When you're smiling, when you're smiling

The whole world smiles with you!

Sweetcheeks is now 2 months old (well technically she's 9 weeks now) and man oh man has she figured out this smiling thing. Her big gummy grin is adorable! She started really smiling on Sunday and now each time you pick her up, your heart just melts at her big ol' grin. I'll be honest, as much as I deny it, she smiles the most for her daddy and for Bubba. It's just adorable! Here she is smiling as Daddy talks to her:

 and in the bathtub for me...

 a little crooked smile in reaction to the camera flash

At 2 months old she is now:

• nursing every 3-4 hours during the day
• sleeps from about10pm-6am without waking, then nurses and goes right back to sleep until her brothers wake her up
• smiling :D
• when laying on her stomach, she lifts her head and sometimes, can do a mini-push up
• she is starting to bat at toys on her floor gym

•  she is awake for longer periods throughout the day, usually wide awake from 9:30-noon then on and off naps until around 6pm when she'll stay awake for another hour or two
• she is now wearing size 2 diapers, size 3 month clothing and when weighed at 7 weeks, she weighed 10lbs4oz 
• she's really started with the baby talk; cooing and ahhhing alot.
• when she cries, she has real tears now :(

On Monday, she'll have her 2 year check up and immunizations with the new doctor that we found. Hopefully we like him because it is very hard to find a family practitioner here who sees patients under the age of 2 {we prefer family practice over pediatricians}. I'm really curious to see what she'll weigh then!

DIY: Looped Ribbon Holiday Wreath

While we're still living amongst a few boxes in our bedroom, for the most part the house is put together so I decided to use naptime today to good use making a Holiday craft.

Tatertots and Jello shared their version of a Looped Ribbon wreath back in October. I was slightly busy having a baby in October and never had the chance to make a wreath but I bookmarked the tutorial because I seriously *love* how these look! My only problem today was that I had the craft itch but have yet to find/unpack my sewing machine. Their tutorial uses a sewing machine, my adapted DIY below uses a hot glue gun instead. Total project time was just under four hours but that's including prep, clean up, sipping Starbucks and listening to Christmas music while gluing and oh yeah, two hours of that was multi-tasked with watching the kids. Easily a project that can be completed in one evening and I'm thinking they would make really great gifts for teachers, neighbors, etc!

For a 14in wreath, you will need:

• 1 craft wreath (floral foam, straw, Styrofoam...whatever you can find, is fine)
• Glue gun and glue sticks (i went through at least 10 sticks using a mini-melt, high temp gun)
• Scissors and a piece of cardboard/cardstock
•  9 yds of a base ribbon
• a few pins
• 10-12 assorted ribbons, 3ish yds each *i highly recommend using ribbon that is 1/2" width or larger...it will be very time consuming and you'll go through a lot more ribbon if you use smaller than that*
• optional: a lighter

Step 1: Wrap and adhere your base ribbon to your wreath form. I used a small dab of glue, used a pin to hold it in place and wrapped the ribbon all around the form.

-Finished Result after step 1-

Step 2: Cut all of the ribbon that will be your loops to approximately 4.5inches. 

Quickest way to cut this much ribbon: take a piece of cardboard and cut to 4.5inches, then wrap your ribbon around the cardboard. Then take your scissors and cut the ends. Viola, perfectly measured and cut ribbon without a lot of hassle. Do this for all your ribbon. (note: I did not cut the entire spool of each ribbon; only about 2/3 of it; the rest I left just in case I didn't need it for this project, it wouldn't be cut into strips. I plan on making hairbows for Sweetcheeks using it later on!)

Step 3: Take a piece of ribbon, fold in half, place a small dot of hot glue about 1/4in from the end and press sides together.

Step 4: Now take your ribbon loop, open up the tales a bit, apply another gob of hot glue and press this flat onto your wreath form. Keep doing this, in sections, using all your ribbons evenly.

At first it looks kinda funny and you're sure that you're doing it wrong and that you screwed it up. You didn't. Just keep going using even amounts of each ribbon. I found it easiest to glue a bunch of loops, then place and glue them to the form all at once.

Keep going and going until the front of your wreath is completely covered. (There is no need to cover the back, which is why you used your base ribbon). For this wreath, I covered all but a 2 inch section at the bottom center; I had this tiny little stocking (from a gift card) that I wanted on my wreath so I hot glued it there, affixing ribbon around it.

Tada! Doesn't that look festive?

and a close up.

These are pretty inexpensive too! The wreath form cost $2.15 at Hobby Lobby but according to Tatertots & Jello, you can buy these for $1 at the dollar store. {I wasn't going 2 different places with 4 kids so save a buck). All the ribbon was 50% at Hobby Lobby making it $1 a roll for most. (I also used 3 spools of ribbon that I already owned as well). Total spent was around $17 but I have plenty of leftover ribbon. And the possibilities are endless! You could make one to celebrate a Holiday, you could use the colors of your favorite football team or just colors that you like or that match your house. So simple, so festive and even the hubs liked it...totally worth the tiny burns accumulated from the glue gun!

Holiday Festivites!

Well, we're for the most part unpacked. Okay, that's a huge exaggeration. A better statement might be, "We're unpacked enough to live a normal day to day." Our garage is FULL of unpacked boxes that were previously items from our garage and basement. Our master bedroom has a bed, a dresser, bookcase and a ton of boxes. But this weekend we were able to unpack the bathrooms, linen closets, and living room. We haven't touched Sweetcheeks room yet (she's still sleeping in our room/with us) but since it's not priority we'll get to it last. We ordered a new loveseat and sofa; the loveseat is in our living room but the sofa will be here next week. I unpacked all the pictures that go on the walls but I want to switch out and update a bunch of the photos so the walls are still bare. But since we did work hard and get a lot done, we opted to take a break from unpacking and put up some holiday decor.

So far it's just our tree and stockings but I'm hoping to find my candles, knick knacks and stuff tomorrow. B and I are in a disagreement with the ourdoor lights; I want new ones and he wants to use the one from last year (which are LED and look blue...I hate that!). But I digress. On to the things we did do...

 Bubba was extremely excited to start decorating the tree! (which is new, are old one didn't light up...B won this one, we ended up with a multi-colored LED tree). This is the first year that we decorated the tree with the kids. Usually we put it up and have it decorated after they go to sleep and they wake up to the surprise. We decided they were big enough to help and other than having a very bottom-front heavy tree, they did great!

Pooks reminiscing about Tito

 Sweetcheeks hanging up an ornament

 

 

 

 

 Love their feet, especially Peanut's reindeer feet

 They did awesome! Minimal arguing/pushing and lots of helping and compliments

 and thanks to a self-timer, a family picture

don't mind my visible awkwardness, i had just ran and jumped behind the boys to be in the pic

After decorating the tree, the boys feasted on eggnog and sugar cookies while I read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".

Then today, we walked down to our community park and met Santa and Ms. Claus. Bubba asked for a Lightning McQueen, Pooks asked for an Ambulance and a Tow Mater, Peanut asked for Tow Mater as well. We have all those toys already but apparently not enough...

a bit homesick

We've now resided in Texas for 5 days and yesterday was the first day where I really felt homesick; it suddenly sank in that this move is real and that while I'm only 12 hours from "home", it's a totally different world down here! Obviously I miss my family and friends; I miss taking the boys to preschool, but we're adjusting. This move was the best move for us financially now, for saving up later and for B's job opportunities. We've been extremely busy trying to get unpacked and organized so I haven't even had much time to focus on the fact that I wasn't home.

Then we went to the grocery store. This kitchen is literally twice as big (if not bigger) than any kitchen we've had since getting married. It's a whole new set-up, in fact we had to buy our own fridge when we moved it because there wasn't one. So we had to go grocery shopping to fill it.

Naturally in this Great state, nothing is the same as anywhere else in the country and they don't have my usual uber-popular grocery store chain down here. No big deal, handled that fine. (at the time, now I may sound a wee bit bitter). Then we get to the pasta sauce aisle. I always buy Ragu Robusto with roasted garlic and onion. Always. Full of veggies, cheap, tastes good in spagetti or baked ziti, just really like to have it on hand,, kids will eat it...it's just our usual brand.

Well, they don't carry it. In fact they only carried one 'flavor' of Ragu. For some reason, this hit a nerve.

So we do more shopping and in the produce section they have BARRELS of pinto beans...odd, the only way I've ever seen pinto beans is in a bag but what-ev, I don't even buy them...it was just different. They also can legally sell 5.8% alcohol and wine in grocery stores. Again, not used to that but not really complaining. So we get back to the cold section and they don't sell the flavor of coffee creamer that I like, nor the eggnog.

Super frustrating.

I walk over the butter section, looking for plain un-salted stick butter. They have the pricier Land o' Lakes brand and then the store brand, which is fine by me. Except the packaging is in Spanish. Obviously I can tell by looking at it that mantequilla is butter. Took me a bit longer to figure out if I wanted 'mantequilla' or 'mantequilla sin sal', unsalted. Figure that out and I'm even more frustrated.(luckily 8th grade Spanish came back to me and I remembered that sin meant without.) Normally if I want butter, I buy butter. No guessing, no real thinking, it's butter. Blue pkg is unsalted, red pkg is salted. Done. But not here in Texas, it's gotta be more complicated than that.

By this time I'm getting irritated.

So lastly we get to the frozen food section, I wanted to get a few frozen pizzas for quick easy lunches. I get over there and start looking for the little orange boxes and ONCE AGAIN they don't carry it. How do you not carry the little crispy crust Tony's pizzas?!!?!

I'll admit, I was pissed. I was done shopping. I just wanted to leave, regardless if we had everything or not. I was done. I've been eating Tony's pizza's since like, birth. Okay, maybe not birth per se but when your Papa and Grandma both retire from working there, my dad worked there {as did most of my uncles} in high school, and it's very well known brand...it's all we eat when buying frozen pizzas. This stuck my last nerve.

Looking back now, psychoanalyzing myself, it was like the grocery store had just slapped me in the face and said ''Bitch, you ain't in Kansas anymore''. It was all the sudden that I realized this is now home, like the food or not, miss the people or not, you're home. This Tony's pizza lacking place where we reside, is now home.

I won't lie, I shed some tears. Not over the pizza (I don't think, lol) but over what the pizza represented. Of course I did so as discreetly and quietly as possible, then pulled on my metaphorical big girl panties and dealt with it. I have kids to raise, I can't be crying. I know it's a combination of the move, the lack of sleep and the business of getting settled. I know it will pass.

But it's my blog and I'll bitch, whine or cry over whatever I feel like. And when I do go back home, I'll probably gain 200lbs from the pizza.

Now that I have a chance to breathe

Here are pictures from Thanksgiving and Peanut's B-day party. Whew, only a week late but you know, four kids, moving across three states, unpacking 8,000lbs of crap into our new house, we've been a bit preoccupied. So, here they are:

 5 Generations of ladies :)

 Great Great Grandma and Miss Sweetcheeks

(there is a 99 year and 6 month age difference)

 Nanaw Phew Phew & Sweetcheeks

 Uncle Matt being, well, Uncle Matt

 My mama and her mama

 Nanaw and Papa with the boys

 Auntie Rachel lovin' on sissy

 B after a little too much Thanksgiving

 and onto the Birthday portion of the afternoon...

 Nanaw with the birthday boy

 Pooks

 Bubba

 Peanut

 his Elmo cake

 opening a few gifts

 He hated everyone singing to him, but loved blowing out the candles

 I'd say it was a hit!