Purplicious!

Today Sarah and Lauren's daycare had a purple party! I signed up to bring cupcakes (so much more fun than plain old grapes or grape juice.) It was fun making 4 dozen cupcakes with purple icing! Really it was!! Here is the end result!

If I had been more artistic I would have done grapevines or something on them, but this about as creative as it gets folks!

Pre-K Graduation

Tonight was Sarah's Pre-K Graduation! I can't believe she will be going into Kindergarten in the fall. It seems like yesterday I was deciding on pre-schools for her and debating whether or not to have her do 2 or 3 days a week and now she is a full on regular kid who goes all day and is learning to read and everything. Sarah has gone to Primrose since she was about 18 months. It has been one of the best decisions we ever made as parents. She has absolutely loved going. Every teacher she has ever had has been great and they have shown her nothing but love and support. Sarah has especially enjoyed Ms. Fox for pre-k. She has been so fun and has taught the kids so much. I actually think Sarah will be a bit bored in Kindergarten because she has learned so much this year!

The graduation was so cute tonight and Sarah did a great job. They recited a little poem about pre-school and how learning never ends. I had tears in my eyes. Lauren was so good during the program. Hopefully taking mental notes and how to be a great 5 year old. After the program we went to CPK (California Pizza Kitchen) for dinner. It was a request from Sarah. She had a great night and we were so proud of her!Receiving her diploma

Ms. Fox and Sarah

Sarah and her joker face of pizza sauce!

With her Papa and Nana

BTW....I must give a shout out to my little brother Taylor! Happy Birthday!!

Memorial Day

I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day. We sure did. Charlie spent the day with the girls and they went to have a picnic at the park. I went to work at Le Petit Hameau and was there most of the day. We then let Sarah swim and we cooked burgers. Nana and Papa came over and we had a nice meal al fresco! I made blueberry cobbler with homemade ice cream for dessert. It was Y-U-MMY! I also spent most of the evening trying to figure out to do a photo collage mosaic. Here is my first attempt. Some of my favorite images for the holiday. The picture of the young woman at the cemetery is so moving. I read about her in an article this past year. She lost her love to the war and it was so sad to read about it and see this moving picture. It helps me to remember all those that have sacrificed so much.
BLUEBERRY COBBLER
This is really a recipe for blueberry pie, but it always comes out more like a cobbler, so I changed it!

2 store bought frozen pie crusts
1 cup of sugar
4.5 cups of blueberries
1 lemon
5 TBSP flour
salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Unfold first pie crust and press into dish of your choice. Rinse blueberries. Drain and add to a large bowl. Add flour to the berries and toss to coat. Add sugar, a squeeze of lemon, and a dash of salt. Pour berries into pie shell. Place the other pie crust on top, either in a single layer, or cut up to arrange in a special pattern (lattice). Bake for 45-60 minutes or until bubbly. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

HOMEMADE VANILLA ICE CREAM

1 cup of whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups of heavy cream
1-2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

In a 4 cup measuring cup, mix the milk and sugar and whisk well. Then add the cream and vanilla extract. Mix well again. Cover and chill if time allows.

Pour into ice cream machine (I have a Cuisinart Classic ice cream machine)and let it mix for 20-25 minutes. Then transfer to air-tight storage container and put in freezer. The mixture will be soft at first. Freeze for 2 hours to get a more firm consistency.

An oldie, but goodie!

Sarah has recently taken an interest in Sesame Street. Since we normally have the TV on Noggin 24/7, it is amazing she has even seen Sesame Street at all. One day she asked me to record an episode and not only did she love it....Lauren did too! So this is huge! Lauren is very hard to please and very rarely gets interested in a TV show. (Unlike her sister who grew up glued to the TV...FYI...she has turned out OK) So now I have the TIVO set to record Sesame street on a daily basis. It is hard to imagine that a show I grew up watching turns out to be one of (if not) their most favorite show of them all. Gotta love the oldies, but goodies!

Why didn't I think of this.....

This type of thing drives me crazy....I saw this cute invite while blog stalking (see it here) and I am so jealous of this cute idea. I love the Bachelor/Bachelorette and I wish I had thought of this. Sooo CUTE! (For those that don't watch...what makes this so cute is that Jillian, the new bachelorette, has a theory about men. That you can tell what type of man they are by what they put on their hot dogs. The best guys put on mustard.

My favorite thing about May

May is great month....Spring has arrived for good, school is almost out, the days are getting longer, but most of all, my hydrangeas begin to bloom! Last year was sort of an off year, but this year they have come in with a bang! I have them in all shades of pink and a little lavender, as well! My favorite is blue and I have bought some to add to my collection. Maybe by next year I will have a ton of blues ones, too! At current count I have around 200 blooms. That is not counting the ones I cut for the May Day Tea Party and the ones I have in my kitchen! Hydrangeas are by far my favorite flower. I will take them over roses any day!

May Day Tea Party

What a great day it was yesterday for Sarah and her little friends to get together for a little tea party. I have been wanting to do a May Day theme party for forever, so when one of the other mom's mentioned wanting to do a tea party for the girls, we decide to collaborate ideas and go with this theme. It was pretty much a success, except for the maypole! The girls liked it and want to play with the ribbons, but 5 year-olds are not quite old enough to grasp the concept of doing a dance to braid the ribbons. We will try the maypole out again in a couple of years!! Otherwise, they loved making beaded necklaces, having the tea party with the magical pink tea (pink lemonade) and twirling around in their little skirts and dresses. We had little sandwiches, fruit and cookies for the girls and the mom's got to feast on strawberry salad and spinach/Parmesan cheese dip! It was a gorgeous day for all the little fair maidens to frolic in the sun!

Jamaica Travel Notes: May 11-15

We are back....It is hard to believe that just a week ago we were jetting off from a rained soaked Dallas to the beautiful island of Jamaica. Cocktails and sunscreen in hand instead of diaper bags and kiddos. We had a wonderful time. The flight from DFW is so easy (about 3 hours) and it is just a tad longer on the way back. The shuttle bus ride to and from the airport and resort was the only non-relaxing part of the vacation. They are crazy drivers, MON. It is by miracle alone we made it to the resort. The resort was fantastic. We stayed at the Sandals Whitehouse resort on the south coast of the island. The location is beautiful, the food was great, the people were so nice. We couldn't have asked for anything better. The weather was perfect, for us. It did rain some while we were there. It ended up being our ideal situation. We are both very fair skinned so we needed the afternoon rain breaks to go back to the room and watch a movie, or head indoors for a coffee or something. It was so nice and made for some beautiful pictures.

The resort is divided into different villages. We stayed in the Italian village. They must have known my fascination with that country. When we go back (which we will) we are opting for the Dutch village. It is a little further away from the main area of the resort, so a little more private and quite, but it is not as far away as the French village. The French village is a trek, I must say. It is more lively over there with live music and a restaurant, but it is a bit too far from the main area. The beach is so gorgeous. The pictures hardly capture the amazing color. The reef kept the shore calm and we enjoyed studying the hundreds of starfish that lined the shore. We kept thinking of our 5 year old that would have had a ball on the beach everyday! Too bad it is a couples resort. We took part in some ocean activities our last day there. We did a snorkeling trip and saw a nurse shark. I am so proud of us for actually getting in the water after it was announced to us he was down there. Very adventurous for us. We also did some kayaking.


We loved that the resort was all-inclusive. We did not have to pay for food or drinks the entire time. Of course this led to endless drinking of all sorts of fruity concoctions that usually contained rum. Also, the endless eating. We had a great buffet the first night. Complete with jerk chicken and some wonderful curry wraps. We then had Asian food the next night, more fine dining the 3rd with a little surf and turf, and ended with another buffet the last night. The lunches were also great and the patisserie was our favorite snack/dessert hangout. The people were so friendly and so helpful the whole time. They really were catering to our every need. We enjoyed doing sunset pictures one night. We were expecting to go the beach and have them snap a quick shot of us. We had no idea that we would be assigned a photographer and we had a full on photo shoot. He took about 30 different shots of us. It was so much fun. Of course, the photos are not all-inclusive so that was a place they caught us!


We are already planning on when we want to go back. I think the next time we want to take the girls and go to one of the Beaches properties so they can come along. It is no more expensive or further to travel than CA and the beach is so much better. We think the girls will love it!! We know we did!

Jamaica is calling my name....

Here is where I will be sitting in about 6 days. I cannot wait! Charlie and I booked this trip back in the chill of the fall and have been dreaming of the white sands, the turquoise water, the no screaming kids, and the us time ever since. We decided that we wanted to do something relaxing to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. Too many times in the past we have planned these wonderful, but very busy vacations. This time we wanted to just go somewhere and not have any plans or have to make any big decisions. The biggest one being which of the 7 restaurants are we going to have dinner at tonight! We love that we are going to an all inclusive resort. We went to one back in 2000 in the Dominican Republic and LOVED IT. We can't wait and are so excited to be able to share this time together. We can't believe we have been married 10 years. (10 years June 26th). Where has the time gone?

Vegas Weekend

What a fun weekend I just had. It was a nice break from the kids and daily life to zip out to Vegas to be with the girls and just have a good time. We had lots of great food, lazy time, and party time. We started our weekend off with a few drinks (of course) and then headed to dinner at Los Caminos at the Palazzo. Highly recommend this. The guacamole was outstanding and so was my dinner. We then headed over to the Venetian to see what was going on and we spent most of the time in a lounge and then we went back to the room to just hang out and visit. The next morning we drug ourselves to the pool and lounged in our cabana. This was sooo nice and quite a little luxury. Lucas, or cabana boy, waited on us hand and foot and brought us breakfast, lunch, and all the cocktails in between. We laid out a little bit, gambled on the horses, and just relaxed. I was so mad that I picked the wrong 50:1 horse to win. I would have won $500 instead of the big zero. That night we had dinner at Zefferino's at the Venetian. We were all a little drained from the night before but we figured since we were on the guest list at Tao that we would mosey on over for at least one drink.....little did we know what was about the transpire. First off, there were about 200+ people in line and out the door. We proceeded to follow a group of girls into the club, but promptly got stopped. We informed the guy we were on the "list" and he said so was everyone in that long line, but he had mercy on us and pulled us to the side and got us in right then in there. So we not only got line privilege, we paid no cover, and found ourselves upstairs in what we would find out to be P. Diddy's and Jay-Z's post fight night party. We were in prime position by Chloe Kardashian's table and had P. Diddy and Jay-Z and their entourage walk right next to us not once, but twice. The little mini concert they gave was awesome and celebrities such as Adrian Brody, David Arquette, Mel B. and Balthazar Getty (just to name a few) came and went throughout the night. It was surreal and we kept wondering how the hell 4 moms in their 30's ended up in what was one of the hottest parties in Vegas that night..by accident! It was quite a weekend!