Busy Busy!

So obviously by the lack of posts lately you can tell we've been super busy. Not only is life crazy with 4 small children, a major remodel, and a hair bow business, but every spare moment is going into working on the new hair bow website. It will be wonderful when it gets done....and wonderful that it is done...but until then my evening when I normally blog are kinda busy. It's pretty much impossible to get any work on it during the day with the kids, so Nathan and I start on it every evening when the kids go to bed. We are getting pretty close but not quite there yet. On top of everything else I decided that now was the very best time to have another garage sale...yeah. Basically this was the only time available in our calendars before school starts for everyone and garage sale season ends. My friend Jenn and I both wanted to give it one more try with all the stuff since it was all labeled and all before packing it all back up. Hopefully this will pay for homeschool materials and flower girl dresses!

Maddelyn finished her swim lessons today. I think she might be a level one again next year but she made huge improvements from when she had started. She now is going like 99% under the water and most of the way diving for sticks! This is my kid who hangs around the ladder anytime she's in the pool and will not get her face wet! So, not quite swimming but much better than before.

Our hot dog party from last weekend went great. The weather was beautiful and we had several people show up. We even had Mr. Oscar Mayer the Wiener dog himself show up. Yes my aunt and uncle have the cutest dog ever and he is just one of their three adorable pups. Lucy and Emmit unfortunately weren't able to attend since it was an "Oscar Mayer" party.

Miss Em took her turn today getting pictures for Mommy's new website. We are going to be carrying some boutique clothing on the website including these adorable Birthday Girl Tee Shirts of course with the matching bows. Emma had pointed out that I always use Maddelyn for my pictures so I told her she could try the new shirts and bows for me. She was thrilled until she had to pose and such. Yeah...sounds like a lot more fun while someone else is doing it. I guess I just always use Maddelyn because she has the longer hair and she is the ham when taking pictures. I tend to use Caroline for all my baby headband pictures but she is close to growing out of those shots. I guess I need to find another baby girl since Nathan won't let Elijah model hair bows for me???

Today after swim lessons we took the kids to play at the park by the swimming pool. We had been promising them all week and between apointments right after swimlessons an drain, we had not yet been able to let them play. It was a perfectly sunny but not too hot day to play outside. So sad that before long it will start getting cold again!

7 Months Old

So my little peanut is 7 months old now! Wow! That's hard to believe. It's so weird to me that we're over 1/2 way to his 1st birthday party! He has grown up so much this past month with sitting up, cereal and baby food, babbling, scooting/rolling on the floor and so much more. We are really starting to learn his little personality much more as well. He sure is a HAPPY baby. Everywhere we go people say "Man he's sure happy" As he grins one of those makes your cheeks hurt kinda grins at them just because they spoke in his direction. He isn't just a content, easy going baby, he's a happy baby! He lives to smile! The last picture with him and Daddy just about makes me want to cry! He's just not old enough to look that big! Now of course I couldn't get his to sit for me to take his 7 month pictures. He was determined to wiggle all around so he kept throwing himself backwards. When I would lay him on his back to get a shot of the number on his shirt, he would immediately flip over. Needless to say the days of easy baby photo shoots with Elijah have passed! Oh how frustrating the next 2-3 years will be with taking pictures. I love how when they are tiny you just aim, focus, and click the camera. there is not trying to get them to stand semi still in your viewfinder while getting the to remotely smile or at least look semi in the direction of the camera! Yeah...not easy. All I can say is that all of my children have had more than their share of camera lens caps in the pictures with them. I learned long ago that it is better to give them something tiny that might show up in a picture just to get them to sit still for a moment while you click a picture. This works really well on hair bow pictures when I don't really need to see their faces anyways.

So this weekend we are hosting a big cookout..like I think my over excited hubby invited over 60 people? Yeah he's proud to host our first backyard event in the new house. See I won a prize pack form Oscar Mayer to host a "Hot Dog House Party." (Long story check out houseparty.com to see what I'm talking about.) So by qualifying to host a party for Oscar Mayer I got a big prize pack in the mail including 25 coupons for a FREE package of Oscar Mayer All Beef Hot Dogs, a free ranch dressing and mustard, more coupons, an Oscar Mayer apron/plates/napkins/serving tray, and this adorable glass serving tray as well as 20 Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile Whistles! Too Fun! So the official day to host these parties was while we were on our trip so I am doing ours now. It should be a lot of fun and hopefully the weather holds out for us.

So obviously my posts since we've been home have been kinda slim, but I am still working on our website re-design for Sugar Sweet Bowtique. It's taking quite a bit of my free evening time not only entering all the detailed information onto the new host, but there is a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I have to do to get ready for ll the new products we will be adding to the site. Once it is up and running I will have to link it here again for everyone to see. We have an adorable template that we ordered from a web designer that has pink owls and hearts. Too cute! The site will still have the same web address and all it is just getting totally re-done behind the scenes.

Putting our Heads above the Water!

So I'm here...and still alive. so obviously you can image how much unpacking/getting the house back in order I am trying to wade through after being gone 3 1/2 weeks. On top of that I think the weeds took over while we were gone...no joke Nathan said the neighbors probably thing after the way the house looked and not seeing us for 3 1/2 weeks that we were foreclosed on! No...we just decided to let our yard turn into the Shelby Jungle! So I've been trying to find our yard through the knee high weeds (no joke) and of course my allergies are LOVING that! I also ended up getting into something and have a huge rash on my arm. I actually went the doctor to get treated for poison ivy and he said it was just an irritation??? What?? Okay so this is the worst "irritation" I've ever had from a weed? So not only are we unpacking/cleaning out a month's worth of dust bunnies, getting the yard in order, and trying to get back to normal life, but I thought there wasn't enough on my plate so we started the website re-design on my hair bow website that we've been putting off forever! I'm really exited about it but it truly is time consuming switching everything over to the new web host. Even though it's a lot of work it will look so much more professional and it will run a lot smoother behind the scenes.

We are also getting pretty excited at how close our 3rd floor master suite is coming to being finished. The contractor told my husband today that we should be ready for carpet on Monday. Yes...we've heard that more times than I would really like to think about but we are praying that this time is it. Our bathroom is really making some progress this week and it is just awful looking at that beautiful jacuzzi bath tub and knowing it don't work yet!

Nathan has been at his annual 2 week guard all week and he has to be there until Next Friday. He is coming home some nights, but as crazy as it is here trying to get back into everyday life. It doesn't make it any easier that he has to get up at 5:00 every morning to drive 1 1/2 hours to guard and then has other work items to work on when he comes home in the evenings. We're both beat still and need a vacation from the trip!

Maddelyn will be starting swim lessons at the city pool on Monday. She is NOT happy about it. My little princess is a lot like me in that she hates trying anything new and hates water in her face. this should be fun, especially cine they start at 8:30 that morning when the water is nice and not-so-toasty!

I've also been making up lost of new bow samples for our website and our wholesale customers. Of course Miss Maddelyn was happy to model for me while her sisters were taking naps today! Sad thing is that she was born to be a hair bow model! Yeah I did ask her to pose a bit because I wanted some cute pictures for our website but she naturally hammed it up then coming up with her own little poses! Now if I could only hire her out as a boutique model we could get free little girl boutiqe samples for her to try out and get pictures in and even earn some cash too! I know there have to be other mommy businesses that need a little girl to try out their adorable items! Okay...maybe mommy just wants to try out their adorable things??