My feet hurt

The bottom of my feet are so painful because I have been on my feet all day. Today was kiddie birthday party day. My daughter's party was at noon, my son's party was at three, and then when we came home we hosted another party for my family from out of town. I am all partied out! Ok I'll stop whining to tell you about our day. It started off nicely enough with a princess themed party at an indoor playground for my daughter.

Except for the playground

It was so very pink.


My daughter was in Disney Princess heaven.


My son on the other hand was mortified.

He and the other boys we invited didn't even want to eat the princess Sofia cake because it was too girlie for him.

In the end he ate it though because after all who can turn down delicious cake.
Next on the agenda was a space themed party at the museum.

This is what my husband and I looked like before the party.


You don't want to know what we looked like at the end! Six year olds are an dangerous blend of high energy and mischievousness. Here are some unexpected things that happened at the party:
1. Two boys were so naughty during a space presentation that they got sent out of the planetarium by the party coordinator and I had to entertain them and hope that their feelings were not hurt.
2. The craft at the party was making asteroids out of foil streamers. My son hit me on the forehead with one that he made and it kinda hurt.
3. One boy thought it would be a really good idea to jump wildly on top of the craft table. (One of my brave friends kindly removed him from the table top - she's awesome!)
4. The kids were so loud that you couldn't hear music playing during freeze dance.
Most of this happened before they even had cake!

There was a moment of silence when the cake came out.

The kids were too busy eating! The afternoon ended with a missing child. He was found hanging out with a friend and his friend's mom on another floor, but for a moment there I was freaking out! After all that my husband and I went home to prepare dinner for my family. We sat the children down in front of the TV. The girls loved watching Equestria girls.

We ended the night with yet another cake.

Everyone had a great time and even though I am tired would do it all over again =)

Better late than never

It is a universal truth that the second child grows up too fast. It is not a truth I always knew. In fact in she started crawling at eight months, where as my son conquered crawling at seven months. My son took his first steps at eleven months and my daughter waited until her first birthday to take her first steps. I didn't mind that she was slower at reaching these milestones. She is my last after all, I wanted her to be little forever. 

Well not all my wishes came true. These days the milestones are flying by. She learnt to zip her own coat at the same time as her brother. She got out of her high seat before she turned three. She is reading "B" Level books already in JK whereas her brother took much longer to graduate to "B" books. Watching her grow is like seeing things in time warp speed. It's breathtaking and heartbreaking at the same time.  

There is one thing that will always remain the same about my daughter. She is not a delicate flower by any means. From the moment she was born she has always had a very strong personality. She has always found a way, verbally or not to make her opinions known. I love this about her. Even though she is only four, I sense a strength in her, an ability to navigate through the waters of life. Right now that strength translates into spending a lot of time explaining to her why things don't always happen how she expects. Thankfully her strength is tempered by her extremely sweet nature. She is very understanding, empathetic and caring. I have no doubt that when it is her turn, she will make an amazing mother. Until then, I am honored to be her mother. When I'm not too busy parenting her, I am in awe of how much fun she is to hang out with. Her name means light and really she lives up to her name. Thank you for being the light of my life Raya! Happy Birthday! I love you!

My little miracle

I think I blinked, because while my eyes were closed my baby turned into a 6 year old. A SIX YEAR OLD. Am I not allowed to carry him any more? Is he too old to hug goodbye at school drop off? Most importantly do I still get to give him snuggly hugs? I just can't believe it so what I did was recreated our first family photo with him. Here is our first family photo with my son - he is a few hours old here. How cute was he? All roundy faced and pink lipped. Look at those cheeks!

Those cheeks have been bitten so many times in the last six years. I've also brushed many tears off those cheeks. (Life's not perfect right?) Anyways, flash forward to this morning, we took another family photo. To make it a fair comparison, we took the picture in a bed.

Some obvious differences:
 - my daughter is in the shot - she didn't exist back in those days.
- I look less tired ( I was in labor for 43 hours with my son).

Some things that never changed:
- my husband's hair style - he's still as handsome as the day I met him
- My son's little face- he is still a cutie.

Six isn't really that old after all. I can still call him my baby right?

I LOVE YOU ZAID!!!!!!!

Snow much fun!

We woke up to three feet of snow this morning. There was so much snow that cars parked outside were barely visible.

That was our babysitter's car. She had to stay the night because the snow storm was so bad last night. We tried to dig her out but her car got stuck in the snow. In the end three of our neighbors came to help. One of them used their snow blower to clear a path around the car. The other two helped my husband physically push her car out onto the road. It was hard work, but finally she got out! Yay! We only celebrated her car's liberation for a moment though, because soon after we had to shovel our driveway. One of my neighbors was kind enough to get us started by clearing enough space for us to drive out using his snow blower. We spent a good hour shoveling the rest.

The kids loved it but my back hurts! We went to the backyard. There was a moment were I was standing still admiring the fresh snow.

But then I got hit by my first snowball of the season.

We romped around in the snow for a good half hour before we headed back inside all wet and sniffly.

I hope it's not like this next Saturday for the kiddie's birthday party day!!!

Chrysalis

Every year my company hosts a huge Christmas celebration called the snowflake serenade. I've never been to this party for two reasons:

1. I heard you have to REALLY dress up for this party
2. All the REALLY important people (head of the company etc.) go to this party

So I felt REALLY intimidated and never had a desire to go. This year a coworker asked me if I would take candid shots of the event for a free ticket. My desire to express myself through photography overtook my fear of feeling intimidated so I said yes. We almost didn't make it to the party because there was a huge snowstorm, but then I had worked so hard to get ready for the party that it would have been a shame to not go.

This post is about my transformation from frumpy mummy of two to golden party-goer.

My inspiration for this evening was Salma Hayek. Back in 2009 I remember seeing this picture of Salma Hayek and thinking that one day I wanted to try this style out.


After consulting with my fashionista sister, we determined that the beehive was probably not a good look for me. She advised me to try a high bun instead. My hairstylist agreed. Her recommendation was to try a sleek pulled back sock bun. She had never done a sock bun before so I was her guinea pig. Fortunately it turned out nicely.

We added two golden headbands I bought from target to complete the look.

Next I went home and squeezed myself into some spanx before stuffing myself into my golden dress. I put on a tonne of make up and voila in less than thirty minutes I was transformed.

My dress is a convertible von vonni dress that can be worn 8 different ways

My favorite thing about this dress is that it was so comfortable! I could even adjust the height so that for once I didn't have to wear ridiculously high heels to look good in this dress!

Three weeks from now is my departmental Christmas party. The theme for that party is Roaring 20s. I am already trying to figure out what to wear now =).

Lazy mommy or genius mommy???

My daughter is starting to read. I let her read with my son.

He promised her a sticker if she did a good job.

She did a great job with the first few pages and then she got stuck. 

My son coached her through it using all the strategies he learned in kindergarten. "Look at the picture, what's the first letter? Sound it out!" 

I observed them work through it together and at the end watched my son tell her that she did great. The best part was when he gave her a sticker. Smiles all around!

Great minds think alike

My friend and I had the rare experience of enjoying the night out on our own. On our agenda was shopping for loot bags for my children's birthday and all u can eat sushi for dinner. Afterwards we hung out at her house and bonded over how full felt. Her husband came down and took one look at us and started laughing. We didn't realize it but we were wearing identical clothing!