Happy Birthday Ryan!

My husband turned 32 last week.  I haven't hardly talked about him on the blog since I primarily talk about the girls, but he is a super laid back guy.  Because of this I tend to be a little too lazy complacent when it comes to birthday plans.  The day of his birthday,  I still didn't know what I was going to get him!  My boss encouraged me to have a mini-party for him that night, so I left the office a little early and headed to our local one-stop shop.  I picked up a little cake, candles, a couple of packages of Snickers and Reece's Peanut Butter Cups (his favorites), party hats, noisemakers and a bottle of Crown Royal.  When I went to checkout, I realized that I didn't have my ID with me and therefore couldn't buy the whiskey (I couldn't believe I actually got carded, but seriously?!).   I called my father-in-law and asked him to meet me at the little convenience store not far from home so I could actually come home with the good part of the gift!  So after the small detour, I was home with my little family and ready to celebrate.

The girls had a riot at Daddy's birthday party!  Claire absolutely loves playing birthday so this was such a treat to have an actual birthday and real cake.  We had a great time until a nasty migrane wiped me out.  I felt so awful heading to bed and leaving the birthday boy to clean up all the mess.  What a happy birthday for him...

This past weekend was full of celebrations with family.  Lots of good food, laughs and gift cards (my husband LOVES gift cards).  What a blessing to be able to celebrate with everyone!  

Ryan I hope your 32nd Birthday was wonderful and I hope your 32nd year is full of joy.  I love you more with every passing year and cannot be thankful enough for your support, help, encouragement and love.  The girls and I are so blessed because of you!

Wordless Wednesday :: Our Gingerbread House

We made our gingerbread house this past weekend.  I bought a kit that came ready to put together. 

Step 1: House construction (Ryan had to take over this phase since I couldn't get the roof to stay in place). 

Natalie wanted to help

Step 2: Decorating.  Natalie went down for her nap and Claire wanted to change into Christmas PJ's

Note:  I am NOT artistic at all, but Ryan is :)  Claire liked to do the landscaping around the house since she had a hard time getting the candies to stick to the house.

Step 3:  The Finished Product

The back was neglected

Natalie woke up just as we were finishing, next year she'll be able to participate!

Wordless Wednesday :: My Hubby The Mighty Hunter

Ryan got a one sided 5 point buck on opening day that put lots of venison in our freezer.  Claire gets very excited when Daddy brings home deer (she doesn't understand they are dead).  However, since this one had lost an an antler, she told Ryan that he had to get a different deer that wasn't broken.  

Here are a few photos (consider yourself warned, don't scroll down if you'd rather not see them):

Top 5 Saturday Laughs

This week has gone SO fast for me.  I can't believe that it's time to write Saturday's laughs already!  I am excited to share a few of the best laughs of this week and actually had the opportunity to get some photos to share along with the post.  I hope you enjoy these as much as I have.

5.  Tonight while Claire was brushing her teeth and stalling like it was nobody's business, I let out a large sigh.  She looked at me and asked, "Momma, why do you say that?" I replied, "Claire, Mommy is tired and really wants to go to bed but you are stalling."  She then responds, "Yeah, I am"  She then gave herself the sweetest smile in the mirror.  I couldn't help but crack up at the situation that she not only knows how to stall but recognizes the fact that she is stalling and is rather proud of herself.

4.  Natalie has been sticking out her tongue constantly, it is super adorable and rather funny since it's always out there.

3.  We went to my in-laws house on Thursday night for dinner.  Claire went to play in her room which is very common.  My mother-in-law soon calls me from her doorway to tell me that I needed to see what she was up to.  Here's my view as I looked in the room.

When Grandma asked Claire how she got up there, she responded, "With my stool."  Didn't we obviously know this?!  Then Grandma posed the question, "How are you going to get down?"  This took a little more pondering, but her response was classic,  "I might need a little help."  Grandma and I cracked up, which made Claire think she was the funniest thing ever.

2.  In addition to the tongue, Natalie has been doing raspberries all the time lately.  She does it once then if you do one back, she will mimic you.  Then she laughs about how funny the interaction has become.  I forget how funny babies can be!

1.  Ryan is an 'engineer brained' guy.  This means anything and everything is taken very literally.  That is the main reason this is SO funny to me.  After her bath, Claire was running around the house naked (a VERY common practice at our house, she loves being without clothes).  She started dancing and jumping around, shouting, "Check out my tushie!"  She just kept saying it, sticking her bum out.  When Ryan asked her, "Where did you come from?"  She responded, "The bath."  I wish I could have gotten a picture of his face, he had his 2.5 year old daughter bust out the standard engineer response on him!

Make sure you check out the blog hop at The Mommyhood Chronicles for more wonderful laughs to kick your weekend off right!

Social Media vs DVR

Here is the first blog post not about our girls {gasp}.  I am participating in Toddle Along Tuesday from Mama G from Growing Up Geeky and this weeks topic is FAIL.  Since I already wrote about the mommy fail from Trunk or Treat where I forgot a spare set of clothes when Claire had an accident and she rode home naked, I decided that I would write about the other love in our house, the Detroit Tigers.

My husband is a die hard Tigers fan and always has been.  We even watched all the televised games in 2003 where they lost 119 games (they only played 162).  Claire and Natalie both have Tigers apparel, Claire has the Detroit Tigers book memorized (she knows they play at Comerica Park, names of some of the legends and what the World Series trophy looks like), and whenever we play baseball we are being Tigers.  This year was great because the Tigers made the playoffs.  Since the games typically started at 8:00 we had to DVR them since Claire normally watches a show before bed.  While I was putting Claire in bed, Ryan would get Natalie bathed and ready to eat so that we could sit down and start the game while Natalie nursed.

These days I'm rather addicted to social media, always checking my twitter and facebook on my phone.  Ryan would always warn me to not check these sites as I might see updates.  I don't sit still well, so it wouldn't be long and I'd be on my phone seeing what my friends were up to.  Of course, I couldn't get through a few minutes without seeing an update of some sort.  Reading the updates was not a big deal, the big deal was that I almost always had a verbal response instantly after my reading.  Since my husband knows me so very well, he was pretty much cued into what was happening in the game, despite my feeble attempts at making up excuses and stories to throw him off the trail.

So my fail of the week is telling the husband about the outcome of more than one of the playoff games before he was able to watch it.  Sorry honey!  Moral of the story, I don't lie well and I can't keep secrets from my husband, he can read me like a book :)

Top 5 Saturday Laughs

I find it amazing when you start looking for the funny things that happen in your life during the week, how many funny moments you actually have!  For two weeks now, I have more than enough laughs to write this post.  This week, I sorted through them all and couldn't just do five, so this here's an extra bonus - Six Saturday Laughs!


6.  For those of you that saw my wordless Wednesday post this week know that Natalie was baptized this past Sunday.  I had bought adorable white shoes for her special day.  (What girl doesn't need new shoes for special occasions?!)  Ryan had gotten Natalie dressed the morning of her baptism.  I had noticed while at church how her shoes seemed to fit better than I had anticipated (I had bought a 6-12 month size hoping to get more than one wear out of them).  Ryan mentioned that they were even a little snug to put on and I didn't think much of it.  When I was cleaning up after the party, I grabbed the shoes and noticed that Ryan hadn't taken the stuffing out of the toes!  No wonder she filled them out :)

5.  Last weekend my mom, sister and niece had come over to help get the house ready for Sunday's baptism brunch.  My niece, Dakota is 10 and a huge help in these situations as she keeps Claire entertained.  Dakota told me that Claire had asked, "Dakota will you put me in my swing so I can tell you about Jesus?"  (She loves the Christmas story).  Later in the day, Claire sang the chorus of "Glory to God" by Fee for about an hour straight.  She stood on the hearth of the fireplace like it was her stage.  Claire has been going to church with us lately and I guess remembered that song chorus very well :)

4.  Natalie had a messy diaper one evening and Ryan took her to change the said diaper.  While he was walking into her room, he commented how he hadn't changed a poopy diaper in over two weeks.  It wasn't long into the change, I hear, "Natalie, ugh!  Don't put your hands in it!"  He obviously had forgotten how wiggly and curious she is during diaper changes.  I was literally crying in the living room listening to the interaction.  I figured it served him right since he had two weeks off of poopy diaper duty.

3.  Claire was climbing all over me and the furniture so I called her a little monkey.  She stopped climbing and told me, "If I eat a banana, then I will be a monkey!"

2.  Natalie has taken a liking to cartoons.  Some of the tops on the list are Dora and Wonder Pets, but Kipper is the absolute favorite.  Whenever she hears the beginning song, she stops whatever she's doing to whip around to see the television.  It will even calm her down when she's really angry.  Her eyes get super big and she kicks her legs in excitement.

1. On our way home from daycare one day this week, Claire asked if she could have a muffin when we got home.  We didn't have any muffins and Natalie was asleep in her carseat, so I told Claire we could make some when we got home.  We made some very simple and delicious oatmeal muffins.  When we were eating them, she took half of mine and replace it with a quarter of hers.  She then exclaimed, "We can trade momma, then we will be best buds."

Now it's your turn, tell me your laughs from the week!