Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Mama said there would be days like this...

My Morning Disc Jokey

Colton's "thing" right now is music.  He is constantly singing, dancing or just listening to music.  Whenever we get into the car he immediately asks for "music please" and sometimes even asks for a specific song.  He has pretty much taken over the radio in the morning on the way to school (Fortunately Brynn is okay with this so far).  He knows my playlists on my iPhone and will tell me which songs he likes by saying "yes", "this one", "no like it","no want it", or by screaming (also means: "no like it").  There are also a couple that he will ask for by name.  I have been wanting to write down his morning playlist for days now (I think that someday he will think it's pretty funny) but today is the first time I actually remembered before we were two minutes from school because he asked for "6" pretty early into the trip.  So here it is...DJ Colton's morning radio show:

-Like a G6 (Far East Movement)-Or as he calls it "6".
-Mickey's Countdown (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse)
-A Mouse Like Me (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse)
-Moves Like Jaggar (Maroon 5)
-Poker Face (Lady Gaga)-  We only listened to half of this one before he said "no want it"
-Wiggle, Wiggle, Wiggle (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse)
-Dynamite (Taio Cruz)-  We had to listen to this one twice.
-Boom Boom Pow (Black Eyed Peas)
-Elmo's Song (The Best of Elmo)-We also had to listen to this twice
-Good Morning Beautiful (Steve Holy)- Or "morning" as Colti calls it
-Happy Tappin' with Elmo (Sesame Street Favorites)
-Kryptonite (3 Doors Down)
-A Mouse Like Me (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse)-This is his favorite so we had to come back to it again.

The play list does vary from day to day.  He absolutely hates Jessica Simpson and will scream if any of her songs come on.  He usually prefers more country in his line-up but it seemed to be a hip hop/Mickey day today:-)

Watching a little Elmo before his morning DJ gig.

Flower Girls

You may remember that Dan's sister Patty is getting married this year.  As soon as Patty got engaged she asked Brynn to be one of her Flower Girls.  Brynn, who is a flower girl expert (having served the role once before), is super excited about this for two reasons:  Reason 1--She will get a new princess dress to wear and Reason 2-She will get to dance in her new princess dress (aka:  twirl).

As soon as Brynn was asked to be a flower girl she began thinking about "The dress".  In fact while I was on the phone with Patty we had the following conversation:
        Brynn:  Mama, can you ask Aunt Patty if I can wear a purple and red flower girl dress?
        Me:  (laughing) Aunt Patty, Brynn wants to know if she can wear a read and purple dress
        Patty:  Sure
        Me (to Brynn):  I'm sorry Brynnie...Aunt Patty says no.

Recently in preparation for the Flower Girl dress shopping trip we have done some on-line shopping to try to get an idea of what styles Patty likes.  Brynn found a particular dress that she loved because "it looks like a fairy dress" and "we could even wear fairy wings with it".  Lol...because of this it occurred to me that Brynn had very specific ideas as to what her flower girl dress should look like. So a week prior to our actual shopping trip we started preparing Brynn.  We told her over and over again that we were going to find a flower girl dress and what is really important is that we find a dress that Aunt Patty loves because it is Aunt Patty's very special day.  We warned her that we may not buy the dress that she loves and that we really just want Aunt Patty to be very happy.

So Saturday was the big shopping trip.  We met Patty and the other two Flower Girls (her best friend/cousin Abby and a soon-to-be cousin Lexi) and their Mamas at David's Bridal in MD.  I would be an understatement to say that all three girls were super excited.  They all greeted each other with hugs and squeals and off we went in search of the perfect dress.  The grown-ups spent some time pulling dresses off the rack to try on while the girls checked out the headpieces.

Lexi, Abby and Brynn modeling various flower girl headpieces.

 We quickly assembled a selection of dresses and herded the girls (much like herding cats) to the dressing room to start trying on...chaos ensued.  Let me set the scene.  Of course everyone wanted to be together so they assigned us to one dressing room.  So we had one bride, 3 flower girls, 3 mamas and about 15 little dresses crammed into our little room.  Everyone just grabbed a dress and threw it over the head of whichever flower girl happened to be nearby at the moment.  It was hysterical.  The most important part of the process was to go out of the dressing room and give it the twirl test.  In order to be a possibility (in the eyes of the girls) it had to twirl well.  There were a couple of dress that all of the girls loved so then they would each have to try it on and give it the twirl test.

Modeling 3 options.  The baseball hat says FG on the front and flower girl on the back. Brynn loved it so she modeled it with all of the dresses.

It took about an hour but in the end everyone agreed on one dress (well...it did take some minor convincing of Abby).  It is so sweet, all of the girls claimed it was comfy (which was second in importance only to the twirl factor) and it is fairy-esque.

The only hitch in the day was that Brynn and Lexi were both under the impression that Aunt Patty's wedding was going to be that day.  That took a bit of explaining and a promise that we could all go to lunch together when we left the store but it ended well.  Shew...

Love is in the Air

I love family traditions and I love holidays. With that said, we traditionally don't do much with Valentine's Day.  Dan and I have always exchanged small gifts and we usually try to fit in a nice dinner but that's about it. 

Last year after Valentine's Day a friend of mine posted pictures on facebook of this fabulous Valentine's Dinner she made for her husband and three boys.  It was so adorable and she had also made this Martha Stewartish valentine for each one of them telling them 10 things she loved about them.  I commented on the pictures telling her how adorable it all was and she responded saying "I know that the years are limited when I get to be their Valentine and they actually want to spend time with their Mom so I am trying to make it special."  Something about that really tugged at my heartstrings.  It's just so true!!!  Right now Mama and Daddy are the center of their universe but the days are all too quickly coming when Valentine's Day will be about some little hoochie/hoodlum:-)

So...I have been looking for a way to make Valentine's more memorable and meaningful for the kids.  The fancy dinner is not really an option because Valentine's falls on ballet night this year (which automatically makes it chicken nugget night at the String household).  The Martha Stewart Valentine's just won't work for me because...well let's face it, there is very little Martha in me.  Fortunately, I stumbled across another friends post on facebook wall this year which sparked a sort of combined idea.

I found foam mailboxes at Walmart for $2.50.  The kids decorated them with little sticky foam pieces and we placed them on the table.  Every night Dan and I cut a heart out of construction paper (this is as Martha Stewart as I was able to go) and on the heart we each write something we love about the kids.  We then put the heart and a little piece of candy or some other kind of trinket in their mailbox.  When the kids wake up, they go to there mailbox each morning and check to see if they have mail. 

Decorating the mailboxes

We are going to keep doing this up until valentine's day when they will each get a toy in their mailbox.  We are only on day 2 of this but it has been a lot of fun for the kids so far.  Colton is all about the treat in his mailbox but Brynn just adores the heart.  She loves to hear the things that Mama and Daddy love about her.  I wonder if they will still love this when the are 30?

The other bonus is that this little project seems to have inspired Dan too:-)  On Tuesday while Brynn and I were in ballet he left a flower in each of our seats in the car, yesterday he surprised me with a picnic lunch, and today when I woke up he had written me a message on our bathroom mirror.  Major brownie points have been earned:-)

Candelight Dinner

Last Friday was a big day for me at work.  For the past 10 months I have been re-creating a Domestic Violence Medical Manual for Health Care Providers.  It teaches doctors/nurses/intake professionals what the best practices are for working with victim's of sexual assault and domestic violence.  This has been a HUGE project.  On Friday, the completed manual arrived at my office hot off the press.  I have never been so excited (by work).  I am very happy with the way it turned out  and the press conference and release is all set up for March.  Wooo Hoooo...I did it:-)

10 months of work...

Dan has a vague idea how this project has completely taken over my work life so when I got home Friday night he popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate.  Back in the day this kind of accomplishment always meant champagne and a candlelight dinner somewhere (sometimes home).  We haven't had a candlelit celebratory dinner in a long time.  It's not that we haven't had things to celebrate but it's a little different with kids.  Our schedules are so crazy that we hate to get a baby sitter unless we have to.  We usually opt for carpet pizza picnics instead because the kids enjoy that and our time with the kids is really precious to us. 

But Friday night was really big for me so...we decided to have an impromptu candlelit dinner WITH the kids. It was a huge hit!  The kids loved eating by candlelight...though Brynn was a bit concerned that she might accidentally touch a candle.  It was definitely not the quiet candlelit dinners of years past...it was even better.  I love seeing the world through the kids eyes and experiencing new things with them. I am one blessed Mama and it was the perfect celebration:-)

I'm pretty sure that the table cloth will never be the same but totally worth it:-)

Flash Back Friday: Lake is in the House!

This picture is of my high school cheer team.  We are holding up the "W" for "Whatever" (The movie Clueless was big that year).  This was at nationals in Florida my senior year.  Our school had never been to nationals and we were all so thrilled to just be there.  We did not place but we did have a great time!  I have so many amazing memories with these girls.  We were so young, fabulously naive, on top of the world...and so darn skinny:-)

Side note:  It was on this trip that I decided I was going to go home and break up with my boyfriend and see where my crush on Dan went:-)

Music Man

Colton is a music nut!  He LOVES to sing and dance.  The poor boy has spent a lot of time watching Brynn dance and play soccer so Dan and I really wanted him to have something that was his own to do.  When Brynn was very little we had signed her up for a music class.  Not really because we thought she would learn a lot but because it was before she started school and she desperately needed to socialize with kids her own age.  Because Colton loves music so much we thought of the music class and thought that it might be something he would enjoy.

It's a 10 week program and the kids (and parents) learn songs, play instruments (well...sticks and maracas anyway), and do some dancing.  After signing him up, I started to feel a little bit of buyers remorse.  It seems kind of silly to pay to go somewhere to do the things that we already do at home.  But, the check was in the mail so off we went two weeks ago for his first class.

About 5 minutes into the class, I decided that this was well worth the money.  I don't know that Colton is going to learn a lot or become a musician but the way is whole face lit up made it worth every single penny.  He just loves it!  He sang, danced, had some wonderful belly laughs, and got some quality one-on-one time with Mama.  I love my little Music Man:-)

All ready for his first class.