Busy Bees and Tweedle Dees

I think I mentioned this to y'all but we were in Birmingham for TEN DAYS at the end of July through the beginning of August. We went because my MIL was having her birthday celebration there, my immediate family is all there, and we decided to make a time of it by having Emma's third birthday there, too. It was much easier this way since no one had to drive to Atlanta on a Friday (yuck!) and I didn't have to clean and prep MY house (yay!)

We kicked off the first weekend there with a lovely celebration for my MIL, FeFe, at a delicious dinner spot in Brookwood called Brio's. It is SO GOOD and I'm so sad we don't have one over here. BUT. That's probably a good thing since we all ate ourselves sick on bread, wedge salad, and delicious main dishes! The next day, MIL's besties threw her a themed Alice in Wonderland tea party for girl's only and it was hilarious and awesome. Two words. Costume Party. For grown women. Hahahahaha! MIL was the Queen of Hearts, Eve was Alice, Jamie was the mad hatter, my mom was the rabbit, Scarlet and Emma were miniature queens, and Sarah and I were......................

Yes. This happened in real life. (Stolen from sissy's blog)

While we were brainstorming what we could be without breaking the bank on a costume, Sarah came up with this. And it was genius. All we bought/made were the hats and bow ties. And a bag of pillow stuffing to create our awesome guts. It was pretty rad.

The following week brought lots of playtime, party prep, and Emma's first two days of school! Emma crashed Scarlet's school and had a lot of fun! 

Sweet cousins!

Then, Scarlet got "croup" and all hell broke loose. My kids started coming down with "it" on Thursday. With Emma's party on Saturday. Yikes. I use quotes because I'm not convinced that Scarlet or my kids had it. I think it was an upper respiratory infection. No one was coughing all night, wet bark style. We are STILL getting over whatever is going on over a week later!

Friday was cray cray. I had booked a cut and color with my stylist cousin, Mo. Y'all. My hair was SO LONG. It was like middle of my back long. I couldn't take it. I told Mo to do something good. She gave me a darker, richer color and cut it to my shoulders. I love it! And it takes 15 minutes to dry and fix!

After the hair appointment, I went to get Emma from school so I could take both kids to the doctor. Alone. Out of town. That was fun. Luckily my mom and sis met me up there to entertain while I filled out 85849409 pages of paperwork. After they went home and napped, I got busy cleaning, organizing, cooking, and decorating. Lots to do! And I couldn't do it all yet because all three kids would be up to destroy things.

We all worked together (thank you so much sis, brother, momma, FeFe, GiGi, Eve, and Jamie!!) to help make Emma's birthday a wonderful, laid back success! That post will have to be next! This is getting long!