Author: pazmeyer

sock bun

My friend Amy was sporting the most fabulous bun the other day and I had to ask how she did it. I was shocked when she responded “with a rolled up sock”. What the what??? 
I had to google that and came across some pretty easy tutorials on pinterest. Really, really easy actually. I was able to whip up Gwyneth’s hair into this bun in less than 5 minutes. Now granted, she has super fabulous hair, but I also did one in my hair and it only took five minutes and given that I have fine, thin, not so fab hair you know this is an easy one!
This look requires one ponytail holder, one old sock with the toe cut off and absolutely no bobby pins. Magic!!

The only concern Gwyneth had was that I used one of B’s old socks (clean of course). She was horrified that her hair would be stinky all day. Silly, silly girl!

craft clean up

My goodness, this house has turned in to a liberal version of Hobby Lobby! Meaning of course that we have buckets of crafts at every turn…..yet we still allow for respect of others personal beliefs, a woman’s right to make choices regarding her own body, and we require the children to work on Sundays.  (Too political? I digress….).
B and Gus grabbed some after-birthday-beers, which are also commonly referred to as beers on a Tuesday at our age. The girls and I did some purging of dry markers, no longer sticky stickers, half used coloring books, and anything Dora the Explorer. I can’t even be bothered with that Swiper in a coloring book. 
Our crafts are so organized. Crafts. Organized labeled buckets. Truly a few of my favorite things. Oh yeah, and happy children. And a happy OCD husband who hates messes and clutter. All is right in the world…at least for the next week until all the buckets get dumped again…

Oh, don’t judge. We let them out for meals. 

happy birthday, ella

Miss Ella celebrated her 8th birthday with a gymnastics party. The gym was fabulous! There was so many fun things for all the girls to do and they played some great games. My girls were in heaven flipping about  and they always really enjoy seeing the Merrill girls. Braxton even let me hold him for a while during the party so everyone was happy!
Annabelle on the uneven bars
Not quite sure what Gwyneth was doing, but it looked fun and she was happy doing it so keep it up little lady.

The girls played a game – basically keep away – and I was pretty shocked at Annabelle’s stealthy moves. She won the first game with her sweet jukes and a few stiff arms to other little ladies. I kid, I kid and no one was injured in the taping of this film.

Miss Ella was very impressive on the high beam. 

Happy birthday, Ella! Such a kind, sweet girl. She reads more than any kid I know which I adore and am always ready to add to her collection. 

They did such a sweet job with the gifts. Each of the girls got to sit next to Ella while she opened her gift from them. It made them feel so special. Very nice touch.

Happy birthday, Ella! Eight years old….WOW!!

happy birthday, library

We planned a super lazy day for ourselves….yes, I said we planned it. It was actually typed right on our Google family calendar. “Lazy Family Day”. This ensured that we made no plans, but something doesn’t sound very spontaneous about it. Who cares!Sometimes we gotta plan to do a whole lotta nothin’.
We headed up to Boulder and roamed Pearl Street. Miss Annabelle is showing her own style with her current clothing, shoe, and hair choices. Um, kinda 80’s, kinda Disney…all Annabelle. She definitely rocks her own style. 
She also posed herself like this for a picture. I should add she’s kind of a diva. 

We spent a few hours celebrating the public library’s birthday. They had crafts, birthday cake, balloon animals, face/arm painting and each child received a free chapter book.

cake time. Gwyneth can’t be bothered with pictures

While B studied that evening the girls and I had a spa date. We did nails and hair. Annabelle wanted super waves for school the next day so I gave her lots of braids.

Rock on, Annabelle. Rock on.
The girls are going green…

cannery

We are super wild and crazy around here! We were so excited when our friend, Kristen took us to the cannery. You get to can your own grains and beans and dried fruits and we even canned some hot cocoa. It was awesome. And it was even cheaper than Costco. And we may be just a bit obsessed. 
B was a work horse –you’ve never seen a man throwing around bags of grain like this. Well you probably have if you lived near a farm where men actually do manual labor and haul grains and beans and crops around all the time….but c’mon, we’re city folk and he worked his buns off.  I got the easy job of sealing the cans. The machine is big and loud and fun and I sealed a few hundred cans and could have kept on going all afternoon. Yeah, we are pretty much living the rock star life style. 

lego

The girls were up at 5:50 requesting breakfast because they were starving. Just a bit dramatic…especially on a Saturday morning. Luckily we have a chef in training in the house who was willing to prepare a big breakfast for us. It’s breakfast week at school so we got to enjoy B’s practice omelets. Yum, yum, yum!
 

We joined the Merrill’s for Lego Club at their local library. Buckets and buckets of legos and the girls were very into it. They spent about 2 hours building and then their projects were displayed in the library. It was great to catch up with the Merrill’s and they introduced us to a new restaurant that meets all of B’s sanitary demands — which is not true of previous restaurants we have visited with them. Yuck, yuck, yuck!

cute little Braxton is on the go now!

Ivy and Gwyneth and their Lego creations.

I tried to get a shot of Annabelle and Ella together but we were at a library and Miss Ella could not be distracted by all those books. It’s amazing how much that girl loves to read!

national margarita day

Gwyneth goes to school Monday – Thursday and then has dance class and a mommy day on Friday. This week she requested a playdate with her friend Grace in the afternoon and she started asking when we could pick her up around 7 am. I finally picked Grace up around 3:30 and the girls had so much fun together. Annabelle went to a playdate at her friend Sofia’s so Gwyneth had the house to herself with her friend. Super big event around here!
 
 
After all the little girls were returned to their rightful homes and tucked in to bed, Gus and Misti joined us to celebrate National Margarita Day. B made some good margs over ice and I ruined a huge batch of frozen strawberry margaritas. They contained about 3/4 of the bottle of tequila. Mixing beverages is not my specialty.
 
 
We played Mexican Train which is the best dice game ever invented. I would highly recommend checking it out!
 

daisy treat

That Gwyneth is super sneaky and oh, so wise. She begged to come along with me when I dropped Annabelle off at Daisy’s. Once Annabelle had hopped out of the car, she said “oh, we should probably get some ice cream before we go home”. I can’t argue with that kind of logic.