Monday, August 29, 2011

A "Little Red Hen" Story

Once upon a time there was a little Baker Mommy. She had a helpful Daughter. One day the Baker Mommy found some bruised and overly ripened bananas. She had an idea. She would bake the bananas into bread!
The Baker Mommy asked her daughter, "Who will help me smash the bananas?"
"I will!!" said the daughter
Then the Mommy asked, "Who will help me add the flour?"
"I will!" said the daughter
"And," asked the Mommy, "Who will help me mix all the ingredients?"
"I will!" said the daughter.
When the bread was finished the Mommy asked, "Now, who will help me eat the bread?!"
"I WILL!!!" replied the Daughter.

I know, she's really cute sometimes! lol!

Michelle's favorite snack right now is, without a doubt, banana bread!

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Michelle's World

Every night before bed Bryan reads Michelle a book, tucks her in and then tells her night night before slipping out the door. Tonight Michelle wanted to talk for a minute.

Michelle: Tomonnow (aka- tomorrow) you have to go to work and get some money.
Bryan: Yeah, I'll go to work tomorrow and get us some money. ...Ok, Night, night baby.

Bryan leaves the room only to be called back in seconds later.

Michelle: Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!
Bryan: What do you need hunny?
Michelle: You stay home tomonnow?
Bryan: No, I have to go to work.
Michelle: Stay home with me tomonnow, daddy.
Bryan: I'm sorry hunny, I have to go to work. But you can stay home with Mommy, and I'll come home after your nap.
Michelle: Oh...
Bryan: Ok, I love you. Night night.
Michelle: Lub you. Nigh nigh Daddy.

How sweet is that?! That's the first time she has really shown that she understands that Bryan won't be here AND that she wants him to stay home with her! It melts my heart!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Vacation Time

First, let me just say that Bank of America rocks! Bryan gets 3 months, PAID, off for paternity leave, and on top of that he still has his three weeks vacation and one week sick time! This means Bryan is going to have October thru the end of the year off to be home with the new baby, and has a ton of vacation to use before then. So this week Bryan took Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off. It was so nice to have him home for five days, I can't even imagine having him for three months!!

Saturday and Sunday were business as usual. Mowing the lawn, bathing Jack, and other house-hold chores most of the day Saturday. Then Church and Grandma & Grandpa visits on Sunday. Monday we relaxed most of the morning. We did some chalking out on the back porch and a lot of playing/rough housing with Daddy. Then Monday night Michelle had her first day of gymnastics! We got her all dressed in her little leotard, which she picked out, packed up the camera, and headed out! I was totally bummed when I saw the big sign that said "No flash photography". So the only pic we got of her first gymnastics experience was this one:


She had a blast though! She was so excited to finally get to go into the room that she didn't do such a great job of listening, but she wasn't the only one. There are three other little girls in her class and none of them were completely focused the whole time. In fact two of them refused to move or even stand up for the first little while. Michelle was jumping and clapping the whole time. It was pretty sad when we had to take her home. She cried when we told her it was time to go, and didn't stop until we promised her that she could come back next week, and do it all over again! We took her out to GoldenChick for dinner. It was so yummy! Michelle loves her "chickn' and frefries." She had me crying laughing when she yelled -SO loud- "AND APPLE JUICE!!" while we were ordering her meal.

Tuesday we went to the splash park in Allen. It was so much fun! Michelle had to go down every single slide she could find.

The purple one...
the green one...
the red one...
...there was also the blue and yellow ones, but they were pretty big so I had to catch her instead of take a picture.

She also got soaking wet playing in the water. Bryan was so good to walk through the splash pad with her so she wouldn't be too scared. He ended up carrying her through some of it, but she giggled, screamed, kicked and clapped the whole time!

Bryan and Michelle were pretty soaked by the end of our trip. It was such a wonderful experience! Bryan and Michelle really got some good bonding time in. We will absolutely do it again!

On our way to the car Michelle found out that there were birds on the grass. There was no question, as soon as she saw them she was off! "I have to catch them!", she yelled to us as she was running away.

Wednesday was spent mostly relaxing at home. It was good for me and Bryan to get to spend some time together doing things that weren't "productive". I had my 32 week appointment with Dr. Mos that afternoon, but that was pretty boring. It was a nice easy day.

Now it's Thursday and Bryan is back at work, and I'm home with a long list of cleaning and general catching up to do from our little vacation from reality. lol- you should see the piles of laundry and dishes that need to be done! And you don't even want to know what the living room looks like!

It was worth it though. I wouldn't trade out mini-vacation for anything. It was wonderful!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

July Date Night/ Anniversary

Bryan and I have been keeping up with out monthly date nights and they have all been SO fun! We originally started with a $50 budget for each date, but have recently been challenging ourselves to keep the spending to a minimum. This month I proved that dates don't have to cost money to be fun. I spent a total of $2! Yep, that's it! I was so proud of myself. So here's what we did....

This month just happened to be our 5 Year Anniversary so I decided to base my date around that. Bryan and I aren't what you would call "traditional" when it comes to the typical lovey-dovey stuff. For example, we don't have "a song", neither of us can remember what we did for our first date, and we strongly disagree about the first time we said I Love You to each other. So planning an anniversary date is a little more difficult then you would imagine. I decided to pick a song that I liked and change it a bit to fit our relationship and use that throughout the night's activities. I chose You're My Everything and went from there.

I picked 5 activities (see the connection there? 5 years... 5 activities, yeah I'm super creative! lol) and then taged each activity with the chorus-
"Every night I pray,
on bended knee,
that you will always be
My ___"
Then the blank was filled in with these five things- Best friend, Taste Tester, Note Writer, Questioner, and Masseuse.

Bryan got to choose which activity we did first. We started the night by opening Bryan's gift. I couldn't figure out what to get Bryan for our anniversary so I went to this website I've heard of, but always been too scared to try. It turned out GREAT! The website is called Gift Sling. Basically, you go there, fill out a survey about the person you're shopping for, pay $20, and then wait for the gift to show up. I had no idea what Bryan would be getting. The survey was so random and asked the weirdest questions! And I was a little worried that I was going to get ripped off (pay $20 for something that only cost $5). But it turns out that I paid $20 for something that normally cost $50!

Bryan got Epic Mickey for the Wii! Such a fun game, and something that he will actually play and have fun with! I have no idea how they knew he would like this, but it worked out great!

Then we moved on the playing cards. This was the "Best Friend" portion. Before we started dating we did a lot of group activities with our friends, like playing cards after each exam, or playing games with my family. This time we made it interesting and decided that the loser would have to make dinner for the winner. Of course I won! So Bryan had to do the hard part of the "Taste Tester" portion of our date. He made pene pasta with sausage, peppers, and a red sauce. I helped by making the garlic bread! ;)

During dinner we played a game we used to play a lot when we were dating. This was the "Questioner" portion of our date. It's a different version of 20 questions. We get to ask each other any question we can think of and the person has to answer honestly. The game used to consist of questions like "what's your favorite color?" or "Who is your favorite comedian?" But, since we've been married for 5 years now, the questions had to evolve. Instead we asked things like "If you had unlimited funds, where would you take our family on vacation?" or "What's one thing you mean to say to me more often, but don't?" The questions actually turned into pretty interesting conversations. And, for once, our conversations weren't about the three M's (Money, Michelle, or Managing our time).

After dinner we had to go pick up Michelle from Grandma and Grandpa's house. We came home, gave her a tub together and put her down for the night. Then we went to our room and finished our date with the "Masseuse" portion of the night. I even broke out the massage oil from Bath and Body works! After the massages I introduced Bryan to the "Note Writer" portion. I wouldn't say it was part of our date so much as it is a part of our lives now. This is also the only part of the night that cost me any money. I bought two notebooks and covered them in scrapbook paper. Then I wrote on the front page of each the answers Bryan and I gave to the following:

The definition of OUR marriage, not marriage in general.
Your favorite part of our relationship.
And the end of this sentence- In order to maintain our happy marriage I must remember...

Then every night, before bed, we write in our "journals" what our favorite thing that the other person did that day was. For example, last night I wrote about how much I love when Bryan plays with Michelle and makes her laugh till she gets hiccups! We do this every night and then at the end of the week we switch journals. We've been doing this for a few weeks now, and I love it! I get so excited for Sunday night when I get to read all the things Bryan has written about me, and he gets to see everything I've written about him.

Maybe we'll do something big and elaborate for our 10th anniversary, but for us, we both agreed that this was a perfect way for us to spend our 5th anniversary.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Can't Wait!

I've been standing like this a lot lately...
So Bryan bought me one of these...
and now I'm going to do this on September 10th....
I CAN'T WAIT!!!