FOUR day weekend!

Usually i consider it the weekend when J comes home. Since he was expected to arrive home on Friday (early afternoon!) i definitely considered this weekend 4-days long. Plus, add in the fact that the twin and her cuties came to play in our neck of the woods AND that we were able to visit with a college friend (+ her husband + SIL + her two cuties) = the weekend most definitely started on Friday!

In case you couldn't tell, we practically live in the water during the summer. It's so much more fun with cousins, though!

sure...

 

they look all calm

but, what they love to do,

is SPLASH!

She's so cute!

We let the big kids stay up until the college friends arrived...

Lil' Miss took quite a shine to Mr. Steve

Both of them ended up staying awake until 11 PM. Sadly J didn't come home until 1 AM but at least he made it home safe and sound! You'd think that late early would spell SLEEPING IN but of course not. 

On Saturday morning we were met with a Box Turtle that J affectionately named Neville/Grumps. 

Churchill wasn't too sure about him:

They might have one day made friends...

but Neville was absconded by two tweeners as they walked past our yard. Bizarre. I just hope they were nice to Grumps.

While the life as a turtle owner can be exciting (or short lived), the life as a toddler is much more exciting--especially when it is birthday party time! 

We had a grand time celebrating Miss O's birthday at the Music Room and then at a great Mexican restaurant across the street.

of course, it wouldn't have been fun without the blanket!

my favorite part was the naptime song! 

We might start instituting that in our household

After the music class, we indulged in Mexican food for tots and adults alike and then wrapped it all up with a cupcake--definitely Cutie Face's favorite part of the day!

this was the first party she attended where there was a goody bag--oo la la

By the way, Cutie Cakes still exists:

We celebrated Memorial Day a day early with Poppy's side of the family

Cutie Cakes loved being held by GiGi

and the yahooligans really liked running in & out of the mesh bug screen

On the REAL Memorial Day, I was supposed to run a 5k...

i ran down to the start just to find out it was canceled! Oh well.

I met back up with J and the Cuties and we walked to Belly

Cutie Face wasn't too sure about the day-old pack of bagels we bought

She made up for the lack of flavor by spicing things up with her antics

thankfully, they kept us all amused while we waited out a severe thunder shower

After a relaxing afternoon, 

we rounded out our 4-day weekend with a neighborhood stroll...

See you later, May! Here we come, June!

Lessons from the Zoo

Today we learned three valuable lessons:

Lesson 1: Get a great start to your day by eating a bagel courtesy of Free Bagel Fridays at Einstein's!




Lesson 2: never go to the zoo on the last day of Spring Break when the weather is PERFECT (ie not humid, but still warm!)





Oh well! we still had fun, especially because J joined us for the first time in a loooong time (last July)!

Lesson 3: Charge your battery before you depart...or else you'll only have 4 good pictures to share.

Family date!

The day after Christmas, Cutie Face came down with the illness that poor Lil Miss had. She didn't get the full-blown croup but she definitely got the bad cold that accompanies it. She also ran a fever off and on for a few days.

To help keep her mind off her sickness, we took her on an excursion (we've been reading Fancy Nancy, can you tell?). Of course, it probably wasn't the nicest thing for us to do to others since we took her out and about while she was sick...but we were desperate to get out of the house!

and get out we did!

We made three stops which wore Cutie Face out but caused her to sleep for 2.5 hours! We'll take that!

First we stopped at an awesome fountain. I thought it would be fun to take pictures of her in her new outfit that we bought her for Christmas (it was her "Wear" gift)

She was way more interested in looking at the fountain

...than to sit still and pose

Check out the crazy cloud line here:

Up next was the petstore. We saw fishies

Cutie Face wasn't very enamored by them

but she did like the birdies! (I was trying to focus on the birds and blur out Cutie Face and J in this picture)

Finally, we hit our original destination--Panera Bread. Ever a fan of bagels, Cutie Face devoured a whole wheat oat bagel...

and then started scavenging for lemons that were in our water...

Despite the initial shock:

She kept going back for more:

Well, they say citrus is good for a cold, right?

Fun Friday

Fridays have kind of turned into a special Mommy-Daughter date day. In October, we went to Einstein Bros. Bagels each Friday morning to celebrate their Pumpkin bagels (and it helped that they were free!). Now we go out and run errands and just take a few minutes away from the house and computer to be with each other.

I really LOVE it!

Today, we dropped J off at work and headed to Dunwoody for my 30-week OB appointment. It was a relatively quick appointment since they just had to measure the belly and listen for the heartbeat.

Cutie Face enjoys going to the OB office because there are walls full of baby pictures. She could just stare at them for hours! In fact, we walked by a wall of photos as we went to our room and, after a few moments, she was begging to go back into the hallway to see the babes. ("Baby? Baby? BABY! Pleees plees PLEES")

Thankfully, they had a "Highlights" magazine in our room and that occupied her while we waited for the doctor.

We met the newest member of my doctor's practice--he was a one-man show until last month and it was fun to meet a woman OB (I've never had a woman as an OB/Gyn before!). Verdict is still out on if I'll choose her to be my full-time OB but she seemed nice and Cutie Face felt very comfortable with her (she has longish wavy/curly hair and resembles me a lot which made Cutie Face ask "Mommy?" when my doctor left the office!).

The office just received a new Ultrasound Machine and needed to calibrate the picture settings on it. The OB asked if I'd like to be the "guinea pig" and I agreed. It was a really fast ultrasound but it was another 4-D one which was fun.

Sadly, Babette #2 absolutely continues to REFUSE to show us her face. This time she had BOTH hands in front of her face. I guess we'll just see her in 10 weeks! I just hope she isn't hiding anything scary behind those hands :)

Since it was Friday, I decided to head to a bagel place right across the street from the doctor's office. I've heard great things about Goldberg's Bagels so no time like the present to try them!

Handily, they were right next to a Starbucks, so we headed over for some tea once we bought our bagels. I'm pleased to announce that these bagels truly are New York style bagels and tasted sooo authentic that, despite eating breakfast earlier in the morning, Cutie Face ate her whole Blueberry and I ate the other TWO bagels. Carbo-loading for tomorrow's cross-country race is my only excuse!

Since we were practically in the 'burbs, I decided to get some errands out of the way after we ate. I needed supplies for next week's Tutorial Tuesday!

We don't have a crafty store like Hobby Lobby too close to us so off we went. Turns out I got a little lost but it wasn't a huge deal and we were in the Hobby Lobby parking lot in no time. I couldn't resist a Super Walmart, though, so we headed there first.

Cutie Face found the baby aisle and loved the baby toys, bottles, etc. I think she is really getting into the Big Sister idea--we are so blessed that God is seemingly preparing her sweet heart for a baby!

While in the Crafty aisle, Cutie Face spied "Melmo" (ie "Elmo") and we spent a good five minutes playing and talking to the Elmo balloons. Despite their apparent similarities, Cutie Face, for some odd reason, favored the balloon on the right MUCH more than the one on the left. Weird.

The rest of the day was largely spent writing Monkeys on the Bed blog posts while attempting to get Cutie Face to sleep (I knew I shouldn't have let her taste that Gingerbread Latte sample!). Finally, we both got in a 1-hour nap before we headed off to pick J up at work...and then to Ikea for dinner and shopping!

Sadly, my phone (also now my camera!) died on our way over there so I don't have any pictures but Cutie Face once again greatly enjoyed herself and J and I checked out some "Big Girl" beds...we may have come to a few decisions, too! Yay!

This weekend is grossly busy but stay tuned for a weekend recap on Sunday evening! Hope y'all have a great one!