For her birthday adventure, we took our baby (and the bigger babies) to the zoo! This girl is obsessed with animals and calls them baby, so we knew her attention would be absolutely captivated by all the animals at the zoo. Her favorite were by far the pandas; she didn’t want to leave them! We let her bring her “baby” along and she was so cute hugging that thing everywhere and ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all the animals.

All the animals are just so amazing. We marveled at the uniqueness of every single one. Like giraffes, they’re gorgeous creatures, but when you really look at their face, it’s kinda freaky looking (to me). Bravey’s favorite were the spider monkeys. No surprise there since her favorite is Spider-Man. We saw most animals at the zoo, but we did end up getting year passes, so you can be sure we will be back again for another visit.

We ended the day grabbing pizza locally before making the long drive back home. It was the perfect way to celebrate our littlest loves 2nd birthday!

on me: dress, handmade by me. shoes, new balance. on true: dress, c/o panache box (I want it in my size!). shoes, salt-waters. on brave: dress, little esop. pants, c/o panache box. shoes, old navy. on soul: dress, vintage. shoes, salt-waters. on glow: birthday dress, handmade by me. shoes, salt-waters.

I’m behind in blogging this, but this month I was part of the October 2013 issue of Family Fun Magazine. This is such exciting news for us for and I am so happy to be part of it. Not only did I write a little article about our home/family inside (and our creative messes), but I also photographed the images for the article and they chose one of my pictures for the cover! Seriously, it still feels so surreal and I’m so honored to be part of such a great issue.

We took the girls to the grocery store to pick up our copy and to show them that they were on the cover… they thought it was cool for like 10 seconds and then they moved on to the My Little Pony cards they were seeing down the aisle. Go figure! That’s kids for you. If you wanna pick up a copy, I’ve seen them at grocery stores, Michaels, and Barnes & Nobles. I think my mother-in-law cleaned out all of San Antonio, Texas, so you probably won’t find any there.

A little project we did awhile back is also in the October issue of Ladies Home Journal. Feeling very honored to be among other creative individuals on this page.

I’m very thankful for these opportunities and I’m thankful for all of you who take the time to visit here and take notice. If you made your way over here from those magazines, well, it’s nice to “meet” you and I hope you’ll stay awhile! When I started blogging, I never imagined the opportunities that come because of it. I just wanted to join in for the fun and community. I don’t even think of myself as a “blogger.” I’m just a gal, who likes to make things (for and with her kids), and happens to blog about it. It’s been so great so far and really, all of you are a big part of this journey, and I am very, very thankful! Many, many xoxo to all of you!!!

Glow gets her 2nd official breakfast in bed (see her first one here). We had a special birthday adventure out planned and there wouldn’t be any opportunity for birthday cake, so I made her this cake for her breakfast in bed. We let her have the first few bites of it, then we cut it up so each girl could have a slice. They devoured the entire thing and there was nothing left!

After they filled up on cake, Glow opened her presents. In that picture above with wrapped presents, only one thing in that pile was from us and everything else was made by the girls. They came up with their own ideas and I had no clue what they had made until it was time for Glow to open it. Our Glow is obsessed with bears, she calls them “baby,” so it was cute to see all the little bear things the sisters made for her. There were pop-up cards, bear paper dolls, and bear drawings. That’s also why Ben chose to make her a little bear out of lemons on her tray. She kept pointing at the lemon bear and saying, “Baby!”

Our gift for her was a mama-made bear softie (in the last photo). She gave it a big hug once she opened it. We were stuck on what to give her because she has 3 older sisters, so there’s not much she needs (she gets plenty of hand me downs), so we figured a bear was the best thing. I worked on a pattern and came up with this little gal. It’s been attached to her ever since! I will be sharing how I made it soon (with a downloadable pattern and all!), so you can make one yourself if you so desire a “baby” for a little one in your life.

After the breakfast and present time, we all quickly got dressed to head out (okay, it wasn’t that quickly as we left the house an hour and a half later than planned!). We had a special day planned to celebrate our littlest love…

Our littlest love she turns two,
I can’t believe how fast it flew.

This little Glow, yes, she does shine,
She’s definitely captured this heart of mine.

Her favorite things are a cat, a bear, and a coyote too,
So we will celebrate by taking her to the zoo!

Happy birthday to our little light,
We all love you so much with all our might.

Happy Birthday Glow!!! We love you!!! 

You can read about her hypnobirthing story here…

These pictures are from our days at the hotel pool for Brave’s birthday. It was another part of fulfilling her birthday request. I think by the end of our 3 day birthday get away, we were all 3 shades darker. We were so happy that they were able to practice the skills they have been learning in swim class. Though most of the pictures here show them with floaties, they were doing plenty of swimming without them too. Soul and Glow were a bit apprehensive about the water (this surprised us about Soul because she takes swim lessons too!), but they did get in the pool eventually. Naturally, by the time we had to leave, they didn’t want to because that’s just about the time they really started loving the water. It always happens that way, doesn’t it?!

Brave turned six and her birthday request was to stay at a hotel, have a pajama party, and swim all day. That was a reasonable enough request, so we made it happen. We were originally planning on going to San Diego, but after discussing it, Ben and I thought staying closer to home was best since we the only thing on the agenda was to swim at the hotel pool. We hotwire-ed it (got a great deal! priceline was being temperamental at name your price) and we had a hotel about 45 minutes from home. We booked two nights, so her actual birth day was sandwiched in between, and we would have plenty of opportunities for relaxing and swimming.

Her birthday evening, Ben took Brave and Glow to go pick up some pizza. It gave True and me time to set up her pajama party. I brought bunting from home to tape up to the wall, put out little party snacks, her gifts, and her birthday cake. I wanted to bake one, but I was running out of time leading up to her little birthday getaway, so I opted to buy one from Nothing Bundt Cakes since there was one close to where we were staying. That was a good decision and so much less stress!

True and I even made a little “Spin the Spider on the Web” game for our little Spider-Man fan (I just found a spider web clip art image to download, went to a local copy shop to get a large print out, cut out little black spiders, and added some tape to the back… tada!) . We taped that to the wall and it was the perfect pajama party game! I made all the girls their own special pajama pants for the party and we were all set.

Brave came back with Ben and she was so excited to see everything decorated just for her! We all piled onto the bed to eat pizza and the birthday treats. Of course, we sang the birthday song and let her blow out her candles too! My six year old girl was so happy!!! We all played the pin the spider game and Brave opened her presents. We just got her little Spider-Man gifts because she loves Spider-Man so much! The sweetest part of the evening were seeing the gifts True made for Brave. She made her little hand drawn cut outs of Spider-Man and cut out scenes to play with him in. She is so thoughtful in her gift making and giving.

It was so relaxed and chill, but our pajama party extended quite late into the evening that Glow was getting to be all out of sorts. We called the party quits at around 10pm, which was way past the baby’s usual bedtime of 7pm, so you could imagine how cranky she got. It was a special way to celebrate my Bravey’s birthday (she requested a hotel birthday which was probably inspired from True’s 6th birthday last year). I’m kind of partial to these hotel birthdays because it gives all of a us a little chance to get away and it reduces the stress of party planning. I kind of wish they would ask for hotel birthdays every year!