May 18: Garage Sale Finds

I was about ready to give up on garage sales for good.  It is always a challenge to find good quality stuff for a decent price, but this year, it has seemed completely impossible.  I have written before about how picky I am with garage sale pricing.  Generally, I don't like to pay more than 50 cents ($1 max) for a piece of kids clothing, and I want that clothing to look like it is brand new.  The prices I have been seeing at garage sales lately have been more like $2-4 per piece.  I don't know who is willing to pay that much for garage sale clothes, but it is definitely too much for me!  Plus, it takes a lot of time to dig through all the garage sale junk looking for treasures, and when you don't find anything, it really is just a waste of time.

With all of these thoughts in my head, I decided to stop at one last garage sale today.   And I hit the garage sale jackpot for girls clothes size 12-18 months.  And everything was priced between 50 cents and $1.  And all of the clothes were in perfect condition.  My kind of sale!!   I got 3 dresses, 3 two piece outfits, two shirts, a pair of jeans and a pair of pants for just $7.  Several of the items I actually recognized from seeing them on the shelves in stores last year, so I know that they are nearly brand new!

Now, if only I had hit the garage sale jackpot for girls clothes size 3T-4T.  Isla is fairly well stocked for the summer (and she has a birthday coming up).  Audrey is the one who could really use a few more items for her summer wardrobe!

It does get really hard to find decent clothes past the 24 months size though.  Older kids wear their clothes longer, and they are rougher on their clothes, so most older kids clothes are in pretty bad shape at garage sales.  Even with today's good deals, I have a feeling my garage sale days may soon be coming to an end.

May 17: Last Day of Sprouts

Today was our last day of Sprouts for the season.  I always look forward to our Sprouts summer break!

To celebrate, we had a beach party and the kids were encouraged to wear their swimsuits.   Check out Isla, showing off her chubby thighs and a new swimsuit!

This was possibly Audrey's last day of Sprouts ever.  Next year, she will be in preschool on Thursday mornings, so she won't be able to go to Sprouts with us.  Audrey has a love/hate relationship with Sprouts.  She talks about how much she likes it when we are not there, but when we are there, she has always been too scared of the other kids to play or do anything. 

Actually, the past month or so, she has been coming out of her Sprouts shell.  She discovered a new love for the playland, and there have been a few weeks when she was like a normal kid...running around and playing by herself so that I didn't even see her for the entire hour!  Too bad it took her three years to decide that playing with the other kids at Sprouts wasn't so bad after all!

Here is Audrey with her BFF Anna.  These two have become good friends through Sprouts and their Sunday School class at church.  They are going to be in the same preschool class next year too.  I think Anna played a role in helping Audrey come out of her shell at Sprouts this year.

Just for fun, here is a look back at Audrey at Sprouts through the past three years.  She has grown up so much!!

May 16: Favorite Baby Board Books

Sadly, I do not read to Isla as much as I would like to or ought to.  I know we read to Audrey much more frequently as a baby, but we just seemed to have so much more free time back then.   However, Isla does still likes looking at books, and she will often just flip through the pages by herself.  And I do still read to her sometimes, and Audrey sometimes "reads" to her too...so we are not totally depriving her of books!

Tonight, it was just me and Isla home by ourselves for a while, and we took book after book off the bookshelf and looked at them and read them together. 

It seems that just about any children's book is turned into a board book these days, but for the sake of this list, I am focusing on board books especially designed for babies.  Here are a few of both Audrey and Isla's favorites!

Touch and Feel books by DK Publishing:  Right now, Isla really likes books that have texture on the pages, specifically soft fuzzy things.  It looks like these books have been updated since we got ours, but we own older versions of the Farm Animals and the Baby Animals book.  Tonight, at least, these were Isla's favorite books!  She would point to an animal on the page, feel it, and then look at me.  I would say the animal name and sound, and she would laugh and clap.  Over and over again.

That's Not My Puppy (Usborne Touchy-Feely books):  Another touch/feel book.  We own the puppy one, but I think all the books in this series are cute. 

Peek-a Who? by Nina Laden:  This was a big favorite of Audrey's when she was a baby/toddler. Actually, it is still a favorite; she likes it now because she can read all of it by herself.  Some of the pages have cut out holes in them, which are fun for little ones to peek through.  The last page is a mirror, which is also a lot of fun for babies to see themselves.

Tails by Matthew Van Fleet:  We actually own two copies of this book!  It is a fun touch/feel book, that also has things to pull and flaps to open.  A huge favorite with my girls.  I have one copy that I got at a garage sale, and I let them play with that one all that they want (it is starting to get pretty worn and a few parts are now broken).  Then I have a nicer, new copy that I only let them read when I am reading with them (it is still in great condition!).

 Where is Baby's Belly Button by Karen Katz:  We have a bunch of these Karen Katz Lift the Flap books, and we like them all! 

Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell:  Another lift the flap book.  This one is so cute. It's simple and fun and a hit with both babies and preschoolers.  Audrey still loves it, and it's another one that she can just about read by herself.

May 14: Bath Time Fun

Both girls love bath time!  They would stay and play in there forever if we would let them.

I'm giving you a little sneak peek of our bathroom remodel too (see the before pictures here).  I haven't posted after pictures yet, because the bathroom is not quite finished yet.  But it is so very close to being finished, so hopefully the after pictures will be up soon.

May 13: Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!  Today probably would have been a pretty good day, except that I woke up with a headache that just will not go away.  It is getting to the point of being unbearable tonight, so I will keep this post brief, so I can go back to laying in misery in a dark place.

All four of us did take a nap at the same time today, and I am pretty sure that is the first time that has ever happened!  I never nap, and Audrey's naps are sporadic at best.  But today with my headache and a busy Sunday morning, we were all ready for some rest!

 Mother's Day is also Baby Dedication Sunday at our church.  Isla was the oldest baby today, as she just missed last year's dedication by a few weeks.  She was so cute and smiled the whole time she was on stage!

May 12: Church Garage Sale

Wow, what a crazy week!  I am tired and would just love to sleep in my bed for a couple of days straight (if only!!). 

Our church had a final fundraiser for our summer mission trips--a garage sale.  I am going on a trip to Haiti, so I was helping with the sale this week.  All of the garage sale items were donated from church members, and we had A LOT of donations.  This picture shows just SOME of the stuff that we had. 

The gym was full, the hall outside the gym was full, the parking lot was filled with furniture...it was so much stuff. Ridiculous amounts of stuff! I spent a lot of time at church this week sorting through the donations.  Yesterday, I just unpacked and sorted and folded bags and bags and bags of clothes for hours.  I really didn't think we would ever get through all those bags.

But we did get everything sorted and organized, and then at 7 am this morning the crowds came and destroyed all that beautiful organization in a matter of seconds!!  However, we did make $4200 in just 5 hours...so I'm thinking that it was all worth it!

May 9: Happy Birthday to Daniel

Happy 30th birthday to Daniel!

We celebrated last Friday by going out to dinner with friends, so today was fairly low key.

Audrey helped me go shopping for Daniel's present, and she insisted that we get him five presents!  So we picked out five (fairly small) gifts for him, and then we gave them to him throughout the day today.  This was the first test of Audrey's ability to keep a secret, and she failed miserably.  She told Daniel multiple times what his presents were, sometimes right before he started opening them!

On Wednesdays, we normally take dinner over to our friends Adam and Lindsey.  (And on Tuesdays, they bring dinner to us...we've been doing this since September, and it's a lot of fun!).  Instead of dropping dinner off at their house today, we invited Adam, Lindsey, Simon and Elliot to come eat with us and enjoy some cake for Daniel's birthday.

Our meal was pretty good, if I do say so myself!  We had some of Daniel's favorite foods:  BBQ shredded chicken sandwiches, homemade WHITE hamburger buns (he requested something with white flour, as we eat wheat almost exclusively these days!), roasted potatoes and asparagus, and some fruit.

Here is Daniel's cake (dessert #3 of the five I am planning to make this week!).  This cake was nothing fancy, just a box cake mix and tub of frosting and lots of sprinkles.  Audrey was in charge of the sprinkles, can you tell??