What a {LOVE}ly week

 

As we wrap up this week of love I wanted to share a few photos, starting with the ones above which are the "Behind the Scenes," of our Valentine's Day photo shoot. Behind every sweet photo of a child, like the one I posted yesterday, is the hard work of a mama (or professional) who is trying to get that child to look cute. When I took the photo for the Valentine's card we sent Eva's grandparents I snuck outside while Ryan kept her entertained. I find that it's best to have everything ready to go before trying to take a photo. We got her to ignore the bright sun and smile big, and then I rewarded her with some sidewalk chalk fun! In the photo above on the left, she is actually running away and hiding from me behind a wall, and her face ended completely covered in pink and purple chalk.

 

Earlier this week Eva did some finger painting with purple, pink, and red paints. This was my first time to open the Crayola finger paints that we have and I liked how they painted and dried, but they have a funny odor. Has anyone else noticed that? I'm just thankful that they are washable because when we do finger painting the paint ends up all over the place.

 

On Valentine's Day we had a few friends over to decorate cookies. Eva's friend Ellie helped her put gobs of frosting and sprinkles on the cookies. The more sugar the better, right? I was hoping Eva would use her hand to spread the pink icing on the cookies, but after dipping her hand in it she put all that icing right into her mouth (we set aside her cookies just for her). I don't give Eva sugar very much but it's fun to bend the rule on holidays :) While the girls played I got to hold baby Reese for a minute. I love this little guy so much! And then we took some cookies down to the people at the office (share the love, share the calories).

 

After a much needed nap time Eva and I went to the park to burn off some of those cookies we ate. She decided to try going down the slide on her tummy and had a blast. Also while we were there another little girl and boy were playing with her. The four year old boy went up and gave her a hug and said, "You're so cute. I love you." And so it begins....

 

Finally Ryan came home just in time for dinner. I surprised him by picking up pizza from Italian Bistro, his favorite pizza place. I called ahead a few hours early and asked them to place the pepperoni's in a heart shape. They laughed but it turned out great! And last, our family Valentine's: Ryan got me the movie The Blindside, Eva made Ryan a card at the library this week, Eva ended up getting 3 new animals for her Little People Zoo; and I surprised Ryan with these cards and notes of encouragement. Check out my friend Rebekah's blog for the Free Printable of these fun cards. I used all 8 and hid them places for Ryan to find throughout the day, including while he was at a conference.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! Who could resist loving this sweet Valentine? We hope everybody feels loved today!

Be fearless.

"Don't be afraid; just believe."

Mark 5:36 (NIV)

A few minutes ago I was working through my Bible study on the book of Mark. The theme for the chapters was looking at your fears. One of the opening questions in my study was to think of a time when fear kept you from doing or saying something you thought you should and to look at what you were really afraid of.

In reflecting on times when I am fearful I realized that most of the time my greatest fear is awkardness. This is irnoic because I find myself in awkward situations frequently, so maybe I should just quit being fearfull of it. But I am. I want to be liked. I want situations to be comfortable. Don't most people? 

Often the situations that I fear awkwardness in involve sharing my heart openly with somebody, inviting someone I don't know to church, or sharing the truth of Jesus and His amazing love and forgiveness. When I step back and look at all of those situations, though, I realize that past my fear of awkwardness is the incredible opportunity for someone to feel love or connected with or ultimately to know Jesus more. Shouldn't that be worth it? Yes! But I'm a real person and it is still intimidating.

I love that my daughter is fearless. She can walk into a room of people and make friends with anybody. When we are outside she will fearlessly run and play for as far as I will let her. She is not afraid of jumping on the couch (although maybe she should be). The only time I really see fear in her is when we go to the doctor's office and she remembers getting shots - so I guess that, like most of us, she has some innate fear of pain. 

I really, really want to be more fearless. More like Eva, and even better, more like Jesus. He approached many awkward and painful situations boldly because He knew that God was with Him. His desire for us is that we would be fearful so that we would have life abundant. How often do our fears stop us from something so much more awesome? Knowing that the God who created everything loves me passionately and is worthy of my trust should allow me to live fearless, believing in faith that He is with me every step of the way.

Finally, I just want to share that as I was praying through my list of requests I could suddenly see that almost every single request could be related to fear. I definitely did not judge the fear that these people face, but I did pray for those specific fears. So if you are on my prayer list, I hope that today and this week your life is blessed with faith and fearlessness!

Her first puppy love.

This weekend was the best weekend ever because we got to puppy sit for our pastor's family dog, Teddy. Despite the fact that Eva literally tried to puppy sit (as in sit on Teddy), we think Teddy liked us too. I have been missing having a dog sooooo much over the past year since Cosby died. I seriously have to remind myself that this is not the right time in our life for a dog every time we play with a friend's dog or get to pet a puppy at the park. I absolutely love sweet, friendly dogs and look forward to the day, many years from now when we are all done having babies, when we get to surprise our kids and tell them that it is the day when we are getting a dog. That will probably be the best day ever.


So for now I will enjoy getting to be a pet sitter. At first we were thinking that Teddy might not be allowed to come play at our house because we don't have a pet lease and when we signed our lease the office was very clear that they did not want us sneaking a dog in. We decided to do the honest thing and actually ask the lady in our office if we could bring Teddy over for a few hours at a time while his family was gone. She really likes the other family and us as well so she agreed that would be okay, especially since we could keep him on the tile floors. Hooray!!!! Every time that Ryan and I would walk down to get Teddy from his home Eva would just stand by the door waiting and squealing with anticipation. She didn't want to play or eat or do anything until Teddy arrived. When he would have to go back home she would stand by the door saying "BYE! BYE! BYE!" for a couple of minutes. Cuteness.



Teddy was such a fun companion and Eva was so in love with him. She would chase him around and pet him and get down on her knees to crawl after him like she was a puppy too. She also kept trying to kiss him. Yuck! I'm a dog lover but I draw the line at letting a dog's mouth touch mine. Oh, and you can't really tell but her pink shirt has a fluffy poodle type dog on it so she wore it on Saturday in honor of Teddy.

We are going to be at my parents' this coming weekend and I am excited for Eva to get to play with their dogs too. I'm glad she takes after me and loves dogs. Sorry, Ryan. We are definitely getting a dog one day. 

Easy Diaper Cake & A Baby Shower

Saturday night I helped with a baby shower for our church's wonderful Children's Director, Stephanie. I decided that I would tackle my first diaper cake to make for Stephanie. If you look on Pinterest there are tons of amazing diaper cakes. I mean, woah, people really go all out. Mine may not be as snazzy as some of them, but I was pretty proud of how it turned out. I did some pre-cake-making research to find some of the best methods and documented below how I did it. It was really so easy, anybody could do it!

 

Here are the steps:

1. I bought a pack of 65 Pampers Swaddlers (size 1). For each individual layer I lined them all up, slightly overlapping, design side up (so the outside would be white). I miss those sweet tiny diapers and I love the smell and softness of Pampers Swaddlers. Definitely the best diapers ever. 

2. Start at the end that has the diaper the most wedged under the others (since you slightly stacked and staggered them) and begin rolling inward. Use your other hand to keep the roll tight and in line. This would be easier with a helper but I managed to make it work by myself.

3. When your diapers are all rolled up put a rubber band around it to keep them in place.

4. For the bottom 2 layers, I rolled up 15-20 diapers and then went back around the outside layer and inserted more diapers. I found it impossible to roll up the amount of diapers need in the bottom layer, so I think I did like 20 and then added 10-15 more around the outside, keeping the layered look going.

5. Make sure the rubber band is aligned. This helps keep the diapers straight looking when you stack the layer. The good thing about using Swaddlers is that they have a yellow line in the middle (the wetness indicator) that you can use to line everything up.

6. This photo is of my 3 layers before they are completely assembled. I think I used 9 in the top layer, 15-20 in the middle, and the rest (maybe 30?) on the bottom.

7. Use an empty paper towel roll to keep the rolls centered and together.

8. I used a hot glue gun to attach a ribbon to each layer. I glued the ribbon so that it would stay tight. I did not want to glue anything to the diapers so that they could actually be used. 

9. Repeat with other layers. Then the best step - decorate with cute baby things off the registry!

I also made Stephanie this banner using her vintage baseball theme. I found a link that has easy printable banner letters for sports themed parties. I love how it looked hung over this fabulous mirror (the party was not held at my home).

Stephanie (in the middle) and some of the ladies from the best small group ever.

I did not make anything else pictured but I want to share some of the other great decor! Stephanie's mom made it and I like how she layered felt for a textured effect. 

Another friend made the cake. We had cupcakes too so it was decided that we should send this home with Stephanie for the rest of her family (husband and kiddos) to enjoy the next day. I bet it tasted good. (Ooh - I did make those yummy zucchini squares on the left using my grandmother's recipe. Yay.)

 To make the flowers go more with a boy themed shower they put them in baseball gift bags. How creative is that?

For one of the shower activities we all decorated onesies for baby Brewer to wear. I thought mine was cute and funny, but it was early on and I didn't realize how funny some of the other ones would be. Also the paint got smeared on mine. Therefore, for my own pride, I am choosing not to show mine and instead feature this one that our pastor's wife, Kim, made. This was awesome! Stephanie, make sure to put Brewer in Kim's onesie and not mine, my feelings won't be hurt.

 The whole group -  I hope Stephanie (and Brewer) feel so loved!

Sometimes life gets messy.

Little kids are super adorable. But boy are they messy! Before having a baby I was a pretty clean person. I cleaned and sanitized the whole house every single week. My things were always picked up and neatly put away. Now....let's just say I am more flexible. I still keep a clean home but life is sometimes messier than expected.

Let's take eating. Kids are messy eaters! Their hands get messy. Their trays get messy. And the floor beneath them? Messy isn't even the right word. More like nuclear fallout. We are working on teaching Eva not to throw food on the floor but some days it is an uphill battle.

Then there is the actually physical dirt. Kids love to play outside and the great outdoors is a messy, dirty world. It's so good for them to be able to play and run and explore though, so a little dirt is worth the fun! On days when I vacuum and mop I am shocked at how much dirt has been brought into our home in such a short amount of time.

And there are also the unexpectedly messy things. Toys scattered everywhere. Books, which would seem to be neat (think of a library), become quite messy when you have 30 of them sprawled out across the living room. Building Blocks? They come in a set of 100! (Oh, good......) Socks and shoes take adventures hiding all about the house. It's amazing.

My dad used to joke with me when I was younger that I oozed stickiness. Now that I'm a mom I can totally see what he was saying. That munchkin does in fact seem to be covered in sticky! The other day I packed a healthy snack of pears and peaches for her to take to an outdoor soccer game we watched - I might as well have smushed it all over her and said, "Go for it!" instead of putting it in a snack cup because that's pretty much where it ended up.

One morning on our way to church Eva and I literally only had to walk from the front door to the car parked in the driveway. She decided instead to run off in the other direction and fell straight into a pile of mud. The mother-of-the-year thing to do would be to take her inside and get her changed into clean clothes. Nope. I just used many baby wipes to give her a thorough brush off and off to church we went. Maybe God made kids so messy so that their mothers wouldn't get too prideful in how precious and adorable they are!

After a full morning of playing at the park, covering her face with sweet potato and yogurt, drawing with chalk, and lying face down in the grass (how else was she supposed to look at that flower close up?) my sweet girl went into the tub before nap time. At least these noisy, dirty people were created to clean up nicely!

Super Party

 

{Photo Credit}

Last night we attended an awesome Student Ministries party to eat good food and watch the Beyonce concert on TV. Oh yeah, I think there was some football game on too. Whatever. Back to the concert... Beyonce was amazing. And it was fun to see the Destiny's Child reunion. Definitely the best half time performance I've seen in a long time. On to the food....

I made this wicked deliciousness. It was called Ultimate Chocolate Chip Oreo Brownie Delight, made from a layer of cookie dough, topped with Oreos, topped with brownie mix. And it was completely calorie free! JK on that one, but it was good. All I had to do was combine and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. This was actually one of the first things I ever pinned on Pinterest and I had been waiting for an occasion to bake it when I knew most of it would be eaten so I wouldn't be left with all that chocolate temptation for myself. There was only 1 piece leftover. Success!

 I did not make this cake but it was cute and available for those more interested in watching that football game instead of Beyonce. In regards to the Super Bowl I was originally rooting for the 49ers because our pastor and his family really like them. I figured, why not? Then Ryan told me that Michael Oher, the man that the movie Blind Side is based off of, plays for the Ravens so I switched my vote. I really like that movie and thought that it would be an awesome end for that story for him to start off homeless and end up winning the Super Bowl. I'm sure Sandra Bullock was voting for the Ravens as well. In the end, I think we can all agree that I made the right choice.

Finally, the real stars of the night! We had 40 youth kids hanging out to watch the game. When Ryan and I launched the youth group at our former church we did it with a Super Bowl party so this is an annual tradition for us. Secret's out - I don't really care that much about football. But I do absolutely care about these students!

We were squeezed in every corner of this media room so it made for a difficult photo op. That's okay. It was lots of kids. Lots of food. Lots of fun.

Look at that star Youth Director! You might say he's the quarter back of Bara Student Ministries...in which case, I am totally his blind side.