St. Patty's Day

For St. Patrick's Day we had a picnic outside and made a fruit rainbow, complete with a pot of gold.  No surprise Tessa's favorite layer was the red one, strawberries of course. 

I am making an effort to craft with Tessa more these days.  She absolutely loves it and, now that I have Pinterest to provide me with such wonderful ideas, I am having fun too.  Our St. Patty's day craft was painting shamrocks.  So easy!  Cut a bell pepper in half, dip in green paint and stamp away.  We made page after page of shamrocks.  Notice how well Tessa is writing her name, I'm so proud of her.  

And for a special treat that night, we made Shamrock Shakes.  They are made with vanilla ice cream, mint extract, green food dye, chocolate swirls, whipped cream and green sugar sprinkles.  Tessa is fascinated by kitchen appliances and the malt mixer was a new one for her.  Ryan helped her swirl everything together and also helped her finish this huge shake.  We have been married for almost thirteen years and I am just now learning that he likes mint ice cream!  Watching the two of them suck up neon green milkshakes was too cute.

Ahoy Matey!

It's leap year which means Ryan actually had a birthday this year, his ninth birthday to be exact.  And since his birthday only comes around once every four years, we wanted to make a big deal out of it.  A friend gave me a great idea to pick a theme that a nine year old would like.  Hmm, what does a little boy like?  Pirates!!!  So the shopping for eye patches, dreadlocks and other swashbuckling paraphernalia began.  But guess who already had Elizabeth Swann's pirate princess dress ... Tessa!  Perfect. 

I wanted to surprise Ryan and managed to keep pretty quiet about the party prep.  But keeping a four year old quiet is a different story.  He probably wondered why Tessa kept talking about pirates.  I tried to explain these comments away by reminding him she loves Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  While we were at OK's party, Ryan's parents were nice enough to decorate.  Ryan knew we were having cake with family but he was surprised to see the decorations and discover we all had costumes. 

In fact, I love these costumes so much I think they will make an encore appearance for Halloween.   

Tessa racked up on pirate toys, pirate books, pirate music and even a pirate Ken doll.  But one of the gifts was actually for Ryan, a bottle of rum.  I might have gotten a little carried away with mixing drinks.  Rum Runner, Planter's Punch, and Bermuda Triangle were just a few of the recipes I tried that day.  Of course we blamed any balance problems on the eye patches not the liquor, it's amazingly hard to navigate with only one good eye.  To say it was hilarious celebrating like pirates would be an understatement.    

The pirate cake turned out great.  The staff at Bi-Lo seemed amused when I walked in with a picture of what I wanted and the toys to do it with.  Then again they could have just been amused that my little helper was sporting one of her princess dresses, Giselle that day, and adding her two cents about the pirate cake.  Side note, we don't usually venture out in princess dresses but that day she was adamant and was even willing to forgo the free bakery cookie in favor of wearing the dress.      

Ryan managed not to light his long flowing hair on fire when he blew out his candles.  Then he proceeded to cut the cake using his pirate sword.  He really cracked me up making his pirate face. Arrggghhhh!  

Happy 9th Birthday Ryan!

Nanny & Pa

Ryan's parents drove all the way from Texas to visit with us and bring Ryan his car.  To say that he was excited about buying their BMW would be an understatement.  I'm not sure they had even been here two hours before he was handling the transaction and signing the deed. 

Here is my successful hubby, the proud owner of a Bimmer.  And Tessa thinks the car is fun too, she loves for Daddy to go "faster, faster!"  She's also very into sunroofs these days.  The other day I told her to get in my car so we could go to school.  When I came into the garage she was standing up and waving her pageant wave at me from the sunroof.  Funny girl.

We had a fun long week-end with Nanny & Pa.  We played, took walks, went out to eat and just generally enjoyed spending time together and celebrating Ryan's birthday.  His parents gave him a new grill and we enjoyed breaking it in too.  It was chilly, much colder than they are used to in Texas, so we mostly did inside things.  The best was when we went bowling.  Ryan bowled six strikes in a row!!!  Pretty impressive for a guy that hasn't bowled in a year or so.  Although he did used to work at a bowling alley so that explains some of it.  Tessa was a fantastic cheerleader but she and I claimed the lowest scores.  We also played board games.  The funniest was watching Pa try really hard not to win Pretty Pretty Princess.  He's such a good sport and she adores both of them.  We are so glad they could visit.