Home alone

As many of you know, Stanton left the country for a few days. And by a few days, I mean he was gone from about 8pm on July 2nd to about 6:30am on July 13th. He had a nice time at the Coco-tech conference in Thailand, but we're glad to have him back. As I previously mentioned, my pal Al came to stay with us for a few days. I really can't begin to say how much of a blessing that was to me. Just amazing! Sadly, because we were just hanging out, I didn't really take too many pictures. But here's a few little bits from our time without Daddy.

Alycia showed up on July 3rd in time for dinner. From the very start, she was ready to play with the kids. She and Jacob had many in depth conversations throughout her time here.
Chaselyn has had reactions to strawberries in the past. So I was trying to find some yogurt packs without strawberry. All I could find was Trix yogurt. She was super happy to try the fun colored treat. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say stomach juices don't break down whatever dye was in the special treat.

And of course, after the 3rd of July comes the 4th of July. We had our own little party complete with glow jewelry and sparklers. Chaselyn wasn't quite as excited about the glow sticks as I had hoped. But then again, we waited for it to get dark which meant it was already way past bedtime when we got started.




Besides the 4th, like I've said, we didn't do much just sat around while Alycia painted.


Alycia left on the 8th. It was sad to see her go. But there was some mention of work and pay checks and a husband that made her have to leave. As a surprise to Daddy, we were going to make a special little decoration in the laundry room. I was going to have Chaselyn and Jacob put their handprints on the wall. Then we could date them with a Sharpie and have a fun little growth chart as decoration. So, I got things ready. Chaselyn put on one of my old painting shirts. I decided to go with a bright teal color. Al thought it would be cute to use a brown so it would look like muddy hands, but I was feeling the bright colors for the kids project. See that look on her face, she's looking at the paint. Someone tell me why I didn't notice the look on the poor girls face.

So, focused on the task at hand, I put Chaselyn's hand into the paint. She gave me a funny face. Then I told her to put her hand on the wall. She refused starting to reveal disgust toward the paint on her hand. I realized I was about to lose her. So I took her hand and pressed it against the wall. She promptly started waving her hand from side to side making a blurry blob. I said "Oh No!" to which she responded by crying and saying "eewie!". I quickly cleaned off her hand of the paint to stop the crying and quickly got a rag to wipe off the blob of teal paint on the beige wall. I actually got it off pretty well. I won't say that I got it all off, but unless you know it's there, you don't see it...I think.

So after the failed experiment on my wall. I figured maybe after a couple painting lessons she might warm up to the paint on the hand idea. So we went to the table with brushes, paper plates and lots of colors. She liked that a lot better. And after doing some demonstrations of making handprints on the plates, she was becoming more comfortable with paint on her hand. Hopefully after a couple more trials on the plates, I can get her to do the wall better.


Who can guess what's special about this next pic?

Yes, the red and white polka dots are cute (Thanks Great Aunt Karen!!) but that's not it. It's my baby girls first official pony tail. Isn't it adorable?! It just makes me happy to see that little curl with a little bow.

And what else do you do when you're waiting on Daddy to come home? Go grocery shopping to have all his favorite treats when he gets home. And this my friends is how you can get 2 kids and a full load of groceries. I had been wondering about how to do it for a while. You go to HEB with the big buggies. Then both kiddos can sit up front and you have all the basket space for food.

And yes, that is a Sonic cup and flowers. Chaselyn may have sneaked a few sips of Mommy's strawberry limeade during our tours through the aisles. And yes, those are some fresh roses. A special treat for the girls of the house.

I don't have pictures, but there's something else I want to remember. One day I was browsing the internet for Stanton's birthday present, some new running shoes. Chaselyn caught me and started pointing to the screen yelling "Ooshs!" which is how she said shoes. Thinking that was just adorable and knowing how crazy she is about shoes (see Jacob's feet in the picture above. Also one of her favorite 2 word phrases is "Momma ... Shoe"), I started perusing for little girl shoes. She went crazy trying to pull shoes out of the screen. I had unknowingly created a problem. For the next couple days anytime I pulled out the laptop, she would come over and ask for shoes.

Another time I was playing on the laptop, I was watching the 10 minutes with Chaselyn video. And the most precious and heartbreaking thing happened. She started crying for her Daddy and tried to pull him out of the screen. Up until that point, she was fine with Daddy being gone. She would ask about him and I would tell her that he was at work and he would be back later. And she would carry on with her play time. But seeing him in the video made her want her Daddy right there. She watched the video about 5 times in a row. She stopped crying and started laughing and playing along with herself in the video. So I know she wasn't scarred by it. But it was hard for me to handle at first. But then after a couple days, this happened...
...and that moment made any little bumps we had had over the past few days just melt away!