Wordless Wednesday: My baby is no longer a Baby!!!!

Attic Treasures

Karl and I are having fun lately with what I am going to refer to as attic treasures. Karl’s mother saved almost all of his childhood toys. Right before we moved to FL she passed them down to us. Because we were overwhelmed with moving we put them aside and didn’t give them much thought. Slowly we are digging through these Rubbermaid totes of goodies one by one. You may have seen pictures of the girls playing with his old train set or the 1980s fisher price little people. Those were the first of the boxes we got into last year and loved playing with them.

 

After the new year however, we have dug through quite a bit more! I started selling things from around the house on ebay. Things such as old purses I won’t use anymore. We also decided to sell some of Karl’s old toys. We sold all his Super Powers (ie batman and superman) items and all his He-Man items. We have made over $400 on these toys. Honestly I have to say I have had a blast selling them and watching the bidding raising slowly through the week and then last minute the price goes through the roof. It is really nice to have an outlet to sell things that have value but you no longer need.

 

However, we have also gotten into some buckets that we are really enjoying ourselves.

 

In October we are planning a trip to Disney. So I have started recording Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so the girls could learn the basic characters of Disney. Oh my goodness, I had no clue how much they would fall in love with that show and all the characters. So look at this GREAT GREAT toy we pulled out of the attic treasures.

He is a tape player that his eyes and mouth move as he reads the story book to you! SO MUCH FUN and yes, this was Karl’s toy when he was a kid! Well, you know Brady and her obsession with clothes, she had Karl dress Mickey up in all the included outifts.

 

Today we were rearranging the totes and consolidating. Well on the bottom of the stack Karl says is his play Mobil castle. I immediately get all excited. He says “Christy, I don’t want to sale that on ebay, I want to keep it!” I have been looking in the stores for a castle that was decently priced for Reese to put her little Disney Princess figurines into. The whole time it was sitting in our garage and it was FREE!

 

Karl set it up with the girls, and the Princesses now have a new home! For those of you who know the Princess and the Frog movie, Brady was excited to find a trumpet in the castle collection for Louis the alligator…

 

Who knows what treasure we will find in the next box we open!

Reese’s Pieces

I mentioned the puzzles last week. But here is a video of her doing a 24 piece puzzle that we bought only 4 days ago!!!!

For those of you with multiple age children this puzzle is awesome. It is three puzzles in one. Each puzzle has a different number of pieces (24, 48, 100) and once completed they can be slid together to create an overall bigger picture. It is perfect for us, Reese can do the 24 piece while Brady works on the harder one,  but to them they are working on the same puzzle together! I got it at Target.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Disney-Princess-Panoramic-Puzzle/dp/B003NFH25K

 

They only had the princesses at my Target, but on Amazon it looks like they have Cars and Dora as well. I highly recommend this puzzle, great idea!

Special Day at Chick-Fil-A

Here is how our Valentine’s Family date…

Every Chick-Fil-A is locally owned and they all run their own family fun nights. The restaurant went all out on V-day!

All ladies young and old received a carnation!

We got table service complete with printed menus. There were table clothes, plastic plates and cups, silver plastic ware. So fancy!!!!

The cow came to greet us, much to Brady’s dismay. Reese was somewhat a good sport about it!

All four of us had the same favorite part! FREE DESSERT!!!! They gave us the option of cheesecake, lemon pie or brownie sundae…BROWNIE SUNDAES AROUND THE HOUSE PLEASE…

We got out of there with only a $20 tab to pay…now that is my kind of date: family, food and fun!

Wordless Wednesday: Bath Color Tablet fun

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