lazy monday

So Sawyer woke up this morning like we had dreamt up the whole fever thing.
He was super hot last night with a 102° temp. He looked horrible (which also could have been due the fact that he was up at 4am yesterday. Yes, 4am. Who knew Easter was worse than Christmas?!) and -we didn't realize til we evaluated the fever- hadn't really eaten a thing all day. So we tucked him in bed early after pouring some ibuprofen down the hatch.
When Ryan and I went to bed later last night, I found Sawyer not only in our bed, but in our bed in a big puddle of sweat. Nice.
But he must have sweated the fever out because this morning he was up and at 'em and feeling good as new.
Thankful.

And funnily, he has no memory of getting into our bed.

He and I have just been lazing around this Monday morning. Currently we're snuggled up watching Looney Tunes and debating our lunch options. I'm just feeling so super unmotivated this morning. Which I think is only going to get worse as the week goes on since there'll be some major rain and storms moving in for the rest of the week and we all know gray weather is not the most motivating. I should really be using today to run errands and clean my house.

We have not one, but two separate visitors coming this week; friends staying with us Thursday, stopping in for just one night on their way through town, and then also another family making a similar pit stop the very next night on Friday! We're looking forward to seeing STL friends!! And it's convenient that we're between all of them and a lot of beaches. :)

Now if we could just get to that beach...

game ball

Sawyer was awarded the game ball after his game this past Saturday... something he's been looking forward to all season! He hit the very first pitch both innings up to bat and was a star in the field.
He loves every minute of the game and he is so fun to watch!















Congrats Sawman!!

Untitled from heather morrison on Vimeo.

easter sunday

It seems Easter is the only time we've had managed a regular family picture taken for the past few years. So here we go again...



















(another realized perk of moving; little girls can wear their favorite Easter dress two years in a row since no one around has seen it!)


We had a great weekend with summerlike weather (mid-eighties and sunshine!), a lazy Saturday with a ballgame and a fabulous Easter Sunday attending church with and sharing dinner and a backyard egg hunt with friends, followed by a family movie night and Sawyer spiking a fever. Okay, so that last thing wasn't so great, but he's tucked away in bed and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he wakes up good as new tomorrow.

Happy Easter!

friday questions

Do you say...

dresser or bureau?

garbage or trash?

shopping cart or buggy?

barbecue or cookout?

couch or sofa?

ottoman or hassock?

dinner or supper?

sprinkles or jimmies?

pop or soda? (or coke??)


I say the first option on all of the above. How about you?

hello, we can't come to the blog right now...

but if you leave a message, I'll get back to you next week!

That's right, I'm going dark.
Unplugging.
Staying off the grid.
Offline.

This week is National Screen-Free Week.
Started originally as No-TV week, but with the saturation of the whole of screen time our kids and our families have these days, it's now a full fledged Screen Free campaign.
And I'm in.

My kids don't know yet.
My husband is not on board.
But I'm all for it.

That's not to say I won't cheat a little and see the land of the internets once or twice at night after the kids are in bed. It's mostly for them... a wake up call to how much screen time we can do without. And I'm for sure cutting myself off during the daytime hours... hours I can be devoting to my kids and my house and people face to face. So I won't be online at all during the day. No blogs, no facebook, no email, no Words with Friends (ack!!). Cold turkey.
We'll see how desperate I am by 8pm. On Monday.

Otherwise, we'll see you back here next week!

the 8th celebration

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that my baby girl is eight years old. EIGHT.






We celebrated by picking her up just a tad early from school that afternoon and headed over to the zoo. It was a beautiful day and with Jenn and Greg and little man Tate here visiting, Savannah had requested a birthday outing at the zoo. (she'd been feeling a little bit jealous since Sawyer had been there and she had yet to see the zoo in our new city.)
So we wrangled up a few presents and a chocolate chip cookie cake and headed over there after school.





























































Savannah's favorite and used-constantly-after-opening gift:





























And she took over 200 pictures some good pictures that afternoon...
(even if they're not all the most flattering angles)































































































































Hope you had a fabulous day, Savannah, with us celebrating eight fabulous years with our favorite little girl!!

the 8th party

*there are lots of pictures in this post and if you're viewing this in a reader the words and pics probably won't line up... click on over if you can!*

Savannah has been especially all about the Art this year... she, as she always has, loves to draw and illustrate and create things. More recently she's been looking forward to taking more art classes at her favorite hang out, and her favorite class at school is by far her art class. So when I mentioned an Art Party for her birthday celebration she was all over it.














I feel like I've been saying this about each new party as the years go by, but I think I had the most fun yet with this one.
I used some printables from here as a base for the decorations... lots of bright colors and splotches of paint everywhere!














For the cake I just (tried to) cut a large sheet cake into the shape of a paint palette (harder than I thought!), covered it with fondant and then put some bright spots of "paint" on it.



Instead of writing on the cake (which I always avoid if at all possible) I splashed a little paint on a small canvas and wrote a Happy Birthday on that to stand up next to the cake.


























We covered the party table in butcher paper and put out boxes of crayons for doodling.



































Of course at an Art Party, there was art to be made:























































Other art-y party activities included Pictionary,
Drawing a vase of flowers... with your foot!;
















































and a round of 'Pass the Portrait', where each artist adds one facial feature to the picture of you as your paper is passed around the table;





























We also set up a photo shoot of sorts complete with silly props and smiles!









































































































































These pics of the girls will be sent with Savannah's thank you notes. :)

My favorite part was the Ice Cream Sundae creation station...














so pretty and colorful and so yummy!



























Sorry, no pictures of their ice cream sundae creations... I was too busy eating mine!


Overall, I think it was a super fun afternoon. I think it helped that it was a smaller party, but the girls were awesome and so well behaved and loved taking home their art-y creations! I know Savannah had fun and she got some arts and crafts gifts from the girls as well to keep her occupied for the next few weeks!
Art Party considered a SUCCESS!

monday morning

We're coming up on 24 hrs till our visitors arrive... which means I'm at the tail end of my procrastination and will have to start getting my butt in gear soon and get this house cleaned up. Or at least the sheets washed.

In the meantime, I'm trying to decide if I want to run to the store before the "storm" hits in the next couple of hours or not. I'm hoping to have all my party supplies done and ready to go before Ryan's sister arrives tomorrow so we can spend the week relaxing and having fun and not running around gathering party paraphernalia before Saturday. I'm pretty squared away, but just need a couple of randoms.

We had unbelievable summerlike weather this whole past weekend... temps in the 90's! It was nice and breezy though, so not too uncomfortable even with baseball midday both days.
So I guess after we squeezed this July weather weekend out of April, we're due for some wicked weather today. Just hoping it's not quite as wicked as last Monday with a few too many tornadoes in the area. And hoping this doesn't become a Monday routine. Although I have to say the lovely weekends are very appreciated! :)

Alrighty then. Just thought I'd check in aand say Happy Monday. Happy Monday!
Now I'm off to probably procrastinate just a bit more...

oh the random

So glad it's sunny again. We had storms on Monday (four tornados in the greater Nashville area; kids were kept at school late because that's when the storms were rolling through, trees, fences, signs, etc down everywhere, roof repair going on in almost every neighborhood the rest of the week... fun stuff!), yesterday it was fareeeezing (and we had a ballgame last night... fun stuff!) but today the sun is back out and we're supposed to warm up and be back up to 80° by the end of the week. Albeit with more storms I'm sure, but the sunshine and flip flops make me happy.

We're getting rolling on SJ's birthday party.
Note to moms who like to throw great birthday parties: if you set the bar high, you're painting yourself into a corner that may be hard to back out of. We offered Savannah a few options for birthday celebrating this year... a fun outing of her choice with one or two friends, pizza cake and playtime with a small party at our favorite hangout, a party involving an art class at said favorite hang out, or an art party at home. I was pushing for any of the first three options. Guess which one Savannah has her heart set on? "But our parties here are so awesome Mom!"
So here we go:










(invites from here)
(and yes, I'm taking all the shortcuts I can this time!)

Did I mention I'm so happy it's sunny today??

I bought a gallon of milk for $1.32 this morning. Four gallons actually. I've bought three gallons at a time before and we can get through that before it expires, but for that price I couldn't resist a little more. So I've never frozen milk before. It'll be good right?

I need to bake something. I'm thinking these, these or this.

Speaking of baking, the kids held a Lemonade stand last weekend during our neighborhood garage sale. I had promised them we could do that but hadn't realized we didn't have any lemonade, so I ran to the store at 7am for lemonade real quick. I noticed cake mixes were on sale for $1 so I grabbed a few thinking we could turn it into a Lemonade/Cupcake stand... specifically because I had recently picked up these adorable cupcake liners at Michael's...



Do these not just scream
"I belong next to lemonade!"??!?!!







So I whipped up a few batches of pink and yellow cupcakes and the kids sold almost 7 dozen cupcakes with lemonade in less than 2 hours!! Even after recooping my own "set up cost" they earned approximately $37.75! And that was just part of the morning. Sheesh. That's more than I've ever earned per hour!

Don't tell Ryan, but they're earning money and saving for a puppy. ;)

Alright, I'm off to battle with the field of dandelions that is was our front yard. You guys, it's bad. It's honestly embarrassing. I don't even know how this house was listed for sale with a "yard"... it should have specifically said "dandelion bed", front and back. Our neighbors must hate us because on either side of our front lawn -it's literally like a line is drawn between our yards- it's plush solid green grass... and then there's our own yellow flowering "grass". I'm sure they're wishing they could actually put up a wall between our yards to keep any floating seeds from touching their lawns.

But at least the sun's out!

go sawyer

So, baseball.




















Don't tell his dad, but Sawyer is claiming to like it better than soccer these days. :)




















He's having a blast on his little team.














And we're having a blast watching him!





















Most of the time I think he looks way too grown up out there on the field and in uniform.





















But then I look again and think he looks way too little in that big bulky helmet...
























batter up!






















foul ball!

































and a hit!





It's gonna be a fun season!