Kira’s Second Birthday Party

Weeks upon weeks of late.

What can I say? My eczema is not getting better, and I’ve been really busy lately – trying to relearn my cleaning habits and planning my future and all that.

REGARDLESS!!!!

Kira turned 2! And we had her birthday party a couple of days before the big event. On a Monday.

Why on a Monday? Well…Ally is with her dad three out of every four weekends, so it was more conducive to our schedules to have Kira’s party (with just family and adult friends) on a Monday evening. We had a backyard barbeque!

Kira’s birthday party had an airplane theme because she loves airplanes. I purchased a bunch of dollar store airplanes for decorations, and each of them came with a cardboard picture of the plane next to a small diagram for assembly, and the back of each piece of cardboard was just a big image of clouds in the sky. I cut the instructional diagram off of the end of each piece of cardboard, hole punched the top corners of each piece, wrote ‘Happy’ ‘Birthday’ ‘Kira’ on the clouded side and alternated plane, sky, plane, sky, plane sky as a homemade birthday banner.

I’m really sorry if that’s confusing. I made it three or four days before the party and I thought I had taken a picture of it…but I guess I didn’t.

So I had a bunch of cardboard ends now that had clouds in sky on one side, and airplane assembly diagrams on the other. After doing a quick mental letter count I cut the pieces up so that I had enough of them to create a smaller secondary banner.

I took a picture of this one! *grin*

The party was at 4pm, so Phil and I decorated all through the nasty peak sun while the girls were napping. (At least, Kira was napping. I’m 95% sure Ally was just reading quietly, but I’ll take it!) After they woke up we brought them outside to show Kira her birthday party decorations.

“Oooooh! B’loons!!!”

This is a picture of Kira’s descent into the backyard, but it was the best picture of her birthday outfit.

I always try to buy a birthday dress that goes with the theme of the party, unable to find ‘airplane’ patterned clothes, I stumbled across this dress in the clearance section one day. It looked to me like a cloud in the sky. So I purchased it and then later bought toy airplanes which I sewed on to the dress. I used the third airplane and braided it into a headband made entirely of wool.

Also, those are her second full braids ever. She’s so big.

This is one of the airplanes that I assembled from the dollar store. I hung them on some wool and then strung them out along our laundry line. The proof is in the clothes pins.

Each one of those pins is holding an airplane. There are also two hanging from the trellis by the shed, and these four:

Kira in her ‘Birthday Girl’ chair.

This is the cake that Aunt Heather made for Kira.

Then Kira opened her gifts, which she loved! I’m not a big fan of displaying what other people gifted her, so you will all have to survive on this single picture of Kira sitting with me while we read one of her cards.

It was a great party, and Kira loved every minute of it.

I’ve got to go now, the kids are fighting and I need to run out to the store. Until next time!

Repurposing the Sand Box

Right before we moved here I purchased an outdoor playset second hand. It also came with a kids picnic table, a seesaw type thing, and a sandbox. The lid does not secure onto the sandbox. That means it is a giant litter box for cats and raccoons. Yay. So I decided against acquiring sand for it. A couple of weeks ago, Kira and I were spending a day alone and it was a scorcher. Then it hit me.

Wading pool.

Some water from the hose, toys from the kitchen, and a t-shirt and swim diaper because I left her swimsuit in the car which Phil took to work, and voila! Instant fun.

Also, here’s a picture of Kira shortly thereafter enjoying an ant crawling on her fingers.

Whaaaaaaa?

Cheers.

PS Remember we are away camping! Leave some love and I’ll reply in a few days!

In the mind…

…of a coffeepoweredmom.

 

Mommy: Can you stop and get beer please? K, thanks.

 

I have been trying to post every day. Every. Day. But I haven’t written down this (for lack of a better word) goal anywhere because I don’t want to be held accountable. I guess, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter whether or not I post every day, it’s just a little something I was enjoying doing. So, I am NOT going to make it a goal to post every day. If anyone thought that I was, because I kind of was, well I’m not any more. If it happens, then it happens, but some days it may not. With the warm weather finally here (although I truly do hate the heat) I am finally able to rid myself of that wintery cabin fever I gathered during the cold. The backyard has been fixed and upkept, and we finally have a porch to enjoy. I have been taking the kids everywhere, enjoying family time on Phil’s days off, barbequeing like there’s some sort of award for it, and kicking back and relaxing with a cold one after the kids are in bed. I have taken tons of pictures of our activities but sometimes it is really hard to get the energy together to go and get my camera to upload the pictures. Soooooo….

I don’t know if there is a post for tomorrow. There I said it. And it makes me feel good for saying it. I’ll still be around, trust me, I like you guys too much. I just need to get some energy together, all of this ‘enjoying days’ stuff is exhausting.

POWERED BY A BEER. Take that, world!

Frame Winner and Backyard Pictures

To make the draw as fair as possible, I used Random.org’s List Generator. I entered all of the ballots in the order that they appeared on my screen at 10am EST on May 8th. This list was as followed:

lorajbanks – like; betsyk1 – like; skippingstones – like; wifemothereventplanner – like; sillyliss – like; Aunt Jodi – follower; Aunt Jodi – frame plans; wifemothereventplanner – follower; wifemothereventplanner – frame plans; sillyliss – follower; sillyliss – frame plans; lorajbanks – follower; lorajbanks – frame plans

I then hit Randomize and took a screen shot for proof.

The winner of the first ever giveaway on coffeepoweredmom, the lucky person who gets to own this frame is:

SILLYLISS!!!  For being an awesome follower! Woooooo!!! Congratulations! Please email your address to coffeepoweredmom@hotmail.com and allow a long time for me to get to a postal office to mail it to you! Before July, I promise. You also get to participate in the ‘neversharemypersonaladdresswithanyoneandiwontshareyourseither‘ unwritten agreement that comes with all coffeepoweredmom giveaways! Yay!

And as mentioned, pictures of the kids in the backyard. This was on Day 1 of my sickness, in case you’re keeping a mental timeline.