Party Day

I. Am. Tired.

Yesterday was full of fun for my sweet C's fifth birthday. I hit the ground running Friday when I got home from school, making 24 cupcakes for her friend party and an Angry Birds cake for her family party.

Then came yesterday. We got up early and headed to Run, Jump, and Play for C's birthday party with friends. There about 15 kids there, mostly from preschool. They had a blast on all of the inflatables.

I have to say, I was pretty proud of C for her patience and thankfulness when opening presents. She took the time to admire each gift and thank each kid, without any prompting from us.

 Run, Jump, and Play was awesome! The staff set everything we brought up in her party room, kept the kids moving from room to room, kept a list of all of her gifts so we can write thank-you's this week, and cleaned everything up. So worth the money we spent.

Last night was C's family party. We had about 20 people crammed into our small house to celebrate our sweet girl. We made a ton of pasta, a huge salad, several loaves of garlic bread, and capped it off with cake and ice cream. The Angry Birds toppers on her cake are part of this game, which I'm sure we'll be playing a lot of in the coming weeks.

And now the celebrating is over. Today's plans include cleaning up, hanging up all of her new clothes, re-organizing her art supplies (she got a ton of art stuff from both friends and family and can't wait to get around to the business of creating), and relaxing.

Tomorrow is her 5 year well-check. I'm anxious to see how much she's grown in a year.

Happy Birthday, Sweet C! Until next year...

~One Ordinary Mom :-)

Hello, December

Hello, December.

We spent the last few days of November getting ready for you. We raked the rest of the leaves (okay, there are a few stragglers).

 And B donned C's Mario hat from her Halloween costume. It's red and festive, so it's kind of Christmas-y. He wouldn't take it off for about three days straight. He even took it to bed.

 And then you came. And we spent the first night of December gathered around the table with friends. We painted cookies, a tradition in our families.

 We shared a meal while the cookies baked (poor B was starting to come down with something, so he just played iPad the whole time-- lil' man still has a fever tonight, but thankfully no other symptoms).

 And then we ate said cookies.

 The Nativity set is the favorite toy right now. While C and One Ordinary Dad went to church Sunday morning, a feverish B and I stayed home. B knows which figure is Baby Jesus and that Baby Jesus is special (that's about all he can wrap his 23 month old mind around). And I think because Baby Jesus is special, B thinks that means that Spiderman comes riding a dinosaur, Batman comes riding a donkey, and an alien sits watch over the Messiah. He'll understand more next year. C totally "gets it" and still invites penguins and any other toys she can find to kneel at the manger.

So with B still fever-y, C getting over pneumonia (she had a mild case of that last week and missed 3 days of school), and Mommy getting in a fender bender this morning, I know that you, December, aren't  off to a great start (okay, well dinner and cookies with friends was pretty awesome). But I'm resting in the peace that C is better, B will get better, and today's accident could've been a lot worse (I won't get into the details, but there was minor damage and no injuries, so I can't complain). I'm resting in the peace of the upcoming celebration of my savior's birth. I'm resting in the peace that so much good is yet to come this season and that a rough start just keeps us grounded.

Welcome, December!

And Happy December to all of you!

~One Ordinary Mom :-)

I Have Awesome Friends

I have awesome friends.

Like Emily. Who is so passionate about fighting human trafficking that she started a company to empower those who have been rescued from that horrible business. Click here to see her on our local news this morning. And check her website often because she has some awesome new products that are about to launch and that will be exclusive to Stop Traffick Fashion. I've seen the jewelry and the new shirts. They're pretty awesome!

Like Lady Lazarus. I've known her in real life since middle school. We lived in the same neighborhood growing up, rode the bus together, survived band camp together, acted in high school drama productions together, you get the idea. Anyway...I always watch shows like "The Biggest Loser" or Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition" and think, "well, yeah, anyone can lose that much weight when they have a nutritionist, dietician, coach, personal trainer, etc. But Lady Lazarus has done it. She's lost over 100 pounds (and counting) with her own will power. And she's living to blog about it.

Like Mama Marchand. I've known her since high school. Yes, Lady Lazarus, Mama Marchand, and I all hail from the same town. She just reopened her Etsy shop and is finally getting the chance to live her dream as a SAHM (a job I realized I was totally NOT cut out for after an extended maternity leave when B was born). One Ordinary Dad got me a necklace from her shop for our anniversary and I get compliments on it every time I wear it. B likes it because it has a bird on it. He points and says, "Tweet, tweet." Be still my mama heart.

I have awesome friends. Go give 'em some love.

~One Ordinary Mom

P.S. For the folks at home-- I have awesome kids!

C is legit reading. Stay tuned for a post about that. We started her on the Bob Books Set One. We don't read them aloud to her first; she sounds all of the words out on her own. So far, girlfriend can read the first 3. She is so proud. We are so proud. Even B is so proud (he's a pretty captive audience given that they're short, simple books).

In the Middle

We are alternating between days of being busy and days of being lazy, finding ourselves in the middle most days. My parents came into town last week, just a couple of days after we arrived home from vacation. Mostly we sit and visit and play with the kids, but on Friday night, we headed to a park downtown, by the river, for a picnic.

We hung around at the playground after we ate. B was on a mission to try to do everything his big sis could do.

We brought home two very tired kids and proceeded to have a fairly lazy rest of the weekend. One Ordinary Dad and I headed out on a date on Sunday night, taking full advantage of free babysitting from my parents. Our goal was to be cheap, so we used a BOGO coupon for the new berry almond chicken salad at Wendy's (delicious by the way), picked up a hardbound copy of The Annotated Charlotte's Web at Half Price Books (I love, LOVE, love Charlotte's Web) for $8, and then used free tickets to a local comedy club, where we did enjoy quite a bit of laughter.

Monday was another lazy day. Yesterday brought the exciting news that two of my friends had babies (one had twins), so there are now three new babies to snuggle in my life. And then, we spent the majority of yesterday evening at a friend's house for a small group pool party.

One of our friends enjoys fireworks, so we lit some bottle rockets and the kids played with sparklers.

Back when I first got my camera, when C was just over a year old, I tried to shoot in Manual mode as much as I could and to use natural light to my advantage. As she got busier and I had to be quicker, I began to rely on Auto mode more and more. I rarely went back to "M" unless we were doing a family photo shoot or something.

One of my goals this summer is to spend some of my lazy time learning more about the many wonderful things my camera can do. I've started shooting in RAW, which I never did before, and am trying hard to do all of my settings manually and to play with light. Our house has a ton of huge windows (an advantage to a nearly 100 year old home) that allow in a lot of natural light.

One of our small group friends is a photographer (like has his own studio photographer). He helped me get most of my settings right for the fun sparkler pictures. Between now and July 4th though, I'm going to try to learn how to get my flash to go off at the end of my exposure instead of the beginning as he said that would enhance these pictures quite a bit. If anyone knows how to do this on a Canon Digital Rebel xSi, please let me know. There's definitely a lot to learn, but armed with some guide books, a notebook for note-taking, and the ever-informative Internet, I'm confident I can get better and more comfortable on the Manual setting.

Enjoy your week friends. I'm off to go daydream about snuggly, newborn babies. And no, I am not pregnant and not planning to be anytime soon, lest you think all this baby daydreaming is a hint.

~One Ordinary Mom