Mom's Weekend Getaway!

I have NEVER been away from both my hubby and kids. So this weekend I decided it was time to go have a girls weekend. Me and 7 of my good friends went to Sarasota to stay at the Hyatt. The picture above is the view from our room.

It was the most relaxing weekend EVER!!! Look how pretty the pool is!

We spent an entire day to swim m at the pool, with NO kids to watch after. We read. We talked. We Laughed. We ate.

We went walking on the beach late at night. We went to Siesta Key (#2 rated beach in America) and spent the entire day (with NO kids to chase after) dirfting in the water and sunbathing.

As you can see, we just had the most fantastic time! Oh and I got a BEAUTIFUL tan! Honestly, I can't even sit at the beach when we go as a family, so to just sit and read was SUCH a treat!


Thanks to my friend S, there are lots of pictures of me to pick from for 10 of 52 weeks of getting mom in the pictures at Forever in Blue Jeans.

Fish, Flowers, and some Water Play

Today we went to this great water spout park.

The kiddos had so much fun running through the water.

Natural Floridians, snuggling up next to an alligator!!

Afterwards, we walked next door to the beautiful gardens where mommy and daddy got married to see Flowers and Fish.

The kids went crazy over seeing lily pads!

Aidman took my picture! This will be week 8 of 52 of capturing mom every week in a picture at Forever in Blue Jeans.

Brother and sister hand in hand. SO SWEET!

Oh the FISH!! They were so excited to see the fish. Aidman kept calling them catfish because of the "whiskers", but I'm pretty sure they are cod.

Aidman thought the pineapple growing was so cool! We also saw corn, strawberries, squash, and lettuce growing.

And the best part about the day was the snail Aidman found. It crawled ALL over his arm. See the grossed out look on Lyssy's face!

The nice thing about going to the garden was how peaceful it was. The kids didn't want to leave. Next time we go, I'll make sure we have more time to spend there since they loved it so much.

Mother's Day Gifts

Since I know none of the grandma's have computer access before tomorrow, I'm gonna go ahead and post the presents. I got this GREAT idea from that artist woman. I bought a yard of sheer fabric and cut 7 inch strips.

I dragged out the sewing machine and hemmed them. I am NOT the best at sewing, but I got the job done.

Then, we used food coloring mixed with water to paint the scarves. That artist woman used acrylic paint, but I was worried it would be too stiff.

EDIT EDIT EDIT!!!! The food coloring ran everywhere when it got wet!! It must have been that type of fabric because it works fine on cotton. So I rinsed all of them and painted them with watered down acrylic paint, it worked PERFECTLY and did NOT run when wet.

My hands didn't fair well.

Lyssy tried on my scarf, I think she looks SO cute!

These are the scarves we made.

I REALLY like this one.

And this one!!

I'm laughing here because daddy said I looked like a rabbit.

The kiddos are going to pick out who to give each to. They said that I can even have one, I hope they give me one of the ones I like!!

These are easy and very inexpensive to make. I HOPE all the grandmas like them!!

This is my 7th week of participating in a 52 week challenge to get mom in a picture every single week at Forever in Blue Jeans.

Rainbow Fish

Tonight we read The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. Then, we made our own rainbow fish.

I asked Aidman how we could make them and he said that we needed to paint a fish blue, green, and purple and then add glitter (I was thinking tin foil, but his idea was better).

Here Aidman is cutting out his fish, notice the tounge.

Lyssy cut her fish alittle too much, and then asked Mommy to cut one for her.

Then we got started painting.

Daddy even decided to join the fun. He wanted to make a shark instead.

The tounge again.

We were all so proud of our work.

Daddy caught a SHARK!!

And this will be week 5 of my 52 week challenge to get mama in a picture every single week.

70's Night!!

Tonight I went to a 70's Party Mom's Night Out! It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH FUN!!! It was mandatory to dress up. I was a hippie flower child. I found that dress at Goodwill for $5!
There was food cooked like and served 70's style. There was a mellow hippie room, it had low lighting with black lights and lava lamps, incense burning, mellow music, brownies and a bag of oregano to look like ya know... sitting on the table. There was a disco dance room, it had strobe lights and a disco ball with all the disco music. There was a game of twister, an old record player playing, and a movie of Starsky and Hutch. The party was a GIANT hit and there were over 20 mama's attending. I think dressing up was the best part of all!


My friend T looked totally Hot!

You can't even tell that S is 5 months preggo!

MY friend C is wearing a handmade dress! The detail was BEAUTIFUL! And next to her is E, yes she is a WOMAN!! We should have known that E would come dressed up like a man, she had us DYING laughing!! The best part is her attention to detail, take a look at the pants!!!

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.

We had a TERRIFIC time!! If you don't have a group of women to get together occasionally with without the kiddos, I HIGHLY encourage you to find one!! I have so much fun with my friends and it really refreshes me and helps me to be a Great mom because I have a chance to relax and just have fun.

This is week 4 of 52 of my challenge to get of picture of me every week. Visit Forever in Blue Jeans to see all the other great pictures.

Happy Easter

I hope everyone had as Happy an Easter as we did! We started off by going to church and afterwards had an egg hunt at church.


We got a couple pictures all dressed up. I am so using this for my#3 of 52 weeks post for Forever In Blue Jeans because let's face it, it takes work to get a picture of mommy each week. And yes, my kiddos are going to be horror stricken when they are grown and look back at pictures from Easters past because yes indeed that is in fact a boobie about to pop out of the dress (of course daddy didn't tell mommy, because he liked it too much!).

After church Granny, Papa, Aunt Britt, and Cody came over. We dyed Eggs, went on an egg hunt (the kiddos even got a chance to hide the eggs once), played the fun games from the Easter Basket, and had a wonderful dinner!

In our baskets we got a new Bible to share, a set of 4 mommy made bean bags, and mommy a made game, and 5 eggs with some candy.

The games are from and idea inspired from Mind Games. I took a shower curtain liner ($2) and cut it in half. Then I traced circles with a bowl (just bigger than a cd). For Aidman's I wrote an alphabet letter in each, there were 55 circles so upper and lower of each plus extra lower of a, e, i. For Lyssy's I wrote a number in each, 0-9. This game can be played like twister, or with bean bags tossed on the letters/numbers, or my jumping on them. I like it because the difficulty can be increased with the progress of the child. Right now we are working on recognition, later we can use it to spell words or do addition/subtraction/multiplication (actually, today Aidman tossed a bean bag on each letter of his name in order, so he's already using it for spelling).

Tea Party

Yesterday we went to this cute little tea house with PALS. The girls had a GREAT time! They loved trying on cute hats.

Someone even got a nice picture of me and a couple of friends, so we are including this for ourweek 2 of 52 weeks of pictures. I don't know how it worked out, but I ended up getting 3 different pictures of me this week (2 were at mom nights). Head on over to Forever in Bluejeans to join in on the fun.