Shopping Spree

I know I haven't ever concluded my Wardrobe Adventure. There is a reason for that. It's complicated. Turns out some of the coins that I had from tips are worth more than their face value (old dollar coins, 50 cent coins, etc). So, we don't want to just take them to the bank and only get face value; but we haven't gotten around to trying to sell them. So its sort of like we dont have that money right now. Consequently, my wardrobe adventure kind of fizzled out.

Oh well. I really like the clothes I did get. It was fun while it lasted.

Recently thought, I have slumped back into the too-cheap-to-buy anything phase, which is good in the short term. But in the long run, when we actually really need something, I have found myself spending too much. When, if I had bought it before we really needed it, but when it was on sale, my long term budget would be happier.

Well, for some reason, a couple weekends ago, I totally embraced the "buy it while its a good price even if you don't need it yet" mentality. I had a 30% off coupon for my favorite clothes store, and we went on a bit of a spree. This is what we got:

2 shirts, 2 pairs of jeans and 1 awesome skirt for me.

2 shirts, a pair of shoes and 2 pairs of shorts for Mon Amour.

A plethora of baby clothes, mostly to be saved for gifts as needed.

And, not pictured, some underwear and one gift-item that could not be picture cause the recipient reads the blog... Total Number of Items: 24 Total Cost: $154 Plus, I got $20 off my next purchase. Which I used a couple days later to get myself a pair of capris. It was a lot of money for one trip. But we got a lot of things that we needed, or would need soon. And almost everything was clearance + 30% off. So I call it a pretty sweet deal.

Hon Fest

Beehive hair, pink flamingos and cat-eyed glasses.
Really not our thing.
But, its a big deal where we live, so we knew we would have to go to the Hon-Fest at least once while we lived here, might as well do it now.

So, Mon Amour, his sister, Papillon and myself headed off for a fun adventure!

We saw a bit of the Little-Miss-Hon competition. Ahh, the feather boas.

Like any good street festival there was yummy food:

Lots of BBQ.

And live music, performed by....an alumni of our college!

Yup, we knew the band before they "made it big". Crazy.

Papillon took in all the sights from her stroller, while eating her lunch on the go.

It was a little warm that day, so we didn't stay long. But I think we enjoyed ourselves, it's not going to go on a list of things-we-must-do-annually; but when it comes around next year, if we have nothing to do we would not be opposed to going again.

A Fun Aunt Visit

On her way to her summer job, Mon Amour's sister spend a weekend with us; while she was here we had a lot of fun adventures.

There was a lot of just plain hanging out with Papillon

Which is always fun.

We also went on a driving tour. It seems that Mon Amour's grandmother grew up in our fine city. And thanks to our recent visit to Granddad, we knew what street she lived on.
On the way there, we encountered the most ridiculous intersection you have ever seen. Yikes! We wanted to go straight-left; not straight-right, and not left-left.

We don't know exactly which house it was, but it was one of about 8 houses on this little street, and it was fun to get an idea of where she lived.

Papillon enjoyed having me ride in the back with her, and made fun noises along the way.

Welcome Home, Papillon Style

This is probably one of my favorite sweet-Papillon moments ever. Whenever I go outside (to take the trash out or grab the mail or something) Papillon crawls over to the screen door to watch for me.

Generally she fusses when I have my back turned, fearing, I suppose that, I am leaving her alone with Marge. But as soon as I turn around to walk back her little face lights up and she starts smacking the door in excitement!

So sweet.

Visiting a Friend

One fine sunny Monday, Papillon and I headed out for a little road trip to visit one of my very good friends. It was high time that we visited her in her home town, cause in the 3 years she has been out of college, I think she has come to me dozens of times, and I have never gone to her. So off we went!

Wonderful little Papillon slept the whole way to her house, which is always a plus!

When we arrive in my friends little town, I was pleasantly surprised that it seemed like a super cool place! There is a college in the town, which always lends a degree of fun-ness. The college has a relatively new science building with a cool color-reflecting wall on it. Check it out:

All the tiles are the same, they just look different depending on how the sun hits them. It looks completely different depending on what time of day it is!


As part of our visit, we got to check out the really cool place where my friend works. It is basically a military museum/archive. My friend is an "archive specialist" (I think) which means she deals with original historic documents all day, things like Civil War Love Letters. Crazy!

At this "museum" they have a little trail where you can explore recreations of various key parts of the different wars that America has been involved in.

Here is Papillon and my friend checking out the supplies in this cabin from the...umm...I think it was the French and Indian war?? Maybe. I forget. History is not my strong suit.

Possibly the most fascinating display was the trenches from World War I. They were crazy! I can't imagine fighting a war that way (not that I can very accurately imagine fighting any war...but..); they must have been insane! You would feel so claustrophobic all the time. Shew. It was intense.

We ended our visit with some ice cream and a little exploration of down town.

It was such a fun time and Papillon and I were glad we finally got to make the trip!

Drinking From a Straw (aka first taste of Chocolate)

One toasty day not that long ago, Papillon and I headed to my parents house to spend some quality time with my little brother. It was quite a toasty day (I think it was very near 100), but being as tough and frugal as we are, the three of us pretended not to mind the heat for the first half of the day.

But when Papillon's hair started curling because of the sweat, we knew we had to do something. Turning on the AC proved unhelpful, since apparently it takes central AC a solid 24 hours or more to bring the temperature down once you let it get that hot (it was like 88 inside, with the shades down and the fans on).

At this point, we were desperate for some relief from the heat. So we hopped in the car, and, armed with coupons for free iced-chocolate-beverages, we headed to a donut shop to enjoy our cold beverages and some AC.

Delicious iced, chocolate beverages:

Papillon was instantly intrigued by these yummy looking beverages. She had her own water and some cheerios, but that just wasn't cutting it. So she pulled out the adorable pleading eyes with which she begged for a taste.

Knowing that she did not know how to drink from a straw and also that, generally, just letting her put her mouth on the straw was enough to make her feel like she was enjoying what we were enjoying, I let her "have a sip" from my straw.

Much to my surprise, she instantly put her lips around the straw and took a big sip. She got a mouth full of frozen chocolatey goodness - and she loved it! Since then, she has been an expert straw-drinker, hoping, just hoping, that one day it won't be water that comes through the straw, but that delicious sweentess that her mom accidentally fed her.

After that, it was back to cheerios and water for Papillon until...

Papillon pulled out her cute act once again. This time she tried it with the store manager. She pulled out all her tricks - flirty eyes, nodding yes, bobbling her head no, etc. It was too much for the store manager, and she caved and gave Papillon an entire glazed donut all her own.

I gave Papillon a couple bites (it would have been rude to refuse the free donut), but decided a whole donut might be too much sugar for Papillon. Papillon, however, was determined to eat that donut without my help. She couldn't figure out how to pick it up and bite it. And when she tried to pull off a piece she only managed to get tiny crumb sized pieces. That did not deter her, however, and crumb by crumb, eating them faster and faster, Papillon devoured her donut.

(she did not eat all of it, but for eating it one crumb at a time, she did make a pretty good dent in it).

So there you have it, our efforts to stay cool and find some AC resulted in Papillon's first experience with a straw, chocolate and donuts. What a fun day!

Garden and Wildlife

I have to say, I have been pretty pleased with our garden results so far this year. Definitely some things that I need to do different next year (like plant the carrots further apart so I don't have to thin them to the point where we only have 5 left. haha) But over all, for planting kind of willy-nilly, its been very successful.

I recently picked some peas:

Which Mon Amour shelled for me. It takes a surprising number of pea pods to get a decent number of peas. We have just learned that you can actually eat the pods as well, who knew. So perhaps we will try that next time cause otherwise I don't think that our plants will yield enough peas to satisfy anyone.

Our cherry tomato plant which lives on our porch is also doing great. Lots of green tomatoes and about 4 or 5 have turned red and been eaten so far.

And, on a sort of garden related note, I spotted this little creature in our front flower bed the other day. Isn't it cute? There is nothing to give it scale in the picture (sorry about that) but trust me, it was tiny.

And adorable.

Picnic with the ducks

Recently, Papillon and I headed back to the duck ponds for a picnic with another friend.
It was a lovely, fairly warm day. The ducks were out in force, and I am pretty sure some of the female ducks in this picture are "babies". They looked full grown, but were definitely following a slightly larger female duck around like they were babies.

The fish also made a good showing this time. And they are HUGE. The ones in this particular pond had to be at least 2 feet long and probably as thick around as Papillon.

Papillon enjoyed a yummy snack:

Actually, she at peas and beans. I ate the Gushers. Oh the deliciousness of supersweet kids snacks!

Papillon's little friend chowed down on some watermelon. This kid loves his watermelon!

He does not love his sunglasses however, so he let Papillon borrow them. She was also not a fan, but looked super cute in them.

Papillon's friend is a couple weeks younger than she, but is totally a walking machine! And by walking, I mean running. He is very fast and very sturdy with his walking. Papillon just sat on the picnic blanket and watched him curiously.

The only way to get him to sit, was feed him some watermelon. Yum!

We very much enjoyed our second duck pond outing and totally plan on doing it at least a couple more times this year!

Summer Fun

It's not quite summer yet, but it certainly feels like it.
What kind of things have we been up to in this summer weather?

Hanging out in the AC chewing on some toys.

Having some yummy bread for an afternoon snack.

Wishing 11 months made her old enough for a sno-cone.

Collecting seashells.

Getting all kinds of sandy.

And of course, playing in the crab pool in the back yard.

The New Deck

Thanks to this years very pleasant tax refund (yay for buying a house and having a baby!) we have been able to do a couple projects around the house. The biggest project has been redoing the back deck.

One of the railings was loose, so we had that replaced. Then we had the whole thing sealed. I knew that sealing a porch was good for it, and something that should be done. But I didn't fully appreciate what it did for the deck until the first time that it rained after it was sealed.

Look at those sweet little beads of water!!
Water no longer soaks into the boards, it just puddles up on top. Which causes Marge to track a lot more water in the house, but also means the boards won't rot which is a total plus!

Stay tuned for more updates on the new deck, we are in the process of acquiring some fabulous new deck furniture!

Sleeping and Bathing

Some of the most fun times with Papillon are the normal every day kind of times.

Like bath time with crazy hair:

And of course there is nothing quite so much fun as sleeping:

Unless of course, its waking up. I absolutely love it when Papillon is standing up waiting for me to come get her in the morning. She is such fun when she wakes up!

This is my typical morning greeting. Not standing up, not fussing, just laying there, and then when she sees me she just explodes with excitement. It makes my day.

Occasionally, she will wake up just plain hungry. Those times looks something like this:

Adorable. But oh so sad.

Fun Times

Papillon continues to thoroughly enjoy any little adventure we have.

We recently met up with a friend at Chick Fil A for lunch. And Papillon was thoroughly distracted from her food by her little friend.

As much as she loves hanging out with friends, Papillon is also perfectly content to just sit in the back yard and play with a few blades of grass.

Side note: this Sun Smart little play tent thing (a freecycle find!) is ridiculous to try and fold up. There is a trick to it. If you know the trick, its a breeze. If you don't, you could be folding in vain for hours. I don't know the trick....time to look it up on YouTube again...

Pancakes

Papillon has gotten mildly pickier with what she eats....well, not really picky. Just preferential. Now that she feeds herself, she can decide what things to eat first, and some times even which things not to eat at all.

One Saturday morning, we decided to see how she liked pancakes.

The verdict: Delicious.

She ate an entire good sized pancake in addition to a whole, very large, banana for breakfast.
I don't know where her skinny-self puts it all!

A morning at the beach

The day after Papillon's first pool experience, we were invited to go to the beach for the morning with some friends. So we packed up our beach bag and headed off for a grand adventure!

First, Papillon and her friend sat and absorbed some Vitamin D.

Ahh, nothing like a day at the beach with your girlfriends!

Eventually, we donned the swimsuit. (this one matches her hat)

And braced for our first attempt sitting in the waves. Ready Papillon?

Not ready!

Actually, she really did like it. I just happened to take a picture of her surprised/unsure face. But she sat at the edge of the waves for a good while just enjoying the adventure.

Oh, and she also warmed up to the whole sand thing a smidgen. Previously she has freaked out when ever she gets the littlest bit of sand on her. This time she was fairly apathetic about it - not enthused, but not petrified.