Mud Fight in Pictures

Since we did this two weeks ago...I thought it was high time to get my videos and photos uploaded to post this.


What happens when it has been raining for three days straight and it FINALLY stops...and Momma is fresh out of inside-rainy day activities, anyway, AND Daddy has to go to a meeting for the entire evening?


She tells you, "Strip down to your panties/undies and get your crocs/rain boots on.  We're going to have a mud fight before I pull out all of my hair."  (Big Momma did not have to strip down, to your relief, she was in charge of documenting the evening.  And she didn't say that last part...but she sure was thinking it.)

The before shot.

We didn't even plan the matching red undergarments but it sure made for cute pics.

My babes started out cautious, unsure if they were REALLY allowed to get dirty...

wandering, wondering what EXACTLY I meant by "mud fight".

At first, McKlayne contently followed Asher around...mimicking his every move...

until he started madly running around, screaming...

and jumping...

and splashing mud everywhere.

She was still unsure about how good an idea all of this was.

Slowly but surely, she came around.

Off came the crocs...

she carefully picked her spot...

and peacefully played in the mud...minding her own business...

and sweetly singing to herself...

until out of nowhere she was ambushed by muddy mudballs fired by BIG BROTHER.

And because that big brother is so smitten with her...

he sacrificially sat down and let her cover him in mud.

Mud baths have become their new favorite type of bath.

I am so thankful for these little munchkins that bring such joy.  

I can be way too uptight sometimes.

And the after.

Our Sleeping Beauty...

This is how McKlayne has been letting us know that she is awake lately. She will sing this over and over until someone comes to get her.

Maybe she's waiting for her Prince Charming.

I caught this sweet thing on camera this morning:

Pregnancy #3: Week 18

I will turn 19 weeks later this week.  Almost halfway through this pregnancy and this poor third child has not had much mention on this blog.

This has been a whirlwind of a pregnancy.  When I was pregnant with Asher the days couldn't go by fast enough.  I think I counted down to my due date by the hour.  Every single thought was consumed with the little life I was carrying and how my life would soon be affected by that little life.  With McKlayne, it seemed to go by much faster as I was chasing around my one year old.  Other than feeling so sick (in relation to my other two pregnancies) in the beginning, and having crazy cravings, and praying for this baby, it seems like I haven't had much time to even think about #3 or how they will fit into this crazy family.

With Asher, pregnancy was really just a license to eat.  I gained 50 lbs.  I know, people, it was ridiculous. (AND...because my husband loves me so much, he gained a sympathatic 40 lbs with me...so I never weighed more than him...that was good news...even though I was way closer to 200 lbs than I ever want to be, Charlie still had a good 20-30 lbs on me.) Thankfully, we did lose it all.  With McKlayne I gained right at 30 lbs and still probably had about 5 lbs I could have lost.  How does that work? How did I easily lose 50 lbs and only 25 lbs the next?  Maybe I didn't work as hard because I knew I didn't have as much to lose? Who knows.

Anyway...cravings...with my first two pregnancies I thought that they were kind of a myth and a good excuse to eat (guilt free) whatever sounded good at the moment.  This pregnancy, has made me a believer of pregnancy cravings...I have experienced them something fierce--especially during my first trimester.  There were days when I would call Charlie and tell him if he didn't bring me home a certain food, then the safety of our family would be at risk.  I needed it or someone was going to get hurt.  One day I emailed him right before my lunch break telling him that I needed some cereal.  I probably hadn't bought a box of cereal in 7 months and all of a sudden, I was willing to take some drastic measures to get some.  Shortly after the email, he called me from the cereal aisle at Albertson's and asked me what I wanted.  Raisin Nut Bran. He came home with a couple boxes and a gallon of milk.  See...this pregnancy has made him a believer of pregnancy cravings, too.

And if you aren't yet sick of hearing about Chelsea on this blog (from the last couple posts) I am going to totally copy what she did with the remainder of my pregnancy.  (I think she is super cool...okay?) I thought it was such a cute way to document and truly treasure this sweet time in my life.  So, here goes...I will try to be consistent with this every Sunday/Monday but if you've been reading this blog long enough than you know that life just happens around here and sometimes we have to let go...so without further ado:

Pregnancy Highlights:

How Far Along: 18 weeks 

My baby is the size of a: Sweet Potato

Size: About 5.6 in., 6.7 oz.

Baby changes: Busy flexing its arms and legs. Blood vessels are visible through the thin skin, and ears are now in their final position, but they are still standing out from its head a bit. A protective covering of myelin is beginning to form around the nerves. 

Best Moment this week: McKlayne and I had an all girl day together this week.  We had plenty of time to cuddle, take each other in, giggle, read, play with baby dolls, and dress-up.  She is quickly growing up and becoming so prissy and proper...and sassy...maybe we've been hanging out too much?

Gender: Not finding out!  And so excited about it!

Movement: I have felt slight flutterings.

Food Craving: water with limes, chips and salsa, raw milk...yum!

What I miss: Easily finding something to wear.  I am still in the awkward stage of...I am too large to wear MOST of my regular pants/shorts (unless they're really stretchy denim like the ones in the picture...I will definitely being wearing those jeans a LOT post-baby, so get used to them)  but too small to wear exclusively maternity.  I wear a TON of (stretchy waisted) or cotton skirts right now.  And I've been living in the denim maternity shorts my sis gave me that have an adjustable waistband inside, just like my toddlers' clothes do! Ha! Most of my regular shirts are getting too short to wear and I just look more chubby in the middle than pregnant.  But...I am starting to look MORE preggo. Hallelujah! I do have  some tighter fitting Maternity shirts that are longer that are working for me right now.  Just an awkward stage to find a good variety of outfits.

Sleep: No trouble yet. The only trouble is I can't seem to get enough of it!  Char and I just completed Season 1 of House and have been staying up way too late watching it!

What I am looking forward to: Feeling this sweet babe move more and more.

Symptoms: Nothing really.  All the nausea is gone and I have that second trimester energy, so I've been feeling great!

***********

So...I want to know...what did you crave during pregnancy?  Did you really experience cravings or were they just a good excuse to eat?

Summer of Celebrations (Part III): Milk & Cookies Shower

Back to what we actually did this summer. 

Incase you missed Chelsea and Heather's posts about this baby shower, (who actually blog about events shortly after they occur) I introduce to you a Milk & Cookies shower...

(Isn't Chelsea beautiful at 8 months pregnant?)

I had seen several Milk & Cookies showers/parties on...what else but blogs? (here and here)...and thought it would be so easy (and unique) to pull off. And it was!

Each of the sweet hostesses baked several dozen cookies.

We had Chocolate Mint Cookies, Sugar Cookies, Ranger Cookies, Shortbread, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chunk, Molasses, Snickerdoodle, and White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies.

Charlie made our cute labels, of course.  And we used fabric (VERY, starched fabric...nothing else would work) to line the inside of the cookies jars. Some of cookies had to be stacked on bowls to make the cookies seem higher so they weren't too low in the jar.  Presentation is everything.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup butter, melted

1 cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1½ cups chopped macadamia nuts

2 cups white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.

Beat together the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the egg, then beat in the egg yolk, then beat in the vanilla.

Gradually add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture until just moistened. Stir in the macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips by hand with a rubber spatula.

Roll into balls or drop by heaping tablespoons onto baking sheets, and press down on the cookies with your palm a bit to flatten (not too much!).

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the edges look golden brown and the middles don’t look quite set. Allow to finish cooling on the baking sheet. 

Snickerdoodles

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, plus 4 tablespoons for coating

1 1/2 cups Sugar

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons Cinnamon

Preaheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar for 3-4 minutes, until light. Add eggs one at a time, mixing completely after each.

Stir together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Beat the dry ingredients into the butter-and-sugar mixture until well-blended. Refrigerate dough for about 20 minutes, or until firm enough to roll into balls.

Combine the cinammon and remaining sugar (you may need more of either of these if you're running out--I just kind of eyeball it)

For each cookie, pinch off enough dough to roll into a wallnut-size ball; roll into c&s mixture and place on cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

(Makes about 4 dozen cookies.)

Sandi's Shortbread Cookies

2 cups butter

1 cup sugar

4 cups flour

1 tsp. vanilla

(This recipe does NOT contain eggs...I always wonder if it was left out by accident on the directions...but, nope, the buttery goodness does not allow for them! ;) Mix butter sugar. Add vanilla. Add one cup of flour at a time. Roll into balls and drop on cookie sheet. Sprinkle top with sugar. Bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes.  (Thanks for this divine recipe, Mrs. Sandi!) 

 

I got this cute mason jar spigot from a garage sale but I've seen them at Hobby Lobby.

Of course, we needed several different varieties of milk in cute glass pitchers that used to hold HEB brand organic Apple Juice.

And mason jars...milk always tastes better in mason jars...these were from garage sales, too.

We always elect Kendra to create her precious prayer cards for our prayer showers and she was generous enough to share them here!

Extra cookies were sent home in a brown bag with the baby's initials...Chandler Owen Groves.  Don't you love that name?

And here is the precious little guy:



The Summer of Celebrations (part II)

Next up on the list...showers.


After the two weddings in early June, I helped host two showers at the end of June...a baby shower and a wedding shower.

The first one I want to tell you about is Chelsea's Baby Shower, but before I do that I wanted to highlight her Gender Party Reveal that we helped with in March.  (Heather blogged about it here, but some people have been asking me to put it on my blog so they could find it easier.)

My sister, Kyle, first told me about Gender Parties.  She'd seen several blogs about them...and how they were the new way to celebrate and reveal the gender of your baby to family and friends.

Instead of finding out the gender at their appointment, Cody and Chelsea decided to have the sonographer write it down on a piece of paper and put in an envelope.  After the appointment, they brought the envelope over to my house.  I was oh, so honored to be trusted with the big surprise!  (I didn’t even tell Charlie, though he tried to get it out of me…and then pretended like he didn’t want to know, anyway, after I refused…I was reveling in all the power I possessed for the few hours that day.)

I made the actual cake balls a few days before and doubled this recipe.  To half of the batch, I added red food coloring to the crumbled cake and frosting mixture until it was a bright pink and to the other I added blue.  My friend, Lindsay, helped me ice the cake balls on the afternoon of the party…okay, I’ll just be honest and say that I tried to ice several and they looked so sloppy...I think icing cake or cake balls is a gift and is definitely not one I possess…so I just let Lindsay ice the rest.  As she was icing them, I pulled two blue cake balls and two pink cake balls aside and labeled the plates they were sitting on, since we iced these before "the envelope" was dropped off.  I was so afraid I was going to get them confused and ruin the whole evening. 

As guests arrived, they gave baby name suggestions for both genders. (And this baby was actually named with one of the suggestions given by Heather! How neat is that?)

Guests were instructed to wear BLUE... 

or PINK according to what they thought this baby's gender was.

The pink and blue fare included:

I'm unashamedly copying the recipes directly from Heather's post.

Coffee Punch (dyed blue)
3 cups strong coffee

2 cups sugar

1 pint cream or half and half

1 quart milk

2 t. vanilla

Dissolve sugar in hot coffee. Cool. Add other ingredients. Freeze. Remove from freezer about 30 minutes before party. Mix and serve very icy.  (I've mentioned this recipe before.)

Raspberry Limeade

1 can of raspberry lemonade concentrate

1 bottle of cold, carbonated lime water

1 bottle of cold, carbonated raspberry water

Mix those ingredients and enjoy!

(This Limeade is Aaron's specialty, except he uses all lime everything instead of raspberry...but Chels needed a pink drink so she substituted, accordingly.  This was my beverage of choice when I was pregnant with Asher and it was responsible for 28 lbs of the 50 lbs that I gained with him.  Thank you, Aaron.)

You can see how the inside of the blue cake calls were kind of oozing out, Lindsay triple-dipped the cake balls that  Chelsea and Cody would be biting into, so they'd have no idea until they bit into them.  These were just for all the guests to eat so we weren't as particular.  (Recipe at the beginning of this post.)

Jello Squares

3 small boxes of Jello

(3 watermelon for pink, 3 blue raspberry for blue)

3 Knox Gelatin envelopes

heavy whipping cream

Mix the Jello and the Knox Gelatin together (this will be dry). Add 3.5 cups hot water. Add 1/2 pint heavy whipping cream. Stir. Pour in a 9x13 pan. Refrigerate. The cream will separate and go to the top. Cut and serve.  (To say that these were a HUGE hit with the kids would be quite an understatement. Chelsea's carpet can attest.)

Pink Party Salad

1 can strawberry pie filling

1 (8 0z.) cool whip

1 small can crushed pineapple (drain)

1 can eagle brand milk

1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Mix all of that together and refrigerate a couple hours before you serve it.

Blueberry Dump Cake

2 cans of blueberry

small can of crushed pineapple

1 yellow cake mix

butter

Pour the blueberries and pineapple in the bottom of a pan, then pour a yellow cake mix on top of that mixture. Melt 1 stick of butter and pour on top of the cake mix. Don't stir. Bake at 350 for about an hour.

Chelsea bought the pink and blue packages of white chocolate chips from Hobby Lobby to coat the pretzel rods.

Then...the moment everyone was waiting for...after all the guests arrived, I handed Cody and Chelsea the appropriately colored cake balls as everyone gathered for the big reveal!

And it was...

This was McKlayne's favorite part of the party.

And my favorite part:

(Oh, how I miss moments like this with that one on the right...)

(I would thoroughly being pregnant if this is how I looked...too bad my tummy is the LAST thing to grow.)

And...this is how I will feel in 5 months.

Friday Funnies

As I was going to kiss Asher goodnight before I went to bed, on an out of town visit this summer, I found him like this:

I will keep the owner of these unmentionables anonymous to protect the innocent. But, apparently, these had been in a stack of clean laundry in the room that Asher was sleeping in for the night. I guess he thought they'd make a great accessory!

When I went to ask him the next morning what he was doing with that "thing" on his head, he said, "I was just being an Indian."

********

Last week we visited the nursing home, and Mrs. M. was the last stop on our in-room visits. She is one of my favorite residents to visit. We were talking about pregnancy and she was reminiscing on her three pregnancies. And then she said, "You don't look pregnant...well, not in your stomach anyway...but your arms sure are getting plump."

Jordan, I guess you have your work cut out for you ;)

The Summer of Celebrations (part I)

Will a post a day, keep the haters away?  Our crazy schedule is finally starting to settle down some and I've got a whole list of things to blog about from this summer and a bunch of posts already written in my head...so over the next week or so, I'll try to catch up!


We started out our summer going to several weddings and throwing some showers...


We went to Austin for my college roommate's wedding...but, unfortunately, I didn't have a working camera...and these are the only ones that Cate captured:

Lindsay and Jim are precious together.  I love the way that Jim cares for Linds...the way he watches her when she tells a story...the genuine interest he takes in her is, maybe, what I love most about watching the two of them.  He loves her very deeply-it is so evident.  And I am so thankful for that.   They were married on Lake Travis (man! I wish I had pictures!) It was such a beautiful wedding-the venue, her dress, every detail of the entire evening was so elegant yet comfortable and fun...so Lindsay.  (We love you two and are so thankful to be in your lives!)

We spent the whole weekend with the Shipley's at Bella & Pop's house.  It was so refreshing to be able to just hang out and relax with such dear friends.  We ate well (thank you, Bella!) rested a little, and played Settler's of Catan MUCH!!  Cate and I kept Ryan and Charlie up late one evening re-telling just about every story that we could remember about the other.  I've known Cate since 7th grade...since we were 13!  (I just did the math here...wow...that's half of my life!) so, there were lots of stories. Lots of stories the husbands had never heard before and lots that they had :)  Thankfully we're not the same silly girls that we were in high school-or even college, for that matter.  The Lord has grown us both so much and I'm thankful for the ways that He has used Cate to refine me.  I'm also thankful that my best friend married someone that my husband adores.  (I guess it was kind of a pre-requisite, but I'm glad that Ryan wasn't just "pretending" in the whole screening process :) I can't imagine spending weekends with the Shipley's and feeling like I had to check in with Charlie constantly to make sure he was "okay"...in fact several times he'd disappear and I'd later find him playing pool with Ryan.  I don't have a picture of them from that weekend (remember...no working camera!) but here is one I stole of their18 month old, Eli, from their blog:

And one of us from Cary's wedding...which was well over a year ago.  (Put an Apel/Shipley photoshoot on the agenda for our October visit, okay?  This is just ridiculous that I can't find any pics of all of us!)

(I know, I know...back when I had long hair and our babies were SO little!)


The following weekend, while garage saling, I found a super deal on a point and shoot camera that Chelsea talked me into getting.  (My BEST gs purchase of the summer, Chels! Thanks for making me go back!)


And later that evening, we went to Charley and Lauren's wedding.  This precious couple is oh, so dear to our hearts.  Charley first walked into our little Moss Street rental house for Hope Group back when I was super fat and pregnant with Asher and we squeezed about 30 people into our 900 sq. ft. home. 

We loved him so much that we made him stay in our group for a few years.  After he got back from Fish Camp one summer, he started telling us about this girl, Lauren, that he'd met.  He told me that I would love her and that in some ways we were a lot alike. (I thought he was just trying to warm me up to her...)  But, we quickly got to know and adore Lauren (and Charley was right...on more than just our wardrobe choices...we hit it off instantly), soon after they got engaged, and she was a staple in the Apel home this past Spring. 

We're so proud of them-for their maturity and boldness- (we were definitely not there when we first got married) as they desire to love and seek after Jesus with their lives.

She even become "our Lauren"...you see, when a college girl tends to spend a lot of time in our home loving on our kids, helping me prep for dinner, folding laundry, knowing where the clean dishes go...the kids and I just sort of bond to them..and they become "ours".  Kind of like our Emily, our Blaire, our Madeline...I guess we're sort of possessive that way. (Sorry Charley, we love you and all, but I think you understand...and you are married to her, so you've got that going for you!)


And oh, how we miss her!  It's sometimes tough living in this transient town where you invest so deeply in relationships and just when you're completely comfortable...and never want them to leave...it's time for them to move away.

Whenever McKlayne couldn't see Lauren, she'd say, "Where's my Princess Lauren?"  She wanted to be next to "Princess" Lauren all night.  Her "princess" obsession is only growing...

Speaking of Em, we got to reunite (and share some news) with her (I stole some of these pics from her Facebook.)

McKlayne quickly found Aunt Kelsey among all the strange faces.

And the kids danced the rest of the night away.

They decided that they LOVED weddings....or at least when they get to dance at receptions.

And we had to peel them off the dance floor when it was time to leave.