It was exhausting watching daddy work in the yard all weekend, Noah had to take a water break.
Nothing better than watching a three-year-old pondering...
Nothing better than watching a three-year-old pondering...
Some of the extra time spent thinking was surely due to a rose bush incident earlier on in the day. Nothing that required a band-aid...but feelings were hurt
-and a few roses suffered the wrath of an indignant little cowboy.
At the end of the day, the roses were pruned, trucks were played with, yard work was complete; and now it's on to the next project...**********************************************************************
If these six boots could talk...
Working on her strategy, looking for four cards of the same number...
Spoons, the goof-balls game of choice :)
Sam's turn with the easel...
Madeline 's turn...
Noah with his blues & greens.
Time for some bad-guy-costume creating.
A few last minute adjustments....
Putting on their best bad-guy-faces...
Heading out for a walk. Remembering that its June, 82 degrees outside & the only one appropriately dressed is Noah. Evidently you can't be a bad-guy unless you have on dark clothes, long sleeves, and a disguise. I knew that of course...but I was wondering how long these disguises would last once we started out for our long walk. Gave them a quick reminder that they will quickly want to shed some of their bad-guy belongings & that I won't be carrying their baggage, as I had Murphy & the water. With that said, we headed for the court house, & had lots of smiles & waves 
After the court house we headed towards the elementary school, got a little side tracked and ended up at 
Time for some ukulele playing!
The countdown is ON! Only 
Birthday flowers for my room!
Talk about a team effort, thanks to Grandma Ellie's old Pyrex bowls the lady-bug looked like well, a real bug! Big bowl for the body & little bowl for the head. Then, a TON of frosting keeping the two together.
Rob used rope-licorice to outline the body/wings for me; I'm so glad I had a guide once I was frosting, it would have been really tricky to stay-in-the-lines without the licorice. This was not something I would have been successful with, if I didn't have the help of my amazing design team; thank you Rob Ferguson! 
Madeline working very carefully on the lady-bugs spots. We used junior mints for the spots on the cupcakes & peppermint patties for the big lady-bug's spots. Mini-M&M's for the eyes on the cup-cakes & big M&M's for the lady-bug cake-with a little help of some extra frosting as glue.; and 1/2 a peppermint patty for the cup-cake head. (Thank you Google!)
Ta-DA!
The reveal...She hadn't seen it all put together, the mommy lady-bug with her babies, the grass (coconut) & with the peonies (from the back yard). She was so very pleased; & big brother Sam was so sweet to be truly excited for her.