Happy Valentine’s Day

I first want to start this post today by saying to my friends and family that you are are very dear to me. You all have a special place in my heart and I am lucky to have you as part of my life! Happy Valentine’s to all of you!

 

Our house has been celebrating V-day in several ways this year. We made homemade Valentine’s for our family. The girls really enjoyed the glue and thick embellishments, I am sure the USPS appreciated that since it required extra postage.

 

 

Grandma surprised the girls with a Valentine’s package, that included there ADORABLE outfits and matching dresses for their doll. FYI: Brady posed herself in that second picture. I honestly think it is nativity inspired!

Beppa and GP surprised the girls with a box FULL of chocolate covered strawberries. OH what a treat!!!

Karl and I celebrated with each other on a mid-day date. We asked our good friends, Jeff and Danielle, to watch the girls. I think Brady and Reese were more excited about us leaving on a date then we were. Brady stood at the door looking next door for like 15 minutes.

The girls had a blast with Jeff and Danielle. Here is a picture I snapped when we got home from the date. The girls love showing off their puzzle skills.

Karl and I took this adult only time to do very grown-up activities…eat at Red Robin and play mini-golf! Look at that bottomless Root Beer float!!!!! I say yuck, Karl says yum.

 

Now I am drafting this post on Sunday, so I don’t have pictures from the actual Valentine’s Day. But we are going to a special event at Chick-Fil-a, with reserved seating and free desert. I think it will be a fun family date to so each other how much we love each other!

Raising a True Southern Girl

A true southern girl knows how to be a princess and cook good food right? Brady self taught herself all about princess, so on to the good food. 

 

We have a “Princess and the Frog” cookbook. For those who don’t know, the movie is set in New Orleans. So the cookbook is FULL of good southern recipes. This particular night we were cooking “Naveen’s Green Beans.” Naveen is the prince in the movie. He loves jazz music, so these green beans are all jazzed up.

 

Here is my southern gal, snapping the green beans. She did the WHOLE pot.

 

I think our attempt looks a lot like the cookbook! If you can’t tell, there is garlic, Italian seasoning, mushrooms and water chestnuts mixed in.

When I asked Brady if she thought it looked just like the picture, she stated “Mommy, it isn’t in a brown bowl!”

Autograph Anyone?

Brady has within the last week or two started actually writing her letters. Well, I am probably the only one that can read it. A’s look like H. Y looks like T or F. P looks like i. You get the point, but she is just starting out so we are excited about it.

 

I decided to record her writing her name, because I think it will be fun to look back at each year as her handwriting improves.

 

Moment of Pride and Amazement

So many of you probably read about the ‘paci war’ as my father called it. Today I got Reese to take a nap with no pacis and looks like we are slowly making progress. Or maybe….

 

I just checked the video monitor at 8:45. We had put her to bed at 7:15, and she usually takes an hour and half to fall asleep so I was expecting to see a sleeping toddler. No such luck! This is what I did see…

 

The lights were on and Reese was sitting up in her bed. She had a 24 piece puzzle in there with her. When I turned on the monitor half of the pieces were on the board. I wondered if she had placed them on there, so I sat down and watched her for a while. First she placed one or two pieces on there and then cleared the entire board. In about 6 minutes she completed the whole puzzle (expect for the 2 pieces that are missing)!

 

As I watched I had several emotions running through me….

 

-somewhat a sense of shock

-pride

-wow, my baby girl is no longer a baby

 

I will have to say I teared up.

 

So I watched after she completed to see what she would do next. She dump all the pieces off and went to start it again.

Wordless Wednesday: New Car Seat Covers

Paci Fairy

Last summer, when breaking Brady of her thumb-sucking habit, we gave a ill attempt to eliminate Reese’s pacis.

 

So we decided to give it a go again this Saturday. That night the paci fairy appeared on the dinner table.

We explained that Reese is now a big girl and that pacis are for babies. The paci fairy is going to give them to the babies we know (I listed the names of the babies she knows well). In return for being so nice and giving her pacis to the babies who need them the paci fairy will bring her a surprise in the morning. SO Reese easily and happily placed her pacis in the fairy’s bag.

 

Well, the falling asleep part is where this all fell apart. (By the way, she only got her pacis for sleeping). That first night, we put her to bed at 7:30, and long story short, she finally fell asleep at midnight with me asleep on her floor. That lasted only 3 hours and I couldn’t get her back asleep. SO at 4 she fell asleep in my bed with me, but was up at 7. She only got half the amount of sleep she normally gets. You can see it in her eyes. But she was very excited about all the surprises the paci fairy left for her.

We skipped her nap that next day to help her be able to fall asleep at night. Plan worked, at 7 she was asleep by the time her head hit the pillow. I told Karl it can’t be that easy, only one bad night. I figured we would be on a rollercoaster between good and bad nights. Well as soon as I said that she was awake crying at like 9:30. I sat there with her, by her side, until she fell asleep again at like 11. Now check out how sleepy her eyes looked the next morning!

Well, tonight is our third no paci night. I gave her about an hour of struggling to fall asleep, I don’t want her to get in the habit of me being in there with her, I want her to attempt to self soothe. So at 8:30,  I sat in her doorway and just played with my iPhone until she fell asleep. I recorded this video on my phone at 9:00 exactly, she was out by 9:04!

 

 

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

 

So we are making slow progress, HOPEFULLY…we will see if she sleeps through the night tonight! I wish this wasn’t so heartbreaking to do!

Super Bowl Party: Orthner Style

This year we didn’t know of any Super Bowl parties going on. Not that it matters because we would have had to leave during the first half anyways to put Reese down for the night. But anyways, as I was thinking about past parties and parties in general, I quickly started thinking about the food and all the pigging out I LOVE to do on appetizer type foods. So we decided to eat party foods for dinner tonight, our little family of four, and we did so at our coffee table to complete the atmosphere.

 

 

I didn’t exactly get the party food I dream of (buffalo chicken dip, jalepeno poppers, etc) because we had to make the menu Karl and kid friendly. We did have a mini meat and cheese tray, and I mean mini! But I think it was experience enjoyed by all. Brady was pretty hyper for the rest of the night. We had planned to make cookies and eat with the girls but we had to put that off until they were asleep because Brady had enough natural energy to contain!

 

An interesting observation from the night, which shows the girls’ personalities, was that Brady filled her plate with a little bit of everything and then started eating. Reese on the other hand ate straight from the bowls and used her plate for the food she tasted but didn’t like.

Videos of Brady

Brady at her preschool, doing her favorite work, sound books

 

Brady saying grace…literally

 

Brady being baby Taylor Swift (Mine) Gets really good at 2:00 and 3:00

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: My mom’s got Mad Sewing Skills

As of late…

Brady’s latest obsession is puzzles. She is doing like 5-8 a day now. She is actually doing a puzzle as I am typing this post. She has two princess 50 piece puzzles that we mix together in the same bag and she completes both of them in one sitting. Here is a picture from yesterday morning, first thing after breakfast.

Yesterday, I had out a shirt for Reese and she kept running away from me, but there was Dewy (my velcro dog) staring right at me, so guess who I dressed…. Apparently Reese and Dewy currently wear the same size clothes

Last Thursday the girls went to the dentist. The hygienist gave the girls a glove each, man did that make their day. They have played dentist everyday since. I heard Reese calling “Brady, come here, Brady come lay down”. This is the scene that soon followed. Now, Karl and I have to be patients too.

Preschool Minithon

Brady has been waiting for today for the last few weeks. Today she got to “exercise” at school. They held the annual minithon for fundraising towards classroom supplies and expanding the main campus. Thank you to all of Brady's sponsors: Auntie Andi, Beppa and GP, Danielle, and Grandma and Caddy. All together Brady raised $149.50, WOW!

 

So this morning when Brady woke up she was very excited about the minithon: or to her exercising and then a feast! But when we pulled we saw the middle schoolers were there from the main campus to help out, and when we saw that Morgan (a 7th grader) was there she was extra excited. Morgan is the student that watches the girls while I coach the MATHCOUNTS team. They had line time while Morgan read all 30+ students a story, look where Brady choose to sit!

 

Here are all the students lined up and ready for the signal to GO!

GO BRADY GO!!

Brady did get distracted a few times…

Here is Brady’s number 1 cheerleader watching the days’ events (or playing in the sand)

Brady started slowing down, so her buddy Morgan buddied up with her for encouragement!

Group picture time

Well after Brady successfully completed 17 laps! She decided to have a marathon of her own…the feasting marathon. If there was a prize to be won for eating today Brady literally would have claimed top prize! She ate, turkey, apples, strawberries, chex mix, chicken nugget, tortilla chips and went back at least 5 times to refill her plate. So all the picnic tables were full when we started eating with kids and parents….

This is the scene when Brady was working on her 4th plate, remember she went up again after that! She was the only one eating for like 10-15 minutes. I was in shock. The teacher says she loves to eat snack at preschool and eats all the time! WHOSE CHILD IS THIS?!?!?!!?

Finally after I convinced her to join her friends on the playground, I grabbed a couple more shots of my running and eating cutie!

 

Congrats to Brady and thanks again to all her sponsors!

The Fun Theory

So you have to go to funtheory.com and watch a few of the videos. It is an initiative by Volkswagen to have people do better things in life by simply making it fun. Like make it fun not to speed, or fun to throw away trash correctly, or recycle.

 

My favorite is this one:

 

http://www.thefuntheory.com/piano-staircase

 

I like this for many reasons. When I was in college I read in a magazine, the best way to get exercise in, when you have a busy schedule, is to add it in throughout your day. Things it suggested were parking at the back of the parking lot, or always using the stairs instead of elevator or escalator. I have tried to do this (a little more difficult with young kids) whenever I can! So it made me smile to watch what made people willing to get exercise in throughout the day.

 

Also,  I liked it because I recently realized I need exercise in general to be fun. I really look forward to Zumba. It is like I am in dance classes three days a week again! I will miss other events to Zumba, whereas I used to look for something to interfere with my scheduled exercise time!!!!

 

So if there is something you dread doing in general, see if you can make it fun in some way, then you are a lot more likely to do it!

 

Leave a comment about something you used to dread and made it fun and now like it? I want to hear your ideas! I need tips on how to make cooking dinner fun!