Libby Lu's

We just got back from Aurora, IL last night.. Joe had a meeting in Naperville so we went up Monday night and stayed in a hotel, went swimming, had fun.. yesterday Joe was in conference all day so Evie and I decided to kill time at the Fox Valley Center Mall in Aurora.. (we loved that mall!) Not only did they have a great food court, killer 2 decker carousel, a super fun kids play area, a stylish Motherhood Maternity store (blows Bloomington away).. but there's a store called "Libby Lu" that has cool girl stuff for ages 5-tweens.. (Evie is a little mature so she loved it!) They sell lots of cool hair products, tiaras, stuffed animals, just all girl stuff! They also do makeovers. Evie got the Princess hair style, tiara, makeup.. (very light lip gloss and stickers) her nails painted, glitter in her hair, a t-shirt and a purse with 5 items from the goody bag section that she got to choose, (glitter lip gloss, hair accessories, lip gloss rings, etc) ALL FOR $24 !!! The hair style was amazing! And took less than 15 minutes.. it's a girl's dream come true in that store... they really make them feel like a princess! Plus you can make your own sparkly, scented lotions, makeup, etc.
I snapped a few pics of Evie's hair.. she even slept in her "do" last night and it's still kinda in tact.. (although there are hundreds of bobby pins in there!) LOL
They ahve several locations in Illinois.. one in Scaumburg, and a few more.. (you'd have to check the store locator on their site.. but they do birthday parties as well.. too fun! You must check out their site to see the different hairstyles they offer! http://www.clublibbylu.com/detail.aspx?menu=4&app=126&cat1=385&tp=23&lk=no&title=Get+Styled

Me and Evie's Look alikes

I do these once in a while from My Heritage.com and it's fun to see if the faces have changed.. so far, with every picture that I use for me, Alicia Silverstone is always the top pick.. I'm not complaining! I did Evie's this time, too and thought it was cute.. so here are our look alikes!

Princess Wishes

EDIT: I JUST ADDED FOOTAGE OF THE FINALE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PICTURES! ENJOY THE SHOW!

We just got back from a weekend trip to Chicago where we saw the "Disney Princesses on Ice - Princess Wishes" show. It was very cool and Evie had a great time. She dressed as Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty for those who are not up on their princesses), and she looked so darling.. there were lots of other little princesses there and each time Evie spoke to a little girl dressed up she said, "I made a new friend who's a princess like me!". It was sweet. So it started out with Aladdin and Jasmine.. the stories were changed a little to make time for every Princess to have a skate and their princes came out with them as well.. During Snow White's bit, all of the dwarfs were skating around.. Evie waved frantically at them... At the end, all of the princesses, princes, Tinkerbell (Evie's favorite in the show who comes out in between in princesses intro), Mickey, Minnie and Goofy all came out.. a chariot, fireworks.. it was pure Disney magic at it's finest. Tough to not tear up when you hear your favorite princess love songs when they are skating so gracefully across the ice. (Well.. it was for me anyway.) I think our favorite part was the dragon (Malevocent from Sleeping Beauty), spitting fire onto the ice.. Joe managed to snap a cool picture of that.. Prince Phillip did a nice job of skating through it! The show was pretty long.. I'd say about 2 hours.. with an intermission in the middle.. I recommend this show to anyone who has a little princesses at home!

(By the way.. they are resized for the blog, but if you click on the individual pictures, they are nice and large and full of detail!)

Here's video footage of the finale.. my favorite part!

Pregnancy pictures 16 weeks

Okay.. I took these myself.. some had the camera propped up on the aquarium, others on the microwave (thus the varying backgrounds). I don't have a tall tripod.. just a desk size.. so I use what's available! I suppose I could have waited for Joe to get home.. but I'm not one to pose for people LOL
At 16 weeks.. I have quite a belly already.. I hope I don't blow up to mammoth proportions!

SNOW!

We finally got a decent amount of snow today.. I'd say about 3-5 inches.. (it felt like more as I was shovelling a path), but it's super fine snow.. we couldn't make a snowball, but Evie played on her swingset/slide.. I cleared the big slide off and made a big snow pile at the bottom so that when she climbed up into her clubhouse and slid down, she fell into a huge snowy mess! She thought that was hilarious! It was snowing pretty heavily when we were still outside (it has finally stopped), but it was too wet outside for me to keep the camera on me, so I just captured a couple of shots.. wish it could have been more.. we had alot of fun!

Evie's Progress Chart

My little Evie sure does love to snuggle up in our bed! We have been battling her sleeping in her own room for.. well.. ever! We finally decided a couple of months ago that a King Sized bed would solve the problem.. we figured that if she was going to be sleeping in our room anyway (fighting with her in the middle of the night is more exhausting that putting up with her feet in your ribs)..we'd at least have more space.. It did work for a little while.. but we still wanted our bed to ourselves and finally started a "Progress Chart" last month.

Her weaknesses have always been 1. sleeping in her own bed ALL NIGHT and 2. picking up her toys.
So! That was our focus for two weeks.. the reward would be anything that she wanted.. but she had to determine what that would be at the beginning of the two weeks so that we had something to work toward. She chose the "Ariel Mermaid Vanity".. partly because she kept seeing it at Toys R Us and loved it.. but she also saw a picture back in December with her friend, Olivia and her vanity.. so for those two weeks, the incentive was to get "what Olivia has" LOL and believe me, it worked! She got a sticker each night for picking up toys and each morning for staying the bed all night (something that has rarely happened in the past), and she only missed ONE night on account that she had a dream that there were "beetles" in her bed (She is her mother's daughter for sure!)
It was so exciting for her to put the last stickers on the chart.. we went straight to Toys R Us that night and bought the vanity!



We are currently working on another two week chart focusing on the same things (I wanna make this a long term habit), and after this two weeks, we'll focus on something different, but she will have to keep up on the other two things (without having to be reminded). This has been working beautifully!
Her behavior lately has been superb as well.. she has her three year old tantrums, like all do, but she has been very polite most times, and quiet in restaurants, etc. I'm very proud of her!

The Children's Museum

Today we went to the Children's Museum in Bloomington with some friends.. the kids had a great time playing there and painting on the big glass wall.. Here are some pics of Evie and her friends, Brynn, Sasha, and Anna. (Aidan was always off doing something by himself so I didn't get to snap any pictures! :o( )

Then, we went to Chuck E Cheese for lunch where I just took one picture of Evie making out with the truck driver in her favorite car ride.. GEEZ!