My Yawning Problem - Help me!!!

The fact that summer is right around the corner and I am the heaviest I have ever been (besides when I was ACTUALLY pregnant), I have decided to get in shape.
So my neighbor invited me to join her for spinning class in the early morning. I used to love spinning and it was how I lost alot of weight after I had LT.
Of course I took her up on the offer and have gone to two session so far. The craziest thing has started to happen to me...After I workout and have had a pretty intense spinning session, I start to yawn excessively during the stretch sessions.
I have never had that happen to me. I also feel extremely tired and am cranky throughout the day. I tried to do some research about it and read that alot of people yawn while they are excercising, but couldn't find many that yawnd consistently afterwards.
what could this be? Here's what I have been doing:

• Going to be early..maybe 10ish.
• Waking up at 5am
• Taking Hydroxycut Max for energy
• Spin for 60 minutes
• Then start yawning for about 20 minutes
• At home I eat something or drink a healthy shake and shower
• Then I am sleepy...I could fall back asleep if I didn't have to go to work
• I go through the day and I feel super agitated
• Throughout the day I feel super tired

What do you think it is? Anyone have any ideas? Could it be that I am getting up earlier than I used to go to bed?
Could it be the hydroxycut? Or could it be that I am severly out of shape and it's my body's way of getting some oxygen to my brain?

My clone

Okay...so I have a clone (or nemesis...not sure yet). check this out: http://www.etsy.com/profile.php?user_id=6333890

heymari! um, seems a little to close to my user name "heymarii" doesn't it? Great, now I going to get a bunch of emails that are not for me! I already get a bunch for my grl4god alias, now this.

Well, i guess I should take it as a compliment....it's just too close tho.

A day in the park!

We are having such fantastic weather here in Austin that it was a great chance to go to the park. My mother was visiting this weekend and we noticed it was very breezy today, so we bought some kites for the kids to fly.

I searched online for a great park in Cedar Park and "BOY!" did we find one! There is a fantastic place not too far from the home called Champion Park. It's located right on the water. We packed up a picnic lunch, the kites, and our fishing gear. Unfortunately, my camera batteries were dead so I had to improvise with my iPhone camera (which isn't that great).

Our picnic was wonderful! We had veggie sandwiches, a turkey sandwich for LT and Kade, baked veggie chips, pickles and some drinks. The picnic areas there are great and would perfect for a birthday party! Guess where our next birthday will be! The picnic area was near the whale wash. It was this skeleton of a whale where water would shoot down. It wasn't working because they hadn't turned it on yet, but it's going to be great this summer when it's really hot! There was also this area with big boulders the kids could climb on and around. They weren't real rocks, but they were sturdy enough to be!

After lunch, we headed over to the Sand Pit. This thing was awesome! Giant sand box with tons of plastic toys and giant backhoes. They even have giant fossil replicas of dinosaurs you can excavate!!

I couldn't get the kids away from this attraction and wish I had made this the last stop. Kaeden had so much fun playing and he even ate a couple handfuls of sand! After the second bite, he decided it wasn't so tasty. When it was time to go, he nearly threw a fit because he didn't want to leave... LT did throw a fit! ha!

Next stop was the fishing area. They had a beautiful bridge and a riverbed to fish from. I saw people Kayaking, so it's a pretty good size river. There was a rocky area further down where the water trickled into a stream. It sounded so relaxing.

We didn't bring any bait and so there were no bites on the fishing line. Perhaps next time we will come prepared to catch a little fish! Lauren just likes to reel in her tiny fishing pole and carry her miniature tackle box...she doesn't care if a tiny fish is caught or not!

Our final activity was to fly the kites. It was a very windy day...perfect for kite flying. We had a blast flying kites. Lauren had a medium-sized one and Kaeden had a mini kite that had a super-duper long tail. My mom got her diamond-shaped kite WAY UP HIGH!! I was impressed!


Ok, you can't see Kaeden's mini kite very well, but it's there...click on the image for the full picture!


It was a great day and I will definitely be going there again SOON! I wish you guys were here to share the awesome park with us!

Birthday Party Wrap-up

So it's been a few weeks, almost a month since the party, and I am finally catching up on the wrap up. Most of you have already seen the pictures from the party, but I wanted to post a few of my faves.

The party was a huge success! We had 29 kids and tons of adults. JW Tumbles was such a fun place to have the party. They had plenty of room and the kids never got bored! I really think all the kids had a fantastic time. The staff was so good with all the kids and they were very accommodating. They just had one activity after another and each one was a big hit. Lauren enjoyed having all her friends there and I found out that she is a compulsive line cutter! It was her birthday, so everyone tolerated it but when I found out I was very strict about her letting everyone else have a turn!

Kaeden had such a blast eating his cake. He really dove into it (unlike his sister at her 1st). He got super messy! He loves cake. When I went to take it away from him, he threw such a big fit. It was all smooshed in his hands...it was disgusting! He even picked it up once and flipped the cake over!

The food layout was phenominal! We had so many snacks and everyone commented on how delicious it was. We had my famous grape jelly meatballs, my special spinach dip, fresh fruit salad, cheese and crackers with summer sausage, veggie platter, pasta salad, chips and queso, goldfish crackers. I even had little snacks for the smaller kids like cheerios, fruit bits, and veggie puffs (it's a baby snack). I had little sippie cups with organic milk or juice, organic juice water, and mini pods of water (along with sodas for the adults).

The cake from Ann's Kitchen was scrumptious! I am so glad I went with their cake instead of Lucy's Cakes. I was extremely pleased with the flavor and decorating...everyone raved about the cake. It was chocolate with vanilla buttercream and chocolate gooey filling! They even made a special tiny cake for Kaeden's smash cake.

The kids and the parents really enjoyed the monkey cookies! They were all impressed that I made them and that they tasted so yummy! I am so glad I ended up doing the cookie instead of bag full o crap! It was totally worth it. (props to vivian for helping me come up with the idea and the remote help on assembly/design!)

Lauren and Kaeden received so many wonderful gifts. We didn't have time to open them at the party, so we opted to spend the time opening them at home. Lauren was thrilled to open all of them, including Kaeden's!

Wish you guys could have been there...it would have made it even more perfect!

My Wishlist???

Okay, this is so funny....
I don't know if you guys ever look at the information to the right, but there is a section called "My Wishlist." I am not sure where that information is pulled from, but it does not come from any database that I am associated with (oh, how i love relational databases...but this one is not mine!).
The wishlist I see right now says:

• Web Standard Solutions - a link to amazon about an HTML book. Okay, maybe I can see myself using something like this...but really not anything I am wishing for!

• CSS Mastery - a link to another book on amazon. Sure, I would love to master CSS because I am a software person, but again not a wish!
  

• Multicolored bolero :) This is what really caught my attention. Of course I need a miniature version of a bolero! Are you kidding me, it's what I have always dreamed of...how did this software application know the true desires of my heart!?!?

Where in the world did I pick up this "Wishlist" Gadget. It's hysterical. I need to keep watching it and see what other interesting things I should be wishing for!!

Coutdown: T minus 5

Okay...so I have been blogging about this for over a month because it has completely consumed my life! For those of you tired of reading about it, don't worry it's almost over....we have 5 more days. For those of you totally excited about it (even tho you won't be able to attend)...WE ONLY HAVE 5 MORE DAYS!!! So the place is booked, the invites are out, the balloons are ordered, the cake is being made, the party supplies are bought, and the kids are responding!!!

RSVP's:
So far we have 20 kids who have RSVP'd. I expect about 10 more by the end of the week. Tonight I finally got an RSVP from a kid in Kaeden's class. So far we have had almost everyone from Lauren's class and kids from the 'hood. I was getting worried because nobody was calling from Kaeden's class, but we finally heard from someone!

THE CONFLICT:
So last week, LT received a birthday party invite from her two favorite boy-friends. They are twins, Ethan and Drew. She and her best friend Jada were kinda like a clique with these two boys. Well, LT was the first to move up to the preschool classroom and so they have sorta broken up the clique. Well anyways, they are having a birthday party too...ON THE SAME DAY!!! Yes, that's right they are all having parties on the same day. So we are attending two parties that day...the twins and ours. So it's going to be a party kinda day :)

BAG FULL O CRAP:
I have been stressing over the goodie bags. I am contemplating what route to take...bag full-o-crap, something useful, or homemade sugar cookies. For those of you who have never attended a kids birthday party, everyone gets a bag full of crap at the end of the party to say thanks for attending. Usually this bag is full of crappy candy and crappy dollar store toys. I am always turned off by the bag full o crap because I have to fight Lauren off the candy, unwillingly apply the temporary tattoo, and watch the toys to make sure Kaeden doesn't choke on them.

I thought about getting something useful like gift cards to Baskin Robbins Ice Cream or McDonalds, some kinda of toy, or a book. Lauren attended this birthday party not too long ago that was themed around pink cupcakes! It was such a cute party. At the end of the party, they gave out these presents wrapped in pink paper. When we got home and opened it up, it was the cutest book called Pinkalicious. It was about a girl who ate too many cupcakes and turned pink! It was the best present because we read this book almost every night before bed. I want to get a cute gift like that!!

Finally, I thought of making some monkey sugar cookies. This has turned out to be harder than I thought. First, I don't have a righteous sugar cookie recipe. My friend has been sending me several recipes, but I have already gone through three and haven't been impressed with my baking. I have FINALLY come to the conclusion that my Organic flour may be the culprit. I am starting over with normal all-purpose flour tomorrow. Even if I do get a perfect recipe, my decorating skills are lame to say the least. So I am not sure if I can even pull off monkey faces!! So one or the other has to be awesome! If the cookies are cute, but taste like crap...well, at least they look cute. On the other hand, if they taste fantastic, but don't look perfect...at least they taste good right???

I am just not sure how much work I want to put into it. In the end, I understand why we get that damn bag of crap. It's easy to put together and it's cheaper than any of the other options!!!! I am probably making gifts for 30 kids, so I have to consider price and time.

It's finally on....

I have been extremely busy at work and haven't had a chance to blog about the roadmap for the big party! Phase one...complete. The invitations have been made and passed out...so we are officially having a party folks!

I was going to have some invites made online and mailed to me, but I couldn't find anything I really like cuz they were all lame...and they were too expensive. So I decided, yet again, to do it myself! I am so crafty--or think I am--or pretend!

Staying with the mod monkey theme weI picked out for the party (thanks to your votes....where have the rest of you been...I think I am only getting votes from kimmie and viv. I might have to plug my blog on IM again!!! Wake up people!!)...anyways, staying with the mod monkey theme I blew up a giant 5x7 version of the monkey face. Went to Hobby Lobby (I know you're jealous Kimmie!) and bought some thick cardstock scrapbooking paper, got some envelopes, grabbed some glue and GOOGLY eyes and I was out the door! Total Cost about 25 bucks.

I knew this was going to be a long project because I couldn't just sit down and knock out 25 invitations on the fly. I had a month and I decided it was safe to do it in small increments...I gotta work people! And boy have I been busy with work....so good thing I got a head start on all this.

I started out with some monkey heads, then monkey faces, monkey lips, monkey ears, and then I printed out the actual invite. It took me FOREVER to come up with a catch rhyme for the invite. Printed out the invites on some white cardstock I already had (score! freebie) and cut them into the shape of monkey heads.





I wasn't sure what I was going to do for the eyes and nose because cutting out the mod monkey eyes and nose was going to be difficult. So I opted for googly eyes and hole-punched some black cardstock for the nose. And viola (or as I used to say whala)...my invites. I think they turned out pretty cute!

For the envelopes, I used the last blog picture of the BFF Monkey and Banana picture! It's so cute and couldn't resist!

Monkey goes bananas!

Okay...I am totally bananas now. I have been researching monkey everything for this party. I think this is why I hate planning a birthday party for the kids because it's so exhausting. The funny thing is that I don't think I even do it for the kids...I think I do it for myself. Why are parents like that? The kids won't care if the theme is perfect...the kids attending the party won't even notice all this extra effort I am putting into my monkey theme. The only people that might notice are the other parents...so am I trying to put on a grandiose show for them? I just I must be.

Well, here is what I have been thinking about. Your opinion counts here, committee! Please vote in the poll to the right.

First off, the cake: Baking cake/cupakes for the party (banana flavored and chocolate frosting to look like a monkey) vs. buying a cake. I was going to go with the great cake place here in austin called Lucy's Cakes. They are apparently "THE" cakeshop to go to...but I am second guessing whether I want to spend $50 on a cake.

(My thrifty side is starting to emerge once again. I looked over everything I want to do and I just can't see myself spening over $600 on a kids birthday party. So I have decided to trim back and figure out ways to be crafty. The place I rented out is already costing $325 so I want to cut back as much as I can...I still have to get goody bags too! arg!)

After days of looking at great birthday invitations online. I opted to not spend $65 on having custom invitations printed. I am going to attempt to make my own! There is something to be said about homemade invitations...if you do them right, they are the talk of the town!! I wonder if you all remember Lauren's 1st bday invites? Man were those cool!!!!

I really didn't want to put that much time into this party this year because I don't have a whole lot of time to spare. But it has to be done.

I am planning out the monkey invitations right now. Once I get a mock-up, I will post them and see what you think.