Blonde Moment Monday

• Happy Monday!
• (Well now Tuesday since I couldn't get my sleepy self going to post this on time)

• It's been a busy couple of days here lately for us, while we've had Scot's Mom and Dad here visiting from Florida. They came here Friday and then left Saturday afternoon to take Ryder to Dollywood for a few days to spend some one on one time with him.
• While they've been gone, I've been working hard to get Mothers Day gifts done for both mine and Scot's Moms.
• I decided to give my mom a cute Shutterfly picture book, and I made Scot's Mom two tiles to put in her garden with the kids footprints and handprints.

• With Ryder's help of course!
• Although it was more of a challenge having him helping me, but still fun!

• I thought they turned out cute, but my handwriting didn't because it was much harder to write in plaster of paris than I'd imagned! I hope she likes them!

• Just when I thought we were done with cold weather, my hydrangea bushes started to bloom, and then we got yet another frost! Which in turn killed some of the blooming flowers.

• But this hearty little Gardenia bush that I planted last Fall, taken from my Grannie's yard, has done surprisingly well, all year!
• I can't wait for it to bloom and the sweet smells of Gardenia to waft through the yard!

• But not to fear, the frost didn't get my Gerbera Daisies! I'm not a green thumb by any means, and am ashamed of some of my flower beds, but I was happy to see that these sunny flowers had come up year after year, without much maintenance on my part.

• I got out and had my hair done yesterday, and did the usual highlights, but this time I had my stylist add more side swept bangs. You can't really tell much here, but I think it will help to camouflage the baby bangs. She did tell me that they weren't bad and at least they were thick so that it didn't appear as if my hair was thinning out at the front.
• Good to know ha!

• We have been wanting to change up our night routine for awhile now, especially trying to get both kids bathed, fed and settled down for the night.
• While having Ryder out of the house and out of routine as it was, we thought this would be a perfect time to switch things up. So we went shopping for some cute things to make the upstairs bathroom "kid friendly", and our hopes were that it would help transition Ryder to an easier bedtime routine.
• Currently it goes something like this:

5:30pm

Once we've fiinished dinner and hung out a bit in the livingroom,  I go get my bath to relax for a few minutes in peace and quiet.

By 5:45 pm

Ryder usually makes his way to the bathroom and sees me, and then somehow manages to get himself in my big garden bathtub too

6pm

Scot brings Brynley in and asks "Do you want a bath??" followed by lots of kicking, squeals in delight, and laughs. We all 3 take our bath and I get out with Brynley because either Ryder has splashed too much or he gets rough and I get scared that Brynley will fall in head first!

6:30 pm

I take Brynley back out in the kitchen and feed her a big bowl of oatmeal mixed with breastmilk

From 7pm-7:30

 it's a race to bedtime as we all 4 pile in our bed and Scot feeds Brynley her big night time bottle as I try struggling to get Ryder as full of Cheerios as I can. Then we all make our way upstairs, Scot goes in Ryder's bedroom and starts reading books, after he's brushed his teeth and made him go pee one last time. Meanwhile, I'm finishing Brynley off with her bedtime bottle, before turning her sound machine on and tucking her in for the night. Then I meet up in Ryder's room to read a story, part of his Bible, and we say prayers and kisses. But it doesn't stop there. Once Scot and I have made our way downstairs, Ryder comes down once, sometimes twice, to try to compromise and get a few more minutes with us before going to bed once and for all.

• So I guess you can see our current frustration and we're hoping that we can move things along by cutting our bathroom/bedroom out completely, and going upstairs to do the bath and settling.
• We went to Wal-Mart and found these really cute frogs! I want to get some canvas paintings, and maybe a Bible verse or their names to go on the bathroom walls too.

• It's been off and on with warm weather, but we did find some yummy green beans at our local Farmers Market, so I let Ryder join me in some old fashioned fun snapping beans.
• I have fond memories sitting with my Mom and Grannie summer afternoons snapping beans

• We had such a great time at the library that I took the kids back and this time we joined in on the Story Time and songs!
• 

• It was fun to see Ryder and Brynley out of their element and interacting with the other kids. I learned that Ryder loves story time but hated the singing. While Brynley loved both!

• One of the most exciting things over the weekend was that my inlaws wanted to gift us with a new iPad! They have loved doing Face Time with Ryder on my iPhone, and wanted to get a bigger screen to see him on, as well as just to have so he could play apps and as a tool for so many other things.
• So far, I'm hooked! And have had the best time playing around with the features on it! I even found an app that converts all of my recipes, so I can now use my iPad rather than stacks and stacks of paper recipes everywhere.
• Hi. My name is Laura and I am finally in touch with the present day and not living behind in the dinosaur era haha!

• Well I hope that your Monday was fabulous, and I guess posting this on a mid Tuesday morning is better than not at all!
• As we wait for Ryder to get back home today, I'm off to finish last minute projects that I'd hoped I'd have been able to get done while he was away. While one child is SO much easier than two, it still doesn't leave you with much time, as one would think!