if there ever was a need to put a bottle of ketchup on my blog, today's the day. i'm so embarassed that the last time i posted was the 5th? what? this may be the longest i've ever gone without blogging! i've missed it, a lot. but let's face it, it's fundraiser time and on top of it, it's spring time and life is just getting away from me. so, once again, here is my life the last few weeks, mostly in pictures...last last (two weeks) saturday rich let me sleep in (this is not unusual for saturday mornings because i'm married to a saint) but he went a step further and made these for breakfast.
he actually added blueberries to the batter! what the hey? this made me wonder why i am always the one cooking dinner - because seriously, if he's capable of that, he's capable of most of my dinner creations. i finally caught up with lauri the week before last for a girls' lunch. she has been out of town and i have been working on the gift baskets and so i felt like i haven't seen her for months! it was so great to finally catch up with each other.
last week was a major bummer because of two words: croup cough. poor ethan, he spent the entire week laying on the couch with his two favorite blankets, fading in an out of sleep with a pesky fever immune to motrin.
let me just say, i've HAD IT with nemo, in fact, after watching it over and over and over i think that sweet little clown fish from the reef is now a cuss word. this would also be the reason i needed to sleep in last saturday. friday was a phil and lauri weekend, we had a date with them to winger's - our tradition spot that deserves it's own blog entry one day when i remember to take a photo. and then again on saturday evening we got together for a phil special tradition - shrimp fry. we LOVE it when phil does a shrimp fry, it's almost always followed by poker - but it's just play money so it's all in good fun.
taylor took this picture, i swear i've given him lessons on composition, but whatever. the only thing i'm saying here is, wow, it's time for me to go on a diet! sheesh! earlier on saturday i went to megan's shower and i have to say that i was as excited to see all the fun linda-the-caterer-food as i was to see the happyily glowing bride to be!
these lemon cupcakes were worth ever calorie - yum-o! we finally remembered to take a blogger picture this time with megan in the middle.
i'm telling you, this is the first of many showers for this group of moms, kristy pointed out that we have 22 kids between us, patsy's just breaking us in! later that afternoon we saw the jr. high production of annie get your gun. we loved seeing so many of our friends in this play including the cutie hailey who was darling in her cowgirl costume!
it was fantastic and nothing was jr. high about it, i can't believe the level of talent of these kids.
taylor is sold on auditioning for the class for next year. and speaking of auditions, monday was madrigal auditions and he wasn't a bit nervous! what? i was a wreck whenever i did this kind of thing growing up! i love that he played his jack johnson song for the audition on his guitar! his teacher was impressed, so we'll keep you posted. this entry is forever long, sorry, that's what happens when you play ketchup! sunday i photographed lauren and earnest's engagement pictures and had so much fun with them, they are too cute and it's always nice to be around people that are kissing so much.
it made me want to go home and make out with rich for a little while. sorry dad. sunday was also jason's birthday dinner at mom and dad's and the cake was homemade by leah and so so so so good - chocolate chocolate chocolate. yum.
ok, so that brings us to today - yay! play group was more about the shopping and girl time than the kids today. sometimes it just has to be that way because moms need girl time! we met at the mall and i made a few random purchases
just for fun (said like nacho libre). jenny and i bought maching sunglasses and got this self portait.
we we will be too cool at cherry hill this summer in our new shades! if you made it to the end of this entry, bless you! if not, i'm so not offended, i can't believe i had so much to get caught up on!
how did we get so lucky to have such beautiful weather for TWO tuesday play-dates in a row? it must have been drew's birthday gift from mother nature. we had a special afternoon edition play date so max could come, he's normally in school when we get together. we went to the park, chased some seriously flocking seagulls while we were trying to eat lunch in the wind and then played at the park. 
i could've taken this portait of drew without all the grime and goo that had accumulated on his face, but then it just wouldn't have been a true portait of drew - that kid is ALL BOY, dirt and all. it was also my first day NOT doing anything fundraiser related, and i enjoyed every stinkin' minute of it! i'll blog more about that later, for now i'm happy not to be thinking about it either. on our way out i saw this kid, maybe 16 or so and he had the most giant afro hair i have ever seen, i mean it was incredible. i almost had the nerve to ask him if i could take his photograph. but i chickened out and took it from the moving car from far away. hence the crappy photo. 
but, you can sort of tell how big his hair is although the photo doesn't do it justice. he was playing frisbee with some friends and his hair was so big that it moved after he did. it was a huge treat for me, i don't know why, hair that big just makes me happy.
traditionally when allie's spring dance recital rolls around, we go see carri for an up-do. (that's code for fancy hair-do if you don't speak salon.) this all began when allie was much smaller, i don't know how old, maybe seven or eight. see her mother was raised with all boys and therefore is completely hair challenged. poor allie, she's so girlie too, i feel bad that she's never had a french braid, twists or barrel curls. so back to the dance recital. after a few years of trying to do some cute fancy hair-dos for the dance recitals i finally just broke down and took her to my stylist, carri. and so the tradition was born and now mom feels less stress and allie feels like a princess, and looks like one too. there have been many up-dos in the past several years, but this was definitely prettiest one yet! but first, the story...i decided that since her recital was on a week night and after school is so crazy, that it made sense to pull her out of school a little early to have her hair done. now, don't judge me already, this girl has had PERFECT ATTENDANCE since the first grade, that's no exaggeraion either, she really does. so one afternoon is okay by me. i then realized that this may be our last real opportunity to have a girl's date before she graduates from elementary school so i pulled her out a little earlier to have some pre-up-do lunch. even with ethan, we had a fabulous time chatting about who likes who and catching me up on the latest sixth grade gossip. she's so animated, i have no idea where she gets that from! (wink wink)
she even consented to the self portait at the restaurant with people watching! carri was excited to see us, i am kicking myself that i didn't get a picture of carri's cutie lexi who ethan loved to play with the whole time we were there.
we were there for a cut and color also and i just had to document the "painting" process, the price of beauty folks. after the hair pins had been placed, the barrell curls rolled and glitter sprinkled and more hair spray than our fragile enviornment should have to tolerate, 
she got a beautiful up-do that she made last for 
carri has barrel curl skills, we love carri, allie would have to wear a pony tail without her.
oh, and the recital? well, you already know how i feel about recitals, i was a little vaclempt during her numbers and she was absolutely beautiful. i'm such a proud mom, i love everything about night's like this. the cheering section was back (they came to cheer for makenna too), this time i remembered to invite rich's parents but i missed getting their photo. 
we caught emily and i finally got to see her cute boyfriend who 
i love that they're such good friends.
spider man in a web 
a chocolate faced baby and a dad who was on his way out of town (but don't tell his boss, he was "working from home" today)
a mom and her joey in a swing
a scared little boy who finally went down the slide all by himself!
two cheeky monkeys on the playground
a little boy who would not hold still long enough to get a clear photograph and...
blogger mom karrie playing tennis on the court next to the park! she didn't know i was taking pictures and my camera was so confused by the chain link fence that they didn't turn out to be great photos. she was having a ton of fun though and it was just so great to run into her at the park! i also found, but didn't photograph, a grandma bringing a tray of chocolate cupcakes for everyone to eat! we love when grandma comes to play group!
you know it's officially springtime when the recitals begin. not that i'm complaining, recitals really are one of my joys of motherhood. a sort of "thank you" from my children for driving them to & from and paying for their music/dance lessons, not to mention the rent they owe me for the forty + weeks they spent in my womb, labor and delivery and the stretch marks, oh the stretch marks. bottom line, recitals make this mostly thankless job all worth it. i especially love how easy it is to see & hear their progress from year to year, they always seem so grown up when i see them performing and find myself wondering, when did this happen? this feeling was especially apparent tonight at taylor's guitar recital. i was watching him play and he looked so comfortable up there strumming along, even his body language was cool and calm. i told him that guitar will be great one day for wooing the ladies, i've actually been telling him this all along and it still makes him blush when i say it. so, here's the video, courtesy of allie. before you push the play button, be aware that it is long, i think three minutes or so, but it had to be posted because it's part of our story. also, the microphone was too far away to be able to really hear his voice well. this means he'll be willing to perform it on the spot for any fan who requests it.speaking of fans, here are a few of them who came to cheer taylor on tonight.
they were so great to have and use, i'm officially hooked on both. thanks janae - i promise to get a lot of miles out of these things! you're wonderful!
although it was sort of stressful to hash out concert issues and go over different options (which consequently made me feel more overwhelmed by the minute), it was also really great to spend time with this group of girls that i love so much.
next time we go i'll remember to get a photo of the salad almost all of us ordered. the quesadilla explosion from chili's. have you tried it? ethan was also in very good form, besides hogging all the salsa and trying to "pet" karrie's hair the whole time, he was mostly manageable. 
right before he laid down for a rest on my leg he was joining in the on the laughing even though he had no idea what we were talking about. he is cracking me up lately, such a funny kid.
my office is completely out of control (more than usual if that's possible) loaded with all of the donations for the baskets. it's a good thing rich is working such long hours because his desk is pretty much burried in stuff. last year it was all at kristy's so it's my turn to have a messy space. 
can you believe that in a few weeks we will have all this crap turned into 25 or so beautiful gift baskets? no wonder we were so scared last year! we had no idea what we were doing, at least this year we have some experience. i'm not sweating it quite as much as last year, i only hope we can make as much money, last year was a big $4000 and it will be hard to top that. we spent three days together this week getting things sorted and shopping for things we didn't have donated and picking up business donations. luckily one of our donations was from noddles & co. and so we just had to eat lunch there.
macaroni & cheese - the real stuff - is probably my number one comfort food on the planet and noddles' version is glorious cheesy goodness. although i can never stray from the mac, i have to say that kristy's noodles and asparagus looked divine. friday jenny was nice enough to let ethan play at her house while we ran around to save him from being a prisoner to his carseat and to save me some time. i was shocked how fast i could get through stores without stopping to fuss with a toddler. he has had some separation anxiety lately but jenny said he didn't even cry! yay! he loves drew and joey so he was pretty excited to play. more fundraiser excitement to follow...
i am a huge salad girl and their's are my favroties. as always we had a fantastic time hanging out together talking like girls and laughing - lots of laughing. everyone brought many many cupcakes and by the time the two hours was over we had made four batches of different kinds of buttercream, laughed a lot more and taste tested several different samples. and i had frosting in my hair. we would love to open a cupcake store together but will have to see on that one. 
at one point i was mixing frosting and listening to patsy talk about wedding showers and announcements when it hit me. a little glimpse of blogger lunches of the future when we would each take turns talking about our daughter's wedding plans. i had this feeling that our little cupcake gathering was just the beginning of great times and real friendships. i just love these girls! with all the chaos i lost track of ethan, well not really, i could see him playing in the living room out of the corner of my eye. at one point i looked over at him to see him covered in lemon frosting - eyelashes and all. then i noticed that so was my black wooden bench, and the tv screen, and the ottoman and part of the couch.
my first thought was, "where's my camera!?" would you believe that this is the second blogger lunch in a row that we forgot to take a self portait? we'll do better next month!
