Baby Eva

Here is Wesley's newest friend, Evangeline Lily Rausch! She was born last month and I only realized after someone asked me if she'd been born yet, that I hadn't posted any pictures of her! She is so beautiful! Auntie Chrissy, Cody and Eva came over to play recently and Wes was squatting down to look at her in her car seat and he kept leaning over trying to give her kisses. I so wish I had taken a picture of it! It's nearly impossible to tell a 19 month old not to touch another little person but he settled for pointing out her eyes and nose and mouth. "Eva" was a bit too much for him, but he definitely kept saying "baby" after they left!

She was born 1/23/11, 6:07am, 8lbs 3oz, 18 1/2 inches.

And here she is sporting one of the clips I made for her. Happy 1 month Eva!

A Pirate's Life for Me

Last Saturday we drove to Chula Vista to help Logan celebrate his 5th Birthday! How is that even possible?? I remember bringing his mom, Julie, bread and saran wrap when I came to visit them at home after he was born! The hands on the clock just tick too fast. Anyway, Logan had an awesome pirate themed party and we had a blast! Here's some pictures from our fun afternoon:

This is one scurvy matey :)

I included this picture because Wes made a bee line for the bowl of gummy candies (octopus, fish, and other sea creatures, sooooo cute by the way) and camped out there until he had shoved three octopodes (bet you didn't know that is technically the correct plural of octopus. I originally wrote octopi, but when it didn't look right, resorted to Wikipedia and Answers.com only to find out that octopuses is perfectly acceptable as well). ANYWAY, Wes is definitely his mother's son since anything gummy is my favorite kind of candy!

Here's Julie's mom and sister launching "cannon balls" off the stairs. These were balloons filled with pirate tattoo's and stickers.

This was so fun for the kids, plus these were some pretty tough balloons so the kids were sitting on them, poking them with swords and standing on them trying to get them to pop. Wes thought the sound of balloons popping was pretty great too!

And here's some of the adorable food Julie made. Above is treasure map quesadillas and below is Jello Davey Jones' Lockers (blue jello with gummy sea creatures, and sour straw sea weed and whipped cream foamy waves). When I asked Julie where she got all the great ideas, she said "I'm not super creative, I'm just really good at Googling." Which I think I'll adopt as my mantra!

An attempt at a group shot...at least everyone is in it!

Here's Wes and Nora and her dad Thomas.

Wes seeking some pirate swag.

And he found the best kind of gold, "M M's"!

Happy Birthday Logan! Hope your 5th year is amazing!!

Jump 'n Jammin

Michael had been at work for three days then the day he came home it was, of course, raining! Some friends had been telling us about Jump 'n Jammin for a while, so we figured it was the perfect indoor family activity!

We had so much fun! It's wasn't very crowded and it only cost $8 for all three of us. That's got to be the best deal around!

We did lots of climbing,

and sliding,

and trying to shoot mommy with foam balls from an air cannon. I think that was Daddy's favorite part of the day.

Wes was definitely tired after all the playing we did, but Michael and I were exhausted. We'll definitely be back, but next time, Mommy gets to take a nap afterward too!

Happy Love Day!

Wes loves watching Blue's Clues (or "boo boo's") these days, it's on at 5:30pm, so for the 22 minutes that he's completely engrossed, I'm able to get dinner on the table! The down side is I'm stuck with the "mail time" song playing in my head for hours (if you have a toddler, you should know the song I'm talking about!) Anyway, the Valentine's Day episode is called "Love Day," so that's what I've been calling it. Daddy was working on Love Day, but he left me these beautiful roses before he headed to work for three days!

And here's a few of the valentines we (I) made for our family and friends:

For Haley, Gia and Cash I made these crayon rolls. They are great to keep in a diaper bag or purse to have on hand when you're out and the kids need a distraction. Usually the two or three crayons you get at a restaruant just don't cut it.

And I made these heart shaped crayons for some of Wes' friends, thanks to a suggestion from my friend Nadine.

Happy Love Day Everyone!

The Lyon Air Museum

On Saturday, Wesley, Michael and Grandpa went to the Lyon Air Museum across the runway from John Wayne Airport to check out all the cool airplanes, cars, motorcycles and WWII memorabilia. But they went specifically to see the super cool A-26 attack bomber take off! Wes loves airplanes (the flight path at John Wayne is visible from his bedroom, and there have been several mornings where I come in to his room and find he's opened the shutters of his window and is just kicking back in bed, sucking his fingers of course, and staring out the window!)

This is the A-26. It took off about 30 minutes late, it had a minor "maintenance issue." Not a bad delay considering it was built in the 40's!

Mike said they all had a blast, check out the museum's web site here!

Super Bowl Sunday

I must, ashamedly, admit that until Sunday morning I didn't know who was playing in the Super Bowl. It's really about the food and commercials anyways right? It was a good thing I didn't have an emotional stake in either team, because I probably only watched two plays. But the food was awesome and I did manage to see the super cute Darth Vader commercial! Thanks Uncle Kevin and Auntie Chrissy for hosting!

The only spread that counts.

Fun in the yard.

I made this felt football player game for the kids and they really had fun with it. It's like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but we'll call it Pin the Football on the Receivers Hands.

Here's some in-the-works photos of the football game. I saw the idea here and just had to make one!

Prepositions

I've never had a great memory. Auntie Chrissy will always ask me if I remember doing this or that when we were kids and the majority of the time I don't (luckily for me her brain is a steel trap, so I know lots of my childhood memories are safe and secure in her head). I was always a good student though, only because I could cram tons of info into my brain and then regurgitate it for a test, but after that, any retention was a crap shoot. But for some reason there is one list of things I memorized when I was in elementary school that will always be with me, never to leave my brain: The Prepositions. I don't remember (obviously) in what grade we had to memorize them or why really, but there they are, always ready to be recited. I'd like to say it's a fun party trick, but it just isn't. And since I've been mentioning recently that Wes isn't much of a talker yet, it did come to mind that he does know some of his prepositions. Here are his favorites (and they're loud an clear!):

Up

Down

In

Out

On

Off

Under

And for those of you who need a refresher on your prepositions, here you go:

Aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, over, past, since, through, throughout, to, toward, under, underneath, until, up, upon, with, within, without.

We're working on the rest of the list, so I'll keep you posted.

A Bargain, A Hand-Me-Down, and One Splurge

We've got some great new toys around here that we've been having lots of fun with recently:

If you know me at all, you know I love a good bargain, so after Christmas I waited for Target's Christmas toys to go on clearance and picked up a few little things to put away. One thing that never made it to my hiding spot was a huge tub of Mega Blocks. We've spent hours dumping them out and building all sorts of towers and towns and castles. "Bok" is one word Wes definitely knows. But he wasn't too impressed with my spelling his name though, he just wanted them down off the mantel.

And this wonderful hand-me-down came from a fireman Mike works with who obviously has a girl :) But the Barbie stickers came right off and maybe someday soon, Daddy will paint the pink parts black. But if not, it's still a pretty awesome Jeep, and Wes is going to love driving it as soon as he gets the foot pedal action down pat. (right now he's giving himself whiplash with all the jerky starting and stopping he's doing!)

And finally our splurge:

A new sandbox for the backyard! We were over at Auntie Chrissy's house last week, and Cody and Wes had so much fun playing together in his sandbox that we figured we needed one too. We tried to find one on Craig's List, but ended up with a new one from K-Mart and 200 pounds of sand from Home Depot. (And play sand is expensive!) But I have to say it was money well spent because Wes is loving it and he is constantly asking me to go "out"!

Happy 2nd Birthday Jessie!

Last Saturday, an absolutely beautiful day, we went to Jessie's house to help her celebrate her 2nd birthday! (and we were so glad the party was on Saturday, because Sunday was cold and rainy! Thank you Lord for good timing!)

Here's Jessie and Wes (he's at the top of the slide) playing in Jessie's new birthday present, a super cute, perfectly sized bounce house!

And Daddy was off work, so he got to join in the fun too.

And since Wes loves to climb, he was all over this jungle gym...

...and quickly discovered how fun it was to send chalk flying down the slide.

Here's Jessie's mom Lisa and Jessie's new baby sister Leah. (sorry you can't see her face, but she's really adorable!)

Blowing out two candles!

And we hijacked an orange or two from the neighbor's tree. Oranges used to be the one fruit that Wes was not into, but recently (I think with the beginning of tangerine season) he's really changed his mind. We've been buying bag fulls of satsuma tangerines at the farmer's market recently.

And as part of Jessie's birthday present, I made her some bean bags:

I haven't copyrighted it yet but I did write this poem, with a little help from Michael. :) Hopefully it will help keep my bean bags from morphing into science experiments!

Happy Birthday Jessie, we had so much fun at your party!

Scroll to the bottom of this post to see pictures from Jessie's 1st birthday.