American Girl Sale Weekend!!

 As you can see from the above photo, this weekend was lovely.  We had fun things to do, a bonus babysitter night out, my mom in town, and my very favorite thing ever:  THE AMERICAN GIRL BENEFIT SALE!!

My mom and I have been going to the sale for 5 years (!), and this year, we held back on buying any more big dolls-- not because I am over buying dolls but because Dorothy has SO MANY and didn't want a specific one.  She did want Wellie Wishers-- she has one and really likes to play with it.  So, we each got her another.  I recommend these dolls completely if you are new to AG or if you are buying for a kid under 5.  She really enjoys their cute little clothes, and they are such a good size for tiny hands.  Also, they are a little more sophisticated (LOL) than Bitty Babies or Bitty Twins.

I planned to spend Friday afternoon and evening at the pool with the 3 youngest kids and my mom while Harry played baseball, but it was POURING all day, so we went to the indoor pool at my mom's hotel instead.  BIG FUN!

 We didn't wear matching suits on purpose, I swear.

 Cooper LOVES this pool.

 Since Ben wasn't there to throw the kids around, they pestered Uncle Ben, who was happy to oblige.

 This is truly the best shot we could get.  Awesome.

 While we waited forever for pizza to come (like, seriously, forEVER), Cooper was hungry, so he ate all of the display fruit in the hotel lobby and bam!  Out came his tooth!  It has been super wiggly for weeks, but he has been loathe to wiggle it.  So cute!

 Finally!  Pizza party!  (Ben and Harry were back in time for dinner, having won a game and made it into the quarter finals before the tournament was delayed for rain)

 Henry wore himself right out and didn't quite make it for pizza.

 THE SALE!!  We had 8:45 tickets, but things were WAAAAAAAY behind, so we didn't get into the warehouse until almost 9:45.

 We both grabbed all of the clothes and accessories we could find and we only ended up with one duplicate between us, which was awesome.  I also bought something I bought last year-- oops.  (The dolls at the sale are not really cheap at all.  The GotY sells for the same price she did last year (but she's no longer in stores, so that's cool) and the rest of the Be Forever dolls are like $80-105, which is a tiny price break).  But!  The clothes are half off, which IS a really good deal because they are extremely well-made and come with adorable accessories.

We went to breakfast afterwards and examined our loot:

 I put most of the stuff away for Hanukkah, as did my mom,  But I bought a beach picnic set and a swimsuit set, and my mom bought a beach dress set that we gave to her right away because it's summer!  She got some dolls (Julie, Grace, and Isabelle) dressed in the new clothes and even put a vintage swimsuit  she already had (from Molly's line of stuff) on Addy, and said, "Wow-- it's like all new dolls now that they can go swimming" and played beach for the rest of the day.

 Saturday night, we went out for a friend's birthday, and I made delicious cupcakes with peanut butter cups inside them and espresso frosting on top.  And then I left them in the car while we went to dinner and when I got them out at the after-dinner brewery, I jostled them too hard and they flew all over the carrier, and also I noticed they were a melty mess.  On the way into the venue, though, a pregnant woman stopped me and asked if she could have one.  It was weird, sure, but I was happy to oblige.  I was about to warn her about the espresso in the icing, but then I saw that she WAS SMOKING A CIGARETTE, so I figured she didn't care about a few tiny sprinkles of espresso.

 Yesterday instead of cleaning the house we went to family float day so Harry could use the new float he got for his birthday.  IT DIDN'T EVEN FIT IN THE CAR:

 So awesome:

 Dorothy brought her swimming girls.

 We had the place to ourselves for a little while, but the pool eventually filled up with a ton of totally silly floats.

 She LOVES it

 I should just walk around with this all of the time.

 Definitely a drowning risk for tiny kids:

 I laughed every time I looked at Harry's float.

 At one point it started to rain, but there was no thunder or lightening, so we didn't have t leave the pool, and it was pretty neat.  Dorothy jumped out to take a hot shower, but the boys and I stayed in and watched the steam rise from the sidewalk.  My friend got this super cool pic of Jack in his very own water tornado:

And now I  am back to being up at 5 am to cram in all my summer class grading before the kids wake up and need me to, you know, parent.