1. We went to a Cinco De Mayo themed dinner where guacamole wasn’t present and most everything was from pre-packaged food purchased at Costco. AND it seemed no one else noticed that it was strange except me.

No   +     = ?!

2. During the party 2 non related friends of mine at the SAME TIME made a reference to “May the force be with you” WHILE holding up their hands and making the Vulcan Hand Sign. I about died and might have to disown them as friends.

3. All the men there decided to go see the Avengers and leave the wives home with the kids.

So is it just me or is that just not right?!  What a strange evening…it must be the huge moon making things a bit wacky tonight. lol

I’ve been trying new things with Alyssa’s crazy hair lately.  The other evening when she got out of the bath I put her hair up in a few sock buns.  She thought I was braiding and putting clips in it. 

After I was finished she walked past a mirror and with a shocked voice said “That looks ridiculous! Why did you put socks in my hair?! That is so ridiculous!”

It took a little while for Luke and I to convince her to keep them in and that the next day it would make her hair look pretty.

Here she is slightly embarrassed about her hair. I think it’s cute even with the socks.

I didn’t get a picture of her in the morning, but here are a couple from the afternoon.

It turned out pretty cute I think.

My husband is not a fan of Sloppy Joes and I am well aware of this fact, but I can only go so long without serving them up for dinner.  And when I do, I feel kinda guilty for making something I know he doesn’t like.  He’s a good sport about it and attempts to play it up for my kids who are also weary.  He even added grilled onions to his this last time in attempts to make it more appetizing to him.  But when I asked how it was I could tell it didn’t help much. Seriously after this 4th kid arrives I’d really really hope to turn at least one of my family members to my side.

So in attempts to make a come back from Sloppy Joes…this is for you Luke.  I think I’ll get lots of points for this one.

I made a 1/2 gallon of Iced Coffee from this blog I found via Pinterest.  Here’s my attempt to recreate her Iced Coffee blog. She made it sound so easy, but here’s my experience.

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First of all the recipe was for a gallon which made me hesitant to make it.  But then a friend who had made it suggested that I just make a half gallon…great idea Laurie!

So I took a 1/2 a bag of my favorite coffee combined with a 1/2 gallon of water to soak for 12 hours…that was the easiest part.

Then comes what I thought was also a no brainer.  Use some coffee filters to strain the coffee into a pitcher…

The first pour went fabulous…

But then everything went crazy.  My coffee filters would sometimes fall into the pitcher…so I used smaller measuring cups…so 1 day, 10 coffee filters and a coffee ring counter top later…I finally had my 1/2 gallon of coffee concentrate.  Whew…that was a challenge.

After that part it was super easy…Evaporated Milk + Sweetened Condensed Milk = Sweet Cream Awesomeness.

Fill your cup up with ice, 3/4 full of coffee and top it off with the sweet cream.

Add a pink straw…get your kids some CapriSuns so they won’t be jealous….

And wha la…Happy Family.  Tastes like a bottled Starbucks Frappacino!

Cheers!!

Oh yes…you must always use a fancy cup…it just tastes better that way. 

Here’s our typical dinner cups.  Can you tell whose is whose? Luke makes fun of me but I don’t care, “I like me a fancy cup.” hehe

I was interviewed by Michelle Crouch, freelance writer for Parent magazine, about a year ago.  She found me through what she called my mommy blog.  Which reminds me that I’ve been thinking about renaming my blog and giving it a new look…I’ll put that on the to do list.  Anyway. She called and talked to me for about 20 minutes and asked me to give her some unique ideas for we how calmed one of our babies.  All the good/normal-ish ideas were already taken so I reached for kind of a strange one that we used to do with Alyssa and she loved it. 

So now about a year later, here I am with my name published in Parent Magazine.  Kind of exciting to be a magazine junkie and then all of a sudden get to be in one!

My friend Ann Yen asked me to post a picture of my fame.  I think it’s not as cool as reading it in a real life magazine, but alright…for those of you who don’t subscribe to Parent Magazine (haha- most of my friends/family) here you go. :)

Here is a picture of the front of the March issue of Parent Magazine.  Mine came wet and ripped…lovely right?!  Of course it did.  The one time I get a moment of fame.  But thank you to my facebook friend Kelly Miller for offering me to send her nice copy to me!

And here is page 84. That’s my quote circled (by me) and published in big red letters!

And for those of you actually interested in my crazy quote.

I decided to finally paint Alyssa’s room.  I had wanted to do it as soon as we moved in (3 years ago), but it didn’t seem a priority at the time.  And then I procrastinated.  But it’s finally done…well almost.  I have some leaves to paint and some branches to hot glue and well…well is any room every completely done? 

I suppose it took me so long to paint her room because I couldn’t decide on the color…yellow…green…pink…white…green…pink…  Well the pink won out.  But I was nervous about pink.  I like pink, but frankly pink walls scare me because I feel like they can go from cute on paper to tacky on walls.  So I started out light.  I stayed up all night painting light pink on the walls and I received the below responses.

This is how you know you’ve messed up royally.

Husband: Hmmm maybe we should paint the baseboards purple?

Alyssa: That is NOT pink…it’s like white pink.

Alright fine. I’ll get a darker pink, but I still couldn’t see myself painting the entire room a bright pink.  So I kept 2 walls light pink and I thought about a 1/2 wall of pink…which turned into more of a pink mountain.  It was supposed to be more of a canopy of pink flowing around her bed…kind of like one of those mosquito nets (princess flowy thingies?) little girls have around their beds…just a painted version. But it was confirmed by my husband that it is definitely a mountain…especially since there are birds painted on the walls.  Apparently the birds confirm the presence of a mountain…ah well.  Well there’s that and the fact that I painted the peaks wrong, so yes it does look like a mountain and I’m okay with that.

I also added in a tree….I’ve always wanted to paint a tree on her wall and so I finally did it and it looks super cute I think…well at least it will when I finish the leaves.  I also added in a few love birds.

This little love bird below is all by himself on a different wall that you see when you walk in.  I found some really cute white branches for him to sit on, but they keep falling onto the floor…so I need to use a little hot glue maybe? or super glue? I haven’t figured that part out yet.  I’ll let you know how it went in part 2.

Here’s a little preview of her room…almost finished.  She seems to like it much better with the bright pink.  She wasn't so sure about the blue, but I convinced her that it was like the sky.  She also wasn’t thrilled about the tree ESPECIALLY Since it was BROWN…apparently she thought it should be pink…but there was no way I was painting a pink tree.  The lid is firmly on that pink paint and available for anyone to borrow!

Stay tuned for part 2…which might be a while so don’t hold your breath!  hehe

Our entire family (including our car) dressed up in Spider Man attire and sported our spidery-selves to the Trunk ‘N Treat at our church.  It was kind of a bummer that it was on a Monday night because Luke is usually in charge of remembering all the techy stuff and he met us there right after work. I had so much to bring that I forgot our camera!  Of all things right?!  But there were plenty of picture takers at the party!

(Oh yeah we did also feature iron man and the Hulk at our car too…because they were big and cool looking…thanks Hensley’s for letting us borrow them!)

Okay so now that we are on the topic of Spider Man I need to go backwards in time for a few moments to Evan’s Birthday…which was also Spider Man themed!

Here he is…our 3 year old (well in July he turned 3) and I say this in the kindest motherly way…we love our 3 year old Evan much more than our 2 year old Evan. 

Wow what a difference a year makes….seriously.  He went from our “Who wants to deal with Evan? NOT IT – rock. paper. scissors?!” to back in the running for favorite kid. 

We had originally ordered the shirt I was wearing for Evan…Luke ordered it and thought it would be a child’s large and just a tad big…well it turned out to be a youth large and it fit me, so I wore it to the party.  The week before Evan’s party I found a spider girl costume at the party sale on clearance which Alyssa thought was awesome. 

They had lots of fun attempting to do “spider moves” – they never quite got the whole spider web spraying hand move down, but they didn’t care.

Alyssa felt she needed to practice in the mirror…they both practiced their moves all day long in preparation for the party.

Since my mom and grandma flew in for Evan’s birthday I decided to have my mouth surgery the day before Evan’s party.  I think it worked out okay, I wasn’t that swollen yet so I didn’t look THAT strange to everyone at the party, but I did carry around my Spider Man ice pack…people said it looked like I was talking on my spidey phone.

And I still managed to make Evan a Spider Man cake.

Well so after Evan blew out his candles I wanted to get a family picture with us and his cake. As we were preparing for the picture he took a candle out of the cake.  I thought he would lick off the icing like kids generally do, but he had never done it before. He had only watched others do it because I had always said, “no you can’t lick other kid’s cake candles.” 

So this was his BIG MOMENT…and instead of licking the candle he took a big BITE out of it…thinking it was edible.  Watch the reaction on his face that the camera caught…so funny.  And yes, little Luke, watch and learn so you don’t do the same when your turn comes around! lol

Poor guy!

The family picture thing didn’t work out so well so I just took one with just him.  Which turned out MUCH cuter and MUCH happier!

And then we let him eat the icing off of the Spider Man instead of the candle.

That night he changed into his new Batman Jammies and said “Next year I’m going to have a Batman Party!!” 

Happy (belated) 3rd Birthday Evan!

Oh and I forgot something funny about our camping experience…

On our way home we stopped for lunch at Carl’s Jr.  Which I was super excited about since they don’t have them near our house.  We went inside to find that the entire restaurant was packed out…it was like a flash back from an In-N-Out or something.  There was no way we were going to be able to find a table for our family and the Hennessy family let alone sit together to enjoy our lunch. 

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Since we were conveniently on our way home from camping I had the great idea of eating our lunch in the parking lot with our camping chairs between our cars.  Everyone thought I was crazy and gave me crazy looks, but in the end it turned out GREAT!  Sure we got a few crazy looks, but we didn’t care. hehe

Alyssa’s outfit and pose cracks me up!

Connor and Andrew

Evan (not wanting his picture taken) Lukes, Tyler & Stephanie

Oh and on our ride to Carls Jr. Luke was pretty crabby so we kept handing him crackers…when we go there this was the mess he had made of himself…too funny.

Our family went on our very first camping trip a few weeks ago.  It was real camping…you know, the kind where you sleep in tents, don’t take showers and build fires to cook your food…like you see on TV.  That kind of camping…and we loved it! 

Okay well I should clarify that Alyssa, Evan and Luke slept in a tent while the other Luke and I slept in a trailor.  The other Luke being the little one…you didn’t think we’d let our kids sleep alone in a tent did you? 

Oh but we didn’t go on this adventure alone.  We had a great time with our Redwood Family Church friends and shared a tent with the Hennessy’s and the trailor with the Willmon’s.  The Hennessy’s had the food all planned out for us and we REALLY enjoyed the pizza and egg sandwiches we made in the iron sandwich maker…so yummy! Thanks friends!!

Here is Stephanie setting up the sleeping bags…

And the boys discussing important tenting stuff I’m sure…

Here we are about ready to go sleep in our trailor…

Fun times around the campfire!

The Lukes at the Beach…

The kids had fun throwing rocks into the water and looking for shells…and crabs!

We had so much fun we forgot to take very many pictures…I guess we’ll have to do it again then!

I made sure there were a lot of Balloons for Luke’s 1st Birthday party…they are one of his favorite things!

Since our VBS at church was panda themed this year, I decided to go with the flow and made his birthday party panda themed as well. It worked out great!  There were lots of cupcakes left over and panda posters so I used them all up and we had a cupcake LICKING contest (on our brand new deck!) and we played Pin the Nose on the Panda!

Here are the kids all lined up and ready to lick their panda cupcakes!

It was quite funny and to no surprise Samantha won!

  My dad helped Luke play too!

Here’s Evan peeking at the competition…more licking, less looking!

So besides the panda cupcakes the kids licked in their contest, I made a couple of panda cakes…one for him and one for the rest of us!

He was super curious and went in for the smash right away…as in trying to smash cake on those in his reach.  It was pretty funny because all of the kids were in really close to him when we were singing and then as soon as he had icing on his hands he tried to “get” all of the kids with his messy hands. Sign of a 3rd child?

Unfortunately our deck is not quite completed and there is a rim of dirt on the outside of the deck.  Evan introduced Luke (and his friend Tyce) to dirt on his birthday.  Apparently he generalized the cupcake licking contest and decided dirt was for licking as well….bleh. 

If you look close you can see his 2 new teeth (one on top one on bottom…same side)

Oh yeah and he got a teddy bear that is like 5 times his size! lol

Can you tell he likes it?  He attacks it every single day.

He had a fun birthday with his friends AND TWO sets of grandparents! (that is sure rare!!)

Happy 1st Birthday Luke!

It’s official. Evan is no longer allergic to milk!  He doesn’t quite understand how cool this concept is yet. He still asks for “my milk” aka soy milk, but we can’t blame him, the two milks do taste entirely different.  He’ll be soon excited when he can pick ANY flavor of ice cream when we go out to 31 flavors for his birthday!  And more importantly he can have things with milk in them without the repercussions of hives.  Yeay Evan!  Now if we can just curb that peanut allergy you’ll be on your way to more normal eating…I have faith!

In other milestone news…baby Luke got his first tooth, drank milk from a sippy cup (bye bye bottle and formula) and started walking all in the same week! That crazy kid, he’s trying to one up his siblings.  And speaking of one…he’ll be one soon…so there goes my baby.  Now what am I going to call him…just Luke? I think he thinks his name is baby Luke, boy will he be surprised when we start calling him just Luke. haha or not.

Oh and you know how some kids get milk mustaches when they drink milk.  Check out this milk action. 

The new Pampers sippy cup is really cool, but it gives Luke a milk beard every single time! It’s gross, but cute. 

As for Alyssa’s milestones, well she is turning into a beautiful curious observant 4 year old. 4 people, 4.  And she is funny…and I’m worried.  It’s going to be a Funniest Foust competition around here pretty soon.  She totally monopolizes the funny and I think Evan is catching on.  Right now he doesn’t care, but he better up his funny game if he wants to compete in the Funniest Foust Family competition.

Not much other news except for one last Foust milestone. Luke and I will have our 6th Anniversary on Saturday July 23rd and I just found out that it’s the year of iron.  Iron. seriously?  What are we talking about here…I wonder if he’ll get me a flat iron curling iron, or some dumb bells?  Oh maybe a new clothes iron…or a cast iron pan?  Maybe they forgot the y and it’s the year of irony? 

Well I know there has been a drought of blogs lately, but stay tuned for more frequent Foust updates!