Is It Naptime Yet

We bought bunk beds this weekend. Not because we really needed them at this time, though Lilah was getting big for her toddler bed that was just a crib converted to a bed, but they were the right price and we’ll need them eventually.
When we were at dinner a couple Thursday’s ago Jon’s boss’s wife mentioned how they were looking for bunk beds and how sad she was that she could only find them for like a thousand dollars, but her friend mentioned Big Lots and how they had bunk beds for $200. They had the bunk bed with a futon bottom, which is what I originally wanted, but they also had this regular bunk bed that converts to two twin beds. The futon bed was dark wood with black metal so I decided against it and we got these. Of course I decided on these after hitting an RC Willey clearance, which had a bunk bed futon for $400 and the Air Force Base which had an ugly wood bunk bed, a primary colors bunk bed and a black metal futon bunk bed. I like the beds we got. They’re well made for being cheap, but they still have some cheapness to them. The bad thing with using someone else’s truck who lives on the other side of town, AKA my dad, is you hate to return things if they have a defect. These just has some wood separated on a leg. Nothing to big that will affect the safety, but not pretty. One day we’ll fill it in with something and then paint them. The beds have other things wrong but, but we’re overall happy with them and we did only pay $200 for the beds them self. Of course we had to also buy a mattress, only one so far, and we’ll need to get a solid board to go under the bed, but for now it works.
I have the room arranged so we actually have about the same space that we had with the two cribs. I like it. Don’t mind the mess in the photos. The mattress is still airing out and I just piled everything on Lilah’s bed so it wasn’t on the floor.
Luckily we have our tent set up out back so Lilah and Jon slept outside last night. I had the fan on to circulate air and the door opened while Eden slept because of the strong scent to the new furniture. I need to go light a candle in there so by nap time it smells nice.
We spent a lot of money this weekend.
We bought the beds, which totaled $323, we visited Costco, which is always over $100, and I bought clothes for the girls. Mervyn’s was having a sale so I was getting knit pants for $2 a pair and overall saved a total of 49%. Some things we’re clearance other things were just on sale. It was great, though half the cloths are for now and half are for winter.:)

It was a crazy weekend. I think we’ve done our big spending for the next three months.

The new bed and a half, since we have only one mattress.

The small room.

My new changing space.

At first we had the beds parallel to one another, but that left so little space that we decided to put them perpendicular.
I also had the changing table against the wall but that left no where for the diaper pail. Putting it against the bed gave me more room.
I like the new arrangement and can’t wait to get ride of the other crib. It’s under Lilah’s bed so I can have so much more storage space once it’s gone.
Anyone want a crib?

Well I had planned on making the girls hooded towels for Easter but my mom wasn’t able to embroider their names on them and I was too tired to make them. 🙁
Instead I got them each a bag of goldfish colorful crackers one mini cadbury egg , some robin eggs and green pear applesauce. (Lilah didn’t like the applesauce. I actually think it’s too sweet for her taste.)

Church was early for us so we had breakfast and got dress to go. Lilah wanted to just stay home to eat candy and hunt for eggs but I said she had to go to church or there would be no more Easter. (She kept asking to stay home so that’s when I gave her the ultimatum.) She went to church but apparently was noticeably grumpy to a primary counselor and her teacher during singing and sharing time. I’m sure waking up at 5:30 am didn’t help either. (Our power went out about 4 times on Sunday. Lilah woke up because the door wasn’t lite by the hall night light, or rather she started crying for that reason.)

They girls got tons of stuff at church, really Eden got tons of stuff at church, play dough, M&M’s, a goody bag. It was more than we had given her! Jon got a picture of the girls and all their loot.

The girls and their loot. This is also the only picture I have of them together, so I had to post it.

Sleepy Eden

Eden also woke up early that morning. As you see she feel asleep in her high chair at lunch. Jon had seen the signs of sleepiness and warned that we’d have to hold off on the egg hunt until after Eden’s nap since she was so tired. I didn’t believe that she was that tired until I saw her eyelids close and her head bob. Lilah was too psyched for the egg hunt so we decided we’d do two that day. She got hers that afternoon and Eden got hers after we got home from my parents.

Lilah’s egg hunt

Her reapings

We all took afternoon naps and then headed to my parents for dinner. It was delicious and the kids couldn’t wait until they went egg hunting.

Howie, Kaitlynn, Eden and Lilah

Eden finds egg!

Lilah goes right by the egg!

Howie was a real trooper and aloud Eden to get some eggs that he spotted at the same time as she. Poor kid, they’d both see it and he was obviously faster than Eden but we’d always ask him to let her get the eggs.(She got 5 and he got 8. ) He’s a great cousin.

Their was tons of candy in each egg. I mean this is a picture of what we got in the one basket my mom gave us and then the 15 eggs the girls found.

Jon wants the candy to be gone within a week, either we eat it or it gets tossed, though I’m sure I can’t do that I love chocolate too much and I’m trying to be good, so I want it to last, we just don’t like the asking of candy each morning by the girls.
Anyways between the candy filled eggs and the best Easter basket ever we’re going to have a lot of candy to eat or give away. Anyone want candy?

Oh here is a picture from Eden’s egg hunt that night.

It actually worked out well to do two. This way she could just look and find rather than us hurriedly point so she could have a chance against her sister. Lilah wanted to help find eggs but we kept her on the couch and Eden laughed with delight each time she spotted an egg on her own. Lilah did help me hide them for Eden. She wants to do more egg hunts, but I can only take so many and three’s enough for me.

Happy Easter Everyone!

My sister Carolyn works at a real estate office. For an Easter gift she asked the women who does their house baskets to make each family, that was here for Easter, a basket. Here’s ours. It has tons of stuff in it. Peeps, cotton candy, chocolate bunnies, crayons, coloring books, Orange slices, m&m’s and candy kisses to name some of it. I almost don’t want to open it because it’s so pretty. It’s was from her and Derek.

Carolyn also bought the dresses that the girls wore for Easter. She just liked them and I just kept them for Easter.

She’s taken nicely to the position of “Aunt with no kids who spoils her nieces”. Andrea use to do this, along with Carolyn, but now we only have Carolyn. Andrea still spoils them when she has a chance, it’s just that she’s hundred of miles away.
On Sunday I joked with Carolyn that she didn’t need to have kids, we’d just share custody with her and Derek. We’d have the girls during the week and they could have them on the weekends, that way we could go on dates. 🙂
She wasn’t up for joint custody but she did say she’d babysit once a month since she’d be babysitting Nia, he friend Julie’s daughter, once a month. Derek would just have to have his boys night out on her babysitting night. 😉
Well see if it happens. Their house will be on the other side of the universe from us, but heck if it’s free $6 in gas ain’t bad for a babysitter. 😉

I think Jon and I are real parents now. We’ve both been neglectful in different ways the last week or so and finally we’ve had to go through our child’s poop and check for an object she swallowed. I think that is one test of true parenthood, stool checking.

Friday we attended a wedding reception for a friend I went to school with. They had vases filled with decorative glass rocks and flowers. Eden was being very difficult. They only thing she wanted to do was lay in the middle of the floor. We’d pick her up persuade her to eat and then down she would wriggle out of our arms to lay on her belly wherever she landed. Late in the night I got a glass stone from a vase for her to look at. She tried to eat it a couple of times and then I persuaded her to just hold it. We put it on the table and later Jon got her. I guess he also let her play with the stone only he didn’t realize she liked putting it into her mouth. Well at one point she started pointing to her mouth and Jon asked to look in it and to spit whatever it was out. Nothing. He then realized he had been letting her hold the stone. He asked where the stone went and Eden just pointed to her mouth. We asked several people there what we should do. One was a vet and another was an aspiring doctor. OK he was my friends younger brother and he is going to be a doctor, just after he gets his bachelors and then goes to medical school. Anyways. We came to the conclusion it would be alright. After all the stone had no rough edges, though it was about the size of a dime.
On the way home we listened intently to Eden’s breathing making sure she didn’t quietly stop breathing and us never notice. She started coughing and choking a little bit on the way home but after a drink of water she was fine. Our hearts worried. We hoped the stone was not lodged anywhere problematic. We got home and put her into bed. We both worried about her sleeping laying down. What if the stone got caught or changed position and choked her?
We looked up some websites and Jon called a nurses line. Her surety that Eden would be OK helped put us somewhat at ease. After all it was a round object with no jagged edges, she had swallowed it with ease, though it was on the big size for a little girl, but the nurse said it would probably just pass.
Jon was very nervous and slept in the girls room Friday night.
Eden’s been fine and today I was the lucky one to find the stone in one of her stool diapers. Yes I got it out and washed it so we could keep it. After all it was just a little poop, and I’ve gotten that on myself before and I’ve never thrown out body parts.
When Lilah showed the stone to Eden today and she called it ice, so she thought it was suppose to be eaten. 🙂

It has been a hard week for Eden. She’s a little more of a handful than Lilah was at this age, or we were more cautious. In the last week she’s had peanut butter and chocolate. She had a reaction to the chocolate, but luckily it was just small, mostly extra rosy cheeks, and she had no reaction to the peanut butter. She’s also been locked out front on our porch one night. We were just grateful she wandered back to the front door to cry and not onto the sidewalk or street. Now she swallowed a stone. Kids keep you on your toes and really our kids are pretty mild compared to others. I hate to think all the things that wild kids would do under our supervision.

For our Mommy group/child’s class today we decided to go The Secret Gardens at The Mirage. Luckily all the kids are under the age of four so it was just $15 for each mom to get in. The girls loved it and loved the dolphins. Lilah didn’t care too much about the lions and leopards. Here’s our adventure.

Right after we got there the trainers came out and we were able to see the dolphins play and jump a little.

We then went to the below water observation and watched the dolphins.

Then back to the surface to watch the other dolphins.

I love these behind shots

We then saw the lions and lionesses. Along with alpacas.

Lilah, Eden, Katia, Isabell and alpacas in the background.

The white tigers.

Isabell and Eden were twins with their onsies.

Lilah, Eden, Britta. (Sam’s daughter whom I watch each week before dance.)

I just love the individual look of each girl.

The Leopards were our last stop before we went and watched the dolphins some more.

It was a great day, though windy and a little cold because of the wind. Luckily the wind did eventually die down and we enjoyed beautiful weather.

We’ve been having lots of fun at the Blake house.
I love watching my girls grow up and I can’t believe how fast they grow.
Things Eden’s doing: Well she copies Lilah in all that she does and she loves her sister. Morning noon and night it’s always Yiyah, Yiyah? If Eden wakes up before Lilah she always points to her sister and says her name. (She says Yiyah much more than she says dada or mama.) I also have to shut the door to their room if Lilah is still sleeping because I’ve found Eden sitting on Lilah’s bed next to her a many a time while her sister sleeps.
Eden’s following her parents example too. We don’t teach them much but we let them know that you smash boxes before you put them in the trash. Luckily this box was empty.

Lilah is getting more independent. We let her rub sunscreen on her and she got it all in one spot. She tried though.

It was a beautiful Saturday on March 10th so Jon suggested running in the sprinkler. I wasn’t too happy about it. I wanted to relax and not worry about them getting muddy or grassy. Oh well. It was fun for them.

I was at target the other night and I saw these shirts that said “everybody loves a blue eyed girl” They also have it for brown eyes, but no green! (not that I could wear a toddler size 6.)

I got one for each girl and they wore them yesterday to their classes at the church.
I put three pigtails on each girl. I loved doing this to Lilah when she was Eden’s age. Now that the mullet is cut I can do it!

I love this one because Lilah is posing a smile.

So much cuter in person.

(I want to tell why Lilah’s arm is in such a strange position. Eden kept walking towards me because she likes to look at the camera so Lilah was putting her arm in front of her so she would stay put. So when I asked Lilah to move it her arm went into this strange position. I just think it’s funny how she mothers her little sister. )

We also had a picnic after we picked Jon up at work yesterday. Well, we had it at his work since UNLV has such beautiful grassy areas.
We then went to a park afterwards that is on our way home. I wish I had brought the camera. Eden was hilarious! It was the first time she’d been on a swing and she had a ball. She had a concerned look on her face, yet she was smiling. She kept saying “whoa, whoa”, it was adorable.
I know I’m a terrible mom. Neither of my girls rode swings until they were at least 18 months or so. Not because I didn’t want them to but because we don’t go to parks often.
It was tons of fun and we may do the same thing next week when we pick up Jon.

I received my diploma in the mail today!!!
I still need a frame. Any suggestions are welcome as to where to get a nice one with a mat or a floating frame

It even came with a wallet diploma, courtesy of the UNLV Alumni association.

Yes, I did blur out my middle name. I figure this is a public site.

We got some promotional tattoos in the mail from Disney. Jon decided it would be fun to put them on him and Lilah. Luckily there were three because Eden wanted one also. They’re Pirates of the Caribbean tattoos.
Here are my rebels.

The funny thing is Lilah had a stake Primary activity today so she went wearing this outfit, which clearly showed the tattoo, which I was fine with. But the funny thing is it was a missionary activity so she was a missionary with a skull tat.
Oh well.

Well this week is my 5th year wedding anniversary and today I received some beautiful flowers from my hubby. As I said in my valentine post we don’t worry about valentines and just really focus on our anniversary. (I got two non-valentines gifts. Chocolates that were bought and not really given to me on Tuesday night, the day before Valentines. Then their were red roses that my husband got very cheaply on Saturday, the day I got back form my trip. )

Anyways, I saw the Fed Ex guy coming to my door and I thought, “We haven’t ordered anything, all our packages got her yesterday.” Well it was for me, and the box had ProFlowers on it so I knew exactly what would be inside. A beautiful bouquet of lavender roses.

It was fun because I got to arrange them myself. (It had instructions and a vase.)

I enjoyed cutting each stem and finding a spot for each flower and then foliage. It was sent with love and arranged with love. I didn’t even finish my lunch before arranging! (Besides the fact that I knew they needed to be in water, but I was just so excited to get them. I love lavender roses!)

The best lighting in my house is in my kitchen so I placed them in the doorway and took a picture. This one shows the color well and the next the flowers.

I love anniversaries. (They also had a beautiful note/ poem with them. Oh how I love my hubby.)

They are beautiful.

The first bouquet Jon ever sent to me were lavender roses. These were long stemmed, large, beautiful lavender roses. (They looked more like this variety.) They were sent to my office on our five month anniversary, which was just a month before we got married. They were so beautiful and the scent was so intoxicating. I had them on my desk, which was near the employees and lawyers in boxes, so all day long I heard how beautiful and what wonderful scent they had to them. Then I brought them home. They bloomed and died within four, if not three, days but oh were they worth it. We’ve yet to find lavender roses that stand up to those, but I enjoy any roses from my hubby.
Happy five year anniversary! Even though you are a pain I love you. (You’re only a pain because you’re such a free thinker ;))
You are such a help to me and the girls and I know you love me with your whole self. Thank you for accepting our differences, even though I’m still trying. Thank you for your patience, even though I get mad that you are so patient and I’m not.
I hope to grow closer to you. At times is seems impossible because we are so close, then at times it seems impossible because of the changes. I love you still and I hope to love you as Christ loves you. 😉

I know ever since you’ve known that I went on my trip you all have been waiting for the inevitable photo blog. ;)Here it is.

So we brought a bowl and a towel just in case Eden decided to throw up.

I looked back sometime between Mesquite and St. George to check on Eden and this is what I saw.

I

I have no idea how long it had been on her head.

 But she had fun with it.

Friday we went to the park despite the throw up incident that morning by Eden.

Then onto the wedding that night.

On the tables they had confetti. It started with Lilah just putting it in my hair but then I started sticking it to the girls faces.

Lilah dancing with my cousin Brittany.

Here’s the cake my mom made.

The bride and groom.

My Aunt Glenna and Uncle Leonard.

There’s a sum of the trip
I didn’t take any pictures on the way back because we had two sick girls. 🙁

All are well now. I’m even babysitting my two niece’s and nephew right now.