Luau Time

What a weekend! I am wore out this morning. We had a great weekend with daddy here. He came in on Thursday afternoon. Friday was our 5 year anniversary! What a great gift to have him at home all day with us. We went to dinner Friday night at a new steak house. We had a nice evening. Here are the gorgeous flowers I got (and they smelled SO good!)

Last week was crazy- I tried to get things done for the party throughout the whole week. I was hit with a bad case of the allergies that took me out one day- but other than that, I was working on getting things together. My first thing to show is the cake. I looked online and got some ideas and this is what I came up with. I did a practice round and it was HORRIBLE- luckily this one came out better :)

I bought the smaller cake pans and doubled them up (and trimmed off the tops of them to even everything out) We iced it with white icing and bought the Oreo sticks to put around it. I cut them in half and every 7th or 8th one, I put a long one in. I then covered the top with graham cracker crumbs. In the back, you can see the little tiki hut I made. We had bought a 6 pack of pineapple juice for the punch, so I used one of those 6oz cans to make it out of. I filled it with cake batter and made a small cake. After icing it, I added the potato shoestring strips. After I finished, I froze it.

Here is what is looked like after I got everything on it. I put long toothpicks in the center of the hut so it would stay on the cake. The chair is from the scrapbook section at Wal Mart. I taped a toothpick to the pack of it. The flip-flops are from the scrapbook section too.

Here are the cupcakes that I had. The icing is dyed brown and I put graham cracker crumbs on top. The "towel" is a piece of a Fruit by the Foot and then I placed the Teddy Graham on top. The umbrella tied in the whole beach theme to the cupcakes.

My dad made the cupcake stand. He did a great job! I got the idea from Shayna. This one turned out a little taller than I had pictured, but it was just fine. We got a sheet of plywood and cute it into 20x20, 18x18, 16x16 & 14x14 squares. The poles in the middle are made from a closet rod cut into 10" pieces. We'll be able to use this at all the birthday parties from here on out. 

This is the table with all the food. We had fruit kabobs, chips/dip, sandwiches for the kiddos, & graham crackers/goldfish/pretzels for the kids. We cooked hamburgers & hotdogs to eat. 

Below, was the drink table. We made a YUMMY punch. I am not a fan of carbonation- AT ALL. My mom and I went to a shower recently and the punch was great. I told her we had to do that for the party! Here's the recipe:

"Second Baptist" Punch

From Second Baptist Church - Corpus Christi

Bette Rae Miller

Dissolve 6 cups of sugar in 8 cups of hot water, add:

1 Tbsp almond extract

1 Tbsp vanilla

1 (36oz) can orange juice

1 (36oz) can pineapple juice

1 doz lemons or 1 can frozen lemon juice (not lemonade)

1 gal. water

Mix well. Serve over ice or freeze and serve as slushy drink. Serves 60. 

Here are some pictures of the night before the party. Me, Marlo & Liz (MIL) were having fun making cupcakes and cookies :)

My best friend, Lindsey was able to come by for a bit before she had to leave town. SO glad she got to come by!

Fun slides!

Happy 5 months!

Kallie is 5 months today. She is such a big girl! She started consistently rolling from her back to belly THIS MORNING!

She is:
Eating cereal
Sleeping all night
laughing out loud
smiling all the time
loving to be with her mommy!
starting to reach out for mommy when someone else is holding her
rolling over
grabbing for toys
scoots all over the place on her belly

Happy 5 months Kallie! We love you!

Kallie's first cereal

Kallie's first cereal
Originally uploaded by kristenkay

Kallie had her first cereal at almost 5 months old. I wasn't in a hurry because, well, let's face it, the child doesn't miss a meal! ;-) Anyways, I bit the bullet and started it this morning. Here's a little video of her in action. :)

and time keeps a flyin' by

We have had a BUSY week/weekend! I have been away from my computer all week and then today I have been going non-stop. I am trying to take a few minutes out to post about what's been going on in our lives.

This past week we went to the DFW area to visit some great friends. Holly watched my girls for me on Tuesday while I went to the eye dr & dentist. I was able to visit with her in between my appointments. After leaving the dentist for a cleaning, I find out I have to have some cavities filled AND a root canal! AHH! All of this was AFTER I bought myself a new pair of glasses. I went into "feel sorry for yourself" mode. I was pretty bummed. I shed some tears over the phone with Kent. My teeth have always been bad- then I plateaued and was doing great. THEN I had two pregnancies back to back..... and it was down hill from there. Anyways, enough of that. :) Wednesday I had to go to the dentist for my dental work so Whitney kept the girls. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I didn't really get to visit with her at all on Wednesday because we headed back to the house after my appointment because the girls were pretty tired. We ended up eating with my friend that we were staying with. Thursday Whitney & I took the girls to the Ft Worth Museum of Science and something else. :) They just re-did it and added a children's part, from what I understand. The girls had a blast running around. My biggest gripe (and SURELY this will be something that will be "fixed" in the near future) is the lack of ease for moms with strollers. It was horrible. No automatic doors.... the restrooms were a NIGHTMARE to get my double stroller (or what I like to call my BUS) through. Luckily all businesses are required to have handicap entrances to their facilities or else I believe this place would have had 3 stories worth of stairs to get into the entrance. No joke. Now with all that aside, the place is great for kids. Here are a few pictures of the girls.

And we can't forget miss Kallie!

These are the only pictures I took all week. I'll get some of Maddox & Kensley playing when Holly & Lance come up for their mini vacation! I know Kensley will love having Maddox at our house.

We are back at my parents' house now. Kensley was SOOOO excited to get back! We visited Nonnie at work and when she saw her, she was running to her yelling "nonnie!!!". It was cute. She saw her Grumpy outside and was so glad to see he and Nana. She really loves it here. And I love her being able to spend so much time with everyone. We're really going to miss everyone!

Today we have been going NON STOP! We are trying to get things ready for Kensley's 2nd birthday next weekend. We are having a luau. I had planned on doing kabobs, so we wanted to try them out today.... WELL----- we are now doing hamburgers! It was a LOT of work and didn't turn out great. The marinade was YUMMY (Landry's Hawaiian marinade). I'll be buying some of that when I get back home, for sure! Along with our food endeavors, I tried out making a cake. I'm just making Kensley a small one this year- I've spent way too much money on decorations and stuff like that (WHY?!?! I don't know) so I'm going to save on the cake. I did a test run- it wasn't good. I learned a LOT! Here's the picture of that... go ahead.... laugh it up :)

And here is the cupcake stand I had my dad build. I have a friend that is AMAZING at decorating. Her daughter's 2nd birthday was ladybug themed.... SO CUTE!  So I got this idea from her- but I made it a little bigger (but not on purpose!) My dad and I bought some plywood and round poles and he put this together today. It's a big one!!! I'll be able to use it for all of our parties now--- just decorate it however I need to.

I would post the picture of the cake I ATTEMPTED to do.... but I'm to embarrassed... so hopefully the "real" one will turn out better. 

So there you have it! Our week/weekend in a nutshell.... sort of :)

Hump day!

Well, we're already half way through this week. Yay! We get to see Kent again this weekend- so I am SUPER excited. Keith is graduating, so we'll be going to graduation on Saturday. (NOT looking forward to that with Miss Kensley..... but I've already got it in my brain that we'll be walking around outside the gym for the majority of the time... and that's ok :)

Anyways, we've been staying busy and trying to enjoy every moment here with family. We went to some friends' house last night and Kensley had a blast. She kept saying "Pun"? (she wanted me to ask her if she had "fun") So I'd say, "did you have fun??" and she'd reply in a happy yell "yeah!!!!!". They had a pool and while it was suppose to be a pool play date (or so I thought) no one else wanted to get in. Kensley's heart was set on it - the whole time I was getting things packed up and ready to leave, she was saying "pool!" So we got in the pool for about 30 minutes. She LOVED it. And it was really nice to get to visit with my girl friends. I didn't get any pictures though- surprise surprise!

Kensley's birthday party luau is in full planning effect! I am getting excited. We went to a birthday party last weekend and I was really "inspired". Shayna always decorates her parties SO CUTE! I'm going to do cupcakes instead of a cake- but I think I'm going to make a small cake for Kensley. I need to get my creative juices going! haha (IF I have any!) I've worked with Marie, who made Kallie's birth announcements and she has made the invites for Kensley's party- I LOVE them! She is so talented.

Both girls are doing so well- Kallie sleeps through the night still but I am struggling on getting her on a better schedule. She is a night owl! And I'm not. Kensley has got to stay up until 9 for a while. I have gave in to the 8:00 bedtime. It's just SO TERRIBLY hot here in Texas and it starts getting a little better around 8. She loves to be outside, so I've loosened those reigns a bit. :) Once we get back home, we'll get back into a schedule, I'm sure.

I have a hair appointment today- I'm excited. I'm growing all these highlights out so I'm going to get a bunch of low lights put in so it doesn't look so crazy! I'm still growing my hair out- so I'm going to get Tera to "fix" what the lady up in VA did to my hair. She messed it up bad!

Here is a picture to share.... my last post was of Kensley brushing her teeth before bedtime...in her swimsuit. well here's a picture of her in her crib sleeping....