Oops. Sorry for spamming my own blog last night in my excitement over 5 Minutes for Mom‘s latest photo contest. I didn’t realize they had a rule about just one entry per person, as I have entered multiple photos before and made it to the finals – I just must not have gotten caught!! :D It was hard enough to narrow it down as far as I did, and much harder to just pick one! Lucky for me, Chris helped (My final entry was the finger painting one. Hopefully I picked right!!).

ANYWAY, back to our normal programming:

A week or so ago, I had a HUGE makeup spill on the carpet in our dressing room.

Bronzer (brown) powder.

On cream carpet.

About one foot by two inches in area. That’s a lot of used-to-be-cream-but-now-brown carpet.

Ali was with me, and I was very glad at that point that one of my (many) weaknesses is NOT swearing when I mess up. I said, in my most horrified voice, “OH NO!!!” .

Ali watched me for the next half hour as I laboriously cleaned up my mess (it DID all come up, surprisingly!). She totally understood the tragedy, and stood over me and my mess, repeating in the same horrified voice that I had used, “Oh no!!!”. It was absolutely adorable, and I was so glad that “oh no” was all I had said.

From that point on, she has started saying “Oh no!!” when she sees anything on the floor, or ground, that she thinks doesn’t belong there. It can be at our house, it can be a puddle of water, it can be litter in the parking lot. They all get the same horrified “oh no!!!”.

So needless to say, as cute as it is, I’ve started tuning it out, at least in a “jump to action” sort of way, because I know it doesn’t mean anything except that Ali thinks that something is out of place.

Yesterday, I was getting ready in my dressing room again, and Ali was behind me, and started repeatedly saying “Oh no!!!”. I didn’t turn around, since, as I said, I figured it didn’t mean much. When I finally did glance over in her direction, I saw that she actually HAD made a pretty big mess.

The poor carpet in our dressing room. She had somehow gotten an eyeliner pencil sharpener and taken the top off and had spilled the contents all over the SAME carpet. She was quite distraught over her mistake.

I am a big proponent of not fussing at accidents (assuming that the child had not been previously told to not do or touch the object of said accident), and so I didn’t react, but comforted her and said, “It’s ok!! Sit here while Mommy cleans it up”. She sat so still, which is a VERY rare thing for her, and watched forlornly as I cleaned up her mess.

For the next half hour or so, she was so very loving to me. She said thank you for everything (including me buckling her into her carseat, of all things), and gave me free hugs and kisses and “love you’s”. She was so appreciative of not getting punished for her mistake.

I am trying to take her lesson to heart. God has shown me so much mercy, encouraged me when I’ve made a mess and cleaned it up for me. Being that I was saved at a very young age, I often take salvation for granted. But I shouldn’t. I should be as grateful and overflowing with appreciation and love for my God (as Ali was for me) EVERY MINUTE of my day!

OK, OK, OK – I know I got carried away and entered SEVEN entries into 5 Minutes for Mom‘s photo contests – but I DO love photos, I love 5 Minutes for Mom, and so naturally I love their photo contests, and I just couldn’t help myself!! (blush). Hopefully they won’t disqualify me for being passionate about their contests!! :D

Daddies are always at the heart of Summer fun.

Maybe it’s because they’re not around quite as much as Mommy, so the excitement of having Daddy around adds to the fun.

Or maybe Daddies are just genetically more fun!

Here are a few pictures of the absolute joy and glee that Daddies bring to summer!

This is a photo for 5 Minutes for Mom’s summer contest!

“Explorer” is the middle name of all toddlers!! There is no better place to explore than outside. Especially when flowers are blooming and butterflies are flying and bees are buzzing!

This is an entry for 5 Minutes for Mom‘s wonderful summer fun photo contest!!

Toddlers are funny creatures. They absolutely can LOVE each other, but they will still play “near” each other, rather than “with” each other. These two little girls are best friends. They were in toddler heaven getting to go on a beach trip together, but being toddlers, they still had their fun on opposite sides of the beach towel! True summer fun for toddlers: getting to play
independently, while being right next to your best friend!

Here’s a Picture for 5 Minutes for Mom‘s summer fun contest!

This is a picture of Ali sitting in the ocean for the first time (with Daddy behind her and Mommy in front of her, of course!).

She loved the lapping waves and the fun of splashing. This picture encapsulates her absolute love of water!

This is a photo for another great 5 Minutes for Mom contest!!

Ali is a very girlie girl. Any time she sees a mess or anything on the floor that shouldn’t be there, she points, gets a worried face, and says quite dramatically, “OH NOOO!!!”.

It was Daddy’s birthday, and I wanted to help her do something special for him.

Finger painting!!

At first, she was quite unsure about getting so messy. I kept reiterating to her that it was for Daddy, and that is what helped her start getting into it. This picture was when she was the MOST consumed with her task at hand. She was fully committed to making Daddy the perfect present!!

The finished artwork now proudly has the prime real estate in wall space in Daddy’s office.

For the full “picture story”, click here.

This picture is for a contest over at 5 Minutes for Mom!!

Ali and AJ are BEST friends. They talk about each other every day, and are happiest when they are with each other! Our families went on a beach trip together this summer, and those two little girls were in absolute heaven! Here are the best friends holding hands with each other, and with their beloved Daddies. That is true summer heaven.

This is a photo for the Summer Fun contest over at 5 Minutes for Mom!!

Ali’s favorite playground activity is swinging!! She begs for “swing!!” anytime she sees playground equipment. Once she’s in the swing, good luck getting her out!!
In this picture, she is completely zoned out, relishing the moment!

To the remaining Eli-Junkies and all others that are following the Eli story line of this soap blog opera:
My question is – do you all have access to Facebook? The reason I’m asking is that Lindsay posted some awesome pics of Eli yesterday, and I will re-post them here if there are still people who only have access to my blog for updates. However, if everyone is facebook savvy now, then I will quit re-posting facebook pics, and only post new pics of Eli when they aren’t on facebook or when I take them occasionally.
Let me know if you want reposted facebook pics!

Ali and I are feeling much better today, just both very sleepy and exhausted feeling.

I got a new “bee bonnet” last week. Or maybe more aptly put, a “bee bow”.

You know how Ali loves hair bows, and they have just the CUTEST bows ever on Etsy? That is where I buy all of Ali’s bows because there is literally NOWHERE in town that has cute hair bows. Even if you can find a store that has bows (which is hard to begin with), they are horrid poofy 80’s bows (sorry, Mom, I know you made me wear these when I was little, but it’s ok, it actually WAS the 80’s).

Anyway, Ashley, AJ, Ali and I were walking through the mall the other day, and I mentioned how well a kiosk in the mall would do selling hairbows like the cute ones on Etsy, because they would be SOOO super easy to make, and there would be no (current) competition in town. Plus, think of all of the stay at home Moms (like us) who walk the mall allll the time. Ashley surprised me and said “Totally! We should do that!!”. I wasn’t quite expecting her to think it was a doable idea, and she might have just been being nice, but it set of a row of dominoes in my head.

It wasn’t purposeful, it’s just that my geeky businessy side took over my mind and FORCED me to concoct an ENTIRE business plan in my mind.

Gotta find out how much a kiosk costs in the mall.

I could buy all of the supplies, then get all of the already crafty stay at home moms I know (like Greta and Lydia), and all of the potentially crafty SAHM’s I know (all the rest of ’em) to make the hairbows, and I could have this great spreadsheet keeping up with how many they made, and then split the profits at the end of the month according to the percentages of the total hairbows made.

I could have tiered levels of how much they got per hairbow depending upon the complexity of the hairbows.

I could totally sell the hairbows for 1 for $5, 3 for $12, 5 for $15. . .etc. Or should the price point breaks be different?

How would I get people to actually work at the booths? Maybe high school girls? Maybe the aforementioned SAHM’s would like to work a few hours a week.

How much FUN would Ali and AJ have getting to help out making and keeping up with hairbows in a few years? I really got off on a long rabbit trail thought stream on that one. It reminded me of all of the crafts we made as kids (in particularly, Heads, but that’s another blog for another day), and sold at Christmas time (at Christmas Village and Homestead Hollow) to earn money to buy Christmas presents with. I absolutely LOVED doing that!! I would keep up with how many I made, what the break even point was, how many dollars that I would make per Head, etc. Yes, it’s true, I’ve always been this geeky.

Back to hairbows. I figured out inventory control systems, accounting systems, profit points, costs, etc. All in an afternoon’s “back of the mind” thoughts.

I even tried to call and find out how much it costs to lease a kiosk at the Galleria, but their sales staff was quite incompetent with this device called a TELEPHONE and kept accidentally hanging up on me and giving me the wrong numbers (maybe they knew that I wasn’t ready to lease a kiosk tomorrow).

Anyway, I know all of this is crazy talk – I already work for three companies, am a stay at home mom, and of course have to make time for my blog. Plus, businesses like this rarely ever make much money. And I remember how much unbelievable TIME it took for my Mom to run businesses at home.

But it was so FUN to think about!! And it still is. . .my geeky side still has a hostile takeover of a little corner of the back of my mind, trying to figure out how to make the time to make it work.

I know, go ahead and say it. I enjoy numbers WAY too much.