Things I Never Blogged About: Elodie’s 3rd Birthday

Trying to play catch up.. so here’s a throwback to November 2013.

Elodie’s third birthday was back in November. I was still on maternity leave, so a stay-at-home-mom friend and I took the kiddos to the aquarium for Elodie’s actual birthday. We love the aquarium, so any excuse to go is a good one. We had not taken Elodie in a while and she is at a great age to really enjoy it. Momma had a fun day with her babies looking at the fish.

Shark Bait ready for the aquarium–Toby at a month and a hafl

Elodie + Ezra

My sweet babies

For her party, since Toby was born at the end of September, I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to plan an elaborate party. We decided to have it at a favorite spot of ours, an indoor playground with inflatables called Catch Air. This place took care of everything for us–all we needed to do was show up & bring cake.

My 3 year old ready to party!

The kids played hard for about an hour and a half, which included a dance party with Dora! Once the playing was done we sang & ate pizza, snacks and cake.

Dance party with Dora

Elodie + Dora

Cake for the Princess

                 

Happy Birthday To You!

I think most little kid birthday parties are enjoyed more by the adults who attend, especially when they can get on all the equipment and play right along with the babes. Here’s Chris going down a slide with another little girl who was there.

I can’t believe my baby girl is already 3 years old. She’s growing right up into a beautiful, smart, funny, energetic & loving little girl. I’m so thankful for her. Love you, princess!

xoxo

Ash

 

Halloween 2013

I’m about 2 weeks late in posting this, but better late than never, right?

Here are some scenes from our Halloween this year! My nephew, Josiah, came over to join the Watson kiddos for some Halloween fun! This was our first Halloween in our new neighborhood & it was a blast! We live in the perfect neighborhood for kiddos, minus all the hills.

Rapunzel from Tangled

Little Pea Pod

Cute kiddos in the wagon: Rapunzel & Little Lion Man

Chillin’ in the stroller

Flynn Rider & Rapunzel from Tangled

My hat that I use every year 🙂

And, since we were all out with the kids trick-or-treating, we still wanted to give other kids candy too, so we left some bowls of candy & a sign a-la Parks and Rec.

If you’ve been to our house & seen our driveway, you know kids don’t want to walk up to ring our doorbell. This was the easiest solution at the bottom of our driveway.

Elodie did so great with her “TRICK OR TREAT”‘s & saying “Thanks!” at every house. It was such a fun evening. Just for fun, here’s a look at last year’s Halloween.

Hope your Halloween was great!

I owe y’all some updates of our house, family & etc. Sorry!

Is anyone still reading this thing… do you want updates? 🙂

xoxo

Ash

Tobias: One Month

Yesterday our sweet little baby boy turned one month old. This month went by way too quickly. We’ve been super busy this month, and luckily our perfect new addition allowed us to get everything done–like a very special wedding! Congrats to my BFF , Jessie, who got married! We had a great time celebrating all the things that go along with this!!

Cheers!

Ready to celebrate!

Rooftop party

But more on Toby…

1 month old

He’s still a great sleeper, doing 4/5 hour stretches between eating each night and 3/4 hour stretches during the day. He’s still nursing like a champ, which makes my life so much easier, especially in the middle of the night.

Blue eyes

I’ve tried to introduce formula because, unfortunately, I do have to go back to work in a few weeks & I don’t know if I’ll be able to pump enough at work to keep up with his voracious appetite. This has been a little battle–regular formula made him throw up, the 2 times he’s eaten it, so we tried soy. He keeps this down better, but doesn’t really like it. I’ve only mixed in an ounce of formula with several ounces of breastmilk, and he still fusses about eating it. We will keep trying to mix in formula and I’ll keep building up my breastmilk freezer stock, so he may not need a supplement after all.

Elodie is still doing really well with him too. Every afternoon when she comes home from her babysitters, the first thing she asks is “where’s my baby?” She seems to be less annoyed when Chris or I are holding him, and loves “helping” bathe him & change his diaper. She’s a great big sister. It will be so sweet when he is older & they can interact and play more.

my life ❤

Always helping out

Sweet big sister

Toby is starting to smile & coo a little bit. He has lots of awake time when we get up in the morning, and this is my favorite time all day. We talk and laugh and smile & it’s so sweet. We love to cuddle. It’s hard it get things done during the day, but totally worth it. This mommy/Toby time will go by way too quickly so I’m trying to savor every feeding, cry, diaper change, smile, coo & cuddle.

Our family has never been more crazy or felt more complete.

Mommy enjoying her babies

We are really excited about trick-or-treating & Elodie’s birthday is coming up quickly! I love this time of year.

Xoxo

Ash

Our Newest Addition

After having to be induced because our little man was 4 days late, we are so pleased to welcome our son.

Tobias Arthur Watson

(aka Toby)

Welcome Toby

Born September 29, 2013 @ 11:36 am

8 lbs 1 oz, 20.5 inches long

We are in love.

So far, he’s been a great newborn and the perfect addition to our family.

Elodie is still getting used to sharing her mommy & daddy with a new baby, but luckily Chris’s parents were here this week to help give her the extra attention she needed.

I’ll write more about his birth, how we chose his name, etc. later, but for now, I’ll just share a few pictures from his first couple of days with us.

Mommy holding her handsome man for the first time

Daddy & Son

Gigi and her newest grandson

Meeting Aunt Jessie

24 hours old

Heading Home

Mommy + her babies

Grandma + her babies

Cute squishy face

At the pumpkin farm

Watson: Family of 4

Can’t get enough of him sleeping

xoxo

Ash

Christmas Card Extras

Hopefully most of the Christmas cards we mailed out have reached their destinations, so since I wanted the pictures on the cards to be new & fresh, I didn’t want to share them until [most of] the cards were received.

A few weeks ago, while our house was bustling with visitors, we got Chris’s mom & my mom to help us out by taking some family pictures of us at the local Marietta Square.

Let’s be honest.. I’ve been dying to share some of the pictures we [did and] didn’t end up using.

So here’s what our Christmas Card looked like:

These are the pictures we used for the card:

The family picture we chose

Our sweet girl is looking mighty grown-up here…

A perfectly festive picture of Chris and me

Some other close contenders:

This was our 2nd choice for the card

Another family photo option

And then just some other fun pictures we got that day:

You know.. just hanging out at the fountain in the middle of November

Thoughtful little girl

Elodie + Grandma

Chris and his mom

Chris and his mom

Wrangling up the babe

Elodie + Gigi

“Let’s get one on the train” says Chris. “Let’s go ‘choo-choo'” says Ash

Elodie was so great while we were taking pictures, so we had to treat her to some ice cream

It was a beautiful day & I’m so glad everyone was cooperating to get some great pictures!

Hope you all are having a Happy Holiday Season so far!

xoxo

Ash

The Past Two Weeks….

…have been crazy busy! Here’s just a little bit of what we’ve been up to lately in addition to Elodie’s party, running a race & visiting Santa. 

We spent lots of time enjoying the beautiful weather at the park with the grandparents.

Elodie + Grandpa at the park

Elodie + Daddy at the park

Elodie + Grandma at the park

Elodie collecting acorns with her grandparents

We celebrated Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Dinner

We squeezed in some down time.

Elodie + her friends “napping” on the ottoman

Diva Girl

Cutie sitting on the counter

“Really, mom?”

We decorated for Christmas.

Decorating for Christmas

We shopped & hung out at the mall.

Elodie + Grandma on the train at the mall

We went to the Children’s Museum.

If only I could be half the teacher that Ms. Frizzle is…

Children’s Museum with Grandma

Dreaming of being like Ms. Frizzle

Chris’s creation at the Children’s Museum

We adopted a new kitty. It’s been hanging around where we live for a couple of weeks, and after we fed it for a couple of days, we decided to bring it in. It seems like it once belonged to someone, because it’s de-clawed, but we don’t know much about it other than that. Hopefully we’ll find out more about it once we take it to the vet this week. In the meantime, it’s name is Fergie. I’ll explain more later…

Our new kitty… we’ve yet to find out if it’s a boy or girl, but we’ve been calling it “Fergie”

We hung out with some great friends. Chris’s cousin, Michelle & her new husband, Jack, came to visit us from Boston. We don’t see them often, but we always have a great time when we do get together. In addition to catching up & taking it easy, we took them on a tour of a local brewery, Sweetwater Brewery, and out to eat at an AMAZING Tapas Restaurant/Wine Bar, Barcelona. Fun times!

Hanging out with some fun ladies at Sweetwater Brewery (Jess, me, Katie & Michelle)

Chris, Jack & Me

So that’s been the last couple of weeks.

We’ve had a great time catching up & spending time with family & friends. The next couple of weeks are going to be just as busy, but this time of year is the best so we’re looking forward to it!

xoxo

Ash

“Whoooo” turned 2

We celebrated Elodie’s 2nd birthday last weekend at a local park we love. We didn’t get a ton of great pictures, because we were too busy having fun. Here are a few shots from Elodie’s “‘Whoo’ is turning two” party.

The birthday girl, running around

Crazy girl

Table set up

Thanksgiving tables cloths that the kids could color on

More table set-up

GIANT cupcake cake

Elodie in her owl shirt, made by Aunt Jessie

All the kiddos playing in rocks

Sisters hanging out

Daddy + Elodie

Presents + Friends

Elodie + some friends from her babysitter’s

Philip + Raya

The Dashevsky’s

The birthday girl, while everyone is singing to her

Brandie, Cambria, Grandpa & Grandma

Uninteresting in opening presents

More presents

Gigi + Josiah

Aunt Allison + Josiah

Cousin Josiah

Elodie pushing her cousin on the swings

Thanks everyone for coming out! Our little princess had a great day!

And just for fun… here’s a picture from last year’s birthday party at the same park:

Snapshot from last year

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I’ll be back soon with some updates from this week with the grandparents!

xoxo

Ash

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, y’all! We dressed Elodie up as Minnie Mouse and went trick-or-treating with a friend from my work & her neighbors. It was beautiful outside and we had tons of fun!

We made these over the weekend to get into the Halloween Spirit

Elodie playing before we go trick-or-treating

Elodie + Daddy ready to go!

Trick-or-Treat!

Elodie’s first piece of candy, a “pop”

Elodie + a friend going for a ride, notice Elodie is already eating some candy

All the kids + Elodie running away

Grabbing a handful of candy at the last house

 

Hope everyone had a nice evening!

Happy Halloween!

xoxo

Ash

Foody Friday/Pinterest Challenge

If you recall, over the summer I made some pillows for something some of my favorite bloggers do seasonally: the Pinterest Challenge. Sherry and Katie, (along with Carmel and Sarah) are doing it again, so I thought it’d be a good time to try some recipes I’ve been drooling over.

It’s no secret that most of the recipes I’ve tried come from Pinterest, and these are no different. I had pinned this easy garlic and brown sugar chicken recipe months ago and this corn casserole recipe more recently in hopes it could make an appearance at our Thanksgiving dinner this year. Since we had chicken in the freezer and I had to try that corn recipe before Thanksgiving (which is right around the corner), I decided to pair the two together this week.

So here’s the good stuff!

Easy Garlic Chicken

The chicken recipe:

Ingredients:

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons brown sugar
3 teaspoons olive oil

Directions:
1 Preheat oven to 500°F and lightly grease a casserole dish.
2 In small sauté pan, sauté garlic with the oil until tender.
3 Remove from heat and stir in brown sugar.
4 Place chicken breasts in a prepared baking dish and cover with the garlic and brown sugar mixture.
5 Add salt and pepper to taste.
6 Bake uncovered for 15-30 minutes.

(Read more at: http://www.food.com/recipe/easy-garlic-chicken-5478?oc=linkback)

The Corn Casserole Recipe:

(serves 8-10)

Ingredients:

1-8 ounce container of sour cream
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
1-15 ounce can creamed corn
1-15 ounce can whole kernel corn (drained)
1-8.5 ounce package cornbread mix*
*I recommend using Jiffy Mix

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine ingredients—sour cream, butter, creamed corn, corn niblets and cornbread mix.
3. Pour into a 1 quart casserole dish and bake for 40 minutes.

And we have dinner:

Our dinner finished off with a nice green salad and enjoyed in the beautiful fall weather

As usual I made some changes. No changes with the recipes themselves, just with the cooking time. I wanted to cook them both at the same time, so I decided cooking at the lower temperature for a little longer was probably the best idea. The corn was supposed to cook @ 350 degrees for about 40 minutes and the chicken at 500 degrees for 15-30. I put them both in at the same time at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes. Everything came out perfectly cooked. Also notice, we used little chicken tenderloins and not chicken breasts, so that could affect the cooking times as well.

Both of these recipes were so easy, required minimal ingredients, and cooking them at the same time made it a SUPER easy, quick weeknight dinner. Who doesn’t want that after a long day/week of work?!

I should probably also mention this was a DELICIOUS meal! Chris and I both raved about it the whole time we were eating. Both of these recipes will be joining our recipe rotation, together as a meal and separately.

So there ya have it, folks. A quick, simple, yummy meal, Foody Friday & Pinterest Challenge all rolled into one post. If I threw in a picture of Elodie this would be the best.post.ever 🙂

Okay if you insist…

Elodie, finally feeling better after dealing with an ear infection, and mommy hanging out while daddy was in class

I’ll be linking this post up at the bloggers’ pages listed above on Tuesday, when everyone reveals their Pinterest Challenge Projects. Check them out if you need some DIY inspiration.

Have a good evening!

xoxo

Ash