Holiday – Page 6 – Casa de Murphy

Our Easter EGG-Stravaganza!

May 7, 2014 casademurphy

Believe it, or not, I started this post about 3 weeks ago. It was definitely not my intention to be just sharing about our super fun Easter holiday almost a month after the fact, but it’s been crazy times around Casa de Murphy, peeps. Both Stephen & I have been working hard & on the weekends, swim lessons are still in full swing, and life has been charging on 🙂

Liam got to participate in his 1st real Easter Egg Hunt with our Meet Up Group of friends, the Sunshine Babies. This is a super fun group of parents and we really enjoy spending time with them! He had a blast!

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The park we went to was in Baldwin Park. Really great space & this fountain was beautiful. Of course, little man was hamming it up for the camera.

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Special buddies since they were babies…so cute!…Kenadie & Liam

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Family pic!

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The Easter Bunny came!! …all of Liam’s current favs…Thomas the Train, Toy Story & Tinkerbell.

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The Easter Bunny hid some eggs in the yard for Liam. He also planted lolly pops in the ivy…WOW! 🙂

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A couple of eggs had treats for Timber in them. The boys were sharing them directly after coming inside. HA!

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We had dinner with Grammy & Papa Rock on Easter. It was also great to spend time with my Grampy (Liam’s Great Grampy). The Easter Bunny got a tad bit carried away with his delivery here…lol.

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Liam was SUPER excited (hence this expression below on his face) to see that he got an Olaf from Frozen. We are loving that movie in our house right now.

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He had also been asking us EVERY day (really, NOT joking about this) for a vacuum. He had one that was a hand-me-down from one of our friend’s & it recently broke. This kid loved to use that vacuum around the house and was pretty upset about it. So, every day, he had been telling me he needed a new vacuum, and he wanted one like our Dyson vacuum. Well, unbelievably, they actually make a toy version of our Dyson Animal that we’ve had for years. It was love at 1st sight 🙂

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The afternoon would not have been complete without another egg hunt, right?!?!

Such a sweet picture between Liam & his Great Grampy!

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And, if this little dude is not spoiled enough…..

He got ANOTHER Easter basket from his Mimi & Papa D. He loved his Mickey cup, puppy & the baking set for his kitchen.

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It was really exciting for us to see Liam get into the Easter holiday this year. He enjoyed all the decorations and the eggs (and, most surprising for me…the CANDY…lol). I guess it’s another sign of the times….our baby is getting bigger…growing up some more!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday, as well!

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Until next time……….

February 2014, Latest & Greatest News

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2014 casademurphy

Happy Valentine’s Day!! Pardon the pun, but I really LOVE this holiday …I love the colors, love the hearts, love the warmth we feel, love the decorations, and LOVE making valentines. I have such fun memories from being a kid and making the shoe box to bring to school to fill with valentines from my friends. Now, I’m excited for Liam to experience that.

Here is my little valentine from this morning. All dressed up with a special shirt for his party at school today. So handsome!

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Thank you to Riley Reigh for this fab design especially for our little dude. You can check out her page on Facebook, Instagram, and Etsy. She also designed the shirt we had for him on his birthday, and I am sure this won’t be the last. LOVE IT!!

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Thanks to my obsession with Pinterest, I created this fun valentine for Liam to pass out to his friends at school today. I was inspired to do the cereal idea from a few different pins I came across, but ended up making my own template via Publisher. I found mustache washi tape at Jo-Ann’s and used that to affix the valentine notes to the mini cereal boxes that we bought at Publix. I hope the kids “cerealsly” like them as much as I enjoyed making them 🙂

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Then, I couldn’t stop….so, I found a FREE printable “hugs & kisses” tag here on the MAKOODLE website, so I modified it a bit and used the front half only. On the back side, I wrote a personalized note from Liam with heart shaped stickers I purchased at Target. I tied these tags to small treat bags filled with Hershey’s hugs & kisses chocolate candy’s. Perfect!

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At drop off this morning, Liam’s teacher gave me this sweet card that he made for us. ALWAYS LOVE the hand-print projects…

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The elephant was an early Valentine’s present that we got from Mimi & Papa-D over the weekend. Clearly, he was a fan. Big hugs!

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My mom started the tradition of a few gifts on Valentine’s Day with my brother & me when we were small, so, of course, I am carrying it on…it only feels natural. Last year, he got a few books & his little oven mitt for his kitchen. This year, since Thomas is quickly growing in popularity, we thought it only fitting to go with that. So, these will be waiting for him when he gets home from school.

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And…..last, but CERTAINLY not least. The most wonderful surprise to my afternoon, so far. My better half made a surprise appearance at lunch time with this wonderful arrangement of flowers {they smell heavenly!}. We are usually always focusing all of our efforts on Liam most days, so this was a wonderful surprise and MUCH appreciated 🙂

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I know that showing love to family & friends is all year round …but ya got to admit, it’s extra special AND fun today. I think that’s why I like Valentine’s Day so much. Not because it’s the only day of the year to show your feelings but because it’s a FUN day!

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So, go out & have some FUN people….and LOVE!!

XOXO

December 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Our Merry Christmas

December 29, 2013 casademurphy

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope yours was a good one! We had a nice, quiet holiday, this year.

Mr. Elf made his last appearance on Christmas Eve by bringing Liam a bucket of reindeer food. While we tried to move him about once a day throughout this last month, we definitely didn’t go crazy with this little guy, as Liam was just starting to “get it” with him. Most mornings as we got closer to Christmas, he would ask where Mr Elf was, so I would say he enjoyed him. We also kept the whole experience with the elf fun & light-hearted, so I think that helped. For us, it was more about finding the elf everyday and not that he was “watching” Liam. I’ve actually felt a little bad these last few days, as he’s asked where he was a few times & I don’t think he understands that he doesn’t come back ’till next year. However, we did have a good time sprinkling the reindeer food out in the front yard before bedtime on Christmas Eve. My flash on my camera was being testy so unfortunately I didn’t get a good pic to share. I got the idea here from a pin off of Pinterest. I ended up finding the cute reindeer buckets at the dollar spot at Target the week before Christmas so it worked out perfect!

Christmas Eve, we just hung out at home & did a few fun things like putting up Christmas window clings & baking cookies for Santa.

That evening, we headed over to Stephen’s family for dinner. Liam got to visit with his aunt Heather & new baby cousin, Sierra — it’s her 1st Christmas 🙂

When we got home, it was PJ time, feeding the reindeer, and putting out milk & cookies for Santa. As soon as the plate of snacks were set out, we didn’t even blink before little man was helping himself to the treats! LOL …it was so cute that we just let him go…he enjoyed a cookie AND some milk!! I guess you could say that he wanted to make sure that tasted okay for Santa 😉

Once he was fast asleep…..SANTA.FINALLY.CAME!!

Liam’s big gift this year was a tricycle. I spent a long time scouring over Craigslist trying to find one that we thought he would like. We knew we didn’t want to buy it brand new because (a) if you look hard enough, you can find great deals on Craigslist and (b) we weren’t entirely sure he would like the tricycle so we didn’t want to splurge on it, just in case. One day, literally a few months ago, I found this Schwinn blue trike & knew it was THE one. Best of all, the family we bought it from said their son never really liked it, so he didn’t use it. It honestly looks brand new still AND it still had one of the tags on it! Definitely a steal! It was so hard to keep this hidden for months!

When we heard Liam wake up and stumble into the living room, I peaked out of our room to see his expression. He walked up to his trike & looked all around it. Then, he walked to the side of the tree and checked out the presents.

So cute!!

When he walked into our room next, the 1st thing he said was, “I got my bike! …and my presents!” ….melt your heart!

Going for a test ride right away!

Little People Wheelies track — another fave from Santa

Papa Murphy & family sent him a Rudolph jack-in-the box. This has been a huge hit. He calls it his reindeer music box. It plays the Rudolph theme song when you wind the crank to make Rudolph pop out.

Great Mimi was so thoughtful to send him this teddy bear. As you can see, he gave it lots of love right away!

One of his presents was the Fisher Price Medical Kit. Here he is giving Christmas Mickey (a present from Mimi & Papa D) a check up!

There was so much excitement from the morning, we were all tuckered out. Especially Timber….as you can see 🙂

I’ve been trying to get some good shots of Liam riding his tricycle, as we’ve taken it out for a few spins over the last few days. Here is one pick above from Christmas day. Below is a quick snippet of him riding yesterday. If you push him around, or, as in this video below, let him go down a driveway, he gets the concept of pedaling. However, we are still working on learning how to do it solo on a flat surface. That will take some time still & that’s ok!

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We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, as well!!

Much love….the Murphy’s

December 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Countdown to Christmas

December 23, 2013December 29, 2013 casademurphy

The countdown is on! Just a few days to go 🙂 …are you excited?!?! Having a child definitely brings that magical feeling from your own childhood back & we are finding ourselves wanting to start re-creating memories that we once did, as well as think of new & fun traditions to start.

During the week, we were pleasantly surprised with this awesome wine gift set from Stephen’s dad & family. It comes from out their way in New Mexico, so we’re excited to try this very soon!

On Thursday night, I put together a little gift for each of Liam’s teachers. He went shopping with me earlier in the week & helped pick out the soaps. He was cute. He clearly did NOT want to be shopping {I didn’t either, really…but I’m a terrible procrastinator}, and after we picked the 1st soap, he says, “Ok, are we done now?” LOL.

I found the tags off Pinterest from a free download here, and Liam & I had fun tracing his hand print to also put with the tag!

Friday, we brought the gifts to school, and he enjoyed a holiday party with his class. Later that day, when I asked him what special snacks he had from the party, he remembered, bananas & cheese 🙂

This was the special Christmas handprint project he made for us that he brought home on Friday. LOVE IT!!!

Saturday evening, we headed out to a Christmas party out at the horse stables where Mimi keeps her horses. Liam LOVES animals and really loves to see the horses, so this was great fun for him. I failed epically at taking a pic this time of him petting a horse, but we also had fun walking about the property checking out all the cool decorations.

After we left the stables, we stopped by Light Up UCF to check out the Christmas lights. Liam is still too small for the rides & ice skating they have there, but it was fun to walk around for a few minutes.

It’s almost Merry Christmas Eve, friends!! I am really looking forward to seeing little man’s excitement over these next few days!

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Until next time…..

December 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Wonderful Christmas Time

December 2, 2013 casademurphy

No sooner did we put our forks down from our tasty turkey dinner, did we start breaking out the Christmas decorations. It seems like Thanksgiving was so late this year, and in a weird way, December feels like a short month so no time to waste!

In previous posts, I’ve talked about our obsession with Fisher Price Little People (now, the ‘old’ style, plump kind), so no surprise, this year’s new decorations involve the Little People Nativity Set (thank you to my mom!). It seriously is one of the cutest things ever! Of course, I set it up to display but Liam has had other plans and it’s a new fav toy. It actually works out perfect to help explain the real reason for this most magical season!! 🙂 …hearing him say, ‘baby Jesus’ is totally adorable, too..can’t get enough of that!

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We (correction “I”) decided it would be fun to have all 3 of us decorate the tree together on Friday night. Hahaha!!! …can we say, exhausting? …it was fun, but little man did not make it an easy experience 😉 …happy to report, though, that no ornaments were harmed during this decorating process.

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Saturday morning, our very own elf made his 1st appearance in Casa de Murphy. As pictured above, he was waiting for Liam while perched in the Christmas tree. His book was positioned on Liam’s picnic table in the living room. Mmmm, let’s just say that we got more of a reaction out of the book than out of the elf. The naming process was pretty funny. Stephen & I ran through at least 10 different names from our top picks that we were sure Liam would like, but each one got a “no” response from him. Finally, he said “yes” to ……Mr. Elf.

So, there you have it.

Welcome to Casa de Murphy, Mr. Elf

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So far, Liam & Timber both are loving sitting by the tree. Liam LOVES the Christmas lights, so I see us going to see some places with lights hopefully in the coming weeks. We hope to make a trip to go see the guy in the bid red suite soon but not sure if he’ll even go for it…last year was a no go. You’ll see it here, if he does 🙂

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Until next time, friends!

Latest & Greatest News, November 2013

Happy Thanksgiving 2013

November 28, 2013 casademurphy

Happy Thanksgiving to all you, our family & friends!

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I am thankful for my little Murphy family…for my three boys that give me love & laughter every day. I am thankful that I have this blog to share our crazy antics with you. I am thankful for our family, near & far, and all of our friends….we love you ALL.

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One year ago, as we were all turkey drunk, our little man decided to take his very 1st steps! In a way, that seems like so long ago….he was so proud of himself, as were we! Looking back at this picture below, he was a lot smaller & was just starting to get his teeth. He even looks a lot chunkier than he does now. I think I had forgotten how much he’s grown & changed over this last year…wow!!!

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Now, of course, he’s off & running and you can’t keep him down for even a few minutes at a pop most times of the day…..full.on.preschooler.

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Today, we enjoyed spending some time with Stephen’s side of the family. Here is Liam with his Great Grandma, Betty —

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Tomorrow, while some of you are gonna brave the crowds at the stores (some of you may be out there now), we are excited to put up the Christmas tree. Liam has already been pointing out the one that they put up at the daycare & those we’ve seen up at the stores, so I’m excited for this season!

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Hope you all enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend!!

We are THANKFUL you have taken the time to stop by our little spot on this great big cyberspace.

Love, the Murphy’s

July 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Star Spangled Ed.

July 7, 2013 casademurphy

Happy Birthday, America! 🙂 We had a blast celebrating the 237th birthday of this great nation over this holiday weekend & hope you did, too.

As we creep up on Liam’s 2nd birthday in a few short weeks, I thought it would be fun to take a look at last year’s 4th of July pic in comparison to this year’s ….

7.04.2012 ~ 1st 4th of July ~ Mommy's Little Firecracker! — 7.04.2012 ~ 1st 4th of July ~ Mommy’s Little Firecracker!

7.04.2013 ~ 2nd 4th of July ~ Patriotic Boy, All Smiles!

On the morning of the 4th, Liam was quite the little man with helping Daddy put the flags up in the yard. We did this over Memorial Day Weekend, as well, and I foresee it now becoming one of our new family traditions.

In the afternoon, we hung out poolside at Mimi’s house to soak in some rays and enjoy a yummy cookout. Liam was also excited to finally meet Aunt Heather (Daddy’s sister), who was in town for the weekend.

Swimming with Daddy ....Liam is quickly becoming our little fish! — Swimming with Daddy ….Liam is quickly becoming our little fish!

While Daddy was grilling, Liam wanted to "help" clean up...too cute not to share. — While Daddy was grilling, Liam wanted to “help” clean up…too cute not to share.

Later that evening, it was off to Lake Eola for “Fireworks at the Fountain”. This was Liam’s very 1st time seeing fireworks and we were SO so happy that the weather held up and it did not get rained out. While he got a tad bit frightened when they first began, once he saw that we were enjoying them, he did, too. While I have always loved fireworks, myself, it was truly magical watching them through his eyes!!

Lake Eola ~ Fireworks at the Fountain 2013

Captivated...Watching the "MAGIC" in the sky while safely sitting in Daddy's embrace :) — Captivated…Watching the “MAGIC” in the sky while safely sitting in Daddy’s embrace 🙂

Amazingly, Liam lasted the entire show (which was WAY past his bedtime) and the madhouse mingle back to the car and drive home. By the time we made it home, though (after 11), he was spent & over-tired. After sleeping in the next morning, he was up & at ’em, ready to take on the world…again! 🙂

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