Perusing Ebay and....

VIOLA! Look what I stumbled upon.

What a cute little munchkin advertising a cute invitation! lol. These are the gals that I worked with to design Em's first birthday invitations. I had no idea they liked it enough to make it one of their templates now. Kind of exciting. I just emailed her the other day asking if she could design something for the next birthday (she recently finished Bryce's "Jack Sparrow" ones too) and I mentioned finding this listing. They apparently thought she was just "too stinkin' cute" to cut her little face from the card on ebay. I agreed.
I showed the listing to Emee and she had NO CLUE who the kid in the picture was. ha ha ha.

A Pirates Life for Me!

Pirates of the Caribbean has been on ABC family all week-which has put this little man in the mood for his party like no other! He and I went to the party store yesterday & he threw in as much "Jack Sparrow" stuff as he could find claiming "we NEED this too for my pawty Mom!" Among the many items were inflatable pirate swords for his friends to play with in the pool! On the way home he told me we needed to find the "pirate fighting song" on i-tunes to play at his party. (Soundtrack from Pirates movie) Goodness-you gotta love him. My sweet cheeks boy.

When I asked what he wants to feed his friends at this shin dig he gave me this list:

olvins (olives)

carrots & white dippy (ranch)

Dominoes pizza-cheese and peppa-woni :)

woot-bea (rootbeer)

pom pom cakes (push pop cakes-like his favorite popsicles. Requested flavor: chocolate with coconut frosting! that actually sounds good to me! like almond joys :)

So with that in mind-we decided we'd better get crackin' on some of this party stuff.

It has been a beautiful day here in the valley today! Perfect weather to get ready for that special event Mr B has coming up....his Pirates of the Caribbean birthday!

He spent the afternoon painting portholes to put on his ship...

 While I sketched a the pirate ship on some of the cardboard-thanks to the packaging of our fabulous cabinetry. :)

 Then B set to work with my skill saw-tongue poking out & all. If you know B, you know what that means!

He LOVED it! I navigated the saw while he squeezed the trigger. That's what you call little boy bliss!

He cut some rectangles & painted them red for an "X" marks the spot decoration.

And painted some scraps brown for other various decor.

I figured we'd get around to painting the ship & tavern sign we cut on another day but...my helper wasn't tuckered out yet so-we pushed on and painted the masts, ship & sign.

Granted THIS ONE took a few breaks to: potty in the yard & mow the lawn but....

If only you could hear him in this pict. He's singing Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls". Someone is raisin' him right huh? On nursery rhymes & Classic Rock!

The good news is we got all the painting done & out of the way!

Thus ended our projects for the day-one little fella pleased as punch & dirty as I'll get out! =SUCCESS!

SOOOOO Bryce-holes in the knees of filthy jeans, spiderman jammies underneath the actual attire, a chocolate covered face. :) and it's only noon. Ah, life with boys...

Bryce the Toolman & the Hippie Kitchen Bye Bye

Meet Bryce the Toolman.

my sidekick.

my right hand man.

Our kitchen cabinetry was delivered a few days ago & since the sheetrock isn't due to go up for about a week-I had the delivery guys put all the boxes in our basement. Needless to say I felt really bad afterwards. These boxes are MONSTROUSLY heavy & our basement & stairs leading to it are awkward. I would NEVER want to be in that line of work. Ugh.

As with everything from IKEA-it is 99% assembly required ;) so each night while Mike is working at CWU, Bryce and I set to work putting together cabinets. He ran and got his little tikes circular saw & was eager to assemble. Boy-this little guy is stuck to me like glue. Absolutely fascinated by anything involving tools. He wanted to help SOOOOOO badly.

He was a great little helper and pleased as punch to be in my employ.

After 9 partly assembled cabinets, we ran out of room in our little basement & things started to look like this:

A quick break for a midnight snack...

 And then my only employee was pooped.

A couple days later....

our contractor, Daniel, came over to fur up our weird ceiling in the kitchen. Bryce was quite interested in the process and didn't leave Daniels side (luckily he has 2 little boys himself, so he understood completely  & didn't mind)

These are some of the images we caught that afternoon:

He went and found Dad's tape measure because he saw Daniel using one....

Then he went & grabbed our step ladder....because he saw that Daniel had one....

Next he discovered that Daniel had a tool belt full of tools....so he ran to my classroom & grabbed one of his own...filled it with toy tools & he was ready to work!

Anything Daniel did-Bryce followed right along. 

CUTEST THING OF MY LIFE!

He couldn't have been happier than if we were at Disneyland. Seriously.

 With his love of legos & tools we told him he could go to college and be a contractor or an architect when he grows up! His eyes were as big as quarters with that news :)

When dad got home that afternoon-he was rip roaring ready to go with this whole kitchen demolition thing we've got goin' on. Which was AWESOME!

He walked through the door with 12 boxes and the kids were all too excited to help fill them with the contents from our cupboards. 

And Dad was all too excited about ripping out the built in-yucky-ugly-nasty wood structures known as: our OLD cabinets!

This was a constant observation on our job site.....Little Tikes tools around every corner. :)

Mike pulled off the trim around the door frame & found this used as "insulation"

Seattle P.I. March 1975....that would be the date of this last kitchen "remodel". Like I said-bye bye Hippie Kitchen!

 Then of course-as with every project with this house-we've found that the previous owners did things in ways that makes demolition MUCH MUCH harder....like nailing AND gorilla gluing on the baseboard trim around the cabinets, as well as glueing in the DISHWASHER! Who does that? Or using 372 nails in a 3x3 space. Ugh. Not to mention labeling the breaker box WRONG! We turned off the electricity to the dishwasher-or so we thought, and then Mike went to cut the wires and let's just say there was a little FIRE and this happened to the utility knife! Ummmmm-not good. So needless to say-ALL the electricity was then turned off until the dishwasher & disposal were out! :)

(in case you didn't notice-that blade-should NOT be serrated! lol)

Chris & Doug-I told you Mike LOVES that headlamp. Comes in super handy!

A ridiculous 6 hours later....another truckload to the dump. We LOVE our handy truck!

We are officially exhausted & still have round 2, 3 and 4 to go on this project. Cant wait for the end result! Stay tuned!

Nana's Spring Visit

We just had a whirlwind week with Nana. Great time & lots of memories. 

After the airport we headed to the Rainforest Cafe.

The kids smashed pennies while they were there (a tradition they've enjoyed since they were babies)

While strolling the mall Nana let them have a spin in the Hurricane simulator. It was hilarious. 

Nana helped out at school...I miss having a helper that I can afford :)

We went to our beloved Dakota Cafe multiple times! :) Nothin' beats a spring stroll & a yummy homemade Hawaiian sandwich!

Nana took lots of pictures of the kids-stole this one off her camera. Doesn't Em look old? :(

 We went to Suncadia for Easter brunch. It was a BEAUTIFUL day & yummy food as always.

We went to the American Girl store at the Alderwood Mall-Em chose a sweatshirt for herself & Kanani. Too cute.

We did a scavenger hunt for an Easter surprise that Nana brought...the DVD Hop (which the kids LOOOOOVE)

(They look like ragamuffins here don't they? lol)

We took a trip to Costco on the hunt for yummy Raspberries....P.S. they are IMPOSSIBLE to find before Easter. I never knew that. Not one store carried any.

Yes-this is how he eats hot dogs...no comment.

Nana enjoyed daily puppy snuggles-they miss that.