Aww, Miss T.

She is my BIG helper.  For Christmas, she received this awesome cookie play set and has been “baking cookies” non-stop (No, this post isn’t timely.  Don’t judge!).  Santa also brought her the adorable little apron she is sporting.  I couldn’t help but grab a few shots of her as she was in character.  I mean, seriously…isn’t it adorable?!  Okay, I may be biased. :-)  Anyhow, here’s my baby girl!

Nothing too exciting here.  Came out of my packaging zone to take a quick pic of our tree.  SO excited about Christmas!  I love decorating the tree, spending time with my family and baking cookies. What are YOU looking most forward to this holiday season??

For kisses.  For giggles.  For throwing leaves.  For ring around the rosie.  For silly faces.

For you.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Good Food.

Who doesn’t love it?!  Well, as we are seeing more and more often, many KIDS don’t like it.  They are becoming so used to fast food and chicken nuggets that they don’t have a taste for GOOD food.  I think this is a very bad trend and I am sure most of you can agree.  Over the weekend, I met a fabulous woman who is doing an amazing job of reaching out to our children and helping them to love good food.  Not only is she introducing them to new {and yummy} recipes, but she is also teaching kids to MAKE them!  Meet Amanda from The Good Food Factory.

It was SUCH a cool experience watching her interact with children!  I watched first-hand as these young girls prepared the food that they later ate….and LOVED.  Does your little one like Quinoa Salad?  These gals do!  Packed with spinach, strawberries, feta cheese…yummmm…

They also made her deliciously healthy {seriously delicious, I had it} Smurf Shakes!!  Blueberries, yogurt, almond milk and more!

After they enjoyed their mid-meal preparation snack, they began to assemble their fruit skewers…

Lastly, they spent some time putting together some magical Shrek Shakes!  Imagine…kids digging into drinks filled with spinach and flax seed.  YES!  It happened and I watched it!

So, if you haven’t heard of The Good Food Factory yet, please, do yourself a favor and check it out.  Play one of her fabulous cooking shows for your little ones.  I know my kids LOVE cooking shows.  It’s fun to watch, it will teach them something and, who knows…maybe they’ll start loving green smoothies?!  Check it out and let me know what you think.  Also, head on over to her facebook page and become a fan to see new recipes and updates.  Tell her I sent ya ;-)

XOXO,

Kelly

Silly

Serious (or to P, poker face)

Excited

Mean

Scared

Sleepy

Birthdays are SO fun when you’re little.

Our kids’ birthdays are just four days apart, so we celebrate them together.  It can be a bit tricky since we have one boy and one girl, but so far, we’ve been able to come up with a theme (that both agree on) each year.  We don’t have big parties in our house (they are limited to immediate family and one or two close friends each), but we still like to do something special for the kiddos.  The theme this year was ‘Greenilicious’.  It was a play on the ever-popular ‘pinkilicious’ and my son came up with it.  It’s a color both children like and it was actually really fun thinking up ideas.  We found some cute cupcake wrappers on Etsy (man do I love Etsy) from Cupcake Express and it really helped to spur some creative thinking.  We designed a couple banners and some cupcake toppers, found a bunch of green candies and came up with some other fun GREEN food ideas.  Green apples, green grapes and ‘ants on a log’ were some of the favorites.  A dear friend of mine (thanks, Tina!) shared a yummy (and more nutritious) version of a popular crisped rice cereal snack.  If you haven’t tried these yet, you MUST.  We can’t get enough of them!!  They are known as Brown Rice Crisp-Wee Treats.  Anyhow, much green was worn and much fun was had!  We’re already excited for next year :-)

Ahh, my boy.

My sweet, sweet boy turned SIX this week.  Six.  How in the world did that happen?  On one hand, it feels like it was yesterday that we found out I was pregnant with him, but on the other hand, I can barely remember what life was like without him.  Funny how kids change your life.  I truly cannot imagine life without them.  So, this week marks SIX years that we have been blessed as parents.  Six wonderful, challenging, exciting, exhausting, but AMAZING years.  Thank you to this little boy who made that happen.  I don’t know that we could ask for a more affectionate, sweet, loving, caring, sensitive, considerate boy.

Happy birthday, big boy!  We love you!!!

At birth:

One year old (look at that CHUB!!):

Two years (that’s my serious boy!):

Three years old:

Four years old (that’s my sweet boy):

Five years old (silly, at times):

…and SIX.  Love this boy!

My little girl.

Well, she’s getting to be my big girl now.  She turned FOUR this weekend.  Where does the time go?  I seriously cannot believe that it was FOUR years since our baby girl was born.  She is just the sweetest, funniest, most positive little girl I have ever encountered.  Of course, as luck would have it, the poor thing was sick and spent the night before her birthday in the Emergency Room :-(  Needless to say, she wasn’t in great spirits on her birthday, either.  She had NO appetite and was just really not herself at all.  We told her we will have to have a birthday re-do.  I just feel AWFUL for her.  She has such a “sunshiney” personality and was SO excited about turning four…sigh.  Sometimes things are just not fair.  Thankfully, we planned their little party the weekend following, so hopefully she will be recovered by then.  We’ll be praying!

Now, as you may expect, I have a few photos to show how she has changed in the past four years.  My sweet girl. :-)

Moments after birth:

One year old

Two years old

Three years…

And now FOUR.  *sigh*

Happy birthday, beautiful girl!!!!  We love you!

And now it’s my girl’s turn. :-) While my son was off busily playing with his cars, my daughter was hosting a very special tea party.  It featured exclusive guests, such as “Hello Kitty” and “big girl doll” (as she likes to refer to her).  Everyone in attendance was told to wear a skirt, tiara and necklace.  The hostess, of course, was sporting a Tinkerbell dress over top a striped sweater.  Quite glamorous.  It is so sweet watching her be “girly”.  I love it!   It’s not often enough that I get pictures like this of my little ones.  I need to do it more so I have them to look back on and remember these times.  They are fleeting.  Each day seems to go faster than the one before, so I need these! Here is Miss T and her “friends”.

Tweet

My boy.

He LOVES his cars.   I think he could honestly play with them all day long.  He knows the make and model of many of them and has for a few years now.  I can distinctly remember one day sitting in the coffee shoppe with him, watching as the cars came and left the drive-thru.  One particular car was leaving and he asked me what it was.  I, not being a huge car buff, didn’t know and just rattled off some random make.  He glanced at me, sternly, and informed me that I was incorrect and then proceeded to tell me the CORRECT make of the vehicle.  Geeeeesh!  Give me a break, kid!  Haha!

Anyhow, my point is, he really loves these little things and I want to remember the moments he spends playing with them.  It’s just too sweet to not remember.  They’re only little once and I want to remember as much of it as I can.  So here he is.  My boy.  And his cars.

I really love this one because you can see “blankie” in there, too.  Blankie has seen better days, but P still loves him!