Monday FUNday and a Weekend of CrAzY

 Here we are, Monday. The start to a new week, a new week that I am very much looking forward to.

I spent the first day of my weekend doing a lot of this---yes, I really did take a picture of you, Tc. Next time I'll warn you...or maybe I won't. I painted and untaped and laughed and layed down in the grass and was tackled by a 6 year old approximately eight times and listened to beautiful singing and SOMEBODY even touched me with their feet. Gasp! {I hate feet}

So that was Friday. Imaginably the best day I've had in a while.

As you read on Saturday, things started to get rocky for a bit. I had a hard morning and I layed around watching tv and/or dramatically crying about how life just isn't fair.

But then I decided that I was NOT about to spend an entire day feeling sorry for myself so I picked my butt up off the couch, cranked my music up, and started cleaning and de-cluttering and getting rid of 90% of Petey's toys and 60% of Spidey's toys. Booyah. Then I organized the family room and planned to add wallpaper to one of the walls but it was 2am so I decided it could wait for another day.

Sunday morning came and I realized I had forgotten another plan I was going to accomplish on Saturday---changing my hot pink hair streak to teal blue. I had 2 hours until church and since I suck at math, I calculated that I had plenty of time.

Ha!

I had to bleach it all first and that took over an hour and there was still some pink left. No biggie, right?

By the time I added the teal, I had 30 minutes before church which meant I had 10 minutes to leave the color in, 10 minutes to wash it all out, and 10 minutes to dry my hair enough to get to church. Hmm...

It didn't quite work out how I had expected and I went to church looking like a freaking Easter egg. Good thing it was actually Easter, right?!!

 

I came home from church and dyed it again. This time it took all the pink out but was left looking purple, blue, and green.

 

So after dinner, I tried ONE MORE TIME, and it is as good as it's gonna get right now. It's blue and greenish blue. Oh-freaking-well.

 

Maybe I should leave that crap to the professionals! Knowing me, I probably won't have learned my lesson and you'll probably hear about me doing this all over again in a few months.

 

At least I was the world's cleanest person yesterday after THREE showers.

 

So today, stuff got real. I was bound and determined to make today productive!

{Ha! Its 9am and I'm on the computer blogging.}

Petey had crazy hair day at school and I was so excited!

We sprayed it hot pink and put gold sparkles in it. I ratted 3 crazy buns and added a few ostrich feather bows. She loved it and we were both happy that this meant it was also a "dress down day" meaning no uniform!

I love uniforms but once in a while, it's fun to dress her up.

 

Then stuff got really real when I decided to sweep the floor in the kitchen...

 Yes, that's the pile I was left with. Why am I showing you? Oh, I don't know, BECAUSE I'VE LOST MY MIND!
I even did the dishes---because I'm such an overachiever.

It's 9am and I think I deserve the rest of the day off. Oh wait, I'm just kidding. Maybe I'll put that wallpaper on today. Or maybe I'll get some laundry done. Or maybe I'll just sit on the couch.


We shall see...

2014: Day 13

 Day 13's challenge was to write about my week. Since I've chosen to write about things on my mind most of the time, I often neglect the day to day posts with pictures of my kids and what they are doing.

Last week, my sister went into labor. Yippee! I had told her I would take her 2 kids so my mom could be at the hospital with her and so we got to have a cousin sleepover on Tuesday night.

Do you think they got any sleep? Actually, they did. Surprisingly, the boys fell asleep within 20 minutes. Spidey is usually the instigator and likes to jump on the bed when he has company over so I was glad to have them asleep. The girls fought sleep for almost 2 hours but they stayed in the bedroom the whole time so I can't really complain.

The next day was really fun. I love doing hair so Ellie got a new hairstyle for the day after Petey went to school. Isn't she adorable?

My brother in law's sister came and got the kids in the afternoon and I was just waiting to hear if my sister had pushed her baby out yet!

In the early afternoon, the announcement text came through and I was an auntie again to a new little boy!

 We took these pictures tonight. I've decided to call him Red on the blog. He is one precious little baby boy. He's also really red. :) He is a mix of his two other siblings so it'll be fun to see how he looks when he's a little older.

In other exciting news, I dyed my hair this week.

 And yes, it is pink. :)

Petey was soooo jealous but also really excited! She's been asking for pink hair for months but obviously, that just isn't happening at the age of 5. I decided it fed my wild side and also made her happy. Doesn't get much better than that!

I love my pink hair so much that Facebook has had a few new awkward selfies of me. Yay Facebook viewers! I just don't think selfies are usually all that cute and yet, I keep posting them! It's partly to show off my hair and partly sarcasm.
But anyway, I really love it! Can you tell?!

This past weekend was full of events; happy, sad, and embarrassing.

I went bowling with a bunch-o-friends on Friday night and since I'm probably the most awesome person ever, I sprained my wirst bowling a ball that was apparently too heavy for my weak-sauce wrist.

Boss' cousin had passed away almost 2 weeks ago and his funeral was Saturday morning so I decided my wrist would be fine until the afternoon, even though I could barely move it.
The funeral was beautiful and I am so lucky to know such a wonderful family. I am so grateful I was able to honor such a special young man. I cried a lot more than I would've expected the day he passed away and his funeral brought a lot more tears. There were tears of happiness and sadness as we mourned our loss but were happy for his gain.

We left the luncheon around 2pm and I was almost in tears from the pain I was feeling in my wrist. Since my dad was in meetings and we couldn't figure out a better option for an xray, I dropped my kids off to my mom and sister and I headed to the hospital ER.

A fun 4 hours later and I was diagnose with a bad sprain and given an ace bandage and stronger medication. The ace bandage became annoying after about 5 minutes but thanks for my wonderful friend, I borrowed a better wrist brace that doesn't take up half my arm.
I really am surprised by how painful this sprain is. The only reason I was worried about it being broken was because of the amount of swelling and the PAIN.

But all is well. It feels a teensy bit better today and hopefully by Tuesday, I'll be writing with my right hand again since school is starting back up! Yay me! Wish me luck. :)

Flexibility and a Hairstyle

First of all, I had to show off this new hairstyle I did with Petey's hair today. It's hard to get her short hair all up and I found a way to do it today. I think it's absolutely adorable!

Second, if you are my Facebook friend, I apologize. I'm sure you're sick of the pictures I've been posting today. I am just so proud of Petey. You see, she was not born flexible like her mama. She has had to work really hard to get her flexibility for dance. Most days, she doesn't want to stretch because it hurts {I tried to explain that is the only way to get more flexible.} but ever since her dance teacher bribed them with an ice cream party, she is all about the stretching!

 Here is her needle.

 She was watching the dance recital dvd and wanted to bring her leg up behind her like the big girls do. Maybe someday, baby girl.

 Surprisingly, her right leg is a lot less flexible than her left.

 This is called "buns up". They sit in their middle splits to stretch them down all the way. She's pretty darn close to the ground.

 Her right splits are tons farther than they've ever been.

 Her left splits are almost perfect! She is so close and she knows it!

This is my favorite picture. That left leg is super flexible now! She has worked so hard and her face shows just how proud of herself she is.

She is loving her team classes. Her favorite is the one class she was afraid of on the first day. She has a boy teacher for her acro/stretch/tumbling class and she cried when I made her go in the room but she came out all smiles and loves going to that class now. She loves Miss Mimi and Miss Taylor and talks about them at home often. I didn't think anyone could replace Miss JaNae but she seems to already love these new teachers just as much! I'm so excited for her performances to start but I have to wait until October. Right now, they are working hard on getting these little girls flexible and starting to teach them their routine.

The Saddest Haircut

 Once upon a time, I thought I would be that lucky mother who's child did NOT cut her own hair. We've had talks about this subject with Petey because she's wanted her hair to keep growing long.

Her hair grows pretty slow so it seems like it's taken forever to get her hair even this long.

 And the curls we can do with this length of hair; perfect. I love her hair this length and I was looking forward to it getting even longer.

But then last Friday happened. I went to take out the trash and right on top was a big wad of hair. My heart skipped a beat and I called my girly into the room.

 This is what I found. Not only had she cut some bangs, she cut a big chunk on the side of her hair.

 I put her hair up in a pony tail to really see how bad it was. Yeah, it was pretty bad. It was a thick little chunk and although we tried to hide it that first day, it just wasn't working.

 We made an appointment Saturday with Petey's Primary teacher at her salon. Although Petey was excited about getting her hair cut by her primary teacher, she wasn't actually excited about having short hair. She was made for a couple of days after the haircut and I'm hoping that makes it so she'll NEVER do it again!

 All done! I appreciated that her teacher gave her some longer hair in the front so we could hide the short pieces but still have a cute haircut.

Here is a picture of the back. I do like the haircut but I'm so sad that her hair is going to take a while to grow longer.

My Favorite Birthday Present

I cheated.
Just a little bit but still...

For my birthday, I wanted one thing and one thing only. I've been wanting it since the day we found out BOTH of our families were getting pictures done at the end of the year.

I wanted long hair.

This is my hair in March. It's the most recent picture I can find of my hair being down since getting chopped off. Imagine only 6 months later and my hair is anything but long. It touches my shoulders but since it was so stacked in the back, I have some pretty short layers back there still.

And for me, medium length hair is awkward and I certainly wouldn't want to be awkward in family photos that may or may not be updated for years and years. I want to look great in those pictures!

So anyway...

Happy birthday to me. :)

PS: Personally, I think they look much better in person but I had to take an awkward self-portrait to show it off to all of you.

Happy Thursday!

The Two Bald Guys I Live With

My heart is kind of breaking today. It must be the unbalanced hormones I am currently experiencing but it's been over 24 hours of me grieving my infertility. Why do days like this happen? I thought it was getting better.

But since I don't really want an entire blog post about infertility and negativity, I'll write about my husband and son because they make me smile and I'm so lucky to have them.

Yesterday, I asked Boss to cut Spideys hair. The above picture is a picture from a few days ago but it shows that his hair was getting a bit long. I love the red hair and I hate cutting it all off but it gets hot in the summer here and my little boy sweats a lot so his hair gets really nasty.

I specifically asked Boss to buzz Spidey's hair and what I was wanting was his hair to look like it does in the picture above. In my mind, buzzed means mostly cut off but still showing that the kid has hair! (That above picture is from last October.)

I walked into the bathroom a couple of minutes later and found this...

Oh yeah, you're seeing that correctly. Boss SHAVED just the top of Spidey's hair off. Seriously? Really? Seriously?!! My brother in law said the picture looks like Benjamin Button and I totally agree. That was such a creepy movie in my opinion and that is what my son looks like in the picture!

Of course, he did end up shaving it all off and then he let Spidey help him shave his own head (which is something he does every month...he doesn't like having a receding hair ling so he chooses to have no hair at all.).

And here is the finished product of my bald little son. I was actually quite mad that he shaved his head but I know it will grow back so I've gotten over it pretty quickly. But I do a double take every time he walks in the room. It looks SO weird!

I'm so thankful that my family can take my mind off of this trial that seems to be neverending in my life. They really are my best friends and my favorite people!

And that's how Suze mourns her son's bald head.

Mayonnaise and Dry Erase Markers

So my hair...my poor, poor hair. It has gone through a lot this year. It has gone brown, blonde, blonde, blonde, blonde, brown, and then red/brown. And well, my poor hair hasn't really liked all of these changes and it has become brittle and breaks often.
I've missed my healthy, soft, long, beautiful hair (picture taken April 2010).
So I decided something needed to be done. I found a link on Pinterest where someone put mayonnaise in their hair, which sounded hilarious and kind of gross but I was desperate for a cheap fix (because I can't afford $20/bottle shampoo right now...or ever).
Yes, that is mayonnaise in my hair. I was actually doing just fine until the smell of mayonnaise consumed my entire house. My brother in law came home and immediately asked what I had done. Don't worry, bro, it's just mayonnaise in my hair.
I left the mayo in for 20 minute and put a shower cap on so it didn't get messy.
I then showered like normal, shampooing and using conditioner in my hair. I noticed a difference when I was combing my hair out before bed but thought maybe I was noticing a difference because I wanted a difference.
But then this morning happened. I woke up and went to brush through my hair and it was easy! And I didn't lose as much hair! And then I thought I'd be crazy and actually straighten my hair. Piece. Of. Cake.

Yeah, it may not be completely back to what it was but I bet if I do the mayo trick a couple more times, it'll be as soft as a baby's bottom. Or not. :)

Also, today I had to share with you a fun thing I made for the Petey girl. For my birthday, my mom got me a laminator. Yes! I was trying to decide what I would laminate first when I came across another idea---yup, you guessed it!---on Pinterest.

I printed these tracing patterns online and laminated each one individually and all morning, Petey was practicing tracing them with a dry erase marker.

And to my surprise, she did really well! I briefly explained to her to trace each line and when I came back into the room a while later, she had done most of them and had done them well! I'm thinking this is going to be a regular thing in our house for her to practice. I could even throw in the ABC's numbers and other things for her to trace.

I have a feeling I'm going to go laminator crazy and laminate everything I can think of. :)

And that's how Suze sees it.

Little Tiny Braids

Is anyone else out there as weird as me?

Wait, dont answer that. I don't want to know.

Well, sometimes when I get out of the shower, I braid my hair so that when it dries, it will be crimpy. The other day when Petey got out of the bath, I had missed her a lot that day and wasn't ready for her to go to bed so I decided to stay up and braid her hair into a bunch of tiny braids so her hair would be crimped and not have to be done the next day.
Flash forward to the next day...Petey refused to let me take the braids out of her hair. She refused to let Boss take them out of her hair. She refused to let Grandma take them out of her hair. Get the picture? We all tried convincing her but she loved those darn braids.

For 2 whole days, that girly refused to let us take them out.

Well, today was the day, folks. Boss' aunt finally convinced Petey to let her take the braids out. Wow, that was some crazy hair! Too bad I didnt take a picture. But just get a mental image...Gracie said she looked like Bellatrix Lestrange (and yes, I did just google that name to ensure I spelled it correctly).

Have a wonderful night. I miss blog hopping to all of your blogs daily but dont worry, soon enough you will have me back.

And that's how Suze sees it.

Twisted Hairstyle

Yesterday, I found a really cute hairstyle over at Princess Hairstyles that I wanted to try on my girl. We ended up doing it that night but it didnt turn out so well...so we didnt take any pictures. This morning, I thought, "I think I get it now. Let's try again!". And it looks so adorable! I added gel to each section of hair so that her shorter "baby hairs" werent poking out. See? I think it turned out awesome. You will find the tutorial at the link above or if youre too lazy to scroll up, click here.

Then we added some cute new flower bows I made for my princess yesterday. I think they are absolutely adorable.

Success!!!

How do I?

How do I create cute Valentine's hair do's on Petey?

If anyone is looking for a cute hairdo for your little girl, look no further...or do. Ours are pretty simple but we like simple around here lately.

This was actually today's V-day hair do but I accidentally put these pictures up first. Start by sectioning the front part of the hair to the side and put a pony tail right in the middle of her head. Do a backwards pull through (link to the pull through is below in another hairstyle) and split the hair into two pieces.

I'm only going to show you one side of her hair in pictures..mirror to make the other side match. I just kept braiding the pieces and attaching rubber bands to make it shape like a heart.

Here is the finished product. It is a squared out heart, not perfect, but still adorabl!

This one, we tried was on Thursday. I took all of her front hair and put it in a pony tail and then did a pull through. I then sectioned two pieces and braided them halfway down. I grabbed another section of hair below the pull through and attached the two ponies together, leaving the braids really lose.
They kind of shaped like a heart when I did this. It wasnt my favorite do but it was my first attempt.

The biggest problem was that the bow covered almost the entire heart (and I dont normally do hairstyles without bows on my girl).
So on Friday, we tried again and tweaked it a little bit...

I took a section (this time off to the side of her head) of hair and did a backwards pull through (see how the hair is pulled through and pointing towards her face?).

I split the two sections again and braided them.

And then I took another section of hair and attached it all together, remembering to make sure the braids were loose. (exactly the same thing but with a backward pull through). This one was shaped a lot more like a heart and stayed that way all day. It also looked fine with a bow in it. The heart was still visible!

A cute picture of Petey with her "snake heart hair", as she called it. I guess the braids looked like snakes?

And that's how Suze does it.