My Biggest Seasonal Weakness

I am having a hard time refraining from buying my children all of the holiday dress clothes out there! Well, some of it is not so hard to resist since it is way overpriced, but many things I am having to constantly remind myself that my children and one and three and don't need an extensive holiday wardrobe. Did you know you can buy a little girl's holiday dress at Gymboree for over $60-70 dollars? Wow.

This season, like always, ebay has been my most reliable friend in the money saving department for kid's clothes. I found a Gymboree black velvet dress for Elizabeth with tags still attached, brand new, for $7.00! The tags say $62.00 and that's Amercian prices. I also found a Children's Place black velvet, brand new with tags, blazer for Mason for $5.00, and I just saw them this week in stores for $44.00. I also found a brand new Children's Place holiday tie (from their line this year) at the consignment store, with original tags of $9.50 still attached, for $3.50. I've found a couple more scores on ebay - a couple other Gymboree holiday dresses for Elizabeth under $10 and a fall jacket as well. My biggest weakness seems to be black velvet though for some reason, I love little kids in black velvet!

Anyways, if anyone is looking for holiday wear for their kids, you can find some real gems on ebay and save at least 50% and most of the time more than that. Even with shipping included. The only down side is that it takes some patient searching (that is the fun part I think though!) and you usually have to wait about 3 weeks for the item to get to you, though that just means you have to start shopping early!

Princesses, Parties and Pink!

Okay so the fundamental elements of being a big girl aren't exactly in place yet (big girl bed, potty trained etc) but Elizabeth is turning into a big little girl! She attended her very first big girl birthday party - meaning parents drop off their kids and take off! This whole idea was a bit foreign to me since we've only ever been to parented birthday parties, so when my friend Laura told me earlier that "you don't have to stay, non of the other moms are staying", I was kind of excited! Her daughter Jadyn was turning 4 and the other kids were at least that age, so Elizabeth being just shy of 3 was the youngest. It was a princess tea party theme so I was excited for Elizabeth to get to play princess games with a bunch of other older girls to whom I'm sure she looked up to, but I was also excited to have 2.5 hours to get some Calgary errands done with just Mason and I. Here is a picture of the birthday gang. Laura is due at the end of this month with her third girl - what the??? Where does she find the energy?! After I left Elizabeth in her princess glory, I went to my favorite children's consignment store in Calgary. I was able to find Mason a winter jacket for $12.00. I wasn't too picky, but I was hoping for a red one, and I found it! I also found Elizabeth a horse halloween costume which works well since she is obsessed with horses and since Mason can wear it down the line. Score! Morg gave me a call when he wasn't busy from his car while he was working and we were able to meet for a quick lunch. It's always fun following his police car on the road. Today I went through an "almost solid red" right behind him and I'm sure someone was thinking "is she stupid?". This is Morg eating lunch. While we ate together, a call came in about a husband who threw food on the floor during an argument with his wife. I had to laugh when the dispatcher said it was a last priority call. Obviously... Mason enjoying his bread.

When I picked Elizabeth up from the party she was in this state within 2 minutes. A sure sign of having had fun.

During my errand running in Calgary, I stopped by a woman's house who was selling all the Barbie furniture she had collected over the years that her daughter was no longer interested in (I saw the add on kijiji). She had 3 Rubbermaids to dig through, and I was able to narrow it down to this stuff (plus some not pictured) for $27.00! Not bad since I just saw a Barbie sold at walmart that came with one bathtub for $24.99. I was so excited since they don't really sell furniture like they used to, and the furniture they do sell is really expensive. I am planning to make Barbie house out of grocery store produce boxes and use carpet and lyno scraps for flooring and if I get really crafty I'll use some old wainscotting scraps for detailing and maybe make curtains and things. She seems so much more like a big girl to me as I watch her act out her imaginary Barbie scenes. It reminds me so much of my childhood!

My favorite are the bright pink lawn chairs. I think I used to have the same ones....?

I got this fold up Barbie house and the Barbie tour bus that plays Britany Spears also. All in cluded in the price! So fun!

This is Mason grinning in his high chair today. His plate is cleaned, no surprise.

The Final Phase of Summer

August in September are over. One went by fast and one went by painfully slow. We spent the last days of summer trying to pack in fun for the kids, as well as us. We hit Calaway park (a smaller version of Wonderland), the Zoo, the parks, beaches, and just enjoying the weather. In late August Morg and I took off to Vegas for three nights where we enjoyed some alone time without kids for the first time in almost three years. Not that three years is terribly long, though it had felt like it had been a while since we were able to just be us two. We dropped our kids off Monday evening at Morg's parnets house in Lethbridge and drove back to Calgary where we'de be leaving with our flight early the next morning. That was the hardest part of the whole trip, coming home and having to sleep in a house with two emplty bedrooms, especially since no one else has ever put them to bed before and I was feeling so sad that they might be feeling like we abandonned them! I just kept telling myself what someone told me "when you get home the kids will never remember that you left, though your husband will never forget it." Great advice for a mom feeling very guilty about leaving her kids to go enjoy some time without them! The first day was a little overwhelming (Vegas in general just plain crazy, not sure how else to describe it) and we missed the kdis horribly. I was surprised at how i got over that quickly though once we were there, since there was nothing I could do about, so I decided to forget about them and enjoy it. We had the best time ever. We enjoyed a full day of jam packed shopping. We covered so much ground on our own running from store to store! Morg and I shop well together - we both know what we want and are pretty fast to find it if it exists. There were a couple stores where we both needed to take our time (Nike and Addidas Outlet for Morg, Ann Taylor and kids clothing stores for me) though we are mostly pretty efficient shoppers. We enjoyed shows almost every night. We enjoyed pool time (actually I didn't enjoy it very much since it was so crowded and the pools were really greasy with sunscreen and pieces of hair and bandaids floating around....). We enjoyed food! Morgan kept saying the whole trip though that I had to slow down, I think I am so used to rushing with kids that as soon as we were finished our last bite of a meal I wanted to be off to the next thing. Oh yeah, and we won $1000, but everyone already knows that. That was a pretty nice highlight for us, especially since we were using the 15$ free dollars of slot machine money that the MGM Grand gave us. Vegas was a blast for us and I think we'll never forget it. I already posted lots of pictures on facebook so I just picked my favorite. This is Morg outside of New York New York at some time in the early hours of the morning. It reminds me of the freedom we had! The rest of these pictures are pretty random. Here are the kids on our front porch. I hope our kids get straighter teeth the second time around....

This was at Calaway Park. I was so proud of my little girl and how she loved all the rides, except ths one. I just had to laugh the whoel time since there was nothing I could do. She screamed the whole time. A rollercoaster at 2 years old....too soon?

Morg and Elizabeth on the "horsies"

These are some decorative shutters I bought at Homesense for Elizabeth's room. i thought they would be something different to hang in her room. I plan to paint them white and distresss them since I'm not a huge fan of the squigglies.

This is Morgan's new toy. It's kind of a big deal in our house. Anyone who has talked to Morg recently will understand this.

This is my favorite way to start fall - with new scents throughout my house. my favorite this year is Leaves at Bath and Body Works. My second fave is sweet cinnamon pumkin. We just got a Bath and Body Works store this summer so I was so excited to be able to refill my plug in that my sister-in-law Micki gave me for Christmas! Now I have about 12 oils to go through...I couldn't not have them all.....

This sums up my life in September - one of the longest months of my life! While we all had the stomach flu (except Morg, thank goodness) at some point, Mason's lasted for a five weeks. He got getter for about 5 days somewhere within the five weeks but started back up again, so he was pretty much throwing up almost every day for a full 4 weeks. He lost 3.5 pounds and all of his good cheer. He was a lifeless, skinny, depressed lump. He was either doing this:

Or if I wasn't holding him he was doing this: (photography courtesy fo Elizabeth)

Now out houre has been healthy for over two weeks and life is good again. We are looking forward to the fall festivities - including heritage Park with the Kyles on Monday - stay tuned!