Weekend fun

Over the weekend, we had a lot of fun, but not exactly together.  Friday night, Calah & I went to the mall to shop for some new Spring pieces I needed.  I found some jewelry at Charming Charlie on CLEARANCE (score!), and a few basic tops, and a dress at JCPenney.  Those weren't on sale, but they were reasonably priced.  I also bought a couple of shapers at Sears but I need them mostly for my abdominal area, so I bought the "granny-panty" kind and it kept rolling down and folding over when I bent over, so I may need to re-think my strategy here.  I was also feeling pretty nauseous when I was wearing it, so maybe I need a bigger size.  The boys went with Hubs to IKEA to return a couple of things and pick up some new fabric drawers that fit our shelving units in the playroom better.  (I will do a separate post for the exciting reveal once it's all done!). 

Saturday, we went out for breakfast to Southern Belle's using a groupon that Hubs bought for us.  We ordered WAY too much food and had to take three containers home with us!  I didn't realize how big the portions would be.  I could have ordered one meal for all three of the kids for sure.  But, Hubs likes having leftovers at home, so it turned out just fine.  After breakfast, he went to help a friend move his office stuff out of the building since he is closing his business next month.  I took the kids to Sam's Club to pick up some Easter candy since my cousins were coming over that day to stuff eggs for the Easter Egg Hunt next weekend.  Here are a couple pics from last year's hunt:   

My aunt has a sweet yard with lots of greenery in which to hide the eggs. The past two years, we have had great weather and didn't even have to wear jackets. This year has been weird because we go from 40 degrees to snow and back. This weekend is supposed to be in the low 50's, so I'm praying that it actually IS that nice out and we can still do the hunt. The kids love doing it every year - even though they never get through all their candy before it has to be tossed out. My motto: If we have Easter candy left at Halloween or Halloween candy left at Easter, it gets tossed. So, we will be purging quite a bit this next weekend.

My 4-years-younger-than-me cousin is pregnant with a baby girl making her debut in June (yay!!), so I will be able to unload all my no-longer-needed baby gear on her (I mean, give it to her :)), so my spring garage cleaning will be just a bit easier this year, I hope.  I still need to decide whether a small storage space would be worth it or if I should just let go of the furniture that's taking up half the garage. We will be in this house for about two more years, so I know I will  be able to use the furniture at that point, but how long is too long to hold on to it? I feel like we can inexpensively replace all of it when the time comes.  I guess the other thing is that I don't know what our future home will look like and I may just end up throwing it out in the end anyway.

The "big kids" lunching and cracking each other up


 

Anyway, my 5-years-younger-than-me cousin Holly and her sister, my 7-years-younger-than-me cousin Jen, came over with their kids on Saturday.  I was super proud of how well the kids all played together considering how young they all are and are still learning how to share and use their words nicely. Their ages: Benji 5, Dillon 4, Alana 2.75, Josiah 2.5, Calah 10 mos, Austin 5 mos.  After a while, I made some chicken taquitos and the always-toddler-approved mac n cheese.  They loved it.  They sat down at our makeshift table (and Alana in the high chair), ate nicely, and cracked jokes to each other.  Well, as much as kids their age can crack jokes.  It was mostly something about Mickey juice.  Who knows! :)  They had fun; that was the most important thing.  And since they were getting along so well, it gave us girls a chance to chat for a bit. While they were sitting down eating, I noticed some of my pom-poms (the art supplies type, not cheerleading!) were on the floor in the kitchen.  Jen told me that they were all over the floor in the playroom and she wasn't kidding! I found the bag completely empty on the floor of the playroom.  There were about 300 pom-poms of various sizes in that freezer ziploc bag.  AAhhh!!  And they dumped all the puzzle pieces onto the floor, too.  Oy.  When Hubs came home, the kids had just finished eating.  He said hi to everyone and immediately enlisted the "big kids" to clean up the playroom by turning on some music and delegating a task to each of them.  I.WAS.IMPRESSED. They actually listened and enjoyed helping! And 20 minutes later, they came back to the living room and the playroom was once again clean.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of that scene.  Big ups to my husband for that one! No yelling needed there!





Jen taking a picture of
me taking a picture of her



Holly and Austin hanging out



Calah, just waking up from nap



After they left, we had a little time to clean up and then I ran to the new store down the street, El Guero, to pick up some eggs, butter, and brown sugar so I could make cookies for Bunco night.  I had lots of fun at Bunco and was happy to have a chance to get out of the house for a few hours because I had had a headache all day and the kids were being a little high maintenance for some reason.

On a great note, though, Jo Jo has been wearing underwear at home for the past five days and has only had two accidents. Whoo hoo!! He is doing so well with telling us when he needs to go.  I am really proud of him.  He just turned 2-1/2 about a week ago, so I wasn't even going to start potty training him until around now and he started it himself about four months ago.  He did well for a while and then took a hiatus but now he's doing better than ever.  I'm still hoping that I'll be done with diapers within the next year (or 18 months max).  I love the baby phase, but not the diapers!  I'm also excited for my kids to be at the age where we can all do things together as a family.

How was your weekend?