First Communion

Ok, I was about to post something else, but I realized that I couldn't go from "First Communion Frenzy" to the next thing without having some mention of the First Communion, and perhaps a picture of my lovely girl! It was a great day, aside from a minor hair catastrophe in the morning... But really, a wonderful day spent with family and friends! We were so proud of our girl, and touched when we heard her saying that this was probably the biggest day of her life so far!

I was able to find a veil finally -- almost made one, but decided that I didn't have the time, patience, or skill to do that -- I found 2 separate pieces at David's Bridal and put them together to make this -- much better than anything I could have done!


We spent a great weekend with my mother-in-law and her sister, who flew out for the occasion. After the first communion mass, we had family and friends back to our house for a party. My girl went from that party to her cousin's birthday sleepover party that night, where she stayed up 'til all hours and had a wonderful time -- the rest of us just crashed on the couch watching a movie and recuperating from the hectic day! On Sunday we went to the Strong Museum and had a great time there, as usual. Monday was back to work and school, and now we are thrilled to be getting ready for a trip to Florida to visit Nana and Mickey Mouse!

Oh, and this little one also had a nice time at her sister's big event!

First Communion Frenzy!

Our house is a flurry of activity getting ready for my daughter's First Communion this Saturday! My mother-in-law and her sister are flying in first thing Friday morning, and we are busily getting the house ready for their visit and for the celebration after church on Saturday. Let's see, the highlights of where we are in the preparation:

- Dress, check!

- Headpiece - nope... Still working on that...

- Special gift for the "girl of honor" -- we decided to get her a small memento in honor of the day (nope, haven't picked that up yet...), and then we are taking the rest of what we planned to spend on a gift and we are going to donate the money to charity in her name. We wanted to show her that this is a special day, it's not about gifts, and it's always good to help others. My friend Catherine gave me the idea -- she had her daughter pick a charity to donate to for her First Communion, as well. We gave my girl lots of options, and she picked the agency that Mommy works at -- so that was very sweet of her!

- Rehearsal, check! We went to the rehearsal tonight at church. My husband's work schedule was changed and he was unavailable to "assist" tonight, so Mommy took both girls to church for the rehearsal. Honestly, we were there for no more than 5 minutes, and my littlest girlie poops in her diaper... And "mother of the year" was not brave enough to take her pants off in church and deal with wrestling with her on a church pew (pardon the pun!) ;) to try and change her... The little girlie was chatty all through the rehearsal and kept wanting to "go get" her sister (as in, "I go get her!" no, no, you stay with Mommy!) whether her sister was in the back of church lining up for the processional, or on the altar, practicing the group's song. But, this was not my first rodeo -- at least I had the sense to change out of the high heels I wore to work, and into my sneakers!! I wanted to be prepared to sprint after her, as necessary...

- Hair cut, check! Ok, this was not actually on our list of things to do for the First Communion. In fact, my girl has prided herself on growing her hair nice and long, and frequently shows me her "bangs" which are the same length as the rest of her hair. Yeah, I don't think they're called bangs at that point... Anyway, Sunday as Daddy and Mommy were up to their eyeballs in window cleaner and vacuum bags, she comes into the room and show me a big knot in her hair -- in the front -- and it is saturated with some sort of liquid, and she is trying to get it out with a toy, Hannah Montana comb. I am holding one of my (wonderful -- LOVE them!) tilt-in windows, cleaning the outside of the window, and she shows me this knot and suggests that Daddy should cut it out of her hair. I say, no, we can easily brush that out -- give me a few minutes. "That's ok, I'll have Daddy take care of it!" Ok, off she goes. About 5 minutes later, she's back and I can tell right away that it's gone -- and so are about 8 inches of her hair in a chunk in the front! What did you DO? "I cut it out!" WHY DID YOU DO THAT? "Well, no one could help me, so I cut it out myself!" WHY COULDN'T YOU HAVE WAITED FOR 5 MINUTES?? "I don't know!!" (tears...) Don't EVER take scissors to your hair AGAIN! Oh, and by the way, WHICH scissors did you use? "Those big ones of yours." WHAT? You aren't even allowed to cut PAPER with those scissors!! "Well, Grandpa let me use them once!" With supervision, I'd imagine!! "Well, yes..." Really? 8 years go by and you don't ever cut your own hair. 6 days before your First Communion, you decide it would be a good idea?

I guess it could be worse -- my husband reminded me -- his sister once shaved once of her eyebrows off, and to this day, when someone brings it up (and we always bring it up...) she still insists that it FELL OUT!

What crazy things have your kids been up to lately?

Easter Egg Hunt

My girls were fortunate enough to have been invited to three Easter Egg Hunts this year! We went to one today at the yacht club that Gramby and Grandpa belong to, and a second one was at the same time at my grandmother's retirement home -- we were able to invite her to join us which made us feel like we got the best of both! The third egg hunt is tomorrow morning at our new neighbors' home across the street. They have a little boy, a little younger than our oldest daughter, and they have twins that are a little younger than our youngest! They are all very nice and invited us and the little boy next door over for an egg hunt on Easter Sunday.


This is one of the easiest ways to celebrate and entertain the kids during Easter weekend. There are egg hunts all over our town, but if you don't have any in your area, go to the dollar store and pick up a bag or two of plastic eggs and fill them with little wrapped candies or stickers or little plastic balls -- the possibilities are endless! If your child likes Legos -- buy a little package and split them up between the the eggs. It doesn't really matter what you put in the eggs -- the fun part is the hunt! Kids love to run around looking for hidden eggs. Hide some around the house, or if it's a nice day, hide some out in the yard and let the kids search around. My dad used to really get into the Easter Egg Hunt that they did at their house for the kids on Easter. One year it even involved maps and a buried treasure down at the beach at the end of their street (with adult supervision, of course!).

We forgot to bring baskets with us today, but the Women's Association at the yacht club came to our rescue -- they had a couple of crafts for the kids to do, including decorating pastel colored sand pails that the kids then used as baskets to collect their eggs.

The kids had a great time, and so did the adults watching them! From my family to yours -- Happy Easter!

Quick Tip for Cutting Up Your Child's Food

I had what I thought was a brilliant inspiration for a Mother's Helper invention this past year -- brought on by my cutting my little one's food into tiny pieces for about the millionth time... I've had aspirations of getting a patent and being one of those self-made millionaire moms showing off their inventions on The View or Oprah. Sadly, the other day I got a catalog in the mail and saw something a little similar to my idea -- sniff, sniff!

BUT, while I was waiting to put together my own creation, my sister-in-law Jess passed along an idea that one of her friends taught her -- and I have to say, it works great! We were having pizza with Jess and family, and instead of getting out a knife to cut the pizza into tiny pieces for the two littlest girls, she got out her kitchen shears and cut it up like it was a piece of paper! I tucked that idea away and the next time I needed to cut something up for my girlie, I whipped out the kitchen shears -- worked like a charm! My oldest daughter was nursing a loose tooth for QUITE some time, and she loves Bagel Bites, but wouldn't eat them unless they were cut into quarters. This is truly a pain when using a knife -- all of the toppings come off, it's messy! I picked them up individually, cut through them with ease, using the kitchen shears, and the mess was cut in half -- pardon the pun.

You could use this for waffles, grilled cheese -- you name it! If you use your kitchen shears to cut raw meat (which I don't), you may want to invest in a second pair for the kid's food -- just to be on the safe side -- although I wash my kitchen shears in the dishwasher all the time. Hope you find this to be a helpful time-saver, just like I did!

Happy April Fool's Day!

April Fool's "pranks" have been running rampant in our house for a week now... My 8-year-old daughter has learned a great number of tricks on the Disney Channel in the past week (in an interesting contrast, my nearly 3-year-old has learned to count to 10 in Spanish by watching "Go Diego, Go" -- hmm...). It started last weekend. My daughter came up to me and said, "Mommy, I'm going to go upstairs and make your bed, ok?" And I said, "You don't even make your own bed, why do you want to make mine?" And she said, "Oh, I just feel like it, that's all!" So, naturally I was suspicious... I went up to see what she was up to, and she had just finished making the bed -- did a pretty good job, I must say! And then I said to her, "Did you short-sheet my bed?" And she said, "No. What's that?" And then she told me, "I saw this on the Disney Channel, look!" And sure enough, she pulled back the covers and she had short-sheeted the bed! She said, "On tv they said not to do it to your own bed, and to do it to your brother or sister, but Kiki doesn't have that type of covers in her crib!" So, she helped me remake my bed and I told her, "This is called 'short-sheeting' and it's a fun trick to save for camp or sleepovers. You can do it to your sister sometime after she gets her first big-girl bed -- but wait awhile -- not the first night!"

After the bed incident, she replaced the soap in our shower with a plastic bar of babydoll soap. She told me about that one, and said, "I switched it to play a prank on Daddy! I put the real soap in my underwear drawer! I know that he'll take a shower tomorrow and see the play soap and say, 'I know who did this!'" So, I warned him that night so that he WOULD only say that, and nothing crabbier (at 4:30am when he was getting ready for work...)!

Once during the past week, I went to pour myself a bowl of my favorite cereal, and lo and behold, my little prankster had switched the bags of cereal inside the cereal boxes. She wanted to play a trick on Grandpa this past week and I helped her come up with the idea of putting his least favorite dvd into the case for one of his most favorite movies -- they both got a chuckle out of that.

I saw one of the "trickster tips" on the Disney Channel the other day -- it was the one about the bed trick. I will say this, all of the pranks that she learned from Disney were harmless and at least they ended the short-sheeting tip with "and be prepared to remake the bed afterwards!" My girl was all excited about this April Fool's Day and got so wrapped up in coming up with pranks -- it's fun to do that when they don't hurt anyone. And we were happy to be her willing targets this week!