OH, LIV.....

Seriously. When will this girl stop getting into things she is not supposed to get into?

"Hey, look Mom! I got into my baby lotion and lathered it into my hair really well. Again!"

"Oh, oops. You don't look so happy about this. Sorry Mom."

I am beginning to think the answer to that is never.

I AM NOT SO GOOD AT....

We all have our things that we are not so great at. I myself, have more than a few, and I am alright with that.

I cannot sew to save my life. Ava came home the other day with a button in her hand. When I asked where it came from she informed me it came off of her uniform jumper. Most Mom'sw would have smiled nicely and said something like "oh, it's alright honey. Let me get my needle and thread out and sew that right back on for you." Not me. I say "oh, it's alright honey." Then I silently say to myself, "Crap. Now I am going to have to take this to Sew What, embarrasinly admit I do not have the skills to sew a button back on to my daughters uniform, and have them do it for me."

I cannot iron. Belive me, I have tried and tried to master the art of ironing and I just can't seem to do it. I can never seem to get the fabric to lay flat on the ironing board to get the wrinkles out. Because of this I have what look like streaks of folded over fabric all over the shirt I was attempting to iron. Not exactly the type of shirt you want to wear out in public. Because of this, I found myself spending quite a lot of dough at the local dry cleaners so my husband could go off to work looking put together and respectable. Lucky for me his job now entails him wearing RiverMarina t-shirts and cargo pants all day.

I cannot wrap presents. At all - really, I am quite horrible at it. I can never seem to get the corners to fold over ever so nice and neat into a nice triangle shape in order to use on little piece of tape to hold it in place. I usually get so frustrated when at this juncture of wrapping that I simply crumble it up at the ends and use 10 pieces of tape to hold it in place. The result is a present that looks as if a 5 year old wrapped it. This is, of course an easy fix. I simply use gift bags instead of wrapping paper. Problem solved.

These are just a few of the things I am not good at.

Anyway, I was reminded of my inability to wrap presents when I looked at pictures from Lucas' birthday celebrations the other day. In particular, the pictures from when he was opening his gift from the Mr. and I. Unfortunately, this gift could not fit in a gift bag, and I was forced to wrap it. Which of course, did not go well. After I cut the wrapping paper, I realized it was not long enough to cover the entire box. Hmmmm. What to do? Cut out two square pieces of wrapping paper to cover the ends of the box that were left uncovered. After doing this, I realized I had no tape. What to do? Well, use the next best thing - masking tape.

Needless to say, the wrap job was horrible.

Lucky for me, Lucas did not care.

Who knows, maybe someday I will master the art of wrapping presents, ironing, and sewing. Until then, I think I will get by just fine.

CELEBRATING WITH FAMILY

After yesterdays festivities, I was absolutely beat, but I managed to keep on keeping on, as we had family over this afternoon to celebrate Lucas' birthday.

We had Ava's dance recital Friday evening, Lucas' friend party Saturday afternoon, went to dinner with friends Saturday evening, and finished the weekend off with a party here with family to celebrate Lucas' birthday. Talk about shoving a whole heck of a lot of things into one weekend, no? Whew.

Anyway, this party was also a big success. It is always so nice to spend time with the family, well, for the most part - Hah! Much fun was had by all, including the birthday boy.

His birthday gift from Grandma Diane. An automatic pencil sharpener. Hmmmm....

And of course, the pencils to go with it.

Turns out all the kids loved this gift [thanks grandma!] and spent the half hour they had before bed time sharpening pencils. Lots and lots of pencils. So many that I can't fit them in their pencil holders.

Nonna spent some time showing Livi how the ever popular monkey sling shot that Papa Scotty got Lucas worked.

Then Liv moved on to Uncle Tommy and Andrea to see what they were up to... Turns out they were playing with Lucas' trick can of food he got from Auntie Cindy. You know, the ones where you say, "I can't open this, can you help?" and when you open it a snake pops out?


Miss Lucia seemed to really like my Grammy, and spent some time with her and her Dora doll.

Nonna got some hugs from the birthday boy,

and some from Anthony Thomas too.

We sang happy birthday,

Lucas made his wish and blew out the candles....

Lucia and Liv ate their ice cream and cake together and enjoyed some good conversation.

All my boys looked as if they were having a good time.


Yet another successful party!

HOLY MESS

This morning has been spent running around like a wild chicken with my head cut off getting ready for Lucas' 2nd birthday party this weekend. [ his first party was yesterday with all of his little friends - pictures of that momentous occasion coming soon.]

Of course, I have been doing all the getting ready stuff by myself, as the Mr. is where he is 70-80 hours every week. Working. Either at one of the Marina's getting someones boat in the water, or at the shop selling a boat, or in his office going through the mounds of paper work piled up on his desk. Whatever the case, he is away from the house, where I really need him. Away from me where I am going crazy, as usual, with 4 kids in tow, trying to get ready for an event alone.

It is all par for the course though, the way things are around here so I just have to get through it in the hopes I don't lose my mind before company arrives today at 3pm. This happens every time we have a party at our house, and I always seem to make it through unscathed. So I am not worried that today will be any different, not worried at all.

Now I have to stop for a moment to point out how very ridiculous it is that I am sitting here typing away at how stressed I am trying to get everything done before Lucas's party, when I should be getting all the stuff that is making me stressed done. One important thing that needs to be taken care of in a bad sort of way is the whole getting clean thing. I need a shower in a bad sort of way, as right now I look nothing short of scary. And I would have to say Miss Liv Grace is in the same boat as I am.

While I was busy doing something - maybe washing floors, or making pasta salad, or baking a cake, or finishing laundry.... She decided to color all over her legs with a red marker, and eat a few [3 to be exact] suckers out of her brothers treat bag. Eating the suckers caused her running boogery nose to get all mixed in with the sticky sucker junk all over her face which resulted in
a really gross looking concoction to form on her face. And in her hair.

Yet she seems to still be happy.

I think she is on to something here.

Alright, off to take a shower and finish preparing for the festivities this afternoon. The festivities to celebrate my Lucas turning 6. It may be a crazy, hectic, I-wanna-pull-my-hair-out-and-scream-kinda-day, but this day is special, and I am doing this for Lucas. I would have to say that makes it all worth while.

CELEBRATING TURNING 6

We have a weekend jam packed with birthday celebrations for my newly turned 6 year old, Lucas.

We started it all out this afternoon by having his buddies over for a party. We were a bit taken a back by the rain that decided to come our way that afternoon, as the party was supposed to be held outdoors. [I curse the weather people telling us it would be in the 80's with clear, sunny skys. ] But we made do by having the oh so fun task of breaking open the pinata out in the garage....

I have to say, I have never seen kids move faster than when that pinata broke open and loads of candy and toys came flying out. They were diving on the ground, screaming and grabbing for it all. It was really quite the scene.

Kids and their silly faces....

Lucas found himself to be quite enamored with his bag full of treats that he acquired from the pinata. After observing what each child had in their bags, I came to the realization that my Lucas had seemed to score the most loot. Go figure.

The rain continued, so we decided to sing happy birthday and eat cupcakes and ice cream.



Then we opened presents.

Always a chore to get a picture of the birthday boy surrounded by all the excited kids yearning to open the presents themselves.....

Then the skys cleared and I sent the boys out to burn off some energy by playing on the trampoline and swingset.



As the party wound down and parents began showing up to pick up their kiddos, we managed to get some pictures of the birthday boy and all of his friends. If you can believe it, we were able to snap one where they were for the most part, all smiling nice.


Of course there was some bribery involved. That being they could make the silliest faces they wanted for the next picture. And that they did.


I would have to say the party was a success. Happy, Happy birthday to my Lucas Alexander.

DANCING QUEEN

Last night was a big night for Miss Ava. She had her dance recital - the one she has been praciticing and practicing for over the past eight months.

The night before the recital we were talking about how fun it was going to be and how excited I was to see her perform. She had a great big smile on her face, and in her giggly little voice she said, "Mom, I am really, really nervous!" I of course told her not to be, that she would be fabulous, and that she should just get up there and have fun.

Turns out she listened to my advice.

Her tap dance was to I Can't Help Myself,



Her second dance, her jazz number, was to Love Train.

It was a successful evening if I do say so myself. My girl happily danced her pants off, and Daddy and I had a great time watching.

Can't wait for next years show~

SOMEONE IS TURNING 6 TODAY

This sweet little boy

turns 6 today.

Where oh where does the time go? For that I have no answer, but I do know I wish it would slow down just a bit.

Happy, happy birthday my Lucas Alexander Shelton. You are such a sweet, sensitive, loving and caring little boy. I know even though Momma does not want it to happen, you have to grow up. But as you grow, please remember to never, ever lose these amazing pieces of who you are. K?

You are truly one of a kind little boy.

Momma Loves.

SHADES OF SHERWOOD

We went on our very first camping trip of the season this past weekend. And it just so happened to fall on a weekend that I was sick. Not just a little head cold kind of sick, but a knock-you-right-out-and-make-it-nearly-impossible-for-you-to-drag-your-poor-aching-body-out-of-bed-much-less-go-camping-kind of sick.

Seriously. I had the stuffy head, the kind that feels as if your head is going to literally explode at any moment. I had the whole if I move my eyes even a little bit to the left or right it ached like all heck thing. I had the my noise is running so much I may as well just stick this kleenex up each side of my nostrils and leave it there to save me some work. I had the sore throat and the no voice thing going on too. Not fun.

But I could not bring myself to cancel, as I knew the kids and the Mr. would be devastated as they had all been looking forward to this weekend for quite some time. So I tried to ignore my state of illness, and spent Friday morning packing, grocery shopping and organizing the camper. After that was accomplished, it was time to pick up the kids from school and get everyone ready to go.

At 7pm that evening we finally arrived at our campsite, and began our fun weekend of camping.

We started off by playing on the swingset just a little ways down the road from our site.

Bed time came all too soon being that we got up there so late Friday night. As you can see, the girls were not ready for sleep.

Saturday was spent playing in the sand,

Doing some more swinging at the playground,

and spending some quality time with our good, VERY big friend, Butterball.

Miss Liv Grave just loves Butterball so much. She spent much of the weekend happily following him around our campsite, petting and hugging him to death. Thankfully, he did not mind.

We played in the woods and took some time out for Mom to get some pictures.

We rode bikes around in circles on the dirt road,

and those of us who have yet to learn how to ride a bike found joy in pushing toys around on the dirt path instead.

We made silly faces and had fun running around the campsite with friends,

stopping on occasion to show us their water guns, along with those silly faces.

The weekend ended up being so much fun, it almost made me even forget I was sick. O.K. maybe not. But it did not stop us from having a great time.

Beautiful weather, in the company of some of our best friends, camping at our favorite campground, Shades of Sherwood - what more could you ask for?