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!!!!
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
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
( 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!
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
I need a wine bottle with a nipple on it today, I have had a long day and I don't drink but tonight a bubbly glass of Verde would go down pretty smooth!! But instead I will drink my ice tea in a wine glass and watch the CMA's, right now there are some blond hooche mama dancers shaking it for Luke Bryan, I wonder how much it would cost to have my body made to look like theirs?? We would have to take into account the feeding tube they would have to put in because I would have to have my jaw wired shut so I could stay looking that way, but cost is no object in my dream world right!! I forgot to put a sandwich in Carleigh's lunch box today, and my desk at work looked worst when I left tonight then it did this morning when I got there!! I am feeling run down from being sick but am feeling much better than I have the past few days, looking forward to the three day weekend! I always decorate our house for Christmas on Veteran's Day, this year is no exception!!! The blog will be getting a Christmas makeover too!! Be watching for it! Tis the Season to be Jolly even if tonight I am feeling like the Grinch!! I am suffering from MAJOR writers block, I tried to write the follow up post to my Dear Me at 16 post, I deleted it, I will try again another day! For now I am signing off as my darling daughters are sleeping and I am feeling a tug toward my big cozy bed, Do you think if I turn off the lights on the house so I can't see the mess, it means it really isn't there?? I am going to try it tonight! I will let you know in the morning how that works for me!!! Buenos Noches Blog Friends!!!!!
Don't sleeping babies make everything right in the world!!! LOVE THEM!!!!
4 years ago on this day I was pregnant, I wrote a journal entry about the best birthday present ever....Tim and I had received a phone call that we were pregnant after months of rigorous fertility treatments, Carleigh was finally going to be a big sister! The next words out of the nurses mouth were, "are you sitting down?" and I said sure why? and she proceed to tell me that our HCG levels were through the roof at a whooping 2400, she said everything indicated that the pregnancy would be twins or possibly triplets!!!! OH MY WORD PEOPLE! LOL Tim and I laughed until we cried!! You see, this was the last cycle that our fertility doctor was going to do with us before we began IVF, which was a road I just didn't want to have to embark down, so these babies were an answer to my prayers, begging God to spare me from IVF. We called our parents and siblings and put Carleigh's big sister shirt on her and took pictures and sent them out via cell phone, we celebrated because when you suffer from infertility your baby is a baby from the day it is made, there is no debate in a fertility office of when a baby is a baby at least not in my head!! and we started talking plans about where we would put multiples and how I would most definitely have to quit working and we fell in love with these tiny little babies that were nestled warm and snug in my belly we were SO naive about what could happen, today I am going to let the story end there, I am going to relish in those happy moments we felt when we found out that we were indeed expecting and that it was probably twins or triplets, I am going to reread that journal entry and laugh at Tim's reaction and recall my own which was "Holy Sh*t Brenda(our RE nurse) are you kidding me!!" I felt safe with those high numbers because all through my first trimester with Carleigh, they told me we could lose her because the numbers were low and not rising correctly, fear NEVER entered my mind that day. What a beautiful day it was 4 years ago...........
Miscarriages are such a taboo subject, they aren't talked about often and yet they happen in 1 out of 4 pregnancies I am going to do a couple of posts of how having a miscarriage affected my life and those around me and how I dealt with it, I am doing this for a couple of reasons, one being I want it documented for my girls in case they ever have to go through it as I was the first one in my immediate family to experience it and it can be really hard for people to understand, and secondly because there isn't much information out there what it is like, mostly there is info about the emotional parts of dealing with it years later.... so come back and read if you are interested they will be scattered throughout the month, if this isn't something that you feel comfortable reading I will title the post with the letter M and a number in the sequence I write them and you will know that it is a miscarriage post!! Thanks for reading and come back soon!!! There are a couple of craft projects a brewing that you won't want to miss!!
