the alternative

i really think sometimes things just happen for a reason and i have the perfect example of that. this past weekend, i decided to once again join the husband and sweet cheeks for a quick morning out to yard sail. please do not even begin to get the impression that i enjoy doing this, because i still do not what so ever. the reason i go is because i really enjoy watching sweet cheeks do it. she really gets a kick out of it, and that is what puts a smile on my face. so we head out to an area that the husband found out was having a large neighborhood yard sale. they were so excited, me not so much. the first yard sale we hit was small. what the guy lacked in stuff, he overcompensated with in his sales pitch & personality. he pointed out clothes, nick nacks, and a few other things that he had for sale. next, he pointed us in the direction of a small box that looked to have 2 or 3 dvd's in it. i looked in and then i saw it. it was none other than the entire season 3 of punky brewster, not even taken out of it's plastic wrapping yet. how could this be.



As i slowly, still in awe, picked it up out of the box, the man tells me that we can have it for one dollar. ONE DOLLAR! this is a show that i absolutely loved as a kid. i could only hope now that sweet cheeks would love it as much as i did. so of course i bought it. my plan was to hopefully get sweet cheeks to like this show and slowly begin to wean her from her favorite show, hannah montana. my plan so far is working. sweet cheeks is really loving the new show. she is even already singing right along with the theme song. she really gets a kick out of punky's dog brandon. i love seeing her laugh to this show. i have to admit that i also enjoy watching it with her. it is a smack in the face of just how horrible the styles were back then. oh my gosh. it has already reminded me of jeans tucked into large, wigwam socks, as well as wearing two different colored high-top converse. what were we thinking. i will say that i love that the language is much better for a toddler than her other favorite show. we shall see if it sticks! but for only $1, i knew there was definitely no harm in trying.

ballerina, you must have seen her

sweet cheeks is my beautiful ballerina. we bought her this little tutu style dress the other day and she was in heaven! we could barely get in the door of the house before she was begging me to put it on her. she was ecstatic! we get upstairs to her room, get it on her, and she quickly puts on her princess shoes as well. you could just see my little girls face magically light up. i knew she felt like a princess in that instant. amazing what a little tutu and some heels can do for the spirits of a toddler. wonder if it would have the same effect on me? no seriously- don't worry, i don't even own a tutu.





nothing says "happiness" better than the kiss on the face by blue dog!




sweet cheeks wanted to take phoebe and her doggie for a walk on monday night. we were outside for about 5 minutes before the mosquitos planned their attack on us. it was not a pretty site. we then scratched our way back into the house, which in a time of war, felt like a very long way. we had lost that battle hands down.

here she is posing next to phoebe. what you can't see in this picture is her doggie, which was really a ball on a string. you have to love their imaginations at this age.



here she is proudly posing with all of her stickers that she got from the pediatricians office earlier in the day. i brought her in for a congested cough, which of course was just a virus we could do nothing about other than wait. sweet cheeks wanted her grandma to see just how many stickers she got for being such an amazing trooper when the nurse was slowly pinching and squeezing small drops of blood out of sweet cheeks tiny pin-pricked finger. i, as well as the nurses in the lab, were quite amazed.

matt damon

i love matt damon. i loved him as jason bourne in all 3 of the bourne movies-identity, supremacy, and ultimatum. the first and third being my favorite. not sure i cared for him much prior to these movies. though i did enjoy "good will hunting."

this song about matt damon by sarah silverman was actually just nominated for an emmy and i love it! the song is freakin hilarious (to my parents if you are reading this post, don't watch the clip- a bit too much language which i do not use but do think adds to the humor of the song) i hope everyone else finds it as funny as i do!




here is a photo of matt damon in character for a new movie he is in called "the informant" in which he had to gain 30lbs! it's not pretty-

sweet nibblets & sweet sarcasm

who doesn't love some good sarcasm every now & again? the husband and i are both pretty sarcastic people. we don't work at it, it just naturally comes out of us. sweet cheeks has it in her dna to be this way & is already becoming a bit sarcastic herself. just the other day for instance while brushing her teeth, she turns to me and says "why are you just standing there, do you work H-E-R-E!" i was a bit shocked but then it came to me. i realized where she had gotten it from. sweet cheeks is sarcastic, but she isn't learning this from her parents. she is learning it from a teenage millionaire named miley cyrus!



sweet cheeks has really gotten into the hannah montana show. her older cousin watches it, so of course sweet cheeks wanted to watch it to. at first, i thought it was cute that she wanted to mimic her cousin. then i thought it was even cuter that she would sing the theme song right along with the show. it was also cute when she asked for some hannah montana pj's at target the other day, which we did get her. the show is pretty funny. billy ray, i mean robby ray, quite often jokes about his old mullet which we all so clearly remember-

and her brother jackson is goofy. but i am now seeing the downside to letting my toddler watch a show meant for girls quite a bit older than her. she has picked up some not so nice words like ugly and stupid. she is throwing show quotes at us left and right now. she turned to her daddy the other day and calmly said, "i don't know how to tell you this dad but JUST GO AWAY," emphasizing her point even more dramatically by throwing her hands in their air. i always knew that my kid had an amazing memory, and i have mentioned that before, but now that memory is being used for hannah quotes. i am torn. do i let her keep watching this silly show that she so enjoys and doesn't really understand in the first place? or do i nip it in the bud and hope that she finds a new show on sprout or noggin that is more age appropriate?

the beep family

so i made a new purchase this week from jk studio, a little etsy shop with lots of cute wall decals.
i got these two monogrammed decals (obviously, our names are not shown)

for sweet cheeks label, i plan to put it on her headboard, which is just white. so i actually think it should turn out cute. the colors it will be in are pink and lime green-



ours i plan to hang in our living room
it will be in a chocolate brown color so it should go well in our newly painted yellowy-gold colored room-





of course, i am definitely a far cry from martha stewart. home decorating is just not a skill of mine. sometimes ideas look better in my head, so we shall see how it turns out.

let freedom ring

we had a great fourth 4th of July. i can not believe sweet cheeks has been around for 4 of them already. time is flying by so fast (definitely not the first or last time i will say that). this was her 3rd time going to the parade and she was so into it. no doubt that her favorite part was the candy! most of the floats in the parade threw candy out to the kids and sweet cheeks loved running after it, then putting it in her bag. she ate quite a bit but i really think she enjoyed stock piling it in her bag more than eating it. she is really too much when it comes to her bags! the parade was lots of fun and we left after an hour and a half due to the heat. we came home afterwards for a mini-bbq of hot dogs & hamburgers with some friends. later that night we decided to try and take sweet cheeks for the very first time to see fireworks! we knew of a place close by that was doing them so we watched from a near by parking lot. it worked out perfectly as we had the same view with half of the noise. she absolutely loved it. i loved her all-natural 'ooh' and 'ahhh''s. she did great watching the fireworks but she did even better just staying up late. i feared she would be a cranky mess but she was too busy having fun. we really had a great day but it didn't end there.

ever since the parade, sweet cheeks makes me play 'parade' with her. one of us sits on the floor while the other walks in a circle, proudly waving a flag, and throwing out fake candy to the one parade on-looker sitting on the floor cheering. it is hilarious. she can do this about 20 times in a row, never tiring.

here are just a few of my favorite pics from the parade-



sweet cheeks when we first arrived. she sat patiently waiting for it to begin



sweet cheeks sitting with a friend & snacking on a cracker



the next two pics are of the girls in the witness protection program-
you can't see their faces but i really enjoyed watching the girls get so into the parade, waving their flags and waving to all the floats






a trip later that weekend to a local park was a lot of fun but sweet cheeks was ready to go after her second fall. the girl really does trip a lot!
here she is proudly climbing the rock wall

no card still

i have been a slacker lately. needless to say, i haven't bought a new chip for my camera so no new pics of sweet cheeks to share. i will definitely have to buy one before friday though so i can take lots of great 4th of july pics. we are going to a parade in the morning, then if she can stay awake we will see fireworks that night. this will be a first for her. i wonder if the noise will bother her?

when sweet cheeks was between 1 & 2 years old, she had the cutest little tee with her name on it. she has since outgrown the tee but i didn't want to just throw it away since it had her name on it and was super cute. i then sought out a crafty person in my department at work to make something out of it. yes, i had to have someone else do it for me because as we all know, i am just not crafty. well this person that i work with did an amazing job. she turned sweet cheeks old tee into the cutest little bag. no doubt that my bag-full-of-too-much-stuff obsessed toddler is going to absolutely love it.



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here is a cutie little bib & shaker set in our great american colors. nothing says americana more so than pirates, right. it is from a great little website called silly dilly top spot. they have lots of other cute things like books, toys, puzzles, plates, and clothes, but i am sharing this particular set since the 4th is right around the corner.