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?