Happy First Birthday!

I know this post is delayed. And I feel bad about not posting anything on here or even facebook on the big day. But he's only 1 so hopefully he won't find out that I didn't post anything until he's older. And knows how to look up blog archives. (That I may or may not keep or erase, if such a thing is possible.....)

J4 turned one last weekend! We went down to Little Rock for Spring Break and to celebrate. He had two parties -- one at Grandmother's (Thibault's) house, and the other at Gramma & Pop's (Kane's) house. For the girls, I threw a big party with both sides of the family when they each turned 1. But that was when we lived 20-30 mins away from each grandparent and didn't have to transport 3 kids, 1 dog, a bicycle, a scooter, 2 sleeping bags, luggage for me & Jim & J4, and a whole bunch of other stuff on a 3-hour car ride.

So this time, he got 2 small parties. But we have pictures and he got presents. Isn't that all that matters? :)

We actually started the birthday celebration on St. Patrick's Day. We got him the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe Police Car! Isn't it cute?

Here's the first birthday celebration at Grandmother's house:

Two of my mom's friends, Bill and Greg, came over. Here is Bill helping J4 walk! He is not officially walking yet, but this picture shows the first time he finally figured out that he could walk with help.
He got a toybox from Grandmother!


A blackmail picture if ever there was one!
The next day, we had a party down at Gramma & Pop's. Mimi and Poppy even came over!


This last picture was taken over Spring Break at Grandmother Thibault's house. I really like it so I wanted to show it to y'all.

I figure this picture will be one of those that, 20 years from now, we'll pull out and marvel at how everyone looks! (leopard print pants, anyone?) Then, 50 years from now, J4's grandkids can look back and wonder who everyone (and the dog) is. LOL!

Laundry List

One day, I added up the number of loads of laundry I must do to consider all laundry in the house "done."

1 load jeans
1 load whites
1 load lights
1-2 loads darks
1 load reds/purples/dark pinks (yes, with 2 girls and red as one of my favorite colors, we have enough red things to do an entire load of laundry. WEEKLY.)
1 load dark towels
1 load light towels
1 load bibs
1 load napkins and placemats (We have been using cloth napkins for several months in order to save money and not fill up as many landfills with paper napkins.)

When summer gets here, the darks will go down to 1 load but the lights will increase to 2 loads. The bib load is about to go away because J4 will be using the vinyl toddler bibs instead of the cloth infant ones. I also can make it about 1 1/2 weeks before we run out of towels. So I do two towel loads about every other week. I also end up washing the placemats and napkins about every other week. We have 12 cloth napkins and 4 people using them. They don't always get too dirty at one meal so we just fold them over and use a clean side the next time. Unless they get really messy at a meal. Then they head to the laundry room.

So all total that is 10 loads of laundry. Per WEEK. But I don't wash just once per week. For clothes, to keep everything that is wearable clean, and since we have a baby, I need to do laundry about 2-3 times per week. My main laundry days are Mondays and Thursdays. That's how long it takes for the darks/lights (depending on season), whites, and jeans to fill up. I only have to do reds once per week.

So there you have it. My laundry list.

Blast from the Past Wednesday

I needed a blog post but couldn't think of anything. So I was uploading some videos taken with my iphone to iMovie. I ran across this video (taken with my camera) from June 2008. We are on our way home from Gulf Shores. At this very moment, we are crossing over Mobile Bay. Enjoy!