Come September...

...I'll probably be just a little bit crazier! Baby #3 is due September 4th!

Nothing Says Love Like...

a heart cookie with the word "love" on it?

Nope. Cookies with sharks and snakes. At least that's what Mark Garrett thinks. I promised him that he could help me make cookies for Valentine's Day to give his teachers. What did he want to put on them? Hearts? Flowers? Nah. We went for the oh-so-manly sharks and snakes.

I did however make a few cookies that were more my style and we actually packaged these for Mark's teachers. But he was happy making his own cookies to eat. And we had a good time making them together. I've been teaching myself to decorate sugar cookies for a while now and have learned so much from the Bake at 350 blog . I think I'm getting better and better.

My lettering still needs some work, but some of these turned out great. (Tim's favorite was the "Hot Stuff" cookie - probably because I told him it was inspired by him!)

For Valentine's Day I wanted to make everyone a special breakfast before church. It's one of my favorite memories growing up that my mom did for us and I wanted to do something that the boys would enjoy. Heart shaped pancakes were out because of Luke's food allergies and so were the heart eggs I made last year. So I opted for pink cream of wheat. It was simple for a busy Sunday morning and the boys loved it. We also had "silly" orange juice (orange juice with a little ginger ale,) and everyone had a little something special at their place mats.

A book, a new car AND jellybeans! What a morning!

Avon Breast Cancer Walk

I was blessed to gain a sister in 2009. My brother married Meghan and we couldn't be happier to have her in our family. She is one of the most thoughtful and caring individuals I know. Case in point, she has decided to do the Avon Breast Cancer Walk this spring in honor of my Mamaw, who has battled breast cancer. The walk consists of a marathon walk day #1, a night in a tent, followed by a half marathon on day #2. She also has to raise $1800 for breast cancer research. If you are interested in supporting her, visit her blog at Getting our Ducks in a Row or her Avon page.

Yeah, those are marshmallows...

Were you also wondering if this picture was taken 15 minutes before dinner? If so, you would be right. Can you guess who didn't each much of his chicken tacos last night?

Christmas Decorations

It's been a while, I know. I'm a horrible blogger. Sometimes living life just gets in the way of blogging life though. We got back from a weekend trip to Disney on Sunday and I'll be posting pictures of that soon, but in the mean time you can check out some of our Christmas decorations at Today's Housewife today...

Sharks and Elephants, Oh My!

Today was mostly spent recovering from all of us being sick this week - laundry, dishes, more laundry. A stomach bug took Luke down first on Wednesday so he was home from school all day with me. Bedtime rolled around that night to find Mark getting sick. I knew I was next but by the end of Thursday I smugly thought, "Wow. I can't believe I didn't get sick." Not so fast. Friday morning it hit me with a vengeance and I thought I was going to die. Thankfully it was a school day and I could lay in bed and moan most of it, but it shot our plans to go to the Trunk or Treat Carnival at the church down the street. I called everyone I could think of to see if anyone could take Mark, but no one was available. I felt horrible because he has literally been talking about this carnival since we went last Halloween. So, today I wanted to do something fun for him.

I thought I'd make a special lunch of "worms and dirty rocks." When I told him that's what we were having for lunch I thought he was going to cry. I had to quickly explain that it wasn't really worms and rocks, but just beans and hot dogs. So much for that plan.

Then a friend called to invite us to a small party at her house to culminate with trick-or-treating. We headed over there and it was fun, but it was so hot here today that the kids were just miserable. After an hour or so we had a sand-throwing incident, followed by a time-out/fit-throwing incident, immediately followed by an accident in our pants incident. (And all of those were the 4 year old.) Needless to say, we didn't stick around for trick-or-treating.

Mark being a mummy at the party - before the incidents!

I told Mark that if he obeyed when we got home that we'd take a bath and go to a few houses on our street. He did indeed start obeying so we dressed up one more time and trick-or-treated just on our street.

Mark wanted to dress up like a shark this year after seeing the costume in the Pottery Barn Kids catalog and getting a Hot Wheels "Shark Park" racetrack from Uncle Eric and Lauren for his birthday. He also would say he wanted to be a shark so that he could "chase Luke around." (Sweet brotherly love!) But he changed his mind to a "nice" shark and since I'm too cheap to pay PB prices (and they were sold out before they went on sale) I had to make one with a hoodie and some felt. I think it turned out pretty cute! Luke, as usual, was what Mark was 2 years ago. Although, I couldn't have picked a cuter costume since he already walks with a little waddle in his step.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to eat while my children sleep. I consider it good mothering. No child needs that much candy - it'll rot their teeth out!

How's this for Scary?

And this was how Luke's hair looked when he woke up this morning...

Happy Halloween!

More pictures to follow....