Turning Three

                                                               

I wish I could say it isn't so, that my sweet last born didn't just turn three, but alas she did and of course I do want her to grow up, healthy and happy, but man it is sure bittersweet to witness your last little one turning into a little person, leaving babyhood behind and becoming more independent and opinionated! and oh my goodness is Caylee both of those!! :) We celebrated her big day with multiple festivities! On Friday night Tim's family came over for a birthday dinner and then on Saturday we had her kid's party at Build a Bear Workshop!

GREAT PARTY idea for any of you mom's out there!! It was so fun and I didn't have to do any party prep we just showed up and they took over!!! The played games and stuffed their bears and then fluffed there bears! Then we all went up to the food court and ate a big cookie and went to ride the train! it was lots of fun! and then on Sunday we went to brunch with my side of the family and went to the park! Needless to say our birthday girl was pretty worn out from all the fun by Sunday night!!!

Caylee girl,

Mommy just can not believe that you are already three years old!!! I remember being pregnant with you and wondering what you were going to be like, what kind of qualities you were going to have and being anxious to see how you were going to make your presence known in a room where your big sister was always quick to steal the show! But I didn't have to worry for long! From the minute you came out, Carleigh loved you and she was quick to pull you right into the center of attention with her! and it wasn't long before you showed her that you didn't need her help, you knew how to run the show without her! I love the way that you talk with your eyes, you are so animated and those big blue eyes speak everything you are not saying! You are VERY stubborn and strong willed and I hope those are traits you hold onto as a teenager and adult and that you learn to use them well, if you want to quit using them so much right now, that would be okay with mommy though!!  Let's see right now you weigh 52 lbs and are super tall, I haven't measured you lately but I will update that as soon as we get it done! You have surpassed where Carleigh was on her growth chart at 4 and a half and I think that you are going to fly right past her!! You can count, know your shapes and talk like and adult, you talk in multiple sentences and there isn't a word that you don't use! You call polka dots coconuts and the other day you said "Gee mom why you have to be so bossy" when I told you to put on your shoes, these kinds of sentences are pretty typical of you. You  also LOVE to sing, you have knack for remembering words to the songs you hear on the radio even if you have only heard it a time or two! You are really into Dora the Explorer and Bubble Guppies right now and you really love to paint and play playdough! You will not learn your colors, no matter how hard I try, sometimes I will catch you off guard and you will tell me them correctly and so I think maybe you do know them, you just like to rile me up by not performing when asked! You are getting ready to go to your Pre-School screening and I am anxious to hear what they have to say! You still have a binky and I am totally okay with that, your beverage of choice is always an "ice cold milky" and you have a blanket with ribbons on the edge that you take EVERYWHERE with you (made with love by your auntie Tricia). There are days when you never stop, you go constantly and then there are days when you come to me and ask to rock in the rockin chair and we usually always do that when you request it! We love you so much Caylee and we can't wait to see all the big girl changes your going to make in the next year while relishing in all the characteristics that still make you our baby!!

Love,

mommy

  1 Day Old
                                                                                   
                              
1 Year Old



2 Years Old!

3 Years Old!!

Let them be little.........

My dream to be a mom is deep rooted, and when I struggled to get pregnant I often begged God for the chance and made promises to Him like maybe somehow I could change His mind on the off chance that never having children was my destiny! Thankfully for me God gave me two beautiful little girls but those promises I made to Him are never far from my mind! I know that God didn't give me my girls because I begged and bargained with Him, I know that was just my way of dealing with the matter at hand. But one thing I remember praying was Lord, please give me babies and I promsie to never rush them to grown up, I will cherish them and Lord I will let them be little! We will mess, and play and we will rock and I will hold them until they are sick of being held, I will kiss every booboo and I will not rush them to grow up....and it is very true that I haven't rushed them and I have enjoyed MOST minutes of them being little LOL! In a lot of ways I struggle as a mom, I am often times not patient enough, I probably yell to loud, don't punish often enough and even when  I do punish it never lasts for long, I let them play ball in the house and we kick the soccer ball down the hallway, the little darlings fill the bath tub to full and then I find them sliding down the incline like it is a water slide splashing from one end of the tub to the other, we don't make our beds everyday ( I know living on the wild side with this one! LOL!) and sometimes I let them eat bread sticks, and canned cheese for dinner, BUT I try so hard not to rush them to grow up. This song has been my mantra on days when my patience's are running thin! It helps me to remember on days when my expectations of my almost 3 year old and 6 year old aren't realistic of where they should be, when I am treating them like "Big" girls instead of little ones, this song knocks me back into prospective!! Enjoy!

Valentine's Day Box Catch Up!!!

Love-my life is overflowing with love!!! Valentine's day is a day to reflect on that!! I LOVE the simplicity of V-Day!! We did fun things like baked heart shaped cookies, and put out the heart covered table cloth, a few simple LOVE decorations and we just relished it how abundantly blessed we are.....okay okay enough of the gag me your life is so peachy stuff right!! :) Want to know how vday really was?? The above statement is totally 100 percent true LOL!! BUT it was also filled with making a vday box to top the year's past, filling out tons of tiny valentines that do NOT make the line big enough for a kindergartner to write her name!!!, running out of time to make Tim a heart-shaped meatloaf and not getting everything done exactly the way I wanted it!!! I spent most of the day wishing I was a stay at home, homeschooling mom because there were so many other things I wanted to do and now Valentine's day is over and well WAHHHHHH!!!! oh and my husband got this funny card for me except that when I read it...I didn't laugh............. yeah...... His reason for a funny card instead of a romantic one "DeAnna you always gripe about how you hate 5 dollar expensive cards and all the romantic ones were 5 bucks" SIGHHHHH WHY did he choose to listen to my frugality on THIS lesson!! REALLY!!!!!  He made up for it with pretty flowers and a scrubbed bathroom :) Tim had to work last night so we had dinner at my mom's house with my sister and her kids and they talked most of the way through GLEE ummm yes those who have read here long no that this in itself is a travesty! but we did laugh a lot and had a really great time so I guess they are forgiven....... I hope you all had a great Vday too!! :) Don't give up on me yet okay! I am determined to make a blogger out of myself!! SOON....yup REAL SOON!!! ya know a blogger that posts more than 2 times a month....ahem.... moving on :)

So Carleigh was in pre-school for 2 years and then kindergarten this year so we have done 3 Valentine Day Boxes, I must tell you that this is my most favorite project of the whole year! I LOVE IT!!!! I wanted to document her other two boxes on here since we didn't have a blog when we made them!!!! So here you have it  The giraffe was pre-school first year, and the puppy was preschool 2nd year and the gumball machine was this year!!! Yup I looooove me some Vday boxes!! These were all great because Carleigh got to be very hands on in making them!!!

Next year my brain will have to work over time as we will have two blond hair giggling girls in need of fancy boxes!!! :) I can't believe my baby baby is going to be going to school!!!!

Rockin her way to 6!!!

               I can not believe that my precious sweet 5lb 4z, 18 inches of preemie sweet baby girl

the one I didn't put down for the first year of her life unless it was to very rarely share her with her daddy or another family member!! The same one that I rocked, and sang to, and cuddled and kissed until I am sure she would have slapped me if she had been able too!! oh her cheeks were IRRESISTIBLE!! she looked like Mrs. Magoo with her big blue eyes and bald head! Really she couldn't have been any cuter if she tired!

She was my real life baby doll!!! I LOVE LOVE LOVED being a mommy!

Anyway back to the unbelievable......SHE TURNED 6!!!! 6 years old! No way right! I am still in some kind of denial!

But denial or not she Rocked her way right to 6 and celebrated it in a big way! We rented out the community center in Auburn ( for 25 bucks, this is the way to have a party!!) and she invited her whole class plus all of our friends kiddos of which the final count at the party was..ohh umm 21!! CAN WE SAY INSANE!!! The theme as you can see from above was A Rocker theme so we set up a stage in the corner and decorated with Christmas lights and Carleigh's Auntie Tricia brought us an amp and her zune and it was way more awesome than any DJ service! (this party would not have been a success without the help of our auntie trish!)

We hung up Rock star Poster's made from her rock star photo shoot! ( I was able to make 5 posters for around ten bucks!! total steal!)

Dessert table which had Guitar shaped suckers, cupcakes, guitar cake(made by ME! my best yet!),  & M&M's

 We don't have a picture but Meme brought up the mother load of balloons which added the prefect touch to each table!!! and then all heck broke lose when all the kids arrived! It was pretty much controlled chaos!!

We have lots of fun pictures, We tried to get Carleigh's picture with each kid, I can't show them on this blog since it is public and I can't show identifiable pictures of other people's kiddos but trust me they are great!!!

The macreana!!! ( I felt old when my nieces had never done this dance before!!!)

We all had a great time celebrating Carleigh turning 6!!!

Myself included!!!!

Carleigh Girl, mama can not believe you have been my baby for six years already!! You are so special and spunky, adorable and funny, smart and joyful, and just all around a great kid! You are in kindergarten and are already reading independently, doing math, and scoring AWESOME on your report cards, you get along well with others and don't know a stranger. You get your feelings hurt easily when other kids don't want to play with you but you easily move on to the next friend who will. You are eager to help me, and don't mind doing things around the house to help out! You are stubborn when you want to be but that is mostly a good thing! You are an AMAZING big sister,  you are patient and kind with Caylee, you share well with her and love her. You have never had a moment of sibling jealousy and I hope neither of you ever will! We go to the doctor in a couple of days for your 6 year check up so I will have to update your stats but you are changing and growing every day!! Your dad, sister and I love you SO much and we can't wait to see what the next year brings!!! XOXXOXO

I have..... but I haven't.....

Giggling Girl's first ever Gingerbread house attempts, Caylee's is on the left Carleigh's on the right, she said her's was hit by a blizzard!!

I have spent much of my time from the week before Thanksgiving until now getting ready for Christmas, we have gone to the festival of trees and seen Santa a time or two, I helped host a Breakfast with Santa at my dad's work where I was the Elf who took Santa pictures, we have done a mitten drive and Carleigh has lost her first tooth, I have done a cute craft project with Tricia that I would rather shoot myself in the foot than attempt to do again! I have threw a birthday party for Tim and my brother-in-law at my house which prompted me to clean like mad the weekend before Christmas which was a wonderful thing going into this crazy fun holiday week, I have watched Carleigh in her Christmas plays and made Christmas bows and treat bags for her class, I have baked some goodies and read lots of Christmas stories to my giggling girls, I have shopped Black Friday and had a wonderful Thanksgiving, I have watched the CMA Christmas special 500 times because Caylee LOVES to dance and sing to the music, I have made gingerbread houses out of graham crackers and milk cartoons, made real Christmas Swags out of branches off of my Christmas Tree and watched LOTS of Christmas movies, I have driven around looking at Christmas lights and relished in the ooohs and ahhhs and the "it's boootiful mama's" and I have let the girls unwrap Christmas presents early, I have taken down my dead Christmas tree the week before Christmas while being extra glad I put up two this year and I have LOVED every single minute of this Holiday Season but I haven't : even started wrapping, not close to being finished shopping, haven't decided what all to bake, ordered my Christmas cards, mailed said cards, or even taken the picture to go on the said cards, I haven't read a full Christmas fiction novel which I must tell you is a TRAGEDY folks! I haven't picked out my Christmas outfits or done any blog post with picture updates, in fact I have not taken a ton of pictures. I haven't video taped and we haven't made it to the festival of lights and I only have 2 more days to finish!!!! Did I mention I work a full-time job?? ...........................It is quite possible that this year I am going to be okay with not sending out the Christmas Cards and that I am okay with the Children's Christmas stories replacing my beloved Christmas novels..........I mean who doesn't like the book Santa's Stuck??? Right, the story line is incredibly complex and I just didn't know if they were ever going to get him out!!!  2 DAYS 2 DAYS HOW IS THERE ONLY 2 DAYS LEFT TO FINISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you Mary!

( Sorry for the messy look of our blog! I am currently working on winterizing it but it takes more time to do that than I have had lately! I also know I am WAY overdue for some updates and I have lots I need to get wrote down like Carleigh's FIRST visit from the tooth fairy!!! :) I will definitely be back to do a catch up post but for today I had something else on my heart)

Christmas is all around us, I see it everywhere I look. Facebook is full of it, I have watched everyone around me as they have prepared and relished in the season. I have seen tons of "generic" posts about making the season about Jesus rather than Santa and other posts defending why they choose to do Elf on the Shelf and Santa even though they are Christians. I have heard lots of great Christmas carols and enjoyed lots of good Christmas goodies. I LOVE Christmas and always have, it has always been a magical and special time at our house, I secertly think that my mom is one of Santa's Elves and always has been! I enjoy teaching my kids the traditions I have grown up with and watching their eyes light up. I LOVE that Carleigh can tell you the WHOLE Christmas story and that she is intrigued and in love with baby Jesus's Birthday and I also love the sparkle I see in Caylee's eye's as she opens a present. It is definitely a magical time of year!

I will never forget the first Christmas that I was mom for. I was nearly nine month's pregnant with Carleigh and I was watching a reenactment of that Christmas Eve so many years ago. It was in that moment that I "got" Mary. My tummy was heavy with child, and I could understand how tired she must have felt after such long days of endless travel, My ankles hurt and I had comfortable shoes on, she wouldn't have had that luxury, I had comfortable maternity clothes to help support the heaviness of my baby, Mary wouldn't have had that either. I had a wedding ring on my finger and everyone knew who the father of my baby was and their were no doubts about that. Mary didn't have that kind of security. I was in my early twenties, Mary would have been younger than me by far.........and yet she had a maturity about her that I STILL don't have even though I am now 29, yes my first year as a mom I was able to understand Mary in a way I had never imagined and the tears filled my eyes .....
The second year I was a mom for Christmas I had a 11 month old on my hip who I loved more than I could ever imagine, she was my everything and I couldn't (and still can't) imagine my life without her. My second year as a mom I "Got" Mary even more.....I now knew the love she felt when she looked down at her sweet baby boy for the first time. I know how her heart swelled with love and how she tired to pick out what features of her He had. I understood her love for Him in a way that I had never been able to before, and not only did I understand a side of Mary I had never understood before, I understood a side of Jesus, he came just like any other baby, he looked up at his mommy with those sweet baby eyes and puffy newborn lips and He LOVED unconditionally just like my babies love me that way. He loved her in that "you can do no wrong because you are my mom" kind of way. My second year of Christmas I understood a mother's love like never before.....and it was breathtaking.
I am now going into my 6th Christmas as a mom, and the wonder of it still takes my breath away. This Christmas I am getting to experience Carleigh understanding, truly understanding, Christmas. She understands how babies are born (well at least that they come out of your tummy), She understands that Jesus was a baby born to his mommy Mary and that God is his Daddy but that Joseph was there with Mary, She is starting to put it all together and that is enough for now, but I am praying that someday she will be able to look at me, while holding her own baby and say Mom, I "get" Mary now, I truly understand how she must have felt on that dark night with the North Star shining down on her, oh the love she must have felt. 

Thank you Mary, for loving and mothering our Savior in only that way that a mother can. Thank you for rejoicing over each milestone He made and for kissing his booboo's and rocking him to sleep at night, thank you for nursing him through illness and for teaching him. Thank you Mary for making a sacrifice that no mother should ever have to make.....

This song means more to me than any other Christmas song now because I understand a whole lot more than I used too!

Craft Time!!

Let it be known that I was so sick for a week :( Our whole family was, I contemplated doing a post on it but truth is I don't want to relive it! HA!! It was one of those weeks where I was trying to be super sick, the girls were both sick, I was trying to work, and bleach the house like a mad woman and it just made for an exhausting experience! BUT we survived! and We are well for thanksgiving!!! But it does mean that we missed 2 craft nights so Trish and I had to make up for that last night and so I present to you our Thanksgiving Day Turkey shirts!!! Trish came up with the hand print idea!!

I didn't take pictures as we went along because I always forget I have this fun blog to keep up!! :) So anyway, you start by your kiddo's hand onto a piece of paper and then cutting it out and tracing it onto your fabric, the we used iron on transfer and adhered it to the back of the fabric, and maybe onto my ironing board cover, but ya know that isn't really all that important to know, except that if you are in love with your ironing board cover, don't use it :), Next you arrange your hand prints on your shirt and then you use your iron to iron them on, we then used brown fleece and cut out a turkey body, we just did this free hand, we  hot glued on some googly eyes (NOTE: If you use hot glue on your shirt you CAN NOT dry them in a dryer, really you can't, don't ask me how I know...LOL!) and we used a piece of felt to make a beak which we also hot glued on, Ironed on their names and

this is our finished product which

Carleigh modeled for me this morning and happily wore to school!  Happy Crafting and

 HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!

Be Blessed but most importantly, Be A BLESSING!!!