GREATEST NEPHEW EVER!!!!!

Ok, so he's also our only nephew, but WE LOVE HIM!!!!!!! About 2 1/2 weeks ago, my younger brother Paul and his wife Jen welcomed their first child, Evan Thomas, in to this world! I'm pretty embarrassed that it took me 2 1/2 weeks to put up a post about the cutest baby ever...SORRY P,J, and e!!!!!!

For some reason, I haven't saved all the pictures they sent, so here are a couple from the hospital and this last 2 weeks at home. He is beautiful and we CANNOT wait to meet him!!!!!!! I'm hoping to take a trip up to visit them in a month or so, but I'm not telling Elise because she will be DESTROYED that she doesn't get to see him as soon as I do. Even Ainsley, who rarely thinks of anyone but herself, was pretending yesterday with her favorite baby doll " Dis is Baby Evan...i feed him milkie, change his poopy diapey, and sing him songs. I wuv him." Awesome.

The new mom and dad are doing well, adjusting to the fact that some babies cry A LOT, they don't read the same books about "sleeping/eating/being perfect" that we do, and that it really stinks to not get enough sleep. AND... they're doing a great job! Jen may be one of the toughest women I know...and I know a LOT of quality, hard-core mommies out there... She's amazing.

If you know them and want to check out their blog, it's martinschicago.blogspot.com.



i think this is my favorite picture of him so far....I just want to smell him! And touch him and kiss him...ok, I sound a little creepy now.

G.L.O.W...here comes Elise!

Anyone who 'gets' the title should be embarrassed. I wrote it and am even kind of humiliated, but I just couldn't stop myself...

Last weekend (a full week ago, I'm a little behind again blogging!), some friends came over for an impromptu hangout/cookout. Their two little boys are 4 and 1, and PERFECTLY adorable. I secretly encourage Elise to have a little crush on Jackson. He's only about 6 months younger than her, and he's so precious. They had a TON of fun playing in our playroom together!

Side note: Adam and Elise wrestle/play a lot. Elise LOVES playing rough and can handle a good deal of rough-housing... so, Jackson probably wasn't prepared for a girl who could hold her own wrestling with a very rambunctious boy! They both giggled a lot and the only blood drawn was a total accident. =)
I'm pretty sure, while I was taking THIS NEXT shot, Jackson said, "It's ok, she can stay there...". What!?! Alan, you'd better keep an eye on that boy! ....On second thought, look at that gleam in Elise's eye! Adam, we need to keep an eye on OUR kid!




Mitchell and Chase 'played' together a little bit, too. Mitchell SO needs some boys around to teach him how to play with something other than baby dolls, toy kitchens, dress-up jewelry, and strollers... Chase was educating him on balls, throwing stuff, and yelling. It was great. Ainsley just kind of hung out and played with the big kids a little, the little boys sometimes, and spent time on her own hiding/hoarding other kids' stuff.


I mean, REALLY!?! Could you find a sweeter little face!?!

Because we have girls...

On Friday, it was raining around here (again!), so we were looking for something to play inside and not be too rowdy since Mitchell was sleeping. We came up with "Ballet Class", "Gymnastics class", and "Beauty Salon"...We even engaged in "small talk" like you do at a salon...she told me all about her 'job-"I walk around the town and give toys and clean water to the poor people. They need water and good toys to live longer and have fun. I do it every day, all years long...". sweet. It was a lot of fun, the girls enjoyed themselves, and I could create THIS in Elise's hair:
She kept it like this for a couple hours until Adam came home. She wanted to show daddy her "beautiful salon hair"...

Our Weekend...

Sometimes on a Sunday night, I wonder, "What did we DO all weekend?" They go by so fast, we laugh so much, but then I already forget what we did. That's why I keep this blog, I guess. We're working on one of those programs that turns all your blog posts into a photo album...but here's a quick glimpse at our weekend:

Saturday morning, Adam and Ainsley went and picked up a ton of wood from a GREAT Craigslist deal. Elise (and Mitchell) and I went to a friend's house to tie-dye. We had a blast. The moms were working WAY harder than the kiddos and we got way messier, but it was fun. The girls each made their own shirt and one for a younger sibling. They also made a pillowcase each. They turned out so cute. Here are my girls modeling two of the six items.


Then we made stepping stones (with handprints, pieces of glass, stones, jewels, etc...) Those will be fun to put in the garden... the kids played in the water while my friend set up a picnic lunch. Ainsley and Adam got back from their errand and we all had a picnic lunch in PERFECT weather under a great shade tree!
Then it was on to naptimes for 3 kids and unloading obnoxious amounts of wood for the adults.
We got them up a few hours later and headed to a nearby creek to play in the water again. The water was VERY COLD and the sun had disappeared, so they only lasted about an hour before we needed to get them out and put on dry clothes.

The creek is at one of the city parks and there's a great playground right there too. So, once everyone had dry clothes on, we spent about an hour and 1/2 at the swings, playground. We had a GREAT time running around all together. =) These kids could swing all day long.


We headed home, realized it was dinnertime, stopped for ice cream for dinner (the first time I've EVER done that with the kids...it was fun! They had a vanilla cone at 6:30, a bowl of cereal when we got home, quick bathtime, and then straight to bed!

Sunday we had church in the morning (and YAY for the nursery workers and Sarah Rachel volunteering...I got to enjoy an ENTIRE CHURCH SERVICE without being paged for Mitchell!). After church, we head straight home for lunch and naps. During naptime, Adam mowed the lawn and I washed our cars- inside and out...literally could feed a household on the Cheerio and Goldfish crumbs from my car... After naptime, we spent about an hour 1/2 in the pool (Adam was in the water with the girls pretending to be an alligator- lots of fun!), then played inside for a little while, dinner, and kids were all in bed by 7:45.
Phew.
We sat on the front porch with a glass of wine/beer and chatting with neighbors for a couple hours...which is so nice and relaxing.
There you go. A typical weekend in a nutshell for the Moseleys...

Growing...

Mitchell LOVES to eat! He was once kind of a skinny, scrawny little thing. No longer. His one year appointment is in two weeks (we won't even talk about HOW it's POSSIBLE that he's almost 1!!!) and I'm pretty sure he'll no longer be in the 15% grouping...the kid is huge all of a sudden. He LOVES mealtime and can throw down as much as Ainsley at a single meal. So much so that his legs no longer fit under the clip-on high chair and we had to get him his own toddler sized high chair/booster seat thing. =)

His legs should be able to fit UNDER the table at the thigh...but they can't. So, that thing is on Craigslist now and he's in a new chair:

Stolen creativity, part II

Remember how, 3 days ago, I mentioned I would "that day" get this posted? Well... I'm working on it! In order to fight off the boredom and frustration, we scheduled play-dates for Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week. Tuesday we went to the mall and played there, did some back-to-school shopping with 3 gift cards (woo-hoo! The BEST kind of shopping), and had a lot of fun. =) Two play-dates down, two to go! The kids are loving it and it's making this week go by very quickly!

Here are pictures from the other fun idea I got from www.littlebitfunky.blogspot.com. We did the prep-work in about 20 minutes on Friday.

First, gather up small not-valuable items from the playroom, garage, kitchen, and front yard. Put them together in a medium-to-large tupperware container.


Fill the container with water. The colored popsicle sticks 'bled' their color into the water which was a)unexpected, b)really cool, and c)extra messy and stains clothing, faces, fingers.... So keep that in mind if you duplicate this fun idea!

Stick the containers in freezer for about 24 hours. It took somewhere between 20-24 hours for these to fully freeze, but they were huge containers:


The next day/week/etc... is when it's really fun!

set up blanket/table/towels outside, fill squirt bottles with warm water, hand kids a medium-sized screwdriver (that scared me a little, but I couldn't find anything else to work, either. My girls were actually very careful and only had one minor stabbing-her-own-hand incident), and let them squirt to melt the ice and chip away to go TREASURE HUNTING!

The whole plan was to do this on a HOT STEAMY SUMMER DAY...that way the sun HELPS the melting-process... do you see any signs of hot/steamy/summer? nope. It was 68 degrees and raining! But, we'd gotten them so excited about it that I couldn't just say "nope, let's wait a few days...". epic meltdowns would've ensued.. it started raining harder, so we had to move into the garage:

We pulled it all out into the driveway at 11am on Saturday and Elise worked on hers for almost 90 minutes!!!!!!!! Seriously! Even though it was COLD, she was soaking wet, and it was, at times, very frustrating work. Ainsley stuck with it for almost 45 minutes. That's pretty good for a 2 year old. Mitchell just wanted to crawl over to them and steal their treasures...


But, it was a blast overall. The girls had fun, Mitchell was manageable, only a few little trinkets were harmed (oh, devastating, I had to throw away 2 cheap necklaces and a spiderman ring?! Yay to purging junk!!). Next time, I'll check the forecast a little more closely AND have more towels ready to soak up the mess...but if it's hot and muggy, the melting ice would be more fun anyway!

Isn's summer over, yet?

We've officially hit the "it's-been-a-long-but-great-summer-and-now-school-needs-to-start.Now.Right-now" time around this house. Elise is super antsy and a little 'needy' for attention (which really is unlike her...), I've run out of ideas of fun things to do, the weather is so SWELTERING HOT that we can barely play outside, I (Erica) hurt my back somehow in the last month and am having trouble doing ANYTHING normal without some pretty frustrating pain, etc...you see what I'm dealing with... and, we never took a vacation this summer. At all. We ran out of time, money, energy, ideas, and it wasn't a big deal, until now. When I really wish we could've had a break from normal life. sigh... next year we will!
Anyway, last week I got super-motivated to find new/fun/exciting things to do for a couple days to stave off the boredom and whatnot in the house. And it worked! The new activities took part of three mornings and the girls had a BLAST. So did Mitchell, actually. He participated on one of the three... I stole all the ideas from a 'mommy blog' I follow of a friend of a friend (you can find her at 'littlebitfunky.com'- it's a great blog), so I want to give her credit even though I don't know her personally. Here are a few pictures from Friday morning:

All you need is about 2 packages of pudding and a dollup of whip cream. outside, of course, hose ready for the 'cleanup', playclothes on everyone...




This was before Ainsley started eating..she really enjoyed the mess. YAY!
It was probably 30 minutes of pure joy...and some sugar intake. =) Even Mitchell got some pudding and they all had fun.


Then we hosed them all off.

Since we were already outside and messy, we unloaded a can of Barbasol shaving cream ($1 at Kroger) on the same table, gave STERN instructions NOT to eat this one, and started all over again!

It added another 30 minutes of fun and...just like that...a whole morning was done!

Another round of hosing everyone off, of course

I'll try to put up the pics of Saturday's playtime/craftiness up later today!