nearby mall’s parking lot and sat in the car for two hours while Reese napped. Luckily I had a novel in the car.

 

In all the time I had sitting in the car, I was thinking about sitting there and how really I didn’t mind it one bit. It made be think about the things I happily do as a mom to provide for my kids, things that other people label as ‘sacrifices’ yet I don’t see them that way.

 

Here is the small list I came up with:

-sitting in the van, so my kids can finish their much needed nap

-listening to the same CDs over and over again, one because they love that music, two so they aren’t exposed to the inappropriate music on the radio (honestly, I have been driving in the car by myself, and find I don’t enjoy the radio as much, and end up listening to those CDs)

-sleeping on the floor on the girls’ bedroom to make them feel safe enough to fall asleep

-eating my meals after theirs, because I have to address their needs

-cleaning up water from the entire bathroom floor, because when I feel asleep when they were watching their TV show, they decided to have a water fight

-taking twice as long to cook dinner because I have little ‘helpers’

-folding the laundry more than once because again I have little helpers

 

Honestly I think being a stay at home mom allows me to have my one focus on my kids, which in turn allows me to enjoy tasks that others might call sacrifices. I hope that when I have to return to work, I will still be able to enjoy all tasks like this.

 

So moms out there, young and old, what are the small things you enjoy that others might see as a sacrifice?

Wordless Wednesday: Family Fitness Fun

Wordless Wednesday: Tired Reesey Poo

MATHCOUNTS

Well let’s start from the beginning. Last fall in the newsletter for Brady’s school there was an inquiry for a volunteer for the MATHCOUNTS team for the middle school students. I love math so I jumped on the opportunity, however I had to bring my kids with me since they meet at 3:00 in the afternoon. The principal set up for a 7th grader to do her community service during the club meetings and watch the girls. The girls LOVED spending time with Morgan!

 

So as the MATHCOUNTS coach, I felt like I spent the whole fall and most of the winter just trying to figure what was best to prepare the kids for the local competition. A competition I didn’t know much about (well I knew nothing, let’s be honest). But I spent a lot of the time feeling like I was getting no where, or where I wanted to with them.

 

In January, I got it figured out and really started seeing the light bulbs going off, it was really rewarding.

 

Well this is where this post is going…. The regional MATHCOUNTS competition was this past weekend. We brought 7 students and from there also entered a four person team. MY STUDENTS PLACED 2ND IN TEAM AND ONE GIRL PLACED 2ND IN INDIVIDUALS!!!! I had a wonderful Saturday with my students and watching them working super hard on the math problems. ALso, of the top ten students we had three!!!! What made me really happy was all three were girls…yah for girls loving math in middle school!

 

Well, at this competition the top teams and top two individuals move onto the state level competition!!!! Yes, my team is competing in Orlando at the end of March…. WOHOO!

 

I am so proud of the kids! I want to post a picture of them, but I didn’t get the families permission! 

Family Fun

Here is what we did with Karl’s day off last Monday. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

 

I will add though every time a wave hit Brady’s toes she ran back yelling “That one was the most fun ever!”

Roundy-Rounds

“Roundy-Rounds” in the Orthner household is a Sunday ritual. For those that don’t know, Roundy-rounds refers to NASCAR. Karl has been OBESSESSED from the day I met him (well before then actually, but I can only speak about this time forward). During the 10 month season of NASCAR our weekend plans must revolve around when the race is on. I have found this to be the PERFECT time to grocery shop.

 

The biggest race of the year, Daytona 500, is also the first race of the year. We have had a kick off party every year since we have been married. Deployments and stomach bugs have interrupted the party from truly being annual but who’s counting. In the past years we fried a turkey and that was always a hit. This year I decided to go a different more creative route. We had a Daytona International Party…yep a DIP where all the guests were asked to bring a dip!

 

We had five families over and it was a blast. With a total of ten kids over playing you would have thought it was a mad house, but it went really well. Our friends brought over their jump house…AWESOME! Our dips included artichoke, pizza dip, queso meat, buffalo chicken, french onion, fruit dip, and more yumminess! Here is pictures of all the fun

 

 

Also another tradition I started last year was home made GO HARVICK shirts for the girls. I cut up one of Karl’s old Kevin Harvick fan club shirts (yes, you read that right, he is a long standing member of the fan club, I love my little dork) and then sew together a toddler sized shirt.

 

Here is this year’s shirts, well dresses since my girlie girls always insist on wearing dresses:

 

And I posed them for the 2010/2011 comparison!

GO HARVICK!

Orthnerisms: Science Lesson

2/22/11 Brady: “My vitamins are in my belly and they are turning into pee-pees right now, Right Mommy?”

               Me: “Well, they are probably becoming stinkies.”

              Brady: “No, meat makes stinkies”

2/24/11 This is a great follow up to above comment

               Reese is grabbing the back of her diaper.

               Me: “Did you do stinkies?” Reese just looks at me, I check and I was right, full diaper.

               Me: “You need to tell me when you do stinkies”

               Reese: “I did stinkies!”

               Me: laugh and then say “Tell right when you do it, so I can change you”

               Reese: “I have a sandwich in my diaper”

               Me: “what?!?!?”

               Reese: “I have a sandwich and vitamins in my diaper!”

               Well I guess she listened to my digestion lesson with Brady.

Shopaholic

So I have been looking forward to March because I have sent in my mind that would be the month I would do Brady’s spring clothes shopping. Reese gets the hand me downs. Well, the past week has been in the mid 70s so I decided to go ahead and get out last years short sleeved clothes and put them all out in the closet. Plus I figured this would give me a good idea of what all I need to buy…

 

Here is the girls’ closets after I brought everything out that would fit them again this year (remember while looking at these, I have NOT shopped this season)

 

Brady’s Closet…

Reese’s Closet…

 

Also note, they both have a load of laundry with the pasts week’s short sleeved clothes in it….UGH

 

First, how did this happen? Can you tell I love clothes and shopping for them…which leads me to my next point…I am somewhat depressed about the lack of need to shop for spring clothing in March.