60th Bday Parties are the Shit

My mom turned 60. We threw her a formal party at Elliott and Sophie's in Palm Beach.

a photo inspired by the 50s, when mom was born.

World of Beers=love

There's the birthday girl and the rest of us hotties!

Sums up the night- carnage and silliness

Pangea

Entertaining me this week is an exam that forces me to cover a range of subjects I havent glanced at since the 5th grade. "Plate tectonics" literally havent crossed my mind in decades. Until today. Another new front runner on the frontal lobe of my brain (the frontal lobe of my brain has, in fact, been on my mind for a year now) are clouds. How cute? I thought the duodenum of the small intestine was important until I realized today I must also know the different types of clouds for my exam on Tuesday. While we had breakie on the river as a family, I pointed out to my kids the different types of clouds, as they all seemed to be accounted for up there today.
I am taking the TEAS test Tuesday; its an entrance exam to get into nursing school. I will publicly announce in 8-10 weeks whether or not I will bum around for another year or start the nursing program in January. Kidding. Kidding about the "bum" part. I have plenty to do.
I will remember this about plate tectonics: there are 3 kinds. Oh, and the 3 kinds are transform, divergent, convergent. And something to do with continental drift, which is also cute since Sunny and I saw Ice Age: Continental Drift last night at the theater. I will ace this one question out of a thousand. Plate tectonics. Maybe it will only ask me to spell it properly. I will fail.

Vegas Baby

Excerpts from my journal:

"I dont deserve this bliss that is a/c blasting into my face in my hotel bed. No, wait- I do deserve it. Is it filled with extra oxygen as well- something that surely kept me awake all night [in the casinos]? It is after 1a in Vegas----> 4a Florida time! What am I doing? Well, I should pump. Milk is taking over. But I wanted to write. Blog, really, but I didnt bring a computer. Hofbräuhaus was awesome! We went there after our $7.77 salad steak shrimp potato dinner and drank massive HB's, just like we did in Munich 1 year ago. Almost exact replica. Kids- I love you and your mom is cool and she can hang. Daddy said, "They're all looking at you!" I said, Who? He said "All the guys at the casino. All night"; everyone is checking me out. I checked baggage today [to save time] for $25 so I'd have all the things that would make me sexy this weekend. I know I look nice, but watching you kids I have no time for sexy. But here I do. I left your daddy and Uncle Steve in the Hard Rock Casino where we're staying. Daddy wanted to play No Limit Hold 'Em poker for $100 buy in. Whatev. I want $120 shoes."

After all was said and done, I took a photo of myself at the end of the night
before I began blogging in the amazing cold hotel room bed.

"We spent $200 yesterday in food, drinks, taxis- and when Jason came waltzing in at 4a we had $200 still! A free night. All good. So- at the HB- Jason and Steve got to reminiscing about snuff- this tobacco.menthol powder you snort at Oktoberfest or beer gardens [in Germany] in general. They used to do it. So.. they asked our drunk fun waitress and she was a little appalled but said they sold it. I had no intentions of snorting anything in my life, but I didnt wanna miss this experience. It was minty, and more importantly, it was fun."

*I dont feel safe here- everyone is off their face still- its 730a*

"I brought my fun slutty dress. Plan to wear it 2-3 nights, lol. Its perfect and fun. Jason needed to zip me in it, though. Right as he began to pull it, I said "Dont rip it," rip! It ripped and he was stunned and waiting for the screaming to begin. But I just wore it with a hole. Classy, huh? You cant see it amidst all the ruffles."

Fun slutty dress with fun slutty husband.

"The coffee's good in Vegas. Pretty much a requirement I'd say. Things could surprise you either way here- a $16 HB beer, $7.77 dinner, awesome coffee, free drinks all night, most cozy comfy room and bed ever, smoking inside, scary looking characters... People watching is easy here."

"I'm traumatized. I pumped a lot of milk this morning and then poured it into the sink. Its a first. I had to take a picture. Lachlan wont drink it if I saved it and I cant donate it to a Vegas baby- its toxic. haha. Only one option then...."

"Coffee. Picture uploading. We hopped into a limo that took us to our helicopter tour. Steve and I rode in the front of the heli- it was amazing! Very smooth, cruising over the strip and into the mountains. Not as bumpy as our Hawaiian flight either (thermals, Jason said, lol). Careening with the Colorado River as we descended into the canyon and landed was the best. I almost puked 5 times as we flew over the Pawn Shop and strip.... Then we went to the pool. Quite unrelaxing unfortunately. But it had sand, which was fun. And I let a 300lb man-boy talk me up for 15 minutes out of boredom until I told him I was married. He floated off."

"Went to dinner on the strip at the mall. Sounds lame, we didnt wanna admit it either, but it was the best Italian food and it was under the clouds- the roof was a brilliant fake sky and we were 'on a cobbled stoned side-street' at night with a water fountain. Then we saw SinCity Brewery, then it rained in the mall. Another 'along the river' outside looking, at night, with a bridge- it thundered and lightening, and rained. We hit the Casinos. Had (needed!) Red Bull/vodkas from a street vendor."

"The casinos were so cool, each so different but continued to blow my mind each time we walked into another. NY NY was sick- dueling pianos=highlight. We went to Dicks Last Resort at another- everyone had tablecloth paper hats their servers would write inappropriate sayings on and I asked ours for one. told him I'd like one. He said "he'd like a lot of things" (ok, he actually said something pretty vulgar, I wont write it on my family blog). So he didnt make me one. Jason asked another server - that server said if we tipped ours he'd do it. So I got a dollar and wrote, "We both like Dicks" on it- gave it to him as I said, "You and I have something in common". It was funny. Tipped the scales back into my favor. But I still didnt get a hat."

He posted my dollar on the wall. No hat.

Popsicles

Lachy helps me make smoothie popsicles.
From this recipe here

Materpieces

Our finished paintings. I LOVE the golf one.

Project Preview

We had mates over! Just a casual Friday morning playdate party with the neighbor kids.

After a nap I let the Gligs destroy the driveway with paint.  I lined up several projects while they slept that I looked up on Pinterest. A footprint project, painting with golfballs, sidewalk chalk paint, and painting over sticker-letters that spell their name when you pull the stickers off later.

Here Lachlan has already tried to eat the paint. Notice his green foot. Now they think painting the bottoms of their feet is normal.

Spilling was the most exciting part. This stuff was just cornstarch and water and food coloring. Came right off everything. Was perfect for this young age (1 and 3).

Lachlan tries to paint with golfballs. Just wants to throw golfballs.

 Sunny liked this activity- might have to do some of these sans brother.

Jason thought we painted golfballs today.

Perfect ballerino in third position

Finished projects to follow....

Swapped

Jason admitted today that he's terrible at mowing the lawn, but good at corralling the kids and maintaining the house.

Thats a relief. Because I enjoyed mowing today. And was good at it.

I can deal with the kids, but they wear me out.

& house is a mess.

Drei jahre alt.

Look at this sassy 3 year old who wanted her birthday cake for brekkie:

She's gone from this tiny 6lb newborn... to a tiny 3 year old Pixie.

Doilies. Yes doilies

Love this. As soon as my crochet doilies came in the mail I sat down and strung them together. I saw this idea on my cousins Pinterest and when I searched for some they were $20 and up. I would never pay that, especially when I found these here for $3.50. And I have string and know how to use it. Here's the finished project strung up under my other garland in the kids' playroom:

Day 2 of Summer Projects

I dont know who I'm turning into: this mom who does crafty projects with her kids?? Not that I dont want to, or that I dont have fun, but I dont normally have time and I figured it was time consuming and a mess. I am pleasantly surprised that the ideas I'm finding on Pinterest are fun and engage Sunny. I think its just her age: she's able to do these projects now and spend time on them which makes it worth the preparation and cleanup. She'll be 3 next week.

Here she is playing with baking soda, a water dropper and colored vinegar.

Lachlan plays on the floor with spoons and a bowl while Sunny does fun stuff. He likes to make noise.

Obstacle Course

Attempt number 2. Destruct-atron Lockie foiled our plans initially. But once he went to sleep we were able to play "under-over" for awhile. I'm betting that when daddy gets home we'll play even longer. If Lachlan hasnt pulled it all down.

Glig Nursery

The Glig nursery. Its not finished, but I finally looked at it in another light the other day- pretty cool! Almost done! Still a work in progress, but we've crossed a threshhold here.

I'd like to thank Pinterest. HomeGoods. ETSY. For the inspiration+ideas

Momma Said There'd be Glig Afternoons Like This

I was feeling like a bad mom; all we ever do for fun is watch Greys Anatomy or dress Lachlan up in Sunny's dresses:

 I looked up something to do with toddlers online. I'm that uncreative.

Maybe you've seen this idea on Pinterest. Maybe you also thought it looked easy and carefree and fancyfun. But dont be fooled. This foil-river is a trick. Its only going to make your 2p-5p seem to double in time. The opposite of what you're looking for..

Here the Gligs are seemingly having a fabulous time. I even dug a hole at the bottom of our river, a quaint pond, to catch all our boats that I thought should flow down there. Then we could fish. This is what I get for planning... I could've stopped the photos here, just said it was amazing and that we accomplished another successful Pinterest idea.

But its so much funnier to document that then this happened, Lachlan Earthquake 4.0

So the river was saved, by me, the Mayor. I dammed it up and shortened it it record time to save the people.  From tantrums.

Sunny & I took the time to cut my new carton of eggs and make small sailboats with them, something I read that sails the best. Here Lachlan is chewing on a sail. And now my eggs are laying all over the counter without a home. For nothing. ps. nothing "sailed best" on this crappy river.

Here's a dogs eye view. Vegemites', in fact. If she hadnt constantly jumped on our river, chewed holes in it, and other general mayhem, I might've given this project 3 stars out of 10. But she did all those things. So I give this project a 2.

After that shot I'd had enough. I didnt roll up the river for another day, as the other blogger did. I balled it up and and threw it straight into the garbage bin outside and was sad that I'd wasted so much tin foil. Then the best part of the entire tin-foil river-with a useless-lake-at-the-bottom project was when Lachlan fell into the hole:


He had mud and bits of grass in places that hadnt seen that much mess in a long time since yesterday.

Sunny tried to help him out, but he hated it. In the end I had to put him in the bathtub. While I blogged. About why he was in the bathtub. Which is right now. At least he had on cool new boardies, thanks to Jenny Lee  :)

Hope You're Ready for this Party

Here is our newest member of our family, the puppy formerly known as Vegemite. A cool name for an Aussie dog, yet my 3 year old just couldnt quite remember which toast spread our dog was called. So she's always called her Jam.

Welcome to The Glig Life, Jammy Jam.

Sunnys Bday pressies

I am so excited to have Sunnys birthday presents here and put together. Jasons parents got her this dollhouse and it arrived yesterday! I assembled it when I put the mini Gligs down for a nap. And then the people I ordered came in the mail too! I might've reenacted a few scenes before taking these photos then covered the entire thing up with a blanket for the big reveal day




Here are the grandparents with uh, some of the kids. All of the kids that will live in this house. The middle kid is clearly adopted.


This dad is wearing his baby! Perfect!

The house comes with its own sun shade. And wind turbine. Recyling bins. Water runoff catcher... garden, and the plants that climb up the sides of the home insulate it. Wish this was my actual home...

The theme of Sunnys party this year is "Purplelicious" She is obsessed with the color, even though I encouraged other more appealing colors to love like orange, red, yellow.... no. She likes purple.

They have clothes!

I knew there were some decent deck photos I'd taken! Here they are, my kids with clothes on:

We have playdates on the deck.

Glig water slide

Couldnt resist:

Our yearly kiddie pool purchase

Contemplating a sandbox date

Ok, it was worth birthing them for this shot

Pretending they've never seen each other before

Eh, now that she's gone I can chill