Missing Child Alert

Has anyone seen this sparkly, glittery, pink and purple loving, tiara wearing, Princess of a little girl?



Someone came in the night and took her. She was replaced with this child.

This new big girl who lives in my house likes to catch frogs and get dirty. New Girl looked at me like I had two heads when I suggested Paint On Pottery or a dress up party for her 8th birthday. She chose instead to take her friends to Jungle Quest.

New Girl seems to enjoy rock climbing.



To dizzying heights.



She enjoys zipping on zip lines and flipping upside down high above the concrete floor (with no padding, I might add)!





Her bravery even influenced her more cautious sister.



In all seriousness, Jungle Quest was a lot of fun. The girls all had a great time. They also decided, after wearing that harness for 90 minutes, that they are glad they are girls, if you get my drift!

Little Man (my replacement baby since the others are so big now) was along for the ride. He's too little for the rock climbing and zip lining, but he did have fun in the toddler section.



The Daddy was there too.
Yes, he is wearing plaid shorts with a striped shirt.
No, I did not notice his outfit until after we were in the car, and it was too late to suggest he change.
Yes, I have considered writing a letter to Stacy and Clinton, but the idea of him having a new $5000 wardrobe while I continue to dress myself from the clearance racks at Target changed my mind!



And yes, I know it looks like he drugged my baby or at least slipped him some tequila in his sippy cup!

After Jungle Quest, we headed home for pizza, cake, ice cream and gifts.



Then the kids headed outside to play on the new Slip 'N Slide. Can anyone explain to me why I was more worried about someone getting hurt on the Slip 'N Slide than I was about someone falling to her death from the zip line?



So, yes, my little pink and purple sparkly princess is missing, but she has been replaced by a pretty cool kid. A big eight year old girl who likes to catch frogs, loves animals of all kinds, loves to help me cook, hates to brush her hair, still likes to wear dresses on occasion and still loves to snuggle with her mama.

I guess it's a fair trade.

Alphabitty Moments - The Letter R

It's Thursday Friday! Which means I'm right on time a day late for MamaBear's Alphabitty Moments blog carnival.

This week we're working on the letter 'R'. 'R' for Reading. Little Man loves books. He is 16 months old now and says a handful of words. "Book" is one of those words. Many, many times throughout the day, he will come to me with a book in his hand, give it to me, say "book", then lift his arms for me to hold him and read to him. We rarely make it through an entire book, but it is still so sweet to hold him and read to him!



Now I'm heading to 4 the Love of Family to check out other Alphabitty entries for the week. Care to join me?

Alphabitty Moments - The Letter Q

Q? Seriously? Q?

I have to admit I have sort of been dreading this week. I didn't know what word I could possibly use for the letter Q. My first thought was Quiet, but the only time this kid is quiet is when he's sleeping, and I pretty much covered that with the letter N!

So, true confession time, I went to my trusty friend Google and did a search for 'words that start with Q'. When I came across the word quintessence with the definition: the most perfect embodiment of something, I knew I was on to something. My Little Man is the most perfect embodiment of adorable little boyhood I have ever seen.

Here he is, my Quintessential Boy in some of my favorite pictures of him.



Now head over to 4 The Love of Family to see what MamaBear and friends came up with this week!

I ♥ Faces - Week 23 - Sepia Toned

This week's I ♥ Faces challenge is sepia tones photos. (Look, I made one of those cute little ♥'s....okay, okay, I copied and pasted from their site. Still, it's here, and it's cute.) I'm actually entering into both the adult and kid categories this week.

Here's my Princess at her Little Gym graduation three years ago. It was just before her 5th birthday. She just turned 8 yesterday. Where does the time go?



This is my niece on the day she got her new Mustang. She's on the phone with her best friend telling her all about it. Of course, now she has a baby and had to move up to a bigger car when she realized it's not easy to fit a baby in the back seat of a two door Mustang. Again, where does the time go?



Go check out some of the other entries at I ♥ Faces. There are some amazing photos over there!

Alphabitty Moments - The Letters O & P

Alphabitty Moments is a blog carnival hosted by MamaBear at 4 The Love of Family. It's a reminder to savor the little moments....they'll be gone before you know it.

I never got around to posting my Alphabitty Moments post last week due to all the coughing and the chills and the fever and the desire to just be able to breathe like a normal person again, so I have to catch up by posting two letters this week.

I know the ocean is most definitely not "bitty", but I just had to use ocean for my 'O' word. We live about 40 minutes from the beach, and we try to get there as often as possible. With Little Man being so little last summer, we didn't get there too much, but I have high hopes for many weekend days by the ocean this summer.

'P' was a no brainer for me. Pacifiers! All of my children have been paci lovers, and the Boy is no exception. I noticed the other day as I was photographing him, that I always either take the paci out or ask someone else to take it out. So, we had a photo shoot in the driveway with the paci's in. I tried to put them in a pile and get a shot of just the pacifiers, but as you can see, he didn't agree with that plan. He doesn't always have one in his mouth and one in each hand; however, he does like to have at least two when he goes to sleep.

Now head over to 4 The Love of Family to see what everyone else came up with this week.

The Adventures of Bully Boy and Girly Girl

That's my Little Man and his new friend, my newest daycare kid. Here's the conversation I translated from his baby talk:

Little Man: Look, dirt and leaves and sticks and germs. Try it! It's delicious!

Girly Girl: EEEEEWWWWWWW!!! (That one required no translation on my part. She went half way up the slide backwards trying to get away from him!)

These two do NOT get along.

He touches her, she cries and says, "Hit. Arm. Boo boo."

I say, "He did NOT hit you. He wants to play with you."

He hits her on the head!

It's going to be a lllooonnnggg summer!

Weekend At the Beach!

UPDATE: I posted this last night, then went over to I Heart Faces (seriously, how do you make those cute little hearts?) this morning and saw they are hosting 'My Story in Photos: Vacation Edition' this week. Ok, so this wasn't really a vacation, it was more of a weekend get-a-way, but I'm linking there anyway. You can head over there too and check out some other vacations, maybe dream a little, make yourself a margarita, put on your flip flops and take a virtual vaca or two!



I'm not posting a Not Me! post this week. I was sick, again. Just when I thought I was feeling better, I took a turn for the worse. I have bronchitis and spent about half the week literally doing nothing other than shivering when the chills hit, throwing off the blankets once the Motrin kicked in, coughing and asking my sweet girls to take care of me. If I were writing a Not Me! post, I would tell you I did not lie lifeless on the sofa while my son slowly but surely ripped tissue into many small pieces and piled them on top of me. Even if it did make him sit still and be quiet for a few minutes, no way would I have actually allowed that to happen.

So, since I don't have any Not Me's to post, I'll finally post about our weekend at the beach.

My in-laws were offered a friend's condo at the beach for the weekend, and they very graciously invited us to tag along. They may be questioning that decision after spending two days and nights in a very small condo with us and our rather loud and nosey little boy!

We all had a great time. The weather was absolutely perfect....not too hot, and a perfect ocean breeze. The Little Man had a blast on the beach. Luckily he didn't try to venture too far into the water. The Sisters loved playing with their brother in the pool, playing in the sand and walking on the beach looking for shells and shark teeth. We found plenty of shells, but sadly, no shark teeth.

I loved taking pictures all weekend. Especially under the pier. The light under there was amazing!

My great niece, Miss B. Man, that makes me sound old!


Yes, my son is being eaten by a wave. He loved it!












After an appetizer of sand and shells, a lunch of hot dog, Goldfish and pasta salad, the poor little guy was pooped. We watched him nod off until he finally just fell over.

We get to do this again in July for a full week....different condo, different beach, same cool kids. I cannot wait!

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

Oh where do I begin? I was sick this week, but I most certainly did NOT use that as an excuse to let anything slide.

I did NOT forget FlyLady's advice to 'never take out more than you can put back in an hour' when I decided to rearrange my closet. Therefore it does NOT, six days later, appear that my closet threw up into my room. I am NOT afraid to walk in there in the dark for fear of tripping over a pile of clothes or other miscellaneous mess. My daughter did NOT ask how that much junk fit into my closet in the first place.

I did NOT let my son move all the lids to my pots and pans along with a large portion of my plastic bowls from the kitchen to the dining room table just because I was too tired to get up and stop him.

I did NOT remove the trash can from my kitchen and put it out the back door because I was sick to death of pulling a certain little boy out of the trash. NOPE, I am an awesome disciplinarian and he has learned at a mere 15 months that the trash is off limits.

I did NOT let my daughters beg and plead until I caved and agreed to take them to the elementary school "talent" show even though I was pretty sure I had already coughed up a large percentage of my lung tissue. I did NOT roll my eyes at the fact that I had to sit through 3.5 versions of little girls singing along with Miley Cyrus on "The Climb."

My Friday did NOT in any way involve:
7 kids of various ages
2 toads being held hostage in my back yard
1 Iguana in an aquarium on my kitchen counter after his stint at sharing time with a 5 year old daycare kid
2 little boys crying over who was allowed to 'take care of' the toads
1 seven year old girl who declared herself the boss of the toads and instigated all the crying and then joined them when she was told she couldn't keep the toads in a bucket in the Florida heat all weekend

I also did NOT have to pack up my family of five for a weekend at the beach while my husband showed up at the last second, threw some t-shirts and shorts in a bag and wanted to know when I would be ready. When we arrived at the beach, realized beach towels were not available in the condo, and The Husband looked at me and said, "You didn't pack the towels?" I most certainly did NOT have a mental breakdown!!

Finally, I do NOT have adorable pictures of my kids from the weekend, and I do NOT plan to get them uploaded and posted ASAP. I am NOT ignoring the bag of wet clothes and bathing suits so that I can blog and upload photos. NOPE, Not Me!