A little Friday fun

One of the highlights of moving to the East Bay is now we not only live close to my cousin Jenny, but we also live close to my sister-in-law Cat's family. Scott & Cat arrived late last night for her brother's wedding weekend. After I dropped Andrew off at Mom's Day Out this morning, I headed over to Millie's Kitchen in Lafayette for breakfast with Cat, Scott, Jessie, and some of Cat's siblings.

It was so fun to get to hang out all together for a few minutes! Even though it was a brief visit, we had a great time. If we still lived on the Peninsula, quick visits like this would be much harder to coordinate.

After I did some work for a few hours, I picked Andrew up at MDO and headed over to Jessica's house (Jessica is Scott's sister-in-law) and Andrew got to play with his super Uncle Scotty. He shot his first BB gun.

Jessica's adorable daughter Jocelyn was also such a great little buddy to Andrew & Scott.

Jocelyn tried to help me tell Andrew to smile instead of making weird cheese faces...

but it didn't work.

Pink princess tricycle and a BB gun.

If there was a choice... I think the princess tricycle would've won out

Jocelyn pushed Andrew around and around

Tito stopped by after getting manicures/pedicures and the little guys were SO EXCITED!

Tito sandwich!

They were both adorable with their Uncle Scotter too

What an awesome way to start out the weekend!

Little sneak

When I got home from a full day of work yesterday I brought in the big tub of candy from my training (unfortunately the teachers I trained didn't eat all of it).

Jessie & I chatted about Andrew's day and the little man somehow grabbed the tub all by himself, brought it over to the couch, and started going to town.

He was pretty pleased with himself. Definitely takes after his mom and dad!

Things not to do before bed

Eat some of this around 11:30pm

Take bets on when the baby will come

Create emergency call lists and prioritize who to call first, second, etc...

Worry that no one will pick up the phone or will be free when we call

Spend a lot of time working on "to do" lists

Do online baby shopping and try to go to bed before search is finished

(still looking for more places to buy little sleepers that I like w/ the mittens on the hands... no luck yet!)

All of the above equaled very little sleep for me last night. I eventually stopped tossing and turning and went downstairs to continue my search for baby sleepers- I am seriously CRAZY! (I think the nesting bug has bitten me again- hardcore this time... I actually organized closets yesterday too... and was almost tempted to start organizing the boxes in the bathroom around 3am)

Fortunately being wide awake also allowed me to get some extra prep done for my YW lesson for Sunday on Optimism. I watched this video and was reminded of how blessed I am! Can't wait to show this to the girls on Sunday.

I read more talks on Optimism (usually helps me to start reading General Conference talks... I'll pass out pretty quickly) and I finally got back to sleep by 3:30 or 4am. Thank goodness since little dude likes to wake up at 7:15am lately! I plan to skip the B&J and "to do" lists tonight!!

Updates

Remember this closet we demolished not long ago?

It now looks like this... and little dude is one happy guy. He loves putting his clothes away in random spots so that I get to go find them. I have a lot of organizing still to do and a lot more stuff to add/take out of the closet, but the closet structure is at least done. Kevin still has to put the white paneled doors on the front, but that will be quick and then it will be done. Wahoo!

My favorite part of the closet is Andrew's drawers. Now he doesn't have to have a dresser in his room and we have way more space for toys and his train table!

His favorite part of his closet is this cupboard. Peek-a-boo! It is a cupboard for toys that I don't want to see. He likes to pick different things to put in there every day... including himself :)

Andrew also got a basketball hoop over his bed. I want to get some vinyl letters and put his name on it at some point. He loves to say, "I want to go play on my bed for a little bit. Do you want to come play basketball with me?"

He loves his new room and big boy bed so much that sometimes he'll just go upstairs, close the door, and play by himself for awhile. It is adorable.

Next up is Caitlin's room. Kevin is going to be building her closet structure this weekend. He is stoked ;)

I have also been gathering little accessories for her room. I thought this was a cute accent to use to stick all her hair clips. As you can see, we have just begun collecting them :) but the ones we have are ADORABLE. The little bright colored ones at the bottom just arrived from VA yesterday courtesy of our fabulous friend Jocelyn. I love them!

Andrew wanted to be in every picture I took... so here is his shot with the hair clip stand.

We also put curtains up in Caitlin's room. I scored these ones on sale at PB kids and they were the last two panels and now they are no longer available anywhere. The colors match perfectly with the baby bedding and are striped, which was what I was looking for. The photo doesn't show the colors that well, but you can see what the curtains actually look like here. They really mellow out the pink walls when you see them in natural light.

I am going to attempt to make a mobile for the nursery in the next few weeks... inspired by this but with multi-colored polka dots instead... we'll see how it works out. My fabulous crafty friend Liz is going to help me, so it probably will turn out beautifully.

My friend Sarah gave me this cute print and I love it so much that I might order a much larger one and frame it for the wall...

... and I also think this is cute (with a espresso wood frame and larger white matte) possibly in a green or another color (non-pink) to go in the room.

They might be too much of competing prints to let them share a space though... so we'll see.

I don't want too much on the walls or too much clutter... but right now the poor little girl's room is barren (besides her brother's train table and a closet full of stuffed animals).

I have a spreadsheet full of all the things that need to get done (day by day) until the little cutie arrives. Her room decor is really last on the list, but is the most fun to work on.

Can't decide what color to do some accent shelves (espresso or white?- her dresser and crib are espresso)... and I can't decide what to put over her dresser- mirror? artwork? something else random... we'll see what I end up doing.

Pass along any ideas if you have them!

Neighborhood Halloween Fun!

Remember this post where I talked about how I got roped into throwing a carnival for our whole neighborhood? Well, it was on Saturday and it was a smashing success... despite the foul weather! I had so much fun that we are contemplating making it an annual event.

Party co-hosts!

We started setting up bright and early on Saturday morning. It wasn't raining... we were hopeful it would stay that way.

The kiddos put spider webs everywhere and added spider rings

Everyone ran around in their pjs (or lounge wear :)) and moved tables and got things ready

Kev & our neighbor Greg had fun moving the large bales of hay for our photo booth out of our garage ;)

Two of my favorite Smiths were on hand to help out and run around after Andrew

Around 1pm (party time) it started pouring... so we rushed to move a lot of activities into garages. Fortunately we'd already emptied our garages a little bit so there was plenty of spaces for almost all the activities (except the bounce house).

We loved that someone set up these caution wet floor signs when it was raining :)

The bounce house was SOAKED inside, so Kevin spent the first part of the party sitting inside keeping it dry with towels.

The rain cleared up pretty quickly and then lots and lots of people started coming! Jessie and Jenny manned the photo booth and took adorable pictures of everyone. Kevin and I were so excited that several of our friends and their kids came to party with us... here are a few of them that got photo booth shots!

We even managed to get Andrew out of the bounce house for a few minutes so that we could take a family photo. I think he bounced in the bounce house for at least 2 hours (starting at noon when we were setting up... then taking a break for a little bit... and then bouncing until 4pm while we were cleaning up).

The night before the big party I suddenly felt creative and came up with a few more carnival games to add to the list of ones we'd already put together for Saturday. Kevin was my super helper and foam cutter.

We made a witch golf game

a Pumpkin candy toss game

and a Gone Fishing game

When the little dude wasn't in the bounce house, he was fishing for prizes

or doing the candy walk (same as a cake walk... but with candy instead).

Some of the other fun stations included Halloween picture frame making, coloring Halloween pictures, face painting, and tatooing.

Halloween picture frames

Tatooing

The inside of the bounce house was quite a party spot as well. This is a picture of Andrew during the rainy part of the party- he was dripping wet and so happy!!

We also had a spooky snack spot. We kept things low key and cheap and just had a mix of Halloween marshmallows and fishy crackers... but other guests just kept showing up with treats... so we ended up with cookies, Halloween jello, and several other snacks.

We utilized the whole cul-de-sac and blocked off the road with cones.

These lovely ladies were some of our volunteers who helped run the different stations. A few of them are neighbors and some of them my neighbor's friends from church. They were so darling with the kids.

I have gazillion more party pictures that you can see here...

The day couldn't have gone any better. I love my neighbors and neighborhood and had so much fun putting together such a great event!! Now I am excited to rest a little bit until we come up with another activity to plan.

Counting down

We have a lot to think about as we plan our "countdowns" this month. We have my birthday countdown (23rd- Andrew can already point it out on our Thanksgiving countdown calendar :) He says it is the "two-three day"), Thanksgiving (25th- can't wait bc we have lots of family coming into town!), and Caitlin's due date (the 30th- just in case you didn't remember... since I've been asked this question over 40 times this weekend, just wanted to make it very clear).

I scored this cute Turkey day countdown calendar at TJ Maxx last week for $10. I love it and so does Andrew.

I am currently generating a huge list of fun November activities related to Thanksgiving that I will post shortly. We are going to try and do at least one thing every day (at least until Thanksgiving... or until I go into labor, which will hopefully be on the 30th or the 28th or 29th- later than that is fine too... just not before). My list includes far more things than I can do in a month... but I still haven't narrowed it down to my favorites yet.

We started off today by...

Coloring Turkey pictures

Playing a Turkey Target game

and making Cap'n Crunch Indian Corn pictures

Please send along your favorite November activities- Thanksgiving, gratitude, or service related (crafts, treats, activities, favorite children's books, etc.). I need some more ideas for my giant list!!