To Make You Smile

This is why they are my favorite people...EVER.



Please excuse the choice of music. I dont normally let my girls dance to a Britney Spears song about three-somes. Ok, maybe sometimes.

Halloween

I have officially become one of those bloggers I hate. Sorry! Oh, for the days where I had time to sit down and blog about mundane things. Instead we are in the throws of potty training and new words every day. Starting a new business has cut into my blogging time tremendously. Here is hoping it will at least pay for pre-school next year!

To ease my shame and embarrassment for my poor blogging I will include a photo of the girls from Trunk or Treat at church on Wednesday. This is probably the last year they wont have an opinion on their costumes, so I took advantage of that!

Disney!

The girls have officially had their first visit to the Disney's Magic Kingdom. We spent a week in Orlando and did Magic Kingdom on Monday and Animal Kingdom on Wednesday. I can honestly say that I could not have asked for a better trip. The girls did GREAT! We stayed in a house with my sister and her family and my mom. So, that is three 2 year olds, 1 princess obsessed 4.5 year old and 5 adults in one house. Although it sounds like a nightmare on paper, it worked out great! This post will just be Magic Kingdom, and hopefully I can get some other posts up.



You can not go to Disney without getting this classic shot. You will notice Ruthie doesnt have her glasses in any of these pictures. We didnt want to risk bringing them with the rides and all of the commotion. We would rather her run into things than pay another $250. Does that make us bad parents?

The first ride we hit was It's a Small World.

This is the first of several pictures we have of Maddie with her finger shoved up her nose.

Both of the girls really liked the ride. I considered the day a success that we made it in there and through one ride without a melt down.

Oh, look! Maddie has her finger up her nose again.

Speaking of it being a small world, look who we ran into!

We had no idea the Benders were in Disney that week also! It was great to see them, and run into them AGAIN when were in Animal Kingdom!

We really wanted to take the girls on the Dumbo ride but the line was ridiculous all day. So, we just put them on the stationary Dumbo next to the ride and pretended like we actually went on it. Why they dont have a fastpass for this ride is beyond me.

And, of course the teacups.



And what would a trip to Disney World be without the lovely princesses? I thought this was where they might freak out, but they seemed perfectly fine.

By the time they got to Belle they were a little leery of these strange women.

And, of course, what would be a visit to Disney without seeing Mickey and Minnie. I dont think they girls had ever even seen Mickey and Minnie until that day.



Little did we know the monster we were creating from this photo shoot. The girls have officially drank the Disney World kool-aid. They are hooked on Mickey and Minnie. My mother bought them stuffed animals of Mickey and Minnie along with some other figurines and they are the new hot item in this house. We are now daily watchers (and DVR'ers) of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The multi-billion dollar Disney industry has secured 2 new fans.

We of course attempted anther cousins shot. This one wasnt too bad. We are making progress each time.

We attempted a 3-D show with the girls. We lasted less than three minutes when Maddie began yelling, "No, no Ducky" to Donald. We made a quick exit after that. Interestingly enough, from that point on, every time she saw Donald she said, "No, no Ducky!"

And, they sleep....

The girls took a great nap in the stroller in the afternoon. They were just pooped! It was a great refresher for them to make it the rest of the day. I think if they hadnt been able to sleep we would not have made it as long as we did.

Besides the ridiculous heat and humidity, we could not have asked for a better visit to Disney.

Happy Early Birthday!

It is that time again! Birthday time! I cant believe the girls will be 2 on Friday. Time has truly flown by. And, oh, how things have changed here.

I was reading my post from a year ago with the fiasco with the Wiggles birthday cake, and how everything had to be *perfect* for their first birthday. This year I did a store bought cake, went to Party City and grabbed some Elmo stuff, called family and a few friends 4 days before and, TA-DA! I guess Ruthie and Maddie arent the only ones that have changed in the past year.

Since we are going to be in FL for the girls actual birthday, we had some family and friends over to celebrate early. I went with an Elmo theme this year to change it up from the Wiggles. Variety is the spice of life and all. I bought an Elmo cake from Publix, some pizza, some rotel, some fruit and was good to go. When I got home Mark said, "Who's Naddie?" I had no idea what he was talking about until he pointed at the cake.

Crap. To be completely honest, there was a part of me that was fine just leaving it like this because it isnt like Maddie can actual read it. The guilty mother side of me won out though and back to Publix I went.

Ok, much better. Let's party!

My $15 decorations. I am a big spender.....

Hindsight is 20/20 in regards to my decorating. I bought the decorations because that was what I thought I was supposed to do for a 2 year olds birthday party. Little did I know that this would result in the girls spending the rest of the night pointing out every Elmo that they could find to anyone that would listen. Next year I am seriously considering just doing a colors only party. Maddie's personal favorite was the table cloth because she could just walk down the length of the table pointing at several Elmo's.

Neither of my girls were really into their cake at their first birthday, so I was excited about them maybe getting into it this year.

Maddie didnt like the crowd of people singing to her and lost it (I am seeing a pattern with her, and I am not liking it).....

Ruthie was unphased by the entire thing and continued eating.

She even found time to feed Elmo some cake.

Presents went alot smoother this year since the girls could help open their boxes and their bags. They were really cute as they "Ohhhhhh" and "Awwww" at each present.

But in all honesty, why do people keep spending money on actual gifts for these girls? Because when it all comes down to it, all that they want to do is play with the boxes.

We had a secret twin exchange again this year with the ladies on my twin message board I am on. One of the ladies is from Australia and her twins, Mia and Zoe, sent the girls Wiggle's panties! I LOVED IT!

Of course they went straight on their head, so we have a little work to do on proper wearing of big girl panties.

The girls are definitely all set with their UT paraphernalia all the way through basketball season.

It has been a crazy ride this past 2 years, but I wouldnt trade it for anything.

Team Work!

You would think team work would be an excellent concept to teach 2 year olds. Maybe it is. Just not in this house. Anything that these two seem to agree on, and work together on, ends up in disaster for me. Exhibit A:

The dogs were less than thrilled, since that was their dinner.

Sorry for the shortage of posts. I have gone back to work a few days a week and it has become all consuming! We are heading to Disney next week so I will be able to post while on vacation hopefully.

One Year

One year ago today....

God is good.

Oh, the Irony!

So, have I mentioned that my children love the Wiggles? Maybe you might have picked that up in a couple of my posts. Last year, when the girls were not even 1 year old we took them to go and see the Wiggles live. It went really well, even though they fell asleep for the last 15 minutes of it. So, of course, when I heard the Wiggles were coming back to town I had to get tickets. So, I convinced my mother to get them an early present and buy floor seats for the live show. You have seen the video of them dancing at our house, so I was so excited about them being able to dance in the aisles with the other kids at the show.

My dreams were almost ruined when I get an email confirmation from Ticketmaster confirming the show that day with a reminder email that all children over 1 year old must be ticketed. I had only bough 2 floor seats since the girls were going to be sitting in our laps. I frantically called the venue and a nice lady there came up with the ingenious idea for when we get to the show to just buy 2 of the cheapest balcony seats they have ($20 a pop) to get in the door and then keep them on our laps at our floor seats. Crisis averted.

We headed downtown for the show.

Did our pose in front of Anthony's drumset again....


and waited for the show to start. Some brilliant marketing guy had put programs on all of the seats that had games and pictures for the kids. It was the perfect diversion for our children until the show started.


Maddie was pointing at the Wiggles sign that was lighting up that she was obsessed with.

Then the show started! Lights down, music on and out come the characters! We had PHENOMENAL seat.

Look how close we were to our Aussie friends!

What could possibly ruin this family moment for us?

>Madilyn Jane.

The moment the lights went down and the music came on the child completely lost it! I am talking screaming, clinging on to me for dear life yelling, "No, Mamma, No!" in between the tears. The first song they sang was "Rock-A-Bye-Your-Bear" and there was nothing but blood curdling screaming. So, I took her out in the hall to try and calm her down. Minutes later I was followed out by my husband who was sopping wet. Ruthie had peed all over his shirt. So, he took his shirt off and had his undershirt on with Maddie while I changed Ruthie. By the time I made it out of the bathroom with Ruthie, Mark was outside the bathroom drenched again. Maddie had peed on his undershirt...and was still screaming. So, I sent my pee-soaked husband back into the show with Ruthie and stayed out with Maddie.

She did ok out in the hallway for a little bit. She kept trying to peek around the curtain when she would hear the songs. Then I would ask her, "Do you want to see the Wiggles?" and she would burst into tears and scream, "No, Mamma, no!" Then Maddie decided she wanted her "sissy", but she didnt want to go back into the show. It was a dilemma for a 2 year old, so her solution was to have a complete meltdown. I went in and got Mark and we left 30 minutes into the show.

Parenting lessons learned from this adventure.

#1. Never assume your children will like anything based on a previous behavior

#2. Bring a change of clothes for Mark when going out on family adventure

#3. Priceless moments actually do have a pricetag. This one was $135.