fourteen months later...

Clint was away all weekend, so I decided it would be perfect timing to finish painting our room and get something up on the wall behind it.

Clint is absolutely adamant we'll never have a legitimate headboard because he hates when pillows fall between the crack of the mattress and the headboard, so we've been living with our bed against the wall for all 3 years of our marriage. Not exactly the homiest way to live.

So, like I said last Friday, we'd been living with an absolute horribly half-painted room for 14 months. It wasn't even like we had clean lines where we'd decided to end. We just quit mid paint job.

My mom came and helped me move the massive bed and clean the walls up to paint and my dad helped me move it back the next day after everything had dried. Teamwork makes the dream work.

I painted after Reuben went to bed for the night. Praise the Lord for 6:15 bedtime! It only took a couple hours and it honestly flew by thanks to trusty Law and Order: SVU.

Once it was dried and the bed was moved back, it was time to clean, organize, and decorate. I had big plans of doing a really cool display behind the bed, but I ran out of time/energy, so some twine, tape, photos, and old book pages did the trick just fine. I'm sure I'll update it to something a little more to scale with a king sized bed eventually...

probably in like 14 months.

birthday par-tay!

You guys.

I wish I could relive Reuben's first birthday party over and over and over again. It was easily the best day of his short life. He's such a people baby. Having a day devoted to celebrating him was his biggest baby dream come true!

We decided on "Up!" as the theme. Clint and I both love that movie and I knew we could do some fun, simple things to tie it all together.

The vanilla cupcakes were dyed blue to be like the sky and then a dumdum rolled in sprinkles looked like a ton of balloons floating up through clouds!

We surrounded his high chair with balloons. Helium just didn't seem necessary and we really didn't want to spend that much just for a few hours. Plus a floor full of balloons was apparently a genius idea, but we'll get to that later.

Food was really simple. We did a rainbow tray of fruits and veggies, popcorn ball "clouds", and mini corn dogs. Everything was gone by the time the party was over, so I'd say it was all a hit!

Ok, so back to the balloons. If you're having a lot of young kids over to your house and you have no idea how to keep them all entertained for HOURS.... use balloons. All the kids were 5 and under and they had a blast! Plus, it was so funny watching them all interact, it was perfect entertainment for the adults!

This year was the year of the blocks. Reuben got a ton of them! I can't wait for him to get big enough to build stuff with me and Clint. Blocks just seem like the quintessential little boy toy. I love them!

The cake was a hit! He wasn't sure what to do with it at first, but after his first bite, he was hooked. He was a hot mess by the end and the few wet paper towels I had weren't going to cut it. Baby boy needed a middle of the party bath!

Please. Take a second to admire the aqua-ness of that bath water...

We went back downstairs to watch the movie Up! while enjoying his first slice of pizza with any friends who wanted to stay and eat dinner with us.

I couldn't help but tear up while I was rocking him to sleep that night. We love Reuben. Like a LOT. And he's incredibly special to us. But he's our kid. Of course we're going to love him.

But to see our friends who CHOOSE to love him so well, joining with us to celebrate his first year... y'all I'm getting teary eyed just typing this. 

It's just something special.

costume-less

It's the day before Halloween. Reuben's very first one...

and the kid doesn't have a costume yet.

And I'm semi-regretting trying to save some moo-lah and make his costume.

I'm pumped about what he's going to be. He'll (hopefully) be my only baby this would make sense for, so I've gotta seize the moment. He can have a pre-made and stuffed costume every other year.

But not this one.

So tonight I will frantically cut and sew and hem and glue and trim and try and make something cute out of nothing.

Wish me luck, y'all!