Say It Ain't So

I mentioned that Grant is saying the darndest things and here are two examples from the last 5 minutes....

His new habit is to have full conversations with himself so that the conversation has no choice but going the way he wants it. In other words we hear things like this... "Mommy, Grant have cake now? Okay Grant have cake now thats a good idea" from 2 minutes ago
or
"Wow thats a low price!" I can't you tell the last time I saw the Staples price but Grant certainly remembers it. The funniest part is that he was flipping through the Target application on my iPhone when he said it!

and heres a picture of Grant being a big boy and dressing himself:

Alive and Kickin'

Hi blogger world!
We are all well, just been busy with life and finishing the house and all that jazz.

UPDATES
inside of house: Rooms are done so now its on to the nitty gritty of making sure I like the drapes, getting the accessories just so and actually putting pictures into all of the frames!
outside of house: Flowers and tomatoes in hanging baskets are doing nicely, yard/ getting grass to grow not so much... so we had our first date with the TruGreen guy today and hopefully we'll get some grass growing here in a month or so. We REALLY don't want to have to sod!
Geoff's work: French classes have begun, his teacher is Morrocan so he's learning a funky combination of French and Arabic. He jumped today for the first time since going to Airborne school but its something we have to get use to because he'll be doing it a lot with this airborne unit.
Grant: Talking up a storm! Making full sentences that are pretty funny! (Food Lion is the Strawberry store; anytime I say he's being helpful he says "I'm helpful and strong and get the job done" from Chuggington) Singing along to the radio and knowing all of the words to songs played on Sirius 60 the Highway, right now his favorite is the "Tractor song" bobbing his head "big green tractor, go slow go faster" Potty training is moving along not as fast as I was hoping but we're surviving.
Baby boy: growing like a weed, maybe I'll get the guts up to post a picture but lets just say I'm huge! I failed the glucose test and had a brief panic that I was getting gestational diabetes but after the 3 hour test all looked good. He's much more of a mover shaker and kicker than I remember Grant being so sleep is already a thing of the past. Crazy to think that he'll be here in less than 3 months!

Key Lime Awesomeness!

Geoff has stolen a page from Brian's playbook and been on a Key Lime kick recently so I thought I'd share some of the goodies we've found.

The first thing we tried was a boxed mix from the store, super easy (Geoff even made a batch, now THATs a test of its simplicity) and super yummy...

Next came a premade cake from the frozen desserts section. I didn't like that we were FORCED to each the whole thing within a day or two because it doesn't keep well but it reminded me of the Key Lime cake that Longhorns serves as a seasonal special and that is a very good thing!

But todays creation takes the cake!

We had to go semi-homemade and man would Sandra Lee be proud. Here's the recipe:

1 box Lemon Cake mix (Duncan Hines Lemon Supreme)

1 1/3 cup Vegetable oil

4 eggs

1 box -3oz- Lime gelatin (Jello powder)

3/4 cup Orange Juice

mix together and bake according to box directions!

I found a recipe online for icing but decided just to modify my go to Buttercream recipe instead. So after adios-ing vanilla and hola-ing Nellie's fresh KeyLime juice we had some mouth watering icing. Just incase you want it the online recipe was:

1/2 cup butter

1 block -8oz- cream cheese

3 tbl Lime juice

4 cups Powdered sugar

Hopefully there will be some left when Geoff gets home from work so i can share his reaction but I make no promises!

Meeting Miss Dagny

While we were in DC I FINALLY got to meet my future daughter-in-law!

(and yes, Grant approved of our arranged marriage choice for him!)

Our short but sweet visit with Rory and Joe and Dagny consisted of a lot of favorites, onion rings and burgers at Red Robin, LOTS of ice water at Rita's and fun time with the kiddos!

Our DC Birthday Weekend!

Last weekend we took full advantage of Geoff's time off and did what we've been waiting to do for years, BE ON THE EAST COAST! We knew that we needed to get to Richmond to get furniture and things out of storage but we made a weekend getaway to DC to be tourists and to celebrate mom's birthday with Brian and Kate. Geoff hadn't really "done" DC so we went to all of the monuments and memorials on Saturday, had a yummy dinner to celebrate's mom's big day, then Geoff and I headed out to a bar (a bar, whats that?!? hadn't been in one in a long long time) to celebrate our friend Ben's birthday, a finally meet Maia! Then Sunday we dodged the rain and went to some Smithsonians. Grant LOVED Air & Space, every single bit of it even in the old timey stuff when I got a little bored. Sunday night we got to see the Richardson's and celebrate Rory's birthday before heading down to Richmond on Monday. It was a jam-packed weekend but we had a blast!
link to all of the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/laurabchilds/DCweekend#

Bartlet Glen: Family Room

Here are some "look how far we've came" pictures of the family room. Geoff was about to have a nervous breakdown over the boxes that were still out and about so he worked his hiney off yesterday getting things sorted. Then on Monday we brought furniture that my grandparents gave me from Richmond and started getting them sorted too... things still aren't 100% but its on the right track. Wall color: Valspar from Lowe's in Nickel, I call it "Pottery Barn blue" and I LOVE IT! ~and of course anything would be better than the army green we started with~

Grant's Photo Riddles

Grant loves our iPhones, mostly because hes learned how to take pictures on it. I love looking through at the end of the day and seeing what he has captured. So heres a game... can you guess where we are?

or how about these?

What do YUDU?

Finally finally finally, I got to play!

Geoff caved in and got my a Yudu for Christmas even though he had no clue what it was or what I would do with it, and I was a very happy girl. The short answer is that a Yudu is an at home screenprinting machine. Basically, take an image and print it with paint on any flay surface (i.e. t-shirts, clipboards, canvases, etc)Well the Yudu is big and since we knew we'd be moving it has been in the box in Atlanta since, and I was not such a happy girl.

Well with Geoff gone this whole week I decided it was time to play! Yudu here I come!

I chose to use the logo I designed back in college for ELONTHON, a 24 hour dance marathon to raise money for Duke Children's Hospital. The event is this weekend, the Tuttles are speaking and I'm hoping we can go. So heres what happened: I aged the image a bit, made the transparency, burned the screen and...

STARTED PRINTING! :o) really really really happy girl! The shirt in the pic is just one of my maternity shirts from old navy and the picture looks a little elongated because I had just stretched it off of the board, but yea, a perfect copy and the exact burn-out/ aged look I was going for. oh the wheels are turning, who needs t-shirts?!?

SPAM hacking

Yes, I know. Someone has hacked into my hotmail account and is sending spam through it! I hope by now everyone knows the nature of spam and me well enough to not open anything about Canadian Drugs that supposedly comes from me...

Bartlet Glen: Upstairs

You've been patiently waiting for some pictures of the house and the painting/unpacking that we've done so my goal over the next few weeks is to give you some shots. We're still waiting on a run to Richmond to get some furniture but I'll try to string you along as nicely as I can!

Heres the upstairs bonus room/play room Before and After:

It went from a dark chocolate purple to white and the room feels 200% bigger. (In real life the room is brighter but I had to close the blinds in order to take a halfway decent picture) It was the last family's man cave complate with surround sound wiring and so there was a lot of Kilz and puttying to be done. I would never usually choose to go white but since we wanted this to be a playroom and bright the use of white with primary colored accents turned out perfectly. The letters were collected from hobby Lobby, JoAnne's and Michael's and then spray painted bright colors, the world map rug bought from Hearthstone catalog and the Toot and Puddles painted last year. Behind where I'm taking the picture is a computer desk and what will be my craft table but they aren't quite done so stay tuned!

We didn't do much to the bathroom upstairs, we kept the chocolate purple that they had and I finally got to use a bath set that we had registered for at the wedding. Its Groomin' by Croscill and it fills the little room with whimsy. (Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of a half bath?)

Grant with the Tulips!

2008
2009
2010

Happy Easter!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

We spent the weekend in Durham, got tickets to Disney Live! Mickey's Rockin' RoadShow on Saturday and it was a BLAST! grant was in hog heaven as he saw his favorite charaters in real life, he was shaking and jumping and all together WOUND UP, it was really special to see him so incredibly happy. Then Sunday we spend Easter at Westminister (The tie actually lasted all through nursery and church and only came off when it was time to get in the car to head to the gardens) then we continued my family ritual my heading over to Duke Gardens to take a stroll around and some pictures!