And FINALLY the day came when those tutus that filled my every waking hour were put to good use :)

Monday the 13th was their first performance and it worked out that Flower Child's dad was able to attend and the Boy was out of school so he could too! Usually these types of fun things happen when he's at his mom's house so he misses out. He was REALLY excited to get to go to this one!

The girls looked ADORABLE!!

This was Flower Child's first RUN on stage lol. Her first part was Mercury (the planet) and she runs on stage, speeds through her lines (because she's the fastest spinning planet) and runs back off. A total of 22.5 seconds I think ;)

OH BOY was this play science-y. There was so much science jammed into this HOUR LONG PLAY that it was practically OOZING with nerdness. lol It's a GATE play and so I guess I should have expected it but OH MAMA was it JAM PACKED WITH THE SCIENCE.

Then for her second part she was a Venette. Which is the back up singer for Venus who sings about how hot she is ;) LOL Oh how my camera sucks at the action shots >:-/

The final dance number a sweet forever later ...

And the group shop of all the players :) Note the SWEET space ship to the right ;)

Their budget, it's limited lol


After an all to short minimum day, I had the kids all sit down and do some fun Valentine's stuff :)

While I worked on the teacher's gifts, they worked on some cards for each other.

I found this super cute set at Walmart of 24 foam cards with foam stickers to decorate with. They had so much fun decorating cards and filling them out with what they love about each other :)

Teen decided she wanted to make some goodies to take to her friends so she busted out her brownie/mini cupcake maker and used this AWESOME recipe I found on Pinterest. They tasted JUST LIKE the box mix only WAY better!

And then because my plans for a perfectly lovely Valentines Dinner didn't exactly work out, we had pizza with Valentines plates ;)

We were together though, and that's what counts :)

After the kids went off to bed I brought down a few things I got for them.

We don't do a LOT for Valentines Day, but I did get them a little something. I found these adorable mail boxes at Target in the dollar aisle and had totally planned on decorating them but time was against me. Something to do for next year! I got them each a card, pencil, sucker, candy, and then they had each others cards to read too :)

I had planned on making something for breakfast too buuuuuut ... well you know ;)

So I picked up some raspberry and orange scones and strawberries and they were pretty excited about it :)

Then they got to go through their mailboxes and were so cute reading all of the little love notes :)

My girlies on the way out the door :)

That night we had Flower Child's evening performance! I was just barely able to get this picture since my camera hates movement of any kind.

DH made it JUST in the nick of time. He'd been working about a month straight with no day off, had just come off of 3 days straight of 20 hours EACH. He was headed home and he could have gone straight home and taken a shower, had dinner or just gone to bed - but he went straight from his 3 hour drive home to his step daughters play, and was happy to be there :)

If that's not love, I don't know what is.


Flower Child and her bestie :)

The players

The next day was tough. It started with a LOT of attitude from a few of the kids that didn't end til they were pushed out of the car to school, and didn't improve much through the day.

The hubs has been dealing with some pretty horrible conditions with his work and they were BEYOND stressing him out. Which of course, stresses ME out. And he was off again for another few days to work.

He knew things were getting to me and messaged me throughout the day to see how *I* was doing. I usually try to be strong and not let him know how much this all gets to me, but he can tell.

So he sent me these :) Not for Valentine's Day, but just because I was having a REALLY bad day. Love that man of mine :)

This was one of those slow but busy weekends. Funny because I felt like it was go-go-go but we only left the house once!

Since the hubs was working out of town I kinda took it upon myself to declare this weekend a "jammies til noon if not later" weekend :)

And we did.

I had a LOT that needed to get done this weekend though, and it actually GOT DONE which was AWESOME. Lil Miss needs to have her Valentines ready to take to class on Monday so once I finally decided what to do it was time to get to work!

It was good though because it gave the two of us something to do together.

On the Boy's weekends when the hubs is working I have to make a little extra time for Lil Miss. Since the Boys is almost 13 {omg} he doesn't really have a lot in common with her. She BEGS him to play with her but he would rather be out skateboarding with his friends. Which is totally understandable.

To help her deal with it, I've got to have distractions ready to go at a whiney moments notice.

So I had her help me with her class Valentines.

They came out SO CUTE! These are for the girls ...

And for the boys ...

I posted about them here, I just LOVE how they came out! They were relatively inexpensive and easy and she LOVES them :)

Today we did some baking :) Besides doing her Valentines, I needed to finish up Flower Child's costumes for her play, and I decided to take a break when Lil Miss started complaining about the Boy not playing with her.

We were out of granola bars and had some bananas that were JUST RIGHT for muffins so that kept us busy. And gave me a nice excuse to get away from all the tulle lol

The Banana Cream Cheese Muffins I had pinned were givin me the stink eye so we made em ;) The recipe is for bread but these came out pretty good!

And I FINALLY FINALLY finished Flower Child's costumes :) Since her part is part of a quartet singing part, it was kind of important that costumes matched. And since the GATE program doesn't get much funding, the costumes are up to the kids {read: PARENTS}, I told the girls I would make all of their costumes so they would match :)

This is my sweet girl's costume and I am just SO excited to see her in it tomorrow!!

This is her OTHER costume since my little one isn't content with ONE part ... she wanted two ;) I'm lucky that we were able to come up with a costume that could double though! In fact, all of the costumes were her idea right down to the colors. She was VERY PARTICULAR in what they should look like ... I just made em ;)

Tomorrow should be fun ... busy, as in NON FREAKING STOP, but fun :) Can't wait to see my performer up on the stage!

This afternoon I was treated to a meal at the Cafe De Lil Miss.

After quiet time, Lil Miss asked if I would come and eat at her cafe. I went up to join her but she was still busy making out her menu. She looked up at me and gave me the o.O look and said ...

"Um ... can you change into something ... pretty? You need a dress ... and a necklace ... and high heels."

I asked if I could just put on a necklace, but the heels were a non-negotiable. So after I was appropriately dressed, she runs an UPSCALE cafe don'tyouknow ;), I was escorted into the cafe where I was informed of their cell phone policy ...

"Now, please turn off your cell phone because it's annoying to the other people. If you need to make a call, make it OUTSIDE." - LOL

Then she handed me the menu ;) Normally her handwriting is better ... she was in a rush lol.

After ordering the "meat meat" I looked over the dessert menu and ate my pretzel appetizer. I then had to reselect since they were "all out of the meat meat", I chose the "chicken beef" ;)

My lovely meal :) and notice the fact that the "chicken beef" is invisible, which makes me laugh because the "meat meat" would have been too ... and yet "Sorry, we're all out". LOL!

Hard at work on the bill ... to which she made clear I was to use "REAL MONEY, PLEASE".

She is ALL about the details ;)

Making a lovely raspberry cake for dessert :)

Normally, patrons are discouraged from taking pictures of the waitress, but she made an exception for me ;)

Love that silly funny crazy girl of mine!

I swear I couldn't tell you whats been going on around here for the last month if I wanted to. Looking in my photo folders on the computer, there's a serious lack of proof that we did anything beyond lay around the house in our jammies.

I've been going through some stuff. Some things that piss me off, some things that make me sad, some that do both. And I don't always see how things are affecting me until they all come to a head like they have this week.

You know, when all of the stuff you thought you were handling and then a bunch of NEW crap come together and you just feel like you JUST CAN'T TAKE NO MORE. Yeah, like that.

It just sucks all around. To make matters worse, the hubs has been working non stop. I mean, that sounds great, and it IS great that he's working, but unfortunately it's just not that simple.

He's rarely home and when he is, he's stressed out. Despite all the work, there is still issues with getting paid on time, or at all, and that is BEYOND frustrating. Plus, I miss him like crazy.

Anyway, just had to get a few things off the chest without actually saying anything lol.

I have been busy with a few things like making costumes for Flower Child's upcoming play :) Her, and her 3 friends who have a singing part together lol. So that's kept me busy. Plus there's the gym, and all the pinning ... THAT can be an issue!

I have taken a few pictures though :) Teen curled Lil Misses hair one afternoon (I love that my girls have sisters, makes my heart smile :)) it was ADORABLE. It took her an HOUR lol. But it was SO cute that I want to make her do it everyday :) It made it just a little bit harder to be mad at her ... and I'll take all the help I can get ;)

The weekend we had rain here, first and pretty much ONLY this year so far, I pulled out something I picked up at the dollar store! These ADORABLE little cardboard doll houses! They made for HOURS of entertainment :) Although, some of those hours were spent arguing over who owned the Tea House since there was only one and they had to share. To fix the arguing problem, I pulled out my head phones and watched an episode of Alcatraz on my computer :) PROBLEM SOLVED.

*P.S.* SUPER AWESOME SHOW YOU MUST WATCH IT SO IT STAYS. Monday Nights on Fox :)

Last weekend we had an Anti Super Bowl Party. It was Teen's idea. The hubs was going to be working out of town and it was the girls weekend so it was just gonna be us chicks! Since none of us, including the hubs, give a flying crap about football I thought it would be fun to do girly stuff but still have the snacks ... cause we ALL KNOW, it's all bout the snacks :)

So we did some Valentine related decorating and activities, and decorated using Valentinesy colors (contrary to my crappy cameras crappy photos).

We made Valentine cupcakes, had Valentine candy, chips and a meat and cheese tray, plus some REALLY awesome stuff I baked with recipes from my Pinterest Appetizer Board :D YAY PINNING! It was fun. We ate, we watched commercials, and the best part was, it was close enough that it doubled as dinner :)

We also went out to dinner! Which might not sound like much, but round here, we just don't get to do that. We rarely EVER go out, and when we do, it's not with the kids. YOU DON'T KNOW HOW THESE PEOPLE EAT!! It's too expensive, so usually we just don't ever go out.

But since I seriously couldn't remember the last time we had, I felt it would be a good time to! Plus the hubs was leaving until Monday night so we thought it would be fun to do before he left.

Not a great picture, but proves we were there ... and not in our jammies ;)