Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 #20

Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful mommys out there! Give yourself a pat on the back for everything that you do!

Up:

• It is rare that it happens, but this year my birthday falls on Mother's Day!  I think it's pretty cool! I was also born on Mother's Day back in 1984 - best Mother's Day present ever (I'm guessing)! What a blessing 28 years later to be celebrating my own birthday and being a mother to my two precious babies - Jackson & Kennedy!

• We enjoyed great company with friends for dinner today! Not to mention Mike smoked another fabulous brisket! Thanks everyone for making today special!
• A while back my friend Lauren asked me if I would be interested in having a group of girls over to the house to learn about organization. I was definitely flattered that she thought I had something to offer, but didn't really know how to teach people to organize short of giving them a tour of the whole house to show them what I had done, so that's what I did! I think the evening went really well and I hope they took something away from it. 

Down:

• Talk about a bad day. Monday we drove home from Salt Lake City, surprisingly the drive home was smooth and uneventful. As soon as we get home I started unloading the car. Jackson said he wanted to draw with chalk on his easel, which I thought was a good idea to keep him entertained while I was still unloading. BIG MISTAKE! He decided to do some more art on the walls upstairs. Then later that evening as I was switching out the laundry, he happened upon my purse. He found my lip stick pouch, unzipped it and picked out my favorite lipstick (which is no longer made) and decided he would color all over our white carpet in the living room. I was livid! Unfortunately after all my efforts to get the stain up, it didn't work and I'm sure we'll be paying for that when we move out. Sorry, I was too mad in the moment to get pics of these events. 
• To top that day off, after the kids went to bed I decided to put together the new toy storage system we purchased at Ikea. Of course I didn't get very far. Apparently there was some type of manufacturer's error and the holes were drilled in the wrong place by like a 1/4-1/2"!!!! I was really upset because on Thursday night I had a group of girls over to show them all my organizational stuff. Even though I wasn't able to have those in place for my talk, Ikea pulled through and is sending me replacements. They are also letting me keep the defective ones which I think my Dad could probably rig and make them work too! Needless to say that day ended with a much needed glass of wine and some DVR'd Grey's Anatomy to make me feel better!

Kennedy, so happy about the warmer weather so she can wear cute stuff like this!

...and these tiny adorable shoes!

The fruit is starting to be on sale again so I made a delicious fruit pizza!

We went bowling when Daddy got home on Friday. Love Jackson's stance here!

There's that stance again while he watches Daddy.

Kennedy watching the bowling from the side lines.

Don't know if you can see it but this is the closest I've ever been to a real beehive. This was in a tree in the Babies 'R Us parking lot of all places. They just called the exterminator thankfully! 

Forgot to post this last week. This is the gorgeous Catholic church in Sun Valley. Unfortunately they only do weekend masses and we weren't there on Sat. or Sun. There's always next time!

Favorite Thing:

I love a good challenge! A couple of weeks ago I purchased a twin bed off a local classifieds site. I had been wanting a twin bed to put in K's room so that when we have guests, Jackson can just sleep in there with her. Specifically I wanted a Captain's bed because those have a lot of built in storage. If you were to purchase one they range from $400-600. Obviously that is not in Mike's 'value tree' as he would say. Then I found a Captain's bed on this site for $200 - what a steal! I'm pretty proud of myself because this has been my project all the way through. I took Mike's pick-up and picked up the bed myself, unloaded it myself, sanded and stained it, repaired a broken drawer and replaced the knobs. Of course I had some guidance from my Dad, but I did all the work. To get to the point, my favorite thing this week is more of a challenge - to do something for yourself to make you feel proud and accomplished. It could be anything - making, crafting, organizing something - anything! I think sometimes as moms we get wrapped up in our children and doing things for/with them that we sometimes lose sight of the things that make us happy and keep us sane. I think it's so important to hold on to that because that is what makes us who we are and helps us set a good example for our children to be independent and your own person. I think I'm rambling now, but I just wanted to say that I had so much fun redoing this bed. It didn't turn out like I envisioned, but like Mike said, "Did you have fun doing it? Then is was worth every penny!" Here are some before and after pics:

Before

After