instafriday

someone is not a fan of shoes – hoop art swap on instagram – all my boys making noise

playing peek-a-boo with daddy in the car – the magic chair at nana's house – drive home from TN knocks him out every time

nugget got some new kicks – he loves the bath, mostly – attack of the bubbles

the cats all lined up so i had to snap a shot – dreaming up something new – coffee

baby eating spaghetti – road trip to ikea on a thursday – i love ikea

ikea warehouse – we joined ikea family; i got free ice cream – birthday boy enjoying his treat too

i'm linking up with jeannett over at life rearranged this week. i see people do this every single friday and decided to [finally] join in.

hoop art swap

a couple of weeks ago, i was flipping through my instagram feed (i'm @becca7903 on there if you wanna follow) and came across a photo with some hoop art on it. across the picture were some words about a hoop art swap. mandy (@mandipidy on instagram if you want to follow her) was the genius behind the idea, so i emailed her immediately, knowing that i wanted to participate. andplusalso? it's always fun to meet new people and challenge yourself to come up with new ideas.

and lucky me? my trade partner ended up being mandy herself. gulp. ok, becca, time to pull something awesome together. (by the way, i LOVE the art i received. trying to find the perfect place to display it. i'm thinking somewhere in the master bedroom.)

so, you know, why not try embroidery for the first time in your entire life? sounds like a good idea to me. and so i did. i'm really pleased with how it turned out too. sort of a quilt-ish type background with some bright yellow embroidery on top. i really enjoyed getting to push myself doing something that's a little out of my element. good times for sure. so glad that i was able to participate!

our big boy

y'all, short of sawyer being born last summer, our big boy has never spent the night away from us. (i know.) and even then, we saw him both days we were in the hospital. but for the rest of this week? he'll be spending some lovely time with his granna and poppa. two nights away from home. we won't see him again until friday. did i mention that he's not just down the road? he'll be at least an hour away, maybe a few minutes longer?

and i know it's fine. i know that it's good for all of us. but, what will we do with all the quiet time? little man is almost always talking. or singing. or yelling. or just making up sounds because it's so cool and how much longer can i do this until mama or daddy tell me to stop? whew.

i don't even think that jeremy and i know what to do with just one child anymore. sawyer goes to bed around 7. (and i bet sawyer's going to miss his brother like crazy!) it's like we're going to have all the free time in the world. which is trouble for us. tonight? we'll probably do some laundry. i might paint my toenails. oh, and we'll probably shampoo the master bedroom carpet while we rearrange all the furniture. yep. that's right. party at our house tonight. ha.

i already miss my cayden. and he's only at school right now. which happens every. single. day. silly hormones.

july birchbox

so, it may seem silly to do a post on this, but i've seen others doing it and i thought it was neat to see what other people got in their birchbox. sure, they tell you that your box will be customized to you, but really? i just presumed that everyone always got the same things. i couldn't have been more wrong!

each month when my little gift arrives, i get so excited about what might possibly be in it. and, being surrounded by all boys pretty much all the time, it's nice to have those little girly moments for myself. this month, i received:

– harvey prince hello perfume

– some earbuds

– eyeko skinny liquid eyeliner

– a lärabar sample

– boscia b.b. cream

– amika hair nourishing mask

– amika hair oil treatment

so far, i've tested the perfume (lovely, lovely scent, but pretty sure it'll give me a headache) and the hair nourishing mask. i might have to choke up the $40 to get the hair stuff, because, wow. my hair feels all pretty and looks healthier to me. jeremy tested my earbuds, and while they look happy, they apparently don't sound so happy. and i'll definitely be eating that lärabar sample soon (as long as my hubby hasn't beat me to it!).

and if you don't know what birchbox is, you should check it out. $10 a month for some fun girly samples! totally worth it to me. want to share what was in yours? leave a link in the comments!

sawyer's first birthday party

we had sawyer's first birthday party almost two weeks ago. y'all, i'm so behind on photo editing that it's not even funny. i still haven't sat down and gone through our beach vacation photos. one day. maybe this weekend?

either way, we had a great time at sawyer's birthday party. we had a bit of a sock monkey theme going on. mostly using the colors for decorations (red, brown and white) and i made sock monkeys as favors for all the kids. (as a side note, i find cayden's sock monkey in all sorts of places. he loves it!) we had hot dogs, baked beans and chips. and for desserts there were cupcakes, oreo truffles, banana pudding and cookies.

sawyer got a ton of lovely gifts and i was amazed that no one brought the same thing, or brought something that we already had with cayden. i'd say that's pretty impressive. sawyer has some special people that love him, that's for sure.

and little dude? he ate that cake like a pro. like he'd had cake every day of his life and this wasn't the first time he'd had anything like that. looking back, jeremy and i are both kicking ourselves for not filming that little scene. it. was. awesome. a quick bath to clean the boy up and he was ready to hang out with all his friends and family.

first birthdays are always so bittersweet. we had a wonderful time, and even though we had 103º weather that day, we all enjoyed it. from the inside of the house with the AC blasting. thanks friends and family for coming. we love you all!

oh, & then this happened

red, white & blue

the boys are both having their fourth of july parties at school today. and you know what that means? special treat time! i look back to the first fourth of july party that cayden had. and how we were the last people to sign up for something for the party and we ended up with sandwiches. we were so bummed, but made the most of it.

since then, we've tried to jump on the signing-up bandwagon as soon as those sheets are hung. we like to get creative and try to stretch our brains on ways to come up with new things. at halloween, we jumped on the owl cupcake bandwagon. seems like we did something kind of cool for the christmas party too, but now i can't remember if we did or not. (oh, hey look. we made cookies at christmas.) at easter? we opted to just give $5 for pizza. we got lazy.

so, for the fourth, we wanted to try to get creative again. and where do we go when we want to get creative? pinterest, of course! jello cookies for the win! and while the cookies we made turned out pretty, the recipe was a fail for us because we could not find any blue colored jello. we unloaded some blue food coloring on those puppies and let them fly. oh, and red colored jello? makes mostly magenta colored cookies. and adding red food coloring to them? well, you should probably wear gloves. that stuff dies your skin. i mean, not that i've learned from experience or anything. (but i have.)

we taste-tested the cookies last night. and y'all? best sugar cookie recipe i've ever tasted. it ::might:: have something to do with the three sticks of butter. maybe. or most definitely.

and just as a funny fact for us: we were trying to remember what we made for cayden's fourth of july party last year. then we remembered we'd just had a baby. and that's when we realized that we didn't send anything to cayden's party last year. just him. so our kid had a fun patriotic party that we didn't supply anything for. nice, right?

twelve months old

one year. twelve months. fifty-two weeks. three hundred and sixty-six days. (it was a leap year!)

no matter how you say it, this past year has flown by for us sweet sawyer. i mean, it was unbelievably fast and one that we're very glad we documented with photos and little video snippets. it's hard to remember what life was like before you joined our family, and it's definitely something that we cherish each and every day.

you rocked the last month of your first year. it wasn't an uber-exciting month... unless you count growing EIGHT new teeth as exciting. i mean, in the general scheme of things, it's pretty cool because now you can eat pretty much all the food. but those teefs wreaked havoc on all of us (and actually still are). but hey, since you now have fourteen teeth, there aren't too many left to come in before you're done for a while. so, yay!

you are crawling like a match has been lit under you. i think you might be the fastest crawler i've ever seen. you could walk if you wanted to, but you basically refuse. you stand for many, many seconds at a time and have moved one foot several times like you're about to take off... instead, you just sit and take off crawling. your pediatrician said we should probably be prepared for you to be trouble when you decide that you can walk. i'm not sure if we're ready for that!

you eat all table food and drink whole cow's milk. you made that transition very easily. switching over to sippy cups was more of a challenge, but we're proud to say that you've been sippy month free for at least a month, if not longer. you still love your paci and so far, we're really in no hurry to take that from you.

you like to talk a lot. sometimes it's words that we can understand: mama, dada, mo (more), ba! (ball) and buh buh (bye-bye). other times? it's most definitely some foreign language that you've made up. and i've recently decided that you would give ringwraiths (warning: lord of the rings reference) a run for their money with the way you can screech. it's ear-piercing to say the least!

we know that we're beyond blessed. and we're so happy that you came into our lives. thank you for keeping us on our toes and for making us smile every day. we could eat you up we love you so!

oh, and for those interested, one year stats:
weight > 19 pounds, 4.5 ounces
height > 29 inches
head > 18.25 inches