You Look Marvelous!

They may play like little boys, but Sydni and Makenzi sure do love the girly fun that a pile of mommy's discarded makeup can bring! Let me just tell you, that allowing them to do this a few times a month has helped keep their tendencies to "borrow" my makeup lessen in frequency. Well worth the mess! Check out my little makeup artists at work this morning!

Sydni pretty much gouges her own eyes out while putting on eyeshadow.

Makenzi is a fan of blush. She put it on for nearly twenty minutes before I cut her off!


Looking "Bee-you-tee-full" as Makki says!

Loving the eyeshadow, Syd. Captivating!

Makeup makes her happy.

Makenzi is a Pro

If you've read my blog or know my children, you know that Makenzi is the child that will make me pay for my raising someday. She is feisty and has a HUGE personality. The crafty kids are usually your most intelligent (teaching 8th grade has taught me a lot about this) and she can "play" both Donnie and I like a master puppeteer! Check out her "pouting" face. This is the face she makes when she really wants something that you won't give her...(like my camera that I took from her dirty paws moments before I snapped this pic!)

Pouting like a pro!

After the pouting did not work...

Flower Girl Dress Selection

We met Ashlee (the bride-to-be) to try on flower girl dresses for her June 6th wedding. Makenzi is not a very good shopper, (she runs through racks of clothes and is basically a pain-in-the-you-know-what), so she went with Granny Deb. Sydni was UBER excited to try on gowns. At David's Bridal, they only had five dresses in her size, and by golly, we tried on each one! Sydni loved each one, and also wanted to try on the flower girl shoes. Needless to say, my little fashionista loved every moment in the bridal store. Ashlee might have a hard time choosing, but Sydni will be happy with any dress she chooses (and Makenzi could care less, but will wear it happily)!

Sydni - going to the prom!

Lots of bows!

Can you tell she's loving this?

Simple and cute!

We didn't have the petticoat on with this one, and it was very pretty in person!

This one had little sparkles and sequins.

How adorable is this one?

Good luck picking, Ashlee!

"Can you see my feet?"

She wanted to buy the shoes right then!

Sydni REALLY Likes Commercials

You could sell anything to my four year old if you put it into commercial format. She believes everything she sees on a commercial, and I've been noticing this more and more! Granny Mar measured her for a SNUGGIE last weekend because Sydni pauses the Snuggie commercial everytime it is on and makes Donnie or I watch it. She REALLY wants one and told me, "Mommy, you need one because you can read a book without your arms showing." She also goes on to quote most of the selling points of the commercial. I mean, really, it's a blanket with sleeves! What "selling points" could a commercial for that possibly make? Either way, Sydni wants one and Granny Mar plans to make her Snuggie dreams a reality!



Another example of her commercial fixation came from a conversation she had with Granny Deb the other day:



Sydni: What place are we at, Granny?

(She says this as they pull into Home Plate Diner.)

Granny: This is Home Plate Diner.

Sydni: Oh, I like Home Plate Diner.

Granny: Really?

Sydni: Yeah, they have a good meatloaf special.



Deb said she started laughing because she has been seeing the diner's recent commercials advertising a "meat loaf special"! Donnie and I are in big trouble when she starts requesting the expensive stuff she sees in commercials!

Fancy 'Do's and Outfits!

Having girls is such a blast! Not only do I get to dress them up and shop for them, but I'm also in charge of hair! Sydni is very fashion conscious for her age, and is now starting to pick out her clothing, but sometimes she has odd requests for what she wears. It's frustrating, especially when we are running late most mornings, and she wants to wear odd combinations! In the picture below she demanded to wear her athletic socks and white Sunday school shoes with her outfit! I pick and choose my battles, because like her Mommy and Daddy, she has a very hard head and doesn't negotiate! We are also experimenting with new hairstyles as the girls' hair grows longer. I've been having to learn a few new things here and there, but I love getting to play with different styles. Donnie also seems to enjoy the compliments we receive when the girls look cute. They never go to daycare or out in public without their hair fixed, so it bothers him if it's not looking pretty! I never thought he would be as particular as me about their clothing and hair, but he's turned into a very fashion savvy Daddy of little girls!


Check out the socks! Sydni is also striking a pose!

I'm calling Tyra to sign her up for the new season!

Mak is working on her runway pose!

They bring a "friend" to school each day for nap time.

Love my Makki Jo!

The "fishtail ponytail". They love this braid!

Looking cute for school.

Awww, Makki puts a hand around Sydni, her idol!

Brenner's Birthday!

It depresses me to say that my baby nephew, Brenner, celebrated his first birthday last week! His babyhood went by entirely too fast, but I've learned through experience that most babies grow up too fast! He's already walking (running, actually!) and into everything! I hate that I don't get to see all of my nieces and nephews more, but we attempt to get to White Deer and Amarillo as often as we possibly can. Here are some pictures from our short visit:

Makenzi and Kienan enjoying breakfast! I need to buy Kienan a new Tech shirt!

Karson pointing at his brain...

Which inspired this picture!

Sydni, Alee and Alyx enjoying the great weather.

Brenner opening his gifts.

Pretty darn cute!

Interview With a Child

I completed this survey with Sydni! Some of her answers were too cute not to share:
Interview with SYDNI RYEN- 4 1/2 yrs. old.
1. What is something mom always says to you?
That you love me.
2. What makes mom happy?
Running around and playing with us.
3. What makes mom sad?
When Fudgey and Lady chew up things. (Our labs...Oh, so true! Pissed is the better word!)
4. What does your mom do to make you laugh?
You tickle me and act all crazy. Will you tickle me?
5. What was your mom like as a child?
You look like me. (How many times has she been told that, huh?)
6. How old is your mom?
She is.....(starts counting on her fingers. Skips from 7 to 28)...um, 28!
7. How tall is your mom?
About 20 feet? (5' 4" on a good day)
8. What is her favorite thing to do?
Watch TV and play with us. YOu like going to the ice cream store. Hey, can we go to the ice cream store? ( I never get to watch TV, and I dread the ice cream store because I can't say no! How would I know if it's a favorite? Ha!)
9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
Look for me? (Haaaa! My witty child.)
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
For being pretty. (I think someone is still trying to get to go to the ice cream store later.)
11. What is your mom really good at?
Playing the staring game. (We have staring contests a lot, but she always wins.)
12. What is your mom not very good at?Getting Fudge off the trampoline.
13. What does your mom do for her job?
You make your kids learn and play. They call you Mrs. Hart.
14. What is your mom's favorite food?
Pizza? No, you like those white thingys with the little rice. (My california rolls)
15. What makes you proud of your mom?
That you dress me. (It's really hard. I'm glad I've risen to the challenge.)
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Tom. (Dang, I was hoping for Jerry. Thanks, Syd.)
17. What do you and your mom do together?
We go play out at the park. You make us read. (I don't make them read! They like it!)
18. How are you and your mom the same?
You put your moisturizer on. (Uh, what?!) Mak says, "We're both girls!" (Smart kid!)
19. How are you and your mom different?
You get pimples on your face and I don't. (Thanks.)
20. How do you know your mom loves you?
Cause your always hugging me and not letting go.
21.. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
To The Man That Shoots Fire. I want to go there. Can we go there? (That is what she calls O'Hana and Kabuki Steak House. Somebody is Hungry!)

Happy Valentine's Day

We are spending our Valentine's Day at home, since apparently it is Makenzi's turn to have strep! I'm breaking out the bleach, Pine Sol and Lysol tomorrow, hoping to at least rid our house of this bug that won't seem to go away! It is circulating around daycare like wildfire, but I had made the stupid assumption that Makenzi had dodged that bullet! Wrong! She's sleeping off a fever as we speak! However, she and Syd were able to enjoy their daycare's Valentine's Day party on Friday. Here are a few pictures:

Posing after I dropped them off at school.

Sydni's signature "crossed-leg" pose

Sydni and her best friend Addi

Mak waits patiently to open her Valentine's sack.

Ready for her snack!

**HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALYX AND ALEE! WE ARE SO SAD WE COULDN'T COME TO YOUR BIG CHEERLEADER BIRTHDAY PARTY TODAY...TRUST ME, WE'VE CRIED A BIT BECAUSE OF IT! WE LOVE YOU!**

Makenzi Thinks Her Daddy is the Toughest

I have a funny story to share from daycare last week. The director pulled me aside when I came in to pick the girls up to tell me about an "incident" that had occurred with Makenzi that day. It went a little something like this:
Director: Um, we had to put Makki in time-out today. (She says this with a HUGE grin on her face.)
Me: Okay, what did she do?
Director: Well, she had an arguement with a friend, and the friend said that he was "gonna get his Daddy to spank her bottom"
Me: Oh no! Did she hit him? (Makenzi has a very short temper. If Sydni says anything negative to her, Mak usually ends the arguement with her fist. She also tends to fight with boys in her class, so I figured this "friend" was a him.)
Director: No....(she starts laughing), she said "Oh yeah?, my daddy will come up here and kick your daddy's butt!" She said it like she meant it! We had to put her in time out and tell her that she can't tell her friends that her Daddy will hurt them. She also can't use words like "butt".
(The director is giggling the entire time she's telling me about Makenzi's "punishment".)
Me: I'm so sorry! We will talk to her about that today.

Long story short, Makenzi admitted to contracting out her Daddy for violence towards her friends. Makenzi's personality is so fiesty, that I'm totally scared of how it will agree with an elementary school setting in a few years! Her daycare teachers love her, and seem to understand that she has a short fuse, so they usually keep her in check before she can blow up. The last time she had a bad day, she had bitten a friend that stepped on Sydni's sore thumb (when Syd had staph infection). Time will tell how big of an "attitude" our little one will have...leave it to the teacher's kid to be the "problem child".

Kienan's Worksheet

My sister sent me a picture of a worksheet her oldest son, Kienan completed during the "100th Day of School" celebration that his elementary school was conducting. Before you look at it, you must know a bit of background information. Kienan loves his brothers, but after Hayli had Brenner (last March), he made it clear that he didn't want her having any more kids! She can't even poke her belly out without him nervously asking if there's "really a baby in there." So when she sent me this picture, it confirmed Kienan's expressed fears:

You crack me up, Kienan! Love you, buddy...

The Mud Room

The Mud Room in Lubbock is a pretty cool store. You can pick out your unfinished ceramic merchandise, paint it however you please, and they will fire and glaze it for you. The girls, Emily, Annabelle and I spent Saturday afternoon painting our hearts out! The girls painted coffee mugs, and Belle (with the help of Emily) painted a few items herself! We had lots of fun, and I hope our special projects turn out...I get to pick them up next week. Painting is one of the girls' favorite past times, so I am sure we will be visiting The Mud Room soon! (I would like to go without the aid of my little artists, just because I could literally spend HOURS at that place, and tons of money!)

Sydni is so excited to begin! She had so many grand plans for her mug, but the end result was pretty much lots of paint blobbed together because she wouldn't STOP painting it! Ha!

I'll get pictures of the finished products when I go to pick them up next week...it should be interesting to see how they turned out!

Makenzi was bored after twenty minutes of painting, but really, twenty minutes of her steadily doing ANYTHING is quite an achievement!

Annabelle gets some help from the Mud Room assistant in making a hand print.

We will have to come back and paint some other masterpieces! They had so many cool pieces you could paint...Mommy will have to come and paint something for herself next time.

Weekend in White Deer

Here are a few pics of our quick trip to White Deer last weekend. We came up to WD for my high school friend Jenni's wedding. Have I mentioned that Sydni loves weddings? My friend Ashlee is going to have Syd and Mak be flower girls for her wedding in June, and let me just say that Sydni is PUMPED about her role! She told me on the way to WD that she wanted to be the flower girl for Jenni, if she needed one! I think she feels like she needs to be everyone's flower girl at this point.
Check out our pics below:



My sweet Sydni! Love those freckles!

Aunt Layci wants to do Mak's hair, so I let her...good luck!

They loved watching the bride and groom dance.

Sydni and Jenni. Sydni thought Jenni (being the bride and all) was a rock star or something! She is OBSESSED with weddings, brides, and anything that goes along with all of that stuff!

Playing at the wedding. See how they hold hands? Cute!

Getting ready for the wedding in Granny's bathroom. Stinkers!

Me and my girlies!

Mommy and Sydni attempt our signature pose...am I squeezing her too hard?

Looking cute for the wedding!

I'm a little obsessed with Facebook right now...

There is a survey going around on Facebook.com (a site that I am loving way more than myspace now) and it requires you to list twenty-five random things about yourself. Donnie won't do one, but I thought I would post mine because I had so much fun making it! It really made me remember so much stuff I had forgotten, not to mention I totally dig reading my sisters and friend's 25 Random Things to! So Carmen, I'm copying you and copying my list from Facebook....(BTW, if you do not have a Facebook, get one! It is so simple and so much fun!)


Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)*************************************************************************
1. I hate to touch frozen food. Really, it oogs me out to touch. My heart starts beating faster and I have to force myself not to drop whatever it is I have to hold. Wierd.
2. My Expo markers on my dry erase board smell awesome.
3. I have a scar on my rib cage resulting from my failed attempt to ride my bike across a cattle guard when I was seven.
4. More than likely, I have ADHD. This is annoying to everyone around me because I start a project, cleaning task, bathing my kids, etc. and I don't seem to finish. Makenzi has left the tub without me rinsing out the shampoo because I've wandered off to fold a load of towels. (Luckily, Syd is old enough to realize I haven't rinsed her and she does it herself!)
5. Bryan Griese (former Denver Broncos QB) literally picked me up and dusted my butt off after I wiped out in front of him on a bicycle. I was a freshman at Tech, 19 and a PR intern for Phil Long Dealerships in Colorado Springs and was working the Denver Broncos Charity Golf Tournament. It was a magical moment. He also told me my forehead was bleeding.
6. Along the same vein, I had three boys pick up a desk to rescue me from beneath it in a Tech lecture hall. The old English building at Tech had ghetto-fabulous wooden desks. I reach over to retrieve a dropped pen (during one of my first classes as a Tech freshman) and toppled the desk. It is one of the most embarassing moments of my life
7. I'm three chapters into writing a book...When I tell people what its about I feel self-conscious, but I will tell you if you want me to!
8. I can stand on my head for quite some time.
9. I can also out hula-hoop most people!
10. I drink nearly two gallons of water a day and a whole liter bottle throughout the night. I must be part camel.
11. My toes are longer than most people's pinkies.
12. Every scar on my body (except my c-section scar and the cattle guard incident), Amanda (Freeman) Saffel was present when I received it!
13. I can look five months pregnant at any given moment...cool when I'm going to United grocery store and need a parking spot. "New and Expectant Mother" parking is awesome.
14. I could live on California Rolls.
15. I never skip breakfast. Ever!
16. I wrote a letter when I was 8, to Shannen Doherty to tell her that she needed to quit smoking or she would die of cancer someday. 90210 sent me back a generic fan club letter. I was pissed! I really, truly believed she would write me back, thanking me for showing her the light. I wish I had that letter back...
17. I've climbed several grain silos during my youth, and once when I was tooted in high school. That's what we did for fun in White Deer! Par-tay!
18. I wish tanning didn't cause skin cancer. I could lay out for hours and hours, turning a wonderful shade of brown thanks to the help of my Hawaiin Tropic Cocoa Butter Oil with absolutely no sunscreen in it. But I'm getting older and can't do that anymore without freaking out about sunspots and freckles.
19. I have amazing hearing. I can even hear the high freqency humm electronic devices make when they are on or plugged in. Donnie thinks it's so wierd. I'm like a dog when it comes to my hearing...sometimes that 's not a good combo when you teach 8th graders. I hear stuff I would rather not hear!
20. Jenni Stone and I used to go read people's mail that they threw away in the WD post office. Again, White Deer was a boring place and you had to get creative to find a means of entertainment! (We did uncover a seedy affair reading that stuff!)
21. Barnes and Noble is my mothership.
22. I read magazines from back to front. Why, I don't know.
23. I wake up at 3:33am nearly every morning. Why, I don't know. That's just what my alarm clock says. I'm sure hayli has some sort of "Sylvia Brown" explanation for this.
24. My Pawpaw (Joe Mitchell) talked to me in a dream after his death in 2005. Until that happened to me, I didn't really believe stories like that. I really wished the old fart would come back and visit me again!
25. I can't hear that song, "Bye, Bye Miss American Pie" without thinking of my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Rapstine. What a wierd lesson plan that was!