A BFF Visit

My best friend came up for celebration festivities, as previously mentioned. She left this afternoon. :( It was a quick visit but much fun! Ace absolutely loves his Aunt Becky and they had a good time together. Got to celebrate the new baby and my birthday while she was here and it was very nice. I wish we lived closer, but so glad that we get to still share each other's lives semi-frequently in person.

We spent our final day together with a nice slow start to our morning, a little party clean up, and a trip to Starbucks. On the way to Starbucks we asked Ace what he wanted from Starbucks, assuming he'd say 'pumpkin bread' which is what he always gets from there... and instead he said 'Um... DECAF!' Becky and I couldn't help but die laughing - resulting in Ace then saying 'decaf' almost the whole way to the establishment.

After our morning we headed out and went to Ikea - which Becky hasn't been to ever (or if she has ever been it was over 15 years ago.) We enjoyed grabbing a few things that we needed/wanted and then enjoying some lunch. Afterwards we took Bec to the airport and said goodbye. Like I said a very short, but great trip!

Mae's NW Shower

Today was my shower for Mae in the Northwest and I was so glad that I was able to celebrate with close friends. My best friend Becky flew up to celebrate my birthday and in addition to doing that she was able to celebrate Mae with me at this shower as well. My dear friend Vanessa was again a wonderful hostess with some excellent games and fun had by all. Thank you, Vanessa for a wonderful event!

 Mae received many wonderful things again. We were blessed with clothes, diapers, a new diaper genie (yay!) blankets and much more! Ace was so thrilled to help open presents, he couldn't wait to tear into them - and then he enjoyed playing with them as well.

Friday Flashback

Five years ago with my husband. :)

Random Fun

You can't say the boy doesn't take after his mother. :) Hopefully when he's 15 he can still find time to be silly too. Yes, I was 15 when my best friend and I decided to bury ourselves in stuffed animals one Saturday afternoon. Ace is 26 months. :)

Leaves!

I love this time of year! What a beautiful backdrop fallen leaves provide for pictures! On Sunday we went out and enjoyed some of the festive excitement for ourselves and had us a good ol' fashion 'photoshoot' :)

Halloween Fun

Ace, last Friday was able to enjoy his first taste of trick or treating, so all day Sunday he was super excited to get to relive it in the neighborhood. In fact the first thing he said after he woke from his nap is 'I have to go get candy!' haha soon little man, soon! We watched It's a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown to help pass the time and ordered pizza for dinner.

We held him off until about 6pm when the first trick or treater arrived at our door and then he was rearing to go! We all put on our costumes. I went with the easy costume of Juno. My costume cost me a whole $1 on ebay for the orange and white striped shirt ... otherwise I owned all I needed for that. The husband went as a 'military' man in non-issued gear. Ace was of course the adorable dinosaur. We posed for a picture with Ace's pumpkin all lit up and we headed out.

Ace had a great time, he was a bit shy at first just as he was on Friday and then slowly opened up. There were a few houses decked out in swag that he was a bit hesitant about, but there were a few that he was all for ... the fog he LOVED and another house that had an LED lit kitty he was obsessed with. I wasn't sure he was ever going to leave that nice woman's porch. :)


 Ace and his dad finished the neighborhood and I went back to our house to hand out the massive amounts of candy (7lbs worth... in fact what is pictured is not all of it. We still had about 50 more pieces + what we gave away of Ace's before we had to cut the lights and hide at 8pm.)

The boys came home not too terribly long after I did with their loot in hand and they dumped it out on the living room floor to survey the fun. Ace had a good time sampling a handful of items. He enjoyed the lollypop - but he didn't get to consume all of it - we moved onto chocolate after that. That was his favorite.

After a while he enjoyed helping handing out candy to the kids at the door. He was only unnerved/cautious a few times about whom he was passing candy out to... Freddie Kruger being one of them... talk about a timeless costume. How do these kids even know who that is?! Ah well... Ace was hesitant to hand candy to him and said 'mommy?' and I looked up from the bucket and was like 'oh... it's ok honey.' and I tossed the candy in and he was gone.

Ace enjoyed staying up late (an extra 30 minutes before starting his bed time routine) and actually slept in an extra hour the next morning for his mom and dad. Woohoo! We had a very Happy Halloween!

Mae's Room

Even before I knew I was having a girl, I had a good idea of what I wanted to do in her room. Then Loving Husband said that looked like Neapolitan ice cream and put the stop to that... well hmmph (I wanted one wall to be a darker brown and the other walls to be the faintest pink imaginable, with little birdies) With that vision 'crushed' I went on the hunt after establishing that this little one was a girl and I think I like it even better than the original plan!

It was decided that we probably should make the rooms versatile enough that the kids could switch rooms - but I also didn't want another 'gender neutral' room for MAE. We decided to go with a blue(ish) hue that could translate into something for a boy if the occasion arose that Mae and Ace wanted/needed to switch rooms. The painting can be seen here.

Then it came to deciding how I wanted to decorate her room. With Ace's room his was a 'jungle' theme and is painted BRIGHT green. You can see that color in many different pictures, but this is a good representation of that. He has a monkey and a snake hanging from vines in his room and a jungle themed quilt made by Dawn that is now formerly 'above the changing table'. Ultimately Ace's room has transformed into a hodge podge of many favorites of his - a post I'll draft soon - but for Baby Mae's room, I knew I wanted something 'soft' and not too over the top or thematic and so I went with cherry blossoms and birdies.


Orginally, I found some crib bedding that was my initial insipiration and then I found the lamp that I wanted in her room at Ikea and next up I was on the hunt for decals. I had contemplating simply painting a tree on her wall, but then that made it less diverse for switching rooms, so the decal hunt went forward. All in all I bought three different 'sets.' The cherry tree by the changing table I found online somewhere... and the birdies above the window and the door were from VinalOnTheGo and then main decal above the pack-n-play was from Surface Inspired. The quilt is another one made by Dawn and this time over the dresser. :)

It was fun to invision everything and then see it all come together - I can't wait for her to be in it.