The audacity of those critters, party planning and more

Mice have returned to our garage. What are they thinking? Don't they know we had to kill all of their friends? :oP Ugh. Jody went out the day after discovering them and bought more of the poison food so hopefully they won't last long or have the chance to reproduce as much as they did last time. They are such dirty critters. We're going to leave the poison stuff out there on a regular basis now to hopefully deter a new crowd from repopulating the space every month or so.

We had a really hot weekend here and it doesn't look like we'll see a break anytime this week either. It's in the 90s outside and feels almost as hot (since we don't have A/C) inside.

These past few days have been really good productivity-wise for us, despite the high temps. Jody got a bunch of things (yard stuff) done this weekend that were on our "list" and I got more stuff (cleaning up the house) taken care of today.

My parents and sister will be here in a little over two weeks to celebrate Ava's 2nd birthday with us, so we're trying to get the house in order, plus prepare for Ava's party.

I got the party invitations printed this weekend, but still need to do a little more work on them because I'm not happy with part of how they turned out. I also need to draw up a map with directions to the park we'll be having the party at. I decided to go with a low-key Sesame Street theme. I figure I'll have some Sesame Street stuff on the invitations, I'll buy a few Sesame Street accent items - like napkins and goody bags - and then some Sesame Street helium balloons. I'm not really keen on commercializing her birthday as it is (not to mention how expensive all that stuff can get), so I'm trying to just add some accents and otherwise just have lots of primary colored stuff. But I figure Sesame Street is one thing that she really, really likes, and it's her birthday, so I think this will be fun. :)

(By the way, if your kids are into Sesame Street, I discovered today that there are coloring book pages you can print, games, music, and other fun activities online at Sesame Workshop. That image above is something I made using pictures from the site that I will incorporate into Ava's invitations.)

We're not inviting as many people this year as we did last year, so I'm also planning on serving more food - brunch and then cake or cupcakes. I just need to get started making the mini quiches and breads and freezing them now so I don't have to bust my butt the day or two before the party.

Ava got her first pair of Crocs this weekend. They are bright pink just like mommy's, but they look so much cuter on her feet than mine do on mine. ;) She loves them and I figure they are great shoes for her to wear this summer.

Oh, I got to meet my friend Brandy's new baby Trajan this weekend. :) He's a little doll. (It turns out he was 8 lbs., 10 oz. at birth after all - not 9 lbs., 10 oz., but either way, she's still my hero.) I forgot how squirmy newborns can be though and I felt all awkward holding him. Ava was very sweet with him - touching his hair and his ear and foot softly. She's a nurturer and I think she'll slip into the big sister roll with ease.

Hope you all have a nice week and find ways to beat the heat if you are having record highs too!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that we had a power outage on Sunday. It fried the power supply in my computer (and I was so scared it had damaged much more because you could smell something had burned in the computer), so we had to drop $60 to buy a new one. Jody installed it Sunday night and everything was fine on the computer. What a relief!! I need to get my butt in gear and backup all of my photos and other things that are important to me before I end up losing it all. Gulp.