Easter Cupcakes

I made 72 of these adorable cupcakes last night.  I felt the need to tell y'all that.

They are SO easy!  Just take a star tip (I tend to use a wide star tip) and ice them, then put 2 little jelly beans on top and you've got ADORABLE "easter grass" cupcakes!

~CB~

Disney {spring break}

My boys were on spring break last week and I knew I wanted to do something fun with them and yet I couldn't take too many days off work.  I decided that I would take them to our all-time FAVORITE place on earth.....DISNEY WORLD.  We can't get enough of it!  I knew it would be hot and crowded, but we just went into it with the attitude of we'll ride what we can when we can and we'll just enjoy our time here.

The boys and I left early Saturday morning so as to make the most of our 4 day trip!  (We came home Tuesday afternoon).  After checking in our hotel, we headed to Epcot so we could enjoy our favorite rides there!

Waiting for Test Track!  One of our favorite rides!

 The "globe" is one of Nolan's favorite things!  The boys enjoy riding by themselves on this.....

Each afternoon, we enjoyed just hanging out at our hotel and I let the boys swim and play.  It was GLORIOUS!

Sunday we decided to go to the Magic Kingdom and our cousins, J and M joined us.  They live in the Orlando area and love to enjoy Disney frequently!

One of the boys' favorites rides at the Magic Kingdom is the People Mover.  Nolan enjoys riding this by himself too!  Carter is not quite old enough to ride by himself, but his time is coming!

Insiders tip--some of the BEST pictures of Cinderella's Castle come from the People Mover!  If you'll get your camera ready, you can get some AMAZING shots!

After the People Mover came Buzz Lightyear!  Another family favorite! 

Would you believe in ALL the times we've been to Disney, neither of my boys have been called on to drive the boats on the Jungle Cruise?!?!?!?.  To Nolan's absolute delight, he was called on to "steer" the Jungle Cruise boat on this trip!! 

This picture is SO blurry, but he turned around for just a second --you can see the smile on his face though!

Parades are a MUST at Disney!

Our next few days were spent at Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom!  I won't bore you with all those pictures, but suffice to say we had a BLAST!

Here's to another great DISNEY trip!  Hmm....I wonder when we can go back????

~CB~

Organization: Pantry

You can imagine with two boys in the house my pantry NEEDS to be well stocked (and restocked often).  I am extremely blessed with not one, but two pantries but I hate it when my main pantry is a mess! 

I try to keep the items grouped together (i.e. chips in one section, cans in another) and I try and use what organizing products I already have (baskets, bowls, etc.)

 I stacked boxes and got rid of half empty ones too!  (Do your boys put almost empty boxes back in the pantry?  MINE DO)

 Here is an example of putting like with like and using baskets!  All my breakfast foods go on one shelf, snacks on another, etc.  My brother has a hay-day with my pantry whenever he comes over!  He'll turn my cans around and move boxes just to make me crazy!

How do you arrange your pantry?

~CB~

Losing TWO teeth in ONE day!

Carter lost his first two teeth in one day while we were in Disney this past week!

What a cutie!

I guess we know what he'll be asking for at Christmas!

~CB~

Why I tell my kids to LEAVE EACH OTHER ALONE

*Warning--if you don't like medical pictures, you might not want to look at the photos herein*

I see (and hear) beautiful stories of siblings (gasp!) getting along and playing together so well.  I have friends' blogs that I read and her children are virtually perfect.  WHY then are MINE at each others' throats 24/7 (or so it seems)?  Don't get me wrong, they have their moments, but more often than not, they are driving me up a wall with their bickering.

(yes, I have a point, bear with me).  We had a FUN weekend around our house!  I had big plans to update you all on Monday with a weekend recap and great pictures of our fun!  We've got more fun coming up tomorrow too (the secret's not out yet, so I'm not telling).......

Sunday afternoon, the boys were outside playing in the waterhose in one of their rare "getting along" moments.  They came inside to dry off and get a snack when all of a sudden, screams abound.  Apparently, they were playing and Nolan turned around right into Carter's finger.  Carter's finger poked Nolan smack dab in the eye and cut it.  Yes.  Cut. The. Eye.  As in--blood.....oh my.

We have some paramedic friends who took a look at his eye and said "definitely get him to the ER".  So--off we go.  We have one of the BEST hospitals in the country here in our "backyard" so that's where I took him.

Looking straight on, it doesn't look bad, but if he looks to the side, you can see all of it.

After seeing 3 doctors, the consensus was that he had (has) a BAD cut in his inner eye, which did NOT penetrate the iris (the colored part).  This was good news!

He was looking happy here, but that was before all the doctors were in and out!  Here, they are getting ready to clean out Nolan's eye with some saline (or numb it--I can't remember if they numbed and then cleaned or cleaned and then numbed).

This was definitely when they were trying to clean out his eye.

 

After they cleaned out his eye, they prepped it for a blacklight view.  They put some sort of orange-glo liquid in it with a needle-looking stick and then we could turn out the lights and see how bad the cut really was.

Inserting the orange-glo....

After looking at the eye through the blacklight, we saw that the cut was pretty bad.  At this point, they knew it had not hit his iris or done significant damage, but were mostly worried about infection.  They cleaned his eye out (again)......

And we waved goodbye to the ER after getting a prescription for antibiotic eye drops!

Monday afternoon, we had to take Nolan to a Pediatric eye specialist to see how extensive the damage really was--she was an AMAZING doctor!  Just loved her!  (ironically, she has a little boy herself and was hesitant to have any more.  I definitely told her to think twice).

The BEST news was that even though she was still very worried about infection, she said his retina did NOT get detached!

Can I tell you how nice and quiet it was at my house on Monday afternoon as my boys played separately???  : )

~CB~

Turkey

Nolan killed his first turkey Saturday morning!  He and Cecil got up REALLY early and headed to the back of our property where turkeys are plentiful.  A few minutes later, I heard a gunshot and then my cell phone started buzzing....it was a short lived trip (they were only out for maybe 30 minutes), but my boy got a turkey!

He was one happy boy!

I can't remember how long the beard was (I think that's what you call it) but I know the first number was a 9...apparently that's a "good un" as they say.....

Carter is asking to go Saturday.  Lawsie Mercy I'm not sure how that will work out.

~CB~

Wooden Spoons

I am very picky about wooden spoons for my kitchen.  I LOVE the Pampered Chef wooden spoons.  My wonderful mother-in-law always keeps me well stocked when it comes to wooden spoons!

She emailed me the other day and said she had a surprise for me!

Look what I got!!!!!!

My favorite are the cute little ones!

Those would be perfect for sauces or whatnot!  LOVE THEM!

p.s.  Pampered Chef has NO idea who I am.  I just love their spoons!

~CB~