Baby Reveal

Earlier this year my cousin, Rachel, called to tell me she was expecting and due only a few weeks after me. A couple months later we decided to do a joint gender reveal party. I wasn't planning to have one for this baby because we already had one for Jake. But she really wanted to do this together and we won't ever have the chance again, etc. So I agreed.

One of the main reasons I was pretty hesitant about it was because I was going to have to keep my baby's gender a secret for about 6 weeks. I'm about 3 weeks further along than her and I found out at 18 where she didn't until 20. Plus, I was in Canada for the first 4 weeks, so we could not have planned it much sooner. Still, I conceded because this would be our only chance. 

So we decided to have the party at brunch time with a Ties or Tutus theme in blue/grey for boy and purple/yellow for girl. Jake's reveal was cupcakes with a blue filling so I wanted to do something different and had many ideas. I finally settled on one the day before the party! Look below to see. 

 My reveal- votes for boys (blue ties) and girls (yellow tutus). I chose a pinata for the reveal and apparently chose one without the pull strings so I told will he could open it. But once he started, all the kids wanted to join in, eventually resulting in the contents being broken...

Above, we're ripping open the pinata to pull out the sugar, spice & everything nice. The sugar mess took away from the dramatic reveal a little bit, but I think everyone got it. Once we cleaned it all up, Daniel and I took some pics. :)

Rachel's reveal- boy then girl guesses with a cupcake reveal.

Our aunt Rose made us gifts with her guesses and she was right!

then I had the kiddos pose with the sugar, spice and everything nice :)

Yes, that is a bag of skittles, but we didn't know what else to use and they are quite nice

Easter

I forgot to grab my camera when we left Easter morning, so I don't have many pictures of the festivities, but I do have some egg dying and hunting photos. I mostly got before and after pics of the egg dying because I was helping.

I don't have Easter basket pictures because we didn't do them this year- we've considered in the past whether or not they're necessary since baskets and eggs aren't what Easter is about- but it's hard not to get caught up in the fun. However, it really came down to the matter of what to put in them. We've really limited Maggie's sugar intake since our first trip to Canada, which means it's been cut down some for everyone. We let her have special treats when the occasion calls for it like her birthday or something, but there's little need to fill baskets with a bunch of sugar none of them need. So we thought about toys, books, movies, etc. but again, it just seemed unnecessary. Between the three of them, there's so much of that in this house that we just decided to skip it this year. I don't know if that's the end for us or not...I'm pretty big on "firsts" so I can't imagine not doing a basket for baby's first Easter next year, but we'll see.

Green Thumb

I'm not saying I have one, but I've been working in the yard a lot more lately and have come to enjoy it more than I ever have in the past. In Birmingham, I tried to plant a few things but it never worked because the dogs dug them up or they just didn't get the nourishment needed to grow. Then there were times I thought about planting something, but that Alabama clay was so difficult to dig in/up, I just never got around to it. Several years ago we had a drought and our yard never really rebounded after that.

Fast forward to this spring and I finally made some time to get some yard work done. The people who lived here before us gave us a good head start and planted several beds. The problem is, several of the bushes were overgrown or dead. I don't recall why we didn't get in there last summer, but I'm sure it made it worse. Plus I really wanted some color, almost everything was green. So after I returned home, we got in there and pulled out weeds and dead stuff. Ah, it looked better already. Then I asked my parents if they could help me pick out plants- I don't really know what goes good together, where it should be planted, etc. Fortunately they were able to come out (I think mostly because they had not seen Maggie since our return) and went to the nursery with me then even helped plant flowers by our mailbox. Dad turned the soil and mom, Will & I planted. Maggie worked hard too. :)

A couple days later I decided to tackle the front bed. There were a couple bushes in there that I haven't liked for awhile and they just needed to go. They fought hard for the right to stay, but in the end, we won.
Maggie turned into little miss gardener and wants a shovel and a chance to dig any chance she gets. I got the first bush out by myself (the one closest to the house) then Daniel came out and helped with the second, which is good because I probably could not have done that alone. We did the bushes one day then I planted flowers the next.

I love how it looks!! Such a big improvement and I think the neighbors agree because we've received several compliments. I can't wait to see them grow!