I think Sadie and Mordecai will know how to operate a forklift before they can drive a car. They love when we go to Jimmy’s work and they get to ride with daddy on the forklift!

While Mordecai enjoys the forklift, he especially loves the crane. When I tell him we’re visiting Jimmy, he says “I wanna play crane!” haha.

Along with machinery forklifting, we’ve been lifting our forks into yummy food! I mentioned I wanted to make a batch of pasta salad and I made it happen!

I made it with chopped tomatoes, black olives, cheese, cucumbers, Italian dressing, and pasta of course! When I was growing up, my mom made it with cubed cheese, tomatoes, fresh broccoli, and pepperoni. If you regularly make pasta salad, what do you add in yours?

I had an order for baby shower cupcakes, so I made and delivered those on Saturday afternoon. The shower theme was beach-y and I made the cupcakes vanilla with blue colored vanilla buttercream, chocolate sea-themed toppers, and graham cracker crumbs to look like sand.

I usually ship orders on Etsy and do *some* local baking orders, so I don’t do a ton of deliveries. I came home from dropping them off at the venue and told Jimmy “I feel like a real business owner!” 😂

Along with the beach vibe, I found out the baby boy’s name: Coast. How cute and unique is that?! I just love baby names 🩵

Speaking of cupcakes, I’ll be doing a big order for a wedding later this summer: 170 cupcakes! Also, Mordecai is going to be the ring bearer in the wedding. I can’t wait 💍

Another baking thing I woked on over the weekend was ironing out chocolate covered Oreo ideas for a first birthday party. The customer sent me the invitation and asked for the Oreos to have smiley faces and the number “1” on them. Here’s what I came up with.

Miss Sadie went to Kennywood (Pittsburgh’s amusement park) on Saturday! Jimmy’s dad and step mom took her and she had such a wonderful time. We were lost without our Sadie girl but so happy she got to get out for a bit and have fun.

We are definitely hoping to take the kids to Kennywood again this summer! While Sadie was out and about, we went to a local mall with Mordecai and Dakota because we were on a mission. Jimmy’s mom gave me a Pottery Barn gift card for Christmas (!!) and we knew just what to use it on: drinking glasses. We had bought a set from Ikea and they literally all broke within months.

We now have some high quality Pottery Barn drinking glasses and had a fun night out with our little ones!

The above picture makes me laugh. So many people in our lives who see Dakota in person tell us that she always looks a little startled/scared and this picture pretty much sums that up haha. And Decky! He was so proud and happy that we bought him a lollipop that he had to hold it up for the photo. I hope he is always happy with simple things like that in life!

Other things from life lately:

We went to Hobby lobby on Friday night and the kids had fun with dress-up items they saw 😆

And Dakota went in her baby carrier in the front-facing position for the first time. She had big owl eyes looking around!

The kids played and played with Mordecai’s toy sink. He asks to pull that thing out every. single. day. and while it is messy (but just water!), it really captures his attention for quite a while! Even Dakota likes to watch him play with it.

Sadie and Dakota wore matching dresses to church and we took a photo with my niece! Caroline is loving all things Stitch (peep her cute dress!) and that makes me so happy. Lilo and Stitch was one of my favorite movies!

Sadie wasn’t a finger sucker to soothe herself as a baby. Mordecai was (and still is!) all about his thumb. It seems like Dakota is into her ring and middle finger self-soothe. It’s so interesting how babies do/don’t do this, you know?

Just a big tossed salad! What’s your favorite salad dressing flavor? Jimmy likes Italian and balsamic. I am a big fan of raspberry vinaigrette and honey mustard dressing.

Last but not least, Mordecai figured out how to take pictures with my phone. I opened up my camera roll and my laptop and found all of his photos and was cracking up! I love the ones of his little feet. So cute!

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Other things of note:

• I got the itch to clean and organize some random places in our house. I took all the silverware out of our drawer and cleaned the drawer and utensil holders, organized and condensed cereals (I have a lot of cereal 😬), scrubbed a muddy wall by our back door, and even scrubbed our boot/shoe tray. It always feels great to do those tasks!
• I was just thinking the other day about how nice it is to not track my blood sugar or worry about carbs since having gestational diabetes while I was pregnant with Dakota. At the time, it was very time consuming and hard. Now it’s just a memory. Whew!
• We are the proud owners of a yellow bed blanket that is nice and light and perfect for summertime. Did our cat sink his claws into it immediately? Yes. But it just makes me smile because he was there and I love our Malcolm boy 💛
• Mordecai turned 2.5 years old on May 13th. I need to blog about him at this age. He is fun and sweet and full-on toddler!

Okay, I am off to start this week. It’s currently Monday and we need to get Sadie’s school lessons done for the day. Other than that, our day is wide open, which is my favorite!