It's been a tough day... but a good one in lots of ways too. It was day 3 of no naps for Evelyn and she was so, so tired but refused to let herself nap. She can get out of her crib now and she does it every chance she gets. I do have a big girl bed for her (thanks to my MIL for sussing out a mattress... I had a nice bed frame and box spring but no top mattress and she found one for me!) but I haven't had a chance to set it up and take down the crib. And to be honest, I am really not looking forward to it. Evelyn is a very high maintenance girl. She gets into mischief. I thought about posting links to all of my blog posts that reference her and her "DaredEvelyn" stunts, but man, there are just too many! She is just a little whirlwind of action and I don't look forward to her being able to roam around free with the confines of the crib rails.

Anyways, I struggled with Evelyn for most of the day. She was over-tired which meant cranky and even more mischievious than usual. And accident-prone too! She kept falling and then coming to me for snuggles every 5 minutes. I was just burnt out. But one of the nicest parts of my day? That I posted my frustrations on facebook, just "Taking it one minute at a time today, just have to keep telling myself to put one foot in front of the other." And so many of my wonderful friends let me know that I am not alone and that we all feel that way sometimes and good times will come along soon. It just made me feel really... comforted I guess. It was just nice.

All my girls let me take a picture of them today. Well, okay, I took pictures of them whether they wanted me to or not. They all desperately need a haircut, but I am just waiting for dance season to be over... less than 2 weeks now! It is just easier to slick their hair and bangs back when it is a bit longer.

And just some peony blossoms, can't wait until it blooms, I think this particular plant is my favourite one in my whole yard!

My little Canuck fan

Laina has been so excited that the Canucks have made it to the Stanley Cup Finals! She has been asking me for something "Canucks" to wear on game days, so I bought her a t-shirt and sewed her a "Canucks-inspired" twirl skirt! I think it is pretty funny that she is so excited about hockey since she has always groaned and begged Adam to turn off the hockey games! I think we are all just excited to have our home team get to the finals when Canada is such a hockey-loving country.



And here she is with her BFF, they used to be the same size, but I think Hannon must have had a big growth spurt when I see them standing side by side!

Fun Projects

I didn't do these all today; I just either finished them today or finally photographed them today. I swear, I paid attention to my family and didn't craft all day!

First, if you live in BC (or even probably in Canada) you probably know what these colours are for... this is just a sneak peak, I will hopefully have modelled pictures tomorrow!

Next is a little project that I found here
. It was a fun project to make tiered treat stands, but I had to get Adam to drill the holes for me and cut the threaded rod (so basically Adam did this for me!) but total cost of each of these stands was less than $5! And they are pretty cute for $5! I will be using them for some upcoming parties.

And finally, I tried out a new SVG file set with my Cricut to make Mylie's teacher a card since she starts her maternity leave after the next class. It is called a waterfall card and the files and a tutorial can be found here.

Basically, when you pull the tab on the right side, it makes the letters fold back and reveal the letter beneath. So cute! I took a couple pics if you can't visualize what I mean.

Oops!

I forgot to blog last night! I was so caught up in a sewing project last night that I didn't even think of it! But here are some pictures I took yesterday to make up for it.

Mylie has been enjoying playing hopscotch lately, but the horrible thing about these pictures? That Mylie is wearing a winter sweater dress and leggings because the weather is so crappy! It is almost June and we have been having at least some rain each day. It is horrible!

And some California poppies that my sweet girl picked for me.

Can I Share?

I was very excited to hear today that my daughter Laina was chosen as a semi-finalist in the Missie Moosie "Fresh Faces" contest. You can see the semi-finalists here and can probably pick out which one is mine because I have shared the picture of her here before!

The weather has been persistently crappy here... rain and clouds everyday basically. But it stopped raining for long enough today for the kids to go out and jump on the trampoline for a bit.

The trampoline is always good for some static!

Photo Rut

I have been in such a terrible photo rut lately, I just haven't felt much like pulling out my camera! Hence the last couple of weeks worth of half-assed pictures taken just before blogging and usually consisting of pictures of my flowers or my cats. Those are things I want to remember, but they aren't very interesting, are they? I am not sure what to do to get out of my photo rut... maybe take another course? Or maybe think of some kind of themed photo shoot? I don't know, but I need to figure out something!

On another note, even though I have 3 girls, I don't save clothes to hand-down to the next child. I pretty much sell or donate all of their outgrown things, with the exception of pajamas... I have kept pretty much all of those until Evelyn is finished with them, and then they are either passed on to my niece, or thrown away. I have actually really enjoyed seeing my cute little jammied girls wearing jammies that I know Laina wore as a baby or when she was younger. So the other day, I pulled out my pajama bin and got out the size 5/6 jammies for Mylie and the size 2T jammies for Evelyn. And was so very excited to see, that they were MATCHING sets! Not just one or two pairs, but most of them! The spacing must have been just right, even though the age difference between Laina and Mylie is 3 1/2 years and the difference between Mylie and Evie is 2 1/2 years. So they wore a matched set tonight and they were pretty excited about it (and Laina was sad, but what can you do? She has finally outgrown Carters pjs!) The other amazing thing about this picture is that Mylie is touching our cat Pearl. I have spoken before I think about Mylie's dislike and/ or fear of most animals but lately, she has started to try and touch Mittens and Pearl! So I think possibly she may be outgrowing that fear! Which would be nice, because it is kind of embarrassing when people (thinking that all kids like dogs) try to show their dogs to Mylie and she says "I don't like goggies." (and no, that isn't a typo, that is what she says.)

Two

I am not feeling well today, think I picked up Mylie's cold and have just felt pretty awful all day. As soon as the dinner rush was over, I retired to my bedroom to lay around and feel sorry for myself so I didn't actually take any pictures today. I hoped you all would let me get away with just posting some old pictures?

A parent at Laina's school today mentioned how much she is starting to look like me and it made me think about my three kids similarities. So I dug up pictures of each of my kids around age two. The closest I could find of Laina's pictures was 2 1/2 years because I lost all my pictures off a computer that got wiped out by a virus. I did have backup copies on disks, but they are barely labelled and would have taken me forever to figure out where to look!

So here we go. First is Laina at 2 1/2 years.... tons of hair, and TALL, very similar to what Evelyn looks like now.

And here is Mylie, who was bald (well, she had hair but it was super fine and blond so you could hardly tell it was there!) until she was 18 months. When these pictures were taken at around age two, she had a bit more hair, and surprisingly, I do see quite a few similarities with the facial features of my other two. It surprised me because I always think Mylie looks so different than the other two!

And Evie, who is my most average sized child. Packed into that average sized child is the most mischievious spirit of all the kids!

Garden

This weekend (which is just ending in Canada... we had a long weekend for Victoria Day today, I know the US one is next weekend) was just so amazing that it almost scares me. I am always afraid when something goes so well... I feel like something bad will have to happen to balance it out. I try to think positively, but it doesn't come naturally to me, I am a pessimist at heart. It wasn't that we did anything spectacular, it was just such a fun, relaxing and productive weekend, that it felt great!

We did a bunch of yardwork and gardening this weekend and I thought it would be neat for me to look back on what the garden looked like when things were just planted versus a couple of months from now when everything has grown and is in bloom! I saved the best pictures for last so try not to get bored with the flower pictures!

This will (hopefully) look very different as I seeded grass along the front of this bed this weekend.

This is just a close-up of one of my favourite trees that is just starting to flower right now.

I think I have taken pictures of this before, but I just love how this Lady's Mantle catches rain droplets and lets them just sit there! This is still sitting here from rain on Saturday.

Some planters, everything is tiny right now!

It blends in, but the Heavenly Bamboo that was in this pot died off over the winter so I replaced it with a cute topiary boxwood that Laina picked out.

And now for my sweet little flower. Evelyn was wearing this Loves Me Not top today and she got the skinny jeans she was wearing with it dirty. Since it was warm, we took the jeans off her and popped so ruffled bloomers that I sewed on her. She was having so much fun "helping" with the gardening. She kept running around taking the tags out of pots and saying "gorgous" for gorgeous.

Cinnamon Buns

I decided to blog about these tonight because I have made this recipe twice in the past week and they have disappeared both times within a couple of hours. Adam says they are the best cinnamon buns ever, but I don't think so. They are great, but not the best ever. What they are is extremely quick and easy to make with no yeast so you don't have to wait for dough to rise!

So here they are:

And you can find the recipe here.

I am making a really fun sewing project now that the kids are in bed, hopefully I will get to show it off tomorrow!

A Clean House and a Productive Day

Adam and I had the day to ourselves thanks to my in-laws who had the big girls for a sleepover last night, and Evelyn joined them this morning. They were all mutually worn out when we picked the girls up this evening and the girls went to sleep without a peep!

We pretty much spent the entire day cleaning up around here and doing little house projects. It may not sound interesting to most people, but it sure feels good to clean up for once and not have my 3 little tornados of destruction whirling after me, making new mess as I clean up old messes!

Without the kids here, I resorted to taking pictures of Mittens.

It's Quiet...

We are having a much needed rest tonight, courtesy of my in-laws. They kindly offered to have the girls for a sleepover and will have them for the day tomorrow. We may be weird (or possibly just getting old) but we sure enjoy a peaceful evening at home.

I did a lot of work outside today and didn't really take any pictures of anything other than flowers. I played around a bit trying to take closeup macro shots and saturated the colors a bit just for fun.

Here they are!
Diascia

Euphorbia

Chives that have gone to seed

Ranunculus

Field Trip and Firsts...

It was a field trip day for Mylie... I went and took Evelyn along to the garden that they were going to.

They did some painting...

Planted some seeds... here is Mylie showing off her seed in a cup and her painting as well as her new Loves Me Not outfit. Her choice of pose of course.

and Evelyn had her first Ice Cream sandwich today (paying no heed to the dairy allergy!)

And that is about the best I can muster since I am hurrying to go watch Grey's Anatomy!

Motion

My kids are always moving. While I tend to be quiet and laid back (some might even say lazy!), my kids are just the opposite. They are rambunctious and energetic and I was very thankful when I learned how to stop motion or show motion in photographs! I got lots of practice with both today when we went down to the USA to visit my sister and my niece. We went to a beautiful park that had two different playgrounds to my kid's delight as well as a waterfall! Some of the pictures were taken showing motion and some were taken stopping motion.