Highlights from the week

I don’t know if the girls were extra sweet this week or I just appreciated them more since last week was a heavier work week for me and I didn’t see them as much.

Anyway, here are a few great moments from our week:

• Eva tells me she loves me all the time out of the blue. (OK, in fairness she tells Steve, Ella, the lady at the gym and some other people she sees too.) But it is so sweet. It comes out like this “Lub you mommy.”
• I hung our comforter over some chairs to dry (Eva got into my lipgloss, but that’s another story) and it instantly became Ella’s fort. She ate a few meals in there, gathered some stuffed animal friends and did some writing in there. Note to self: Build more tents at home for easy entertainment.
• We had a playdate in which the girls rocked out on a kids set of drums. They loved it. Eva also loved a keyboard they had. That child is so musical.
• Steve wanted something sweet one night this week, so I stopped by Kroger after Ella’s dance class. I bought him a huge salted caramel chocolate cupcake that he thought rivaled Casa’s insanely good chocolate layer cake. And it was only $2.50 and enough for both of us. Good find! And Eva’s reaction to us bringing her home a chocolate donut with sprinkles on it made my night. She kept looking at it saying “Wow!” “Wow!”

I did it – before and after haircut photos

I decided a while back to embrace having curly hair and just really learn to make them look nice. I grew my hair out (it helped that I was on prenatal vitamins back then) and wore this look for several years.

But I was just so bored with it. And also, while it looked great on some days, a lot of days it looked like a bad perm and it started to be up in a hairclip more often than anything.

This is an average day …

So I started to get excited about going back to short hair. And I don’t think my curls really look good with short hair, besides short hair is much easier to straighten. And some where along the line I decided that I would try out some blonde highlights in my red hair. I had seen it on a few models and thought it was really cool.

This is my hair “inspiration board” I took to my stylist.

And here is what I came home looking like …

This is soon after my new cut. Love the highlights and the cut.

This is 3 days later. I still haven’t washed it. Some of you may think that’s weird and not everyone can do that, but my hair does not produce a lot of oil. It took a very minimal amount of time with a large barrel curling iron to maintain the look. I just purchased a 1 inch flat iron though and I think that may work even better.

Trying to show cut/highlights in back. I really like them. Only time I have done anything at all to my hair color was getting lowlights over 10 years ago.

So, that’s it! I’m excited that I have a new look and it may be very easy to maintain too. Am wondering about what will happen when I get all sweaty at a zumba workout. It will probably curl right up and look terrible! We’ll see soon …

Ready for a Kindle

I decided after a good amount of research I’ll be buying a Kindle Fire for my birthday. It’s a smaller tablet than the iPad, but I like that. I think I’ll actually carry it in my purse and it can be something I can do when I’m waiting or the kids are waiting. And I love the Amazon Prime deal with it. If you are a prime member -$80 per year- you get free 2-day shipping on Amazon for anything, and you get one book per month from their lending library. We order quite a few things off Amazon and a book a month is worth more than $80 alone.

And I know, I know, the iPad is AMAZING. I have no doubt it’s the best tablet out there. But I can’t justify to myself or Steve that I need to spend another $300 for it. I think the Fire will be great for me. Can’t wait to prop it up in the kitchen for my many Pinterest recipes …

And I’ve already ordered a cover. Isn’t she cute?

A sweet Valentine’s Day

I didn’t really take many photos.

But we had a lot of sweet moments this Valentines Day. The girls couldn’t wait to open a box from their Grandparents in Michigan so they called them the night before and begged. They were so happy with their things, who can blame them?

They also got a few things from mom and dad. This stuffed animal was actually from grandma and grandpa. We got Ella a little pink album that is a scrapbook all about her. She carried it around all day and filled out many pages. Their other grandparents sent sweet cards with stickers and a dollar for each year in age. Ella used her money to buy snacks for her and her daddy at Star Wars this weekend.

We surprised Steve with this cake in the morning. Ella kept a good secret. And it was so yummy. Not as good as the peanut butter sundae from DeBrands Steve got me though.

Ella made really nice presents for her class too. She picked out little Tinkerbell notebooks for the girls and Spiderman notebooks for the boys. We tied a small bag of candy on each and she attached a Valentine she wrote herself. She was very proud of herself and I was too.

Hope you all had great Valentines Days!