Beach Day!

I attended MOPS for 8 years and then it was time to move on. All the kids were in school and I was working at the church so that chapter in my life closed. It was a sad day, but at the same time it was just a natural progression. There were a group of us ladies that were all roughly in the same boat with kids around the same ages. We decided to start meeting about once a month for Mommy & Mimosa Mornings. We'd all bring some sort of brunch food and drink Mimosas. It was a really nice way to stay connected to each other. 

Of course during the beginning of Covid we all were being careful, but then we all decided that we'd rather see each other. We met a couple times at different moms houses and thankfully the weather was nice enough to have all the kids play outside. On July 21st, we decided to get together and head to Pike Lake. One of the mom's lives in a neighborhood that has access to a private beach. 

We don't have any water type equipment...not even life jackets. The ones we had for the kids are all too small now. Thankfully friends are awesome and had extras they shared with us. 

There was one kayak and I think 4 or 5 paddle boards. 

The weather was absolutely perfect! 

The kids were a bit nervous at first so I took each of them out separately on the kayak. After that they were all for it! 

This was actually my first time riding a paddle board. I wanted to rent them in Maui, but we didn't end up having enough time. It was so much fun! I did end up slipping, but thankfully I just fell on my butt and not into the water...especially since I wasn't actually wearing a bathing suit! 

Owen loved the paddle board and spent most of his time on it. A few days before this the kids had been swimming at Ms. Rachael's house and Owen's back got torched! It was so bad! I had him wear a swim shirt and then his life jacket also protected him from getting even more sunburnt. 

We were the only ones on this beach for over an hour before a few teenagers showed up. It was so nice to have the whole area basically to ourselves. 

Zeke wanted to go out on the paddle board, but he didn't want to go by himself. One of the mom's older sons was happy to take him out. It was the sweetest thing! 

There was a dock out in the lake that was super fun for the kids as well. The kids were getting diving lessons. I gave a few kids rides out to the dock if they didn't want to swim out there. 

Us ladies were all set up on the shore enjoying the nice warm sun! We had all brought food to share and just munched the whole afternoon! 

I love these ladies!!! 

The kids all had a blast and did not want to go home. We were hoping to have another lake day before summer was over, but it just didn't work out. I can't wait until summer of 2021 to make more memories with these lovely ladies! 

MOPS Graduation!

On May 23rd Zeke graduated from MOPS! 

I think it's fun that he was born on our last day of MOPS in 2012. I had gone to MOPS and thought he wouldn't come for another week or so, but he had other plans. It would have been fun if his last day had fallen on his actual birthday May 22nd. 

Here was the whole 4 & 5 year old class. Zeke is such a shorty!!! 

Ms Connie giving Zeke his Bible! 

Here you go! 

So happy to have his Bible! 

Before they passed out the Bibles the kids did a couple poems, a Bible verse and a couple songs for us moms. Of course Zeke did not participate in any of that. He just stood there. My sweet shy guy! I really hope that he comes out of that shell of his next year at Kindergarten! 

Thankful Leaves!

My position at MOPS is technically called the Creative Activities Coordinator. I'm more known as the craft lady though. I haven't really done many creative activities. This year I thought that it would be fun for me to provide the materials to do a creative activity at home with their families. So I found some leaf cut out patterns and asked the lady in the church office if she could print them out on colored cardstock. The ladies were able to take a bunch of leaves home to their families to do the creative activity. 

We have chosen to do ours after dinner every night....now every night is a lofty goal, but still it's what I aim for. Really because life gets in the way we usually don't cut them out every night and then we just make up for it the next night by cutting out two leaves instead of one. 

Each of the kids got their own bundle of leaves and scissors. 

They can chose whichever leaf they want to cut out that particular night. 

Then they write what they are thankful for on that leaf. 

It's been fun seeing what they write down. For example Owen was thankful for school....love that my big guy sees school as a blessing! 

We have chosen to put our leaves up on the sliding glass door in our dining room. We have to put them all up high since Charlie will try to jump up and get them. This was after the first night of cutting out leaves. Michael and I are participating as well. After we cut them out and write down what we are thankfully for we go around the table and say what we wrote and why we are thankful for that particular person or thing. I love this activity and it's really so easy!

Family Signs!

One of the things I wanted to do this year at MOPS was some sort of wood craft. I had taken inspiration from this piece I saw on Pinterest.

 I made an example like I always do for any craft. Once I did that I knew I wasn't going to be able to do a craft that was that big in size so I had to get creative especially since I have a budget to think about. The best thing is one of our friends had a few pallets that he didn't mind giving to me so all the wood ended up being free. Michael and I both cut the wood apart into 12 inch pieces and then we nailed them together so they were 12 X 12 squares.

I stained all the squares with a dark stain I had on hand and then I used this cream colored craft paint that I got on clearance at Joann's for .99! The only thing that ended up costing money were the two stencils I bought and nails. The tree was $3.99 from Scrapbook.com and the one that had the sayings was from Joann's. I think it was probably $5, but I'm sure I used a coupon. In all the entire craft cost around $20! 

Since this was a pretty in-depth craft we didn't actually do the craft at MOPS. Instead I did a demo on how to stencil and then a week after the demo the ladies that were interested in making their own piece came over to have a fun crafting day. 

This was the one I made at MOPS while I was doing the demo. I had already completely one prior to the meeting so I raffled off both of them during MOPS. My friend Amanda got to take this one home with her! 

If I'm remembering correctly there were 8 ladies that came to my house. 5 came in the morning and then the other 3 came in the afternoon. It was a full day of fun crafting! It was really neat to see the different designs that the ladies came up with. Each unique and each fit their personalities. 

Corinne is all about nature right now so this saying was just perfect for her house. I love how she made the extra branches come in on the right side. 

Alicia made this one. The difference in style and preference was fun to see. Alicia wanted her tree to be more solid white, but Corinne wanted her tree to be a little on the lighter side with the paint so the brown would show through. 

Kara made this one...it was fun to see someone make it with the tree pointed the other direction.

Melinda decided to do something different from everyone else. She actually put tape over the trunk on the bottom of the tree. She wanted her trunk to be shorter so she could fit her saying centered in the middle under the tree. It really turned out great! 

My MOPS Coordinator Laci made this for her family. She was super precise with those letters and it took a while for her to complete it. It turned out so professional....love it! She also did her tree faces the other direction!

Elaina made this one. I love how she chose a bunch of different sayings! 

I joined in the fun and made this one for my brother & sister-in-law. Their 5 year wedding anniversary was coming up and I thought it would make a fun gift. Stephie of course loved it! 

There were a couple other ladies that came, but I wasn't able to get pictures of theirs. They all turned out so wonderful and it was such a fun day! Unfortunately the very next day was when I went down hill health wise so I ended up not finishing my own for over two weeks. 

In the end I decided to not have the full tree in the picture. I really like how it's not centered. 

This was one of those crafts that I was actually dreading because it just seemed too overwhelming! I'm really glad that I took the time to give it a try and I figured out how to make it work and not spend a ton of money. In fact I actually have another wood craft in mind for next years MOPS! 

Sparkles!

For my MOPS Leadership Christmas party this year we decided that we should dress up and wear something sparkly! I own nothing that is sparkly or really fancy for that matter. I think the only thing I had that would fit that category would be my brides...well I guess grooms-maids dress....I stood up on my brother's side at his wedding. It felt like it might be a little too fancy. Two days before the party a few of us MOPS moms met for brunch and then Laci informed us that Value Village was having 50% off clothing, shoes and accessories if you had a Value Village card. So off to Value Villa we went! I have been wanting to go shopping with Alicia for a long time because I think her style is so cute. So got to be my Stacy London (She's from the show What Not To Wear) for the day. We picked out all sorts of dresses and then it was time for me to model them. 

I will not confirm nor deny that I tried on a dress that I honestly thought would not come off. I did not stand there in my underwear with a dress pulled up to my chest thinking great I'm going to have to have Alicia help me pull this thing off. I did not honestly contemplate nor try with all my might to actual tear said dress to no avail. I did not finally decide to pull the dress down rather than up and almost hyperventilate in the process. I have no considered bringing scissors with me on any of my future trips to Value Village. 

Before trying on dresses I had stopped at the shoe section and found some really cute wedges. I hate high heels with a passion so for me to even consider wearing them is a miracle. I did end up stopping at The Dollar Tree and got those cushion things for the bottom and I used my Mole Skin that I bought for our trip to Disneyland to pad the sides of my big toes.  

Here is the dress we chose! It's actually has spaghetti straps, but that is just too much skin for me to be showing. I was reaching outside of my comfort zone already and I did want to actually feel comfortable. The dress was a little big so I did end up using my sewing skills to take it in a bit. It's hard to tell, but the sweater had sequins on it making it sparkle. So for the dress, sweater and shoes I paid all of $11.50! 

Melinda (front left black dress)....was the one to open her home for the party. We started out there and had appetizers. Then we drove over to her parents house that's less than a mile from hers. Her parents go all out in regards to decorations. This huge tree has thousands of lights on it and they fit it through a normal sized front door. It is crazy huge! 

Also this is the outside of her parents house! Seriously Clark W. Griswold would totally approve! Her Dad has even been interviewed by KOMO 4 news. It was so fun to walk around and check out all his hard work. Best part is it wasn't raining. 

After that it was back to Melinda's for dinner, white elephant gifts and dessert. Laci ended up being the one to get the MOPS Owl. Just in case you forgot what that cute little guy looked like here ya go....

You're welcome!!

Thank you Laci for telling us about the sale. Thank you Alicia and Melinda for going shopping with me and being my little cheerleaders! You sure know how to make a girl blush! Also thank you Melinda for opening up your home and sharing your parents house with us as well. I seriously would not no what to do without my MOPS friends. Love you guys! 

The MOPS Owl!

The leadership team for my MOPS group has an annual White Elephant Christmas Party. For years and years there has been this awful looking owl that has been passed around. At the party it's always a question of who's going to get the owl! Last year my friend Kim got the owl, but she wasn't going to serve on the leadership team again the next year so she passed the owl onto me. From what I have heard the owl had originally been ugly, but then one of the ladies added to his ugliness, but turning him into Uncle Sam. 

I present you with the ugly owl!

Since I'm the craft coordinator for my MOPS group it seemed only fitting that I be the one to finally after all these years alter the owl in some way shape or form. I really wanted to see if I could make him a Yoda costume, but after really checking him out I knew that probably wasn't going to work.

I started his transformation by removing his Uncle Sam hat. Then I knew all that awful white hair needed to go. 

I used this little scraper tool that's for my Cricut...think dental scraper. I also rubbed goo gone all over the owl a few times. After hours of picking and stabbing myself with the scraper I finally got to a point where I was happy! 

Now that I had a clean slate I had to figure out what to do. 

That's when I remembered the horses that I made for each of the kids for Ella's 4th Birthday party. I just happened to still have a couple of them lying around. I had thought of throwing them out a few times, but then could never bring myself to do it. Now I know why! First thing I did was removed the horses hair. 

Even though I scraped for hours I still could not get all the glue off the back of the owls head so the hair served two purposes...looking ugly and covering up glue lines! Next came the horse ears! 

I took the hair off so I could glue the ears on first. I also took the top cuff of the sock that made the horses head and cut it off. This made a perfect little sweater for my owl! 

Once the ears were all glued on I was able to glue the hair on and I added some buttons to the sweater as well. 

In the before picture you might have noticed those hanging things that made this a wind chime. Well I removed those and used the leather strapping to make eye brows and then I used two of the hanging things to make feet for the owl. They also serve another purpose of keeping a jingle ball up inside the owl. I think I did a pretty good job of altering him. I honestly think he's pretty cute and ugly at the same time. It will be fun to see who gets the owl this year! 

MOMcon 2015!

Months and months ago we...as in my MOPS Leadership Team started talking about possibly going to convention. I was super excited! The last time our group had gone to convention was the year before I went into a leadership role. The only snag was we...as in my family had already planned my dream vacation and the two events overlapped a teeny bit. So after rescheduling and waiting for months to find out if we were actually going to go to convention or not we finally got all the bugs worked out! So on my 35th birthday I boarded a plane with 3 lovely ladies headed for Indianapolis!

We left SeaTac on Wednesday at 11:59pm and arrived in Indy on Thursday at around 9am there time....after a plane switch in Chicago. Of course barely any sleep was had on the plane, but we were riding the excitement high at this point. It did start to wear off a bit and after a cab ride from the airport to our hotel...praise God they had a room available at 9:30 in the morning so we were able to crash for about an hour and a half before the festivities began! 

First was registration and figuring out what workshop we were going to attend. I wanted to attend this one about anger, but so did every other mom so it was sold out. Instead I attended the workshop titled Making Time For Making Love. It was delightfully entertaining and when I texted Michael my choice of workshop he was pleased as well! 

We ate dinner at a sports bar in the lobby of the hotel and then went to our first Session of MOMcon. 

Elaina, Alicia and Laci were my buddies for the trip. It was so much fun getting to know each of them a little better. We laughed until we cried and of course like all trips like this we now have our own inside jokes....#werock!

The Sessions....all 5 of them and the after party concert were all held in the Grand Ballroom of the JW Marriott. All in all there were around 3000 women that attended MOMcon. It was crazy fun! 

Here's what the hotel looked like. Super fancy and wonderful and not the least bit stuck up!

Friday was filled with more workshops...Discipline That Connects and Wild Things: The Art of Nuturing Boys. There was also 2 more Sessions in the Grand Ballroom and then us Moms got a night out on the town. Earlier that day we went to the buffet at the bar in the hotel lobby for lunch and we met a super nice lady...Peggy. She was supposed to come to MOMcon with a friend, but that didn't end up working out....so we invited her to come hang out with us. Before leaving for MOMcon we had talked about possibly doing a progressive dinner so we could try out all sorts of different food and that was our plan for the night. 

We took a cab to the first place....The Saffron Cafe....it was a Moroccan restaurant.   

Not the best lighting, but such fun memories with friends. 

We ordered three different appetizers - the mozzarella plate above, a pita plate and saffron mussels. The mussels were seriously the most amazing thing I've ever tasted in my life. I already love mussels, but the saffron cream sauce was pure heaven. I even told the server that if I was at home I would have licked the plate! 

  

After appetizers we walked over to a restaurant the bartender at the hotel recommended....Bakersfield. It was packed....good sign! We put our name on the list....because we could!!! No kids = long waits for good food are ok! To pass the time we did head over to a bar across the street and each got a drink. When they called us to let us know our table was ready we paid our tab and then headed over. This place was super cool....we got seated in an alley next to the restaurant. Since we were sharing and weren't super hungry we just ordered 4 different tacos and each took a bite and passed it along. Yes...germ freaks we did! We had planned to go out to dessert at a place called The Flying Cupcake, but they were already closed by the time we were finished with dinner. So we took a cab back to the hotel, got dessert from the restaurant there and went to the room to play Mad Libs. So. Much. Fun!

Saturday was the last day of workshops...our first Session wasn't until 9am so we didn't have to rush. I attended two more workshops that day....Happily Back in Ever After & Raising Girls. The first workshop was not all that good....I really didn't get much from it and the second workshop was so popular they actually asked that 1 person from each group choose to go and take notes. It was like Black Friday at Walmart crazy! I was so happy that I got to go, but then while I was in there I got super emotional. The first night it was Alicia's turn for a meltdown because of lack of sleep and this was my turn. The topic, plus the sleep deprivation really got to me. After the workshop I found Laci and she hugged me and I sat in a hallway crying for a bit. Seriously while I was in the Raising Girls workshop I wanted to call my Mom and simultaneously apologize for what I put her through growing up and then also pat her on the back and say thank you for being such an awesome mom! Love you mom!!! I have a lot of fear in regards to raising Ella. Most days I feel like I'm messing up and the future scares the crap out of me because I know what a crazy teenage I was with all these emotions. I did learn that I need to take all that baggage and just put it on the cross. Let Jesus carry my burdens...after all 'today has enough trouble of it's own'! 

After the last Session we went to have dinner. MOPS had arranged for food trucks to be out back and that sounded like loads of fun. We course decided to each get something different and share everything so we'd get the best experience possible. I got two different sliders, Laci got plantains, curry stuff, jerk nachos and conk frittatas, Elaina got a yummy grilled cheese sandwich with fried zucchini fries and Alicia got french fries covered in some yummy green sauce and then a chicken wrap of some sort. By this time I was so hungry I don't think I was paying attention to the names of things. The only downside to the food trucks was the wait! They only had 6 trucks for 3000 women. Bad news! A lot of people just gave up and went out for food at other places. 

  

To finish up MOMcon 2015 we had a concert in the Grand Ballroom with JJ Heller....google her you'll love her...and yes she really is that sweet in person. Followed by Matthew West. I haven't been to a concert in years and it was a blast. So awesome getting to rock out with all these other awesome moms.

We were still super hyped after the concert so we decided to hang out in the hotel bar and have a little food and some drinks. We were also creating our own game for us to play at an upcoming MOPS meeting. 

Yummy meat and cheese plate that we enjoyed. 

By the time we were finished at the bar it was 1:30am...yes Sunday morning. We had to be at the airport by 4:30am so I figured what was the point in going to sleep. I'm one of those people that taking a little nap will just make me feel worse. So I took a shower and got all ready, packed up my stuff and read my People magazines. The other 3 ladies each got a little nap in and then it was time to go. We took a cab to the airport and were on our journey home. This time we had a layover in Denver and of course we got looks since Alicia was wearing her Hawks jersey. There were plenty of Hawks fans there though so that was nice. I did sleep a little bit on the flight, but not much. 

We landed in SeaTac around 9:40am! Having been gone 4 nights and only sleeping 2 of those I'd say I look pretty chipper! Michael picked me up and we packed up for our next adventure....literally we were on the rode for the ocean 2 hours after I got home. Blog posts to follow! 

Alicia thanks for being my bedmate and not hogging the bed. Also thanks for introducing me to the Jimmy Fallon hashtag video. #whatarefriendsfor. Laci thank you for planning this trip, coordinate airline tickets, hotel reservations and all the other stuff. Also thanks for letting me cry on your shoulder. Elaina thank you for encouraging me to reach outside my comfort zone and try new things and best of all making me laugh! 

Also huge shout out to all the people that made this possible for me to go...my wonderful husband who took care of the kids, my neighbor Rachael for feeding the boys breakfast and getting them on the bus, my neighbor Rose for feeding them dinner, helping them with their homework and keeping an eye on them until Michael got home from work and of course Ga-Ga & Pa for keeping the younger two for the two weekday days. Love all of you!