Family Sleepover

Last weekend, we had a "family sleepover" with the Lewis'. (Lewis's? never sure on how to do that for someone's last name that ends with S." Robin (Connor's godmother), Kyle, and Douglas had us over for pizza, kiddy playtime, kiddy sleepytime, adult playtime, and adult sleepytime. We had so much fun! They live just a few minutes from us, and have plenty of bedrooms in their house, so we get the kids to bed and then get some good times in without having to worry about getting a sitter.

Unfortunately, Isabelle was a bit under the weather with a runny nose, and I was starting to get a bit sick. But we all had a great time---and from the pics you will see that to be true! Only a couple of days after this, Isabelle came down with pink eye, and the cold and pink eye are things she was kind enough to share with the rest of our little family, and also Douglas. Sorry, Dougie!!!

Here are the buddies once we got there, sharing some chips (1st chance that she infected Douglas).


Ready for our pizza party!

Kyle and Douglas enjoying some Papa Murphy's pizza!


Dance party in the living room. I think Kyle put on the version of Don't Stop Believin' from Glee.


Isabelle giving Douglas one of her bear hugs that none of her friends seem to like. I'm pretty sure this is when she gave him the pink eye. :-)


Dancing to the crazy Elmo doll!


Brushing teeth before bath time! Isabelle and Douglas were sharing the stool.


Bath time! They had so much fun splashing and acting silly, dunking their heads under water and blowing bubbles.


After bath we let them play for a little bit before it was time for stories.


Douglas shared his books with Isabelle. She listened very attentively as he read to her. Yeah right!


"Hey, honey, hope you are enjoying your beer while we wrangle these crazy toddlers!"

Isabelle and Douglas snuggled for a bit before it was time to retire to their separate quarters.

Night night RaRa! Love you so much!


Nightie night to my precious Godson!!!



"Seriously, Isabelle, I really don't want your crazy hugs."

Daddy came up to read some books with Isabelle before she went to bed.

"Mommy, might I be getting to big for the pack n play? Or my sleep sack?" Mommy says no way!!!



Little Connor is always to happy to go to bed. I love that about him!!!!! :-)



In the morning, Douglas was very excited to play with the kitchen his mommy got for him at the big kiddie consignment sale the day before. He was also sporting the cowboy boots that will be part of his Halloween costume.

Breakfast time! Biscuits and fruit. These two love sharing meals together. Isabelle also handed Douglas her cup which he gladly drank from, which I'm sure is when he contracted her cold. :-)




After breakfast, we went to the neighborhood splash park. These days it's only comfortable enough outside to do things like this in morning. Isabelle was so excited because it's pretty much her favorite place ever!



Their buddy Madeline came to join them on the playground.



After the kids went to bed, we hung out and talked, ate some ice cream, and watched some House Hunters. It was wild and crazy, just the way we liked it. I really treasure moments like this when we can catch up with friends without being interrupted every 5 seconds!

What a fun event this was! Many thanks to our hosts for a good time. Robin and Kyle are expecting baby #2 in January, but thanks to their many bedrooms we will continue our family sleepovers for years to come! This fall we are looking forward to going to the state fair, the Dallas Aquarium, and the Plano Hot Air Balloon festival with our wonderful friends Robin, Kyle, and Douglas.

My Buddies...

Isabelle is sure lucky to have two of the best friends she could ask for, Luke ("Guke") and Douglas ("Dougie"). We play with them very frequently. Playdates with them started right after they were born. At first us Mommies would get to watch tv while they laid on the floor, rocked in the swing, or slept. Now our playdates are full of activity, and pretty soon Luke and Douglas with both have a sibling, too!!! We try to get out and do fun things, so here are a few pics from the last couple of weeks.

Here we are at Luke's neighborhood pool.


Enjoying a snack break!



Ready to head home in the fun red wagon! We love our buddy Luke so much!


Dougie and Isabelle got to go to the park a couple of weeks ago when it was only in the 90's for one day! It felt so good to get out of the house to play outside, and we are really looking forward to the fall when we can go to park each and every day.

Could these smiles be any cuter? These two have so much fun!

Riding the grasshopper together...


Swinging time usually only lasts a couple of minutes. I wish it lasted longer, but who wants to swing when you could run around like a crazy person on the playground?


Here is a pic from playtime at our house the other day. The kids (that's our friend Madeline) hopped on the couch to watch Barney, and it did not take long for Isabelle and Dougie to start hugging and wrestling!


We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends. Not only are the kids blessed to have each other, us as parents are so grateful to have one another to experience parenthood together! More to come soon!

Isabelle "Snowcone" Barto

Isabelle has a new love, and its name is the Scallywag's Pirate Boat Shaved Ice Stand. This boat is parked near our house, and she talks about it non-stop!!! Today we took her for a treat (well, we take her at least two times a week...) The owners know us now, this is how much we go! It really is a neat snow cone place, and she already has her favorite--yellow (banana) and red (strawberry) swirled together. She calls it ice cream cone, even though I try to correct her and say snow cone.

Here is Brendan holding Isabelle. Today we couldn't get too close because bees have taken over and are swarming the outside.


Here she is pointing at the lady on the boat. At first from a distance she thought it was Jesus, as she does slightly resemble him on the cross from far away. :-)

ds


Mmmmm....whether slurping from a straw, being fed by Daddy, or eating with a spoon, it is always delicious!!!!!!!!!

And now for some other photos of the family.


Gosh, could he be any cuter? He definitely is a Daddy's boy and always smiles and laughs with him.
Pretzels and nutella (a fave snack instituted by Grandma) is such a fun thing to eat, and wonderfully messy!

"Yes, I am 6 months old and can drink from a straw cup!"


Sweet boy growing so fast!
This is a photo of "snack picnic," an activity I recently created. She thinks it is so much fun to eat on her blanket, and I must agree!

6 months old and some summer fun...

Wow, how 6 months has gone by fast! My sweet Connor is precious as can be, and Isabelle is officially 2 years old. We'll leave it at that! Haha!

Connor is 13 lbs 14 oz which puts him in the 3rd percentile. Tiny! But he drinks 5 bottles a day and gets 3 small meals of cereal and fruit/veggies, so he'll be big and strong before we know it. He is taking two long naps and sleeping from 7 pm to 6 am. He can roll from his back to his tummy, and is learning how to sit. He thinks Isabelle is the funniest thing ever, which just melts my heart. Here are some pics of him.

Posing on the bed during our Mommy and Me time early in the morning while Isabelle is still in bed.

I had put his bowl of cereal on the tray, looked away for a moment, and when I turned back he had pulled the bowl over, and had cereal all over his face with the spoon in his mouth. Hungry boy!


Here he is sitting for a split second. They start looking so grown up when this happens!

I tell my mom that Isabelle is sweet as sugar 90% of the time, and unbearable for the other 10%. Living with a toddler is definitely challenging, but so much fun! She makes us laugh so hard one second and then is sitting in time out the next second. Each day is different, but we just take it one day at a time. :-) She has started giving kisses and hugs all the time and says Love you when prompted. This summer we have spent a lot of time at the pool.


Digging in the sand with Dougie, our buddy!!!


Here she is with her play kitchen that she got for her birthday. She really loves it!!!

I'll close with some portraits we got taken at JCPenney. Pretty soon I should be able to get Isabelle to stand still long enough to get a portrait of them together!

Life's Too Short...

So I'm really not a slacker. I go non-stop from 5-7 a.m. to 7:30 pm without a moment's rest (well, sometimes when naps fall at the same time I might get 30 minutes to chill, but showering or eating something usually takes precedent over blogging) but always in the back of my mind is this dang blog. I really do want to document this fabulous fun life we have here on Brookfield Way, but every time I sit down to post I get frustrated over how long it takes to upload my pictures, or how I deleted a picture when all I really wanted to do was backspace some text, etc. This post actually had 3 pictures on it, but I deleted it trying to get the freaking cursor to appear so I could actually write something! Ugh! And I really don't have the time or patience to upload another picture, so here you get two. Deal with it! My photos I guess are huge in size due to my super fancy camera, and take forever to upload to this site on my 7 year old computer. Do I have the time to figure out how to compress the files to make them smaller and upload them faster? No. Are we planning on buying a new computer in the next couple of weeks? Yes. So guess what? Blogging will be re-visited with the purchase of a super-fancy-last-another-seven-years-computer. Hopefully pics will be uploaded super fast and Amanda (Mrs. Super Blogger) will give me a tutorial on how to create a blog post in a flash. Because I am over feeling annoyed after trying to post a blog! Thank you for letting me get this off my chest. And here are the two pictures you get from me. It took 7 minutes to upload them, and I can only do 3 at a time instead of the five the site will allow you to do, because of my old computer. So enjoy. Want to see more? Go to Facebook. :-) And now I am off to vacuum the dog food up off of the freshly vacuumed carpet and then perhaps wash my face and read up on how to get your toddler to stop hitting her mother. Because these are the things on my mind when I am sitting here trying desperately to post to my blog! Peace out...