Date Night

I LOVE date night! It keeps me sane. After a week with these 2 very active boys, a night out alone with my husband is my favorite. A couple of weeks ago we decided to go out, I got the babysitter and Wesley planned the restaurant. We tend to gravitate towards downtown Denver usually, I'm not sure why. Our favorite thing is to try new places, and this night was no different. While walking to the restaurant in LoDo, we spotted a cute Spanish Tapas Restaurant called The 9th Door. Wesley went on a mission to Spain and when he took me to Spain a few years ago, we went to a Tapas bar/restaurant. It was so yummy, so when we walked past this restaurant we thought we'd give it a try. Spanish Tapas is where you order a bunch of different mini dishes and share them. They are smaller portions so we ordered 6 dishes, and this place didn't disappoint! It was amazing! I loved it all, and would go back in a heart beat.
After dinner, we walked around a bit before heading off to dessert. Any of you that watch Food Network, on Food Network Challenge, the host Keegan Gerhard has his own dessert bar. I guess they serve dinner now but we went just for the dessert. It's called D Bar Desserts. And yeah, it was amazing! And even better, Keegan was there! I felt all excited he was there! So, I got the Molten Chocolate Lava Cake with a white chocolate truffle in the center and raspberry ice cream and raspberry glaze. Yum! Wesley got the Creme Brulee and that was by far the best creme brulee I have ever tasted. I put my dessert aside and kept trying to eat Wesley's.
It was one of the best dates we've been on. My favorites are always the low key ones, where we eat and talk, no agenda or place to be.
Lastly, no date of ours would be complete without a trip to the grocery store for Sunday dinner. I hate the grocery store and wait until the last minute to go.
I just had to post about our date, mostly so I can remember these things in years to come. Journal, journal, journal!
I love date night and I love my husband!

Out of this:

I made this:
Thanks to this:



And this, I mean him:
My husband is amazing - he helped me the whole way through, so I guess he can say now that he knows how to make a purse! I love this book already! No Sew, Low Sew is just up my alley. Every time I pull out my sewing machine I have to start from scratch. I have to go back to the manual to help me remember how to thread the bobbin, etc. It's pathetic. So when I saw this book I squealed with delight! And now I have such a cute purse to use! Did I mention that this was a NO SEW purse? Yeah, amazing - and cute!

Sesame Street Live came into town on Cooper's birthday so we took the boys. We weren't sure if we should bring Cooper or not but I felt bad leaving him home with a sitter on his birthday. I know he has no clue it's his birthday, but still, I felt bad. So we all went... yeah, I think we should have left Cooper home with the sitter. He was mesmerized the first 5 minutes and was over the rest. Wes had to take him to the hall a couple of times to let him walk around. He got restless and didn't want to stay put. Jake, on the other hand, loved it! I'm surprised by this, but there weren't very many people there! Theres' the golden circle which was on the floor and that was only filled up a few rows, if that! And we were in the first row of our section, right behind the golden circle. There must have been maybe 10 or 15 people behind us! Weird! But it was still a lot of fun. We had good seats because the characters would come in front of us and shake our hands or high five us. Jake loved high fiving all of them except Cookie Monster, who freaked him out. And even though he was happy to have Elmo give him a high five, he really wanted him to give him rocks (pound fist) instead. It was a great show. But my only complaint is the things they sell. At intermission they came out with TONS of elmo balloons so I told Wes to get the boys one, maybe it would keep Cooper still. He went up to get one and guess how much a balloon was? $10! Are you KIDDING me? Seriously, there were a bunch of suckers who bought them for their kids. These weren't exceptional balloons either, just regular sized Elmo balloons. Lame! Jake had popcorn and a slushy instead. Wes had been out of town and we weren't sure if he would be able to make it but it all worked out and we were so happy to have him with us!

Big Bird starting the show

Some of the characters

Cooper's 1st Birthday

Yes, Cooper is 1 already! Please someone tell me where the time has gone! I can't believe he is 1, I mean seriously, he's 1! For his birthday we had Clint and Kara's family over for hamburgers and hot dogs, and of course, birthday cake. When Jake turned one, I hoped that he would smash his face into it or throw his hands right in, but no, he was neat and tidy and to be honest, a little afraid of it. Cooper on the other hand, did not disappoint! Within seconds of him getting the cake in front of it, he dug his hands in, squished the cake in his fingers, massaged the cake, really, he massaged the cake and got it all over the place! It was quite the sight, and I think it took only a couple of minutes before the cake was no longer! It was quickly on the floor and all over his body. So.much.fun! Here's a few pictures to enjoy:

The Cake

Ta-da! One hot mess...one cute mess!

Jake's Cowboy Party

Jake has his 3rd birthday coming up on the 13th and we celebrated it this last Saturday with a cowboy birthday. He had originally asked for a gun birthday but you can imagine how chaotic that would have been... a whole bunch of 3 year olds running around shooting each other with play guns, yeah, we had to think of something else so cowboy birthday it was! This is the first he's been excited about things happening which makes it all the more fun for us! He had about 10 of his friends come over and we were lucky enough to have it be a gorgeous, warm, sunny day!
Our birthday boy - he was thrilled about his guns and holster that he got that morning!

Each kid got a cowboy hat when they came along with a bandana made into a bag to put their goodies into.

The cake. Believe it or not, but apparently we picked the worst time to have a cowboy birthday. I could not find ANY-THING cowboy in the stores. I went to Walmart, Target and the dollar store as well as looked in the grocery stores. No one was selling even a gun. So my wonderful mother-in-law found a store in Utah by her house that sold a gun with holsters and mailed them to us. I had to order the hats and bandanas online. I was lucky enough to find invitations at party city as well as the pinata, but that's all they had! Hardly anything for the occasion. And of course when I called grocery stores, none of them had a cowboy themed cake. The only hope I had was Safeway who said they had a digital photo machine that they could use. So I emailed a random cowboy photo, they slapped it on with edible ink and we were equipped with a nice birthday cake! Hooray! Why did I not make my own cake you ask? I don't bake, I don't enjoy it... and that's that!The decorations: as they walked in the door there was a wanted poster of Jake with his frowny face (he had just learned about the frowny/smiley song when we took this picture of it) It worked perfect for the wanted poster. I didn't get pictures of it, but I had a bunch of wanted pictures of the kids that came to the party as decoration.
Some of the kids and moms:

We had 3 stations. My niece and nephews came to help out which was so nice! One was pin the badge on the sheriff and then they got a sheriff's badge as a prize.

We had a target that they shot a nerf gun at and then got a mini water gun as a prize.

We borrowed a bouncy rocking horse from Clint and Kara that they had to lasso, or get the hoola hoop over the horse and they got a yo yo as the prize
Of course, no party would be complete without a pinata... at least on my side of the family. I don't remember a single birthday in my life without a pinata, it's tradition! That's where the Mexican side comes out!
The pinata was solid as a rock so we had to get our niece and nephews to make a dent into it for us. And then, this was a first I've seen in my lifetime. None of the kids ran after the candy... we had to tell them to go get it and still half of them didn't want to get any. In my day, it was every man for themselves and you were lucky if you came out with a handful of candy...

Blowing out the candles. He got lots of fun presents from his friends, he's so excited about all of them! It was a fantastic party!

Decoration

I know, I know, WAY too many posts! But I was on a roll today after church and just went for it! I am COMPLETELY caught up now! I feel an overwhelming sense of relief to have that done! My journaling is up to date. Isn't that the best feeling? You may have to come back again and again to get caught up with all my posts, but enjoy! Oh and please comment. When changing my background a few weeks ago, I accidentally deleted all of my links and don't have the majority of all of you that I keep up with. Please comment so I can get the links to your blogs again! Thanks, enjoy!

It's been almost 3 years and I still haven't done much as far as decorating goes. It's so hard for me to make a decision and to know what looks good and what should go where. But I was able to make 2 new additions lately and I'm in love with them! The first is this wall decoration thing. I don't even know the name of it. I have wanted something like this for a long time, but I'm not willing to pay $200 for a wall decoration, no way. My sister introduced me to this blog called thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com. I love her ideas! One day I noticed she made this wall block that I had been wanting to do for a long time. It was easy to do and super affordable! So I did it and it's by far my favorite thing in the house! If you want to see how to do it, go here
The second is this rug. I love it! It's way cuter than the picture shows. I suppose vacuuming before I took the picture would have been helpful, oh well, you get the idea. I got it at Home Goods for a great deal! Also, you can see in the picture the new desk we added to our family room. It's so nice to have all that space when I'm at the computer!





I have wanted to

April

Our friend's real estate company puts on a huge Easter Egg Hunt right across the street from our house. They have over 6000 plastic eggs with candy, some have money in them as well. And they have the Easter bunny come visit. Cooper was mesmerized by the bunny's mouth. This egg hunt is hilarious, 6000 eggs and it doesn't even last more than 2 minutes! It's so much fun!

Clint and Kara's family came over to color easter eggs and then have our own Easter egg hunt in our backyard.
Wesley challenged the guys to a dunking contest. He won. He's a stud!
Look at that form!
Easter morning with their Easter baskets
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We had Easter at our house with Clint and Kara's family. I've never really gotten to do holidays. We are always out of town or we go to someone else's house so I was really excited to get the chance to make Easter dinner.
I had fun decorating the table. We even had sparkling cider with our dinner. I love sparkling cider!
I got this idea form Martha Stewart. It's a chick and a rooster. Have you ever had the wedge salad at Carino's? It's my favorite. It has candied pecans, roma tomatoes, gorgonzola, bacon, apple slices and a garlic ranch dressing. Oh my gosh, it's so good! I decided to make my own version of it. I have had a wedge salad a lot lately now, it was so yummy!
Jake loves to imitate Cooper

Wes and Jake being silly Easter morning


My cute Jake and I on Easter morning. A sight you don't see very often, I was baking! Many who know me know I don't like to bake. I don't! But I made Double Chocolate Almond Cookies courtesy of Barefoot Contessa's friend.
Here are the cookies. They turned out different than they should. They were supposed to be flatter but they stayed stuck in their ball. And I thought they were kind of hard. See, I follow the recipe exactly and they didn't turn out right. Reason #1 I hate to bake!
Jake lost all of his hair after he was born. So he was bald until almost a year old. Cooper, on the other hand, kept all his hair. So he's need a haircut so badly! I tried to cut it a while back and missed all sorts of spots so I took the boys to get haircuts last week when Wes was out of town. Cooper did well for about 2 minutes and hated the rest! He cried the rest of the time. I'm thinking about buying my own set

Jake getting his hair cut. He usually goes with Wes to Sports Clips. I think we'll go back to that. It's only $13 there and it's $18 at this kid place we went to. Blah, $18 for a kid's haircut!
When Wes is out of town, I let (make) Jake sleep with me and I let (make) him stay up with me. I like the company. Here he is one night at 11:30pm on the couch.


I was so impressed with Jake. He wanted to make a bridge one day and that he did! I helped him with 2 blocks, that's it and he did the rest. I thought he did a great job!

Jake loves playdough. I helped him make some glasses. Those are the best glasses, huh? I guess I should say I helped make a mask, it looks more like that huh?Wesley's parents came into town for a visit and for Maddie's baptism. We spent a day at the zoo. Here's grandpa and Cooper. He sure warmed up to them fast!
Jake and Ella