Lots of Randomness (121/365)

Bear with me, I can't add the captions with the pictures from my phone.

1) Tomorrow is Kathy's bridal shower and so we decided to get together
with some of the out of town family that came in (and other locals
that we don't see often) for dinner tonight. No gathering of the
Bathje/Muchow crowd is small. We had a whole section all to ourselves.
And as far as I can tell, good food was had by all. I'd certainly go
back to Gulliver's again!

2) Izzy was seriously thinking about drinking Brett's beer. I blame it
on the fact that Matt forgot to pack Izzy a bottle. That's ok, she
more than made up for it with the two containers of baby food, Alice's
leftover mac & cheese, chicken and bread from Matt's dinner, and some
milk and water that she drank from a straw! The kid had a belly like a drum by the
time she was done.

3) Alice's flower girl dress came in the mail this week. She was more
than happy to try it in for me, complete with the watermelon colored sash.
She's going to be the prettiest flower girl ever come July!

4) The other day Izzy had my phone and was listening to her favorite
song, Elephants. She's recently learned how to push the button to exit
an app, and she was getting very frustrated because apparently she didn't really want to do that. Alice decided to help
her, but Izzy must have hit the button twice, which turns on the
camera, because Alice snapped this gem of Izzy getting very upset with
her helpful sister!

I'm Still Weeding Through Pictures (120/365)

But here's a gem or two from Izzy's actual birthday when she was eating birthday cake. We had so much fun that day. (click to enlarge)

More Spring Beauties (119/365)

I am just now getting around to editing the pics I took the last time we went to go see Dad and Cindy. I'm working remotely from our Mac to our PC so it's not the fastest, so you'll have to take these two pics (and the new header) that I have done for now. I'll come back and edit the post with more pics when I get them done. Hey, I started this, so I make the rules and as far as I'm concerned this isn't cheating.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
(click to enlarge)

Hanging with Uncle Ry. Miss you.

Grandma Susie's tree.

Alice being a crazy girl and pretending to be a door-to-door salesman.

88 is Great, Grandma! (118/365)

The Kid Knows What She Likes (117/365)

All day long Izzy has been obsessed with walking with her walker up and down the hallway. Several times in fact she took 5+ steps without holding on to something to get to her walker! I thought I'd try and get that on video before she went to bed this evening, but unfortunately she was more interested in the computer than her walker. Here's the video that resulted.

I Wish You Sweet Dreams of Your Grandmother (116/365)

Today Alice informed me that she had a dream about Grandma Susie during her nap. She normally dreams about sheep, teddy, or recently, the bow to her flower-girl dress (the kid's excited, what can I say?) so this is really something different for her. I'm not sure what happened in the dream, but I, for one, hope she never stops having them.

I'm off to bed. Maybe I'll get lucky and dream about Mom too.

Five Things About This Photo (115/365)

1) Alice's new skirt from JJ and Tori reminds me of my favorite Barbie
from when I was a kid.

2) Yes, those are fish maracas. Thanks, Cath.

3) Alice was dancing to a terrible Hawaii Scooby Doo movie starring
Mario Lopez. She gets her taste in entertainment (if you can call it
that) from her Father.

4) Say hello to Izzy's butt down in the lower right corner.

5) Alice's outfit is a GIRLS size 4/5. Skirt is loose, shirt is ALMOST
too short. The girl is a freaking monster. There must be Miracle Grow
in the milk.

Can You Guess Which Came First? (114/365)

It's not what you'd think.

This kid was up so much last night that she fell asleep in her lunch
and we had to wait for her to wake so we could eat cake! We had a
FABULOUS day. The only thing that could have made it better is if all
of you could have been there.

By the way, do you even recognize Matt? He's looking pretty skinny
these days! We have about a week left of our challenge, and as of
last week Matt is in the lead.

Horrible Allergies + Preparing for the Party= (113/365)

I'm going to lay on the couch and wait for Charles and Erin to get
here, then go to bed. Sorry for the cheap post. I'm really spent.

See you at the party!!

It May Not Be Perfect (112/365)

But I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. This is what I spent
the majority of my day doing, and I can't wait to eat it!

And yes, that's chocolate buttercream. Mmmmmm...

Apparantly it was Teddy's Bday (111/365)

And he and Izzy's new babydoll, Claire, went out to eat to celebrate.

No word if meat was served.

Please Tell Me We Don't Have a Vegetarian on Our Hands (110/365)

The following is a conversation we had at dinner tonight. This is an ongoing conversation ALICE has at dinner every night about how things are made, but this time it took an interesting turn.

ALICE - Daddy, how do they make chicken?

DADDY - Well, chicken is a bird. We don't really make chickens like we do bread...

ALICE - (yelling) BUT DADDY, WE CAN'T EAT BIRDS!!!! THEY'LL DIE AND GET KILLED!!!

DADDY - Well, we eat a lot of meat, and all meat used to be an animal and...

ALICE - BUT DADDY, THEY'LL DIE!!!

DADDY - The animals we eat are made to be eaten. We need to eat meat to make us healthy.

ALICE - Well I don't want to eat a bird.

Oy vey. Where the heck did that come from?!

In a Benadryl Induced Haze (109/365)

And I'm having a hard time functioning.

And I need to function this week as the house is a wreck and I, to be quite honest, haven't planned a damn thing for Izzy's b-day party this weekend. To think I used to think when, as a kid, Charles was laid up on the couch drugged up on Benadryl with a washcloth over his eyes that it couldn't be that bad. How could I know, I never had allergy issues until I got pregnant with Alice.

Boy was I wrong. Now if I could just find a drug that could get rid of my symptoms with out knocking me out at the same time I'd be set. Unfortunately I know a lot of you can relate to me right now!

Highlights of Our Weekend (108/365)

• The Embassy Suites is a fabulous hotel! I would stay there again in a heartbeat. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the breakfast, but I was still able to find something to eat.
• The best part was that we, apparently, had the board room suite. Based on the outside of the hotel, it looked like the rooms in the middle of each side of each floor of the hotel are a bit longer than the others. This allowed us to have a bigger front room with a table that could seat six, plus a hide-a-bed, arm chair, tables, tv, and more space than I knew what to do with.
• Had I known we had the large room I would have happily allowed the girls to congregate in there!
• We all ended up with rooms next to each other. Which made this super easy and convenient. For that I am glad as I would not have wanted a room next to one of the many noisy teenagers who were there this weekend!
• I can't wait for pool weather to get here! Alice really took to the pool and was such a little fishy!
• Izzy's bday cake was the lesser of two evils. Walmart had two to choose from that were big enough and the ugliest one was purple and black! Ick!
• The day of the race I took 13,526 steps. Needless to say, we did a lot of walking that day!
• And no, I did not count them myself as I went. I wore a pedometer, Tony. He he he.
• My allergies have been obnoxious this weekend. My sinuses are blocked, my ears are fluid filled, eyes feel like they have sand in them, the list goes on and on. The worst part was waking up several times last night feeling like my throat had closed up and I couldn't breathe. If this keeps up, I'm definitely going to have to call the doctor.
• The kids all got along great. I'm pretty sure most of them didn't want to go home this morning.
• I found out this morning that Claire asked her mommy if Alice could come to her four year old birthday party. Can you say BFFs?
• Including Alice. She was a perfect angel the whole weekend. The moment we walked out of the hotel she got very upset because we didn't walk out the revolving door (despite having said seconds before that she didn't want to walk out of it). I knew she was really just upset to be leaving.
• Pretty much one of the cutest things ever was when we were getting ready to leave and Alice wast trying to say goodbye to Anya. Anya kept avoiding her and Alice chased her up and down the hallway. When we finally got to the point where I told Anya goodbye and told Alice to come sit on the potty. Anya seemed to have realized right then that Alice was leaving, and she stopped running and gave Alice the biggest hug.
• On the way home, Alice was trying desperately to stay awake. When she saw me lay my head down (Mommy was very tired and felt like crap) she immediately laid her head down and promptly fell asleep.
• And all of us, but Matt, of course, slept the majority of the trip home!

I can't tell you all enough just how much fun we had this weekend! My only complaint is that it went by too fast! Miss you girls already.

Well That's One Way to Spend Your 1st Bday (107/365)

Today was the Race fo the Cure with my MoGo mommy friends, and I must
say I think we all had quite a blast! Everyone is so incredible and
would you believe it I don't think there was one fight has amongst
them if you don't count siblings.

We had a few setbacks due to traffic jams, but we all walked together
in the end and then spent the day at the zoo. Alice and Claire (who
coincidentally reminds me very much of Kaylee) hit it off SO well and
spent the day holding hands, sharing snacks, and sharing laughs. They
really are quite the pair!

After the zoo we had pizza, cake (for Izzy, Dani, and Ian's
birthdays), and lots of socialization for the kids and parents alike.
Duck duck goose, tag, hide and seek, were some of the favorite games
played. The adults took advantage of the open bar.

Afterwards, we swam, and right before the girls went to bed we let
Izzy open some presents. All in all it was a very good day, spent with
very good friends, made all the sweeter for me because of a certain
little one year old.

Happy Birthday Little Girl. Momma loves you.