Sterling's cowboy birthday

Ever since his 3rd birthday party, Sterling has been saying he wants a cowboy birthday next. Sooo...I have been planning for a few months now trying to come up with the best/cheapest way to throw a cowboy party. Wish I could have rented a horse to come but $500 is a little steep for me! But he ended up having such a great birthday party anyway! My dad and step mom came in town to help celebrate and we enjoyed their company!

Here are a TON of pictures from his special day! Thank you to everyone who helped make this day extra special for him!

Uncle T (my brother) and Sterling shootin' their guns!

I can take half of the credit for the cake. I made the shape and frosted it with the blue frosting. The next day (a few hours before the party was supposed to start) I went to decorate it and I didn't have the right tools!! I freaked out of course! So I called up our little local grocery store that is right down the street and asked if they could help out. I drew out exactly what I wanted it to look like and she did it perfect!!! Even better, she didn't charge me a penny! I love how it turned out!The party favors...

I printed cowboy coloring sheets off the Internet and put together a coloring book which I taped crayons, and cowboy stickers to. Then everyone got a sheriffs badge to wear when they got there. I also ordered some bubblegum coins from Oriental Trading and covered them with some bandanna material that I already had. (cowboy treasure)

Once everybody showed up we got the party started off by decorating some cowboy hat and boot cookies. That is licorice strings and miniature gummy bears in the buckets.

This cracks me up...

Then we opened presents!! We got the hay bales for people to sit on!

Thanks Grandma for the toy shot gun...(insert major sarcasm here please) look at my face!

Getting a sweet hug from cousin Clayton!

Then we sang and served the cake!

Little toot! Thanks G-dad and G-mom for coming to celebrate his birthday with us! We enjoyed our time with you both! See you again soon when Judson gets here! :)

These pictures are from his actual birthday on Tuesday at school. Sterling helped me make these cupcakes to take to his friends.

This is funny...we forgot candles! So he's pretending to blow out the candles! haha

He got to pick out of the special birthday box!

That night he said he wanted to eat at Red Robin for his special birthday dinner.

This is hilarious...

They came out singing really loudly the birthday song that goes,"happy happy birthday, we're so glad you came...yada yada" clapping and just being really loud. Sterling was NOT having it! His little face got really red and he was just pretending they weren't even there!! He started eating his french fries and and just looking at other things. It was hysterical! Then when we got to the car Heath asked him if he enjoyed his birthday dinner and he said,"YES, but I didn't like that song they sang!"

I think Sterling has had quite the birthday week and this momma is one tired prego!! Now it's time to get this baby's nursery ready!

A certain special little boy is 4 years old today!!!

I LOVE YOU STERLING!

Mommy and Daddy are so proud of the little man you are becoming and what a sweet child of God you are. He has truly blessed us with a wonderful little boy who is our whole world!

You are going to be such a wonderful big brother to Judson.

We love you! Enjoy your day!

My little crafty project

So I won some potpourri in a silent auction back in August and I didn't have anything to put it in. I figured instead of going out and paying a fortune for a fancy thing to put it in then I would just search garage sales for something to fix up...

IE...create a project for myself!

So a few weeks later I found this ghetto fabulous thing...

for .50 cents!

A can $5 can of textured spray paint later...

The very last road trip for a very long while!

Have you ever traveled in a car for 5 hours when you are 28-29 weeks pregnant?

If not, I don't recommend it.

At all.

Very uncomfortable.

Don't do it.

But I'm glad we did make the trip to St. Louis this past weekend to see my family. I had a blast!

First thing we did when we got into town was made a stop to see one of my good friends Jill and her new baby Emerson. She is SO cute!! It was so good to see Jill even though it was for a short visit. It's so neat to see us then when we became friends (summer 2001)...

And now... With our kids...

Me and sweet little Emerson...she's so cute!!

Mama and her tired little sweetie!

So good to see you Jill! :)

The next day was my step-sister in-law, Jennifer's baby shower! We are due three weeks apart!!

Nick (my step brother) and Jenn...

Me, Jenn, and Jamie...

Me= 28.5 weeks, Jenn= 32 weeks, Jamie=12 weeks

Jamie is my step sister! We all three are pregnant at the same time...how often does that happen!?! So fun! Too bad we all live in different states. :(

How cute is this...

While the girls were doing the shower, Sterling Heath and my dad went to the Transportation Museum. Sterling had a ball! These pictures are from Heath's phone so it's not the best quality.

Poor Sterling, on the way there he fell asleep and woke up with a bloody nose with blood all over his shirt. Thankfully they had another shirt in the car for him! G-dad and Sterling... Couldn't turn this...

After the shower and the boys got back, we just hung out at Jamie's the rest of the night visiting...so fun! Sterling and Gavin (Jamie's little boy) were having a ball playing and stopped to give us some camera cheese!

The next day (monday) was my grandmother's birthday so we stopped in on our way out to have lunch with her in the park and spend some time with her.

Sterling walking Chloe to the park. Since Grams isn't going to be here for Sterling's birthday we did Sterling's birthday with her at the park too! (we have a lot of birthdays in Sept!) Thank you Grams and Aunt Gigi for the birthday presents! He is enjoying them!

He got a stethoscope and was checking Daddy's heartbeat. He keeps saying he's going to be a doctor and loves to help people, so maybe, just maybe!?!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRAMS! WE LOVE YOU!!

Sterling and Grams playing around in her flowers.

Then it was back on the road for us. It was a LONG trip home!

Our not-so-labor-free, Labor Day

Our labor Day turned into a not-so-labor-free, day!

We (actually I should say I) started the morning off painting the garage door. See when the tornado came through 3 years ago, we were able to get our whole house re-sided, but have never painted the garage door and pipes/electrical boxes and the gables to match. So 3 years later, it's finally finished!

I ended up painting the entire garage door, while Heath and Sterling painted the pipes/electrical boxes/gables.

Sterling is all about helping us do things...ALWAYS! I have another post on that coming up! And when the little artist found out we were painting, he was ALL ABOUT IT!!

So here is the before:

And the after:

Then Heath decided to paint the back door since it didn't match anymore either. We couldn't decide whether we wanted to accent with black like the rest of the accents on the house, or just go with the color of the siding. We chose the color of the siding...black might have attracted too much heat!

Before:

After: So after my fun project of the garage door, I went in to finish the day off with laundry and cleaning the kitchen and bathroom floors on my hands and knees. I think I might have over done it...the next day I was kinda sore!

That night was Owen's 3rd birthday party! We had so much fun visiting and sharing that day with him.

All the Brown cousins (minus Bree) enjoying the slip-n-slide!