Kylee's Hair

I've been having so much fun with my baby girl's hair lately, and she loves it!

I've been braiding...

 

and twisting...

and knotting...

and anything else I can think of or find to do to her hair.

She even tells me how she wants it in the mornings. Her favorite lately is "two braids." Then after I'm finished, she has to make sure I did what she wanted. Silly girl.

Gunnar is 1!

Our sweet baby boy is 1!

For his actual birthday, we made cupcakes and let him have one all to himself, just like we did with Kylee. He was more interested in playing with it than eating it!

 

He eventually did eat a bit though.

 

For his birthday, we did a Dr. Seuss theme. So fun!

Per my mom's suggestion, the invites were little books.

This was the cover...

and all the pages...

 

 

{if you're interested in using my invite idea, just let me know and I can link a downloadable file of all the pages for you to download and print. All I ask is a pin on Pinterest as a thank you.} :)

For the party, we did a Cat in the Hat cake. We had originally planned to just do the hat, but this was our first time using dowels to help hold up the cake, which resulted in improvising. After we had placed the fondant on the cake...it started to settle a bit, resulting in this:

 OOPS!
So we improvised at 12am and I did my best to make a Dr. Seuss-esque fish.

The themed food was so fun!

 We had Oh, the Places You'll Go! cookies...

 One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish...

 Hop on Popcorn...

 Truffula trees...

 {I bought yellow straws, and put black electrical tape on them. Then I put marshmallows on one end. I dipped the marshmallow in melted candy melts and then colored sugar.}

Pink Yink Ink Drink (Even though I messed up the recipe and so it was actually red...)

And what would a Dr. Seuss party be without green eggs and ham?!

 I made his little personal cake into a "Thing 3" cake.

 A friend at church who teaches at their school had a bunch of Dr. Seuss cutouts that she uses in her classroom and she let me borrow them. Awesome! Thanks, Ashley!

 I made a banner of all of Gunnar's monthly pics and hung it on the wall in our foyer.

 And here's the birthday boy!

Gunnar did even better with his cake the second time around...

And he had no problem digging in!

For games, I used an oatmeal container, a paper plate, and construction paper to make a Cat in the Hat hat, and the kids tried tossing marshmallow in it.

They also played Pin the Hat on Cat with some of the hat cutouts I had, but I didn't get a picture of it.

The third game was called "Would You Eat it in a House?" The idea was to puree food and dye it green and have the kids (and adults!) taste it and guess what it was. I have leftover baby food in the pantry so we just used  that.

We let the kids and adults play, and it was fun watching everyone's faces! A few of the foods we picked were green beans, peaches, and even ground chicken...yum!

The party went great! Thank you, everyone, for helping make his day special!!

Fun Date

Greg and I went out on a date last week and it was so fun. We got a very first paid babysitter, and we went to a shooting range and I finally got to shoot a gun!

First, we had Mexican. I had authentic tacos. Up until just a couple years ago, I'd never had them before. They are so good now that I've actually tried them! I can't believe I was missing out for so long.

 Before we left, we had to take some dumb photos too. It wouldn't be a date without it.

Then it was off to the shooting range.

Greg and I had tried this whole "shooting range" thing before we had children, but it didn't go very well the first time. We went to an indoor place up in Michigan, and I had been having a hormonal, emotional, crying morning that particular day. And women, we all know that if there was already crying that happened in a particular day, crying is more likely to happen at some other point that day. Anyway, Greg was going over the gun safety rules wiht me while we were in our lane when a very large gun went off that scared me half to death. I jumped out of my skin, and then before I'd fully recovered, it went off again. Next, I burst into tears and buried my face in Greg's chest until it was done. Needless to say, I didn't shoot that day.

It took me more than 6 years, but I was ready to try again, under the agreement that we'd try an OUTDOOR range this time where the sound wasn't trapped in a concrete room.

Once we were there and ready to shoot, we had to wait for a cease fire so we could put our target out on the range. While we were waiting, a man walked up to us to say hi. It was the father of one of the kids on Hunter's soccer team that we're coaching. Wouldn't you know it that out of the 5 other people at the range, I had to know one of them.

We rented a .380 for me to try. I was scared to death a bit nervous at first because I just didn't know what to expect for the kick, but I think I did quite well.

Here I am ready to shoot, and standing absolutely ridiculous because I was still getting used to standing comfortable with it. Also, you're not mistaken. That's a look of sheer terror on my face.

After a while of shooting the .380, I decided to step it up a notch and shoot a .40. I had his glove on because I was afraid of the kick, but I ended up doing fine.

I guess I was feeling very brave that day (and I couldn't let my husband think I was a baby) so I even got up the nerve to shoot a .44. 

Greg predicted I'd be done after 3 rounds but I shot 10, and even aimed pretty well with it! By the 10th, my hand was getting sore, so I stopped there.

Here's a video of me shooting the .44.

Here's the hubs looking all hot and stuff, but that's nothing new. This time, he just has a gun in his hand while doing it.

It was so fun!!! I can't wait to go again!