Hannah's Sunshine Party

The idea for a "You Are My Sunshine" birthday party for Hannah Bear came together for several reasons:

1. She asks that the entire family sing "You Are My Sunshine" to her every single night before bed.
2. I'm obsessed with the way she says, "yellow."
3. She literally lights up our world.

It was that easy!  I started searching Pinterest and Etsy for "You Are My Sunshine" parties and all things pink and yellow.  

I received many questions about what, exactly, is a "You Are My Sunshine" party.

This, my friends, is just that.  Enjoy the pictures from our little tot's party!

Lucky for me, I found a wonderful printable pack for the party on Etsy.  And those "You Are My Sunshine" lyrics on the mantle?  I found those here.

More on this love story later:)

Hannah was so excited to pass out the goodie bags with the princess popcorn inside!

Our invitation (in the frame) came from here.

All in all, it was a perfect party.  Everything came together very well, and the birthday girl thoroughly enjoyed herself.  I think she felt really special, and that's all that I was after:)

Silent Sunday

behind

I know I'm behind - I'm sorry:(  I have to say, while we've been home from our vacations for a couple of weeks now, I've either felt like I just haven't had time to blog or I've had other things to do rather than catch up the blog.  I'm trying to be better...  This morning, I thought if I made it part of our morning routine while the kids were eating breakfast and before our day really got started, I might be better off.  That idea lasted for .3 seconds before Hannah crawled into my lap and said, "Be wif Mommy."

Clearly becoming part of our morning routine won't work.  So now I'm going for while Hannah sleeps. We shall see.  I made a small list of things to accomplish while she's sleeping today and so far I've done half of one task and taken a small nap:(  I'm going to have to wean myself from napping when the kids nap so that I can actually have a sense of accomplishment around here.  Things are piling up, and when the kids are awake, I try my hardest to play and do fun things and go fun places.  When they go down at night, I'm so tired, I can barely get anything done.

Taking up lots of my time lately are our digital files...which is another reason I'm behind on my blog.  Trying to make sure our family photos are updated and backed-up is a huge task, or so it seems to me anyway.  I'm not sure how other families do this well, but I'd love to know.  I feel like it's over-taking my life.  In the last week, I thought we lost a huge file of photos.  This caused me to have to upload 7000 something photos from a back up drive again, which took a lot of time.  I know have a separate back-up for both computers and everything is also in the cloud.  I think.  That's the tricky part!  I've also decided it is impossible to name every photo I take, so I'm trying to let that go.  It's bothering me a bit, but we're going to try it out because otherwise I'm never going to catch up!

And that doesn't even touch on the fact that the kids' yearly photo books are nearly non-existent, with the exception of Jack's two-year-old book which I finished last year...

So I'm feeling behind...

But in the meantime, we're having a fun summer, and the little lovelies are keeping me very busy!

Jack dressed Hannah up so they could play Iron Man together!

We made an "invisible" jet.  I'm not sure why it appears that Hannah was glaring...

We played in the rain!

When we went to a birthday party last weekend, Jack was reunited with a little love of his from preschool.

I just love this picture!

How Hannah eats pizza:)

Cheese!

We are trying to spend lots of time at the pool - this was their best attempt at a picture together.  So it goes.

Jack is working up to the diving board - first with his floatie, and then today without it!

Hannah is loving the pool this year!

Jack started Tae Kwon Do after asking for nearly six months, and he's loving it!

He's just so handsome...

Hannah's been helping me cook, although she wasn't loving having her picture taken that night.

We've gone for walks (or drives).  Hannah's not quite sure about the Gator just yet...

I've been getting ready for Hannah's birthday party this weekend.  I still have 7,345 things to do, but I think it's going to be really cute, and she's so excited!

And then there's this...

When Daddy had to change the band-aid on Jack's foot, he was a little scared.  So Hannah crawled over and held his hand:)

Oh, I love those two so much!  Even though I'm overwhelmed and feeling behind in everything, I am so lucky that I get to spend this special time with them - especially while they are so little.

The Golden Ticket and Cash Money

I know it sounds like we've won the lottery, but I assure you, that's not the case:)

I've been thinking about how well our family vacations went this summer, and I think I've figured out "the golden ticket."  I think the reason things went smoothly is honestly because we took everything in stride.  In fact, things didn't go smoothly at all, but we didn't expect them to go smoothly from the get-go.

That might initially sound bad - the whole lower-your-expectations-bit.  But it's somewhat true.  Vacationing with little kids is very different than vacationing without kids, and if you accept that and understand that hiccups will happen, it seems easier to handle them when they inevitably do.

There were plenty of hiccups between our two excursions, and I'm not even going to lie and say I can't remember them because we had so much fun.  Because I do remember them.  But I also remember that Brad and I would just look at each other and laugh and make jokes about how "perfectly" events were going...  A "Yep, that sounds about right..." attitude!

Some of our hiccups, just for laughs (because you know you want to know...):

• Hannah threw up 40 minutes into our drive to the airport.  And again 10 minutes after we got her all cleaned up and back in the car.  And again right before we got to the airport.
• While watching the Fountains at Bellagio, Hannah dropped her binky over the wall.  It was out of sight and not within reach ~ she wasn't happy.  Thankfully, Grandma brought an extra in her purse!
• While in Vegas, we looked for Jack's sunglasses, but decided they must have been left behind in the car at the airport.  We never found them on the trip.  I did find them when I unpacked his backpack of toys - which we'd had with us the entire time.
• Our kids fell out of bed in the middle of the night a total of four times...twice in Vegas, once at the Grand Canyon, and once at Great Wolf Lodge.  Despite blockades and pillow walls.  Causing my eye to re-injure itself only once!
• We didn't bring the strollers on the day we had to take the longest walk of the entire trip - through the MGM Grand to get to The Rainforest Cafe.
• On the way to the Children's Museum, we happened to see Elmo on the side of the street.  Hannah wouldn't stop asking to "see Elmo!" so we had to go down a few blocks, turn around, pull over to the curb, and wave money out the window so we could get a picture of Elmo.  She then spent the rest of the trip asking to see Elmo's picture - it was seriously her highlight of the trip!

• We survived a total of 183 (I'm exaggerating!) temper tantrums/meltdowns, from Jack and Hannah combined.
• It rained every day we were at the beach.
• On the night we decided to get dressed up and go to a nice dinner at the beach, the following occurred:
• our original destination had an hour and a half wait
• it started raining as we walked to a restaurant nearby
• Jack randomly threw up moments before we were heading to the dessert table (we didn't stay for dessert!)
• After driving to the Golden Corral, Hannah asked for her binky and lovey.  We realized they were still in the hotel room.  She cried.  And cried.  And cried.  We went back to the hotel, and then drove (for the second time) to dinner.

See?  Not perfect vacations at all...but they were so much fun!  The good, the bad, and the ugly, they all count!

*****

On our beach vacation, we realized that when it sounds like Hannah is saying, "Cash money," she's actually saying, "That's Mommy!"  It took awhile for us to figure it out, and it became so funny, and sounds so similar that we really just got a major kick out of it.  We all say it now, in Hannah's little voice, and it makes us smile.

This is maybe not quite as funny, but she also asks, "What's that?" a lot.  Except it sounds like she's saying, "Oh, s*!%!"  Brad's still not convinced she's not actually saying that, but I'm pretty sure.  We don't walk around saying that, and it also coincides with when a "What's that?" would make sense.  But still...  When I'm in public, I make a big production saying, "Oh, that's a ____..." to clear up any confusion!

She makes us laugh!

Happy 4th!

Today was a good day.

The fourth of July is always one of my favorites, but this one was especially good.  

We're home and unpacked.  The skies were sunny - no rain...

We played and napped and ate and played some more.

Happy Birthday, to this country that I love.

To the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Home Sweet Home

It feels good to be home.  It's cozy here, our favorite spot - just the way it's supposed to be.

We had so much fun on our beach vacation with the littles - they are at such fun ages for ocean and water park play!  And I'm proud of myself because I was really present for it, every second.  This time with them is so precious, and I cherish it.  I took some pictures, but not nearly as many as I usually do.  Why?  Because I was busy playing with my family - dodging the waves, swimming in the pool, and going down the slides.  I did take some great video clips, so we'll have to see what I can do with all of those...

Here are some of my favorite photos from our trip together - enjoy!

I'm thinking maybe we'll turn this into our yearly summer vacation spot...  Such good memories are made there!