Princess Cupcake Party….

So I, stupidly I might add, asked what Gracie wanted to do for her birthday party since we will probably be going home around the time of her birthday which means we are going to have to celebrate.  I gave her the choice between princesses and Elmo.  At first she wanted Elmo, but quickly changed her mind (which made me happy) to princesses.  I began my search right away for ideas considering that we are only going to have 4 short days with each family so the more prepared I am, the less stressed out I will be come November.  Plus, as all of you know, I am a tad bit of a procrastinator so I figured if I get a head start on it now, then I won’t have a problem in a few months.  (We will see how that works for me!)

Anyway, Gracie spent two days talking about her princess party.  Many conversations along these lines happened through out the later part of the week, especially when it was time to leave the house:

Gracie: Going to my happy birthday princess party?

Me: No baby girl, we have to get a plane to go to your princess party.

Gracie: Get on a plane and go to Maca (Jamaica) to my princess party?

Me: No loviebug, we have many sleeps before we go to your princess party.

Gracie: Ok, mommy, I go to my princess birthday party.

At some point you just give up and move on.  So I came up with the idea to have a princess party here at the house over the weekend.  So I went and got cupcake stuff so we could make sprinkle cupcakes and cookies and cream cupcakes which are daddy’s favorite.  We got all dressed up in our dress up princess clothes and aprons and made cupcakes.  We had so much fun.  Our friend Jamie came over to help us too!!!!   

Getting ready to have some baking fun!  You can see she opted for the tutu instead of her princess clothes…I was kind of surprised!

 

She had so much fun with the sprinkles…there were sprinkles EVERYWHERE!  It was a little nuts! 

Finished product (can you see the sprinkles that didn’t make it on the cupcakes?) 

Other then our princess cupcake party, we had a very relaxing weekend.  Only 4 more days until I get a four day weekend, well an almost 4 day weekend.  I am definitely looking forward to it.

Weekend Round-Up/LONG Week

Someone tell me why I volunteered to do overtime…I am working from 6:00 AM until 5:00 PM.  11 hours  a day.  It is only Tuesday.  How many more days until Friday, I am too tired to do math in my head…

Ok, enough about my pity party.  We had  great weekend.  It was a busy one, but worth it!  Friday Matt took his girls to Olive Garden.  Gracie has a serious love for their breadsticks and salad.  We now go through 2 bowls when we go.  We haven’t been going out as much lately since we have a big move coming up (still no official word yet) but the never ending pasta bowl was too good to pass up.  Gracie and I share so it is a pretty good deal for the Cunningham’s. 

Saturday we went to the zoo.  It was military appreciation day so we thought we would take advantage of the discounted tickets and see some animals.  Each time we go it gets so much more fun with Gracie.  This time she kept pointing out the animals and saying “See em?”  You see em?” She did a great job while we were there.  We thought we would try our luck without a stroller.  Amazingly enough, she did fantastic.  She is growing up so fast and becoming such a big girl!!!

Getting as close as she can…or at least we will let her!

The lions were her favorite all day, of course they were the closest.  Thank goodness for the plastic between us! 

 

After our zoo adventure, the three of us met our friend Jamie for some swimming.  We are coming to the end of the summer with only 2 more weekends to enjoy the outdoor pool.  Gracie has gained enough confidence to let go while in a life jacket.  We are not to far behind of course, but she is quite the little swimmer.  I am hoping to get her into some classes next summer, she really enjoys the pool.  She has been such a water baby since she was 4 months old.  We have gone from this: to this:

If you have noticed, little misses’ hair has gotten so long!  I have been planning on getting it cute for weeks just haven’t had the time.  When her curls are pulled straight, there is a few strands that reach between her shoulders.  This coming from the little girl who was pretty much bald until she was 18 months!

Off to bed I go…how many more days did you say??????

Upcoming Life Changes

I have talked about being a military family many times before.  It’s a life that so many live but not all can handle.  There are many aspects of this life I love, some I really hate.  The one that tops my list (other then Matt being gone which is pretty much an obvious given so it doesn’t count) is moving to a new duty station after a few years.  It is nice to be able to live in new places, see new things, have that change of pace and broaden horizons.  However, the hardest part is making friends and having to leave them.  I have  a lot of friends that I still keep in contact with from both duty stations.  I always talk about them in this context:

“Liz, my best friend from Germany” or “my friend from Ft. Lewis, Leda,…”

It is hard to share stories with people and talk about past experiences when your new friends have never met your other friends.  I am going to be doing the same thing in about 5 months (give or take a month, you know the Army NEVER works on your time).  I will be saying goodbye to a very dear friend here in El Paso.  She is going through life changes that I will won’t get to be a part of and that makes me very sad.  On a positive note (you know I always try to stay positive) and let me tell you, it’s a GREAT positive note, if the Army works in our favor, we will be stationed in Ft. Bragg, NC come this late winter/early spring!!!!!  Which means I will get to hopefully be neighbors (ok, ok, at least live in the same town) as Liz, Mike, Sophia, and Chase!  I am so stinking excited!  Of course, we have not received the official word, but still, I am hopeful.  I will not give up that hope for anything.  I look forward to many Saturdays, where the girls can play and Liz and I can have many girly chats while we watch Chase toddle after the girls! 

Liz and I spent pretty much 5 (ok, 6) out of 7 days a week together when our husbands were stationed in Friedberg.  It was an instant bond that flourished into a strong friendship.  We have so many memories (remember laughing hysterically coming back from IKEA, Liz?) and I am looking forward to many more.  This time around, we will have 3 more munchkins to add to the mix.  I have never met Sophia or Chase and Liz has never met Gracie.  (Did I mention Matt has met Sophia, not once but TWICE!?!?!?!  Do you know how unfair that is????) Anyway, this is our newest life changing event that we are praying works out to our benefit.

Matt goes to school for 2 months in October (where he will once again get to see the Salvog’s while I am sitting here in El Paso all by myself…*sigh*……).  Rumor has it that we should find out a definite word if we get to go before he leaves, but we are down to a month and half….not one word…..so we will see.  I am staying positive and doing as much planning as I can.  So keep us in your thoughts and prayers.  It’s something I haven’t felt comfortable talking about because I was unsure about who was reading, but now I know, so now you know! :) 

Both of these pictures were taken at the castle right outside of the town we lived in.  Muzenburg Castle was a very cool ruined castle…we visited there often!

High Energy Lil’ Girl

This whole week the Cunningham household has been running on an energy level of at least 10 if not 20.  I am so used to the level being at around 4 or 5.  I.am.exhausted.  I thought I would feel better after the weekend…not really.  Even though we had a fabulous weekend, I am laying here in bed wondering where it went.  It is amazing how time flies these days.  While I am driving home from work, I make a “To Do” list in my head.  It usually consists of who I need to make contact with, whether it be for business stuff or for personal stuff.  I have been meaning to call Liz back for about 5 days now. I just got a hold of Mariah & Aunt Joy today.  I have not talked to my sister in law for at least 2 weeks I think.  UGH!  *Do you feel the exhaustion just seeping out of every pore of my body?*  The good thing is, now hopefully things can calm down.  As much as I hate Mondays, it is a start of a new week and I can look forward to sleeping in on Friday (instead of the normal 4:30) since we have training day at work!   I also want to clue you in on some stuff that has been going on in the household since we have gone private.  Look for those posts later this week (although, no promises, I have to bring this energy level down before I can commit to anything!)

Anyhoo…on to the happenings in our life.  Nothing! ha!  I know, why so much energy?  I don’t know.  Gracie has started off the days sleeping when I drop her off at daycare, but by the time I pick her up from school, she her little engine is revved up and ready to go.  I feel like I had either meetings or errands to do after work all this week.  Matt also had a busy week.  Gracie has had a busy week bossing people around.  This is just a sample of the conversations that happen in our house these days:

Gracie:  I go to school mayrrow (tomorrow)?

Me: Yes baby, you go to school tomorrow.

Gracie: Daddy go to work mayrrow?

Me: Uh huh, he sure does.

Gracie: You go to school mayrrow?

Me: Mommy goes to work too tomorrow.

Gracie: NO MOMMY, I go to school mayrrow, daddy go to work mayrrow.  YOU.STAY. HERE!

Me: Are you going to tell my boss about this?

Gracie: No.  YOU. STAY.HERE!

She had me giggling!!!  The things she talks about all the time.  She stole the phone from me tonight when I was talking to Aunt Joy, her Nica, and they had a very nice long conversation.  I can only imagine what she was telling her, but she had fun!  Look at that face!

Saturday Matt and I had a date day.  You know how rare it is for us to do that, but I really wanted to take Matt to see the new movie Expendables.  It was great!  I actually really like action movies and this one did not disappoint.  It was great to spend a couple of hours with Matt.  It always takes me a few minutes to get used to not having Gracie around, but it is very important to take advantage of time together. 

 

Today, we went to Old Mesilla which is a fun little town outside of Las Cruces.  They have a very yummy restaurant I love to eat at.  It is called La Posta.  They have, of course, made renovations but they still serve in the same building they did over a 100 years ago.  It is very neat on the inside.  I love going up there to spend a few hours.  Gracie had fun playing in the court yard for a few minutes.  I am telling you, this girl has so much energy (are you sensing an energy theme yet?)

   Of course what happens to a little girl who runs around for about a good 30 minutes non-stop?

She is too funny.  She has been playing so much pretend playing lately.  This is a norm in our household.  I thought it was too cute to share, she is all dressed up in her princess clothes and shoes and pushing her baby. 

Here she is running/walking in the front yard with Bella and Sleeping Doodie.

Smiling with her Daddy…can’t you tell how tired he is…doesn’t she look like she is about to jump out of his arms and take off?

The first time I have painted her toenails.  So very messy but a certain little girl was so excited about getting them done she couple keep her little piggies still!

    

Last but not least a video.   It is two parts.  The first part is all about counting and princesses.  The second part she is just playing around.  She was singing up a storm so I thought I would record some of it.  It is a little bit long but so funny.  It will also give you an idea how she has been.  Disclaimer: this child insists on jumping on the couch…she knows she is not supposed to, but since the grandma’s don't think Gracie does anything wrong, I would hate to scold her for fear they may jump on a plane to come and rescue poor lil’ Gracie even though she is in the wrong…he he…just kidding Grandma’s.  Gracie and mommy did have a little chat after the jumping.  Sometimes, it just isn’t worth the battle.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Well, it is the start of a new week,  I hope it is a much calmer one!

Last Moments of Summer

The last moments of summer are finally upon us!  I know I don’t have school aged children or I am not a teacher (anymore, well at least an aide anymore) but seeing all the school supplies, hearing the chatter amongst all the kids, and the days slowly getting shorter and shorter, gives me the excited sense that fall is coming.  I love fall.  PERIOD.  Fall is my favorite season hands down.  I love the colors, I love the crispness in the air, I love all the preparation for the holidays.  I. Just. Love. Fall.  The bad thing is I live in El Paso which means I still have at least 2 if not 3 more months of summer weather, but summer activities follow the same schedule that the rest of them do, they shut down all pools after Labor Day.  We started out spending a lot of time at the “Wat-ter Park” as Gracie says but we took some time off of it due to busy busy busy schedules.  Saturday, we spent the whole day in the water.  We started off by having breakfast at Cracker Barrel.  Matt loves their breakfast.  He wanted to start of our family weekend with a good hearty breakfast.  We had a couple of visitors with us this trip:

Daddy had babysitting duty while Gracie played in a rocking chair!Such a sweet little face with a precious smile.  I love this girl.

Princess Bella (supposed to be Belle) and Princess Sleeping Doodie have been attached to Gracie’s hip.  We DO NOT leave the house with out Bella & Sleeping Doodie.  We will have a state of emergency if they are left behind.

After breakfast we started out at the kiddie water park on post.  It wasn’t very busy but there were a lot of bigger kids that were not very mindful of the smaller kids.  We did stay for about an hour.  Gracie was the picture perfect child.  She got out of the pool easily when it was lifeguard break.  She also did not throw her usual temper tantrum when we left either.  I took 195 pictures at the pool.  In my defense, I found a setting on my camera that will take 3 pictures at a time.  My last camera did the same thing but took like 20 pictures so I had never tried this feature before on this camera.  Leave it to me to find a setting that is perfect when you have a toddler when I have all but worn out my camera.  Here are a few (or many) of my favorites from the day.

 

           After all the excitement in the kiddie pool we went to the big pool where we found out that Gracie loves to be on her own, with no hands holding on to her with a life jacket on.  Of course we were always right there, but she loved it.  She was just a kicking all around like she has been swimming forever.  She is such a little fish.  I didn’t get any pictures at the big pool, I was just having so much fun with Matt and Gracie.  We were exhausted after all of that water that we went home and just took it easy for the rest of the night.

Today was movie day in the Cunningham household.  We black out the windows with blankets and watch movies all day.  Gracie preferred Wonder Pets in her play room.  It was so nice and relaxing.  The weekend actually went by very very slow.  Such a nice change of pace for us.  We are really trying hard to take it easy the next couple of weekends because time is going to start flying for us.  We have a lot going on in the next couple off months but more on that later.

Other then spending time outside in our little pool and trying to stay cool in the desert heat, it has been relatively calm.  We aren’t used to that but I have to admit, it’s nice!  Tomorrow is another week started which means only 4 more days until Friday.  Friday is a training day for us so I don’t have to be at work until 8 which is a nice change since we are used to getting up at 4:30!  I am going to leave you some pictures from  late last week.  After we got home on Thursday, we had some outside time where the entire household except me was enjoying the pool  The puppies jumped in for some fun and ended up getting a bath in the process! he he! 

Up & Running Private Style

First of all, a great big thank you to all of you that have decided to follow my ramblings about our life.  Now that I have know who is reading about our daily lives, then I can be a bit more free with information.  I know it may be a pain since you have to log into one more thing, but it’s for our favorite girls safety.

Speaking of our favorite girl, guess where we spent our evening last night?

Yep, that is a hospital bracelet right around Gracie’s ankle.  She kept complaining her knee hurt and wouldn’t let us put her down.  She would scream bloody murder every time we would attempt to put her down.  So I got worried and Matt said we needed to go to the ER.  Well, we thought we were going to spend half of our night there but they referred to us the Quick Care Clinic.  The doctor came in, look at Gracie’s knee and realized that nothing really serious was wrong.  She suspected that Gracie was experiencing growing pains.  Believe it or not, they are real, and Gracie thought they hurt!  I do believe she pulled a muscle so I kept her home today to let her rest, which her doctor thought was a good idea.  I love having days at home with my girl.  Although, I do believe she forgot how to go pee pee in the potty (apparently the floor is a GREAT place to pee.)  I am not kidding you, she just did it next to me and this is the conversation:
Mommy: “Gracie, where are you supposed to pee?”

Gracie: “Gracie put pee in the tolieyet”

Mommy: “Why did you pee on the floor?”

Gracie: “MMMMMM, I had to go!”

Oh living with a 2 year old…priceless.

Well, it is time for me to cook dinner so off I go to conquer the kitchen.  Look for more updates and pictures soon!

2 Week Catch Up

So I unintentionally took a 2 week blog break, but it did me good.  We honestly don’t have much to report anyway, but still, it gave me a chance to think a few things over.   Matt and I have had many chit chats over the risks of having a blog.  The pros always outweighed the cons.  But we still have our concerns.  Even though this a great way to keep our friends and family up to date on our lives, it leaves open all those we don’t know to follow us too.  Now I realize we have friends of friends of friends who like to follow us.  I have actually become friends with many of my friends of friends of friends through blogs.  After many mini-debates, we have decided to follow some fellow bloggers and go private.  I will be officially going private as of Wednesday.  So please, please send me your email address to tfcunningham3@gmail.com so I can add you as a follower.  Now this will mean that you will have to sign in each to you want to check in, but you can set the settings to remember you so that is pretty easy.  You may also have to sign up for a Google account too, but if you are like me, then you have a million emails anyway, so why not add one more (I am not for sure you have too, but I just want to give you fair warning.) 

Ok, so on to the fun stuff.  Have you ever had a 2 1/2 year old in your house?  It is the funniest thing ever!  I can’t even think of any of the stuff she says or does, but it cracks me up.  Here are a few examples.

“Momma, there is an ant in my eye!’ (Yes we still have a fear of ants or she finds them and stomps on them.)

“Mommy, babies crying!” (As she hands her too me because I am fix everything right?)

“Mama, daddy at work.  Not home. Come home Daddy, right now.”

“Whose that?  Mommy, is that _________?” (Fill in Grandma, Nica, Riah {Mariah}, Liz, Jaime, or Katie)

And my personal favorite:

The other day after Matt got off of CQ, Gracie and I came home to find him still in bed.  So we went upstairs to tell him we had arrived with all the entourage in tow.  Daisy and Harley beat us into the bed, so at least he had fair warning, usually Gracie is a little excited to see her Daddy.  But this day in particular she seemed to understand he was still very sleepy.  She was sweet gave him hugs and kisses then let him go back to sleep.  While we were heading downstairs, this is the conversation Gracie and I had:

Mommy: Gracie you make Mommy & Daddy’s heart happy.  Are you Mommy’s princess?

Gracie, who by the way stops dead in her tracks, replies: “NO Mommy!  I am DADDY’S princess!

Mommy:  Well, ok, are you Mommy’s loviebug?

Gracie, who has now headed back up the stairs: No, I am daddy’s loviebug.

She then goes upstairs to tell Daddy that she is his princess with a sweet hug and kiss.  I have to admit, my heart broke just a little bit.  She still holds true to the fact that she is Daddy’s Princess, but she is finally my loviebug all over again.

We have had a good couple of weekends, Matt finally finished up with his class now I just have to get caught up on the million projects I have going on.  I wanted to finish up at least two of them this weekend, but I came down with strep throat AGAIN!  At work on Friday I started feeling dizzy and got the chills.  I called Matt and had him pick up Gracie which most of you know that I rarely want Gracie to stay in daycare after 4:00/4:30 at the latest.  The girl goes at 5:45 every day!  Anyway, I felt better after a nap but was still pretty feverish.  Yesterday I woke up with the worst sore throat.  I went to the doctor and after 3 doctors (2 in training) looked at my throat they gave me to shots and another 10 day antibiotic.  I am really hoping it works this time, I am such a baby when I am sick and I know Matt is over me being sick.

Other then that it has been a chill weekend.  Like I said nothing new to report.  It has either been too rainy or too hot to do anything fun.  Hopefully next weekend I will be feeling better and we can actually go do something!  I have taken a few pictures over the last few weeks.

Gracie loves to play with her puppies…Harley is her buddy.

 

A few kisses for Mommy!  

This is what bath time looks like now…I wondered why my body wash seemed watery….

 

See how long her hair is?  We are actually going to get it cut here soon.  She is major need of getting it evened out. 

I love this picture.  She is pointing at the ice cream truck that comes through our neighborhood on a daily basis.  We have a major ice cream addiction in our house!

 

Well, that is it for the Cunningham Household catch up!  Don’t forget to send me your email address at tfcunningham3@gmail.com so that way you can continue to check on on Lil’ Miss Gracie!