Happy July!

Ok, so I'm 11 days late, but I have been busy lately!  It's super-hot here and Mary, the babies, and I have been melting away by the babypool in between painting projects. 

Mary and Louisa moved into our childhood home that Tyler and I purchased three years ago.  Within the last three years, Tyler and I have "decided" to sell the house with a realtor, do major home improvements, fix the house ourselves, and lastly, to sell the home by owner.  Tyler will do whatever I want to do with the house and I am the worst at making final decisions, so we've flip-flopped for the past three years.  Then when Mary moved in, it was awesome because she was full of motivation and fun pinterest ideas to improve our house!  Fantastic!  And then reality set in and we realized that the house won't be complete to our specifications until we're fifty and we'd rather chase babies around outside than paint cupboards.  So, finally I have made a for sure decision: we are selling the house ourselves.  We are willing to sell for what we owe just to get out asap, so we can start the next chapter of our lives.

On top of housing decisions, I had a birthday (hello, 28!), dyed my hair brunette (by accident x100), Lulu turned 10 months old (double digits!), and Molly dumped her loser boyfriend and is accepted back into the family (woohoo!). 

Scarlett is changing SO much everyday.  I'm just trying to soak it all in!!  She's hilarious!!!!  Scarjo says, "truck," whenever she sees a big truck anywhere.  I love that she just picks up new words!  She's our neighborhood welcoming committee; she wades naked in the driveway puddle and waves to every passing car, waves, and yells, "byyyyes!"  Cute.est. thing. ever.  See:

It's been an eventful summer so far and up next is Mary's birthday...!!!

Baby love!

Someone reeeally enjoyed the birthday doughnuts!

And the Beal girls are all brunette (for) now...!

LOOOOVE this picture!  Pretty Lu!

love her new faces!

Yay, Auntie Molly is back!

(sorry, Scarjo!) But look at my fascinator!  Just call me Kate;)

So What Wednesday

Go link up!

Today, I'm saying so what if...

• If I can NEVER make up my mind about what to do with our fixer-upper house...should we work on fixing it OR sell it?!  At least for now, we're starting to make improvements!
• T-shirts & capris are my daily uniform...I spend the day outside with Scarlett, walking the loop, and painting!
• I'm super excited for my birthday - it's only a week away!
• I've been a little more stingy with the amounts of photos I add to facebook.  People steal them and print them out and it reeeeally annoys me - especially that I don't know about it!
• I've watched The World According to Paris.  Ew.  Paris Hilton is ridiculous.  Her show is a little fun, though!
• I have NO IDEA what Instagram is or it's purpose.  I want to know.  I see it all ove everyone's blog, but I clearly missed the memo here.  Time to google it.
• Scarlett has never been to the ocean.  She's 17 months old!  We're rectifying the situation tomorrow - woohoo!!!
• I use enough Jergen's sunless tanner in one application to completely change my skin color.  I don't have the patience to wait three days!
• This week's sww is a little boring...!

Kitty Love

Scarlett looooves our kitty, Mr. Rex.  (or Sexy Rexy if we're really being honest!)  The feeling is not mutual.  Every time Rex is anywhere near her, and sometimes when he's nowhere to be seen, Scarlett walks around saying, "Eeex!  Eeex!  Eeexy!" and clicking her tongue to get her kitty to come see her.  If I call Rex, he comes running.  He is a super friendly, patient kitty...who runs as soon as Scarlett is near.  She grabs him and lays her entire body on him once she can get ahold of his fur, even though we're constantly saying, "Be gentle!  Soft rubs!  We looove Mr. Rex!"   So, I came up with a plan.  We headed off to the most dangerous place on earth (for our wallets), Wal*Mart, and stocked up on kitty treats!!!!  Then when Scarlett is calling Rex, I shake the bag and hand the treats to Scarlett to give to Rex.  It's a win/win!  Scarjo gets to bury her fingers in Rexy's fur and Rex gets yummy treats!  The only person who loses is me when Scarlett dumps the entire bag all over the living room floor.  Lesson learned:  do not hand over the whole bag.  Obv. 

(You can just ignore whatever is under my couch!)

Oh hey, Lulu!  Want some treats?!  (Sneaky, sneaky, Scarlett!)

Shoot!

Lulu wants in on the Rexy love!

Scarjo's not sharing the fun...

Dance, Dance, Dance!

I stole Tyler's video of Scarlett showing off her skills, but it's sideways and I cannot fix it - VERY frustrating!  (Any advice would be much appreciated!)  It's still too cute not to share!  :)

(no worries...Tyler was standing there the whole time, so Scarlett wouldn't pull a "Zuma" and fall.)

Long Overdue

This pretty much rocks my world and only just feeds into my obsession with Kate Middleton!  (Pippa who?) How did I not know about them before the royal wedding???  Tragic.

Sooo, on top of reading any and every royal wedding magazine there is, I have been working on our house with my new roomies, Mary and Lulu!  Mary is the project manager because without her forcing me to work, nothing would ever get done.  We make a good team because she has decorating ADD.  As soon as she starts a project, she thinks of the next thing to do and starts on that.  I'm left to finish the first project.  (hello, white trim for days!)  You can see some of our progress in this photo:

The ugly green cabinets are going to be painted white!  I'm hoping it'll look fresh & clean!  That's why we chose the celery/minty green for the tops of the walls.  So far, so good!  Also notice the paint splashed across Louisa's face.  Thank you, Scarjo!  While Mary and I were chitchatting, Scarlett took my paint cup and brush, snuck over to Lulu and wham!...painted her face.  Luckily, her eye was avoided; Scarlett is seen here assessing the damage. 

Speaking of little Miss Katie Scarlett...she's just acting so much older nowadays.  She seems more ready to start potty training, so that will be our next step.  Oh wait, and WEANING!  Geesh, it seems like it's looong overdue, but she's still needing it to fall asleep!  And maybe moving her into her toddler bed, too!  Lots of big girl things that need to happen, so I'm just appreciating her little bits of baby that are left...

Scarlett talks lots!  Much of what she says is still jibberish to us, but she does say 'yes' ("yeesh"), 'please' ("eeese"), "aaah, ruff," Rex ("eeex"), meow, neigh, uh oh, and Mummmm!  (I love that she knows yes and not no!)

She runs and jumps and DANCES all the time.  I even caught her playing pretend!  She picked up a mini brush and a small container, dipped the brush into the container and proceeded to "paint" Tyler's toe nails (hehehe!).  It was the cutest.  Smartest baby ever. 

Louisa's the smartest baby ever, too!  She is reeeeally trying to pull herself up all the way and is a little chatterbox herself.  I forgot how sweet baby babbles were!  Lucky me that I have a little little one in the house again! 

We are all missing Alyssa lately.  Disagreeing with Molly = less Alyssa love.  Wicked sad.  Buuut, while Alyssa was visiting, I snapped some fun pictures of my favorite three year old. 

jumping to Uncle Tyler!

jump #2

Busted!  haha

So, aside from spending naptime stalking Kate Middleton online, completely tearing apart the kitchen, and watching naked babies playing in the driveway puddles, I've been reading MODG's blog and she's making me feel spendy...uh oh!  I'm totally off to windowshop online!  Yes!  I'll leave you with photos of my favorites:

cousin love

Louisa's famous HIPPO face!



kisses<3



It's Official

As if it wasn't already enough that high heels seems ridiculous to wear during my everyday life, I constantly have baby boogs somewhere on my clothing, and my favorite summer activity is sunbathing watching naked babies play in the driveway puddle, but now I scan playgrounds for other mothers I may know.  If my first scan is unsuccessful, I check for other toddlers who look like they're Scarlett's age because if there are any potential future playdates, we stop to play during my walking loop.  Yup, scanning the playground for friends = officially a MOM.

Oh well, at least she's cute.  Ha!

Blogging FAIL

Ahhh!  It's been forever and a day since I've blogged and I blame Mary.  She moved here with my favorite little 8 month old niece a little over a week ago and I haven't blogged since.  Lots has happened recently, too!  Alyssa turned THREE!  Scarlett turned 16 months and is officially learning new tricks hourly.  More on that later(whaaat?!  I'm ex-haust-ed and I'm uploading/editing boat-loads of pictures of baby biscuits & bows!), but I'll leave you with this picture of my crazy sister, Molly.  We're the Beal sisters and we are always blonde together (Mary strays once in a while) and then Molly went and did this: 

Not quite sure how I feel about this yet, but she's so pretty that I feel like she can pull of any hair color.  Super sassy red!