SIMPLIFY

Am I the only one who laughs each time I see a "Simplify" sign in someone's home? They are becoming quite trendy right now. I have one too. Mine is written in crayon on a sticky note stuck to my bathroom mirror. Now, that's a real "Simplify" sign.

Speaking of simplifying my life, I was stressing out over the kids' Halloween costumes. I spent hours trying to figure out how to make "Talking French Fries" and the "In-n-Out" guy. Not that it wasn't feasible. I read all y'all's blogs and I know some people find a lot of pleasure in spending hours creating their child's Halloween costume, but for me, it just seemed tiring. That was when I discovered this great thing called online shopping. I sat the kids down at the computer with me and let them pick out new costumes. Easiest thing ever. I always knew throwing money at a problem was the best solution.


Luke chose this Iron Man costume from Target. Charlie wanted to be a bumble bee from Old Navy. So glad this is done.

Something else that seems crazy, and kind of flattering, is the number of Halloween parties we've been invited to this year. I don't ever remember it being this overwhelming. Maybe it's the age of my kids and the fact that everyone feels the need to overcompensate since Halloween is on a Sunday this year. So, I found another way to simplify when asked to bring a treat -


Pillsbury Ready to Bake Cookies! You can't dumb down cookie making anymore than this. True, they are full of junk, but kids don't care! A mother at Luke's preschool party today complained about staying up all night to make these cute chocolate dipped pretzels that looked like scary fingers. I laughed to myself as she spoke, thinking about the 30 seconds I spent putting those cat cookies on a cookie sheet.

FREE GIRLY STUFF

Since we found out yesterday that we are having a girl (more on that later), it seemed fitting to post the codes that our friend, Troy, has given me to download his Fairy Princess app for kids off of iTunes.

Just click redeem at the bottom of the iTunes page and enter in the code. These are good for another 23 days or so.

MM9RHKKMTYFJ
KPX7RR4XWNH6
HHK3K3HTTR4K
N79KAJ9AM7XY

Yay for free stuff!

BACK TO THE GRIND

Here is a picture of Shaker Village (woo hoo!) with my nieces.

Since returning home early Sunday morning from my week away in New Hampshire, I've spent the last few days slowly adjusting to being a Mom again. It's weird how quickly I got used to not cleaning, changing diapers or cooking meals. I had a great trip. New England was beautiful, although I have learned that looking at leaves is kind of an old person thing to do. (We ran into a lot of Blue Hairs.) Hey, I still had fun.

And Erik? He survived playing Mr. Mom for a week. Good thing I wasn't around though. I was going through the pictures on his phone from last week and the kids were definitely spoiled.

The first thing I noticed was the numerous pictures of Erik feeding the kids corn dogs. Really? Corn dogs? Gross. I have never fed the kids corn dogs in my entire life and I probably never will.

My first thought when I saw this was that Charlie died. Actually, Erik kept the kids up really late one night. The next day he found Charlie asleep in the middle of the day like this. Nice.


Ah, yes. The McDonald's pictures. I have discovered several new "happy meal" type toys since returning.

This was a good picture. He took the kids on an impromptu flight to Camarillo for dinner one night. They fell asleep in the back of the plane.

At first I thought Erik was changing Charlie's diaper in this picture, but then he explained that this is what he did with the kids so that he could use the bathroom at Winco. Uh, yeah, totally safe.

Don't worry, there is a picture of Erik changing Charlie's diaper too... in the trunk of our car!

In all seriousness though, I really couldn't have asked for a better gift than for Erik to take a week off to watch the kids. When he picked me up from the airport, he brought me food in a cooler, along with napkins and cutlery. He said, "I brought you some food. I'm all Mom'd out now!" Knowing how crazy his life is right now, it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.