A better birthday post

So I did a little birthday post for Elias, but it was thrown together very quickly, because we have been ridiculously busy for the past two weeks putting in new hardwood floors (a post of that is coming). And although I know it's completely unfounded, I am somehow wrapped up in the notion that I have to prove my love and devotion to my second born by writing a better post.

So here it goes....

I struggled with what to do for elias's birthday for quite a while. Everything in me wanted to throw him a huge party, but after much thought I decided that do that would just be selfish. See, Elias doesn't really like big crowds. He tends to get overwhelmed and freak out when there are tons of people around. So the party would really just be for me. For me to feel like a good mom. For me to have good photo ops. For me to invite a bunch of my friends over and try to impress them with my dazzling culinary skills.

So instead we opted for cake, an afternoon at the yogurt place, and a few gifts.

He got a whole huge cup to himself, and was in heaven.

He had a blast blowing out his candles too. Andrew and Krista were down here helping with the floors, so they were able to celebrate with us as well.

All in all I think not having a big party was a good choice. Maybe next year we can do it up big for him.

Happy Birthday Elias!

I really and truly can't believe that my little man is two years old.

He is getting more and more handsome every day.

I love you Elias Miguel! Happy Birthday!

floor update

So just in case anyone cares, the cement grinder thing was ridiculous. It took Tony about 4 hours, and covered the entire downstairs in cement dust, even though we had a shop vac and a tarp to reign it in. I'm tempted to just wallow in despair and say : "why do bad things happen to good people!!!!!!!". Then I remind myself that "Oh no, my brand new hard wood floors are more difficult to put in than I thought" is definitely a first world problem, and in light of eternity is of no significance. So I'm just going to accept my dusty, unfinished house this week and embrace the chaos.

new floors

So last weekend Tony and I started the arduous task of putting in hardwood (okay, fine, engineered hardwood, but who's couting?) floors in the majority of the house. My parents came down to help (Thanks so much, Mom and Dad, yall rock!) and Tony's parents took Elias and Leah for weekend. I must say I definitely underestimated the amount of time it would take. I was prepared for it being hard work and all, but I didn't think it would be as tedious, with so much measuring/time consuming stuff involved. So, even after working till midnight on friday, and about 16 straight hours on saturday, we only got about halfway done.

And then the kids came back, and Tony has to work during the day (bummer), so now progress is very very very very slow. Even though I have now become a pro with the miter saw. 

From this angle it looks awesome!

From here, not so much (actually we have a little more than this done at this point.)

Now we have hit another road bump, as it appears that the concrete is not completely even. There is a huge bump that we have to get rid of before continuing, and that will probably take another day to do.

I'm hopeful that after this next weekend, our whole house will look like this:

staycation

So we had our may family staycation this past week, and it was pretty awesome. We stayed at a friend of our parent's house (I'm not sure if that's grammatically correct, but I don't know how else to phrase it), and we pretty much partied it up for 5 days skraight. That's right.... I said skraight. Just kidding, we totally didn't party. There are too many children under the age of 6 for that to happen, but we did have a  blast.

I, of course, forgot my camera again, so I have to rely on the instagraming and blogging of my more prepared and picture loving sis and sis-in-laws. If you want to see pictures, just hope on over to May Days and check it out. Incidentally, she mostly posts pictures of her own boys (almost like it's her own blog,) but it's still way cute!

Anywho, we went pseudo-hiking (cause Leah has been asking and "training" to go on a hike for a year now. Seriously, she really has), water parking, Skiing, movie watching (brave with the kiddoes), and pool swimming. It was truly a very enjoyable time. Many thanks to Joel, Beka, Carpio, and mom and Dad for helping all of us with the kids!

cow appreciation day

Dress up like a cow, get a free meal at chick-fil-a! There is very little I would not do for a free chick- fil-a meal.

So I did (this picture makes my face look super freaky, I don't know why). Cow costumes are not flattering, btw.

Leah told me she wanted to be a pretty cow. Hence the necklace and bows.

Elias is flashing gang signs over there... so cool!

So the outfits may not be the best, but they are super cute!

volcano!

So afternoons around here can be kind of rough. It's still ridiculously hot, the kids have just awoken up from a nap, and I feel like the day should be over... but it's not. There's really not enough time to do anything fun outside the house, so we are just kind of stuck indoors. Sometimes I'm a lazy mom and I turn on the TV... Sometimes I'm a good mom and I do fun science projects.

What is this, you ask? Well, It's a volcano. Duh!

Ahhhh.... baking soda, vinegar, and red food coloring... it never gets old.

(sidenote, every time I think about a model volcano I think of the Adventure in Odyssee episode where Oscar ruins their volcano because he was dyslexic).

I'm pretty sure they all enjoyed it!