Her little piggies

Havi recently discovered the stash of nail polish I keep in my bathroom and has been asking me to paint her piggy toes.  So one morning, I indulged her a bit.  Since it was the first time I was painting them for her, I thought I would capture the moment.  So I pulled out my handy dandy mini tripod and remote shutter release.  I picked a spot in the house far away from rugs and with enough space to place my camera/tripod on the floor nearby.  We ended up in a walkway between the living room and kids playroom.

As soon as her nails were dry, she insisted on changing out her top for one of her sister's twirly dresses.  I guess her painted toes made her feel a bit glamorous.  I can't blame her.

Helping out friends

Recently I had a friend that I met in the blogosphere (and finally in real life) ask a favor of me/Madeline.  Her daughter Jaelyn was looking for people with limb differences to participate in her science project.  She is looking a foot, eye, and ear dominance to see if it's possible for people with affected limbs to still show dominance for the affected side.  Madeline has always kicked a ball with her left foot.  So I was quite curious to see how she would perform on the rest of the tasks.   Madeline performed all tasks but one (kicking a ball) with her right side.  

Little Hav Hav insisted she participate too.  So I let her kick the ball.  She also kicked it with her left foot.  Anything else, she would have simply copied me because her English isn't quite there to follow commands like these.  Still, she had to push her way in front of my camera.

Would you just look at the new and improved fake smile? 

No more overbite on the fake smiling thing. lol
And if it weren't for the curl in her hair, she would most certainly be sporting an awesome toddler mullet.

Well, as I suspected last weekend, all of Caleb's tennis matches were canceled due to rain.  He was so bummed, even though he was expecting it.  Fortunately, we had a very big Sunday planned which wasn't rained out!  Patrick bought tickets for Caleb and me to see the finals played out at the Delray Beach Open by The Venetian.  Oh, did that ever make up for the previous two days!!!  I took a ton of photos with three different cameras.  So as soon as I'm done sorting through them all, I will get a blog post up.  Suffice it to say that Caleb declared the day to be one of the best days of his life, ever.  I love that boy!

So for the next couple months, Caleb will be back to Friday nights under the lights as he participates in the middle school tennis league.  He is so excited that the weather will be cooperating this week.  He also has a local tournament on Saturday, which he's also looking forward to.  Alrightie, I'm signing off for now.

Have a great weekend!

And the birthday celebration continued

Golly gee, I wish there were more hours in the day to get done what needs to get done these days.  Since that's not the case, I have gotten a bit behind in my blogging.  Anyway, to pick up where I left off last time...

Michele, John, and Lydia came down for a quick visit after Thanksgiving.  As such, we knew we would wait until the week after Havi's actual birthday to throw her a little party.  We spent the first few days of their stay just relaxing and enjoying the warm weather.  One afternoon, we headed over to our favorite park by the river.

Sunday afternoon was when we had her little party, just family.  My sister came with hers and her in-laws.  It was so cute to watch Caleb show Havi how to open a present.  Once she figured it out, she went to town. lol

For her birthday cake, I knew I wanted to make dark chocolate with a whipped vanilla buttercream and decorate it with a watercolor swirl effect.

The cake had sat out at room temp for a while.  So that's why the cutout slice in the photo above looks a little rough.  Although I love my swiss meringue buttercream to pieces, I knew that some people at the party prefer the sweeter traditional buttercream.  And since I only like to use that one sparingly when decorating (because it's so sweet), I chose to frost it using this simple watercolor swirl effect technique.  It was a winner.

Well, we did end up visiting the Mouse like I had said.  But those photos will have to wait because we have another busy weekend planned.  We had such a great visit with Michele, John, and Lydia.  I only wish it wasn't so short.  We love you guys!

Our Thanksgiving fun

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day celebration.  I know we sure did.  The weather cooperated, and it actually felt like Fall.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that I had wanted my sister to take a family photo for us for our Christmas card, and unfortunately had no winter clothes to fit Havi.  Yep.  Hand me downs from her cousin Leah were too small, and Madeline's winter clothes were too big.  So we had to roll with it.  And that kind of dictated what the rest of the family wore for the photo session. Nice, right?  Well, it worked out fine.  I snapped a few photos of the dumplings before my sister arrived to snap a photo of the five of us.  I will share the Christmas card here once it's been mailed (which might be a while because it still needs to be designed and ordered!)  But for now, I'll share this funny outtake.  

 In case you're wondering, this is Havi yelling "STOP!"  It's one of her new favorite words.  Well,that and "NO" and "MINE."  Aren't those fabulous new words? You're rocking the English acquistion, Havi!

Well, we managed to make it over to Andy's parent's house for the food and fun.  After eating a yummy meal, the kids went outside to play. It was chilly for us Floridians, with temps only in the mid 60s.  The kids played duck-duck-goose and plenty of other games with Lisa, Andy's brother's girlfriend.  She's a pediatric OT and consequently has a stash of games in the trunk of her car.  Fun fun fun!

 Josh was so cute trying to get back inside.  He just couldn't turn the knob, poor boy.

 Caleb thought it would be fun to have some races.  He might have had an advantage.

We had such a great time and are so thankful to have been invited. It's so much fun to watch all the kids (7 of them, plus an infant) play with each other.  Caleb and Josh are clearly outnumbered because they are the only two boys.  Yep.

Well, we have been spending the last few days chilling with Michele and John, my SIL and BIL, and my niece Lydia.  The cousins have had a blast playing with each other while we have intermittently dined on some delicious food while enjoying each other's company.  Yesterday we had a little birthday celebration for Havi at the house. (Remember I mentioned we would be celebrating twice?)  Patrick and I worked together to cook up a yummy mini feast.  I will be sure to share about it here once I catch a free moment.  

Well, we are headed to see the Mouse today, as I mentioned before.  No doubt, some fun will be had today! 

TTFN, as Tigger would say!  Ta Ta For Now!