Early Birthday Room Makeover

As an early birthday present for Lydia, my mom offered to re-do her room in something Lydia would like. Her decor was still the "Mommy and Me" theme we had used when she was an infant. We picked butterflies as the theme, and my mom used her craftiness, and resale skills to makeover Lydia's room for a reasonable cost! And

The result was a beautiful new "Butterfly" room, which Lydia loves!

Here are the pics:




This is not what the banner look like out of the box. My mom did a some painting, and "glitterizing" to have it match the color scheme.



The lamp was a resale find embellished with all things butterfly!
Thanks mom for giving Lydia's room a new look!

Easter Weekend

This was Joe's first Easter, and our first Easter as a family of four. The weekend itself was very busy, so I am thankful I had time before the weekend to reflect on the "meaning of the season". I am thankful for Jesus's work on the cross and His resurrection, which opened the door to eternal life for those who put their trust in Him. When I think how he lived a sinless life, and then he suffered and died for us, I am amazed at his love for a sinner like me.

Romans 5:6-8

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.


Like I said it was a full weekend. And with hardly any naps, plus us the kids and I fighting a light cold, it made for a late start to Monday. :) They slept past 8! That's a record for us!

Here are some pics from the weekend, plus a few bonus pictures!

This picture is actually froma couple of weeks ago at my parent's house. This is Lydia's Easter bonnet on Joe. (Lydia put it on his head!) He seemed to like it and this picture was too funny to not post.


Decorating Easter Eggs with our friend Leeann. Leeann is very creative and fun!





Joe enjoying the train at our friend, Kalli's birthday party.

The kids hanging out in the church basement before Easter breakfast. I tried to get a nice one of them sitting next to the plant together, but as you can see it didn't happen!





This picture is from today. Lydia got a flower headband from her Grandma Sandy and was enjoying wearing it around the house.

Joe's Birthday

Joe is one! We love our little boy so much, and are thankful to the Lord for the gift of his life. Two kids has kept me on my toes, but has been so much fun too. We celebrated Joe's big day with a small group of family and friends. Here's us singing to him as well as some pics of him opening his presents.

"Pre Birthday" Festivities

While Marc was gone on his one day retreat with the guys from church, I got to spend Saturday with both kiddos. This was especially meaningful to me, as it was Joe's last day as a "baby". We had fun, the three of us, goofing around, reading lots of stories, and playing make believe (well at least Lydia and I did that..). Then when the kids went down for their afternoon nap, and thank goodness Lydia took one today!, I went to work on Joe's birthday cake. I have been looking forward to this for long time. I took a Wilton cake decorating class a few months after Lydia was born, and I haven't used my cake decorating supplies or "skills" for much of anything yet. I had ordered a cake pan a couple of weeks ago, and had all of the other supplies I needed. I had a lot of fun decorating it, but it took me a couple of hours and my hand hurt near the end. Joe is of course worth it! I thought it would be fun to take a few step by step pictures so here they are.

The cake baked and ready to be decorated! It was originally a bear so I had to cut them off and put them lower on the head.




Outline of facial features.



Facial features filled in.





Final product. Tada!



Then since I had put so much focus into the cake(and not dinner!), and since it's Joe's birthday tomorrow, we had dinner at Red Robin!





I can't believe it has been a year. We love our little JoJo and can not imagine our family withouth him. Hopefully I'll post more after our little birthday celebration tomorrow.