Since my good friend Ashlee mentioned the swing hanging in our office doorway, I figured I should tell the story behind it. See, the boy loves swings. At a playground, it's all he wants to do...he's not so interested in the slide, or playing in the sand...it's allll about the swing. Problem is, he doesn't want to get out. He screams bloody murder every time I take him out. Usually this means I'm walking down the street headed toward home pushing a stroller with a wailing child in it. Even at his birthday party, his grandma kept trying to take him out of the swing and he would cry every time, so she left him in there and he FELL ASLEEP. So one day we were wandering through a toy store, and we came upon these plastic swings for $20 and decided to get one, thinking we could hang it on our back porch and he could swing while I did yardwork, etc. - only when we got home, we looked at the porch roof and realized it wasn't secure enough to trust hanging our kid there. We looked all around and realized we were out of options outside...so we went inside. We hesitated to hang anything from our ceiling or doorways mainly because our house was built in the 40's and has plaster walls...not to mention it's a rental and technically not our house. So then we came up with the idea of a chin-up bar. We headed to Big 5 and found a chin-up bar that brackets into a doorway with screws...is removable and even comes with extra brackets (for my back door!)...holds up to 400 pounds...and was only $17. PERFECT. So we came home and hubs set to work installing the brackets. We slipped that bar into place and both of us hung on it to make sure it was safe.

And The Boy Was Happy... After a while, we got tired of standing there and pushing him - so hubs found a string...tied that sucker to the safety strap, and sat in his chair while the boy was happily swinging away. Tweak even joined in on the string actionAll in all, a successful idea!
Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

What's been going on at our house lately...

Birthday Recap

FINALLY. I'm such a lagger...

So the boy is a year old. We had a small party. I don't usually do the theme thing, but my kid is so entranced with Veggie Tales, that's what we ended up with. ALL of hub's family came, so with just our two immediate families and ourselves - we had 17 people, plus a couple of friends and their little one. We kept it simple, did build-your-own sandwiches, some pasta salad, chips, and a bucket of drinks on ice. All the kids got to play on the playground and wear themselves out:

Some swinging
Dad and Carie dozing in the sun
And going down the slide!
First off - the cupcakes. OY.

I thought about getting red "bob the tomato" type cupcakes, but I was worried about all the kids getting dyed from all that red frosting and with Easter being the next day, I decided to play it safe and just order regular ones from Costco. Hubs and I went and got the order form, but they had Eastery looking cupcakes on the shelf with pink and yellow decorations and I wanted to make sure there would be no pink on his cupcakes, so I talked to a lady and told her I wouldn't mind some blue decor, but I didn't want them to be all blue. She assured me they wouldn't be, said she'd handle it herself. Fast forward to the day before his party, my lovely sister in law Carie offered to pick them up for me. She called me on her cell...

"K - ummm, did you know they are blue?"

"huh?"
"your cupcakes are blue...I just wanted to make sure you knew that"
"what do you mean they're blue...like ALL BLUE?"

"yup - all blue, like Cookie Monster blue"

"WHAT? CRAP!"
But I didn't know what else to do and knew I wouldn't have time to pick another batch up in the morning - so I shrugged and said what the hell...at least we have cupcakes right? They'll be Madame Blueberry cupcakes! hehehe

Except that...dude...cookie monster blue was right on the money...they were B-L-U-E. Observe:

(you know, I just realized - he had on this really cute shirt that said 1st birthday on it - and since I covered it up with this gray thing, I don't have ANY pictures of the birthday shirt...oops!)

Afterwards, hubs and I headed to the bathroom to do some damage control - but his teeth (along with everyone else's) and his face and his hair were all dyed blue...He kinda looked like he was going to a rave later...my little punk.

We opened presents and he got some way cool stuff...a basketball hoop, a train set, a bunch of BOY stuff like balls and tractors, some nice new clothes (including a bomber jacket that I need to take a picture of), and my mom painted him his very own rocking chair with his name on it.



My mom also showed up with these FABULOUS cardboard cutouts that she painted her very own self of Larry the Cucumber, Bob the Tomato, and the French Peas (my faves). My neices wanted to do a "puppet show" of sorts, and so she made them not only for decoration, but to be used for the show as well. It was so stinking cute - I saved them so I can put them up somewhere in his room...

-

He's like "BOB! You're so flat! what happened!" hahahaa

All in all - a good day full of family and friends and blue frosting!

Tagged. dammit.

Thanks ALISON

Here are the rules: If you are tagged - take a photo of yourself AS SOON as you see this. No primping, prepping, dramatics allowed

So here it is - no makeup, shiny face, hair in a ponytail, office a disaster, boy peeking out to see if anything interesting is on TV...