play-time, paint, projects, parties,

It's nice to feel like I'm back in my routine. (I use the word 'routine' loosely.)  A better way of saying it would probably be, It's nice to feel like I'm back in my chaos.  At least when I'm home with all of my stuff in my space, and more importantly all of the kids' stuff, it feels a little more like controlled chaos.

So here's a little of this and that that's going on here in our corner.

Garrett and Addie are learning to play together better everyday.  And what I mean by 'play' is, Garrett is learning more patience, and Addie is adjusting well to life as a little sister.  Garrett's new thing, that happens all too often throughout the day, is trying to ride on her back while she crawls.  And when she stops crawling or gets pinned by him, it turns into kind of a bear hug/head lock/tackle move.  I'm working on saying 'no' less to G when he's 'playing' with Addie, because I don't want him to think I don't want them to play together.  I just say, be soft and be careful more often.  Garrett will be 2 in a week, and Addie is 10 months today.  Addie does a great job at keeping up with her brother.  She crawls super fast.  Pulls herself up to standing on everything and cruising along furniture pretty quick, too.  She says 'mmm' when she eats.  And she'll also say mama, dada, yeah, and uh-oh, all on queue.

 I know it looks rough, but she was laughing and fighting back, so what's a mom to do?

Last Sunday we went to Pasadena to help our friend, Robyn, work on her mom's dining room.  Her mom had a brain aneurysm 3 months ago and has been in the hospital and in rehab since.  It was a pretty tragic situation, but she's a strong women and is making great progress and amazes her therapists everyday.  Robyn wanted to re-do her moms dining room for when she gets to come home.  We had high hopes of getting a lot done, but have you every stripped wall paper?  We were there for about 7 hours and only got about three forths of it off the walls.  I felt bad leaving them in such a mess!  The kids did well and let us all work most of the time.  It was good to spend time with Robyn.  (We met her in Utah and now she lives in Idaho.)

I also made this for Robyn.  She asked me to help her with a Spring decoration almost a year ago.  And I'm a loser and never got around to it so I finally just made one for her.  I only took a picture because hers is cuter than the one I made myself a few years ago and I want to re-do mine to look more like hers.

I've been working on birthday parties and other projects when I can.  Garrett wasn't going to get a party this year, but I'm a party planning ninja, and even hope to someday make a little money at it.  So long story short, I had a very simple idea for a family party for Garrett, (like, 6 or 7 people). I told my mother-in-law about it, our wheels started turning, and now, a week from today we'll be celebrating with 50-60 of our friends and family.  Addie is getting a little over-shadowed I feel, and we may just celebrate her in Utah the week of Thanksgiving, instead of another party here with a lot of the same people, just 6 weeks later.  I never want people to feel obligated to come, and especially not to bring gifts!  But I love a good party, so I'll probably throw them more often than not.

And Paul's birthday is just 4 days before Addie's.  So last year, he got nothing. And the year before that we had a 6 week old we were getting used to, so also, nothing. So I want to do a little something for him this year, too.