My new favorite

Over at The Idea Room, they are doing a little photo challenge. The challenge was to post a picture of yourself. I think alot of mom's don't like to be in front of the camera and yet we will want our kids to have those memories, so we're just going to have to. Now you will have to go over there and see the really cute creative pictures they have - like the one that is a Got Milk ad. I'm feeling a fun photoshoot coming on with my girls. Isabella would get a kick out of that one since I don't drink milk and she is always sure to point that out to me.... and everyone-- guess I could use almond milk for me. :)

Currently, this is my new favorite picture of me and my love. There are so many reasons for me to NOT like this picture. First, the day we took this (and the family picture in the header) I had just wanted to go out and take pictures of my girlies. Then Isabella wanted to take pictures of Daddy and Mommy and then I said "Why not? And then lets take a couple family pics" (The wall was an added bonus since Kenny's leg is in a cast) To be quite honest, I hadn't showered that morning.... or the morning before. Yeah, I was 'stanky' with dirty hair. The only reason I even threw a headband and a necklace on was because I knew we told the girls we would grab them breakfast out. I didn't want to go into the restaurant stinking with dirty hair and not at least LOOK like I was trying.

Secondly, who really enjoys a picture of themself scrunching their nose up - I mean really, no one says "Ok, now scrunch your face all up, yeah, that's it, ....beautiful."

But I love this, its my profile picture on Facebook -- it might be forever. I love that my six year old wanted to take pictures of mommy and daddy (and did a pretty good job), I love that I LET my six year old use my D300 :), I love that she kept saying "now hug, now kiss....", I love that this was totally unplanned, and that Kenny knows that ticklish spot, and I love that after Isabella took this we were all laughing. As much as I avoid getting in front of the camera, I'm glad my girls will have this picture memory of their mommy and daddy loving each other. And boy don't I love this man!!

It has been so long that.....

.... I forgot my own password for this blog. :) One, of you many people, who I'm sure has been checking daily for 5 months, just recently asked me if I was done with my sabbatical. The answer is yes, I think, maybe, ok, definitely yes. I think I just needed a break from the whole blogging world for a little while. Blogging has changed immensely since I started this blog over 4 years ago. I mainly started this blog so that family out of state could catch up with us, funny thing is none of them ever comment so I'm not sure they even read it. Then it was fun reading other blogs about families - some were, in particular, adoption blogs. Then I started finding blogs about photography, crafting, cooking, organizing, adoption/orphan care,.... Then blogging took on this whole competitive nature, and it starts becoming a matter of "are my pics that good?; I wish I was that organized;their house looks like what?; they're so spiritual, they have it all together, she has HOW many readers; " not that those blogs are bad, I enjoy getting inspiration, encouragement, etc. But some of what was going on inside of me well, I didn't like it too much and I had to step back and rethink my reasons for blogging. Mostly, I just want to do it to make a little record, journaling if you will, about my family. I already love looking back at previous posts and reading the silly things my girls said or did. They are truly growing up too fast. It is also good way to keep in touch with people and I've quite honestly met some great people through blogging - many of which might have forgotten I have a blog but are at least friends with me on facebook. :) And every now and then its a good way to get myself motivated or organized (like those menu plan mondays.) And who knows I might even share a little inspiration like THIS adorable blog that shares so many pretty creative ideas. So my blogging might not be earth shattering, it most definitely will not be everyday, it might even just be a picture like this:

Because looking at these two faces always brightens up my day..... unless they are standing next to me eating cherries and just ruined their shirt and my picture mousepad with cherry juice..... (yeah, that just happened)

Hello?!?...... Is this Mic on?

Ok, so I've taken a long sabbatical from blogging. I guess I should have told all (three) of you that I was going to do this. It wasn't totally planned, but as our busy fun fall went along I just didn't feel like sitting down and blogging. Then along came the Christmas season and same thing, enjoying my family time far too much to be at the computer alot. I would say that I've kept in touch with some of you through facebook, but I think its been months since I posted new pictures on there as well. The last few months have been full of all kinds of fun stuff - honestly, I love fall and Christmas, but this year seemed even better. I'm going to post some pictures, but not alot because I only have 30 minutes to do this before I have to pick up Isabella from school. This fall, we loved the weather, Kenny put up a new swing for the girls, so hours upon hours were spent swinging -- them, not me, although I did give it a whirl, its just not nearly as fun when your butt almost drags the ground because you're.... well, you're more than 40 pounds. We tried to enjoy the pretty weather as much as we could - although we missed out on a couple things that we normally do every year, like apple picking, we were able to replace them with different fun memories.

I was able to go away one weekend for some girl time with my cousin, Alyssa. We went to the beach and had so much fun. I wish I could post a video from that time on here, but she might kill me. :)

Then, of course, fall brings Halloween and I just love dressing my girls up. This year Isabella decided she wanted to be her own version of Mulan and Amelia..... well would anyone would be surprised who she wanted to be.... Snow White - of course.

Then our friends who live in Ireland had come back to the states for a little over a month and we tried to snag up anytime with them that we could. It had been 2 1/2 years since we had seen them, but the girls didn't seem to miss a beat. We were able to spend an afternoon out in the beautiful weather, another day at the Children's Museum, and another afternoon Cindy planned a tea party for all the little girls -- such fun, fun memories! We're really hoping and praying that its not another 2 1/2 years until we can get to see them. We had so much fun, and it has made us miss them even more!

Ok, I'm realizing that I have far too many pictures to post, so maybe later I can post a couple from Thanksgiving and Christmas and then we'll be pretty much caught up..... so I can go on another sabbatical...... Just kidding. :)

Zipline

As promised, here's a couple pics of us at the zipline for our anniversary. You can see from this first picture, that it was a rather glamorous thing to do for our anniversary. Actually, you can't totally tell that because you aren't getting the full shot with the harness tightly around the lower regions, or the enormous work gloves I had to wear. And for me, I had to wear tennis shoes with capris (we weren't allowed to wear anything that came above our knees due to the harnesses I guess.) I have this thing about wearing tennis shoes.

My hubby, you can hardly tell since he is so far away. I thought we would be going on a zip line, hike for a while get to another zip line...... but actually we were attached to a zip line the whole time.(Me and a stranger, this man said this was on his bucket list. He was unsure pretty much the whole time, but was proud of himself at the end that he had accomplished it) After going over one zip line we would then "hike" over things like this:

(This is one of the guides showing the lady behind him that it didn't matter if she did fell because we were attached to the line, it was kind of strange to walk across it)

We had a little training class at the beginning because we had to know how to hook ourselves on, make sure that when unhooking we would right away attach ourselves to a safety line.... this at first seemed silly until we got to a couple places where the area we were standing on was like standing on a 2x4 hugging a tree for your life, way up above the ground. We also had to learn how to stop ourselves -- hence the ugly work gloves because we had to use our hands to brake. You can barely see me in this last picture, but I am there. This was the very last zip and it was so long. I shouted the whole way and the guide at the end was using the slow down signal and had the rope out to stop me, but I figured why not have fun, it was the last one, they couldn't ask me to leave now. Found out my husband pretty much did the same thing. It was so much fun and I'm looking forward to doing that again. Isabella is looking forward to when she is 10 and she can go along with us. :)

A month?? Really?

I can't believe it has been a month since I last posted. I don't know how some of you can update every couple days, I want to, I just don't get around to it I guess. Ugh! I'm so disorganized, any of you organization freaks out there want to give me some pointers. Anyway, so where HAVE I been.....

Well, this past month has been busy. Right before my last post my husband and I went to this adorable place to celebrate our 13th anniversary. And if you read this before there are zip line pictures, come back and look tomorrow. I was downloading the pictures today (yes, I'm that behind) and I realized that the zip line pictures weren't on my camera. Like I would actually take my big camera down a zip line, not nearly as compact as my husband's point and shoot. So, I have to find his camera and cord and I can download those.
We had such a fun weekend. And this place was one of those "we definitely will have to come back to this place." Then the next weekend was labor day and we went to the beach with my parents And don't let this above picture fool you, I realize this would look normal for the average sisters that are 26 months apart, but Amelia is actually down in the hole and Isabella is on the side. Amelia is maybe an inch shorter than Isabella. I'm hoping that and the fact that I dress them alike alot is the reason people continue to ask me if they are twins..... honestly, I've been asked this so many times this summer its been comical.

We actually were at the beach twice, the first time with my parents, and then a week and a half ago we went camping at the beach. Isabella had a couple of days off from school, so we had planned to go away for a last little hoorah before fall truly arrived. The water was nice and warm so I had fun playing in the water with my girls, we rode bikes, visited with friends, and got rained on in the loudest, strongest thunder storm I've ever camped in. It was a great trip, minus the thunderstorm that pretty much kept us up all night. Oh and the raccoons that got into some of our food -- this was the big talk the next morning around the campground because I believe the 'coons were a problem this year, everyone had them "stop by" and were amazed at how smart they were getting into things. Thankfully, most of our stuff was in the car. I didn't take many pictures.... I know that's awful. But instead I just really enjoyed my time. I'm trying to learn how to balance my need,.... I mean want, to take so many pictures and just spending time enjoying what's going on. Its great having a thousand pictures, but if I haven't been truly enjoying my family, what good are the pictures, right? There's a balance, I'm sure, I'm just finding it.

And my Amelia was so, so cute on her little scooter. We took our bikes, but Amelia is still getting used to her bike, can't quite get the whole pedaling forward without constantly going backward into her brakes, so she wanted her scooter. And boy did she become the scooter queen. I wish I could have a video of her to post, she had the most determined little look and would just ride this thing back and forth between "#63 and the stop sign" (those were mommy's rules) and she even rode it around the campground with daddy. The cutest thing ever!

At home, we've been busy with Isabella going to school, searching for a new church, I've gotten back to being more organized with my meal plans now that the summer vacation is over, and we have also been having some fun family time. The girls were racing by pushing apples with the noses down the halls.

Kenny and I raced the girls as well, but who really wants to see our butts up in the air?! This was part of family devotions --- can anyone guess what we were learning about? Hmm, wonder what kind of prize I could give if you guessed right.

Then this past weekend, we went to a "reunion"/get together for my old high school.

And in case you are wondering if that's my whole graduating class, no, here is my class:

Ok, to be fair, this is 44% of my class -- there were 9 of us. :) I went to a very small Christian school. But don't feel bad for me, I actually loved it. And I think pretty much everyone that showed up for this get together agreed. We had great times, great friends, great teachers and great memories. I wouldn't change it.

So, that has been my life in a nutshell for the past month. Give or take a few things in between of course. We have been gone 4 out of the past 5 weekends, and still have several things planned for this month. The nice thing is that even though the months from September to December seem like the busiest for us, at least it is fall. I love fall!!! Its my happy spot, once I get jeans and long sleeve shirts out, I'm so content. Hope everyone has been having a good fall as well!

13 years (and 4 days) ago

I married my best friend! And today........ I love him even more. I am not going to use the cliche "it feels like just yesterday...", because actually, it doesn't. I will admit 13 years has flown by, but when I think back about what we have done, what we have enjoyed, what we have gone through, how we have been blessed over the last 13 years, it definitely doesn't seem like just yesterday. When I realize how old I am to be married for 13 years, sometimes I wish it was yesterday. :) The picture above was taken by Isabella while we were at the beach in May. I think she did a pretty good job. No, she did not change the coloring in photoshop and burn the edges, but she'll get there. :) I put this picture in a frame for our bedroom it says "Love with no regret." A few weeks ago when visiting a church (haven't told some of ya'll about that yet, but we'll talk later) they were talking about: Are there things you would go back and do differently? do you have any regrets? are there trials you wouldn't change because of what you learned? etc. So Kenny and I have been talking about this off and on lately. I really don't have real regrets, at least not in the sense that I would go back and change things - well, maybe I would change gaining 20 pounds, but I'm talking serious things people! NOW, if you would have asked me in the middle of a trial, say infertility, yeah, I would have said you could have it. But then that would mean not having my 2 girls, not seeing God work, having a different life than I have now - nope wouldn't change it. And if I would like to go back to say high school or college and be the person I am now, rather than that person back then, sure every now and then I would love to change that. But again, if I was the person I am now, but my husband was not the person he is (or vice versa)...... you get my drift, my life might not be my life now. So I thought the frame was appropriate when I saw it. I am so thankful that God has given me an amazing husband, who is an amazing father to our girls. There isn't anyone else I can imagine spending the last 13 years or the next many, many more with.

I'll have to post picture later because I'm in the midst of packing and cleaning for a long Labor day weekend at the beach, but to celebrate we went away this past weekend. The place we stayed at was marvelous! It was like a little mediteranean village and was Rustic Chic (as their sign said.) It had a spa, which was oh so wonderful when my hubby booked me a massage. We also went on a zip line tour and had so much fun. Just another thing I love about our marriage, we love spending time together, truly enjoy being with each other and trying new things together. (And yeah the zip line pictures will be attractive, we have helmets, harnesses, oversized gloves.... yes the perfect picture of romance.)

To my hubby: I love you Babe! With no regrets! Well, I kind of regret that my wedding dress had a big bow on my butt, but other than that, no regrets. :)

I survived.... ur I mean SHE survived her first day of school

Well today was it, the first day of Kindergarten for Isabella. Of course, she loved it! And if you had placed a bet on my crying, well you would have lost. I was honestly too excited for her to cry. I'm sad that she's growing up so fast, but I couldn't help but be excited with her. We already knew that she would love her teacher and she's been talking about things she's said or stuff they've done all evening. She already learned the concept of raising her hand to talk because she was doing that tonight in family devotions. :) She met friends, but has no idea any of their names. This too is no surprise. She wanted to carry her backpack today, although since its just half day K5, her teacher said there is really no need for her to bring one. I let her for today.... what's a good first day of school picture without a backpack. And I had to have a picture of both of my girlies. Amelia missed her sissy today. When we were leaving she asked "Are we leavin' Sissy?" after I said yes she said "I so sad." And when we went to pick her up, boy, you would have thought Isabella had been gone longer than a 1/2 day. Amelia was so excited to see sissy. She said "Did you have fun? What you learn?" :)

I just dropped her off by myself this morning so that Daddy could in turn meet us after she was done to go out for some fun. I told Isabella not to expect that every day, that was just a celebration of her first day of school. All together, it was a great first day of school. Here's hoping that tomorrow goes as smoothly!

10, 9, 8, 7, 6,....

...5! In 5 days, my 5 year old will be starting K5.
Can you believe it? I'm feeling pretty strong today, I think I'll be fine and won't cry.... anyone want to place some bets? She's so excited, she has been asking me every day, "how many days until I start kindergarten?" and she has been finding it quite hysterical how her Daddy pronounces kindergarten, I'm sure her teacher will hear about that. This past Saturday, we went out and had a little "going to school" photoshoot. It was just going to be us, but then I decided I could use Daddy's help (no one can make her laugh like him, and he's great at carrying desks. Love you Babe!) We had a mommy/daughter date day afterwards though so its all good. She could so easily be my retro girl, so I had to have some retro looking shots and then some school shots as well. Just so you know, the red high tops were too small on her.

She has told me everyday since Saturday that they hurt her feet. I'm a bad mommy, but they were too cute not to stuff her feet in them for this photo shoot. :) I told her to just wait, she was at least in high tops, try wearing a pair of heels with toes so pointy its unnatural, then tell me about suffering for beauty. I'm only posting a few of the pics, if you're friends with me on Facebook, I have several of them on there. Here she is, the cutest kindergartener:

One of the many....

....MANY things, I love about my husband. This past weekend was my birthday and this was my first birthday present:
I was at a Bible study with friends a couple days before and Kenny helped the girls make me flowers. It's just the sweetest thing. I love that he is helping our girls do special things for me. I love that he loves me enough to take the time to do this with our girls. And this isn't the first time, he does this kind of stuff alot. I love that they see him, loving me. I love that he is a good example to them. And quite honestly, I love being spoiled every now and then too. He just didn't realize until our girls that I would be easy enough spoil with paper flowers.

Little smart aleck

Amelia must be a baby genius, I think she read my last post about Isabella being so funny and decided she needed to step up her game. She has been such a crack up lately. She doesn't talk as clearly as Isabella did at her age, but with a chatterbox for a big sister, who really gets a chance to talk? So some of the things she says are more about HOW she says them rather than what she says. For instance, we were up in Michigan for the 4th and went into a Joann's Fabric store.... we walked into the scrapbook area and Amelia said "Howee cow! HO WEE Cow!" (Holy cow if you need interpretation) It took me a while to stop laughing. Then today the girls were watching a show on Noggin and Amelia said "No way, NO Way! No he didn't!" And really how did I end up with such a little smart aleck? (No comments from some of you! :) I really thought we wouldn't have to work on that until she was like 9, but 3?!? Today we went to lunch with a friend and I could tell by the way the girls were playing at the restaurant that when we went into the next store they could easily get out of control. My husband is probably nodding his head right now because he knows, the girls can get silly, which is cute until it turns to "Let's be as loud as we can, let see how many times we can make mommy say sit down, touch everything in sight....." and when they are with a friend, which means audience, it can be worse. (And now I'm sure Andrea is nodding :) So as I was buckling the girls in the car to go to the next store, I gave them the whole speech "While we are at the store I don't want you to........ I want you to........ if you don't......... if I need to call Daddy......" The nice long speech that I thought had just the right amount of firmness and motherly love, :) and then as I'm finishing up Amelia says "Sooo.... we need to be good." Uh, yeah, that's what I meant. Little smart aleck.

As I opened up blogger today, I noticed that it has been exactly 1 month since I have posted. Sorry. This summer has been flying by, at the start of the summer, I sat down with my calendar and filled in all the things that I wanted to do: playgroups, free movies, library programs, etc. We have not gotten to everything I wrote down. Some due to better options -- getting together with friends rather than just sitting at a library story time for 1/2 hour (pfft, I can read a book just as dramatic as them :), some we've missed due to rain -- can't have outdoor movie or music programs in the rain, and some just because we are hanging on by our teeth trying not to get over run with things to do. All in all we've had a fun summer so far. In the last month we've gone camping for Father's Day, went to Michigan for a week, spent the past weekend celebrating Kenny's birthday doing fun family stuff, and just little fun things here and there. I feel like this summer is flying by, normally I wouldn't care because when it flies by, it just gets to my favorite season quicker, but this summer, oh I just wanted it to stand still. I'm not ready for my baby to go to kindergarten, I'm not ready for counting down to holiday breaks and summertime to spend all day with her. And I'm not too sure that my little smart aleck above is either. She adores her sister and I think she's going to miss her during the day. Sniff, sniff..... why do they have to grow up?

This girl can crack me up like no one else. The things she comes up with. For instance, a couple weeks ago, she was putting on her crocs and she has this little jibbit that is a pink breast cancer ribbon - she said "I know this is to remember Nunu." I said "Yes, that's so anytime you see it we can remember Nunu." She let out a sigh and said "I wish I could get a tattoo on my foot that says I love my Nunu." I honestly wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry because it was so sweet, or start worrying now that she is thinking about tattoos.

Then their are things that are so sweet that make me thank the Lord for her tenderheart and pray that He continues that work in her. For instance, one night praying she was going through all the normal, thank you for Daddy, Mommy..... and then she said "And God, help everyone have food. If they don't have food, please give them some, we have enough." :) Again, laughing, crying....

And I know that God has used her to be an encouragment to a lady in our church. This lady's brother has Lou Gehrigs/ALS, Isabella obviously doesn't know what this sickness is, but she knows that she needs to pray for him. Mostly she just remembers his name and that's really all that matters anyway because God knows exactly who he is and what he needs. She will remind us to pray for him at home and the last couple weeks she's made sure that if anyone forgets to mention his name in church that she will do it. Such a sweetie -- the prayers and childlike faith.

She is growing up so fast. She just brought me roses in from outside, yes its 9:15 at night and she was outside with her daddy and had him cut some roses for me and came up the porch saying "Oh, you're going to LOVE what I got for you mommy...." And I do, I love the little giver much more than her gift!

Sisters

"Its their beauty that captures your attention

Its their personality that captures your heart"

I'm not sure if I've used that little phrase on my blog before, but yesterday I dropped the girls off at dance camp and then headed to my hubby's work (Lunch date - yay!) I used this phrase on a calendar I made for him and when I read it, I automatically thought of this picture. And I also thought how true it is of my girls. Granted, I'm a little biased, but I think they are beautiful and yet its their sweet, silly, fun, tenderhearted personalities that I love about them the most. Its fun to watch them play with friends, but when its just them either at home or on trips like Disney, I just love watching them having fun together and being so close as sisters. I'm hope that God will continue to build this sweet relationship!

Kindergarten here she comes!

I'm not sure how it happened, but in a blink of an eye, my first baby is getting ready for Kindergarten. Today we had a busy day; we had to run by the drs to get her immunization record, then we needed to be at the school for me to pay registration, then we met with Isabella's teacher and Isabella had to take an oral readiness test. We left early because you just never know about doctor's offices, thankfully I was thinking ahead (for once) and brought my camera with me because the drs office had the paper already out for us and we had time to kill. We went to a little park area and took a couple pics of the girls. I was thinking that I would take pictures of her before her test, you know, kind of documenting this first big step for kindergarten. This next picture is the exact reason I told Kenny we are going to have to watch this one like a hawk as she gets older. I told her to pose on the bench and that's what she did. :) We got to go to lunch with Papa and then the girls got chauffered around at the school. Papa works there, so he drove them around in the golf cart.... I can already see Isabella trying to use that for some kind of popularity points at school. :)

We love her teacher, I think either of the kindergarten teachers would have been great, but I was hoping for this one after we had gone to the open house. Isabella's test lasted almost an hour -- I wasn't allowed in there, I guess they didn't want any hints from mommy. She passed with flying colors. She was at her age and higher on everything. A couple things cracked me up: 1. The teacher kind of laughed and said "well, I couldn't really give her credit for writing her name because she wrote it with a lowercase i at the beginning..." I laughed because I know my daughter, and I looked down and saw this cute little i with a heart at the top --- she doesn't normally do that, but lately she has talked about "fancy writing" and I can just see her little mind thinking "the teacher is going to LOVE this" 2. She didn't get credit for knowing her address because..... well I've never taught it to her, I know bad mommy. (Not to worry the teacher said they would be memorizing it in class, phew) 3. one of the areas where she was just right at her age was "Body Image" --- and no this doesn't mean she doesn't find herself attractive because she would have scored high on the not so humble points. But the teacher said one of the things it was talking about was knowing things like "where your neck is, where your elbow is....." Isabella has what some would call "brain farts" when it comes to certain things, she is like her daddy in that you have to say a name like a thousand times before she will remember it. She constantly tells me "look I'm walking on my hips" when she means heels and she is always calling her elbow her ankle. I didn't ask. 4. She scored very high on the "language" area. Wow, what a shock, she so rarely talks around here. :)

Now I have 2 1/2 months to try and mentally prepare myself for her actually starting Kindergarten. The only supply she needs to take to school (since the teacher said everything else would be provided) was a big box of tissues.... how fitting, I might use those all up the first day.

And in case you thought I forgot about my other girly, I currently have a new favorite picture. I am going to print this as big as I can.

This is SOO Amelia, Sassy thing trying to be Miss Big Girl with her teddy on her hip.