Staying Busy!

I've managed to disappear from Blogland again and this time you can blame it on my phone. :)  Over the past week since getting my new iPhone, I've found that pretty much anything I need to do can be done on my phone! Days go by without me even opening up my computer and I've been loving the ease and convenience of this new phone!

Aside from being in iPhoneville, I've been staying pretty busy with an assortment of different things. On Friday, I went to play Bunco with some friends. It was my first time ever, playing Bunco and it was a lot of fun!  I guess I had a stroke of beginner's luck because I walked away that night as the winner with the most buncos and $25 in my pocket.  So cool!

Getting paid, lol!

I even was able to make and take some Halloween decorated cupcakes too, which was fun because it had been a long while since I'd made cupcakes.

Over the weekend, we made it to Alyssa's school Fall Festival.  What I thought would be a super fun day for the girls turned out to be a big bust. It was crazy hot that day and they were all in bad moods.  I bought wristbands for carnival games the girls refused to play and I was almost wishing we'd have stayed home. I took along my good camera and managed to get literally only one good picture....

The girls had fun playing with their cousin Natalya that day and the highlight of their day was getting to go swimming at the pool in my sister's new house!

The other highlight of my weekend was making some cupcakes in a jar for MOPS.  I volunteered to make cupcakes to celebrate birthdays and yesterday was my first time on cupcake duty.  The cupcakes turned out so fun and I was glad I gave them a try!

I made red velvet cupcakes (care of Duncan Hines, lol) and then made some yummy cream cheese frosting to go in between each layer.  You can find the recipe for the frosting HERE.  I'd been doing so well with not sinning in the sweets department these last three months, but I could not help myself. I gave in and had a cupcake and they were SO good!

I'm working on making more of these with a friend really soon for a fundraiser we'll be doing for Wren.  I have a feeling these will sell really well! :)

While at MOPS, I asked my friend Sonia to take my picture with Liv. It's been a year now since joining MOPS and my baby has grown so much since then.  Gone is that little (or not so little) baby girl and here is my growing girl!  I can't believe how big she's getting!

And speaking of babies....I cannot believe that my very best friend, Kristin is due to have baby Matthew anytime now.  As of tomorrow, she will be 38 weeks already!  I'm so, so excited, and pretty soon here, I get to do my very first "guest post" on Kristin's blog announcing Matthew's arrival.  I can't wait! :)

Momma time (and last call for the Christmas Ornament Exchange)!

Tonight I was finally able to get out for some much needed "me time" thanks to my super awesome Hubby!  It felt great not having to rush or be interrupted and it was exactly what I needed to clear my head and regroup after another long day!

I wandered around Target and lost track of time, just checking out all there was to see. I found some tops for the girls and I to wear for the family picture we still need to take to make our photo Christmas cards complete!  I am determined to get a good picture of us this weekend so that I can finally place our card order!  Speaking of which...I've been so excited to see so many blog friends joining in on that awesome deal for bloggers and Shutterfly!  If you still haven't done that yet, you really should.  Just go HERE for more details on how to get 50 free Christmas cards (and all you end up paying is the shipping)!

Tonight while I was out, I also found some ornaments I liked for this year's Christmas tree. If you followed my blog this time last year, you'll remember that I love to do a different colored theme every year with our tree.  It's just something fun I started doing the year we got married and have continued ever since.

Last year our colors were hot pink and silver and this year I decided I wanted to go with teal (my favorite color).  I'm still trying to decide which other color(s) I want to do alongside the teal. 

I've really been loving the teal and red combo I've seen around (like the Christmas card I liked from Shutterfly) but when I held the two colors together at Walmart the other night, they just didn't seem to go well together afterall. Maybe I could add in some white or cream or possibly even eliminate the red and do teal and hot pink?  That might be a fun combo!  We'll see what I end up coming up with!  Oh and just in case you're wondering what my Hubby has to say on the matter...he's good with whatever I end up deciding!

While I'm on the topic of ornaments, I also wanted to do one last call for the Christmas ornament exchange I mentioned doing a couple weeks back!  I didn't get too many people who said they were interested but I think it would still be fun to go through with it anyway.  For those who are interested, please leave a comment here letting me know you're interested.  Once I know who wants to join in, I'll get everyone's addresses and assign partners.  The ornament will need to be $10 or less and should represent something about where you live.  I think this will be lots of fun since all of us are scattered all over the country! 

Well, I guess that's enough with the rambling for now!  I have a really exciting giveaway that I need to work on posting ASAP so hopefully I can get to posting that tomorrow!  In the meantime...it's off to bed!

An awesome week!

{Please note}:  This giveaway is now closed!

This has been a good week for me and I mean a really good week!  The Lord's been teaching me so much about stepping out in faith.  It's been a week full of letting go of fears and watching God just show up!

The biggest two highlights of the week?

#1--Sent Alyssa to her very first VBS ever!  It was the first time I'd ever left her with strangers for any length of time.  She was nervous and so was I, but you know what?  I'm so glad we did it because she had SO much fun and it gave us some good prep for Kindergarten which starts exactly a month from today!  Crazy!!!  It was definitely a change of pace getting all of us girls up and out the door by a specific time and I'm hoping it won't be too much harder for us when Alyssa starts school.

Here was my big girl today on her last day at VBS...

and yes, we do have some work to do before she starts school!  I thought she had the hang of spelling her name already, but I noticed today that she started to change things up a bit.  Added and extra letter, switched up a couple of letters and has her s's backwards!  Oops!  Mama's got some teaching to do!

~#2--Took the leap and finally connected with a MOPS group here in town!  Met some super sweet mommies at our little county fair here on Wednesday morning!

Audrey got to see the animals...

while I got to chat with the mommies.  It was so much fun getting out and I'm super excited about making new connections.  I seriously can't believe I waited this long to get out and do this but I'm so glad I did!  Thank you so much to Trisha and Lindy for encouraging me to do this!

On my way out of the fair, I took a picture of this...

These two people were working on this amazing sand sculpture!  Pretty neat, huh? 

I also snapped this picture of me and Miss Livivie because I'm cheesy like that!

And can I just tell you how much I'm still loving my Moby?  I'm find myself wanting to tell every mommy I meet that they need one of these when they have a new baby.  Seriously, it's been my lifesaver and it helps me make up for the times when I'm not always able to hold her! 

Well, it's been an amazing week and my heart is seriously so full!  I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend and getting to visit a new church on Sunday!  It's been almost a year since we've been to church and my Hubby and I decided we needed to finally get back out there and stop making excuses.  I'm super excited to see where the Lord takes us!

Just as a reminder, don't forget to enter into the two giveaways I have going on still...

Go HERE for the Glowing Mama Giveaway and go HERE for the LAWRY's Giveaway

and...

if you want the chance to win a $10 gift card to here...

Just leave me a comment on this post telling me something good that happened to you this week!  Why the extra giveaway you ask?  Because believe it or not, this is my 300th post and I think that calls for a giveaway.  I am so thankful for the friendships I've made through blogging.  Seriously...you guys are awesome!

Thanks so much and hope you have a great weekend!  I'll be back on Monday to announce all three giveaway winners!!!

Beach Fun!

Happy Thursday!  Just a quickie post because I'm camera happy lately and wanted to share some pics we took at the beach last night.  We had SO much fun just hanging out at Avila Beach (which is like 20 minutes away from here) after dinner and took a ton of pics!  When I went to upload them to the computer this morning I was thinking there would probably be around 100 new pictures just from last night but I was wrong.  It was somewhere close to 200 photos! 

Here are a few of my favorites...

Me, Alyssa and Livvie (in my new Moby wrap...now I have two I can rotate)!

Audrey LAYING in the sand.  She had a blast and got SO dirty!!!  And yes, she was wearing a sweater here even though its summertime!

My sweet Livvie!

My Hubby who was all wet here after taking a swim in the really COLD ocean.  Don't know what he was thinking!!!

                                        Me and my sweet girl.  I just love those chubby cheeks!!!


Well, I've got a ways to go with learning what all this camera does, but I'm having a TON of fun practicing in the meantime!!!

P.S.  Don't forget to check out my giveaway from yesterday for some cute hair accessories from Trinity's Treasures.  Go HERE to check it out!

Summer is Here!

We had an awesome weekend and it's safe to say that summer is officially here! It was beautiful here and I enjoyed having my Hubby with us all weekend long to hang out with us girls! :)

On Saturday we took the girls across the street to the park, and I brought my camera with me, of course.

I don't think I go anywhere without it, come to think of it!

I've been trying to take as many pictures as I can, especially now that the girls are small.  I mentioned a while back that I had a small memory card for my camera until recently.  It was actually a 256 MB card and the one I upgraded to is now 8 GB.  I seriously do not know why I waited so long to get a bigger card and now that I can just snap away, it's been fun to just go camera crazy. 

Oh and speaking of cameras, I've been drooling over all the pics I've been seeing on everyone else's blogs lately.  Seems like all at once, everyone got new dSLR cameras and I've convinced myself that I need a new one too!  I even mentioned to my Hubby that I would really love an upgrade and he's totally on board with the idea too.   He just made me promise that I'll take the time to actually learn how to use it right!  I think I can manage that but what I was wanting to know from any of you is, does anyone have a particular camera that they can recommend?

I know I want to stick with a Canon, since that's what I already have.  I've been looking at the Rebels but want to know which one is best, the EOS Rebel T1i or the EOS Rebel xSi? 

 I want a camera that won't be too hard to figure out how to use, yet one that I can grow into and won't become outdated in a year.  Anyone have any suggestions for me?  I would love any help you can give me!

Thoughts at midnight

Now that I have a small baby, I find myself up at all hours of the night.  It's after midnight and it's not really a shock that I'm sitting here at the computer.  Seems like times like these are the only ones I can really use to catch a little break.  I really should be getting to bed soon considering that a certain little someone will be waking me up to be fed before I know it, but for some reason here I am, typing anyway. :)

I find myself wanting to sit and get caught up on what I've missed over the holiday weekend while I tried to put the computer down and spend time with the family.  I feel bad for being so behind with blogs and stuff but it was nice just being able to take a break from the computer and relax.  We had such a fun weekend of doing pretty much nothing but hanging out and enjoying the beautiful weather that finally decided to come our way! 

Alyssa had a fun time going to the movies with her Grandma S and her cousins to see Shrek 3 on Sunday.  You can totally tell from this picture who Alyssa looks like...! :)

Lately, I've been realizing just how much time I spend here on the computer.  I LOVE having a blog to be able to share what's on my mind and getting to make such sweet blog friends, but I guess I've just been having a tough time balancing everything out between handling regular life stuff and getting all caught up in blogland.  Can anyone else out there relate?

I find myself getting all wrapped up in things and before I know it, it seems I've spend a ton of time just sitting on the computer.  This is nothing new really, I guess, but just something that I've been struggling with again lately.  Over the weekend, I even had the thought of just stopping the blog so I could just get re-focused on other stuff, but I know I would be so sad if I did that.

Now that summer's here, I want to make it my goal to get out more with the girls and have some fun.  I think in the past, I've let the fact that I don't have a lot of close in real life friends to hang out with stop me from taking the girls out and just going on adventures.

I want that to change. 

I don't want to keep the girls all cooped up in the house because of my insecurities.  I want them to get out more and have some fun. 

These are just the thoughts that have been running through my head lately and I'm hoping that I can get things figured out so that I can continue doing what I love to do while being a good Mommy to my girls at the same time.

Well, guess I should probably get to bed for real now, but before I do that, I just had to share my new favorite picture.  I have the hardest time getting Audrey to sit still these days for pictures, so I was SO excited when we got this picture today.

Don't you just love her sweet smile?

P.S.  Sorry if this post sounds all jumbled.  I even got a nap in today but I guess staying up late will cause a person to get a little rambly! :)

Spring Treats and a Giveaway!

{NOTE}:  This giveaway is now closed!

Easter is right around the corner and I know that many of us are planning to make some fun sweet treats.  After the last few parties I've shared here, you already know how much we love treats in this family!

As I mentioned before, I love getting to work with MyBlogSpark!  Well, I recently received a great little baking prize pack from Betty Crocker and Safeway Stores through MyBlogSpark and it came just in time to start doing some spring baking!  The prize pack included a VIP coupon valid for a free Betty Crocker product, a silicon baking pan, a stainless steel mixing bowl, an oven mitt, a Betty Crocker mixing spoon and a $25 Safeway gift card!

In addition to the prize pack, I was also told about a great Betty Crocker website that you should really check out if you're still trying to decide which fun treats you'll be making this coming weekend!  When you go to BakeSweetMemories.com you can find some SUPER cute recipes that include treats like these cute and easy to make cookies and cakes...

Aren't these bunny cakes and cookies SO cute!  I'm still trying to decide which treats I'll be making, but Alyssa has already decided that we should make the bunny cakes!

What's great is if you end up finding a recipe you'd like to try from BakeSweetMemories.com, from now through April 6th, you can visit the Safeway family of Stores to purchase Betty Crocker SuperMoist Cake and Traditional Brownie Mixes at the special price of $0.69, which is an awesome deal, for sure!

The best part of all of this is that I get to give away one of these great prize packs to one of you!

(The winner will also receive a $25 Safeway gift card, in addition to the baking items pictured above)!

All you have to do to enter into this giveaway is...

~Visit BakeSweetMemories.com and come back here and leave me a comment and tell me which spring recipe you'd like to try.  This is a mandatory entry!  An entry like, "I really like to bake, so enter me in" will not count, so please be sure to check out link and find a recipe you like before leaving your comment.  

~If you are a public follower of my blog, be sure to leave me a separate comment and tell me you follow and that will get you entered in a second time!

The giveaway will be open until Sunday, April 4th at 11:59 p.m.PST and I'll announce the winner sometime Monday morning!

Happy entering and I'll be excited to see what kind of fun treats everyone ends up making this weekend!!!

P.S.  As a reminder, the coupon, prize pack, information and additional prize pack to give away were all given to me from Safeway and Betty Crocker through MyBlogSpark!