Raising Beach Beauties

La Hora Loca

I was part of a really amazing wedding last month - the bride was Peruvian and it is a Peruvian wedding tradition to host a "La Hora Loca" (crazy hour) during the reception. We hired Caribbean carnival dancers to come in and entertain the crowd.

It was really awesome. It was one of those things where I came home and told Stu, "I'm totally doing that at my next wedding". The bride had purchased a bunch of Mardi Gras-esque hats, boas, etc for the dancers to pass out to the crowd. I couldn't help but snag a few of the extras to bring home to my own little locas.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Yes, yes, yes, those are Etsy shirts!! And NO, I did not purchase them! A couple of weeks ago, a mystery package came in the mail. I order so much stuff online, just about every package is a mystery, but this time, I really had no clue what I had ordered. Upon opening the package, I was thrilled to find two tot sized turkey t-shirts inside! Fairly certain my husband didn't spend anytime on etsy, I figured I had a blog stalker and sure enough, Grandma Kat confessed to getting my little turkey's some new gooble t's for Thanksgiving!! And believe me, my first thought after opening that package was "crap, is Stu going to believe me when I tell him I did not order these??"

The girls wore their shirts to school/daycare today (maximum exposure time) and so I wanted to get a little shot of them before they left this morning. My first attempts were not going so well...

 

They were NOT in the mood for pictures. Thankfully I have like 280 dum dum suckers left over and knew that they could help in our picture taking efforts. Stu grabbed the lollipops and you can see they went bananas...

Marley was first to truly understand what camera + candy meant. She promptly stepped away from the candy and shot me a huge grin. Check out Maya still clinging to her daddy's leg in attempts of scaling up him like King Kong to get to the candy.

We sat them down in my favorite picture taking place and they instantly protested being so far from the candy.

Stu, being the genius that he is, stood directly behind me and pretended the dum dums were bunny ears on my head, pretended he was going to eat them, danced like a belly dancer, whatever to make them laugh...

Score! But it wasn't long before they realized, ok, dad is funny, but I'm still sitting next to my sister and I ain't got no candy!

This year, I am thankful for Grandma Kat, Etsy and candy. And a belly dancing husband.

Oh...and that I don't look like that when I cry. If a boy ever breaks your heart Maya, make sure he is NOT around to see it.

That's my kind of stuffing.

I spent a good portion of the day stuffing dum dums into little felt turkey's...

 

I secretly live for this sort of thing. My girls have summer birthday's and I feel I have deprived them of school birthday fun - you know, bringing in cupcakes to share with your class, having everyone sing Happy Birthday to you, your teacher presenting you with a pre-printed Happy Birthday __(FILL IN NAME HERE)___birthday card, usually taped to your deck or locker so you see if first thing in the morning. So any chance I get to bring in a cheap tchotchke for any holiday promoting cheap tchotchke purchases, you know I am in! And there is absolutely no shortage of holiday's promoting cheap tchotchkes. Oriental Trading Company is my newest BFF. Although, Stu has requested a hold on purchasing anything more from OTC for awhile. Which I agreed I would not order again until Valentine's Day. Because I already have my Christmas tchotchkes ordered, delivered and stashed away.

And these are the only birds I'll be stuffing for Thanksgiving. My florist (yes, I have a florist - because I'm a wedding planner, not one of those women that always has fresh flowers around the house, although that would be nice) asked me yesterday if I was cooking up a large Thanksgiving feast. I said, yes, but then added, well...Stu will be, I don't cook. To which she replied, "so you're purely decorative then?". Heehee, yes, I guess so. I doubt that will fly with Stu when he tells me to clean the house, "sorry honey, I'm purely decorative". Oh, how I wish that would work though.

Coral World with our bestest friends...

We had such a good time with Princess Sophia last week. We kept Marley out of school on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday so she could hang out with her friend. Now every morning this week when we tell her it's time to go to school, she thinks about it and says, "no, I think I want to play with Sophia today". Very Montessori of her. But unfortunately, Sophia has returned north and we have to explain to Marley that she is not here to play with anymore. We have heard, "then lets get on a plane and go see her!" more than once this week.

Diana and I took the girls to Coral World on Friday. Marley and I haven't been there in forever. Last time I was there I was busy trying to keep Maya in her stroller and prevent Marley from shoplifting at the gift shop. Given, a three year old does not always know that items have to be paid for first, but it definitely was not fun chasing her half way down the park and making her return the stuffed animal walrus. This time, Maya was at daycare, so it was a very even man on man defense with the girls at the park. Very effective and resulted in a very fun time for all.

Checking out the stingrays...

Someone recently told me they are amazed at how many times I can get the girls to look at the camera. My secret? A super fast camera and bribes. This is a typical shot of toddlers. One with a grumpy look, the other completely ignoring my plea to look at me:

 

And with the false promise of candy:

 

The famous shark petting:

Feeding the stingrays:

 

Sophia was great at feeding the rays. Marley was more interested in bonding with her new friend. The dead fish.

 
 

She would pet him and stroke him and poke at his eyes and generally cover her little hands with dead fish germs. I had to pick him up by the tail with my fingertips to help her feed him to the stingray - the stingray's lips (???) rubbed up against my hand....ewwwww...still getting the heebbee geebbees over that...

After washing our hands throughly, we headed off to the nature trail to check out some nature (as if I hadn't had enough of that). The shark/stingray guide was behind us, as she had to check on a sick tortoise. She was so nice to sit and hang out with the girls. They LOVED asking her a ton of questions (why? why? why? why? why?). I swear, she was the best exhibit of the day.

Actually, this was the best exhibit of the day:

But the girls didn't know that. Thankfully.

Help Support the Montessori School!

Every December, the VI Montessori School holds their largest fund raiser, Las Vegas Night, at one of the local hotels. As a "Montessori Mom" I am now forced to help with this event - yay! [looking for my Stepford smile....]

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you've probably seen me asking if anyone wants to buy tickets. Each family is given four tickets that they are asked to buy or sell. $50 each, which is a lot cheaper than years past to help your economically strapped checkbooks. Please let me know if you would like to go and please buy your tickets from me! Will trade a ticket for a night of babysitting - you can even come over at 7pm when the girls in bed - a free ticket to watch tv on my couch!!

But, if you're reading my blog, you probably do not live on St. Thomas. But I just know that you have been asking yourself, how can I help? Guess what?? YOU CAN!! I have 4 books of raffle tickets that I need to unloadsell. Each book contains 10 raffle tickets at $5 each - $50 measly little dollars per book. And guess what the raffle prize is? COLD HARD CASH! Your $50 investment could easily turn into $10,000!!! There are 4 prizes raffled off..

1st Prize - $10,000!!!

2nd Prize - $3,000

3rd Prize - $1,000

4th Prize - $500

Or something like that...chances of you winning are really low anyway, so it doesn't really matter but chances of you making me happy by buying a book - VERY HIGH!! That alone is a prize worth winning!!

So email me at janellescott28@yahoo.com and let me know how many books you would like! I have increased the storage spaced allowed in my email account to allow for the flood of emails I KNOW that will be pouring in!! Yeah!!

Please...do it for the kids...

And just for the record, Vegas Night is December 5th just so you can be assured that Stu talked me out of my original plan of buying all the raffle tickets for ourselves to see if we could win any money and then selling the loser tickets to those off island by telling them that Vegas Night was December 12th. Ugh, who knew I would end up with a husband with morals??

SOPHIA SOPHIA SOPHIA!!!

I know it's been over a week since I blogged and that millions of fans are having M&M withdrawl...I'll try to get better about that, I promise but I really haven't taken any pictures since Halloween (and you should see how much they have grown!). I'm hoping to get a ton of pictures this week as SOPHIA IS IN TOWN!!!

The girls were INSANELY happy to see each other! Diana and I weren't sure if there was going to be a "Santa Claus Situation" after not having seen each other in 8 months. You know, all excited to go see Santa and sit on his lap but then the moment comes and a huge terror induced meltdown occurs the moment they see the fat guy with the funny red hat? We weren't expecting terror induced meltdowns, but we thought there could be a "wait, who is this kid again and why is she playing with my stuff?". No reason to fear, the girls were over the moon excited to see each other and played and played and played and played...Soph is here until Friday and we're hoping to see as much of her as possible (and her lovely parents too). I'm really not quite sure I'm going to let them leave with Sophia, I may try to hide her somewhere on Friday and then you know, pretend to help look for her and be all like, well you better go or you'll miss your flights, we'll keep looking and let you know if we find her....do you think that will work??

Happy Halloween!

We had a very ambitious day yesterday - and exhausting, as proven today by Maya's 4.5 hour nap and the fact that Marley went to bed at 4pm today. The weekend started with Marley being invited to spend the night at Ms. Phalen's house. Ms. Phalen is the afternoon camp director at her school who has four daughters - the youngest is probably 7 or 8 and they all adore Marley. Every time I run into one of her kids, they stop me to tell me just how hilarious Marley is.

And I have to throw this out there for anyone who currently has one child and is thinking of adding another...whoa. Totally forgot how much easier it is with ONE kid. Friday night was so...peaceful at our house...Saturday morning we actually went out for breakfast...sooooo nice.

We met up with Marley at the Montessori Fall Festival, threw on her Halloween costume and had a great time...

Or at least, most of us had a great time. Is it just me or do I have a spaced out Stepford Wife look on my face?

They had cupcake decorating station.

Face painting...

Which she rubbed off about 10 minutes after it dried.

She loved being a butterfly princess. Although, Stu and I referred to her as a "German beer serving, butterfly wench" when out of earshot of the princess and other parents. It did have a certain Lederhosen feel to it and she looked like she belonged in a German beer hall, no?

 

Maya loved running around the campus.

But it was pretty hot and we were all pretty tired. We headed home for naps. Marley fell asleep in the car but woke up when we attempted "the transfer" into her bed. Attempts to get her back to sleep failed and this was the general attitude of the afternoon:

 
Stu had to head to a wedding and I was left to ponder whether or not trick or treating was a good idea or not. I had to admit, it was more for me than it was for the girls, but the island very rarely has such fun activities to do and I hated to waste the opportunity. After some smooth talking, I was finally able to turn that frown upside down and convince Marley that trick or treating would be fun. She found her old costume from last year and wanted to wear that..she told me she was a good witch, but when Maya went to hug her, she warned her, "I'm a BAD witch Maya, don't touch me!" and then proceeded to give me bad witch voodoo...

Before we got in the car, she insisted on putting her butterfly outfit back on. She was all about gathering up the candy once we got to Yacht Haven. She didn't quite get the whole "say trick or treat" thing yet though. She did great at the first store and when we went to the second store, I reminded her what to say - to which she scolded me, "I said it ALREADY". But you have to say it again, "I already said it MOM!". K (insert Stepford wife smile here).

You ready to see Maya's outfit?

Keep in mind, it was the hat that really pulled the whole outfit together and the one item she completely objected to.

This purple fairy was determined to help me get a picture with the hat on. Thanks purple fairy for helping me torture my kids!

Love this picture of Marley & Aiden. We'll blow this up and have it displayed at their wedding reception.

Maya is cursing me out with her eyes. "I swear it woman, I will finger paint my crib with the goods in my diaper tomorrow morning if you try to put this @#$&% hat on my head one more time!"

 

I hope everyone had a very fun & safe Halloween! And Amber, in reference to your comment about etsy - I totally got busted by Stu last night - after the girls passed out from candy overload  went to bed, I was searching "Thanksgiving t-shirts". Stu slapped the computer out of my hand and informed me I had lost my mind. Ah well, no gobble gobble t-shirts for us this year. =)

All Hallows Eve

So excited to kick off Halloween this year! Maya slept in today which allowed me time with Marley this morning. We got her Halloween dress on and snapped a few pictures before daddy took her off to preschool. The big event for her school is tomorrow, but I wanted her to wear her dress today, as tomorrow she'll be in her costume. You have no idea the ulcers I'm forming today, worried that she is going to get orange and black paint all over this dress. I coached her to say, "please do not get paint on my dress" before they left this morning. Can you find the skeleton tattoos on her?

After they left, I took some pictures of my pumpkins while waiting for my real little pumpkin to wake up.

Little Maya needed her sleep - she has a big day today. Nanu's is taking the kids downtown to do some trick or treating. Her Halloween costume is a bit too warm to wear during the day, so I'm sending her to school in this little skeleton onsie. I'm also packing Marley's old witch costume from last year, in case they are ambitious enough to change her.

 Exciting stuff! Probably a close tie to my favorite day of the entire year (Christmas Eve being a big runner up) - I always love the day before - enjoying all the anticipation!!

H1N1....we're ready for you.

Took both girls to the UVI campus this morning and got them the H1N1 vaccine. A very limited supply was available to a select group of people - our girls fell into the children ages 6 months to 24 years (love how a 24 year old can be considered a child, because you know, it was only 6 years ago that I was a child and that wasn't all that long ago. That would make me like a teenager now, right? I did stay up late last night searching YouTube for New Moon trailers so that sounds about right....).

Stu asked last night why I couldn't just take them on my own, did I really need his help?

Um, yes. Had Stu not gone with me, I would have totally walked out after the first 1.5 hours. This is why I don't travel by myself with both girls anymore...I can't just quit during the layover and leave one or both girls in the Charlotte Airport. Waited in the line to the far back right of the picture for 45 minutes. Then the middle line for 30 minutes, then the far left, front (where I was standing when I took the picture) for about 1 hour, 45 minutes (I had nothing other to do than time this event, chase after Maya and slowly lose my mind). Let's just say this was NOT the general attitude of mom & dad all morning...Stu was smiling for the camera and the camera only.

Marley got the nasal mist. We didn't have a choice in what kind of vaccine they gave us - we were told Marley would get the mist and Maya would get the shot.

Maya wanted to know what kind of crap was that? Did Marley get a sucker too? What'd she get, a stupid band-aid?

 I agree with Maya - the whole morning was just sucky. But I'll take a free H1N1 vaccine & three hours of my precious time instead of a bankruptcy inducing hospital bill any day.

Now go call your congressman and let them know you support affordable health insurance for small business owners today!

I'm not a very good (dog) mom.

I feel really, really bad that Casey did not get to go to Barktoberfest on Sunday. We were getting ready to head out the door and Stu asks, "do we really have to take Casey?". I was a bit surprised, since Casey is his dog and I figured he was the one that really wanted to take him. But logistically, if Casey went, that means I would be the one wrestling with Marley and Maya while Stu wrestled with Casey. I said no, he doesn't have to go and then the entire 8 minute drive to the new Humane Society Campus, Marley asks over and over again WHY Casey didn't get to go to the DOG PARTY that was for HIM???? Because I am a horrible dog mom, that's why! We did have good intentions though - see, the day before I even dressed him up as a cross-dresser, had it all planned out to enter him into the doggie costume contest.

(I'm sure he's glad he didn't go now that he knows he was going to have to strut his tutu in front of all the other doggies)

A big huge THANK YOU to the Humane Society for an awesome Barktoberfest this year! It was so family oriented and such a fun trip for the girls. In years past, it is normally held at Bolongo Bay Beach and it's just HOT down there plus a huge binge drinking festival. We didn't go last year - too hot for a newborn and just didn't seem like a huge amount of fun with two small kids. This year they held it at their new campus (yet to be opened) and had a fun little haunted hiking trail and a pumpkin patch for the kids where they could decorate and take home their own pumpkins (we were thrilled when Marley decided she wanted a small pumpkin instead of a big pumpkin - the pumpkin decorating area was at the END of the trail and well, we didn't want to lug a big pumpkin back to the car).

Scary spider.

 
Marley's reaction to scary spider.

Maya checking out the pumpkins.

 
Marley decorating her pumpkin.

I think her eyes are starting to turn more green (how is that even possible if Stu and I both have blue eyes?). There are flecks of yellow in there as well which always reminds me of Days of Our Lives when I was in high school. Remember when Marlena was possessed by a demon and you always knew when it was the demon because her eyes would be yellow and not their normal color?

I think of that often when she is having a meltdown.

Marley is at this great age where I can manipulate her into taking a nice photo for me. All I had to do was tell her I would give her some candy if she would stand by the pumpkins and smile for me.

She got the idea somewhere though that she needed to frame her face with her hands to truly model for the camera. I think she thought this would = more candy. It didn't.

It was a very fun event with a ton of dogs there (sorry Casey, I really am!). As I was waiting in line for our food order (don't want to think about where the meat may have come from), this woman was waiting in line holding her dog. I tried to very discretely get a photo of this dog. See his eyes? It's not the flash from the camera - they really glowed white like that!!! Freakiest dog at the ball, that's for sure. I tried not to stare but I mean, come on!

Definitely not as handsome as this little guy - definitely my favorite of the day (besides you Casey, but you know, my favorite of the doggies who have GOOD moms that take them to Barktoberfest).

 

We ran into our friends Ursula, Phil and their little one Aiden and new baby Mowgli (their four month old puppy) and invited them back to our house for dinner. Marley stopped at the potty as we were leaving and when she was done, ran outside asking, "where's Aiden, where's Aiden??" - she knew he was coming over to our house to play and was so scared that he left without her. I think she really misses having Ella and Sophia around to come over and play and she was pumped to finally have a friend over again. Look at this look of concern on her face as she was running to the parking lot to find her friend!

And Maya - not really caring about anything other than stealing her sisters pumpkin and getting away from the camera (candy bribes don't work with her yet).

 

And if you look closely, Maya's onsie actually matches Marley's dress but that was not intentional at all. They both came from different vendors on etsy.com and I didn't realize that they matched until they came in the mail. And you know how excited that made me!! Stu just rolled his eyes but I know time with matchy matchy outfits are limited. Marley is already voicing a strong opinion on her clothing. Then I'll just be left to embarrass them with my own sense of style.

Maybe Casey and I can start wearing matching outfits. Might up my standing in the "good dog mom" category.