Look Mommy, I'm a Chef

What can I say my child is in LOVE with all things cooking. Really, I don't know where she gets it from....ok maybe from her Mommy, her Grandfather(my dad), and her Great Grandmother(my Nanny, my dad's mom). Any chance she gets she wants to get her hands dirty in the kitchen. It is absolutely adorable, most of the time. Tonight was no exception. See Olivia has a very limited repertoire of foods she eats--mainly mac & cheese, cheese, cheese quesadilla's, cheese pizza, and fruit. Did you see a pattern there-CHEESE!! My girl needs a cow she eats so much cheese. When we order pizza Olivia likes hers cheese, NO sauce. Yeah, my 2 year old likes to eat white pizza and no you can't get it in the frozen food section of Publix. So what is a Mommy to do so her child can eat pizza at home??? I bought fresh pizza dough and mozzarella cheese and we went to town in the kitchen tonight. She got to make her very own personal pan pizza in the comfort of her own kitchen. Not only did she have a great time making it I'm now able to make 4 of these bad boys for only $2.50, much better then $5 a piece from Pizza Hut.

Look Mommy, I'm a chef!!

I wish I took a picture of the smile she had on her face when we put her pizza in the oven. She was so proud of herself and I was just as proud of her. We of course had to put the light in the oven on so we could watch it bake. At dinner time she ate her pizza and told Daddy more then once that she made it herself.

Christmas 2010

I have to say this was probably the best Christmas of my life. Olivia has been so much fun, I couldn't have asked for a better gift! We have had a wonderful vacation too, I love being able to have time off during such a fun time of year. Here are the highlights of Christmas...

Olivia had her first Preschool party, oh what fun! Playing with some friends after having a snack. She also had her first Christmas program. We practiced her songs and poems for almost a month, she was doing a great job singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells and this is what she did the entire time she was on stage...chewed on her fingers. Yeah, my kid who talks all the time, can't close her mouth didn't sing a word on stage. I was actually waiting for tears when she first got up there. Thank goodness there were no tears but there was no singing either. Oh well, whata memory we have now of her at age 2. I was a proud Mommy and she was certainly proud too. As soon as we got her after her performance she asked me "Mommy did you see me singing with my friends?" Of course I did honey you did GREAT!!

We made a visit to the man in red too...Santa Claus that is. After waiting in a COLD line for an hour and a half we got to go in a take a quick picture. She was so happy!!

Since we were off and Olivia has a flair for crafts we decided to make a snowman out of cotton balls. Oh what fun and what a mess, I think I'm still finding cotton balls under my bakers rack a week later. She is proud of her creation, whenever someone comes over she drags them to the pantry door and shows them her Snowman.

And finally we decorated cookies for Santa.

I offically win the bad mom award this year since I didn't take one single picture of our tree after Santa arrived or of Olivia opening her gifts or playing with them. I was so involved with her I didn't bother to grab my camera, not a one-BUMMER! I do however have a video that Olivia's Poppy took for me, thanks Stacy!! So if I can figure it out I'll load them so you can see her on Christmas morning with all her goodies.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas this year too!!

Wordless Wednesday

Photos courtesy of Julie Paisley Photography

Did Someone Say FREE?!?!?!?

So last week I was doing my nightly ritual of reading blogs I saw that Kerri posted about getting 50 FREE Shutterfly Christmas cards. Seriously, FREE Christmas cards Santa had come early. I LOVE to make our Christmas card every year since we had Olivia. It's so much fun but also so stressful, which picture to use.

I've used Shutterfly in the past to print pictures of my sweet Olivia, the quality is great and shipping is quick. While persuing Shutterfly to look for the perfect card I happened upon photo calendars, I think we may be getting one of these to see how Olivia has grown over the past year and the memories we've made. I also took a look at the photo mugs, what a cute idea for the coffee drinker in your life. I've also used their servies the past two years for our family Christmas card with lots of compliments. Here are some of my favorites this year, there were so many to pick from so you may or may not see one of them in a mailbox near you.

Now that I've looked at all my choices and narrowed it down, a little, I can't wait to see the rest of our Christmas photos we had taken a few weeks ago!!

Spur Of The Moment Trip

This morning while getting ready I had a wonderful thought, why don't we go to the zoo? So, I looked over at Paul and asked him to go with us. Why not go...we have a zoo pass, it was a beautiful day, and we haven't been in a while? My quick little trip turned into a 3 hour trip but we had a great time. I'll let the pictures tell the story...there are a lot of pictures in no particular order and you will notice the difference in size, I tried something new when uploading and didn't realize how big they were until I was about half way done-oh well!

Enjoy the highlights of our day!!

Looonnngg Overdue

This post is looonnnggg overdue. I've been trying to post for weeks but there just aren't enough hours in the day. I looked at the last time I posted, August 10, wow that was almost three months ago. So what have we been doing for the past three months you ask-work, play, work, life. We've been busy, busy, busy to say the least. Since I last posted I've returned to work which was pretty overwhelming the first few weeks. I felt like this year has been more stressful then the past few due to all of the new testing and stuff we are required to do. Well, enough about work you don't want to hear about that.

On to the good stuff--our exciting family life. We have been doing so much and having tons fo fun doing it. Olivia has started preschool and LOVES it. We started off rocky, as I posted a while back, but now she's doing great. She looks forward to going to school every Tuesday and Thursday. I love to hear all of the fun things she does at school. I hate that I have to work and can't take or pick her up but that's just part of life. I am excited that I have today off and will be able to drop her off and pick her up, I'm sure her teacher will be shocked to see me-heck to meet me.

Halloween was a few weeks ago and this year was so much fun. Olivia had her first Halloween party at school, which I had to miss. Luckily, Paul is able to go to all her school events and take LOTS of pictures for me. She dressed up with all of her little classmates and had a little party.





We also went trick or treating with Kelly, Russell, and Grady. Olivia had the best time trick or treating this year. She was so great at saying trick or treat at every door we went to and was always sure to use good manners and say thank you. She is so polite! Olivia and Grady wore themselves out running down the street with their candy bags. But after about 30 minutes they wanted to be carried and I'm sure wanted to go home. But they were troopers they stuck it out for another 30 minutes. Needless to say we got a pretty good bit of candy the kids had fun and we were all TIRED!



Isn't she just the cutest pirate you've ever seen?!?!?

If A Cat Can Have One So Can Olivia

One of Olivia's favorite books is If You Give a Cat a Cupcake so of course since we read it almost everynight she insisted on making cupcakes WITH sprinkles like the cat. What fun we had!!! We started in the morning and made the batter to bake them, she just thought that was fantastic. She had a smile on her face the entire time. Once she woke up from her nap the cupcakes were cooled and ready for frosting and sprinkles. Olivia tried, notice I said tried, to help ...what she really did was make one heck of a mess. But hey it was all in good fun and we've had yummy snacks for the past few days.

Look at all those sprinklesPoking holes in cupcakes before they were frosted. I think she was trying to put the frosting from her hands on the cupcakes to help me.

Why put just a few sprinkles on a cupcake when you can pour the entire bowl of sprinkles on it.

She then decided to takea bite of the cupcake, well at least lick the frosting off of it. What a funny face:)

First, I LOVE this photo. I don't know why I just do. She was washing down all of those sprinkles, way too much sugar.

We are now pool people, yep we got an above ground pool. We just love good deals especially when they're FREE. Olivia has been a fish since we got the pool. She has even gotten comfortable enough to swim with her swimmies not just her lifejacket. Of course every night we have to race Daddy around the pool, for some reason he loses everytime;)

Smiling from ear to ear while swimming with Daddy.