Mini Fox's Baptism

As I said yesterday we were getting ready up to the wire before Mini Fox's baptism. She usually naps about 1 and wakes up at 3ish, but with the baptism being at 2pm, that was going to work, so I put her down for a nap right after eating at noon, luckily she was tired and it worked. We woke her up 5 minutes before we left, she was not happy about that choice.

We get there and almost everyone is there and things are about to start.

We great our family and friends and find our seats, my parents are no where to be found. The priest starts talking, my parents are not there, I look around, and suddenly the door open and half of my family walks in. I guess the priest started a few minutes early and they were all talking in the parking lot. Oops.

He got right to it, no wasting any time.

Us with Mini Fox's Godparents

Mini Fox with her Godparents (they are close friends of the family. Mini Fox's Godfather's dad was my Dad's best friend growing up, and had known each other since Kindergarten, he passed away a couple of weeks before Baby Fox was born)

Picture with my Godfather, my Godmother lives in Florida

Now onto the party details!

This is the invite I sent out:

I decided to have little name cards of the food, so I actually went to Vista Print (where I ordered my invitations from) and pretended to order the Thank You cards, and then instead of writing Thank You I just wrote out the name of the food. The great thing about Vista Print is that you can rearrange the words and graphics, make them smaller or bigger, add text where ever you want, it's a great site and relatively cheap too! Go check it out.

Party food - 

• I tend to get fruit that I can eat as left overs and since I am allergic to melons I mostly stick with berries and grapes
• Mr. wanted to do meatballs and BBQ sauce, you can see it in the background in the crockpot. It was a huge hit and every since meatball was devoured (we got the Costco meatballs and BBQ Sauce, pour together 3-4 hours before event start, done)
• Mr. was also in charge of the cheese and meat tray, he got everything from Trader Joe's
• We also did these chicken salad croissant sandwiches, always a crowd favorite. I tripled the recipe and we didn't have much left over - Mr. and my dad were sad, they wanted more leftover
• We also bought the veggie tray from Costco, put in own server bowls/tray and you're done and it looks better then that plastic thing, easy.
• Lemonade - I just bought the Country Time Lemonade, made it before we left, minus some water to account for ice melting. When we got home I poured ice in and put outside.

Tip: Cut the croissants sandwiches in half, that way people don't have to take a whole one, less wasted food

Of course had food for the kids too:

Uncrustables and fruit pouches

Tip: If you are going somewhere before your party, i.e. a Baptism, and need a quick set up, have everything ready to go. We had the sandwiches on the platter in the fridge. Our fridge didn't have enough room for all the other platters, so I put everything in Ziploc baggies, so when we got home, I just pulled out the baggies and poured the food on the platter at the table, took less then 3 minutes and I was done.

Party Decorations -

I decided Friday night that I wanted some poof balls hanging everywhere outside, so my Dad went to Big Lots at 7pm, and bought me tissue paper so I could make them. I used my tutorial here. The small ones I did like the big ones, except after I fan folded it, I cut it in half, it worked out perfect!

This is walking into our house, view from the front door

The dessert table, before the cake got there

The cake, my parents wanted to contribute to the party, so they bought the cake, everyone could not stop talking about how wonderful the cake was. It was Lemon Bavarian Cream. I loved the design, simple yet elegant.

We are so blessed to have so many wonder people in our lives, willing to drive all the way out to our house to celebrate the welcoming of Mini Fox into the Catholic Church. It was a perfect day and I think everyone had a great time.

The guest of honor got tired pretty quickly after getting home and made her rounds and then went to bed, almost a 3 hour nap, totally unheard of! We love you Mini Fox, and feel so blessed that we are your parents. Welcome!

Linking up with Glossy Blonde & Karly Kim

Party Weekend

This weekend was full of parties. Saturday we went to a racing birthday party, it was so much fun/funny to watch the kids race around.

The invitation told us to bring a power toy vehicle. We don't have one, so we had brought my son's bike (see him in the back?). He came in second, woo hoo!

The second time around, Baby Fox wanted to ride with someone, so he jumped into that jeep in the front. Let me tell you, that Jeep had some go! They were done with the "race" before the other kids even got down the first straigh-away.

 

Finally someone gave up their car and gave Baby Fox a turn to drive. If you see him on the road, get out of his way! Mostly cause he has no control and will just run right into you.

Then he decided to take a shortcut, yep, right up and over that curb.

I have to say it was hilarious to watch all of the kids. It was nice to celebrate our friends birthday and get to drive a car, let's hope he doesn't ask for one! Where do you store something like that?!

Sunday Mini Fox got baptized, so Friday/Saturday was spent prepping for the big day. We finished getting ready at 1:30pm, baptism started at 2. Oops, that was cutting it close wasn't it?

I'm not sure she even noticed that she was getting water poured over her head.

Us with the priest and Mini Fox's Godparents

And here's some pictures of food, cause who doesn't like good food, more pictures of the party to follow this week. We were so beat from yesterday, it was all I could do to muster up there few photos.

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather

TBT - House Edition

Before I start - I woke up at 4:25am and thought, thank God it's Saturday, only to realize, hope I have to get out of bed to go to work. Yes you read that correctly, I get up at 4:30am to go to work. Good news, Mini Fox didn't wake up till I woke up, so that's a plus.

Onto throw back Thursday - House Edition: Front and Back

We bought our house as a short sale. We got lucky and the previous offer was okayed by  the bank, and all the t's were crossed and i's dotted, but then their funding fell through, enter us into the equation, we had the same exact offer and they literally crossed out the previous person and wrote our names in.

Our house needed a lot of vision, I mean a LOT. In one spot inside, you could see the following wall colors: Red, Brown, Blue, light purple, dark purple, green, and orange. It was like Rainbow Bright threw up in our house.

That's us 4 years and 5 months ago.

Now when you see that house color behind us, it doesn't look too bad, but let me tell you, it was horrible! It was actually orange. The neighbors called it the pumpkin house.

We considered painting the roof green for Halloween, for like 1.2 seconds.

Here's the back:

  Yep that's a whole lot of orange!

We'll get to the front yard and backyard/pool in another post.

Our first order of business was to paint the house. We got the keys and the very next week we had painters there. The first day of painting, I pull into the driveway and no less then 4 neighbors came out to tell me Thank You for painting the house. Our next door neighbor said that she almost passed her house because she was so used to turning into her driveway next to the orange house. I actually DID pass by our house, oops!

Second order of business was to get water in the pool. Doesn't it already look so much better?

As soon as the water was added, Mr. had to go swimming, the water was freezing but he said "I worked hard to get this pool, I'm going swimming."

After getting a few quotes to get the inside painted, we decided we're going to paint it ourselves and have the rest of the work done by professionals...Which meant that we lived like this for 5 months:

Dining room looking from kitchen

Dining room looking from the other side

Living room, looking from the front door - yes all of our work clothes are on there

Family room

Kitchen/Eating area, standing in the family room

Eating area, standing near the dining room door

The living room, all "moved" in, the movers just left, and let me tell you, we decided to move on one of the hottest days EVER!

 The reason you ask why our clothes are on those hanging racks? Well the upstairs was completely unlivable. I mean, the carpet was supposed to be white, but was actually brownish because it was so dirty, stained from pets (we did get the house professionally cleaned before we moved in, but they can only do so much). We lived in a room downstairs, which I never took a picture of, go figure!


Come back next week, and I'll show you our front and back yards!

2 Kids and White Pants

I've been wanting a pair of white pants for forever now, and I finally got them! I was/am hesitant to wear them around Baby Fox, he thinks I'm his human napkin. So I wore them on a MNO (Mom's night out) and decided, perfect opportunity to wear them!

Shirt - Loft,(on sale right now for $10!) Pants - Loft, Shoes - DSW (old), Scarf - Old Navy (old), Belt - Target

Whenever I wear these shoes, I always get a ton of compliments, it took me forever to decide to wear them, but I'm so glad that I finally wore them! Now I wear them with everything, plus they're comfy, so that's a double win in my book! Also I'm really into scarves right now, like I can't buy enough of them, and I wear them almost everyday. Why did it take me so long to jump on the scarf train?

And just cause she's cute, here's Mini Fox sleeping at the doctors office, has no clue she's about to get 2 shots.

Linking up with Because Shanna Said So, Get Your Pretty On, The Pleated Poppy and Tucker Up

Weekend Recap

Friday my Dad wanted to go to the beach to feed the seagulls. I'm not sure why someone would want to feed one, but hey, chance to go to the beach, ok why not?

Here's Baby Fox looking at the ocean. Not really, he's just climbing on those stumps.

 The beach had this awesome playground for kids. Yes it was warm enough to wear shorts and t-shirts, don't hate us.

Mini Fox enjoying her stroller view of the ocean

 

 

Baby Fox didn't quite get that you're suppose to tear the bread into pieces, so he would just throw the whole piece of bread.

While I was feeding Mini Fox, all of a sudden the whole beach erupted into applause and cheers, why? This couple just got engaged, how sweet is that?

Then we went to lunch at Johnny Rockets

Mini Fox enjoyed herself too

Baby Fox enjoyed the fries

 

 

And you might ask what we did for Valentine's day? Got Thai take out and Baby Fox colored a ginormous card for me.

Me and my Valentine, love this kid! That card opens up 4 times to make a giant poster.

By the time I got around to scooping my dinner up, Mr. had eaten half of his, making for a bad picture

Mr. and I don't do Valentine's gifts, okay that's not true. Mr. gets me a Valentine's gift and I usually make him something. I made this for him, can you guess what it is?

If you guessed Creme Brulee, then you would be correct! This is without the sugar part of it, they're cooling

Saturday we went on a hike. Well it was going to be a hike, but then Baby Fox found trail he wanted to go on. Daddy dressed Mini Fox for our hike. Perhaps not hike appropriate, but she was definitely cute.

Our hike turned out to be more flat. But it was fun, was able to do some jogging with Mr. We haven't gone out jogging together in a really long time, so that was fun. Looking forward to many more hikes and walks with the kids.

Baby Fox wanted to take this big rock home, we told him he couldn't because it was marking the path.

Then we stumbled on this gem, of course the boys wanted to see what was up those stairs on the other side. It was a trail, in which they both wanted to go on, so me and Mr. picked up the stroller and carried it across these awesomely stable boards and up those stairs.

This is what was up those stairs.

Sunday Mini Fox and I went shopping together. Target, the mall, Bed Bath and Beyond, Buy Buy Baby, it was so much fun. I can't wait till she's old enough to really get into the shopping part with me. After nap time I took Baby Fox over to surprise my parents with a visit.

Then invited them over for Sunday dinner. We had ribs, bake potato and salad, yum!

We end every night with some reading.

Doesn't Baby Fox have the coolest bed?

And that's what we did. Guess what? Only 5 more months until I can finally upgrade to a phone with internet! I can wait that long...right?

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather