Mommy would never let me do this...

...but my school will!

A little whipped cream fingerpainting. Who knew art could taste this good!!! When I got to school to pick her up, the teachers were all still laughing at how much fun she had!

sunset + cone + new jeans

watching the sunset out on the deck, enjoying an empty ice cream cone, and checking out my new jeans...
wait, you're getting a picture of this? hold on, I'll pose...

West Coast Friends

Our sweet friends Jake, Emily, and Abby Jane came in town this weekend from California! This was the first time we'd met Abby Jane who was of course just darling. The girls didn't really know what to think of each other -- Abby Jane loved watching Kirkley and Kirkley ran all around like normal. Can't wait for them to play together again one day soon -- come visit again!

A few product endorsements...

Thanks Alli and Sarah for this idea...there are so many things we use on a regular basis, many are ideas we've gotten from other families. Maybe these give some ideas to you! Coming soon...a "books on my nightstand" post -- shocking to those who know me well! :) Now in no specific order...

1. Love the Garanimals tees at Wal-Market for Kirkley! Thanks Sarah Beth and Sadie for showing us these! We got lots of these this summer and put little monograms on them -- the coordinating gingham shorts were so great for play clothes. Also handy if you have a wonderful monogramming friend like Selwyn. She's helped stock Kirkley with some cute tees for fall! I'd show but my model is snoozing. The long sleeved tees like this one and leggings are out now in cute colors and dots! I would probably love the ultimate tees at Target with scalloped necks and puff sleeves, but our Target has yet to stock them for fall!
2. The Stride Rite Popsicle Sandals have been great this summer -- thanks, Mandi! They are now $14.89 on Amazon. Ordered another pair for next summer a size bigger. These have also been a summer standard.

3. The Bean Vac Coffee Canister is great for coffee lovers. It advertises for beans, but we keep our grounds in here, and they don't dry out.
4. My KitchenAid Stand Mixer saves oodles of time. I can make a bundt cake in five minutes which is a huge bonus to Kirkley's teachers, Alex's office, and my coworkers. My parents gave me this for our kitchen shower (after I informed my mom that I'm pretty sure this is what mothers get daughters at their kitchen shower). I had a white one first that I wore out a year later making cookies for several weddings. Good to know that you can walk into Williams-Sonoma with all the pieces and walk back out with a cute new butter colored one. It's still up and running!5. Any Fiber One products. If you do Weight Watchers (which we've basically been doing by our own calorie counting), all the fiber takes off points. I love their strawberry yogurt for breakfast -- I stir strawberries and/or blueberries in it. They have great muffin mixes that Kirkley loves, and the oats and chocolate bars are great midday snacks. Just realized their website has recipes too!

6. Member's Mark Wipes are everywhere in our lives -- car doors, kitchen table, changing table, stroller, every diaper bag...love that they pop open and closed. And I love that you get nine packs for $12.88. Now we did not use these right out of the gate with Kirkley. We of course did all of the sensitive, non-everything wipes, but after a few months, these were fine! Try them...I'll take the rest if they're not up to par! And we did switch to the Member's Mark diapers at size 2. While you're at Sam's, their produce is amazing -- we have lived off of their strawberries, blueberries, red grapes, etc. this summer!

7. I second Sarah's recommendation for Baby Wise. No lectures, please -- I know there is literature, I know it's controversial. :) Our child slept through the night by two months and now sleeps 12 hours each night. No exaggeration. 6:30pm-6:30am. And she was never underweight -- always around the 50th percentile. And I'm type A, so I loved a schedule. There are also a lot of interesting educational connections between a good night's sleep and attention. And she sleeps 12 hours each night. :)

8. And for those of you expecting, we have lots of baby favorites: the Angel Monitor, Swaddle Me blankets, and the bottles with drop-ins are the first to come to mind. And another random fact I'm glad I did was lined her bumper with the soft minkee dot fabric which she's snuggled up against ever since she could move. Several blankets in this fabric have been great to have as well. And personalized pacifiers. I think Ruth Ann found these -- a must for babies heading to school. Nothing like walking in to see someone else's pacifier in your child's mouth -- we ordered them that afternoon.

9. Nutri-Grain Blueberry Waffles. Pretty healthy and who knew, a help for teething babies...frozen. Yes, Kirkley eats these right out of the freezer. She went through a phase where we were toasting them, but she's getting a few more teeth and now they're frozen again. By the time she gets a chunk to soften enough to bite it, it's soft enough to chew.

10. Honey Maid Bees are a great kid snack for the snack trap that don't have tons of sugar or sodium like a lot of kid snacks. I never feel bad giving her a few of these!

11. Ice cream cones are another random teething snack. Found this out at a Sunday lunch as we were trying to calm the masses. These kept everyone busy for a good fifteen minutes. Thanks Scarlotte for this idea! Kept us from all being shuffled out the door! At 20 calories, they are more of an activity than an actual snack. We take one outside treat as we watch Daddy mow or enjoy the cooler weather...because they are a total mess. Which also leads me to a dustbuster -- a must once finger foods begin. Ours has the megabattery interchangeable with some of their power tools.

12. Green Giant Valley Fresh Steamers -- and really all of the steamed frozen vegetables! But the Steamers have a broccoli and cheese that is so good, Kirkley ate almost the whole bag by herself in one day (minus the stalky parts!). There is also a new potato bag with rosemary and green beans that is fabulous. The Bird's Eye Steamfresh Veggies have single serving packages great to throw in the microwave for her for a quick meal.

13. The Trader Joe's Charles Shaw Blend wines. You can't beat less than $3 for a bottle. I'd put the Cab in a secret wine tasting! And you certainly can't beat buying wine by the case for the same price as one good bottle. We love opening up a bottle to get to dine with for a few nights at dinner. Makes our weeknight meals feel so special! And while you're at Trader Joe's, they have great jars of puttanesca and scallopini sauce that you add to sauteed chicken -- super easy! And really cute cinnamon cookie alphabet letters for kids. Basically, spend some time in this store if you get near one!

14. Our travels have been thoroughly enhanced by our Garmin. I didn't think I'd like this, and I don't usually get into the gadget hype, but this beats the heck out of flipping through pages of printed directions. We breeze around new and old cities to all sorts of destinations we never would have found otherwise! A good husband gift if you're searching.... Did not work so well at the beach -- we need to update it, but every other location has been pretty perfect! This was such a great Christmas present last year from Boppy and GiGi -- we have totally utilized this!

15. And as thoroughly evidenced on this blog, we have gotten a little bit of use out of our camera. We should have bitten the bullet and bought one before Kirkley was born. Instead, we were diligent Americans and put our stimulus check right back into the economy. I think that link is it -- there are lots of Nikon versions. I totally thought this was a splurge, but it has been well worth it. Proven by the endless pictures I subject everyone to. I still need to learn all of the bells and whistles as well as invest in the zoom lens. We got ours at Best Buy but had them match Sam's price. We especially appreciated this more than our video camera as we put together Kirkley's one year video. I still debate on whether I'll do these videos each year. We loved watching it and now she watches it from time to time!

I hope all of these hyperlinks work...Now I want everyone to spill the beans on some of your favorites.... Last week, I put the feedjit live stats on the blog. It's been so fun to see people logging on from everywhere from New Jersey to Michigan, Canada, California, Colorado to Maryland...I've been shocked! Glad I don't have anything too crazy on here other than my random ramblings...like this one! I'd love to hear how you found the blog and see your favorites too! Don't worry that I found out about this stats site from reading a stranger's blog that they had put it on theirs (friend of a friend, but still a stranger to me!). Also don't worry -- doesn't tell me who you are, just where you are from!

This is also my 100th post on the blog! We hope to somehow turn this into somewhat of a scrapbook for our family one day. I have heard that you can upload your blog to make a book -- anyone know how to do this? No idea if silly posts like this will make the cut, but we've so enjoyed sharing these fun memories with our family and friends around the country. At some point I may do some "backblogging" and post some older things -- I hate we didn't start this from the get go! So sorry if you have google reader and get random announcements that Kirkley has arrived! :)

A long day...

I know I maxed out my audience long ago on sleeping pictures, but I couldn't resist yet another. I picked Kirkley up today to learn for various reasons she didn't get much of a nap. So after doing a few errands together, she was solid asleep in the car. Since one of the various reasons was a larger than usual diaper (I'll spare you details), I wasn't dying to put her in her crib without a bath. So I put a blanket on the floor and let her snooze. She stayed there for over an hour. At that point she ran out of her room searching for us! Don't think we're ready for a toddler bed as she was sort of in a panic and ran into a wall when she realized she walked past the bedroom door where I was calling her!

Sliding Sunday

Today was Kirkley's first time on a big slide! I didn't know what she'd think about it, but after watching the other kids for a while, she walked to the entrance to try it out! Sarah was so sweet to take her. Kirkley's face looks a little unsure in these pictures, but she walked over to go down several times!

Fall...

So I can’t resist posting that fall is here! Maybe not officially yet, but it is certainly feeling like it around here anyway. This is my favorite time of the year! I love the cooler weather, the leaves changing, football season....

One of my favorite fall memories is from our first years of marriage. When travelling home from a weekend trip, we passed a little farmer's market with all sorts of pumpkins outside. I made Alex pull over and before he realized what was happening, we were stuffing 10-12 pumpkins in our car all in between our luggage. The Southern Living that year had done an article on decorating with random colors and sizes of pumpkins. I was determined to make our first little home feel something like the spread I’d seen in the article. My sweet husband kept quiet as we shoved probably 10-12 white/orange/tall/fat pumpkins in our car. But I loved it! We put them all over and our sweet little law school apartment felt like fall.

Now fall comes differently with a little one. No time to search out the great pumpkins. Instead the search is for a Halloween costume (which we’ve found – she’ll be a strawberry). We’ll soon be getting out our cute fall plates (which some girlfriends and I found for a steal – not at Pottery Barn but the look alikes at our local Wal-Market a few years back). And we're looking forward to some newer October traditions consisting of downtown trick-or-treating and costume parties.

I can't leave out some of my favorite fall recipes...all of them involving pumpkin. There are many more...I had to pick my faves.


Creamy Pumpkin Dip

2 8 oz. packages of cream cheese, softened
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1 15 oz. can pure pumpkin (on baking aisle usually)
Serve with nilla wafers, gingersnaps, sliced apples/pears, etc.

- Set cream cheese out to soften to room temperature
- Beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, and spices until totally smooth
- Beat in pumpkin until smooth
- Chill at least 2-4 hours or overnight- Freezes great! Let thaw in fridge for a day


And a favorite recipe that my mom makes year round:

Pumpkin Bread

2 c sugar
2 c flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 15 oz can pumpkin
1/2 c oil
2 eggs
1 c pecans, chopped (optional)

- Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- Add pumpkin, oil, eggs (and pecans if using), and stir until all are moist (do not overstir). There will be a few lumps.
- Pour into greased pans -- I spray with Pam with Flour (can be done in loaf pans, muffin pans, etc).
- Bake at 350 for 40-45 min for loaves or muffins 18-20 min. Check with a toothpick for doneness.
- Cool 10 min in pan, remove to rack to finish cooling.
- Serve plain or with cream cheese frosting.
- Makes 2 loaves or 24 muffins.


I also love the pumpkin cheese ball from Southern Living a few years back -- not pumpkin flavored -- shaped!

And these pumpkin chip muffins are a favorite of my Orlando roomies!

I also have a pumpkin creme brulée that is great...but I'll spare you! Happy fall!

More Beach Pics

We had such a great trip! Kirkley loved the beach more than we ever would have guessed! As soon as we got down to the beach, we could barely unload our stuff before she was trying to take off to the water. She laughed running all the way to the water, would come back up to crash sandcastles that Aunt Laurel made, roll and fall in the sand (which was also surprisingly hilarious to her), and then she'd head back down to the water with daddy to rinse off. She played so hard that she'd lay down on the sand exhausted when she was ready to go in for a nap.

We enjoyed all that being at the beach has to offer including some outlet shopping and brunch at the Doughnut Hole. An after bedtime favorite of the adults was playing tripoley -- I totally recommend this as a fun game to add to your family favorites! Alex and Laurel grew up playing this with their family. So many fun memories -- can't wait to go back again!

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Beach Baby!

Kirkley officially loves the beach! Yes, we're here with a hurricane in the gulf, double red flags flying, police taped boardwalks, and all. Having a blast!

Grandparents Day Tea

Kirkley's school had a tea this morning in honor of Grandparents Day this Sunday. They got her all dolled up for the big event! Grammy, Great Grandma, and Great Grandpa got to be there. She so missed her other grandparents. Kirkley is so lucky to have so many grandparents around! Here are some of my favorite pics with her and her grandparents.

Granddaddy

Pa Pa

Great Grandma and Grandpa Kribel

Boppy and Gigi

Great Grandmother Mimi

Golf Lessons

Daddy is such a sweet coach!

Check out my swing!

So proud!

Is this what I do??